Granite Harbor, page 14
“What does any of this have to do with Shane’s murder?”
Another slide appeared. Alex recognized the file photo he’d seen on Harris’s computer. The slit-open torso of the body found at Prouts Neck sixteen years earlier.
“We know Shane Carter was doing drugs from the DMT in his blood. So was Byron Pugh in Prouts Neck. I’m sure you’ve read the report.”
The photo of Ethan and Sophie coming out of the Shed reappeared on-screen.
“What I see here, is that this boy, Ethan Dorr, is a drug dealer. Hardworking single mother has no idea what he’s into. Maybe Ethan is Shane’s dealer, though Shane didn’t have any money, but Ethan’s got money to burn if he’s buying Bathing Ape hoodies; he can afford to give his friend a ride. Shane comes from neglect at home. He was cutting school too. Both of these boys are vulnerable. I don’t see either of them spending hours bushwhacking in the woods up around Baxter State Park looking for Psilocybe quebecensis, the shrooms that can give this sort of buzz, so they’re getting it on the street—here, or Rockland, or Fairhaven. This is a classic drug-taking situation here. Shane had it in his blood.”
“How does this fit in with a murder in Prouts Neck, which happened around the time Shane was born?”
“Same presumption of Byron Pugh doing drugs. He went to a therapeutic boarding school for difficult kids, he was a troubled child like these others. What I’m saying is, these boys are exposed and vulnerable to the criminal element. They’re getting drugs from someone they know, somewhere close. This is how serial killers and sex offenders—they go together, of course, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy—find their victims: among vulnerable, neglected youths. They prey on them with drugs. Detective, you ask why these kids, kids you know, are up there”—Harris nodded at the screen—“with those criminals, sex offenders, drug dealers? Because they go together like peanut butter and jelly. There’s no mystery here. This is the paradigm. This is textbook.”
“You’re presuming,” Chief Raintree said, “that Shane took the drug voluntarily. What if someone gave him the drug, spiked a drink or something, and then killed him?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m assuming he took drugs voluntarily. That’s what I see here. I’m looking at this with a broader view than simply an autopsy finding. I look for patterns. What I see here is kids doing drugs, and behind that a killer. The drugs make them vulnerable prey to a serial killer.”
“And the toad?” asked Chief Raintree. “Where does that figure in?”
“It figures in with madness. That’s obviously what we’re dealing with here. A fetish, a fixation, an association. A childhood hangover thing, a gruesome show-off device. Who knows. You catch the lunatic and then you figure out his crazy. I’m not too hung up on the frogs—toads. That’s a detail. The crazy thing a killer does is almost incidental. A serial killer will kill to a pattern.”
Chief Raintree asked another question. “Who owned the property in Prouts Neck where the other victim was found?”
“Family named Buell. No known connection, place, or the family, to either victim, Byron Pugh or Shane Carter. The only common elements here are the murder details, the toads, and the drug, DMT.”
Harris closed his laptop.
Chief Raintree stood and turned on the overhead lights, and turned off the switch that powered the projector. She sat back down at the table. “Thank you, Agent Harris. And why do you think Byron Pugh’s killer has not killed, or such a killing has not come to light, and now woken up and begun killing again in this pattern after sixteen years?”
“We may not learn that, ma’am, until we’ve apprehended him.” He looked respectfully at Billie Raintree. “Or her. But, as you know, most serial killers are male.”
Harris stood. He placed his computer in a rigid molded attaché case that looked as if it had been designed to carry a small nuclear weapon. “I’ll be in my hotel if you need me.”
When Harris had left the conference room, Chief Raintree said, “What do you think?”
Alex looked at the white screen. “It was well put together. Impressive.” Alex shook his head slowly. “I just … don’t see it. I don’t like the logical neatness of it.” He looked at Chief Raintree. “Do you?”
“My only like is for the truth. And for information that leads us to that. Our job is to not turn away from where that takes us. The drug finding is significant. We have very little else. Apart from frogs. Which clearly mean something to the killer.”
“Toads.”
“What’s the difference?”
He tried to recall what Professor Barney had said. “Habitat. Warts—the toad makes a toxin.”
“Enough to kill?”
“No. But … you don’t think it suggests spells and witchcraft? Shakespeare mentions them—”
Chief Raintree exhaled noisily. “I don’t. Perhaps you’d have to be a woman to understand. Witches—women. It’s a tired trope, but go ahead and prove me wrong.” She stood up. “What are you planning to do?”
“I’m going to talk to Ethan Dorr about his fashionwear.”
26
At dinner, Isabel said, “Alex wants to talk to you again.”
“Fuck. What for?”
“Ethan, please stop saying that.”
“Do I have to?”
“If he needs to talk to you about—”
“Okay. Fuck.”
“Ethan! Stop saying that!”
“Okay! When?”
“I don’t know. I think tomorrow, he said.”
Ethan hunched over his plate.
“The school is doing grief counseling. I think it would be—”
“I’m not doing that. I’m not going there.”
“Lots of kids are. I want you to.”
“Well, I’m not going to.”
“Would you like to talk to somebody else? Roger said he’d be happy to talk with you.”
“No.”
“Ethan—”
“Mom, stop! I don’t want to talk about it.” He pushed his plate aside. “It’s freezing in here. It’s like fifty degrees.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It was this morning!” he shouted at her across the table.
“Ethan, please don’t shout at me.”
“But this is ridiculous! Who lives like this? What are we going to do about the furnace?”
“We’re going to get a new one.”
“When?”
“When I make some more money.”
“I’ll get one. How much do they cost?”
“About four thousand dollars.”
“Really? Can’t we get one secondhand?”
“No. People keep them until they break down and then they get a new one. Like us. That’s what we have to do. If it was fixable, we’d fix it.”
“Well, I’m going to sell something. It’ll make me a lot of money.”
She pretended it was a possibility. “That would be nice.”
“I’m serious. You don’t believe me. You’ll see.”
“That would be great. It would be wonderful, Ethan. Do you want any dessert?”
He stood up. “No thanks. I’m going upstairs. I going to get into bed—where it’s warm.”
He took his plate and glass to the sink, washed them, placed them in the dish rack. “Thanks for dinner,” he said, and disappeared upstairs.
She pushed away her own plate—she’d barely eaten anything—and sat at the table.
A great sadness enveloped her. Ethan seemed unreachable. This wasn’t just Shane. He’d changed completely since he was fourteen. Where was her little boy? This taller, lankier dude was morose, unhappy, with a constant, simmering anger.
He’s a teenager, people told her. Welcome to the club, this is what happens.
Then she thought, Why wouldn’t he be angry? His father disappeared. His mother’s a freak who pulls out her hair, shaves her head, lost her job, and now dresses like a witch. And they live in a freezing house.
He didn’t know the half of it, thank God. How she felt in the mornings before she forced herself out of bed to take Flynn out to Calderwood Point. To put one foot in front of the other to avoid the total collapse she felt she had in her.
She’d been angry too, at herself, worried about money, how to pay for college—if he went—at the terrible abyss that seemed to yawn before them both. The shame she felt, the sense of failure as a parent. The almost overwhelming fear of everything collapsing, losing the house if she couldn’t make any money. She was getting close to telling Ethan to get a job—a real job, not his model-making—if he wasn’t going to school. They needed the money—anything would help.
She’d changed too. He must have seen that. She’d been happier when she drank.
She cleared away her plate and washed the dishes. She was disgusted with her self-pity. She made a cup of Herbal Wellness tea. Her attempts at healthy eating didn’t seem to help much—where was the wellness?
When she set the cup down on the counter she saw the little blue jar Roger had given her. He’d pasted on a paper label, written on it in black ink, in a flowing cursive script: Bowles’s Electuary. A Beneficent Tonic for Spirit and Physik Humors.
Isabel untied the string, removed the cloth, and sniffed. Pungent, earthy. Mostly herbs, flowers, a little bit of willow bark, sassafras, this and that, a spoonful of honey. Dark, like tapenade. She dipped a finger and brought it to her mouth and sucked. Rooty, like root beer, not too sweet. She spread some on a pita chip. It went well with the tea. Something in her that hadn’t wanted supper wanted this.
Again, the thought of Shane broke over her like a cold wave. Isabel shuddered. Why? She had her own grief over Shane. He’d been over a lot, eaten with them, remained a loyal friend to Ethan at an age when kids dropped friends and made new alliances. A beautiful, sensitive boy.
Her mug was empty. She’d polished off a third of the jar of thick jam-like stuff, and now it was filmy on the roof of her mouth. She put the cloth back over the jar, tied the string, and put it in the refrigerator. She drank a mugful of water, washed the mug, and went upstairs.
27
Something woke him. A noise?
Alex’s house, a small converted barn, made noise in strong winds. When spring and fall equinoctial gales came, and during the winter northeasters, it moved. It swayed and groaned. He’d mentioned it once to his landlord, Ed, who’d smiled and said, “Oh, sure.” Ed pointed out the barn’s structural members, the rough-planed eight-inch-square beams joined to the massive ten-inch vertical posts, the hand-chiseled mortise-and-tenon joints. “She’s stout. But maybe think of it as an old wooden schooner. She won’t sink, but she’ll heave, and she’ll let you know about it.”
Alex knew the noises by now, and he believed in the soundness of the building, and when the wind blew and he lay in bed at night and heard the groaning timbers, he felt secure. The old barn would carry on till morning.
Now he sat up and listened. This was not a known and cataloged creaking post or beam. It was new. Not wood on wood. It was oddly soft.
Sophie, he reminded himself, was at her mother’s. But just to be sure—she might have come over and crept in—he got out of bed, went to her room, and opened the door. Bed empty, room dark.
Then he heard it again … from the kitchen.
Back in his bedroom, he pulled the small gun safe from under his bed, punched in his father’s birthday, and pulled out the Glock.
Inside the kitchen, he paused, then stepped soundlessly to the back door that opened onto the deck. There was some wind, but it wasn’t blowing hard.…
The inner kitchen door was closed; locked, he was sure. But the storm door beyond it was moving … slightly. An animal trying to get in?
Or someone had tried to?
The sky was overcast, but there was enough moon above the cloud ceiling to give him a clear view of the backyard through the den windows. Nobody visible.
The noise again … there was something between the two doors. Not a person.
Alex stepped forward, unlocked the inner door, and opened it gently—
Something leaped at him—he jumped back, his foot twisted on the braided carpet and he stumbled—hissing Jesus!—as his hip hit the floor—
It was coming at him across the floor. He rolled away, hissing again, channeling fear into what sounded like anger—What the fuck!—checking the impulse to point the gun—it was small.… It stopped moving. Then it trembled. Brown, crinkled, the size of a clenched fist.
A leaf, for fuck’s sake? A leaf made that noise?
Or the storm door? It moved again, its weather stripping rubbing on the raised threshold. The leaf whirled across the floor, and something heavy tumbled into the doorway. Alex reflexively aimed his gun—
Then he slid it away from him across the carpet. It was what he hated about guns: if you have one, you’re waiting to use it.
He was shaking. He stood up and pulled the storm door shut until he heard the latch engage. He closed the inner door, locked it, and opened the plastic bag that lay on the floor. Butternut and acorn squashes. Gifts from Ed and Joan, his landlords. They often set bags of fruit, tomatoes, or, now, fall squashes from the garden inside his back door. These were large, and the storm door had not latched.
Alex picked up the leaf, crushed it in his fist, and threw it into the garbage beneath the sink. He put the squashes on the kitchen table. Thanks a lot. He returned the gun to its safe and crawled into bed.
He tried to relax. What is the matter with you? Pull yourself together.
He’d been sure—just for a moment—that a toad was leaping toward him.
28
She woke gasping for breath. She was out of bed, stumbling across the hall, pushing open the door to Ethan’s bedroom before she even realized it. Then she was tearing off the duvet, pulling at the sweatshirt he wore. A wild woman.
“Mom … what the…”
“Where is it?” she cried, searching frantically, trying to roll him over, running her hands over Ethan’s body, his skin beneath the sweatshirt.
“Mom!” Ethan sat up and backed away from her. Wide awake, terrified. He tried to pull the duvet over himself. “What are you doing? What’s happening?”
“Where is it?”
“Where’s what, Mom? What the fuck?”
“There’s something on you. Let me see—”
Again she tried to pull at his sweatshirt. Clawing at him.
“Mom, stop! There’s nothing on me! What are you doing?”
She stared at him. He was fine.
“You didn’t feel anything? Crawling over you? In your bed?”
“No! Like what? Like how would you know, Mom? Did you see something?”
Yes. But not in here.
“You’re okay?”
“Yes! I’m fine. There’s nothing in my bed.” He threw the duvet aside to show her and then whipped it back over him. The letters SHANE still starkly visible on his forehead beneath the mop of curly hair. Below that, his eyes were bugging open at her. He was still moving away from her.
“I’m sorry, Ethan. I guess it was a nightmare.”
“Mom, I’m fine. Nothing was in here. You were like … berserk.”
“Okay.” She saw it was still dark out his bedroom window. She was sweating, but it was clammy cold around her torso beneath her T-shirt. “I’m sorry, Ethan. Go back to sleep.” She stood and went to the door.
“Yeah, right.”
29
Sophie ordered a chai, Ethan a latte with an extra shot. They took their drinks to a corner table whose legs tottered on the thick, uneven floorboards of the Shed, the café in a former boatshed hanging over the water at the inner end of the harbor. Long and narrow, tilted out of all level planes, the Shed’s largely unimproved, old-world ambience made it a favorite of local artists, writers, lobstermen, construction workers, and high school students who wanted to avoid greater numbers of their peers in the library or the Granite Deli & Bagel.
After years of staying away from each other, repelled by the association of their parents, Sophie and Ethan had felt mysteriously drawn together since Shane’s death. The inking had been Sophie’s idea, and after that they’d found it natural to hang out.
Ethan pulled off his beanie, flicked his head, ran his fingers through his dark curly hair, pulling it away from his forehead in a self-consciously casual movement. The letters of his SHANE tattoo were slightly faded, like day-old Sharpie pen marks. He looked over at Sophie and found she was looking back at him over the rim of her large mug.
“Can I see your ship models?” she asked.
“How do you know about those?”
“Everyone knows. You sell them. That’s cool. Can I see them?”
“Sure. They’re at my house. When?”
“Like now? Will your mom be home?”
“I don’t know. It’s after work, but she might be shopping or walking the dog. My stuff’s in the basement anyway.”
A thick hairy hand dropped onto Ethan’s shoulder. He had to turn his head up and around. “Oh, hey, Chester.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t bop you on the head with an axe handle.” The face, largely hidden by beard, was amused. “That’s what I was going to do. I was ready to pound the hell out of whoever it was. The tarp was Roger’s idea.”
Roger appeared beside him. He looked at them both, shaking his head. “What were you thinking? We’re still on pretty high alert there.”
“We were just … We were there to say goodbye to Shane.”
Roger nodded. “I understand. But after what happened, sneaking around there at night?” His expression softened, he fixed his gaze on Ethan. “Look, Ethan, why don’t you come and talk to me? I hope you know I’m always there for you. You know that?”
Ethan nodded. “I do, Roger. Thank you.”
Chester now dropped his face close to Ethan’s. His eyes became small beads, his expression a mask of annoyance. “I’m still looking for a pair of needle-nose pliers. And a C-clamp.” He looked Ethan up and down, into his lap, as though he might be hiding them in his clothes. “You don’t happen to know where they are?”
