At first he thought she had poor English. Then he wondered if she was mute, or deaf, or both. Whatever it was, Felicia was about as forthcoming as a clam that had swallowed some Superglue. Mitch tried the housekeeper, the maid, the gardener. It was always the same story.
“I don’t remember.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“I did my job and went home.”
Tomorrow he would head down to the harbor and talk to the fishermen. Some of them must have been out on the water that day. But he didn’t hold out much hope. It’s like they’re all part of some secret club, like the Masons or something. But it made no sense. Lenny Brookstein was already dead. What did they think they were protecting him from?
HANNAH COFFIN CALLED TO HER HUSBAND.
“Tristram! Come see this.”
“In a minute.”
The Coffins worked at the Wauwinet Hotel, a five-star retreat in one of the quietest, least-populated parts of the island. Like all the big hotels, they were closed through the spring months, but kept a skeleton staff to work on maintenance and repairs. Hannah and her husband acted as caretakers, overseeing the off-season staff. It was a job with a lot of down-time, which Tristram Coffin spent tinkering with his Ducati motorbike, and Hannah spent watching daytime television.
“Tristram!”
“I’m busy, honey.” Tristram Coffin sighed. Just buy the damn earrings already, or the super-duper potato peeler, or the Greatest Hits of Neil Diamond, or whatever it is they’re selling! You don’t need my opinion.
“It’s important. Come on in here.”
Reluctantly, he put down his wrench and wandered into the living room of their modest ground-floor apartment. As usual, the television was on.
“Do you remember that guy?”
Hannah pointed at the screen. A man was being interviewed about Maria Preston’s murder. The story was getting juicier by the day. It now looked as if the husband had done it, hired a Mob hit man to kill his wife because he suspected her of having an affair. Hannah Coffin was particularly interested in the murder because Maria Preston had stayed at the Wauwinet once.
Tristram studied the man’s face.
“He looks familiar.”
“He is familiar!” said Hannah triumphantly. “Where’s that cop staying? The one that’s been asking all the questions about Lenny Brookstein?”
“Union Street. Why?”
“I’m gonna call him, that’s why.”
Tristram looked disapproving. “Come on, honey. You don’t want to get involved.”
“Oh yes I do.” Heaving her two-hundred-pound frame up off the couch, Hannah lumbered toward the phone. “I know where I’ve seen that guy before. And when.”
“ARE YOU SURE?”
Mitch felt like pinching himself. If he weren’t scared of putting his back out, he’d have picked Hannah Coffin up in his arms and kissed her.
“One hundred percent. They checked in here together. It was the day of the storm. Him and Maria Preston.”
“And they stayed…”
“All afternoon, like I told you. I’ll write it down for you if you like. Make a statement. He was on TV, acting like he hardly knew her. But he knew her all right. Intimately, if you know what I’m saying.”
Mitch knew what she was saying. He was due at the harbor in half an hour, but this called for a change of plans. He headed for the airport.
NANTUCKET AIRPORT WAS LITTLE MORE THAN a shed, a simple L-shaped shingle structure with a pitched roof, one-half of which was designated “Departures” and the other half “Arrivals.” As single-and twin-engine Cessnas landed, passengers got out and helped the pilot unload luggage onto the tarmac. In the departure lounge, “security” consisted of a gray-bearded old man named Joe who glanced at the locals’ bags before waving them through with a cheery smile and a “See you at the Improv Friday night. Baptist church, don’t be late now.”
Mitch marched up to the desk of Cape Air.
“I’d like to see your passenger records, please. I’m interested in all flights in and out of the island on June twelfth, last year.”
The girl at the desk rolled her eyes. “And you are?”
“Police.”
“Darlene?” she called over her shoulder. “I got another one here. Wants those June twelfth records. Can you take him?”
An old woman in a tweed skirt emerged from the office. She wore her snow-white hair tied back in a neat bun, and a pair of pince-nez glasses perched on the end of her nose, like Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother.
Mitch looked puzzled. “Another one? Has someone else been asking to look at your passenger lists?”
“They have indeed. Darlene Winter.” She shook Mitch’s big, bear-like hand with her thin, wrinkled one. “You policemen are like buses. Never there when you need one, then suddenly you all show up at once. Come on back.”
Mitch followed Darlene into an office that was as neat and orderly as she was. There was a computer in one corner, but she led him to a desk on the other side of the room. A big brown leather book lay open. It looked like an antique Bible, or an enormous visitors’ book from some medieval Scottish castle.
“All our records are computerized, of course,” Darlene told Mitch. “That’s the law. But we like to do things the old-fashioned way around here. We keep a daily logbook of our flights as well, handwritten. I suspect I already know what you’re looking for.”
She pointed to a familiar name, beautifully rendered in italics and black ink.
“He caught the six-ten A.M. to Boston, along with five other passengers. Landed at six fifty-eight. Whatever he was doing that day it looked like he changed his mind, because at seven twenty-five”—she flipped a page—“he boarded an eight-seater right back to the island. This is his landing record, right here. June twelfth, eight-oh-five A.M. Flight 27 from Logan. John H. Merrivale.”
Mitch ran his finger across the paper.
So Hannah Coffin wasn’t a fantasist. John Merrivale really could have been at the Wauwinet that day, shacked up with Maria Preston.
According to Hannah, the pair of them hadn’t arrived at the hotel until early afternoon. A full five hours after John got back to the island, after setting up his alibi. More than enough time to sail out to Lenny Brookstein’s boat, get aboard and murder him.
“You mentioned someone else had asked to see this. Another cop?”
“That’s right. FBI, I think he said he was, but he came off as more of a military man. Very brusque. A little rude, if you must know. He had one of those army haircuts, you know. Much too short.”
“You don’t remember his name?”
The old woman furrowed her brow. “William,” she said eventually. “William someone-or-other I think it was. Went straight to the same page. June twelfth. John Merrivale. Is this Mr. Merrivale in some sort of trouble?”
Not yet, thought Mitch. Then he thought, Who the hell is William?
THE GUARD LOOKED AT THE MUD-SPATTERED sedan and its lone occupant. He’d expected an armored vehicle, or even a convoy of some sort. Not a middle-aged man in a dirty family car. This guy looks like her dad coming to pick her up after a sleepover.
The camp outside Dillwyn in rural Virginia was a top secret OGA facility. OGA stood for “Other Government Agency,” which typically meant CIA, although the Dillwyn camp provided a temporary “home” for a variety of nonmilitary prisoners considered too disruptive or dangerous to be returned to a mainstream correctional facility. Some were terror suspects. Others suspected spies. A few were classified as “politically sensitive.” But none of the inmates at Dillwyn was more “sensitive” than the one this man had come to see. The prisoner was being transferred to an FBI holding cell in Fairfax. In a sedan, apparently.
“Papers, please.”
The gray-haired man handed over his credentials. For a few moments there was a tense pause while the guard leafed through them. But everything was in order, as he knew it would be.
“Okay, go on through. They’re expecting you.”
GRACE STOOD IN THE CENTER OF her six-by-eight-foot cell. Planting her legs in a wide stance, she stretched out her arms, focusing on her breathing as she lunged forward into warrior 2 pose.
She’d been at Dillwyn almost two weeks, locked for twenty-two hours a day in a spare, windowless box. With no one to talk to, no human interaction of any kind, yoga had been her salvation. She spent hours going through a series of poses, energizing her body and focusing her mind and breathing, staving off despair.
I’m alive. I’m strong. I won’t be here forever.
But would she? Hours, days and nights had already merged into one, long, unbroken stretch of nothing. The lights in Grace’s cell were permanently set on dim. Meals were pushed through a tray in the door at regular six-hour intervals, but there was nothing to distinguish breakfast from lunch or lunch from supper.
They’re trying to break me. Make me crazy so they can lock me up in a mental institution and throw away the key.