She's Not There (31 page)

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Fitzy put his yellow tape around the perimeter of where the bones lay. Then we brought Jim and his dog home to his brothers. I told him I'd bring his bike to him the next day. He said he'd come back for it in the morning; his brother could give him a ride. “Then I can help you.” I didn't know what he was talking about. He said, “You know, look for Joe's cat.” Good kid, indeed. Back at the police station, Fitzy dialed his commissioner and waited for staff to wake him. Didn't take long.

“Hey, Commish, if I'm bothering you, sorry about that. It's because I've got no choice. We have another body.” He paused. “No. A skeleton. Now as far as I know we don't have another girl missing, but considering how—” Pause. “Well, sure, it could be anyone. But the bones were twisted around themselves. I don't think anyone arranged them either. Not the way whoever it was rearranged the body of the woman who was poisoned. My feeling, paranoid though I usually am, is that—”

Fitzy paused again. He stood up. He said, “What?” Then he paced back and forth. His next message to the commissioner was a very loud, “Fuck,” and he slammed the receiver down.

“Poppy, we're dealing with assholes.”

“I know.”

“The body stays right where it is, until the travel ban gets lifted. Told me bodies have been washing up on Block Island since the Pilgrims. Suggested I appoint a deputy to guard the body. Yeah, right. Think I'll appoint Jim Lane's kid's dog.”

“Seemed like the commissioner was on our side. What happened?”

“Ex-cop or not, he's appointed by the governor and his job is to be on the governor's side. He jumped at what I'd said—that no girls were missing.”

“Call Tommy. He'll guard the body or get someone to do it. But you should call him right now. Jim Lane's friends will all know what he found by now. Teenagers have a morbid curiosity about them. They're probably on their way to Sandy Point already.”

“Yeah, you're right. Isn't Tommy guarding the camp?”

“No, he has other people doing that. He's got his hands full keeping Jake home.”

“Okay, I'll get him out there. He can bring Jake, leave him in the truck or something. What do you think, Poppy? Is Jake capable of behavior so rational he could connive to kill the campers?”

“I can't imagine it.”

“Me neither. But it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.”

“Fitzy, I'm going to check in with that doctor. He should go have a look at the skeleton.”

“Goddamn quack. Could
he
come down far enough so that both his feet are on the ground and kill the girls? Kill Esther?”

“Same answer as before.” I started to leave, but then I didn't. Fitzy looked defeated. The wind was out of his sails. I said, “Fitzy, there are always mistakes. Always. And a slew of them have been made here, left and right. But mistakes can be overcome. You know that.”

“This is worse than a mistake.”

“But it doesn't change anything. The case is not hopeless. That's what's important for us to remember.”

“Should have been a piece of cake.”

“No. There are no pieces of cake in our business. It seems like it should be a piece of cake because we're on this little tiny island, not in a big city where bad guys can hide out in twenty million different places. This island doesn't even have a decent tree to hide behind. Now we're frustrated because we can't find our killer under the nearest bush. We have to be even more patient than the killer, who is biding his time, watching for his opportunity. Solving a crime is painstaking, Fitzy, tedious, even on little tiny islands.”

“I have no patience. That's my problem.”

“My problem too. But as long as you recognize your problems and deal with them, it's okay. Fitzy, the Unabomber milled his own screws for the bombs he made. He knew we wouldn't be able to trace the manufacturer if
he
was the manufacturer.”

“No kidding.”

“No kidding. You know what our best hope is, don't you? The only hope for impatient people like us. You must.”

“Yeah. We need another Fred. Only one who saw more than Fred did. We need a tip.”

He was coming around. He was with me. “We sure do.” We needed a tip from someone close to the perpetrator, close either through a relationship or just plain physical proximity.

“Poppy, what you're forgetting is that we had a tipster. Esther. We blew it.”

“Esther blew it. She kept the tip to herself.”

“Yeah. What if our copycat was the actual perp and he meant to have Esther's death look like a copycat killing?”

“We always dread that but it's rarely true, isn't it? Let's not get distracted. We still can't tell if Esther knew who killed her or if some tourist wanted to steal an old map.”

“We do know that, Poppy.”

“I was grasping at straws. Is that what you want to do?”

“No.”

“We don't depend on straws. We have no choice but to depend on what investigators always depend on.”

“Luck.”

“Exactly. Only luck
seems
about as reliable as straws. But luck is far more reliable, because it doesn't exist where there isn't perseverance. Which is why I'm a lucky investigator and I suspect why you have been lucky as well. Back when you were working. We persevere.”

He smiled. “So we figure we'll just stumble on him—maybe a coincidence will lead us to him—as long as we stay a couple of diehards. That's your philosophy. The Stumble Philosophy.”

“It's the only philosophy.”

“Yeah, it is. The only one. It's just depressing to admit it.” I left him dialing his phone and went back out to Joe's jeep.

The doctor came to his door. Carol was right behind him. They both wore ratty bathrobes. They had more than a professional relationship. Brisbane didn't wait for me to speak; he felt he had the right to be angry with me. “Atlanta called me today. Like to take my head off.” He added a note of defense to his scold. “Listen, I know you're FBI and maybe I should have come to you first, but for all I knew you were a secretary or something. And you'd aligned yourself with that cop. Well, as far as—”

“Aligned myself with the cop? Who was I supposed to align myself with? You?”

“Never mind. The thing is, there might be some bacterial infection these girls are carrying, maybe spreading. Something highly contagious.”

“But only overweight teenage girls can catch it?”

“It could have been a coincidental cluster. And if so…”

I let him babble. I didn't listen to anything else. When he was finished, I said, “Jim Lane's kid found a skeleton halfway down Sandy Point.”

He reacted the way I had. He mumbled to himself, “A skeleton.”

Not Carol. She said, “You're shittin' me.”

“I'm not.”

The arrogance slipped from Brisbane's voice. “When?”

“Tonight.”

Carol said, “Probably washed up from God knows where.”

“The limbs of the skeleton are wrapped around its torso.”

The doctor shuddered. But then he lifted his chin and tried to be professional. “I hope you didn't touch it.”

“I did. And I haven't washed my hands yet. I could go into a bacteria-induced spiral any minute.”

Carol jumped to his protection. “What exactly is that supposed to mean? This isn't funny.”

“No. It is definitely not funny. The good doctor is the only comedy show around.” Then I pretty much let him have it. “You had some drug-induced panic attack, didn't you? Took more than you should have. And because of that, we cannot get a forensic team out here to examine the body that poor boy found. I'm here on your doorstep because I've made an executive decision, seeing as how there are no other executives around that I know of. Here it is:
You
, Doc, have to be the one to examine the body. And while you're doing that you can think about the girls up at that camp who are at the mercy of a lunatic. Go out to Sandy Point. After you have a look at the body, maybe you'll call Atlanta again and tell them what a reckless mistake you made.”

Carol got a pack of cigarettes. She lit one up and passed the pack to the doctor. He had trouble lighting his because he was hypered up. Demerol will do that to you. Keeps you groggy for long stretches and then, when it's time for more, you're a puppet jangling on a string.

Carol said to me, “I'll see he does what he has to do.”

“Good. Fitzy's asking Tommy to guard the scene. Tommy will be glad for the company, I'm sure, trying to keep an eye on Jake and do this too.” And then I stepped up into the doc's face to be sure he was in the real world. “There is no fucking plague on this island, Brisbane. There's a serial killer. And we've got to find him. Make Atlanta understand. Just the way you convinced them that we have a plague.”

I stomped back to the jeep. I didn't ask the doc if he'd been adopted by a psychiatrist when he was a young child. He hadn't. I'd checked his genealogy on Esther's family tree.

 

12

By morning, stranded tourists learned of the skeleton and began offering huge bribes to people with boats to smuggle them off the island. Some boat owners at the marina took them up on it, but they were all turned back. Billy and Mick gave it a try and met the same fate. That was why they arrived at the coffee shop late. They'd taken a hundred dollars apiece from four tourists and then had to give it back. They couldn't wait to describe their adventure.

Mick said, “Coast Guard boat offshore carries a mean loudspeaker, let me tell you. Nearly blew my head off bellowing orders.” Mick curved his hands and held them to his mouth, forming a megaphone. He shouted, “
Violating the ban means a fine, an arrest, and a quarantine on a private colony
. Hell with that.”

“And the people we had on the boat—thought they were going to dump us overboard. Told us we were all crazy for living out here. Used to that, though.”

Ernie said, “How far'd you get?”

“Right about the spot where the Coast Guard used to catch up to us when we were runnin' rum. 'Course they only caught us fifty percent of the time. Now they got radar.”

Fitzy said to me, “He's talking about Prohibition. As if it were yesterday. These Block Islanders live to a ripe old age, don't they? Buncha crooks.”

Billy, who heard him along with everyone else, said, “Times were pretty rough.”

“They're still so rough you want to gouge tourists?”

“Who asked ya, fuzzbucket?” Billy and Mick chuckled together.

The little bell over the door, back up, taped, made its muted ding. Ernie had insisted, telling Willa that it was dangerous to spoil the boy—meaning Jake. Tommy had left Jake in Willa's care again and he kept himself occupied taking an old radio apart. Now he let out a shriek. But it wasn't the bell that did it. The three girls standing in the doorway must have scared him. He knocked his chair over and charged past them, out into the low glare of the morning sun. Willa made a move toward the door, but Ernie grabbed her arm. “Let him go.”

“Tommy will—”

“I'll handle Tommy.”

Christen, Samantha, and Kate didn't know whether to come in or go back out again. Elijah Leonard's head was tucked under Kate's arm, his face turned away. They hadn't stolen the van this time. They were red and hot and sweating. Jim Lane called to them—“Hey”—no longer judging books by their covers, maybe.

Ernie said, “Never mind Jake, girls, he's a nervous boy. Now get on in here and tell me what I can get you.”

Christen said, “We don't want anything. Water.”

“Don't be silly. Willa, get something up for these kids.”

The girls spotted Fitzy and me and hurried over to our table. Christen said, “We know who the skeleton is.”

Chairs scraped across the floor, making a circle around us, and Ernie dragged three more over for the campers. Willa got a pitcher of juice and a plate of pastries. I said, “Sit down, girls,” and Fitzy, “We're listening.”

The campers drank the juice. Christen wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “See, there was this one girl who got here a week early, a week before camp opened. Her parents made special arrangements with Irwin. The mother was going to be in Paris and the father—who was divorced from the mother—was traveling on business, so Irwin agreed to—”

Kate interrupted. “Like,
imagine
what Irwin
charged
them!”

Then they all started talking at once. “He took her early. And when the first of the real girls arrived—six of them—the day camp officially opened, they met her. They said all she did was sit on the floor in the corner.”

“I mean, they tried to be nice, but she was completely stressed out. She was stressed out because she'd been on Irwin's so-called twelve-hundred-calorie-per-day diet for a week and couldn't get to extra food. She wasn't able to sneak any in her suitcase. The girls gave her chips and cookies and everything—shared what they had—but she was wrecked.”

“When I got here I gave her a
million
Drake's Cakes.”

“So then, all that week, there was a lot of commotion because the campers were coming in, and then at the end of the first week the six girls who were the first to get to camp realized that the
actual
first girl was gone. The girl who wouldn't move from the corner. So they went to Irwin, and he told them she was a runaway. That she was with her father.”

“So this morning when we heard about the skeleton, we paid off the counselors to get the first girl's application. And we called her mother, and her mother said that right after camp started, Irwin called her to tell her the girl had run away. The mother told us she ran away all the time. To her father.”