Granite Harbor, page 21
“It gets stuck,” the driver said. “I got to do it.”
He got out and came around the truck.
Part Three
47
The place gave her the creeps now. Every morning as Isabel walked into the Settlement from the parking lot, she could see plainly the spot beyond the vegetable patch where Shane’s body had hung on that first morning—her first day here. She hadn’t seen the body, but she knew where it had been found, and her whole impression of the Settlement dated from that moment. Every dark morning—it was now less than two months before the winter solstice—when she came to work, she saw it as she imagined it might have looked 381 years earlier. Dark, gloomy, no sign of light, except sometimes a flickering fire as Chester pumped the bellows in his forge. In the cabins, they lit flickering oil lamps and made smoky fires in the fireplaces. God, what an awful place. The settlers must have gone out of their minds.
The woods looked impenetrable where they bordered the marsh. She could imagine Hannah looking at them from the cabins, fearful of whatever might be lurking in there, looking back at her. Natives, wolves, other creatures. What had lurked closer, in plain sight, right here in their midst? What had happened to them? And why had they left?
It was cold and damp every morning in Goody Swaine’s claustrophobic log cabin—as cold as her own house. Every morning she made a fire with the kindling and logs stacked beside the crude stone fireplace, and the small interior warmed up quickly. But it remained an unwelcome place. She shivered inside the raw wooden structure, bare except for a rough chair, a stool, a table, and a pot that might hang over the fire if she wanted to demonstrate meal-making to a visitor. All those layers of her historical outfit were insufficient. The wool grew wet with sweat or rain through the day.
Today, the Settlement glistened in a mist of fine rain. When Isabel lit the fire, wet smoke billowed from the fireplace and filled the room instead of going up the chimney. She opened the windows and the small door, but that just seemed to pull more smoke into the cabin. She couldn’t remain inside. She couldn’t even get close enough to the fireplace to put it out.
People came running. Jeff Block, Monte Glover, Bill and Jan Conrad. They fanned the fire, swung the door open and shut to try to improve the draft. Nothing worked. They began to cough. Monte fetched a bucket of water and poured it over the fire, which smoked worse.
They stood around outdoors in the rain.
“It’s okay, folks,” Monte bellowed at the few early visitors who had gathered to watch. “Just a blocked chimney.”
“That’s what I’m checking on,” said Chester Coffey. He was walking with a ladder—a neat handmade contraption fashioned from long saplings that appeared to be of genuine colonial design and ancestry. His felt hat with the feather was clamped down over the thin wet strands of his hair. His leather jerkin was shiny wet. In one hand, he carried a long, nearly straight branch, its smaller limbs hacked off.
“Chester, please don’t go up there in this rain,” said Nancy, walking quickly behind him. She carried a basket holding a few small squashes and carrots. “The roof will be slippery.”
“It’ll be fine, you’ll see,” said Chester. Then he addressed Isabel. “Goody Swaine, has your fire been smoking before today?”
“A little but not like today.”
“We’ll take a look.” Chester laid the ladder against the eaves of the roof and began climbing.
“Chester, please,” Nancy said again. “The house isn’t on fire. You don’t have to go up there now. Monte, do tell him to come down.”
“She’s right, Goodman Denham. It’ll keep for another day. I put the fire out. No need to head aloft at the moment.”
But Chester was already on the roof. He pulled a small hatchet from his belt and swung it without force into the thick shingles, where the edge of its blade lodged. “See. Got a good handhold. I’m not going anywhere.”
He moved easily across the slope of the roof, releasing and sinking the hatchet blade for a secure handhold, until he reached the stone chimney. There he straddled the ridge, where he appeared quite safe and comfortable, a foot planted on either side.
“Oh, do take care, Chester,” said Nancy.
The small group of people, most of them the players in their old clothes, standing in the rain around the small cabin watching Chester on the roof, made Isabel think of a scene in an old painting.
Chester maneuvered the long pole until he was able to thrust it down the chimney. He lifted and plunged the pole several times. What had been thin wisps of smoke now thickened and rose out of the chimney, swirling around his head.
Chester started to say, “Got a nest or someth—”
The shriek of the visitor right beside her startled Isabel more than the animal shooting out of the chimney straight at Chester’s head. Dark brown with long pink hands, clawed fingers stretching forward. Because of the scale of the cabin, it appeared huge, the size and shape of a football. It landed on Chester’s head, scrabbled for footing on his hat, the hat came off, and the creature leaped into the air. Gasps, more shrieks, people jumped as the writhing bundle sailed over their heads. It landed ten feet from the house, a rolling ball of fur, then scurried away.
Someone shouted again—Isabel looked up to see Chester slip. He slid down the wet shingles. Then he was airborne, twisting, midflight.
Nancy cried out, “Oh, no!”
He landed heavily and they all heard the breath expelled from him by force.
“Chester!” Nancy dropped her basket and rushed to his side.
“Oh my God,” said several visitors.
Everyone drew close.
“Stand back now,” said Monte, in his deep voice, and they did.
Except Nancy, who dropped to her knees beside Chester’s head.
“Chester, darling,” she said softly, bending over him.
Isabel saw the way Nancy smoothed the thin hair away from his face, her palm lingering as it passed across his furry cheek.
“Is he okay?” said one of the visitors. “That was some fall!”
Chester rolled onto his back and tried to sit up. “I’m all right,” he said. He put his hand on his leg, staring at it, and fell back.
“Chester, please lie down,” urged Nancy.
Monte squatted beside Chester. “Chester, I want you to lie still. I’m going to call an ambulance. You need to be looked at properly. No fooling around here.”
“No, no ambulance,” said Chester. He was trying to sit up again. “I’m all right. I just need to go home.”
Monte pulled a phone from inside his jerkin and punched the numbers. “I don’t think so,” he said with a tone of great good humor to the assembled group. “Don’t try this at home, folks.”
“Where’s my hat?” said Chester.
“Chester, do sit still,” said Nancy. “Look, I’ve got your hat.” She showed Chester his hat and put it in her basket.
By the time the ambulance came, Chester was visibly upset, attempting to stand and resisting Monte and Nancy who were trying to keep him down. “I want to go home!” he kept saying.
The EMT team, a man and a woman, with pleasant, imperturbable assurance, took control, told Chester to lie still, bound him to a gurney, and took him away. Nancy followed in her car.
She left her basket behind.
48
The ringing phone jolted Alex awake. He raised his head abruptly and realized he was staring at the Granite Harbor Police Department screen saver, which showed the Chamber of Commerce town photograph: a sunny, summer view of the harbor filled with boats. And the time, floating slowly across the screen: 7:26 A.M.
It was his own cell phone ringing on the desk in front of him. Not his department phone. He reached for it, looking to see who was calling.
Thirty-two hours earlier, 11:30 P.M. night before last, Kathy McKinnon had called the station to report her son, Jared, missing. On-duty officer Becky Watrous had taken the call. She phoned the emergency room at the Penobscot Medical Center. A quiet night so far, no teenagers. Becky knew Jared McKinnon was Shane Carter’s friend, so she’d called Detective Brangwen.
He was at Kathy’s house fifteen minutes later, at midnight.
Jared had been coming home late since he’d started seeing Ashley Green, she told Alex. She’d talked to him about not being out late, especially now, but she couldn’t keep him at home.
“I can’t stop him,” she said helplessly. “He says yes, like he hears me and understands, and then he just…”
“Believe me, I understand,” said Alex. “At least he’s saying yes.”
He asked her the routine necessary questions. Any reason he might have run away? Gone to see his father, who lived in California? Could his father have turned up and persuaded him to go away with him? No way, said Kathy.
Outside, he called Mark Beltz, told him Jared was missing. “Jared and Ethan have a van. Registered to one of them. They keep it parked in the lot behind the mill. See if it’s there, anything in it.”
At 1:00 A.M., he called Ashley and drove to her grandmother’s house. They talked in the living room. Jared had been there earlier, but left—she wasn’t sure—like around ten thirty?
In his car at 1:25 A.M., he called Isabel.
“Oh my God,” she said. “No, he’s not here.”
“Can you wake Ethan and ask him when he last saw him?”
She brought the phone with her—he heard rustling, movement—he imagined her in the upstairs hall. He heard her knocking on the door, Ethan’s croaking voice, resentful at being woken. She put the phone on speakerphone and asked him when he’d last seen Jared. Alex heard the spatial echo of the room.
“Why?” Ethan said.
“He’s not home,” Isabel said. “Kathy’s worried. When and where did you last see him?”
“Umm … At the Shed. Yesterday—no, the day before yesterday. After school.”
“Do you hear that?” she said.
“Yes,” said Alex. “Ethan, do you have any idea where he might be—now, at almost two in the morning? Anything at all you can think of?”
“Maybe with Ashley? The ink artist.”
“He was with her earlier in the evening, but not now. I’ve just seen her. Anything else?”
“No. Mom, what’s going on?”
“Alex, do you need anything else right now?”
“No, thanks. Thank you, Ethan. Obviously if you think of anything, call me, please.”
“Alex, please let me know when you hear anything.”
“I will.”
His phone had been buzzing, two calls from Kathy. He called her back. No Jared. Could she talk more now if he came over? Yes, please come, she said, no way could she sleep.
She was in sweats. She was going out of her mind. Was he thinking it had anything to do with what happened to Shane?
“Let’s hope not. He’s a missing teen. It’s not that unusual.”
“It is for us.”
“What did they share, do together, Shane and Jared?”
“Everything,” said Kathy. “The three of them, Jared and Shane and Ethan. They did everything together. They shared everything, their whole lives. Summer camp at the Y, chess—”
“Chess with Roger?”
“Yes. He was wonderful with them. All three of them had chess lessons with him, went to tournaments. I don’t believe Roger had anything to do with what happened to Shane. And obviously not Jared.”
3:00 A.M. She made chamomile tea. She talked about her breakup with Jared’s father, who’d gone to California. Jared went out there for a few weeks every summer. What a mistake that had been. She hadn’t known him at all. She’d fooled herself. Her fault as much as his father’s—different temperaments, different values—different realities! She was a perfectionist and he was—never mind. Ha! So have a child together! She spoke with lacerating guilt, self-blame. But she had Jared … Oh my God … She began to cry.
He made more tea. Then said, “I’ve got to go. I’ll come back in the morning. Call me of course if he comes home. If you think of anything.”
At dawn, with a sudden wild sense of dread, exaggerated by a lurid yellow sky, he tore north doing eighty on the Fairhaven Road to Granite Harbor Settlement. He walked all over the place. Into the woods, the marsh, onto the beach, looking in the waves along the shore. He checked the dumpster behind the gift shop. Nothing.
At six thirty he stopped at the Granite Deli & Bagel and bought six bagels and six donuts. Back at the station he made coffee. 8:00 A.M. department meeting with Chief Raintree and all officers. Procedure cranking up. Missing Persons bulletin issued to agencies statewide. Media outlets alerted. He sent Mark Beltz to check out Roger Priestly’s house—no logic to it if Mark asked him why, but he didn’t ask. Just go through the place again, everywhere, every closet, Alex told him.
Nothing here, Mark reported back by phone an hour later.
Alex called Doreen Wisner, Shane’s mother. Asked her if she could think of anywhere Jared night be. She couldn’t.
Midmorning, Alex and Mark went to the high school. Through his own boys, Mark knew most of Jared’s and Shane’s friends and peers in the junior and senior classes. They were taken out of class and brought to Alex and Mark in the principal’s office. They’d already spoken about Shane but now the questions were about Jared. Where did they think he might be? Could possibly be? The kids shrugged. Several mentioned Ashley. They talked with Sophie—it was certainly easier for Alex with Mark in the room.
Nothing.
In his car, he called Agent Harris in Boston.
“So I grant you it’s not Roger,” said Harris. “But all you’ve got is a missing teen. Not something I would come up for. Kids go missing all the time, usually for no more than a few hours. I’m not downplaying anything, Detective, but any association with the other boy, Shane Carter, is right now just coincidence. They’re friends at school. Let’s hope the boy is found. You get anything, give me a call.”
The television trucks and generators descended on the William P. Merrill Station for the press conference outside the station at noon. Chief Raintree made an appeal to anyone who might know of anything. Then the TV reporters shouted questions, the inevitable linking and revisiting of stories—was Roger Priestly responsible for the murder of Shane Carter? Did Jared McKinnon know Roger Priestly? Was Roger Priestly’s suicide an admission of guilt? Had Jared and Roger Priestly been close?
In the afternoon, Alex and available officers drove around town, looked inside the dumpsters behind Hannaford, Brown & Cord, and Seafarer Marine, not because of any connection but because they were large enough to hold a body. They walked in a rough grid formation every possible route between Ashley’s grandmother’s house on Atlantic Avenue and Kathy’s on Cedar Street. Looked at every possible detour through backyards, walked empty lots. This was police work. That and just driving around, trying to think, hoping unreasonably that Jared would somehow pop out of the shroud of absolute disappearance that had dropped over him.
Harbormaster Dave Pixley drove Alex around the harbor in his Whaler. They peered under docks, floats, cruised around the few boats still not hauled out for the winter. Then along the shores of Watson Cove. The tide was low. They skirted and nosed among rocks covered with seaweed. Bell buoys clanged out in the marked channel. The afternoon was growing dark. An icy damp floated above the water like a blanket.
Nothing.
Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.
A total absence of any kind of clue, sighting, basis for conjecture. Alex felt unprepared for this. An amateur. Ashamed at his powerlessness.
Who do you call if you’re the police?
* * *
He called Kathy—her voice clutched, choked, seeing who was calling. No news, he told her immediately. But could he come over?
Her face had collapsed. Eyes sunken in their sockets, the pigment around them dark. Deep hollows in her cheeks, around her mouth. As if the essence beneath the surface of her had ebbed away.
“Kathy, are you eating and drinking? Is there someone who can come over—”
“Oh…” She waved a hand. “People are calling. I can’t … What’s going on?”
“Could I borrow something of Jared’s?”
“What?”
“His skateboard.”
“What for?”
The lie came easily. “Just to see if anybody recognizes it.”
* * *
Isabel answered immediately. “Any news about Jared?”
“No,” said Alex. “Where are you?”
She was at home. She’d been at work at the Settlement, she told Alex, but Chester Coffey had fallen off a roof, and Nancy had left, and Isabel couldn’t stay any longer, she was too worried about Jared, so she’d come home.
“Could I come over?”
“What for?”
“I need your help.”
When he knocked, Flynn barked. He watched through the mudroom as she opened the door to the back deck and the dog rushed out. When she opened the door to him, she didn’t look much better than Kathy. She was in jeans and a sweatshirt. No hat.
Pointing down at his hand. “What’s that?”
“It’s Jared’s skateboard. I wondered if … perhaps you could—”
“It doesn’t work like that, Alex.” She sounded annoyed.
“I know—or, I don’t know. I just thought…”
She looked down at the board again, stood aside, and opened the door wider. “Okay—of course.”
In the kitchen, he said, “Where’s Ethan?”
“Downstairs. In his workshop.”
He followed her into the living room. She sat on the sofa he knew so well.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any more of Roger’s stuff?”
She glared at him. “No.” She held out her hands.
He handed her the skateboard. Then backed away and sat in a chair facing her.
She laid the board across her legs, top up, knees together between the wheels. She placed her hands flat on the black sandpapery griptape where Jared’s feet would have stood. She looked up at Alex. They locked eyes.
