I wasn’t in the best shape Tuesday morning. Jack promised to call Trenton State as soon as he got to the station house, and to make sure that he got it done before he caught a case, he left a little early. I was ready early myself because I had to pack Eddie off to Elsie and get to the college in time to pick up my class list and all the tons of notices that were always in my box, instructions on everything from where to park to how to fill out the new, very necessary forms that appeared at the start of each new school year.
There had been no word from Dodie and I was scared. When I got to the college, I called her law firm and asked for her. I was told by a crisp young female voice that Ms. Murchison was on vacation and I was welcome to leave a message. I didn’t.
Maybe it was nothing but I couldn’t accept that. Dodie was no fool. She wanted to know who had killed Ken Buckley and Tina Frisch so that she would be off the hook. It was possible, as Jack suggested, that her disappearance was an indication that much that she had told me was false, that she, in fact, had killed both of them and that sending me on a wild goose chase had just given her another twenty-four hours to effect her disappearance.
The other possibility was, as Jack had also suggested, that someone had followed me—or Jack—on Sunday night to Greenwillow and had seen Dodie drive up, go in, and leave. And then he had followed her because, if she had been the last person to talk to Tina, she might know what Tina knew, who the killer of Ken Buckley was.
There was also the chance that she had been picked up somehow by the police, perhaps for speeding, and a check determined that she was wanted for questioning in a homicide case. If that had happened, having Tina’s diamond earring in her purse wasn’t going to help her case.
It was a good thing I had done all this before. I found my class assignment and my room, met all the new students and began to commit their names to memory. Some of them had the book, others didn’t. Nothing new there. One thought this was an advanced class and left. Another found this wasn’t the class she was assigned to, but she decided to stay and see whether she liked it. I even managed to get some teaching done when all the bookkeeping was taken care of.
When it was over, I dropped off my attendance list at the registrar and hurried to the cafeteria for a quick lunch. Then I drove home to see if Jack had called.
There was a message from him on the machine: “Talked to a guy at Trenton State just now. He’ll get back to me later today with the list of names of people released on that date. Sorry I couldn’t do anything sooner but you know how it is. I also called Chief Springer and asked if Dodie Murchison had been found. He said she hadn’t turned up and he figures she’s out of the country by now. Give me a call when you get home.”
I called but he wasn’t there, so I did my shopping before driving over to Elsie’s to pick up Eddie. If any police department had arrested Dodie for any reason, her name would have come up on their computer as wanted in Suffolk County. So it was a pretty good bet that she was still at large—or being held somewhere by a killer.
All kinds of ideas were dancing in my head as I got Eddie out of the car and into the house. I put him safely in the playpen and then went back out for my bags of groceries. It took two trips and when I came inside for the last time, the phone was ringing. I literally dropped the bags and ran.
“Chris?” my husband’s voice said.
“Just a little out of breath. What’ve you got?”
“The name we’ve been looking for.”
“Tell me.”
“Five men were released from Trenton State that day. Two were in their forties, one in his thirties, two in their twenties. A twenty-six-year-old was black, so I figured that was a long shot. The other guy—are you ready for this?”
“Ready. Tell me.”
“The last guy was named Richard Springer, nickname Buzz or Buzzy.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Right. So our friend Curt Springer knew his brother had gone to Fire Island and was never heard of again and he got the police chief job in Blue Harbor a couple of years later, probably so he could investigate his brother’s disappearance in his spare time. It also explains how Buzzy got out of prison with a new identity. A cop—and Curt was a cop somewhere or other before he got this job—would know exactly how to get him the papers he’d need to start a new life.”
“Jack, I’m afraid he may have killed Dodie.”
“OK, listen to me. I’ve just called the sheriff’s office in Suffolk County. They’re up to speed on the Buckley and Frisch homicides. I’m going to take the night off from my classes and go out to Blue Harbor and try to talk to Curt. He kind of liked me and maybe I can talk him into telling me where Dodie is. It’s two days since you saw her. If he hasn’t killed her, she may not last much longer.”
“You can’t take off the time from your classes, Jack,” I said.
“This is life and death.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll call Elsie to come right away. She can stay over if I don’t get back in good time.”
“Chris, I don’t think that’s such a—”
“Jack, if you miss the second night of classes—”
“OK, OK. I’ll call the deputy back and let him know. But I don’t like this.”
I assured him I could handle it, more to hear myself say it than to tell him what he already knew. He gave me the name of the deputy and all the information I would need.
When I got off the phone, I called Elsie, who said she would come right over, and then Deputy Shrager, who said he would meet me at the ferry as soon as I could get there.
It would be up to me to coax Curt Springer into disclosing where Dodie Murchison was being held. If he had her, and she was still alive.
I had thrown a change of clothes into a small bag. I am a day person, not a night person, and I fade fast after dark, so I didn’t look forward to driving home late at night. By the time I got to the Bay Shore ferry slip, it was close to six. It took no time to find Deputy Shrager; he had been looking out for me for half an hour.
“Thank you for coming, Mrs. Brooks,” he said. “We’ve been looking everywhere we can think of that a person could be hidden, but we’ve come up with nothing. There’s a ferry leaves here in about ten minutes. One of our people is already in Blue Harbor and we’re in contact. Springer’s in his office. Your husband’s given us the whole story. We’d just like you to sweet-talk Springer, see if he’ll tell you where the Murchison woman is. Tell him anything you want. We just want to find her alive. We want to make a case against Springer, but she’s our first priority.”
I said I would do my best. We got on the ferry with a handful of people. It would be a longer trip than usual. With the reduced number of passengers, two routes had been combined and Blue Harbor was the second stop.
We talked on the way. His name was Terence Shrager and he asked me to call him Terry. He was a lean man with the weather-beaten face of a farmer and a calm, reassuring demeanor. It didn’t take an expert to see that I was nervous, but I relaxed some as we talked.
During the forty-minute run, he talked several times on a cell phone to the man already in Blue Harbor. “Springer’s still there,” Terry said, each time he got off. As we approached the pier with all the red wagons hanging from their hooks, he said, “Brad Schofield’s waiting for us. He’s going to walk you to Springer’s office. Springer has never laid eyes on any of us and we’ve done our best to look like we belong.”
I smiled. He was wearing a plain green T-shirt and jeans that were loose around the ankles so I knew that was where his weapon was holstered. The ferry came in smoothly, and we stepped off after a couple of men who looked as though they had just finished a day on Wall Street.
A man in cutoffs and a big sweatshirt moved toward us through the small group waiting with wagons, and was introduced to me as Brad Schofield. We started walking toward the Blue Harbor municipal building.
I left the door to the outer office open as we had agreed. The secretary was gone. I went up to the closed door to the chief’s office and knocked.
“Come in,” Springer called.
I opened the door and walked inside, leaving the door open behind me. “Hi, Chief.”
Springer looked surprised. “Mrs. Brooks. I thought you folks left the island on Sunday.”
“We did. I came back to talk to you.” I sat in the chair on the visitor’s side of the desk.
“About what?”
“About Dodie Murchison. I’m very worried about her. I think you know where she is.”
His eyes darted around before settling on me, as though he sensed that something was going on behind his back. Then he smiled. “How would I know? I told Jack when he called this morning she hasn’t turned up anywhere. I’d put money on her being long gone, out of the country maybe.”
“Curt,” I said, using his first name for the first time, “we know what happened to Buzzy.”
“You—” He stopped, looking confused. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“We know how your brother died. It was in the house that burned down fifteen years ago.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He had paled and I thought his hand was trembling.
“Richard Springer got out of Trenton State Prison about eighteen years ago. Someone had arranged a new name and a new identity for him. He became William Jamieson. He met a woman the day he got out of prison and he became friends with her. She had a little girl who was only five years old at that time. The little girl’s name was Tina Frisch.”
This time his hand shook visibly. “Tina Frisch knew him?”
“She thought he was her father,” I said, “but he wasn’t. She’d been looking for him for years. By coincidence she came out to Blue Harbor this summer, the same summer you found out what happened to your brother.”
“Ken Buckley killed him.”
“No, he didn’t, Curt. A young girl killed him after he made advances. It was an accident. She was trying to protect herself. Ken Buckley just came in afterwards to clean up the mess.”
“That’s a lie. Buckley killed him and got rid of his body—I don’t know how. They all covered up for him. Everybody here was his friend. They talk about the blue wall of silence. It’s nothing compared to Blue Harbor.”
I didn’t want to argue about it. “Dodie Murchison was an innocent victim in all this. Please tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know. I’ve been looking for her since she left Fire Island.”
“I saw her Sunday night.”
“You saw her and you didn’t report it?” He was doing his best to sound angry. “She’s a suspect in two homicides.”
“You followed us home from Bay Shore, didn’t you? You followed us to the place where I met Dodie. And then you followed her when she left.”
“You’ve got a good imagination, Mrs. Brooks. Murchison killed Tina Frisch. Her fingerprints are all over the bicycle, all over the gate. We’ve got a good case against her. I bet she even has the missing diamond earring.”
I think that was the moment I became absolutely certain that he had her. He had gone through her handbag and found the earring. I wondered whether he had killed her and made it look like suicide. With the earring, he might even have a pretty good circumstantial case.
“Did you see it?” I asked.
“What?”
“The diamond earring.”
“I didn’t see anything. Look, Mrs. Brooks, you’re a smart lady but you’ve got this all wrong. You’re right, I had a brother. He was a good kid who made one mistake and he paid for it. Buckley killed him—maybe they got into a fight—and Buckley kept it a secret for fifteen years. I don’t know who killed Buckley, maybe Murchison, maybe Tina Frisch, but he got what he deserved.”
“I know you did it, Curt,” I said, keeping my voice low and steady. “Jack knows you did it. It was a misunderstanding. You thought Ken killed your brother and you wanted to punish him, but Ken never killed anybody, and all Tina wanted was to find out what happened to a man she thought might be her father. The only thing I don’t understand is why Ken had no clothes on when they found his body.”
Something changed in him when I finished speaking. “You think I’m a fag, is that what you think?”
“I don’t think anything. I just wondered—”
“I made him undress,” Springer said, his face changing. “I wanted it to look like he was waiting for a woman, like a woman killed him. I used a woman’s gun. He was a ladies’ man, that son of a bitch. I figured he killed my brother over a woman.”
“So you made him undress and get into bed. And then you shot him.”
“Yeah. I let him know what for, too. And then I went downstairs and got the stove going and put some papers on it so they’d burn the place down.”
“Like the Norrises’ house.”
“Just like the house where they burned my brother.”
“Is that when Tina came in?”
“I don’t know when she came in. It could’ve been while I was upstairs with Buckley. I found her in the living room just before I ducked out. She was scared, as if she knew what had happened upstairs. I told her if she ever said a word about what happened, I’d kill her.”
“She never did say a word, not to me and not to anyone I know of. What happened then?”
“There was an old fireman’s coat hanging on a hook. She grabbed it and put it over her head. Everything was burning by then and I could hear noise outside. I went out and made like I’d just got there. She just disappeared.”
Through the crowd with the coat over her head, making her way to safety and anonymity until she bumped into me. “Why did you kill her, Curt?”
“I saw her with the woman lawyer. I figured she’d told her everything. I hid near the grouper house she was staying in and waited for her to come back. I got myself a goddamn tick, if you can believe it.” He showed me a red mark on his forearm where he must have taken it out with a needle. That was his punishment for hiding in the tall grasses. “When the lawyer left, I grabbed Tina. And if it makes any difference, I didn’t follow you to Bay Shore. I took an earlier ferry and waited for you.”
So that was the story. He had probably never noticed that his second victim was wearing only one earring.
“Please,” I said. “Please tell us where Dodie Murchison is.”
“What’s it worth to you?”
“Jack and I will do our best to help you. I have a wonderful lawyer friend and I’ll ask him to defend you.”
“Sure.” He opened a drawer with his right hand and I got scared. I knew the deputies were in the building. With luck, they were in the secretary’s office, just the other side of the open door behind me. Springer didn’t ordinarily carry a gun but I knew he had one, and as the drawer slid open, I knew it must be there.
“Curt,” I said.
He pulled a gun out of the drawer as I watched in horror, said something that sounded like “Gibson,” and as I screamed and dropped to the floor, there was a terrible explosion.