She's Not There (29 page)

“I was supposed to be.”

He sighed. “I am so between a rock, you know? If those girls—if that woman had been strangled, shot, stabbed, whatever—things would be different. But I was told there was no evidence of homicide. I was told the three corpses exhibited unusual changes in various tissues. On top of that, I've got the governor of the state involved, a governor who belongs to the same political party the President does. Protocol demands we see if there is bacteria harbored out there in a stagnant pond. I'm holding up my end: looking for evidence of bacteria. You hold up yours: find evidence to the contrary that says—”

“Harry, the girls died in one place and were dumped in another.”

“No. I was told they were hitchhiking. If you pick someone up and she dies, you might get real nervous and dump the body.”

“Not me. I'd get her medical assistance before she died.”

“I'm sorry, Poppy. All I can suggest is that you get the police to guard the girls.”

“Get the police? I don't think you quite understand. We have one state trooper here. There is no one else and we can't
get
anyone. Travel here has been banned, remember?”

“What about the local force?”

“The local force consists of a man, a
constable
, who upholds the town statutes—which, as far as I can see, are few and far between.”

“Okay, then keep the girls sequestered.”

“When I was a teenager, no one could sequester me.”

“I'll bet.”

Speaking with Harry was no longer productive. I slammed the phone down. Fitzy and I had that quirk in common. We knew who you could effectively hang up on and who you couldn't.

I said, “Fitzy, can you rouse that detective from your force who went down into Rodman's Hollow with us?”

“Sure.”

Fitzy dialed and handed the phone back to me. The detective didn't like my waking him up. Tough. The first thing I learned from him was that he knew all about the ban. He said to me, “I agree with you, of course. Plague, schmague. But I've thought long and hard. Let's face it. It was drugs. There was not a mark on either body. The girl I saw—her heart gave out. Just like the first girl. Drugs can do that to you. That movie star, the kid in LA? Goes to a nightclub, takes I-don't-know-what, walks outside, and drops dead on the sidewalk. You're waking me up over something that happens every day of the week. Kids who—”

I tried not to burst. “Listen to me. One of the girls didn't do drugs at all and the other one smoked a joint once in a while. If pot did whatever it did to those girls, the country would be littered with contorted dead bodies.”

Fitzy was watching me. I knew what he was thinking. That I could not say to anyone that perhaps noise killed the girls. If I said it to this detective, he'd think we were
all
using Demerol. I tried a new tack.

“Maybe they were poisoned. Esther was. The woman who—”

“No. She
took
poison. That's what we have to assume now, considering the information we have on her.”

“From who?”

“From the doctor out there. Brisbane.”

Shit. “Please, Harry. Someone is enticing these girls with food. And then he puts something
in
the food—”

“If he put poison in their food it would have shown up.”

“Not in the stomach contents, it wouldn't. The girls vomited. The FBI is looking at tissue samples. There are poisons that don't show up in the usual places.”

“Since when?”

“Since I told you. These campers are not drug addicts and they have families. Some of those families are finally beginning to understand that their daughters are in danger, but now these same daughters can't get out. We have over twenty girls left.
And we have no security for them
.”

“Then handle it like this. Those people out on the Block take care of each other. They have a rescue squad. Have them get up some volunteers to patrol the streets and keep the girls in the camp till the ban ends.”

“The citizens here rescue people from capsized
boats
. In nor'easters. They are not the police. And what if a
volunteer
is the killer? Or what if a volunteer gets
killed
trying to protect a girl?”

He didn't say anything at first. Then he did. “If there's a killer, it's just the woman who was the victim. Probably the boyfriend. Isn't it always the boyfriend who's the killer?”

“It is. But there is no boyfriend in the picture, and boyfriends don't use poison. Boyfriends go out and get a gun. Fun to point a gun and say, ‘You want to leave me, honey? Good. You're gone.' Bang. Except O.J. He got a great big knife. Even more fun that way. Listen—”

He interrupted me. “You can't know that. This boyfriend used poison because he saw an opportunity. He could copy. Boyfriends don't want to get caught, and this one probably didn't have the wherewithal to jump on a plane to Chicago. But the two girls? I'm sure it was drugs. There are studies being done on substances that give you a high, and they're not categorized as drugs. There are drugs that don't show up in your body after a few hours. Unlike poison, that you and I both know doesn't go anywhere. The dealer who sold this stuff to the dead girls isn't a killer, he just doesn't care if things don't go smoothly. Pretty common type of personality trait demonstrated by drug dealers everywhere. You must know that.”

“You're wrong, and you're especially wrong about this killer's personality. This one does care. He
takes
care to see that these girls die at his hand. He knows exactly what he's doing. He's murdering innocent teenage girls and because you don't know how he does it you're in denial. Or maybe the governor is pulling your strings, since you're not putting the lid on the phony leak that the woman who was poisoned committed suicide. Two girls were killed. It has happened twice. Twice. Doesn't
twice
do anything for you?”

“Twice? No. Three times, yes. Get the girls together in a group and explain carefully why they just have to say no, and then there'll be no number three.”

Idiot.

I hung up on him too.

Fitzy sat there, still gazing at me. He said, “I couldn't bring myself to tell the commish about the boy in Esther's newspaper either. How do you tell someone the weapon used in a murder was probably a goddamned bell?”

*   *   *

It was true about the island wanting to help. In the morning at Richard's Patio, Willa was coaxing Jake to eat his breakfast while Tommy was out organizing a team to guard the camp and patrol the roads. Apparently he was used to organizing rescues at sea. Tommy, Ernie told me, would go out into the teeth of a January blizzard and come back with frozen fishermen who he'd thaw out, fill with brandy, and see on their way. So when he asked for help from his fellow islanders, everyone available came running, including those recently back from the Dordogne and those who had intended to leave but now couldn't. In fact, Tommy was already out there, checking all the docked boats, flashing his badge, looking for drugs. Fitzy and I watched the militia form at the Patio: Billy and Mick would take the eight to midnight shift, camp guards. They were making their plans. Billy said, “I got to see my rifle is all ready.”

Fitzy just shook his head.

The taxi brothers would patrol the roads during those same late hours. Jim Lane's kid, plus his buddies, would be out on their bikes taking spins around the campgrounds during the day. Everyone had an assignment.

It had taken Esther's death for people to get serious. It had taken one of their own. Ernie had been storming around ever since it happened. “We can't get her body back here for burial! A travel ban!” He spit the words out. “Who can believe it?”

Now he was picking up dishes and cups and glasses, crowding them onto a tray, piled high, ranting about such insanity. And then he dropped the tray. The tray was metal. We all jumped. Willa leaped. Jake clamped his hands over his ears and started to keen, the sound of the wind, I thought, a powerful terrible wind. Willa rushed over and put her arms around him. He screamed and yanked himself from her. She started to cry. Ernie rushed over to the table. He grabbed Willa and held on tight while he tried, at the same time, to calm Jake.

“Jake, I broke some dishes. Some glasses too. See them there on the floor? I don't care about some old dishes. But now everything is okay. Look, we're all here, nice and quiet again. I'm going to sweep up the mess. Willa is going to throw all of it away and we'll get new dishes, right, Willa?”

She whispered, “Yes.”

“And Jim Lane's kid will help you finish your breakfast.”

The kid got right up and went over to the table. Ernie and Willa started their work. Fitzy and I had already picked up the biggest pieces of crockery and glasses and put them on the tray. Jim Lane's kid stabbed at the cut-up pancake with a fork. He said, “Hey, Jake, look. I got three at a time here.”

Willa wiped her eyes with her apron when she got the tray from us. She said, “I'm sorry. You folks eat your breakfast.”

We went back to our table. Except for Jake's whimpering, Richard's Patio was back to normal but I'd lost my appetite. Fitzy ate my breakfast too. I said to him, “Listen, this morning before I left, I called the camp. I reached a counselor and then I talked to Christen. Apparently our friend Irwin remains unfazed.” I told him what Christen had said—that Irwin was busy fielding phone calls, assuring parents that camp activities had resumed, that the infection control center did this sort of quarantine thing all the time—we should be grateful they took such matters seriously. But not to worry. There was no such illness, as they would find out in just a few days. At the end of the short quarantine everyone could feel secure once again. As to the girls who died, they were an element he had tried diligently to screen out. Unfortunately, he'd failed in these two instances, so he apologized and promised the parents that the rest of the girls were not of that ilk. He continued to assure them that not only was the Rhode Island State Police—meaning Fitzy—seeing to it that their daughters were protected, though he knew that was hardly necessary, but a volunteer force was doing the same. He described the friendliness and concern of the locals. He assured them there was even an FBI agent and a top gun from the ATF on hand who happened to be vacationing on Block Island and who had taken charge of the whole situation.

Christen said she got most of her information from her mother, who'd talked to Irwin and then insisted on talking to her. Christen told me her mother said Irwin reminded her camp tuition was nonrefundable. Her mom said she didn't care about the money—he could keep it—she just wanted Christen home as soon as the travel ban was over. She was wiring money through the post office. Then she was going to call all the other girls' parents.

“Fitzy, finally.”

Turned out Fitzy had called the camp this morning too. He'd reached Irwin. “I instructed him to hold a meeting. I'm going to talk to the girls.” Fitzy looked at his watch. “Due there in fifteen minutes. Coming?”

“Yes. I want to see them.”

Before we left, Willa said to me, “Poppy, when the ban's called off and the campers leave, you should too. This was supposed to be your vacation, yours and Joe's. Let Fitzy and the state take care of this. Come back next year, start again.” Her eyes were full. I gave her a hug. But only a few days ago she and everyone else said I shouldn't leave. They needed me.

Fitzy and I went up to the camp. The girls were there, sitting together on the ground, just like the first time I'd seen them—no backpacks, though, no hike in the offing. And instead of sprawling on the grass, they were huddled together. Kate was in the middle, Samantha's arm around her shoulders. I counted. Eighteen. Some parents had seen to getting their daughters out after all, before the ban went into effect.

Irwin came out onto his porch when he saw Fitzy's car pull up and watched us get out of the car. As we approached, he smiled down at his campers and said, “Are we all here, girls?” “Almost all,” Christen called out. “Some have left and two are dead.” I detected a sag to Irwin's shoulders. He introduced Fitzy, telling them the police officer was setting things to rights and they should all listen carefully to what he had to say. As usual, he looked right through me.

Fitzy climbed onto the porch and sat down on the top step, facing the girls. He said, “Okay, kids, this is the story. One, there is no germ that is going to kill you. Instead, you've got two things to look out for. Drugs, for sure. On general principle, don't take any. Don't smoke a joint. Don't swallow a Tylenol unless you brought it from home yourself. Mainly—far more important—don't go off with anyone who offers to make you a chocolate cake.” The girls smiled a little. Then he lied to them, based on the rumors following Esther's death. “Maybe what's going on here is some kind of poison somebody went and slipped to the two deceased girls. Maybe did it as a joke, who knows? Maybe gave them date-rape stuff, too much of it. I'm here to make a promise to you. We're going to find him, arrest him, and see that he never has the opportunity to do to anyone else what he did to your friends.

“And here's the most important part: In two or three days, the infection control people will announce that this disease business is a crock. And then you will all go home if I have to take you myself.”

I watched Irwin. He didn't move, didn't even twitch. He knew his scam had folded.

A camper raised her hand.

“What?”

The girl said, “My dad's a doctor. He told me there's no such thing as plague. And, trust me, he reminded me to just say no, too, until I'm out of here. So I don't appreciate having to hear it from you. We're not complete idiots, you know.”