Stay Hidden: A Novel Page 8

  “Who did she end up hooking up with?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Can’t say or won’t say?”

  “Both. The way I get along out here is by not making any more enemies than I have to. But let me put it this way: there aren’t more than a few single men on this island, and none of them are prime catches.” The truck jolted over a ridge in the road and we all bounced. “So how do you go about investigating a shooting like this? I’m picturing it’s like Hercule Poirot, where you go around interviewing suspects and then gather us all together in a parlor to unmask the murderer.”

  “That’s not how we do it in real life.”

  “Shit, that would have been fun.”

  Something moved in the headlights. The two deer we’d seen earlier eating apples in the road had been joined by another doe and four fawns. They all had the same angular faces, the same globed eyes, the same scruffy coats. They high-stepped aside, then closed in again to browse after the dust had died behind us.

  I said, “I’ll do interviews along with the state police detective and the constable. Hopefully, the person who shot Ariel will come forward and confess. If not, we’ll try to build a case to take to the attorney general’s office. It might not happen overnight. But if we do find cause to arrest someone, we’ll take that person off the island as quietly as we can.”

  “If it’s the Washburns, you’d better call in a SWAT team. No matter who it is, don’t expect Andy Radcliffe to be of any help.”

  “Why not?” I asked but already knew the answer.

  “There’s basically one qualification to be the constable on Maquoit. You need to be a big, mean motherfucker. You’ve got to be able to break up a fight. Most of the trouble we have on-island comes when two drunks start brawling at the Trap House or down at Bishop’s Wharf. Or there’s some domestic shit—a guy’s hitting his girl, the girl’s hitting her kids. It helps if you’re a good peacemaker. But basically, people have to be afraid of you. There are mice on this island scarier than Andy Radcliffe.”

  “How did he become the constable, then?”

  “The first assessor makes the decision. And Harmon is the first assessor. You figure it out.”

  “How did you end up on the island, Joy?” Charley interjected.

  She had a wonderful, utterly uninhibited laugh. “You guessed I’m not a native? What gave it away? My impeccable fashion sense? Nah, I grew up outside Green Bay. My dad was a papermaker for Georgia-Pacific. He’d wanted a boy, so we did manly things together. He made me play hockey until I was actually good. Took me fishing and hunting. He nearly shit himself when I told him I wanted to be a visual artist. I got my BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design and came to the island one summer to paint. The famous artists—your Rockwell Kents and Edward Hoppers—had already done Monhegan to death. But no one had really painted Maquoit.”

  I said, “Did Ariel ever show you her sketches of Blake Markman?”

  Joy seemed genuinely taken aback. “Sketches? Ariel was a writer.”

  “We found drawings she had done in her cottage, portraits of Markman.”

  “No shit?”

  “You had no idea she was a visual artist, too?” I said.

  “No, but it explains some things. She came to my studio once, asking to look at my stuff, and I was surprised by how much she knew about art. She compared my work to James Fitzgerald, who’s not exactly a household name. And Fitzgerald was a huge influence on me. Ariel seemed so different that day. She was soft-spoken, serious, not at all the party girl. The way she talked about art, it made me feel … close to her.”

  “She seemed like a kindred spirit?” Charley asked in his best grandfatherly tone.

  “Yeah, but also—” Joy made a noise that sounded as if she were pretending to clear her throat. “I was thinking about the day I first set eyes on the island. The minute I stepped off the ferry, I knew I was home. It’s the same thing I saw in Ariel’s the day she arrived. Not everyone gets this place. But she did.”

  As we neared the village, we began passing year-round houses. The homes of the islanders all had stacks of lobster traps in their dooryards. They were boxes made of green, yellow, blue, or sometimes even purple vinyl-coated wire. A few houses still had rotting jack-o’-lanterns on their lopsided porches. But two days after Halloween, most of the pumpkins had been smashed in the road, and you could see that the deer had been at them.

  After a long pause, Joy Juno spoke again. “I remember Ariel saying a strange thing in my studio. She said, ‘All of my life, I have been searching for a sanctuary.’ Now she’s dead. Some sanctuary this place turned out to be.”

  12

  The next house we came to belonged to a hunter. He had a dead buck hanging from a jerry-rigged meat pole in his yard. My father had hung his trophies—none of which had weighed less than two hundred pounds—to show off their impressiveness to our neighbors, most of whom already hated and feared him.

  But there was nothing triumphant about this display. The hunter had hung his meat to age. He was thinking only of food.

  The wind had spun this one around toward the road so we could see the bloody incision on its white belly, and the wind kept spinning it. The animal was undersize by the standards I was accustomed to. Field dressed, it might have weighed 120 pounds. Its antlers had a total of five tines. You don’t often see odd-numbered antlers, but the deformity added to the grotesqueness of the already-macabre scene.

  “Looks like Nat got his deer,” Joy said.

  “Sure is a scrawny feller,” said Charley.

  “On Maquoit, that stag there is a giant. Nat’s a good hunter. He’s a Pillsbury, the last on the island. His family was among the first settlers here, along with the Washburns and the Dennetts. The Reeds came later.”

  “Pillsbury as in Jenny Pillsbury?” I said.

  “Nat’s her husband. They have an adorable baby girl named Ava. Figures she’d be so cute, given how good-looking her parents are.”

  The road through the village continued. The gray houses began to crowd closer together. We passed handmade signs for the school and the library, the Maquoit Church (no denomination specified), the Olde Island Burying Ground, the Lazy Lobster restaurant, where Crowley supposedly had an upstairs room, a coin Laundromat, and a couple of bed-and-breakfasts shuttered for the winter.

  People glanced at the truck as we bumped along past, displaying the full gamut of facial expressions from hostility to suspicion. A knot of fishermen emerged from Graffam’s Store with styrofoam coffee cups, cans of soda, and open containers of beer. Not a single person was wearing an item of blaze-orange clothing. That told me a lot about how worried they were of being shot themselves.

  It was my first view of Marsh Harbor from the ground. Powerful arc lights along the wharf illuminated the near vessels. Lobsterboats, empty of traps, bobbed at their moorings beyond, waiting for the rush that would begin when Trap Day opened Maquoit’s official fishing season. A single sailing yacht was moored out past the motorboats, no doubt Radcliffe’s.

  But all eyes were on the Star of the Sea. The impressive seventy-five-foot ship was Maine built, with such a powerful engine and a hull so thick that it did double duty as an icebreaker. Part of me wished I could get a tour of the legendary vessel before it left port.

  “Everything ready to go here?” I asked.

  Klesko grinned his dead-tooth grin. “We were waiting for you slowpokes.”

  “You sure you don’t want to take the boat back?” I asked him.

  “I’d like to interview the schoolteacher at least.”

  From behind me Charley said, “Looks like they’re going to have rough seas returning. The flight won’t be silky either, but at least it’ll be short.”

  The wind was up again, and the sky above the outer harbor was as dark as the smoke that comes from burning tires, but the air was fresh and bracing in the lungs. Gulls wheeled overhead, hopeful for whatever scraps we might discard. Small rafts of eiders were visible as white and bl
ack spots at the harbor mouth. I heard big waves crashing against the island’s granite breakwater.

  “I almost forgot,” Klesko said. “Landry wants to talk with you. She’s already aboard with Ariel.”

  I made my way carefully down the ridged gangplank. The apparatus could be raised and lowered to suit the weather conditions and the size of the boat trying to come alongside. Because the tide was high, the walkway was perfectly horizontal, but the choppiness of the waves made every step tenuous.

  In the narrow hall, a woman, whom I took to be the mission’s nurse-practitioner, given the box of prescription bottles in her hands, pressed her back against the wall for me to pass. “You’re the warden investigator?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Keep going down the hall and take the first steps you see down to the galley. We had to put your shooting victim in the walk-in cooler. Excuse me, I need to run some meds up to the store before we leave.”

  The cook in the galley was stirring a big pot of something that smelled like chowder. He opened the cooler for me. Inside was Ronette Landry, seated on cartons of bottled water. Someone had lent her a blanket to wrap over her uniform. She had pulled her watch cap down around her ears. Her nose was reindeer red and she looked miserable. I stepped into the refrigerated air. The door closed with such force and finality that I found myself checking to make sure we hadn’t been locked in.

  “Thanks for coming.” Her breath was visible, her nose stuffed. “I wasn’t sure Steve would remember to give you my message.”

  “Ronette, you don’t have to sit in the fridge with her.”

  “She shouldn’t be alone.”

  “Did you want to compare notes before the boat pushes off?”

  Either she hadn’t heard my question or she had prepared a speech she was determined to give. “This is going to be a difficult case to solve, Mike. I’ve worked a lot of hunting homicides. The rain tonight’s going to hammer the crime scene. Plus there’s heavy fog moving in afterward. There will be no point in DeFord’s sending over the rest of the ERT. And then there are the islanders, who are never going to turn over the man who did it. You’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  A shiver passed through me. I turned the collar of my peacoat up against the cold. “Maybe the autopsy will turn up something.”

  Again she pretended not to hear me. “There’s one other thing. I didn’t want to say anything before because the time wasn’t right. I’m sorry about you and Stacey.”

  When it came to gossip, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife was worse than a small-town diner.

  “It’s no big thing. She and I are taking a break.” My heart knew this was a lie.

  “She was a brilliant biologist and the toughest woman I knew. Physically toughest. It’s a real loss to the state.”

  My breath formed a shapeless cloud. “Thank you.”

  “It seems like it’s been one loss after another. First Kathy Frost retiring. Then Dani choosing to become a trooper. There are only three women left in the Warden Service now. The department should declare us an endangered species.”

  Dani was former game warden Danielle Tate. She was a five-foot-four-inch blond dynamo with a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu. When we’d first met, she was straight out of Warden School, and she had struck me as a sullen, antisocial, perennially pissed-off person. To make everything worse, she’d also inexplicably developed a crush on me that had made our interactions awkward, especially after Stacey had moved in with me. But Dani had changed over the past few years, grown up, become self-confident and at ease with herself. She’d left the Warden Service because she believed she had an easier path to advancement in the state police. I was impressed with the courage that had taken.

  In the weeks since Stacey had left I had occasionally found myself thinking of Dani.

  I had the impression Ronette still hadn’t said the thing she needed to say to me before the Star of the Sea left port.

  “I want you to make me a promise, Mike.” She removed a well-used tissue from her pocket and dabbed her nostrils. “What I’m asking is that you don’t let this fall by the wayside.”

  “Come on, Ronette. You know we don’t ever let that happen—not in the Warden Service, not in the state police.”

  “Not even when the female victim is unsympathetic?”

  Ariel’s blond beauty, not to mention her fame, would catch the interest of the news media, which would, in turn, put pressure on us to solve the case. But her image would be degraded by those who didn’t care about the harm they inflicted on her friends and family. And I knew more than a few holier-than-thou cops who would claim she’d gotten what she deserved—because she was from out of state, because she should have been wearing blaze orange, because, in their eyes, she was a junkie and a slut.

  “It shouldn’t matter that Ariel Evans did drugs or slept around,” said Ronette. “Ariel was a human being, one of God’s children, and someone killed her and needs to be held accountable. That’s all that matters.”

  “I agree completely.”

  Ronette Landry set her hand on the crinkly body bag beside her. “This woman is no longer with us. It’s too late to save her life. But even now she needs a champion. You need to promise me that you will be her champion because I’m not sure anyone else is up to the job.”

  I promised.

  13

  Charley and I helped the captain of the Star of the Sea cast off. We lifted the thick hawsers off the bronze tops of the pilings and tossed the ropes down to one of the ship’s mates.

  As the engine roared to life, herring gulls rose from the harbor on soft, gray wings. The screws began to churn and the water started to boil. Then the wind pushed the greasy diesel fumes toward the wharf, and I had to take a step back to keep from choking.

  Ronette stood on the top deck as the ship pulled away from the island. Her face was as white as porcelain in the arc lights. She was clutching a steaming cup of coffee or tea that made me aware of my own coldness and exhaustion. In two more hours she would be in Bass Harbor, where she would meet the “coach” that would transport Ariel’s body to the autopsy table. But I had no idea how long my stay on Maquoit might last.

  The wind had a new sharpness, like a scythe slicing across the open water. I shivered and dug out my leather gloves.

  “You gentlemen preparing to depart, too?”

  It was Harmon Reed, who had come down to the ferry dock to see off the Star of the Sea. He had a corncob pipe clenched between his molars. The temperature had dropped as the clouds descended on the island, but the harbormaster was still dressed in short sleeves, which revealed his huge, sun-spotted forearms.

  “Mr. Stevens and I will be flying back tonight,” said Klesko. “But you’re stuck with the warden for the time being.”

  “I hope you had the foresight to book a room.”

  “I’m staying at the White House, I think it’s called.”

  He glanced at the hill above the village. At the top was a traditional New England church, high steepled, clapboarded, and ghost pale in the gathering darkness. “Kind of quiet up there this time of year. But at least you’ll have company. Nothing warmer than a lonely widow.”

  With that, Harmon Reed took his leave of us. He passed through the blinding glow of the wharf lights and then was lost in the thickening shadows.

  When I glanced back at the Star of the Sea, it had turned north past John’s Point, headed for home.

  Half a dozen islanders had come down to the dock to watch the ship depart, and now they began to scatter. Joy Juno sat inside her truck, tapping away on her cell phone. There was no sign of Radcliffe. He’d probably gone home to have supper with his family.

  * * *

  Charley said he wanted to walk up to the airstrip to get a little exercise and fill his lungs with “good sea air.” He told us he’d be waiting at the plane.

  Joy Juno drove Klesko and me to the schoolhouse.

  “The State of Maine
better be reimbursing me for taxiing you officers around,” she said. “Why, I must have put on a good three miles!”

  “I’m sure we can arrange something,” I said.

  “If you’re sticking around, Warden, you might want to see about scaring up a vehicle of your own. There aren’t many working trucks to be had. But probably someone has a golf cart they can loan you.”

  The thought of conducting suspect interviews via golf cart mortified me.

  When we got to the school, we found the lights off. The small, square building was covered in white clapboards with a roof that was perfectly pyramidal. The days of the one-room schoolhouse might be long gone elsewhere in America, but the era lived on in Maine’s remote island communities. Beryl’s electric cart was nowhere in sight.

  “She must have gotten tired of waiting,” said Klesko with a hint of frustration.

  “Maybe we should check the library,” I said.

  Juno reached her thick arm across my chest to point down the road. “That’s it there, that little brown building.”

  The library windows were also dark.

  But I noticed something flapping on the door. “Steve, can you let me out for a second?”

  What I had spotted was a note held in place by two tacks. I shined my pocket flashlight on the wind-blown paper.

  I WAITED AS LONG AS I COULD. I’LL BE HERE AT 6 AM TOMORROW BEFORE CLASS IF YOU WANT TO STOP BY.

  —B

  When I showed the note to Klesko, he looked as if he wanted to rip it to shreds.

  “Can we call her?” he asked Juno.

  “We can try.”

  There was no answer at her landline, nor did she pick up her cell.

  “She has a bad case of Lyme disease,” said Joy Juno. “Sometimes it wipes her out so she can’t get out of bed.”

  “I’ll catch up with her in the morning,” I told the detective.

  “Where to next?” asked Joy.

  “The airfield,” said Klesko, his frustration audible in his voice. “The way this day has gone, it’ll be a wonder if we don’t crash on takeoff.”