Dangerous Depths (14 page)

A man with silver hair and a deep tan
answered the door. He wore a watch that I was sure cost more than
my yearly salary. This was not the butler.

“Mr. Ingram?”

“Yes?” he asked, defensive and
suspicious.

“I’m Detective Sampson, Tortola PD. Like to
talk with Jilli.”

“Jillian is not here,” he said, ready to slam
the door in my face.

“Who is it, Joel?” a voice called from the
living room. “Is it about Jilli?” A mixture of hope and fear laced
the voice. Then Rita Ingram appeared behind her husband.

“Detective Sampson. Has something happened to
Jilli?” She looked terrible, her hair pulled back with pins, eyes
bloodshot and smudged with mascara.

“No, I just came to talk with her. What’s the
problem?”

“She’s run away,” she said.

“You might as well come in, Detective,” Mr.
Ingram said.

The living room was as dark and uninviting as
the last time I’d been there. That damned Rembrandt glaring at me
through the gloom.

“What did you want to see Jillian about?”
Ingram asked. “My wife told me you were already here once asking a
lot of questions. If this is more to do with Elyse Henry, I can
assure you that Jillian is not involved.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I told her to stay away from her. And I told
Elyse the same thing. Jillian doesn’t need someone coddling her.
She’s just a wild kid. She needs to learn some things about
life.”

“Guess you think that boarding school is the
place to learn it.”

“Damn straight. They’ve guaranteed to get my
kid on track.”

“How long has Jilli been gone?”

“She’s been away all night,” Rita said. “I’m
frantic.”

“Why haven’t you called the police?”

“The girl is out partying with her friends,”
Joel Ingram said. “She’s showing us she’s got the upper hand.
She’ll be back when she gets hungry. And she is leaving Sunday.
I’ve got her booked on a flight, and she will be on it.”

I couldn’t believe that they hadn’t been out
combing the island for her. She was so vulnerable out there alone.
I guess it was Joel Ingram’s version of tough love.

“I don’t know, Joel,” Rita said. I could see
that she was having a hard time trying to figure out what was best
for her daughter.

“Jillian has been so quiet and withdrawn this
last week,” she said, turning to me. “I’m sure that I’d heard her
sobbing in her room on Monday night, not long after you left. When
I knocked on her door, she wouldn’t answer.”

“You didn’t go in?” I remembered how lost the
kid had seemed that afternoon when I’d left her sitting on the
steps.

“Absolutely not! I would never invade her
privacy.”

Christ, I’d never been a parent but I’d
watched my sister with her kids. She’d have been charging in there,
hugging the kid and helping her through the pain. I was sure that
Rita had been brainwashed into this hands-off tough parenting style
by her husband. No wonder she drank.

“I’ll see what I can do to find her,” I said,
standing.

“We don’t need your interference,” Ingram
said. “We can take care of our daughter ourselves.”

“Right.”

The first thing I did after I left the
Ingrams was find a phone and call Mary.

***

“Yes, Hannah, Jilli’s here. I called her
earlier when I got your message about how worried you were. I spoke
with her for about five minutes before her father grabbed the phone
and told me to mind my own business. Jilli showed up at my door at
four o’clock this morning. She’s in bad shape.”

“What do you mean, bad shape?”

“She found her mother’s wallet, took a
hundred dollars. Amazing how these kids know just where to go to
find drugs. She bought a gram of cocaine. I can’t believe some
low-life on the island is selling drugs to fourteen-year-olds.”

“Believe it, Mary. It happens everywhere,
even here.”

She walked all the way up here with the stuff
in her pocket, untouched. To tell you the truth, I’m very surprised
she came to me instead of finding a place to get high. She was
exhausted when she knocked on my door. She started talking and
there was no stopping her. God, what happens to our children.”
Mary’s voice cracked. “I think I’ve seen it all, and then
this.”

“What, Mary?”

“Jilli was assaulted at boarding school the
very first month she was there. By one of her teachers, no less. I
suppose it’s not surprising knowing Jilli’s father. He’s a cold
bastard who should never have had children, much less a daughter.
And Rita, she just goes along. Jilli turned to the first adult male
who seemed to care. When it turned sexual, Jilli was too naive to
understand until the man raped her. She never reported it or told
anyone. She’s positive it was all her fault and that she’s a bad
person. It’s no wonder she’s smothering her fear and hurt in
drugs.

“Where is she now?” I asked, worried more
about Mary at the moment. If Jilli had caused the explosion on
Elyse’s boat, Mary could be next.

“I gave her a sedative and put her to bed.
She’s been sleeping most of the day. I’ve convinced her to go into
the hospital—the drug rehab unit. I was about to wake her up and
take her there.”

“What are you going to tell her parents?”

“Actually, I had hoped you could help me.” I
knew by her tone that she wasn’t giving me any option. “She did
have a gram of cocaine in her pocket. A threat from the police of
either jail or the hospital might convince them of the necessity of
treatment.”

“That might work for a couple days, Mary, but
the kid’s a minor,” I said.

“I’ll take a few days. This child needs help.
She is such a sweet kid, sensitive, smart, caring. God knows how it
happened with parents like hers.”

“Mary, there’s a problem.” I told her about
Jillian’s prints on the empty prescription bottle. Maybe Jilli
wasn’t the sweet kid that Mary thought.

“Look, let me get her admitted. Once she’s in
a safe environment, you can ask her about it yourself. Give the kid
a break, okay?”

“Okay, but Mary, she could have slipped Elyse
the drugs and rigged the boat. You need to be careful.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said and told me to
meet her at the hospital in an hour.

***

When I got to the hospital, I stopped to
check on Elyse first. She lay peacefully, same as before. I sat
with her for a while, holding her hand and carrying on a
stream-of-consciousness monologue. I kept hoping that some word
would connect, that Elyse would open her eyes.

“Come on, Elyse,” I pleaded, “snap out of
it!” But Elyse wasn’t listening.

I headed up to the drug rehab unit on the
third floor. It was just a couple of rooms at the end of the
hallway.

Mary had been responsible for establishing
the little unit. She’d convinced a couple of hospital
administrators that such facilities were essential even in
paradise. A nurse buzzed me in when I identified myself. Mary was
at the nurse’s station filling out a pile of forms. She looked up
and gave a weak smile when she saw me.

“Hannah, let’s go talk before you see
Jillian,” she said, leading me to a conference room and closing the
door. “She’s still settling in and getting the once-over—blood
pressure, temperature, blood drawn. I’m writing up an evaluation
and treatment plan.”

“Jilli is lucky that there is a doctor like
you on this island, Mary. You look really tired. You ought to be at
home.” I knew I was wasting my breath. Mary would leave when she
was good and ready—and that would be when she was sure everything
was in order.

“Getting patients into the hospital is always
stressful. Often at the last minute they decide they don’t want to
be hospitalized. I was afraid Jillian would bolt. It is very
difficult to admit to a drug problem, much less decide to do
something about it. It takes a lot of insight and fortitude,
especially for a fourteen-year-old.”

“Did you call her parents?”

“Yes. They’re on their way. I told them that
Jilli didn’t want to see them right now, but her father wouldn’t
hear it. I need to be here when they arrive.”

“How’s Jilli doing?”

“As well as she can be. I think she’s feeling
relieved that she’s in a safe place. But she’s scared too. Go
gently with her, Hannah,” Mary said, concern etching her face.

She walked me to the room and left me there.
Jilli was curled up on her bed, on her side, arms wrapped around
her knees. Her cheeks were tear-streaked. Christ, she was just a
kid.

When she saw me, a mask dropped over her face
to disguise the pain. She quickly swiped at her eyes and sat
up.

“Hi, Hannah. What are you doing here?”

“Just came to see how you’re doing.”

“I’m okay. How is Elyse?”

“About the same. You have everything you
need?”

“Guess so. I’ll probably be out of here in a
day or so.”

“Give yourself some time. You should stay
here till Mary says it’s okay to leave.”

“Yeah, well, my folks are going to be really
mad—especially my dad.”

“They’ll get over it.”

“Maybe.”

I took a deep breath. The next part of the
conversation wasn’t going to be easy. “Jilli, I need to ask you
some things about Elyse.”

“What about?” she asked. She was listless,
closed down.

“Well, when I talked to you on Monday, you
said you hadn’t seen Elyse for a couple of days. Are you sure you
didn’t see her Sunday night?”

“No, I didn’t,” she said, averting her
eyes.

“The thing is we found your fingerprints on a
vial of her medication.”

“I looked through her prescriptions. So
what?”

“That particular medication showed up in
Elyse’s bloodstream when she was tested at the hospital. I thought
you might know how that happened.” I couldn’t figure out how to be
any more tactful than this. If this kid hadn’t been in such bad
shape, I would have been pushing a lot harder to trip her up.

“You think I gave her the Ambien?”

“How’d you know it was Ambien?” Okay, so I
resorted to one little trick. I am a cop, for chrissake.

Damned if the kid didn’t bend over and start
sobbing into her hands. She was rocking back and forth on the edge
of the bed when the nurse came in.

“Everything okay in here?” she asked, glaring
at me.

“Everything’s fine,” Jillian said.

I went into the bathroom and pulled a wad of
toilet paper off the roll, sat down on the bed next to Jilli,
handed it to her and waited.

“I did go to the
Caribbe
that night,”
she finally said, her voice cracking. “I didn’t know where else to
go. I’d had a big fight with my dad. Elyse wasn’t home. I knew she
had a lot of old prescriptions in the medicine cabinet. I found the
Ambien and was sitting at the salon table with a glass of water and
the vial when Elyse got home. I never opened it.

“Elyse made tea and we talked for a long time
with that bottle sitting there between us. She never took it away.
Just let it sit, like it was my decision. Finally, she took me
home. When she dropped me off, she made me promise that I’d call
her if I felt that bad again.”

“What happened to the vial?”

“It was still sitting on the table when we
left.”

“Why did you lie about seeing Elyse that
night?”

“I didn’t want my parents to find out I’d
gone to see her.”

I wanted to believe the kid. But the last
time I had trusted a teenager, I’d ended up lying on a Denver
street with a bullet hole in my shoulder.

Sadie bounded up the steps, jumped up, put
her paws on my shoulders and licked me on the nose. She knew
better, but hey, I’d been gone all day. I went below and changed
into a pair of old shorts and tennis shoes.

“Come on, girl, let’s go for a walk.” She
scurried down the dock and waited for me in the sand, panting,
tongue hanging out the side of her mouth. When I stepped off the
dock, she darted down the beach. I followed at a more leisurely
pace, stopping to examine the shells that were scattered on the
shore. I crouched on my haunches and ran my fingers through the
rocky debris, the activity relaxing, a way to clear my head.

The beach was littered with broken pieces of
snails, shiny and smooth. I picked up a perfectly preserved shell,
white with bands of gold outlined in black. I stuck it in my
pocket, stood, and gazed out to sea. Birds were out fishing,
graceful forms silhouetted against the setting sun. A warm breeze
carried the smell of the ocean—salty and sweet. There were few
places I’d rather be than standing in this spot on the edge of the
ocean. I regretted that I sometimes got too caught up in things to
take the time.

Up ahead, Sadie stood out on the point
waiting. We walked inland, through brush teeming with hermit crabs.
One was in the process of making the transfer from the shell it had
outgrown to another that it could wear more comfortably. I picked a
small one up, only to have it instantly retreat into its shell.
After a moment, it emerged, brave or curious, to explore the palm
of my hand, its needle-thin claws tickling my skin. I set it back
where I’d found it.

“Let’s go swimming, Sadie!” I ran back to the
beach with her at my heels and pulled off my shoes. We splashed
into the water and then I dove under, fully dressed. When I
surfaced, Sadie was right with me. I swam out to deep water and
then floated on the surface, watching white billowing clouds move
across the deep blue sky.

***

O’Brien was rattling around in the galley
when I got back to the
Sea Bird
.

“Jeez, what are you doing here?” I regretted
it the minute the words were out of my mouth and the hurt crossed
his face. It was stupid, thoughtless. But I’d been looking forward
to being alone, sitting on the bow with Sadie and Nomad, staring
blankly out to sea and eating cold tuna. And I did not want to
resume last night’s conversation with O’Brien.