Vineyard Stalker (3 page)

“Do you think your cousin Sally is evil?”

“Oh, I don't know. Maybe that's too strong a word. I know she got in trouble once for beating up another triathlon contender, but if she's behind this guy who's stalking my brother she's doing an evil thing!”

I had been running my eyes around the perimeter of Nunes's property.

“What is it you want me to do here?”

“I want you to spend a few nights keeping watch. If you see the man who's been doing these things, I want you to find out who he is. That's all you have to do. I'll take it from there.”

“I may be able to spot him, but unless I apprehend him it'll be hard to identify him.”

“I have some things that should make your job easier. They're in my car. Have you seen all you need to here? I wanted you to know the terrain before it got dark.”

“I've seen enough for now,” I said.

We walked back out to her car, and she pointed across the paved road at a narrow opening in the scrub oak. “There's where the ancient way continues on a little way. There's a gate across it about thirty yards in. Another sign of modern times.” She got a pair of binoculars and a camera out of her car and handed them to me.

“These are both for night work,” she said. “They belong to Jordan, my husband. Some infrared principle, don't ask me what. You can spot him with the glasses and then get his picture without him even knowing it. After you get his picture you can scream and yell at him and scare him away before he does any damage. The next day I'll know what he looks like and a little later my lawyer will be having a talk with him, and that will be that.”

“Simple,” I said. “Does your brother know what you're having me do?”

“I'll tell him this morning before I go on to the office.”

“Maybe you should ask him, not tell him.”

“No,” she said, firmly. “I'll tell him. I want this business to stop. Now. Before it really turns ugly.”

I went home and spent the rest of my day with the cats, who, between rests in the summer sun, followed me about wondering when the rest of the family would be home. I worked in the garden for a while, then got on the roof of the house and tried yet again to find and repair the pesky leak that happened every time we had a heavy rain driven by a northeast wind. I had been fighting that leak for years and had never found it. One reason for this failure was, of course, that the leak only leaked when it was raining and my chances of locating it during a storm were almost as low as finding it between storms. I tarred a few places I hadn't tarred before, and hoped I was right this time. Maybe I should hire Roland Nunes to thatch us a roof. The kids would like that.

Back on the ground I sat in a lawn chair with the night glasses and camera and read the printed matter that came with them. The glasses were easy but all cameras are a challenge to me, so I studied its papers seriously. Both items apparently had come from one of those spy supply places that will sell you whatever you need to pry into other people's lives and avoid the long arm of the law. In this case, the camera promised you a good black-and-white night photo at up to a hundred feet, with the subject never being aware that his picture was being taken. It had a portable power source that allowed you to take it with you wherever you went.

I diddled with it until I thought I knew how to turn it on and off and how to focus it. Then, since it was a warm and sunny day, I had a Sam Adams and some crackers with bluefish pâté and thought about the night to come. Carole Cohen's plan was so simple that it might actually work; however, many a simple plan has turned to dust when put into action and I didn't want to become dust.

Oliver Underwood and Velcro trailed me out into the yard and, after a few leg rubs, lay down in the shade of the yard table, sharing and increasing my loneliness for my family. My children were changing so fast that I didn't like missing even a week of their lives. I thought of the Monk living alone for more than thirty years and wondered how he'd managed it. Even during the years when I'd been between wives and was living here in the woods, I'd not been bereft of friends of both genders. The Monk was apparently made of sterner stuff. Or, I thought, remembering the fragrance of lavender, perhaps not.

After an early supper, I put the glasses and camera into a small backpack, along with a sweater, some dried fruit, a water bottle, and a flashlight, then I got into dark clothes and drove to West Tisbury. I parked a hundred yards down the road from the ancient way so the prowler, if he came by that way, wouldn't associate my truck with the Monk, and walked back to the path. The sun was low in the west and my shadow was cast before me as I went down the path into the meadow.

As I reached the house, a man emerged from the ancient way coming out of the woods beyond the stream. He crossed the water on the granite stepping-stones laid down there decades before and came to meet me.

He was about sixty-five years old, I guessed, and was very sun-bronzed and lean. He wore khaki clothing and sandals and a floppy-brimmed hat. No saffron robe. He walked with a comfortable stride, neither fast nor slow. He was carrying a hatchet and there was a canvas bag hung from his shoulder.

“You must be J.W. Jackson,” he said, with a smile. “I'm Roland Nunes.”

We shook hands. His was thin and strong, the hand of a worker.

“Your sister has given me a job,” I said.

“Yes, so she tells me. I hope her plan works, but even if nobody shows up tonight I'll be able to get some sleep that I need.”

“I'll try to keep the peace.”

“Have you eaten? I have bread and fresh vegetables.” He gestured back toward the woods. “And I've just found mushrooms enough for two.”

His voice was gentle but rich and his bottomless eyes were impossible for me to read. He seemed totally at ease.

“I've eaten,” I said, “but you go on with your meal. I'll try not to intrude on you while I'm here.”

“It's no intrusion,” he replied. “I rarely have guests but I'm glad to have one when it happens. I don't have much here in the way of creature comforts, I'm afraid, but you're welcome to what there is.”

“What I'd like to do is walk the circumference of your property to get a better notion of where this prowler might be coming from. Then I want to find the best spot to wait for him.”

He made a slight bow. “Very good. It would please me to talk with you when you return from your explorations.” He pointed a hand to the east. “There's an old stone wall just inside the woods there beyond the stream. It leads down yonder around the mill pond and it marks the end of my land in that direction.” He pointed north and south. “There are new fences there and there, built by my neighbors, and the paved road is my western border. It's almost seven acres, all told.” He gave me an amused, crooked smile. “It was cheap when my aunt got it, but it's valuable real estate these days. No wonder people covet it.”

“I have a few acres of my own. My father bought them when nobody wanted to live in that part of the woods. Now I pay a lot of taxes just for owning it.”

“Yes, taxes,” he said with no resentment in his voice. “I'm fortunate in that my land is in trust and the trust pays the taxes. If I had to pay them, I might have to move and let my cousin sell the place.”

“I can't do anything about my taxes,” I said, “but maybe I can help out with your prowler.”

Another small bow. “I hope you'll have tea with me when you finish your reconnaissance.”

I could feel his eyes on my back as I walked back toward the paved road.

There was an old stone wall paralleling the road. It was low and gray and covered with lichen, and it was greatly fallen down, unlike many of the island's other walls which were now being built and rebuilt at great cost by the many stone workers whose craft had become fashionable among the wealthier islanders. When I was a boy, a good stone wall builder was rare, but now there were dozens of them, some working for the same rich employer for years as his stone fences stretched farther and farther around his land and between his fields.

There was so much stone work being done on the Vineyard that they had to import the rock. I knew because I'd talked with a local guy who also owned a farm in New Hampshire that produced only stone. He had a contract with a big outfit to mine it, and every time a truck full of rock left the farm, the guy made a few dollars; and once, he said, while he was waiting in line in Woods Hole, to catch the ferry to the Vineyard, he'd seen one of those very trucks boarding ahead of him. The island was a rocky place, but not rocky enough to supply the demand of the stone workers.

I followed the wall until I came to—what else?—a new stone wall defining the property line of Nunes's neighbor. The new wall was high and beautifully constructed, a far cry from the old, rough, utilitarian one I'd been following.

It was possible but unlikely, I thought, that the prowler came in from the road. If he parked a vehicle, it would be seen; if he walked from some far parking area, he'd still have to avoid being seen by some night driver.

I walked east along the new wall, admiring its workmanship while looking for any indication that someone had come over it. I saw no such suggestion, and though I am no Abraham Mahsimba I can cut a little sign if required.

The stream bubbled out from under the wall through a nicely shaped stone arch as it entered Nunes's land. I crossed it with the help of a fallen log and went into the woods on the far side until I came to the old wall Nunes had mentioned. Here it was harder to tell just where an intruder might have entered since the wall was so old and broken that it offered no interference to any traveler, coming or going, and because much of the ground was covered with leaves and needles that could hide the footprints of any careful walker.

But what walker could be so careful at night, when he could show no light to guide his way and could only guess when he disturbed the earth with his step? We'd had recent rain, and I saw no spoor as I walked between the trees and around patches of undergrowth, stopping often to study the ground and look around me for whatever the prowler might have seen had he come this way.

When I came to the ancient way I noted no tracks. Even had there been some, I'd not have known whether they were those of the prowler or of some innocent walker of old trails.

I crossed the path and worked my way south, moving slowly, seeing no sign, until I came to the old mill pond. A pair of ducks watched me, then paddled across to the far side of the pond.

Evening was approaching, and birdsongs were beginning. As I listened I thought of Bonzo, my brain-damaged friend, who loved fishing and birdsong above all things, and of friends who had returned from Africa with stories of their wonder at the night sounds of the bush: the chatter and cheep and howls of monkeys and birds, the cowlike moo of hyenas, the bass grunts of hippos and the occasional trumpet of an elephant, the splash of crocs near the riverbank.

Circling the pond, I studied the soft soil surrounding it and finally, after recrossing the stream over the old mill gates in the dam, I found the sign I'd been seeking. The prowler had come onto Nunes's land from the woods to the south, along a path that followed the stream and led through the state forest behind the fenced land belonging to Nunes's southern neighbor. He'd then gone up through the meadow behind Nunes's outbuilding, done his work, and returned whence he'd come. Behind him, in a small patch of dirt he'd left a clear print of a medium-sized, low-heeled shoe that could have belonged to either a man or a woman. The soil was soft but the print wasn't too deep, which suggested someone of little weight. No matter, since small people could be as dangerous as large ones.

I followed his trail by the edge of the stream, along the old path that had probably originally led to the mill, and noted that the farther the intruder was from Nunes's land, the more careless he'd been with his track. A half mile or so to the south I came to the Edgartown–West Tisbury Road, where the stream flowed through a culvert and bubbled on toward the Tisbury Great Pond.

There were houses in sight both ways along the road, and there were driveways leading off it to unseen homes. There was also room to park a car beside the stream, and there were hiding places for a moped or a bike.

It would be a good spot to wait for the intruder, and I wished I had a helper, someone to stay here with a walkie-talkie while I watched and waited with another one back at Nunes's place, but I didn't.

So I walked back along the path, listening to the tinkle and gurgle of the brook beside me, until I was again on Nunes's land. There I worked my way west along the new stone wall marking his southern neighbor's boundary and wondered if this neighbor was somehow engaged in a stone fence duel with the neighbor to the north, because this wall was even higher than the one I'd followed earlier. I imagined Frost looking at the walls with pixie grin and ironic eyes.

I found no sign that anyone had come over this new wall or over the old one paralleling the paved road, when I followed it back to the ancient way where I'd begun my circumnavigation of Nunes's land.

The only sign I'd cut was on that path along the brook. Unless I'd missed my guess, the prowler had always come in along that path and, since habit is strong and success leads to repetition of action, it was reasonable to presume he'd come that way again. As I walked to the house I thought of what I'd seen and not seen.

Nunes was seated on a mat in front of his house. He looked like pictures I'd seen of mystics seeking nirvana. He turned his head toward me as I approached and flowed to his feet, smiling.

“I'm about to have tea. Will you join me?”

“Tea sounds good.”

He went into the house. I was double-checking the grounds when he came back out, carrying his single chair.

“Use this,” he said. “Unless you're used to sitting on a mat, the ground can be uncomfortable.”

He gave me the chair and went back inside. Moments later he returned carrying a pot and cups.

“It's green tea,” he said. “I have no milk or sugar, I'm afraid.”

“I don't need either, thanks.”

He poured for both of us and then sank easily down onto his mat. The tea was mild and refreshing.

“Your face says you found something,” he said.

No wonder I have so much trouble winning at poker.

“Yes,” I said, and told him of my wandering and discovery.

“Ah,” he said. “I've followed that path myself, more than once. It's a good back entrance to this place, as is the ancient way that goes east into the forest.”

“The ancient way was clean of tracks. It's rained since your last walkers came through from there.”

“Yes. It's been a few days, and we've had rains since. Have you decided where to wait for my visitor?”

“Yes.” I pointed to the southern edge of the meadow. “That oak tree yonder will give me cover and a good view of your whole place, including the mill pond. If he comes I should see him and he shouldn't see me. If he gets close to the buildings I'll be able to get photos of him before he can do any damage, then I can do one of two things: I can make a racket and scare him off or I can take him down. Which do you prefer?”