Firebird

by Jack McDevitt

  It wasn’t as if we hadn’t done things like this before. Sure, it’s not quite ethical to start rumors to increase the value of a client’s holdings, but Alex’s argument is that nobody gets hurt, that all we’re doing is earning our money. Nothing wrong with that. And I wasn’t being asked to lie outright. Exactly. Just provide some context. That was the term he normally used. Context.

  So okay. I decided to skip the beach for the moment. I put on a pair of shorts and a white pullover with an anchor emblazoned on the vest pocket, and wandered out among the tourists.

  Virginia Island was home to about four hundred houses. Hotels and lodges, shops, and souvenir stores lined the shore walk. There was a convention center, a stable, a pier that provided all kinds of entertainment, a petting zoo for kids, and an aquarium. And, of course, the beaches.

  I looked for somebody who didn’t appear to be a tourist and settled on an elderly couple sitting at a table under a tree. I bought a sandwich and some chocolate cookies and sat down on a nearby bench. It was easy enough to catch the woman’s eye and begin a conversation. Within a few minutes, I had joined them and was commenting on how beautiful the area was, while we all munched on the cookies. They’d been on Virginia Island for the better part of seventy years and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. But when I commented that this had been the home of Christopher Robin, they looked at each other and shrugged. “If you say so,” the woman said.

  A little farther on, a guy in shorts was working on his boat. “The island can be a wild place this time of year,” he told me. “Parties every night. Kids running loose. Don’t know where their parents are. I wouldn’t let mine just wander around.” His name was Wes Corvin. He was well past the century mark, all smiles, with an appearance of absolute contentment. It was obvious his plans in life didn’t extend far beyond floating around on the ocean.

  When my opportunity came, I commented that it was fascinating to be here, that I’d done a paper in school on Christopher Robin, and there I was on Virginia Island.

  “I remember seeing him when I first moved here,” Corvin said. “He used to walk around up by the cove. He’d be up there in the evenings, sometimes with his wife, sometimes alone. I can remember that he’d just be standing there, leaning over the rail, staring out to sea. I never really talked to him. Maybe said hello or something. He didn’t seem to pay much attention to what was going on around him. Every time I saw him, he was looking at the ocean, or the sky, or something far away. You know what I mean?”

  “But you knew who he was?”

  “Hell, I still don’t know who he was. I knew he was supposed to be a famous scientist. But that’s all.”

  In Ruby’s Walk-In, I drank lemon soda with two women, one tall and distant, one heavyset and almost painfully good-natured. They shook their heads sadly while telling me that Robin had been cheating on Elizabeth, that she’d found out, and that when he’d arrived home that night, she’d been waiting for him. “Everybody here knows what really happened,” the tall one said. “They just don’t like to talk about it.”

  “You’re saying she murdered him?”

  “I’m not sure how she managed it. Since there was no witness, I can’t really say.”

  “But you think she killed him and dropped him into the ocean.”

  “Yes. She might have had a gun. She might have simply told him there was something strange happening in the sky and got him to walk out to the overhang. Maybe she had an accomplice, somebody to help her drag the body out. She had a lot of money, so she could have paid somebody.”

  “They never found the body,” said her affable friend. She seemed proud of the fact.

  That evening, I took a taxi out to the house they’d owned, which rested on a summit overlooking the sea. It was completely alone at the southern tip of the island. No other property, no other house, was even visible.

  A FOR SALE image blinked on as I approached, and a code that would allow a prospective buyer to contact the agent.

  It looked more imposing than it had in the photos. It was not as large as most of the island homes, but it had a quiet ambience: single-story, small windows with dark green shutters, a sloping roof and a chimney. Until then, it was the only chimney I’d seen on the island. The property was shaded by tolivar trees, and protected on three sides by a hedge that needed cutting.

  I strolled around the perimeter of the property, went out onto the top of the bluff, and spent several minutes looking down at the sea. It was a three-story drop into the water, where an incoming tide washed over a few rocks.

  I’d done my research. No weapon had been found. And there’d been no mention of the adultery theory.

  No evidence connecting Elizabeth, or anyone else, to his disappearance had ever been brought forward. She had not been charged though the media had reported she drew the attention of investigators. But the only reason seemed to be that she was his spouse, and the spouse, in a case like this, was automatically the prime suspect.

  The owner of the Windraven, Ilena Kataiya, told me that Elizabeth had been a longtime friend. Ilena was short, solid, still energetic despite being advanced in years. She was always rearranging things, wiping down the counter, entering data into the system, adjusting the curtains. She was routinely amiable, but her voice grew intense when I asked about the disappearance. “It broke her heart,” she said, “that anyone would think she could have done it. That she could have killed her husband.”

  “Were they close?” I asked.

  “They were like most married couples, I guess.” She winked. “They got along okay. I mean, he couldn’t have been the easiest guy to be married to. He was all physics all the time. I don’t recall that he ever talked about anything other than the stuff he was involved in. I remember when Kevin won a prize at the school. For swimming. Kevin was a great swimmer. Still is.”

  “Kevin’s your son?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “He took first place in the Oceanside Tournament. I wanted to show them the trophy, but Chris couldn’t have been less interested. He was a guy who, if he was with you, was either talking about black holes or looking at the time. But you know how it is—a lot of guys are like that.”

  I hadn’t known many who spent their time talking about black holes, but I let it go. “Ilena, could Elizabeth have been behind it?”

  “No,” she said. “Not in a million years.” She thought about it. Shook her head. “No way.”

  “She says she slept through the night and never heard Cermak’s skimmer arrive. How could that have happened?”

  “I think the media got that part of the story wrong. She told me she heard them touch down. She was in bed. It woke her, and she just turned over and went back to sleep. Look, Chase, it wouldn’t have been the first time it had happened. That she’d slept through it when Chris came home. In fact, she’d done it just a couple of weeks earlier.”

  “He’d been out two weeks prior to the final flight?”

  “Yes. Two weeks, three weeks, something like that. I remember her telling me about it when she complained that he was going out again. She wasn’t all that happy about the flights.” She bit her lip. “I’m probably talking too much.”

  “She didn’t like his being gone so much?”

  “It wasn’t only that. She was afraid something would happen to him.”

  “Why would she think that?”

  “Well, they lost Bill Winter.”

  “Bill Winter? Who was he?”

  “An academic type. I think he was a historian. He went out with them one time, and they apparently set down somewhere, and he was attacked by a predator.”

  I hadn’t heard about that, but she had no details to add. “Do you know how long he was gone?” I asked. “On that last flight?”

  “Three or four days, I think.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Well, something like that.”

  We were in the lobby of the Windraven, and a family with three little kids were coming in. “Hang on a second.�
� She got up and assumed her place behind the counter. When they’d been taken care of, she came back. “Everybody liked Elizabeth,” she said. “We all wondered what she’d seen in Chris, how she could have gotten connected with him in the first place. When it happened, when Chris disappeared, we were all worried she’d leave, too. But she didn’t. She stayed on. Lived in that house for, I don’t know, another forty years or so. She never gave up hoping he’d come back. I thought she was better off with him gone. But what the hell did I know?”

  Cermak would have dropped Robin off at the pad, which was on the west side of the house. The house itself faced away from the sea. The picture of Robin walking through the terminal on his way to that last flight had shown him with a light bag and a notebook. Where had they gone? If Robin had strolled directly out onto the bluff and fallen off, he’d have left them behind. After he got out of the skimmer, he’d have set them down before walking out onto the summit.

  It was possible Elizabeth had met him at the front door and just said, Honey, I’m glad you’re home. Let’s go look at the ocean. It’s beautiful tonight.

  Bring your luggage, love.

  I couldn’t get the earthquake out of my head. For some reason, they’d set down here and he’d changed his mind and they’d both flown on to Kolandra. And both had died in the quake. It wasn’t, of course, a theory Alex would want me to pass on to Ramsay. Better to have something that would point to a more outré conclusion. What I really needed was some neighbors to tell me that they used to go to parties at Robin’s house, and how he had a talent for walking into a closet and disappearing. That would be good. I was pretty sure that, given the opportunity to talk to a few people, I could coax a whopper or two that I could use, that Ramsay could duly put up on The Morning Report.

  The private homes were spread loosely around the island. I rented a korvine at the stable, climbed into the saddle, and let it carry me in a slow trot along the back roads. People looked up as I passed, some waved, and a few said hello. I stopped and talked whenever it seemed feasible, telling everyone the same story, that I was doing an essay on Chris Robin, and that I was trying to get a sense of what life had been like forty years ago on Virginia Island.

  Of those who were old enough to have known Robin and Elizabeth, nobody had anything to add to the basic story. I heard no more about infidelity, even when I asked whether there might have been any problems with the marriage. Everybody remembered Elizabeth as being friendly and nice. Her husband was okay, nobody had any real complaints, but he was always tied up in his work. I got the usual range of opinions as to what had happened to him.

  I was looking for a more efficient way to penetrate the social mix on the island when I heard that the local church, Holy Sacrament, would be holding its monthly St. Kaelen’s Night in two days. “What,” I asked Ilena, “is St. Kaelen’s Night?”

  “St. Kaelen,” she said, “is the patron saint of friendship and good times.” He was the saint whose motif was: Be generous and loving and you will never be alone.

  I went early. The event was being held in a meeting hall, adjacent to the church. An engraved dove, its wings spread wide, adorned a sign carrying the maxim Heaven is a state of mind. I wondered if that was really what they meant to say.

  Approximately two dozen people were already in the hall when I arrived. Others were still filing in. A priest stood at the doorway, greeting people as they passed. He saw me and smiled. “Hello,” he said. “Welcome to Holy Sacrament. I’m Father Everett.” He’d put on a lot of mileage, and was old enough to have known Robin. He had dark hair, dark skin, friendly eyes.

  “I’m Chase Kolpath,” I said. “Glad to meet you, Father.”

  “I don’t suppose you’re a permanent resident of the island, Chase?”

  “No, I’m just a visitor.”

  He looked pleased. “Well, we’re glad you decided to join us. Are you visiting friends?”

  “Just sightseeing. It’s a beautiful island.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it is.”

  More people were coming in, so I started to move on. “While you’re here with us this evening, Chase,” he said, “the tradition is that you make at least one friend.”

  The event was utterly informal. People brought covered dishes and soft drinks, set them down, pulled up chairs, and sat down with one another. Despite the efforts of St. Kaelen, the usual social relations held. Some guys were anxious to meet me; others shied away. I joined one group arguing politics while tensions rose, and another that was enraged by the policies of a local storekeeper.

  When I could, I asked about Elizabeth and Chris Robin. And I got contradictory information: Chris was hostile, he was friendly; he was a genius, God knew how he’d ever become a professor; he had a great sense of humor, he was a crank. Nobody could account for his disappearance though nobody thought he’d gone voluntarily. “He loved Elizabeth,” they said. I heard that over and over.

  Elizabeth was a good wife to him, they told me, better than he deserved. She could be a shrew when she wanted, though. Unlike him, she had a good many friends.

  “I think whatever happened to him,” one woman told me, “it had to have been an accident.” Her name was Mara. She was accompanied by her husband and a grandchild.

  “What kind of accident do you think would account for it?”

  She glanced at her husband, who was small, smaller than she was, compact, and heavy. “He was working on a pocket-size antigrav device,” she said, without batting an eye. “Isn’t that right, Walt?”

  Walt nodded. “Something like that.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” she continued, “if he had one in his pocket and activated it accidentally.”

  “How would he have done that?”

  “He was hauling luggage. It was late. It would have been easy enough to push a button by mistake.”

  I got an image of Robin drifting into the sky, suddenly too high to turn the thing off, maybe hanging on to his piece of luggage because it was the only thing he had to hang on to. “Thanks,” I said.

  Of course, with an antigrav unit, he wouldn’t go into orbit; he’d just keep going. Ridiculous idea. A pocket-size antigrav unit, I’m pretty sure, isn’t possible. But it would be a story that Ramsay could use.

  Toward the end of the evening, I looked around for Father Everett. He was speaking with an elderly couple near one of the tables. I watched for my chance and, when they started away, I stepped in beside him and asked if he was enjoying the evening.

  “I always do, Chase,” he said. “It’s my favorite time of the month.”

  “I was wondering if you have a couple of minutes to talk to me, Father. I could use some help.”

  “Of course, Chase. If I can. What sort of help?”

  “Well, I’m actually here doing some research.”

  “You’re studying the sociology of parties.”

  “That, too. Seriously, Father, did you by any chance know Christopher Robin?”

  “Chris? Yes, I knew him. To say hello. He and Elizabeth weren’t members of the parish, but she used to come to some of the events. We were sorry to lose her.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Her husband—? That was, what, twenty years ago?”

  “Forty,” I said.

  His face clouded. “Time moves so quickly. But yes, I knew him to see him. Though I don’t think we ever really talked.” He picked up a potato chip and bit into it. “They’re good,” he said. “What kind of information are you looking for?”

  “I’d like to figure out what happened to him.”

  The smile broadened. “Of course you would. Well, good luck on that.”

  “Can you tell me anything at all that might be helpful?”

  “I just never knew him, Chase. He had a reputation for being self-centered; I can tell you that. I thought he looked down on the rest of us. I suspect he thought everybody else on the planet was his intellectual inferior.”

  “You didn’t like him much.”

 
“I had no dealings with him, to speak of. Hello, good-bye, and not much more than that. But there was something in his manner. A sense of his own preeminence. It was hard to miss.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, I don’t know. He occasionally shocked some of our people.”

  “In what way?”

  “Some of his opinions—” He glanced around the hall, which was now almost empty, and lowered his voice. “He was an atheist, I believe.”

  “I see.”

  “But that sometimes happens to people. They don’t believe that faith has a place. They don’t see the evidence for God, so they dismiss Him.” He excused himself for a moment to speak with a couple of his parishioners. Then he came back. “Despite his atheism, he seemed to think there might be a spiritual dimension. That, without God, we—our souls—drift through eternity. That it was possible there really would be no rest. He used to laugh at the notion of Hell, but I can’t imagine a worse one. I almost think I’d prefer the fire.”

  “Odd,” I said.

  “He had exquisite musical taste; I’ll give him that. Sometimes, in the evenings, I enjoyed walking down past his place, out onto the overhang. I could almost always hear the music coming from his house. Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Rimsky-Korsakov, Goldstein, Harkin. He loved the Euro composers.”

  “Anything else, Father? Did you ever hear anything about what might have happened to him?”

  “I know the police suspected Elizabeth. I guess they had to. They didn’t have anyone else.”

  “You don’t think she could have had anything to do with it?”

  “No. Not a chance.”

  “Thanks, Father.”

  “One other thing. I understand he was careless with money. I don’t know whether that might have had anything to do with his disappearance or not—”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, for one thing, he kept buying yachts. And then losing them.”

  “Did they sink somewhere?”