Granite Harbor, page 9
Chester was simply her new coworker. He made a convincing seventeenth-century settler in his beard, old felt hat with the feather poking through it, and his big leather jerkin. He was familiar. She’d seen him around town for years, she realized, when, in his own everyday clothes, he looked like a builder, or the construction workers or landscapers one saw everywhere in Granite Harbor. But she hadn’t known or noticed him. He was nice—that was the word she’d decided upon at first. Nice and quiet, and reserved.
She heard he was selling some cordwood. She needed some—she had a nice, efficient woodstove now—and decided to buy it from him, someone she knew. He brought it over to the house and stacked it on her deck. It was late in the afternoon, that hot spell at the end of September, and afterward she invited him inside to give him a glass of water. He saw a photograph of her sitting on a camel, from the trip she and Graham made down the Nile. He was fascinated that she had seen the Pyramids. They’re still there? he asked. Oh, yes, she said, and told him about them. He sat down, sipped his water, looked at her as she spoke, and asked questions.
After that, at work, when they found time, eating lunch or at the beginning or end of the day, they talked about the Settlement, the settlers, what life must have been like for them on this cold, forbidding shore. And in these heavy woolen clothes—Nancy wondered how they’d lived without fleece and Gore-Tex. Chester said he liked to imagine them going about the same things they were doing, on this same ground they stood on, 381 years earlier.
He had books about early American history—Nancy was surprised. Chester hadn’t seemed bookish, but apparently he read a lot. He brought books to work, and offered to lend them to her. She took them, partly because she was interested too, but mainly because she was touched that Chester wanted to share them with her.
What is this? she began to ask herself, when she realized she was looking forward to seeing Chester. Or when they parted at the end of the day, after talking about history. Or at home, when it occurred to her that she would like to ask him over for dinner. When she realized she wanted to see more of him.
But what would that look like? Quite apart from the age difference. Chester looked like the sort of man, the construction crews, the lobstermen, who went to Captain Smithy’s pub after work. For all she knew, he probably had a lady friend somewhere—one of the tattooed women at Captain Smithy’s. Nancy had never been in there, but she saw the people going in and out. She couldn’t ask him over for dinner. It would make him uncomfortable. Then they’d both be embarrassed. It would be the end of their sweet friendship
Then Chester asked her if she would like to come out for dinner with him. There was a special on Wednesdays at the Wharf. “Oh, how nice,” Nancy said, with an air of pleasant surprise. “I’d love to.”
Chester picked her up at her house. They went to the Wharf and ate seafood. Chester was shy and quiet, as if, Nancy thought, wondering what he’d done in asking her out. So they talked, at first, about the food eaten by the early settlers, what they’d gathered in the woods and from the sea; how much that seventeenth-century menu might have resembled the Wharf’s: they might certainly have gathered scallops, mussels, oysters, mushrooms, grown squashes. It was a way of continuing their ongoing conversation about the Settlement. Then Nancy asked Chester how he’d discovered the Settlement, why he was working there. Roger had told him about it, he’d been there now five years, but he was more interested in hearing about Nancy. He wanted to know where else she’d traveled to. She told him how she and Graham had tried to escape the Maine winters, sometimes going to Europe, Greece, Egypt, as he’d seen, to Mexico—Chester wanted to hear all about those places.
He paid for dinner and he drove her home. Nancy asked him if he’d like to come in for a coffee or tea, but Chester said he’d better be getting home. They agreed it was a nice evening.
A week later, Nancy asked him if he’d like to come to dinner at her house. Sure, Chester had said, with a shy pleasure.
She didn’t often eat red meat, but she thought Chester might, and that night she made filet mignon. Before dinner was over, Nancy realized that it was now more than just a sweet friendship. She was almost sure that Chester liked her in that way, and she had begun to imagine them in bed—but she was equally sure that he would not initiate anything. She felt as if he were a horse that might bolt if she startled him.
After dinner, Chester offered to help her with the dishes.
“Oh, no, thank you, Chester. I’m just going to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher.”
But he stood beside her at the sink, without speaking, apparently intent on watching her hands and the running water. Nancy heard him breathing, she was aware of his physical bulk inches away, and she was flooded with a wild desire. I don’t care, she said to herself. When she closed the dishwasher she turned to Chester, stood on her tiptoes and put her arms around his neck, and kissed him gently on the mouth.
He didn’t bolt. He remained still for a moment, his lips unmoving. Then she felt his arms encircle her, and he returned her kiss.
That night was beautiful to Nancy. He came willingly when she led him into the bedroom, but he seemed unsure of how to move, whether to sit or stand, or when and where to start removing his clothes. She helped him. In bed she nearly swooned to feel the size and shape and strength of him, a burly, very hirsute young man, so utterly different from Graham’s long and delicate thinness, and the near total absence of hair on his body in his later years. But Chester had difficulty. He was uncertain how to touch her, though she helped him with that too, gently and encouragingly.
“I hope it was all right,” he said to her afterward as they lay side by side.
“Chester, dear, it was lovely. It always takes time for two people to learn each other. But this is so lovely. Just being here with you. You’re a very beautiful strong man, Chester. You have quite thrilled me.”
“You’re very beautiful too,” Chester said.
“Oh, I’m an old maid!”
“No,” he said, gazing at her as they lay on the pillows, “you’re beautiful.”
That was what was so sweet about him, she decided. He was genuine: she believed he meant it. To him, she was beautiful.
Their lovemaking improved. Chester remained tentative, but they began to grow used to each other. They made love at Nancy’s. He didn’t invite her to his house. She imagined he might be self-conscious about it. It was some distance out of town, in the farming country toward Hope. Perhaps it was a manufactured home, or a trailer. She didn’t care. She liked having him come to her. Soon he was there almost every night after work. Unlike Graham, with his four or more trips to the bathroom through the nights, Chester slept soundly, deeply. Like a child. Nancy would wake in the night and listen to him breathing. This beautiful, gentle mass of man beside her.
What was this?
18
“What sort of frog?” asked FBI Special Agent Brad Harris, as if the classification of species might help the investigation. He’d driven up from Boston the night before to be present at the 7:30 A.M. autopsy in Augusta.
He looks like Tintin, Alex thought. Blond hair very short all over except for the small gelled quiff sticking up like a feather at the front. Small button eyes. Impossibly young. Taut, smooth-skinned, not like a cut gym rat, but like a boy. Yet his every remark implied long years of fieldwork. As if he’d become an agent at six years old.
“Not a frog,” said John Barney, herpetologist and professor of biology at U Maine, Orono, who had driven down to the medical examiner’s office in Augusta. “Anaxyrus americanus. Eastern American toad. Female, judging by the size of the tympanum.”
“It was inside the body, is that right?” Phil Gressens, the medical examiner’s senior forensic technician, looked at Alex. With a long braided gray ponytail, Gressens was tall, his height accentuated by Dr. Scholl’s slip-resistant work clogs.
“Yes,” Alex answered.
All four men wore white Tyvek overalls.
The toad was still alive, smeared with blood, coagulated in places and glistening wetly in others. It had accompanied Shane’s body in a plastic evidence Ziploc bag in which Patrolman Mark Beltz had poked breathing holes. Gressens had kept it overnight in the Ziploc, in an unsealed Tupperware container. Now the toad, still inside the Ziploc, sat on a bright stainless steel autopsy table, where it appeared to be in a state of Zen repose.
Shane’s body was out of sight in a cold drawer. The windowless room was brightly lit with overhead fluorescent lights. Glass-fronted, kitchen-looking cabinets showed an array of small electric saws and other tools.
“What’s the difference?” asked Harris. “Frog, toad?”
Professor Barney had already pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. With practiced movements, he removed the toad from the bag. “Taxonomically, they’re both amphibia. Frogs belong to the Ranidae family, toads are Bufonidae.”
“Perhaps without the Latin, please, Professor?” said Alex. “For me anyway. What’s the basic difference?”
Professor Barney turned on a tap and gently washed the blood off the toad. His tone was affable, yet still pedagogical. “Frogs have longer, meatier legs, as any Frenchman will tell you. They jump, they move around more, explore farther afield. They exude a mucous film on their skin, which acts kind of like a wet suit, because they spend more time in ponds and water habitat. Toads—this creature here—have shorter legs, dry skin. More woodlands habitat, though they need freshwater ponds for reproduction. And here”—he pointed with his pen to two raised mounds on the toad’s head behind each eye—“these are the paratoid glands. In here the toad produces and retains a reservoir of bufotenin.”
“What’s that?” asked Agent Harris.
“It’s a toxin,” said the professor.
“Enough to kill a person?”
“Oh, no. Well, certainly not Anaxyrus americanus. Toxic for small animals, predators. Grab a toad—like a dog will, say, in its teeth—and it will eject bufotoxins. A Florida cane toad could certainly harm, possibly kill a human if the toxin entered the eye. This toad would not cause death to a human, but its toxin might cause palpitations, disorientation.”
Professor Barney shut the water off and placed the toad in the palm of one hand.
“Why would a toad crawl into a dead body?” asked Harris. “And how would it get up there, if the body was hanging, suspended off the ground?”
“It wouldn’t. That would not present as a hospitable habitat. And they don’t fly.”
“So it must have been put there,” Harris observed, shooting a penetrating glance at Alex.
Alex nodded back, arranging his face obligingly, as if to say, Good call.
“I would say so,” said Professor Barney.
“Has it been harmed, mutilated, in any way?” Alex asked.
Professor Barney picked the toad up with his other hand, turned it over, inspected it again. “She looks unharmed to me. What are you going to do with her?”
“From my point of view, it would appear to have nothing to do with cause of death,” said Phil Gressens. “But I’m going to autopsy it. See what’s in the stomach. How should I humanely kill it? Preferably without injury.”
“Rub her all over in benzocaine,” said Professor Barney. “Use a whole tube of Orajel. Give her a few minutes and she’ll be on her way.” He handed the toad to Phil Gressens, who was also wearing gloves.
Gressens looked at Alex and Agent Harris. “There’s a Walgreens up on the corner. Two minutes. Maybe one of you could run up there? I’ll have the boy’s body ready for you when you get back.”
“I’ll go,” said Alex.
He saw Professor Barney out of the medical examiner’s office, thanked him, agreed upon the details of the delivery of his report. He walked on to the Walgreens. When he returned to the autopsy room, Shane’s body was laid out on a stainless steel table. Alex’s nostrils tingled anew with chemical odors. Harris was walking slowly around the table, studying the corpse.
Alex handed Gressens the tube from a Walgreens bag. “Generic benzocaine. I presume that’s okay.”
“Works for me,” said Gressens. He squeezed most of the contents of the tube into a stainless steel dish and began to gently smear it over the toad. When it was covered with gel, Gressens placed the creature in the dish.
All three men looked at the toad, which appeared unperturbed in its coat of death gel.
“If toads could talk,” said Harris.
Earlier in the morning, before they had arrived, Gressens had prepared the body, he told them. He’d weighed and measured it, made a close external examination. He had placed a rubber block beneath Shane’s back making it arch, projecting the chest upward, causing the long incision to gape open. Shane’s head tilted backward. His eyes were still partly open, the lids half closed.
Agent Harris pulled a small bottle of Vicks VapoRub out of his pocket, opened it, and dabbed a finger beneath each nostril, and offered the bottle to Alex.
“No, thanks.”
“That stuff’s not good for your lungs,” said Gressens.
“Works for me,” said Harris.
Alex had previously attended only two autopsies—both in this very room—during his training at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy. They had been performed on donations to the Academy: elderly bodies, shriveled, diminished carcasses that had appeared more like archaeological finds, the life long ago sucked out of them. The deaths he’d covered as detective had required little initial investigation before being ruled accidental or suicidal; the cause of death evident, there was no need for him to be present at the autopsy.
On the clean stainless steel, Shane—his upturned face anyway, despite the cold blueish color—still looked like any boy in Granite Harbor. Alex tried to recognize him, place him.
In his house, apparently.
He shook his head as an image of Sophie herself on the table in front of them flashed through his mind.
Gressens’s gloved finger pointed to the left side of Shane’s neck where it met the shoulder. It was vividly bruised, blotchy purple and brown.
“He received a blow to the right side of the neck some hours before death. Enough time for considerable bruising to collect in the area.”
“Looks like a brachial stun,” said Agent Harris. “Inflicted by a southpaw—left-hander.”
Alex looked at Harris and then to Gressens.
“Certainly a blunt force injury to the brachial plexus,” said Gressens.
“Brachial stun,” Harris said again.
“What is that?” asked Alex.
“A blow inflicted with the forearm to the brachial plexus. Not a punch or a karate chop, but a blow carrying the entire weight of the attacker’s torso. Like this.”
Harris stepped toward Alex. Slowly, he swiveled his entire upper body. Although it came at him slowly, Alex tensed at the sight of Harris’s entire arm swinging horizontally through the air, moving not like an arm at all but a separate attachment strapped onto his shoulder and having its own momentum. Harris stopped it as his forearm reached the side of Alex’s neck, low down, but he allowed some weight to land with the impact.
Alex felt it. He understood then the power it might have contained. The recipient poleaxed by something like a small tree limb hitting the neck where it joined the shoulder.
“The force behind that, if I were doing it for real, would exceed my body weight by many times. Like a bag of wet cement. If it lands on the brachial plexus, it shocks the carotid artery and jugular vein, and causes immediate unconsciousness. It’ll land right side or left, according to the swinger’s right- or left-handed preference. The attacker here was a left-hander.”
“It would certainly explain the bruising,” agreed Gressens.
“Cause of death the wound down the stomach?” Alex asked.
Gressens shook his head. “No. The cut’s not deep, just through the abdominal wall. It would have bled, but not a lot. Not a gusher source. On its own, not nicking arteries or vital organs, it wouldn’t result in death.” He raised first one and then the other of Shane’s half-closed eyelids and pointed out the bloodshot hemorrhages in the whites. “Petechiae, generally present in asphyxia deaths. And”—he pulled Shane’s lips open—“slight bruising inside the lips showing pressure on the mouth holding it closed. Trace bruising against the nostrils to block air intake. Not hard pressure. No signs of struggle except for the light bruising around the wrists and ankles. Probably tied down but not so much that he struggled against the restraints. Which suggests he might have been sedated. Blood work will show what sedative, if any. I would say he died of suffocation. Nostrils pinched, hand over the mouth. Probably post incision, because the edges show bleeding.”
“Cut open while he was alive?”
“Yes,” said Gressens. “Subsequently suffocated. Almost an act of mercy by then. He would have been in great pain.”
Alex sensed Harris observing him. He didn’t want to show his face, so he looked away. In the stainless steel dish, the toad, glistening in its thick wet suit of benzocaine, had slumped forward onto its chin, its hind legs splayed out beneath it. Its eyes were closed.
Part Two
19
The first time the boy saw a frog—or toad, he couldn’t tell the difference until long afterward—was beneath the white hammering light of the Florida sky, when his dog Boon dropped the creature from his mouth and started to shake his head so violently that the boy thought the dog’s brains would begin to fly from its ears. A flow of drool gushed from some impossible reservoir out of its mouth, and the high voltage convulsions continued long after Boon had fallen to the dirt, emitting the piteous howl that subsided into a wheezing organ note from deep inside his chest as he lay dying at the edge of the muddy, reeking canal.
