She's Not There (33 page)

They hadn't. Mick said, “All the same, tough. Real tough.”

“See, we could do it if the sea was calm,” Billy said. “Boat with a real shallow keel, use a trawl engine, minimum noise—”

“Thing is, it would take six or seven hours to get across.”

“And we'd have to do it at night. If the wind isn't too bad. Blowing in a good direction to boot.”

I said, “Well, it's night. How do we find out if the wind isn't too bad?”

Mick said, “You go down to the beach and squirt into the air.”

Oh, joy.

Fitzy said, “You'll have to turn your back, Poppy.”

We all went down to the harbor. Billy said, “If it's a go, we'll cut the parking lot lights. A little confusion never hurts. Jake'll do it for us.”

I turned my back. So did Fitzy. They tested the wind, zipped back up, and talked fisherman talk. The verdict was no.

Billy felt bad. “Sorry, Poppy. The wind over the water's brisk. It's the open Atlantic out there, not a lake. Maybe tomorrow night, right, Mick?”

“Yeah. We'll try tomorrow.” They wanted to do it.

Fitzy said, “Thanks.” Then, “Poppy, let's get these boys back to their game. Then I'm going to call in some chits.”

Within an hour, Fitzy had clearance to leave. He said to me, “Actually, I'm almost as good with a phone as you are. I just get lazy. I know a lot of secrets, Poppy. It's what I do best—threaten people whose secrets I know. A hell of a lot of people are afraid of me. I swept the mob out of a place where they were more firmly ensconced than they are in Palermo. So just now I've promised a few active chiefs out there that I'm going to back off for a while. 'Course, I was lying. As if I'd back off from anything. I'm always amazed that these goons believe my bullshit. So they called in chits of their own. Pretty soon, next week probably, someone's going to dip my feet in wet cement and throw me in the drink. But considering what my life has become, it'll be worth it.”

“No, it won't.”

But he was pacing, raring to go. I drove him to the airport. We waited there for a couple of hours, sitting in the jeep, looking at the stars, listening for the sound of an engine. Fitzy said, “Want to make out?”

I looked over at him. He'd crossed his eyes. I had an uncontrollable laughing fit. So did he. And then we ended up holding hands, saying nothing until the lights on the strip came on just long enough for a plane to come in. Before Fitzy left, during the time we were holding hands, I said, “I was interviewing this guy for a job once. He'd had surgery—it was obvious—for a harelip. It was the first thing that registered when I asked him to sit down. Then I began to notice how he had these great eyebrows that kind of went straight across. Then, as we talked, I became fascinated with his previous work, admiring of what he'd accomplished. And then his personality came through. He was not only cheerful, he was happy, I could tell. And when I saw him the second time, when I got to tell him he was hired, I realized after he'd left the office that I'd forgotten about the harelip. I hadn't noticed it. And until this minute, I realize I've never thought of it since. I'm not aware of it when I see him.”

“Poppy, what in God's holy name are you talking about?”

“The girls. I was thinking about them. I was thinking about them without thinking they were fat. I'd forgotten the fat.”

He thought for a moment, then said, “I got a call once. Abandoned baby. I'm holding this baby and I'm describing him over the phone and when I was finished I was asked, ‘What race?' I had to look down at him to say, ‘Black.' I realized I wasn't thinking
black
the whole time I had him. I was thinking
baby
.”

*   *   *

Once Fitzy was gone, I went back to Joe's cottage and waited till morning to call Harry in Atlanta. I didn't need to stir him from his bed for my hypothetical question.

When I asked it, he said, “No, Poppy. No one gets clearance under any circumstances. There is no clearance whatsoever when we issue a travel ban.”

“Sorry, my mistake.” I hung up. It was fortuitous that Fitzy could accomplish such a thing without Harry's knowing about it. But I'd needed to make sure. Fitzy arrested wouldn't help anything. Rhode Island might be the world's smallest state but it's got politicians who can get whatever they want done, one way or another. Texas can't do that; I don't know about Alaska. Fitzy could take care of himself.

I wouldn't sit around doing nothing. Denying the killer could be one of the volunteers guarding the girls was worse than foolish. He was lurking, and vigilance was the order of the day. I wouldn't even go to the Patio first; I ate two pieces of toast and threw a few things into a bag. Before I got in the ragtop I tried Spike yet again, shook his box of dry cat food. No big orange tail sprang up from the grass. If I left food out for him, every vertebrate and invertebrate on the island would be fighting for it. The gulls, of course, would be the big winners. So I compromised and left a bowl of water. Spike had had a lot of time sharpening his mouse trapping skills. He'd fend.

When I got to the camp, I found chaos. One of the girls was ringing the dinner bell, which happened to be mercilessly discordant. The rest were clumped in circles together on the grass in various stages of despair. The two counselors were trying to bring about some kind of control by screaming at them. Christen spotted me and came running. Her face was red. She blurted out, “It's Stupid!”

I jumped out of the jeep. “What's wrong with her?”

“She's gone!”

“She can't be gone.”

“Yes, she is. Because the freaking Cabbage Patch doll is gone too.”

“Where's Willa?”

“We had breakfast, and then she went back to her store for supplies. She said she wouldn't be gone long—told the counselors not to let any of us leave. While she was gone, Stupid snuck away. She told us she had to put Elijah Leonard down for his nap. That was half an hour ago. Longer, I think. We just realized she wasn't here now!”

One of the counselors was wringing her hands together. “Everyone was cooperating. We never saw where she went!”

I looked around. The bell was quiet. The girls were stopped in their tracks, staring at me. I said, in my calmest voice, “I'd like to speak with the counselors.”

The hand-wringer and another girl stepped up to me. I told them I needed their help. The hand-wringer said, “We're scared.”

Christen stalked up to her. “What the hell have
you
got to be scared of? You're not
fat
!”

I put my arm around Christen. I asked the counselor, “Is the van back?”

“Yes. But it's making a funny noise.”

“That's all right. As long as it moves. I want you and three campers to drive to the clinic and tell the doctor about Kate.”

“Tell him about who?”

“About Stupid.”

I thought of sending the other counselor to Tommy, but he was still making sure the skeleton was left alone and somehow keeping Jake under wraps. I said to her, “I want you to get these girls into groups of four. Each group is to head off in a different direction and call her name. Maybe she misplaced her doll and she's in the bracken or at the beach looking for him.” I was trying to sound rational but I knew Kate would have heard the camp bell if she was within half a mile of us. Maybe she was following the route she'd watched Rachel take, hoping to come upon the man with the picnic. “Be sure to go all the way around the point.”

I said to them, “She wouldn't have gone off with someone. She knew better. We'll find her. Christen and Samantha, you're coming with me. Let's get moving. Now.” But Kate
didn't
know better. She was ten years old.

One counselor grabbed some girls and headed for the van and the other began counting the rest of them off. They formed their groups and hustled away.

Christen and Samantha got in the ragtop with me.

I started it up and took off. The first thing Samantha said was, “She doesn't need food. Her grandfather sent her enough food packages to feed the whole camp. So she's not out looking for the picnic man. And she never lost sight of that doll. Never. She went off with someone. It had to be someone she knew. Someone she trusted. Someone who promised her Drake's Cakes because she's finally out of them.”

Christen said, “Maybe that guy from the grocery store. Willa's husband. He's always nice to us. He's always adding a few Drake's Cakes to her bag when we can get into town. I mean, Stupid is obsessed. So maybe the guy promised her more.”

And maybe Esther had heard such a promise. And there wasn't an opportunity to kill Esther via torture because there was no way to entice Esther to wherever he enticed the girls. But
Ernie
? And then I remembered all the Styrofoam boxes piled up on Esther's kitchen table. He'd paid many a visit to her. I said, “We'll start there, then, at the store. We'll ask Ernie if he saw her this morning.”

Just Willa was in the store, stocking up for the girls as she'd told them. “What's wrong?”

“Willa, one of the girls left the camp.”

“Oh, no!”

“Where's Ernie?”

“He's with Jake. Jake started having some kind of attack or something. Took him to the clinic.” Her eyes were wet. “Doc was going to force him to take a Valium. Which girl?”

Christen and Samantha both said, “Stupid.”

“Stupid? She said she was going to play cards with you kids.”

Christen put her hands to her mouth. “We didn't let her play,” she wailed. Her bottom lip began to tremble.

I turned to Willa. “Go get Tommy and Ernie. Maybe the doc's got Jake settled. Get Jim Lane's kid. Get everyone. We have to find her.”

I hustled the girls back into the jeep. I could only hope that Kate hadn't died yet. Maybe she was in the throes of whatever it was that killed the other girls. Maybe she could still be saved before he was finished with her.

I drove fast, and for the sake of the girls I stared hard at the road ahead of me, as if I knew where I was going. I asked myself, Where would the killer dump the body this time? Someplace different. Six islanders were patrolling Rodman's Hollow, and Sandy Point was taken care of. Tommy would have sent someone there if he'd had to leave. So I didn't head toward the long narrow spit of Sandy Point. I would drive to Joe's side of the island, the southwest coast, sparsely populated—to the rocky unused beaches where his cottage perched above the Atlantic—and then I'd head north until the road ran out at the cut into New Harbor.

The road along the western shore was just inland, narrow but paved, high sea grasses on each side. I looked at Joe's map. It was printed in 1953. Joe told me nothing had changed. The road didn't have a name then and it didn't now. Everyone referred to it as the Western Road. There were five unpaved tracks in addition to Joe's that led away from the road to the sea. Once past the track to Joe's, it took me two minutes to reach the one after his, Dickens Bluff. I turned onto it and drove to the shoreline, where it ended at the edge of an eroded clay cliff. There was nothing but a long tumble of charcoal gray dry muck reaching right into the water. The stuff looked like the deep innards of the earth, something no one was ever supposed to glimpse.

The next track was Dory's Cove Avenue. Avenue. Incredible. Maybe a joke on Dory. Wasn't a dory a boat? I took it. There had been a cove, but it was full of the charcoal clay, a sandy beach turned into a muddy ugly flat. Nothing was there.

The next track was unnamed and led to what had been a lifesaving station, swept out to sea by a storm in 1867. The storm had also swept out the beach, and a rocky shoal now jutted out of the water. Joe had shown me the original foundation of the station. He'd wanted to build there. No go, too exposed. I turned the jeep around.

I sped along. The elevation lessened. I could see the ocean glimmering to my left. Two tracks remained. At the end of the next one, Clay Head, the head itself had eased away to sea level. There was a wide beach, big waves. Bikes were parked by the side of the track. At least a dozen people were belly-boarding. Joe and I had gone surf casting there. I put the jeep in reverse.

Christen said, “This is taking so long.”

“I know.”

I looked at my watch. It just seemed that way. We'd left Willa's less than fifteen minutes ago.

I looked at the map. One track left, Tughole Way. This tughole was abandoned—barren, no more peat. At the corner was the soaring electrical tower, the transformer that directed electricity from the mainland to the island. I jammed the accelerator to the floor, reached the track in another minute, and took a left by the tower. Tughole Way ended in a cleft carved right through the center of another wide beach. The cleft was full of rocks, coated with clinging blackened seaweed. The cleft kept going right into the sea, another rut gouged out by the ancient glacier. It acted as a funnel, sucking in debris, seaweed, mounds of shells and piles of driftwood. A large old piling, ripped from a dock somewhere, ten feet long and two feet around, lay a few feet from the encroaching tide.

Christen said, “I hear something.”

We all did, a soft sound intermittent with the crashing of the waves.

“It was a gull, Christen.” A ring of them, overhead, were scoping out the beach. I turned off the engine and they came in lower, cawing at one another. We listened carefully and then we heard the sound again, louder. And longer. It did sound like a gull, one of their more terrible calls. But it came from the other side of the driftwood. I could only imagine the very worst, that the gulls had found her before we had, had completed their diabolical feeding, and that there would be another skeleton behind the length of piling. What had Delby said? An hour and a half.

I leaped over the jeep door and ran, shouting at the girls to stay where they were, but Christen was already out. I couldn't stop her. We left Samantha to extricate herself from the backseat.