She's Not There (24 page)

“Found what?”

“Something you have to see. But you're going to think I'm crazy.”

I already thought she was somewhat crazy. I humored her. “Nothing you want me to see will top some of the things I've seen many times over since I first began enforcing the law. I see things in my line of work that make me think
I'm
crazy. All the time.”

Esther got up, went out of her living room, and came back with a cardboard box that served as a file drawer. She took out a folder and handed it to me. She said, “There are three newspaper articles in here. No dates, and the name of the newspaper is cut off. But all the clippings must be fifty years old. Someone besides me needs to look at them, preferably an FBI agent who won't think I'm crazy.”

As I opened the folder, she lit up. And she came within a centimeter of touching the match to the filter end of the cigarette before she turned it right way around.

The first clipping was an article describing the misery of a young child who had become mute for no reason. His parents described his horrible nightmares and hallucinations to the reporter. The only time he spoke, they said, was during the nightmares and hallucinatory events, when he screamed and begged, “Stop, stop!” A priest practiced the rite of exorcism over him, to no avail. Then he was treated by a doctor who had studied the art of psychiatry.
Art
of psychiatry, not
science
. The doctor, a woman, felt he had been subject to beatings—beatings that had left no mark upon him. She was quick, however, to agree with the authorities that his family was kind and loving. They were not the boy's tormenters. His parents were poor, the father, an Italian immigrant, was a groundskeeper on an estate in Newport. The boy had nine brothers and sisters. The psychiatrist asked the parents if he could be placed in her protection. The desperate parents agreed to the arrangement. The article ended:
The boy will not be identified so as to shield him from the curious.

The second article was in the police log. The Rhode Island State Police log. Based on medical findings, it was determined that the boy who had lost his sanity a year earlier had been tortured. Although the police had observed no marks on him initially, upon examination by several doctors they'd reported minor injuries to his head, which had healed, as had his eardrums, which had perforated and then scarred over. Next to the police log was an article telling how the woman doctor had officially adopted the child and moved from the area,
with the hope the boy will take comfort in new surroundings
.

I looked up at Esther. “If what you've found reveals the cause of this child's injuries—if he'd gotten into something toxic—we'll finally have something.”

She looked away, concentrated on exhaling a stream of smoke.

“You're aware the dead girls had ruptured eardrums.”

“Everyone knows that.”

The last article was long, accompanied by a photo. I couldn't bring myself to study the photo carefully since my heart skipped a beat after one glance. I would get to the photo after I read the article. The words were blurred, though. I had to blink a few times before I could read them.

Three sisters, children of the estate owner where the Italian groundskeeper worked, had been charged with torturing the boy. They'd put him into a well, into which they'd also lowered large heavy brass cowbells on ropes and then rang them. They enjoyed watching the boy as the bells clanged loudly and incessantly, the echoes resounding off the stone walls of the well sending him into agonies.
This, readers, is how the sisters spent their summer in Newport, Rhode Island, on their vacation estate.
The reporter declined to offer more facts because
such vile details would give great offense to this newspaper's family readership
.

Now I looked back to the photograph, a picture of the guilty girls, a formal portrait: sixteen-year-old twins and their fifteen-year-old sister. They wore velvet coats, fluffy white fur at the collars and cuffs, and matching brimmed hats also trimmed with fur. I could see the fur was not bunny, sticking out in all directions as though touched with static electricity; it was ermine. The brim of each hat had the shape of a heart. The girls' hands were hidden in white fur muffs. But the coats and the hats and the muffs could not hide their obesity. Their faces were hugely round, their cheeks and chins enormous, their narrow eyes sunken into the flesh of their eyelids, nearly hidden.

The sisters were identified by the reporter. The article was an exposé. The newspaper had exposed them because they hadn't been arrested; warrants had not gone out. They had not been remanded for trial, had not been incarcerated, had not even been sent to a juvenile facility. Instead, they'd been sent home to be disciplined by their parents.

The newspaper had taken advantage of a loophole. The law states that juveniles charged with felonies, or on trial for a felony, cannot be identified. These girls, however, had never been charged and therefore would never be tried, never held accountable for the brutal crime they'd committed. The story simply related the psychiatrist's version of the events. She named the family the boy's father worked for. In addition to the portrait of the sisters, there was a photograph of the well, so there was no mistaking the premises where the family summered, leaving no doubt as to who exactly that family was.

The reporter and the psychiatrist were people after my own heart.

There was another article describing the boy's journey on the road to recovery. The psychiatrist had hypnotized him. He no longer had any memory of his summer-long ordeal; his adopted mother had erased it just as she had erased for him the environment where he'd been attacked.

There was one page left, behind the one I'd finished. I didn't know what else there could be. I turned the page over and found another photograph: the boy's tiny face, compelling and pale, his eyes downcast. He may not have had a memory of his ordeal, but he hadn't been able to smile for the camera either, the way his tormenters had smiled for their portrait.

I looked up. Esther was watching me, waiting for the first and most obvious question. I said, “Does the child look like anyone?”

“No.”

“So some tourist arrives on Block Island, sees our overweight campers, and his suppressed memory is triggered. He goes nuts, puts a couple of the girls down a well, and rings cowbells till they die. How simple.”

She took her perennially crushed pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She struck yet another match and said, “I suppose sarcasm is understandable given the circumstances. But we've never needed wells here. We have three hundred and sixty-five freshwater ponds, one for every day of the year. Besides that, this is a very small island. We'd hear cowbells. Cowbells are loud, meant for places where cows have free range. That never was the case here, and now there are no cows to boot. And, of course, Jake would have gone nuts at the sound of clanging bells and we'd have heard him as well as the bells. But you're the expert. Could such a thing happen at all? Could noise be intense enough to break an eardrum?”

As to the second question, I didn't know. Probably yes to the first. Anything can happen, is what I've come to find out. But I would share those answers with Fitzy and my crime lab, not Esther. “Can I have these articles, Esther?”

“That was the idea.”

“Where did you find them?”

“People give me stuff they dig up in their attics. Don't know who gave me the bag I found these clippings in. But I'll do some research, and if I figure it out I'll tell you. While you're doing your own research. Will you tell me what you find out?”

“Yes. I'll tell you within the limits of the investigational parameters.”

She said, “All right, then. I suppose you'll have to tell Fitzy.”

“He's not such a bad guy.”

“Actually, I can't help but like him. All the same—”

“All the same what?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure you don't want to come to breakfast?”

“I'm sure. They're a little annoyed with me.”

“How come?”

“Because I had the nerve to suggest that the person who did whatever he did to the girls might not be a tourist. They want to believe what they want to believe, as we just said. A drug dealer who comes in and out on the ferry.”

“That's what Joe wants to think too.”

She said, “Yeah.”

“But what if … I mean…”

“There is no drug dealer, is there? We all just jumped to that conclusion.”

“I'm not paid to jump to conclusions.”

“You're human. You believed what you wanted to believe.”

“No. Don't let me off so easy, Esther. You know what happened here? Profiling. A dead teenager? She must have taken an illegal substance.”

“But what else would a healthy teenager die from? If you found a forty-year-old man in the same condition, what would you assume?”

I thought. Then I said, “Drugs.”

“Poppy, when do you eliminate drugs from the assumption?”

“When you stop believing what you want to believe. My God, what am I looking for here?”

She didn't know.

I left, hoping to find Fitzy at Richard's Patio. But first I'd dash back to the cottage and ask Delby to make a few calls.

*   *   *

I pulled up in front of Willa's Grocery, got out, and went around to the Patio. I walked past Pal, sprawled on his side, sleeping so peacefully, and opened the door. No muted tinkle. I looked up. The bell was gone. Not a cowbell, Poppy. Willa saw me and jumped off her stool. She pointed over to Jake to explain the bell's disappearance and shrugged. This morning Jake was slumped at his table, his head on his arm, asleep.

She said, “He's knocked out, poor thing.”

I looked over at him. I wondered if his face was the little boy's in the newspaper.

“Where's Tommy?”

“Making his rounds. He leaves Jake with me till he's done.”

“Has Fitzy been in yet?”

“No.”

“May I use your phone? I want to have a little business meeting with him. Maybe we can sort a few things out.”

“I think he's gone, Poppy.”

“Fitzy's gone?”

“No. I think the killer's gone. That last girl turned up alive, thank God. He had enough of his business so he left. Good riddance.”

“I hope you're right.”

The Patio door opened. Fitzy came in.

Willa said, “I'll see the gang steers clear of your table, Poppy.”

“Great.”

Fitzy had on an ironed shirt. He hadn't had anything to drink after I'd left him. Maybe Fitzy could make his way back.

“Hey, Poppy.” He plopped down next to me.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Your FBI scenarios came in this fast?”

“Not quite. You ready to eat?”

“I'm always ready to eat.”

We gave our orders to Willa, and she went back behind the counter. “I've got something you have to see.” Exactly Esther's words to me. I took out the folder. I told him Esther had given it to me ten minutes ago. “Fitzy, read what's in here. Take your time. And before you do, I have to tell you that Esther was a little hesitant at first, before she gave it to me. Because what's in here is so … It's … I don't know what it is. I just need you to—”

He said, “I'll read it, Poppy.”

He took the folder, opened it, glanced down, and then looked back to me. “Am I going to need coffee before I get into this?”

“Probably.”

Willa brought coffee and two plates, loaded with scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, and home fries. I watched Fitzy drink half the coffee down in one gulp and take a couple of bites of his breakfast. Then he stopped eating and concentrated on the articles. When he started reading he was holding a piece of toast, about to put it down onto his plate. He had to turn a page before he noticed the toast in midair and carefully set it down. Then he looked over at me.

I said, “Read it all before you say anything, okay?”

He didn't take my order. “I want this to be a review of a horror movie.”

“I know. Read it twice. Let it sink in.”

“I will. It sure as hell hasn't sunk in so far. I only hope tabloids have a long history. How old are these?”

“Esther thought fifty years or so, give or take.”

“Where'd Esther get them?”

“She's trying to figure that out.”

“Kid would maybe be dead by now.”

“Maybe.”

He finished reading the clippings and then he read them again. He drank the rest of the coffee in his cup. He said, “Mother of God.”

Willa came over with a coffeepot and refilled our cups. Fitzy showed her the picture of the boy. “Look like anyone?” he asked.

Willa looked down, cocked her head. “Nope.” She went to pour, sloshed a little into the saucer.

“Sorry, Fitzy.”

“Not to worry.” He put a napkin under the cup. Willa went back to her stool.

Now Fitzy looked down at the boy's photo again and then at me. “Kid looks like Joe.”

“Shut up.”

“Let's eat, Poppy, we'll take a walk. The walls in this place have ears.”

We headed out along the harborside and around to Corn Neck Road, skimming Crescent Beach. Our eyes were focused straight ahead and we put one foot in front of the other. We weren't having a nice stroll. Nice strolls were what I associated with Corn Neck Road. Whenever I'd turned onto Corn Neck with Joe, I couldn't take my eyes off the sweep of white sand, the deep blue water, the hedge of beach roses, and the rise of the cliffs at the end of the crescent. Spectacular. Today I saw none of it.

We started with the givens. First, the comprehensible aspects of the crime against the little boy. I didn't have to tell Fitzy the cases I knew of where some mild-mannered fellow who seems to overcome abuse suffered as a child only to have the long ago trauma triggered, whereupon he turns into a psychopath. Fitzy had been involved in cases like that himself. He said, “Honest to God, Poppy, there was a kid whose father was a golfer. Used to beat him with a club. Kid grew up, beat people to death with a nine iron.”