She's Not There (15 page)

“Guy who runs the liquor store, right?”

“That's right. He must have been hallucinating. He drinks most of his profits.”

“I sure as hell hope so. All the same, refresh my memory. Where is this Roadman Hollow?”

“Rodman's Hollow. Do you have a map?”

“Sure, but I couldn't put my finger on it at the moment.”

“I have a boxful.” She disappeared into the blackness of the next room. It didn't take long for Esther to come back with her map. She held the one-inch stub of her cigarette clamped between her lips and spread the map out under the lamp. It was hand-drawn. Pen and ink. She must have drawn it herself. She said, “Block Island is shaped like a pork chop. The rib end runs due north.” She ran her finger from the loin, on up the rib and then back down again. “Right in the middle”—she poked her finger mid-loin—“there's a wide deep bowl, dense with brush. Rodman's Hollow. Some insist it's bottomless. It isn't, but it sort of is.”

Fitzy crossed his arms over his chest, a man beginning to feel a bad headache coming on.

I said, “Esther, we're trying to follow you. We need you to be specific.”

She took the remains of the cigarette and put it out in a clamshell on her windowsill. Then she lit up again, took a few drags, and started her attempt at specific. “Twelve thousand years ago, a mile-high glacier cut a rift through the island. The contours of the rift are visible across the landscape. Long time ago, the rift was called the Devil's Causeway. They say Dutchy Kitten named it that.”

Fitzy said, “Who?”

“Someone who died three hundred years ago,” Joe told him.

“Can we not get into her story now, Esther?”

Esther took a very long drag on the cigarette, blew out a heavy stream of smoke, and went back to the glacier. “At the center of the rift a bowl was reamed out, three hundred yards across. This hollow is actually below sea level, even though its rim is ninety feet above. Marcus Rodman acquired the land. He renamed the rift after himself.”

“Does he still own it?”

“Dead two hundred years,” Joe said.

“Okay, Esther. What say we get this show on the road? Forget the goddamn history of the place. Just tell me what it is I'm lookin' at here.”

“All right, then.” Esther had no intention of forgetting the goddamn history of the place. “There is no water table in the depths of the Hollow, so that's where the legend came from—about its being bottomless. But there used to be twenty feet of peat bog down there. Got cleaned out in the eighteenth century. The only source of heat we had then. Anyway, the peat was broken down spruce. Twelve thousand years ago—”

Fitzy held up his palm. Must have done some duty as a traffic cop at one point. “Listen, Esther, we're not interested in three hundred years ago or two hundred years ago, and we're especially not interested in twelve
thousand
years ago. Can you move on to the present?”

Not yet, she couldn't. “—a glacier denuded the island of an extensive spruce forest, just like the first colonists did who came much later and denuded it of a hardwood forest. Which is why there was no wood for heat.”

Now I understood the dearth of trees.

Fitzy said, “Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong. What you're fucking trying to tell us is that, bottom line, this hole in the ground is a good place to hide a body.”

Another big drag, more smoke. “Yes. Because if someone put a body down there it would decompose in no time. A month. Wouldn't leave a trace. The present layer of peat at the base is two or three feet thick. A body would sink right in and be covered. It would be hard to drag a body down the trail to the bottom, but a body could probably be rolled down from the road. It's steep where the road skims a small section of the Hollow. We had to set up a metal barrier, matter of fact. Mopeds can't make the curve at high speed.”

I said, “But Fred … Prentiss, did you say?”

“Yes.”

“If he wasn't hallucinating, he saw a body that obviously hadn't sunk in.”

She didn't say anything. Joe did. “I don't want to think there's a body in the Hollow. But if there is, maybe it didn't roll all the way down. Got snagged on something. Shrubs have branches thick as my arm.”

I said, “And if there is a body down there, perhaps Fred saw the person who pushed it. Witnesses make anonymous phone calls all the time.”

Fitzy said, “Or maybe he's the one who rolled her down and then got to feeling proud of himself. Another motivation for all the goddamn anonymous phone calls people make.”

Sad, but true enough.

Esther said, “There can't be a body. I refuse to believe it. And there is absolutely no reason for Fred Prentiss to kill anyone. Isn't that what we're saying here, that Fred might be a killer?”

I said, “No. We're not saying that. We're only saying we have to check out an anonymous phone call that might be a hoax.” And I knew Joe and Fitzy were thinking what I was thinking. If we didn't have a hoax then, yes, we had a killer. If someone gave Rachel Shaw what Dana Ganzi had been given, he knew she would die. That's what Joe hadn't wanted to face up to.

“Well,” Esther said, taking one more drag, “if there
is
a body and Fred
is
a killer”—she stabbed out the cigarette—“then the body is his wife's. I could kill her myself.”

Time to end that conversation trend. “How far is this place from the spot where I found Dana's body?”

Joe said, “The trail into the Hollow is off Coonymus Road. Coonymus borders its steepest rim right where Esther's talking about. It happens to be very close to where you found Dana Ganzi's body.”

“So it could well be the place where Dana's body was meant to end up. But the plan was interrupted.”

None of us spoke. It was Fitzy who put the thought in words, not me. “If that's the case—if there's a second dead girl—we've got more than a drug dealer here. We have a killer. He knew what happened to his earlier client.”

Joe said, “I—”

“Yeah, we know. You don't want to believe it. Me neither. Ditto my boss, for sure.” Fitzy turned to Esther. “You able to lead us down the trail?”

She had taken her cigarette pack out of her shirt pocket. She shook it. Nothing. “There is no choice that I can see. Let me change my shoes. We'll be walking through sludge. And I need some more smokes.”

Fitzy said, “Where's your john? I got to get this cheap scotch out of my system.”

“Out back.”

“Out back of what?”

“Of the house.”

“Jesus. Then first you can lead me there. I ain't about to fall into some dyke's cesspool. Then we'll go have a look at this Roadman Hollow.”

No one corrected him.

While Joe and I waited, I whispered, “How can she not have a bathroom?”

“I've already explained that.”

“Another with no land to sell?”

“That's right.”

I asked, “How sludgy is the sludge going to be?”

“Not bad. We've had a great summer. No rain.”

“We're all right with sneakers?”

He was distracted. “Sure.”

Outside, the night was overcast, dank and dark. We all got into the ragtop. Joe and Fitzy had flashlights and Esther had brought two more, powerful ones. As we headed toward Coonymus Road, Fitzy asked her why she felt the need to light up the whole planet. The whole
goddamn
planet. She said Block Island was subject to power outages all the time. Storms tended to appear out of nowhere and thunderstorms could be fairly wild. But Fitzy hadn't been looking for an answer. He'd only meant to be sarcastic. “Esther, I don't want a meteorological report. I've got a headache. If it wasn't so damn humid around here, breathing fresh air might do me some good.”

No one responded. He tried again. “This jeep makes you feel like a real he-man, right, Joe?”

Now Joe gave Fitzy what he was looking for, a little fight. Joe said, “I'd rather be a he-man than a lush.”

I like my testosterone in a different format. “Listen, fellas, we're going to see if there's a dead body in Rodman's Hollow tonight. I believe a little decorum is in order.”

Fitzy and Joe clammed up. Then Fitzy said, “You're right, Joe, I gotta get off the sauce.”

Esther said, “I'll drink to that.”

I glanced back and saw Fitzy's head turn toward her. “I'm beginning to appreciate you more and more, Esther. You sure you're a dyke?”

She blew smoke in his face. She liked him.

Joe drove the southeast rim of the island from Esther's house, up Spring Street, along the edge of the Mohegan Trail bluff, past the South Light. He turned toward the interior and in a few minutes reached Coonymus Road where it ended at Center Street by the Indian cemetery—the spot where I'd come upon Dana Ganzi's body.

Esther leaned forward between the two front seats. “This is all protected nature land.”

Fitzy snorted. “Well, then, maybe we'll find a few nature lovers, in addition to Fred, who maybe saw something out of the ordinary.”

Joe parked by a hand-carved sign. The local Boy Scouts had placed it at the start of the nature trail that led, according to Esther, around the perimeter of the Hollow before it made its descent downward. The name
RODMAN'S HOLLOW
had been covered with extra carvings—graffiti—the usual scatological suggestions prevailing. Fitzy said, “You know what I'd like to do with these graffiti punks?” We knew he wouldn't need us to make a few suggestions. “Toss 'em down this hole.”

We got out of the jeep. Esther bent down to touch the large round buds hanging off a few leafy plants at the base of the sign. She said, “I planted turk's cap lilies around the posts. Wildflowers, but they took. I knew they would. They're pretty during the day. They close at night.”

When laypeople must accompany law officers to a crime scene, they tend to find a reason for hesitation. Knowing this, Fitzy showed patience and restraint. Finally, Esther stood. Flashlights switched on, we followed her between a tangle of bushes beyond the sign to the trail.

“These are chokecherries,” she said. “Very fast-growing. Need to be trimmed back. We don't have to worry about briars, though. Not yet.”

Fitzy said, “Tell me when to start worrying.”

We'd only walked about ten yards when I told them to stop so I could shine my light on fresh footprints, two pair. “They were made tonight. Step around them where you can, Esther.”

Fitzy pulled a rag out of his pocket, bent down, and covered a few of them. I said, “Fitzy, they're not the same as the ones under the girls' window.”

“I know.”

“You'll still have to…”

“I know. I will.”

Esther said, “Someone was looking through…?”

Fitzy turned toward her. “Not your problem, Esther.” Then he said, “What the hell was that fool Fred doin' down here? I mean, if he wasn't the one who dumped this body he claims he saw.”

Esther flinched. Joe said, “We can only hope he was drunk.”

Esther said, “Yes. And came here to hide out. I hate to think what Doris will do to him when she finds out.”

I said, “Women who are married to alcoholics tend to be fairly impatient with their husbands' behavior. Why they stayed married to them I'll never know.”

“Don't get her started, Esther.” Joe appreciates my easily triggered annoyance but often prefers it to lie dormant.

Once the trail had circled around the Hollow, it descended very steeply via a series of short hairpin turns. We followed it down. Sludge was the perfect word for the gravel below our feet, mixed with decaying foliage and peat. Slippery was not an exaggeration. Fitzy and I pretty much skidded along. After about ten minutes, we came to a level area ahead of us, where the trail seemed to take a straight drop, no more hairpins. The beam of Esther's flashlight disappeared down a dark green tunnel. About thirty feet below we could see another level area dotted with more shrubs. My light scanned that ledge, once, twice, and then on a third pass it touched over a white patch nearly hidden by the growth. I held the beam steady.

All of us knew the white patch was skin, even Esther. She said, “Dear God.” And again she did what laypeople do. She closed her eyes and her chest heaved, but she controlled herself. She recited the Lord's Prayer. We didn't interrupt her. Then she took out her pack of cigarettes. It was going to take Esther longer to light up than to say her prayer. Her hands shook. Fitzy had to take the matchbook from her hand and light the cigarette for her.

Joe looked up. “As the crow flies, the closest part of the road is right up there. That's where he pushed her down into the Hollow. But that lower ledge stopped her. Because she was so … so big.” He knew it had to be Rachel Shaw. We all did. Then he said, “Fitzy, you've got some serious trouble.”

“Yeah, I do. Esther, you want to stay here while we go down the rest of the way?”

“Yes. But listen to me. The drop to the ledge is dangerous. The trail is less than a foot wide below us. Be careful.”

We made our way, kept having to grab at branches to remain on our feet. Esther called out, “Watch the briars!” Too late. Thorns stuck in the skin of our palms and ripped at our clothes. I pointed out threads that hung from them already, none from heavy canvas gloves, though. Fitzy said, “We'll let the forensics people gather those.”

And then we were standing next to her. It was Rachel Shaw. I said, “This is exactly what the other girl looked like, Fitzy.”

He didn't answer, only nodded.

The girl's limbs were spasmed, her head thrown back, the face contorted in a death scream. Joe's face reflected the shock I'd seen on Fitzy's just a few days earlier in front of Aggie's B&B. Same picture of shock Aggie had seen on mine when I'd stumbled through her front door. Aggie said I looked like I'd seen a ghost. Worse than a ghost, Aggie, much worse.