The Traveller (62 page)

Her heels echoed a staccato, machine-gun sound, as she rushed from the hospital.

14 No man’s land

19

Holt Overholser, sixty-three years old, the chief of the West Tisbury police force, and its only year-round member, fiddled with the paperwork on his desk, inwardly complaining about the influx of summer people who paid his salary every year, but who also neglected to obey the posted speed limits and were forever trying to toss out their garbage at the town dump on days it was officially closed. He had spent much of the afternoon with his radar detector, ticketing cars. The selectmen had put up a speed limit 15 sign a half mile from the center of town, knowing that no one would slow that much until they at least got past the Presbyterian Church. This was where Holt parked, waving every other car over and handing the driver a $25 speeding ticket, which he’d had the sense to fill out in advance.

This had become a major source of revenue for the town; the selectmen were pleased and Holt was pleased. Last year they’d made enough to get him a new Ford Bronco with four-wheel drive and the special police package. This year, he thought, they’d get those new walkie-talkies that clip onto the belt, with the microphone up on the shoulder, like the ones they wore on Hill Street Blues sometimes. That was Holt’s favorite show, and much of his police training had been acquired from a religious watching of it and other shows, dating all the way back to Dragnet. Every time he signed off the radio, he said, ‘Ten four’, in the same gruff manner that Broderick Crawford had made famous. He wondered whether there would be any good police shows in the upcoming television season. He doubted it; cops seemed to have swung out of favor again and it would

probably be a couple of years before television tried something new. He didn’t count Miami Vice as a police show.

Holt leafed through the ticket book, making certain everything was legible before sending it over to the town clerk’s office. He’d written forty-seven tickets in four hot hours. That was three shy of his record, he thought ruefully. But Labor Day was fast approaching, and he was confident that he would not only break his record but shatter it.

He stretched and stared out the window of the small office. Darkness had insinuated itself onto the warm late-summer night. All that remained of the day was a fast-fading red glow off to the West. Holt had never traveled farther in that direction than his sister’s home in Albany at Thanksgiving, but he read avidly, mostly novels and travel books, and he longed to go. He liked to think of himself as a throwback to some earlier era, in the Old West. He saw himself as the peacekeeper in the small town, tough yet likeable, fair, yet the wrong man to cross, a good man to side with in a fight.

Of course he had never had a fight in thirty-three years of police work on Martha’s Vineyard. The occasional belligerent drunk had been the worst he’d ever faced.

He closed his eyes and rocked back in his desk chair. There would be fresh bluefish casserole for dinner, cooked with vegetables from his own garden. Holt congratulated himself on eating well, which was actually more the result of his wife’s dedication. He thumped his heart: Sixty-three and still going strong, he thought. The selectmen had tried to retire him three years earlier, but Holt had passed the state police physical examination ahead of a half-dozen men a third his age, and that had persuaded the selectmen to keep him on. They were amused, too, the way Holt always relieved a good deal of money from the summer kids whom he hired as temporary police help. Holt could out-arm wrestle all of them with his left hand; forty years earlier he’d worked on a lobster boat out of Menemsha, and hauling crates hand over hand from the bottom had left him with a considerable upper body strength. He’d also learned poker as a young man, which now supplemented

his income handsomely. College kids always think they car. play the game, he thought. They learn.

He examined the stack of tickets and decided: It can wait until morning. Most things could, even in the summer season. He yawned and lazily picked up the police radio on the corner of his desk.

‘Dispatch, this is One Adam One, West Tisbury, I’m ten-thirty-six from HQ. Please put us on emergency link, ten four.’

‘Hello, Holt, how are you tonight?’

‘Uh, fine, dispatch.’

‘Did Sylvia get the recipe I sent her?’

‘Uh, dispatch, that’s a roger.’

He hated it when Lizzie Barry was doing the late shift on the 911 network for the island. She was older than him and half-senile. She never followed the proper teminology.

‘One Adam One, roger, ten-four.’

‘Nighty-night.’

He hung up the microphone and started to collect his things, when he saw the woman walk through the door. He smiled.

‘Just getting ready to close up, ma’am. What can I do for you?’

‘I need some directions,’ said Mercedes Barren.

‘Well, sure,’ replied Holt, sizing the woman up. Despite the blue jeans and sportshirt, she did not seem like a vacationer. She had a big-city air about her, and Holt could smell business. Probably another damn real-estate developer, he said to himself.

‘I’m looking for a place where an accident took place about twenty years ago.’

‘An accident?’ Holt sat down and gestured at the chair opposite him. His curiosity was pricked.

‘Some twenty years ago a businessman from New Jersey, guy owned a drugstore, drowned off South Beach. I need to know where that accident took place.’

‘Well, hell, South Beach is seventeen miles long, and twenty years is awhile ago. You’re gonna have to give me a bit more information.’

‘Do you remember the incident?’

‘Ma’am, begging your pardon, but we have one or two drownings every summer. After a while they pretty much seem the same. Coast Guard handles ‘em, anyway. I just push some paperwork about.’

“I have the newspaper account. Would that help?’

‘Can’t hurt.’

Holt leaned forward while Mercedes Barren fished the

old copy of the Vineyard Gazette from her bag. Holt caught

just the barest glimpse of the automatic pistol barrel, and

without thinking of some clever response he simply blurted

out: ‘You carrying a weapon, ma’am?’

‘Yes,’ she said. She reached down into her bag and produced her gold shield. ‘I should have introduced myself. I”m Detective Mercedes Barren, City of Miami police.’

Holt was instantly delighted.

‘We don’t get many big-city police, uh, people, up here. You here on a case?’

‘No, no, just visiting friends.’

‘Oh,’ he said, disappointed. ‘Then why the gun?’

‘Just habit, sorry.’

‘Unh, hunh. You maybe want to leave it with me?’

‘Chief, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to leave early and it would be more convenient to keep it. Can’t you bend some rule for a fellow cop?’

He gave her a smile and a little wave, signifying that she could keep the weapon. ‘Don’t like handguns on the island much. They never do anybody no good no how.’

‘Chief, that’s true in the big city, too.’

She shoved the newspaper copy over at him. He scanned the page quickly. ‘Yeah, I remember, but vaguely. Guy got caught in a riptide, I think. Didn’t have a chance.’ He looked over at Mercedes Barren. ‘You don’t get riptides on Miami Beach, I bet.’

‘No, chief.’

‘Well, a rip is caused when the wave motion disturbs a bit of the bottom sand, like opening a new hole. The water pours in, and suddenly it has to go back out. It peters out a couple of hundred yards from shore. Trouble is, most

people just fight like crazy when they feel that currer. pulling them out. They don’t know that all you got to do is ride it out, then swim back in. Or, if you got to do something, you swim parallel to the beach. Rip’s probably only twenty, thirty yards wide. Nope, people don’t keep their heads. They fight hard, get exhausted, and bingo! More paperwork for me, and a body search for the Coast Guard boys. Happens once or twice a year on South Beach.’

‘The paper just says South Beach.’

Holt kept reading. ‘It says the family was staying in West Tisbury, but it don’t say where.’

‘I know. I thought you might remember.’

He shook his head. He looked at the newspaper again.

‘Say, what’s this got to do with visiting friends?’

Mercedes Barren laughed. ‘Well, chief, it’s a long story, but I’ll try to make it quick. My friends are renting the house and they came across this old paper. They knew I was coming up to visit and they thought it would be interesting to me, so they sent it down to Miami, along with directions on how to find the place. Well, wouldn’t you know it, I lose the paper with the directions and phone number, but kept the silly old newspaper. So now I’m trying to find them.’

‘Unh-hunh.’

‘I bet you get a lot of weird ones in here during the summer.’

‘Unh-hunh.’

‘Well, just file me under your silly-summer people file and help me figure out where to go.’

Holt broke into a smile.

‘That’d be a helluva long file, if I kept one.’

They both laughed.

He looked at the story again. ‘I suppose we could call around to some of the realty people, see if they handled the rental. But that might take some time. Lots of realtors up here on the island nowadays. Did you try calling the Gazette?’

‘Yes, but they had gone home for the night.’

Holt thought for an instant.

‘Well, I got one idea, might as well give it a shot.’

He picked up the police band microphone and said:

‘Dispatch, this is One Adam One, come back.’

‘Hello, Holt,’ said Lizzie Barry. ‘You should be home. That dinner’s probably getting cold on the table.’

‘Dispatch, I’ve got a woman here, looking for her friends. It’s a long story, but they’re staying down at the same place where a guy named Allen was staying the summer he drowned. Twenty years ago. Do you remember that case? Over.’

The radio crackled momentarily.

‘Sure, Holt. I remember. He was taking an evening swim. It was that summer we had the hot spell, remember, when it went up to a hundred and five at one time. I remember because the same day my old dog died. Heatstroke. He was a good old dog, Holt, you remember him?’

Holt didn’t. ‘Sure. Sure. A setter?’

‘No, a Golden Retriever.’

‘Oh.’ Holt waited for the voice to continue, but she didn’t. ‘So, dispatch … Lizzie, do you remember where the guy was living? Over.’

‘Think so. Not certain, but seems to me that he was staying on Tisbury Great Pond. On Finger Point. Could be wrong, though.’

‘Thanks, Lizzie. Ten-four.’

‘Anytime, Holt. Over and out.’

Holt Overholser hung up the microphone. ‘How about that,’ he said. ‘Old Lizzie’s like an encyclopedia. She remembers damn well near everything that ever happens up here. Anything exciting, at least. Look, though, it’s gonna be real tricky to find your way down there at night. You ought to find a hotel room and stay the night, go down in the morning.’

‘Sounds like a good idea. Could you just show me, though, on the map?’

Holt shrugged. He walked over the wall. He showed her the sand pit entrance and where the washboard dirt road curved about. He showed her the fork in the road and which path led down to Finger Point. He couldn’t remember the

last time he’d been down that road. Probably not in the twenty years since the drowning. He shook his head. ‘Got to remember,’ he said. ‘No lights down there at all. All looks the same. You could get real lost down there. Wait until morning.’

‘That’s good advice, chief. I appreciate it. I think I’ll just head into Vineyard Haven and find a hotel room. But I appreciate your taking the effort.’

‘No problem.’

Holt Overholser walked Mercedes Barren outside into the night. ‘It’s right warm tonight,’ he said. ‘Dropped down to forty-five three nights ago, so these old bones still say we’re gonna have an early fall, and a tough winter. Course, you get to be my age, all the winters are tough.’

Mercedes Barren laughed. ‘Chief, you look like you could handle anything that winter sends your way.’

‘Well, I guess you don’t worry about the cold too much down there in Miami.’

‘That’s right.’ She smiled. ‘You want to recommend a hotel?’

‘They’re all pretty good.’

‘Thanks again.’

‘Anytime. Drop by and we’ll talk police work.’

‘Maybe I’ll just do that,’ Mercedes Barren said.

He watched as she got back into her car. He did not see the instant disappearance of her friendly, outgoing demeanor, replaced immediately by a rigid, hard-eyed concentration. She pulled out of the driveway to the small police station. Holt then started to anticipate his waiting bluefish, although he noticed that Detective Barren had taken the road which led not to town, but into the island’s dark core, which made him pause briefly, filled with vague concern, before heading home.

Detective Mercedes Barren drove carefully through the thickness of the night, thinking: The darkness will make finding the house more difficult, but it will allow me to approach Douglas Jeffers under concealment, which would give me an advantage. She had no real plan other than to

not give him a chance. I will shoot him in the back if I have to, if I can. I will take the shot that’s open. Don’t hesitate. Don’t wait. Just seize the shot when it is there. One shot, make it count. That’s all I’ll get. It’s all I’ll need. She watched the road, peering ahead of the weak light thrown by the car headlights, looking for the turnoff that would lead her down toward Finger Point.

Images from the day seemed distant, yet intrusive on her concentration: She could see the Lost Boys, circled around her, poised on the edge of their perversion, watching her. She thought that she’d handled them well. She was struck, momentarily, by the power of suggestion, how the right words spoken in the right context can trigger almost any conclusion. She’d walked away from that session completely convinced that Martin Jeffers had gone to find his brother at the location where their adoptive father had died. That persuasion had remained firm, unshakable, as she’d taken a tire iron to the doctor’s window, jackknifing into the apartment as she’d done before, only this time she was oblivious to any noise she made and she made no pretense toward stealth.