Last Night, page 22
Hadley heard his desperation, and she felt it herself. But he seemed unhinged, and his air of violence scared her. Was this the Bernard her sister had seen every time he got angry with her?
He seemed to see the fear in her eyes, and the monster retreated. Suddenly he seemed deflated. His shoulders slumped, and he wiped sweat off his face with his shirt sleeve. “It’s not your fault,” he said.
“What’s not my fault?” she asked.
“The fact she’s still missing. And no one is finding her,” he said. “Look, I’m not feeling well. Will you help me pay my bill here or won’t you? I am sure Madeleine would have.”
“Bernard,” she said, “first of all, the only reason I am staying here is that Maddie owns the suite—I could never afford it myself.”
“Surely you could add my room to her account. She would want me to be nearby, for our daughter.”
“Second of all,” Hadley said, as if she hadn’t heard him, “Maddie was divorcing you. She wouldn’t have bailed you out. You’ve been lying to me about why you’re here. It wasn’t to scout locations. It was to be near my sister, to spy on her. You said horrible things on the phone to CeCe. You scared her . . .”
“You’re just like Madeleine. The high-and-mighty Cooke sisters. No wonder you don’t have a man—you don’t even have a heart,” he said, his eyes blazing with white rage. He raised his arm as if to strike her, then he abruptly turned and stalked away, toward the lobby.
Hadley was shaking. His fury had exploded, diminished, then returned again, and it was terrifying. Maddie had been right about him. He could never take criticism or listen to anything but gushing praise. She had spoken to Hadley about his anger issues, but without seeing them herself till now, Hadley had had no idea what her sister must have faced.
She wondered if Maddie had encountered that rage on the beach path, in the middle of the blizzard, with their daughter watching him shoot her in the head.
38
Conor got the call.
The body of an unidentified female had been discovered behind a pile of road sand and salt at the Stonington Park & Ride. None of the vehicles there seemed to be hers. She was wearing a gold ring on the index finger of her left hand. A fine gold chain with a blue-enameled gold pendant had most likely been around her neck, but the chain had broken and was found in the folds of her jacket.
She was five foot eight, 150 pounds, with short dark hair and brown eyes. The medical examiner estimated her to be in her midthirties. She was wearing dark-red nail polish. Her right forearm was slashed almost to the bone through the sleeve of her white wool coat. Several of her fingernails were broken, indicating defensive wounds.
The cause of death was determined to be homicide. The method of death was asphyxia by strangulation and stabbing. She had been stabbed twenty-eight times. There was no identification or cell phone on or near the body.
Stonington was just over the border in Connecticut. This was Conor’s territory. Amanda Birkhall, another detective on the Major Crime Squad, had caught the case, and at first she assured him that she had it handled. He had taken two weeks off, expecting to propose to Kate and spend the rest of their vacation celebrating, and Amanda didn’t want him to cut that short. But a development changed all that. Amanda filled Conor in, emailing him images, and he called Joe.
“The Park & Ride murder victim had an old photograph in her coat pocket,” Conor told him. “It’s obviously of Maddie, from a long time ago. I’m guessing she was in her late teens.”
“Okay, that’s interesting,” Joe said. “I’m glad to have an insider. We work together on this, right? With those photos, it’s clearly connected to my case.”
“I’d say so,” Conor said. “Two dead women, the unidentified victim with Maddie’s picture in her pocket.”
“So tell me what you know,” Joe said.
“A van driver pulled off I-95 and stopped in the parking lot to take a leak. When he went behind the sandpile, he found the body. He called 911, and Vicky Nisbit, one of our troopers, caught the call. She asked for a supervisor, and Amanda, my colleague, was dispatched.”
“And Amanda called you,” Joe said.
“Yeah. She knows I’ve been working with you, and as soon as she realized that it was Maddie in the picture, she got in touch. It took time because Maddie was so young in the picture that she looked different from her press photos. By then, the scene had already been processed.”
“And no identification on the body?” Joe asked.
“No,” Conor said.
“How about in her vehicle?”
“None of the vehicles in the lot were hers,” Conor said.
“She could have been in someone else’s car. They could have parked, and he could have attacked her there,” Joe said. “But are you sure that was the murder site?”
“We’re thinking it wasn’t,” Conor said. “She had twenty-eight stab wounds, zero blood at the scene. She was killed and bled out somewhere else.”
“She knew him,” Joe said, obviously making the same assumption Conor had, based on the number of times she’d been stabbed.
“Yep, and he drove her body to the parking lot and dumped her behind the sandpile. He probably brought a shovel or another tool to cause a little avalanche to bury her. He thought she wouldn’t be found till spring.”
“And then someone had to relieve himself and spoiled that plan,” Joe said.
“Here’s another thing,” Conor said. “She was wearing a necklace—gold with blue enamel.” He started scrolling through his phone, looking for the photos Amanda had sent him.
“What about the necklace?” Joe asked.
“Blue background and an engraved design, with color filling in the etching. Recognize it?” Conor asked.
“Huh,” Joe said. “That famous painting by Maddie—MC. The one you see everywhere. My daughter has a poster of it in her dorm room. The whale and the swan.”
“The thing about the photo,” Conor said, “is that it had an address written on the back. Amanda checked it out, and it’s a fine-art storage facility. You know where Kate and Hadley were yesterday?”
“The place Maddie stores her artwork. Same address?” Joe asked.
“Yes,” Conor said. “I think we’d better find out if Genevieve Dickinson is five foot nine and has short brown hair. She was supposedly on her way here, but she hasn’t shown up.”
“Her name has come up repeatedly, and I know she and Maddie were involved in a long lawsuit,” Joe said. “But it was settled.”
“I should have given you this right away, but Hadley only showed it to me last night,” Conor said. He scrolled to a photo of the receipt found in Maddie’s storage unit.
“Okay, this is bizarre,” Joe said, reading it. “Maddie is acknowledging that Genevieve has rights to the whale-and-swan business? Where is the actual document?”
“Hadley has it.”
“I’ll get it from her,” Joe said.
“And I’ll work on getting Genevieve Dickinson’s description,” Conor said.
39
Ronnie found some food for them to eat, but CeCe was past being hungry. He knew where the snack bar was, and he grabbed some half-eaten pizza and french fries off a table. He gobbled it down, but CeCe didn’t care about food. She was floating above her body, and all she wanted was to see animals and pet them, put her arms around their necks, feel their warm fur.
“This is crazy,” he said as they walked through a crowd.
“What?”
“People are supposed to be recognizing you,” he said.
“They don’t know me,” she said.
“You’re famous because of me,” he said.
CeCe looked at him as if he had no idea what he was talking about. Her papa was famous, and so were some of his friends. Her mommy was famous because of her art. They kept CeCe hidden from photographers to protect her.
“It’s true,” he said. “You’re on the news. Your picture is all over the place.”
She didn’t believe him.
“It’s brave of me to be doing this, you know. I’m a fugitive. I could be shot on sight. So why do you think I brought you here?” he asked.
“To see the lights,” she said.
“Uh-uh,” he said. “To get you rescued. Why aren’t you screaming for help?”
CeCe didn’t know. She had wanted to shout and yell at the beginning, and she had made so much noise when she was in the wooden box at Ronnie’s house. But none of that had worked; no one had come to help her. Her head hurt from being banged, and she had broken her tooth. Her tongue was cut and swollen from the sharp edge. Mommy was gone. Star was gone. The only thing that seemed to matter now was petting baby goats.
“Scream, CeCe,” he said.
When she was little, a year ago, she’d had pain in her tummy. It hadn’t gone away, so her mommy had taken her to Dr. Maguire. She didn’t like to go to the doctor, especially that time, because he pushed on the sore spot, and it got worse. They had rushed her to the hospital, where the doctors did an operation on her hernia.
Before the operation, they’d given her medicine that made her feel as if she were in a dream, not alive, a ghost, like when her kitty, Tim, had gotten sick and the vet had come to put him to sleep. She’d been so sad that she’d thought she would die with him. CeCe felt that way now, in the zoo, everything in her body and mind feeling numb, as if she were dead. Ronnie told her to scream, but she didn’t want to. She just wanted animals.
“You’re not gonna do it?” he asked. “I could push you down, and you’d make noise then. But fuck it.” She watched him look around. There were people coming and going, walking right past them, not paying any attention. Now he stopped looking at the strangers and bent down to look into CeCe’s eyes.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” he said.
She stared back at him. Maybe she was dead, and maybe he was, too. Like Mommy and Tim.
“I shouldn’t have done it,” he said. “It was a mistake. I mean, I knew what I was doing, I can’t say I didn’t. But it was all in my head, like a TV show, until I got there. I liked holding the gun. I liked that my dad had taught me how to shoot and said we were a team, we were partners. He said I was gonna help save the boats and the fleet, that we’d have money.”
“I need animals,” CeCe whispered. She didn’t want to hear this.
“I wish I knew her name,” Ronnie said. Suddenly he started to cry.
“Madeleine,” CeCe said. “That’s my mommy’s name.”
“Not your mommy,” Ronnie said. “I mean the lady who paid us to kill her. I would tell the police if I knew.”
He began walking away. Her mind buzzed with the word kill. She should have been glad to see him go, but she was scared to be left alone. She hurried to keep up. He walked over to a family—parents and two girls older than CeCe.
“Hey,” he said to the mother. “See this girl? Know who she is?”
“Oh my God,” the mother said, putting her hand over her mouth.
“It’s Cecelia!” one of the girls said. “She’s alive!”
“Call 911, Don,” the mother said. She knelt down, stared into CeCe’s eyes. “Sweetheart, we’re getting help right now.”
The father was dialing on his cell phone, talking into it, but then Ronnie pointed.
“Security guard,” he said to CeCe. “He can handle it.”
Ronnie walked over to a man wearing a uniform. He pointed at CeCe, and the security guard spoke into a walkie-talkie. Everything happened very fast after that. Another guard came. He pushed Ronnie up against the wall. He had handcuffs, and he put them on Ronnie. CeCe watched as if it were a movie. But then Ronnie turned to look at her, and because he was still crying, she began to cry, too.
Then the police came and took Ronnie away, and CeCe sat down on the floor. A crowd of people circled around, and she heard them talking and saying her name. She drew her knees up to her chin, put her arms around her legs, made herself as small as possible. A policeman knelt down beside her.
“You’re safe, CeCe,” he said. “We’re going to take care of you.”
“I just want to see the baby goats,” she said. “I need them.”
But then the policeman picked her up, and all the officers surrounded them as he carried her out into the snow and into a police car. She wasn’t arrested, but the sirens were loud, and the flashing white-blue lights hurt her eyes as they drove away.
40
Toward the end of the day, the snow stopped. Tom drove to Duffy’s Marina, where the Anna G had been towed and hauled. She had pretty lines, like the many forty-five-foot Novi lobster boats in the Port of Galilee, but it was clear she needed a lot of work. Not just because of the substantial damage done when she had gone aground during the blizzard, but because she hadn’t been well maintained for a while now.
The Novi was up on jack stands, and Tom could see how galvanic corrosion had gotten to the hull. Not only that, but the bottom, rudder, and propeller were covered with layers of algae, barnacles, and seaweed. The paint was peeling, the windows cloudy. Ice from the storm had broken the mast, knocked the radar askew, and stoved in the port rail.
Not that long ago, Zane had been a proud and responsible lobster fisherman and, thus, boat owner. Every July, for years, the Garsons had taken part in the annual Blessing of the Fleet. Point Judith lobster boats and trawlers, Coast Guard vessels, the Block Island ferries, pleasure yachts, runabouts, and all kinds of watercrafts would pass through the Galilee Breachway to receive a benediction from a local priest.
Zane would always have the Anna G in perfect condition. When his wife was still alive, she would be on the deck of her namesake vessel, wearing a straw hat and her best summer dress; young Ronnie would stand at the rail, beaming and waving an American flag at the crowd of spectators cheering from Salty Brine State Beach.
The Blessing of the Fleet in Point Judith had been going on for over fifty years, but it came from a centuries-old tradition that had begun in Europe. The priest would make the sign of the cross and say a prayer as each boat passed. It was a solemn occasion. At noon, the lead fishing boat, sometimes the Anna G, would drop wreaths in memory of fishermen who had died at sea.
But it was also a joyful day. Families would decorate the boats, and prizes would be given for the top three, as chosen by the judges. Some boat owners would go all out, choosing a theme like Jaws, or Finding Nemo, or even Harry Potter. Zane hadn’t allowed his wife and son to do anything that cute. He considered fishing a serious business, and he didn’t want to trivialize that. But he let them hang red-white-and-blue bunting and flags, and to sound the air horn when passing the beach.
Tom wondered when everything had changed for Zane. He’d gone from being a friendly guy, a pillar of the Point Judith fishing community, to being moody and reclusive. Grub was a different story. He had always been nasty—getting into bar fights, leading the charge on the buoy-cutting incidents.
He’d been suspected of, but never apprehended for, smuggling marijuana. When he was young, he bought into the Coyote Den in New Bedford, a “gentlemen’s club” that was later raided for prostitution. Grub sold out just before his business partner was arrested for tax evasion and money laundering. Tom still wasn’t sure how Grub had managed to avoid being indicted, too.
So Tom wasn’t completely shocked that Grub would be involved in what was looking like murder for hire. But Zane? He hadn’t seen that coming, not by a long shot. When he thought about Zane’s downward spiral, he honestly believed it had begun when Anna died. She had loved Zane and kept him on track, steered him away from Grub’s influence. He wasn’t perfect, but with Anna he was okay. A decent enough husband and father, a good fisherman and boss.
Those days were over.
Zane had been taken into custody; there was a manhunt for Grub and Ronnie. Tom determined that he needed to inspect the damaged fishing vessel. So he climbed the ladder and stepped onto the deck. Here he saw the blizzard’s destruction up close. The sheet ice had cracked fiberglass, destroyed the portside winch supports, tangled stainless-steel stanchions and stays.
The cabin door had splintered in the storm. Tom stepped inside, felt the cold breath of damp and freezing December air. He glanced around, looking for any sign that the hull was compromised. But his attention was immediately grabbed by a design modification that he had never seen in any fishing boat before.
The cabin’s table and settees had been removed, and shelves—or racks—had been installed. They were crudely made out of unvarnished pine, as if they were temporary installations. Tom took a closer look. There was a large frame, about the length and width of a twin bed, with boards set up vertically, six inches apart, like dividers in an oversize file cabinet.
He had been wondering why Zane went out in that storm. The lobsterman had been heading toward Watch Hill, where Maddie had been shot—most likely by his son. But what purpose would the boat have served? Presumably, Ronnie had a vehicle and wouldn’t have needed transportation on a lobster boat in treacherous seas. Had the plan been to pick up cargo? Were these racks intended to hold drugs? Or, if Zane was working with Grub, were they supposed to imprison people? CeCe? The thought was horrific.
Tom took some photos of the structure from different angles and texted them to Conor with the message What do these look like?
Art storage racks, Conor texted back. Kate has them at the gallery. Where are you?
Now that Conor had put the idea in Tom’s head, he saw it perfectly. That’s exactly what they were. But for what art? Maddie’s, he assumed, but there had been no paintings found at the Ocean House and certainly not on the beach path. He felt there was still a missing step: If Zane had been taking the Anna G to Watch Hill to pick up art, who was supposed to deliver it to him?
His phone buzzed. It was Conor.
“Hey,” Tom said. “Thanks for the info—I think you’re right. Zane was planning to transport paintings. I’m on his boat, and . . .”
