The Edge, page 10
“Who was that?” said a surprised Devine.
“You have no reason to know.”
“O-okay,” he said, wondering why she would have a problem with sharing information like that. “I understand you teach art part-time at the public school.”
Her expression instantly brightened. “I do. Twice a week at the very end of the day. That’s all they could afford. They barely have books in the school library or computers for the students. When government budgets are tight they always cut education; the students can’t vote.”
“But they will one day,” pointed out Devine.
“The kids were uninterested in art at first. But their enthusiasm grew as they got better.” She looked around. “But the odds are stacked against them. Jobs are limited in this part of Maine, along with opportunity. Drugs are rampant, and grandparents are raising their grandkids because of it. Ninety percent of families are on some sort of government assistance. Many of these kids are being dropped into big black holes, never to be seen again.”
“But you might find an artist out there who you could lead to another, better future.”
“I doubt I have that ability in me.”
“Why don’t I believe that?”
She put her brush down and stared at him. “Believe what you want.”
“Okay, let’s talk about your sister.”
“I didn’t even know she was in town,” she said automatically.
Just like her brother told me. And I believe it even less this time around.
“Did she come here often and not tell you?”
“She didn’t come here all that often. Once or twice a year.”
“When was the last time?”
“During the summer.”
“Why not more often?” asked Devine.
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask her, and you can’t.”
“When was the last time you saw or spoke with her?”
Alex let out an extended breath and shook her head. “Saw her briefly when she came here during the summer. Spoke to her last? I can’t really remember.”
“Ballpark? Months, weeks, days?”
“Over a month,” said Alex.
“What’d you talk about?”
“Nothing important.”
“You two weren’t close?”
“She had her life and I had mine and they didn’t really mix well. She was off somewhere around the world while I was stuck right here in Putnam.”
“Stuck? By your choice?”
“Bad choice of words. It has everything I want as an artist. Solitude, incredible beauty, haunting images, a place that makes you think. It’s very inspiring.”
“I spoke with your mother. She thought you should be in New York, or California, or Europe.”
“Of course she did.”
“You see her much?”
“Not for years,” said Alex.
“I saw your father, too.”
Her expression grew firmer and seemed to be pulling her inward. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Your brother said he goes to visit him.”
“They have that military connection,” she said in answer. “I don’t.”
“I don’t think he has long left.”
“None of us know how long we have left,” she replied.
“So you didn’t know Jenny was in town and you hadn’t seen or spoken with her in a while?”
“That’s right. So I really can’t help you.” She turned back to her canvas. “And I have a lot of work to do. So…”
“Have you started selling your artwork? Your mother didn’t think you were.”
“I have an agent now. Over the last few years I’ve been commissioned to do a number of paintings and sculptures. You can tell my mother that my clients include people from New York and California and across the pond.”
“You should tell her yourself. I’m sure she’ll be very happy for you.”
“I’m not nearly as sure about that as you appear to be.”
“Are you sad that your sister is no longer living?” Devine had decided to ask this provocative question to get something from the woman that didn’t sound scripted.
“What the hell kind of question is that?” she said, her face flushing again and her thick eyebrows nearly touching.
“It’s just that, a question.”
“You found me sobbing my heart out at the inn.”
“I just don’t know why you were sobbing your heart out. You didn’t hang around.”
“Well, it was because of her. So now you know. Are we done?”
“Then why did you intimate that you would not be describing your sister to me as a person much loved by folks here?”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
Devine repeated back the account she had given him from the notes he had put in his iPhone.
“Does that jog your memory?”
“No.”
“Okay, one last thing.”
“What?” she snapped.
“I’d like you to go with me to where your sister’s body was found.”
“Why would I do that?” she said slowly. “And why would you want me to do that?”
“Because you know this area far better than I do. And you clearly possess something that might help me.”
“What, pray tell, is that?”
“An artist’s insight into the human soul.”
“I still don’t think I can help you,” she said, her tone and voice not nearly as assured.
“Let’s go find out.” He paused and added, “Please.”
CHAPTER
18
HE RETRIEVED HIS RENTAL AND drove it to Jocelyn Point to pick her up. Then it wasn’t that far to the spot where Jenny Silkwell’s body had been found. They walked over the same cold, rugged ground that Jenny had presumably trod during her last night on earth.
Devine wanted to see Alex’s reaction to being here, because that might actually help him understand her better. And he thought he was going to have to do that in order to figure out what was really going on.
She had put on an overcoat and scarf and a ski cap pulled down low over her ears. The wind had picked up even more, and they watched as dark clouds gathered just off the coast.
“Looks like snow or sleet is coming,” said Devine.
“Let’s hope not,” she said.
“You don’t like the white stuff?”
“I teach my art class late this afternoon. I don’t want to miss it.”
She looked around as they walked across the field toward the forest and the wide path through it to the bluff overlooking the ocean.
And then something happened to Alex. She started to sway and then she cried out and Devine barely caught her before she slumped to the ground.
“Are you all right?” he exclaimed. “Look, I’m sorry for bringing you here. I didn’t stop to think about the effect it might have on you.”
She looked up at him, her eyes unfocused and her expression woozy. She slowly came around and then managed to stand without his assistance.
“We can go back,” he offered.
She looked at the open field and shuddered. “No, I’m here now. Let’s get this done.”
As they entered the path she seemed normal again, even walking with spirit. He wondered why that was, since they were getting closer to, not farther away from, where her sister’s body had been found.
He led her to the edge of the land, and they gazed down at the rocks and the ocean.
“Is this where she was killed?” she said.
“It appears so.”
She shot him a perplexed look. “What do you mean ‘appears’?”
“I meant it exactly as I said.”
She indicated the rocks. “But her body was found down there.”
“Yes, that is a fact. Everything else is speculation.”
“You’ve lost me.”
Devine didn’t answer. He was thinking about possibilities that he would need to parse through if he was going to get to the truth.
Jenny had been shot in the forehead, and the round exited out the back of her skull and apparently vanished into the ocean. That meant she was looking landward. But if you went to the edge here, wouldn’t you be looking at the ocean? Since that was the whole point of coming to this spot. The casing had been found more than three hundred yards away from where Jenny had fallen. At night she wouldn’t have even been able to see her shooter from that distance. And if she had turned to leave before she was shot squarely in the forehead, would she have been close enough to the edge to topple over it?
“Why did you want me to come here?” she asked, pulling him from these thoughts.
“I need to know if this spot had some special significance for Jenny.”
“None that I know of. Do you think she might have come here to think?”
“In the pouring rain late at night? No, I doubt it.”
“Then you think she came here with someone? Her killer?”
Devine didn’t answer because he was the one doing the questioning, not her. “Did your sister ever talk to you about her work?”
“No. Wasn’t it confidential?”
“Did she say it was?”
“No, and I didn’t ask. I was used to our father being unable to talk about political stuff.”
“Right. He served on the Senate Intelligence Committee.”
“I was never interested in any of that. And he and I—”
“—weren’t close?”
“Jenny was his favorite. And I was a distant third behind Dak.”
“Jenny was interested in politics?”
“Jenny was interested in everything,” she said wearily.
“And you? What are you interested in?”
“My art. And now my students.”
Devine thought about what Pat Kingman had said, that Alex had changed years ago, going from outgoing and fun to introverted and… scared, diving back into her hidey-hole at Jocelyn Point after venturing out for short intervals. But she was teaching at the local school, so maybe she was getting over whatever had caused her to change.
“I’m having dinner with Dak tonight. Would you like to join us? My treat?”
She frowned and looked away. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”
As they walked back to the Tahoe, Devine said, “Did your sister have any enemies here?”
“Not that I know of. She was adored in Putnam.”
“But, again, you intimated that you didn’t share the general opinion that Jenny was a wonderful person, regardless of whether you remember saying it or not. You did.”
She wheeled around on him, seemingly itching for a fight. “Look, I meant nothing more than the people with those general opinions never had to live with her. She was a tough act to follow. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love her or make me any less sorry that she’s dead. So don’t try to put words in my mouth.”
“I can understand the hard-act-to-follow piece.”
“Can you really?” she said skeptically.
“My two older siblings are roaring successes in their chosen and highly compensated fields. Me, not so much.”
She gazed at him with a sudden look of empathy. “Oh, well… being a federal agent isn’t a small accomplishment…” Her voice trailed off as they walked.
He drove her back to Jocelyn Point. She got out and then peered back into the Tahoe. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more help.”
“You might have been more help than you think,” he replied.
“Your meeting with my brother?”
“What about it? Changed your mind and want to join?”
“No. But, piece of advice? Don’t believe everything you’re told.”
She slowly walked to her art studio.
CHAPTER
19
HOPING TO BEAT THE INCOMING storm, Devine drove straight back to where Jenny’s body had been found and walked the area with a soldier’s eye for detail.
He stood at the spot where the shell casing had been found. The .300 Norma magnum round was mostly, but not exclusively, used by the military and its snipers. The casing had been next to a stand of bare trees, providing some good cover. He had noted all of that before. He drew a sight line between the ejected casing and the spot where Jenny had been standing before toppling over the edge after being shot.
Or so the story goes.
He lay prone on the ground and pantomimed taking aim at Jenny Silkwell.
He pulled the invisible trigger and counted three beats. The bullet would have hit her in the blink of an eye from this distance, but it would have taken a few beats for her to fall over the edge and hit the rocks below.
He stood and pulled out his phone. He’d had the medical examiner, Françoise Guillaume, email him the preliminary autopsy report. As he read it, the weather system coming in off the coast had raised the temperature enough to where the precipitation that started to fall was rain, and not sleet or snow.
He caught himself smiling. Alex Silkwell would get to teach her art class today.
He hustled back to the Tahoe and reached it before it really started to pour. He sat there staring at a crime scene that had definite shakiness to its outlines, and thus its substance.
He texted Campbell with his theories and waited for a reply.
He got it five minutes later, a testament to how such a busy man, with a dozen missions like Devine’s to oversee, was laser-focused on this one. But it was no doubt the only mission under his command that had to do with a man who had saved his life. As a former soldier Devine got that one really well. It forged a bond stronger than just about everything else in life.
Campbell’s advice was explicit:
Follow your gut and keep things close to the vest. Dak Silkwell’s military file is sealed. I cannot break through it as yet. And Curt never talked to me about his son’s military career, and why he left, and I never asked. Stay tuned. It is critical to find her government laptop and personal phone, Devine. Ulcers are forming in people’s guts here.
He knew that if someone had taken those devices, then Devine might be looking at a stranger having killed Jenny in order to get some intel from her. They had checked the secure cloud of her government-issued computer and personal phone and found nothing unusual, nor had there been any attempts to hack into them. And there had been no calls, emails, or texts that would foreshadow her being murdered. If she had communicated with anyone about her trip here, she had not done so electronically on her personal or government devices.
Being an ops officer, she knew the pitfalls of sending anything over the internet. But she could have used a burner phone or prepaid phone card and left no trail. She had no social media accounts at all, not unusual for someone with her occupation.
He sent a brief reply to Campbell, put the Tahoe in gear, and fought the wind and rain to his next destination.
Earl Palmer’s house.
CHAPTER
20
THE RAIN STARTED TO EASE some as Devine pulled onto the long gravel drive. In the daylight everything looked different as he wound back through a thick stand of bare woods with cluttered undergrowth. The long limbs swayed, dipped, and creaked in the stiff breeze that had never been absent since Devine had stepped foot in Putnam.
The little cottage appeared to him in the middle of the woods. Coupled with the inclement weather, the place had an ominous sensibility to it, like something out of a Brothers Grimm violent yarn masquerading as a fairy tale. In the light he could see that it was white clapboard with faded green shutters, just as the man who had confronted Devine outside the bar had said it would be. He eyed the ancient station wagon again. And the F150 looked even older. The truck bed was filled with old tools, long metal rods, what looked to be a small concrete mixer, rolls of fish netting and rope, and grimy buoys.
Next to the house, on a small rusty trailer, was a wooden dinghy with a name neatly stenciled on the side.
He got out of the car and drew close enough to see.
BERTIE’S BOAT.
Named after his dead wife.
Behind the house was a small building with curtained windows that he hadn’t noticed on his previous night’s recon.
He stepped up to the porch and was about to knock when the door opened and he was staring at the business end of an over-and-under shotgun.
Earl Palmer stood there in a red thermal underwear shirt and soiled dungarees, white socks on shoeless feet. He had about an inch in height on Devine and looked ruggedly strong with a barrel chest and long arms that tapered to slender hips and thin, bowed legs. Not bad for a man in his latter seventies, thought Devine. But lobster fishing demanded a lot of physical strength, he reckoned.
Up close he looked like a taller, broader Robert Frost, thought Devine, who had read the man’s poetry at West Point. His comrades at the Point had teased him about this, until some pretty local girls they had gone into town to see had told them that they found an interest in poetry incredibly attractive in a man. All the way back to West Point the guys had pestered him for details on some of Frost’s best-known lines that they could use for their own pickup efforts.
“‘Two roads diverged in the woods and I, I took the one less traveled,’” he had told them. He had learned that the line was often misinterpreted because Frost had regrets in his life and had not actually taken that road. When his buddies asked him what it meant he said, with all sincerity, “We chose a path almost no one else does. We’re going to risk our lives to protect our country and way of life. We chose the most honorable journey and also the most dangerous. It’s a selfless act of sacrifice in a country that routinely worships individualism over the collective.”
None of them had expected that response, he could tell. Hell, he still didn’t know exactly from where inside him those words had come. They had ridden the rest of the way back in silence, each man seemingly lost in thought over what Devine had said.
Devine had lost four of his classmates to war, including one in their group from that night, and three more to suicide after tours of duty that had forced them to see and do things that people should not have to ever see or do.
