The Shape of Night

by Tess Gerritsen

  If only every mistake in life could be so easily corrected.

  “How is it?” he asks.

  “It’s fine. I’m just not hungry.”

  “Not up to your high standards? I’m told you make killer blueberry muffins.” At my raised eyebrow, he laughs. “I heard it from the lady at the post office, who heard it from Billy.”

  “There really are no secrets in this town.”

  “And how’s your mouse problem these days? Emmett at the hardware store predicted you’d be back within a week for more traps.”

  I sigh. “I was planning to pick up some today. Then I got distracted at the historical society, and…” I fall silent as I notice that Donna, sitting alone a few tables away, is looking at us. Her eyes lock with mine, and her gaze unsettles me. As if she has caught me trespassing.

  The door suddenly bangs open, and we all turn as a man wearing fishermen’s overalls lurches into the café. “Doc?” he calls out to Ben. “They need you down at the harbor.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now. Pete Crouse just tied up at the landing. You need to see what he dragged outta the bay.”

  “What is it?”

  “A body.”

  * * *

  —

  Almost everyone in the café follows Ben and the fisherman out the door. Curiosity is infectious. It forces us to look at what we do not really want to see, and like the others, I’m pulled along with the grim parade as it heads down the cobblestoned street toward the harbor. Clearly the news about a dead body has already spread and a small crowd stands gathered around the pier where a lobster boat has tied up. A Tucker Cove policeman spots Ben and waves.

  “Hey, Doc. It’s on deck, under the tarp.”

  “I found it near Scully’s Rocks, tangled up in seaweed,” says the lobsterman. “Didn’t want to believe what I was seeing at first, but as soon as I snagged it with the boat hook, I knew it was real. Afraid I might’ve caused some, um, damage when I hauled it aboard. But I couldn’t leave it just drifting out there, and I was afraid it might sink. Then we’d never find it again.”

  Ben climbs onto the lobster boat and approaches the blue plastic tarp, which covers a vaguely human shape. Although I can’t see what he’s looking at, I can read his appalled expression as he lifts up one corner of the tarp and stares at what lies beneath. For a long time he simply crouches there, confronting the horrors of what the sea can do to a human body. On the landing, the crowd has gone silent, respectful of this solemn moment. Abruptly Ben drops the tarp and looks up at the police officer. “You called the ME?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s on his way.” The officer looks at the tarp and shakes his head. “I’m guessing it’s been in the water for some time.”

  “A few weeks at least. And based on the size and what’s left of the clothing, it’s most likely a woman.” Grimacing, Ben rises to his feet and clambers off the lobster boat. “You have any current missing persons reports?”

  “Nothing reported in the last few months.”

  “This time of year, there’s a lot of boats out on the bay. She could’ve fallen overboard and drowned.”

  “But if she’s been in the water for weeks, you’d think someone would’ve called it in by now.”

  Ben shrugs. “Maybe she was sailing solo. No one’s realized she’s missing yet.”

  The cop turns and stares over the water. “Or someone didn’t want her to be found.”

  * * *

  —

  As I drive back to Brodie’s Watch, I am still shaken by what I witnessed on the dock. While I did not glimpse the body itself, I saw the unmistakably human shape beneath the blue tarp, and my imagination fills in all the gruesome details that Ben was forced to confront. I think of Captain Brodie, whose body was consigned to the same inexorable forces of the ocean. I think of what it’s like to drown, limbs flailing as salt water floods into your lungs. I think of fish and crabs feasting on flesh, of skin and muscle dragged by currents across razor-sharp coral. After a century and a half underwater, what remains of the strapping man who stared back at me from the portrait?

  I turn into my driveway and groan at the sight of Ned’s truck parked in front of the house. I’ve started leaving a house key for the carpenters, and of course they’re here working, but I’m in no mood to sit through another afternoon of hammering. I slip into the house just long enough to pack a picnic basket with bread and cheese and olives. A bottle of red wine, already opened, calls to me from the countertop and I add it to my basket.

  Loaded down with lunch and a blanket, I scrabble across lichen-flecked rocks like a mountain goat, following the path to the beach. Glancing back, I can see Billy and Ned at work up on the widow’s walk. They’re busy installing the new railing and they don’t notice me. Down the path I go, past the blooming roses, and I jump down onto the pebbly beach that I’d discovered that first morning. A beach where no one can see me. I spread my blanket and unpack my lunch. I may be losing my mind, but I still know how to lay out a proper meal. Although it’s a simple outdoor picnic, I don’t stint on ceremony. I lay out a cloth napkin, a fork and knife, a glass tumbler. The first sip of wine floods my body with warmth. Sighing, I lean back against a boulder and stare out to sea. The water is eerily flat, the surface as still as a mirror. This is exactly what I need to do today: absolutely nothing. I will soak up the sun like a tortoise and let this wine do its magic. Forget the dead woman pulled from the sea. Forget Captain Brodie, whose bones lie scattered beneath the waves. Today is about healing.

  And forgetting. Most of all, forgetting.

  The salt air makes me hungry and I tear off a piece of bread, smear it with Brie, and eat it in two bites. Devour a few olives and wash it all down with another glass of wine. By the time I finish my meal, the bottle of Rioja is empty and I’m so drowsy I can barely keep my eyes open.

  I stretch out on the blanket, cover my face with a sun hat, and tumble into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  It’s the cold water lapping at my feet that awakens me.

  Nudging aside my hat, I look up and see the sky has darkened to violet, and the sun is dipping behind the boulder. How long have I slept? The rising tide has already brought the water halfway up my little beach, and the bottom edge of my blanket is soaked. Hungover and groggy, I clumsily gather up the remains of the picnic, stuff everything into the basket, and stumble away from the water. My skin feels hot and flushed, and I desperately crave a glass of sparkling water. And perhaps a splash of rosé.

  I scramble up the path to the top of the cliff. There I pause to catch my breath and I look up at the widow’s walk. What I see makes me freeze. Although I cannot make out the man’s face, I know who is standing there.

  I begin to run toward the house, the empty wine bottle clattering and rolling around in my picnic basket. Somewhere along the path I lose my hat, but I don’t turn back to retrieve it; I just keep running. I bound up the porch steps and burst through the front door. The carpenters have left, so there should be no one in the house but me. In the foyer, I drop the picnic basket and it lands with a clunk but I hear no other sound, only the beating of my own heart. That drumbeat accelerates as I climb to the second floor and move down the hall to the turret staircase. At the bottom of those steps I pause to listen.

  Silence upstairs.

  I think of the man in the painting, the eyes that looked straight at me, only at me, and I long to see his face again. I want—I need—to know that he is real. Up the steps I climb, setting off a series of familiar creaks, the glow of twilight lighting my way. I step into the turret room, and the scent of the ocean sweeps over me. I recognize it for what it is: his scent. He loved the ocean and it was the ocean that took him. In its embrace, he found his eternal resting place, but in this house, a trace of him still lingers.

  I cross the tool-littered room and step out onto the widow’s walk.
All the rotted boards have been replaced, and for the first time I’m able to walk out onto the deck. No one is here. No carpenters, no Captain Brodie. I can still smell the sea, but this time it’s the wind itself that carries the scent, blowing it in from the water.

  “Captain Brodie?” I call out. I don’t really expect an answer, but I hope to hear one anyway. “I’m not afraid of you. I want to see you. Please let me see you.”

  The wind ruffles my hair. Not a cold wind, but the gentle breath of summer, and it carries the scent of roses and warm soil. The smell of land. For a long time I gaze at the sea, as once he must have done, and wait to hear his voice, but no one speaks to me. No one appears.

  He is gone.

  Eight

  I lie in the darkness of my bedroom, listening once again to mice scurrying in the walls. For months, alcohol has been my anesthetic and only by drinking myself into a stupor have I been able to fall asleep, but tonight, even after two glasses of whiskey, I’m not the least bit drowsy. I know, somehow I know, that this is the night he will appear to me.

  Hannibal, who has been slumbering beside me, suddenly stirs and sits up. In the walls the mice fall silent. The world has gone quiet and even the sea has ceased its rhythmic murmur.

  A familiar scent wafts into the room. The smell of the ocean.

  He is here.

  I sit up in bed, my pulse throbbing in my neck, my hands ice cold. I scan the room, but all I see is the green glow of Hannibal’s eyes watching me. No movement, no sound. The smell of the ocean grows stronger, as if the tide has just swept through the room.

  Then, near the window, there is a swirl of darkness. Not yet a figure, just the faintest hint of a silhouette taking shape in the night.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I announce.

  The shadow drifts away like smoke, and I almost lose sight of it. “Please come back, Captain Brodie!” I call out. “You are Captain Brodie, aren’t you? I want to see you. I want to know that you’re real!”

  “The question is, are you real?”

  The voice is startlingly clear, the words spoken right beside me. With a gasp, I turn and stare straight into the eyes of Jeremiah Brodie. This is not merely a shadow; no, this is a flesh-and-blood man with thick black hair silvered by moonlight. His deep-set eyes focus on me so fiercely that I can almost feel the heat of that gaze. This is the face I saw in the painting, the same rugged jaw, the same hawkish nose. He has been dead for a century and a half, yet I am looking at him now, and he is solid enough, real enough, to make the mattress sag as he sits down on the bed beside me.

  “You are in my house,” he says.

  “I live here now. I know this is your house, but—”

  “Too many people forget that fact.”

  “I won’t forget, ever. This is your house.”

  He eyes me up and down and his gaze lingers for a tantalizing moment on the bodice of my nightgown. Then he focuses once again on my face. When he touches my cheek, his fingers feel startlingly warm against my skin. “Ava.”

  “You know my name.”

  “I know far more about you than just your name. I sense your pain. I hear you weep in your sleep.”

  “You watch me?”

  “Someone must watch over you. Have you no one else?”

  His question brings tears to my eyes. He caresses my face and it is not the cold hand of a corpse I feel. Jeremiah Brodie is alive and his touch makes me tremble.

  “Here in my house, what you seek is what you will find,” he says.

  I close my eyes and shiver as he gently nudges aside my nightgown and kisses my shoulder. His unshaven face is rough against my skin and I sigh as my head lolls back. The nightgown slips off my other shoulder and moonlight spills across my breasts. I am shaking and utterly exposed to his gaze, yet I don’t feel afraid. His mouth meets mine and his kiss tastes of salt and rum. I gasp in a breath and smell damp wool and seawater. The scent of a man who has lived too long on a ship, a man who is hungry for the taste of a woman.

  As hungry as I am for the taste of a man.

  “I know what you desire,” he says.

  What I desire is him. I need him to make me forget everything but what it feels like to be embraced by a man. I topple onto my back and at once he is on top of me, his weight pinning me to the mattress. He grasps both my wrists and traps them over my head. I cannot resist him. I don’t want to resist him.

  “I know what you need.”

  I suck in a startled breath as his hand closes around my breast. This is not a gentle embrace but a claiming, and I flinch as if he has just burned his brand into my skin.

  “And I know what you deserve.”

  My eyes fly open. I stare up at no one, at nothing. Wildly I look around the room, see the shapes of furniture, the glow of moonlight on the floor. And I see Hannibal’s eyes, green and ever watchful, staring at me.

  “Jeremiah?” I whisper. No one answers.

  * * *

  —

  The whine of an electric saw awakens me and I open my eyes to dazzling sunlight. The sheets are twisted around my legs, and beneath my thighs, the linen is damp. Even now, I am still wet and aching for him.

  Was he really here?

  Heavy footsteps creak upstairs in the turret and a hammer pounds. Billy and Ned are back at work, and here I lie in the room just beneath them, my legs splayed apart, my skin flushed with desire. Suddenly I feel exposed and embarrassed. I climb out of bed and pull on the same clothes I wore yesterday. They’re still lying on the floor; I don’t even remember taking them off. Hannibal is already pawing at the closed door and he gives an impatient meow, demanding to be let out. As soon as I open the door, he darts out and heads downstairs to the kitchen. To breakfast, of course.

  I don’t follow him, but make my way up to the turret room, where I’m startled to see a large hole in the wall. Billy and Ned have broken through the plaster, and they stand peering into the newly exposed cavity.

  “What on earth is back there?” I ask.

  Ned turns and frowns at my unkempt hair. “Oh, gosh. I hope we didn’t wake you up.”

  “Um, yeah. You did.” I rub my eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Nine-thirty. We knocked on the front door but I guess you didn’t hear us. We figured you went out for a walk or something.”

  “What happened to you?” asks Billy, pointing at my arm.

  I glance down at the claw marks. “Oh, that’s nothing. Hannibal scratched me the other day.”

  “I mean your other arm.”

  “What?” I stare down at a bruise encircling my forearm like an ugly blue bracelet. I don’t remember how I got it, just as I don’t remember how I bruised my knee the other night. I think of the captain and how he had pinned my arms to the bed. I remember the weight of his body, the taste of his mouth. But that was merely a dream, and dreams do not leave bruises. Did I stumble in the dark on my way to the bathroom? Or did it happen yesterday afternoon on the beach? Numb with wine, if I’d banged my arm against a rock, I might not have felt any pain.

  My throat is so dry I can barely answer Billy’s question. “Maybe I got it in the kitchen. Sometimes I get so busy cooking, I don’t even notice when I hurt myself.” Anxious to escape, I turn to leave. “I really need coffee. I’ll get the pot going, if you want some.”

  “First come take a look at what we found behind this wall,” says Ned. He pulls off another chunk of drywall, opening up a wider view of the cavity behind it.

  I peer through the opening and see the glint of a brass sconce and walls painted a mint green. “It’s a little alcove. How strange.”

  “The floor back there’s still in good shape. And take a look at that crown molding. It’s original to the house. This space is like a time capsule, preserved all these years.”

  “Why on earth would anyone wall off an alcove?�
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  “Arthur and I talked about it, and neither of us has any idea. We’re thinking it was done before his aunt’s time.”

  “Maybe it was a bootlegger’s space, to hide liquor,” Billy suggests. “Or to hide a treasure.”

  “There’s no door anywhere in or out, so how would you get to it?” Ned shakes his head. “No, this space was closed off, like a tomb. Like someone was trying to erase the fact it was ever here.”

  I can’t help shivering as I peer into a room that has been frozen in time for at least a generation. What scandalous history could have led someone to close up this space and plaster over any trace of its existence? What secret were they trying to conceal?

  “Arthur wants us to open it up, paint the walls to match the rest of the turret,” says Ned. “And we’ll need to sand and varnish the floor, so that’ll take us another week or two. We’ve been working on this house for months, and I’m starting to think we’ll never get finished.”

  “Crazy old house,” says Billy and he picks up a sledgehammer. “I wonder what else it’s hiding.”

  * * *

  —

  Billy and Ned sit at my kitchen table, both wearing grins as I set down two steaming bowls, fragrant with the scent of beef and bay leaves.

  “Smelled this cooking all morning,” says Billy, whose bottomless appetite never fails to amaze me. Eagerly he picks up a spoon. “We wondered what you were whipping up down here.”