If he stuck to a logical list of priorities, the cult’s gaggle of levitating devotees would not be next to interview, but as he’s in the vicinity and following no such list, Émile Cinq-Mars knocks on their door. Besides, he bears a grudge against them, still miffed by the lack of civility he experienced when he showed up with a dead dog. If he can in any way disturb their afternoon, that success will only elevate his.
He thinks it might make him so happy, he’ll positively float off the ground.
For this encounter, the group’s leader and resident doorman at the old City Hall does nothing to ingratiate himself or his band of spiritual neophytes. He’s still wearing his high-rise boots, suitable for a clown. “Not another dead dog story.” The man is expressionless. “Do we have an epidemic on our hands?”
Today he’s not sweaty, and his motley crew seeking to defy gravity must be on a break or enjoying nap time. They’ve gone quiet, wherever they might be.
Cinq-Mars is equally as superior. “You’re the only person on the island who doesn’t know who you’re talking to right now, or why, or what’s at stake.”
Arms crossed, a hip buttressed against the doorjamb, the tall, skinny, waiflike sentry with a skin tone that eschews the sun—perhaps Dracula-like he ventures out only at night and, unlike the drinker of blood, only during storms—blows a bubble with chewing gum. It pops, and his tongue slips it back into his mouth again. He asks, “Who are you supposed to be? King Kong?”
The detective figures that he probably deserves that, and tells him, “I’m an officer of the law investigating a rash of murders on this island.”
The lie, he justifies, is a minor one, a question of time and circumstance. The fib is working, as the guy seems less blasé. “You’re a cop. A cop who the last time he was here didn’t know that this isn’t the real City Hall. Are you sure you’ve got your story straight?”
Cinq-Mars figures he’s owed that one, too.
“Like I said, you’re the only person on the island who hasn’t heard of me. Best advice? Take this meeting seriously.”
The man concedes an inch, at least. “I can’t help with any murders.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“Officer,” he says, giving his brow a wipe as though overcome by the lassitude of the age, “shouldn’t you show me your badge or something?”
Rather than do the impossible, Cinq-Mars stares him down.
“Okay, okay. Look, we’re not exactly integrated with island life. People don’t know us, we don’t know them. I don’t know you or anybody else, so don’t take it personal. Truth is, me and nobody who comes here can help you.”
“Your group was on the ridge the night the Reverend Lescavage was murdered.”
“How do you know?”
“Who else would be silly enough to be out on a night like that?”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I’m not answering questions. You are.”
At an impasse, perhaps a crossroads, the two men glare back at each other.
“There’s a slow way to do this,” Cinq-Mars advises him. “Most find it mildly uncomfortable. Some come undone. Another way is easy. Which do you prefer?”
“The quick,” the man said. “Of course. The easy.”
“Good answer. Let me in. I’ll ask, you’ll reply. Afterward, I’m gone from your life and you probably won’t remember I was here.”
“Unless you arrest me for murder.”
“There’s that.”
The man holds the door wide open, and Émile Cinq-Mars steps inside. His nostrils twitch from the scent of incense. Patchouli. A few sticks smoke nearby. His host takes him through to an antechamber off the vestibule, where they sit under the image of a white-bearded guru with long white tresses seated in the lotus position and smiling idiotically, in Émile’s opinion, like a dolt in love with his daily enema. He desperately wants to say so but correctly holds his tongue. The skinny fellow squats on an exercise ball behind a small table being used as a desk. If he crosses his legs on that thing and keeps his balance without rolling away, Émile will be impressed. But the man keeps both feet steadily on the floor.
“Fire away,” the fellow on his ball says. He bounces slightly.
“My wife is studying numerology.”
“Seriously?”
“I don’t know how serious it is.”
“I mean, seriously, you’re going to talk about your wife?”
“I was going to explain why I want your complete name and date of birth. Now, I’ll just ask you to tell me.” Cinq-Mars has armed himself with a notebook picked up at the General Store, and he writes down the mystic’s name: Geoff Samuel Brown. And his date of birth: February 9, 1986. The man volunteers as well that he’s from Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
“Is she going to find out the murderer using numerology?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her. If you knew my wife, you wouldn’t either. What were you doing up on the ridge the night of the murders?”
Don’t give him a chance to confirm or deny his presence there. Stick with the assumption as being a bald fact and see how he bears up.
“We were out in the storm.”
“Obviously.”
“I mean, we were out there because of the storm. No storm, we stay home.”
“I’ll repeat my question. What were you doing?”
“Being with God. You?”
“You believe in a thunder god, do you? Or is it a rain god? It wasn’t the goddess moon.”
“No harm to remind the soul how fleeting life is. Have you ever contemplated such a thing? No. You wouldn’t. A cop. A storm such as the one that recently swept through here has power, great force, yet that appearance of force is less than a mosquito’s piddling fart compared to the power loose in the universe. Have you contemplated such a thing? This is where our minds diverge. We remind ourselves how small we are in comparison to that mere puff of nature, which helps us begin to grasp how infinitesimal we are compared to a force of infinite power.”
Cinq-Mars nods. He says, “Good.”
“Why good?”
“I was hoping you weren’t trying to get struck by lightning.”
“Maybe we were.”
“You jest.”
“So do you. There wasn’t any lightning when we went up there. Not at first.”
“Were you trying to fly?”
The man straightens in his seat, then tugs on tufts of hair at the nape of his neck. This seems a studied reaction, to Émile’s eye. Then Geoff Brown arrives at a decision and appears determined not to answer the question. In a way, Cinq-Mars is impressed, as any answer will put him at a disadvantage.
“Did you see anything while you were up there? A man was murdered on the ridge. For the sake of this conversation, let’s say that you didn’t do it—”
“I didn’t. We didn’t.”
“If you had, would you admit it? You see what I’m getting at. Let’s say that you didn’t kill the minister. Did you see anybody or anything up on the ridge that might pertain to this investigation?”
“Flashlights,” the man admits. “They were a bit far off, but we saw them.”
“How many?”
“More than one. Hard to tell otherwise. So two, maybe three.”
“In what direction were they coming from, and what direction were they going?”
“They came from North Head. We assumed they were following the trail. We saw them over Ashburton Head. Then we saw another man—one flashlight—coming up from the other direction. He saw us, too. After that, we were on our way.”
“Why would you say that you had nothing to contribute to this investigation if you saw all that?” He doesn’t give Brown a chance to answer, and presses on. “When did you see the dead man?”
The silence floats in the room like smoke hovering at eye level, though Cinq-Mars imagines the other man’s mind buzzing. “Never said I did,” Brown replies.
“Come on. You left early. You packed up in a flash. Something spooked you.”
“The man who came up the trail spooked us.”
“Why?”
Geoff Brown passes his right hand over his face to give his left eyebrow a scratch. Émile doesn’t recognize the gesture and is not sure how to read it. Only later will he think that it occurred while the man was making a decision to tell the truth.
“We saw lights. We valued our privacy. A couple of volunteers from our group went to investigate. To intercept. A significant hike. They found a dead man. Obviously slaughtered. They brought us back that news. Then while we were considering what to do, the other man came by. I mean, who walks out of a storm of that power? Besides us? And now the cliffs were crowded. We were, as you say, spooked. That made us think that maybe we’d better leave before we were blamed. We have no pull on this island, no friends in high places. Few friends period. We didn’t know where the storm walker guy came from. Maybe he was with the others and had just circled around, so he might be a murderer. That was a definite possibility, which put us in danger, right? Safety in numbers, though. Even if he was just an innocent bystander, like us, then he might tell others that we were up there. So we left in the dark before anybody could identify who we were. How did you identify us, anyway?”
The question warrants a smirk from Cinq-Mars, and Geoff Brown understands. What other large group would be out in a storm for the fun of it? Boy Scouts? They’d be prepared, they’d head home early. Essentially, Geoff Brown had confirmed the identity of his group for him.
“Did you know the victim, sir? The clergyman?”
The way he casts his glance down instantly betrays him. He can’t deny it now, and seems to understand that. “I met him a few times. Like you, he seemed to enjoy making fun of us. Apparently, not that I was there, he frequently mentioned our group in his sermons. Not with much affection. Very little Christian kindness. Or even respect.”
“How do you know?”
“That he spoke about us? He told me. Anytime we were mentioned he sent me a copy of the sermon. Always with a request for comments, but we didn’t bite.”
“Why do you suppose he did that?”
“Honestly?”
Usually when someone brings up the matter of honesty, it is because they intend to lie. Cinq-Mars, on a hunch that this could be an example that disproves the rule, nods.
“He had trouble with believers. He baited me so that I might bait him back.”
“Did you bother?”
“Once at the grocer’s. Once rather loudly at the farmers’ market. The talks were heated and I am ashamed for losing my equilibrium. That’s all he wanted, I think. To show me and others that I’m not as enlightened as I might pretend. He didn’t need to go to all that trouble, truth be told. All he had to do was ask.”
He didn’t sound like a man who’d had it in for the minister.
“One more quick question.”
“As long as you don’t mean a trick question.”
“Maybe it is. Why do you wear tall boots when you’re tall to start with?”
He studies them first, the six-inch heels and the five-inch soles. He smiles, as though to concede that they look ridiculous. “When I take them off, my normal height seems small. That provides me with two advantages. One, I feel small, so my natural height is no longer a point of pride. I’m helped to feel humble. And two, I feel that I should be higher, as though I’m sinking when I should feel as though I’m—”
He stops.
“Flying?” Cinq-Mars coaxes him. “Levitating?”
“I feel as though I’m sinking when I should be elevating my consciousness.”
“Good save,” Cinq-Mars opines. “I hope you won’t be offended, or mind my saying so, but you might be a lesser kook than I first imagined.”
That wins him a smile.
“I’ll need to speak to the others, specifically to the two men who saw the body, then to everyone in your group.”
“Not two men,” Brown corrects him. “One man, one woman. The woman is still on the island. The man, I’m afraid, is deceased.”
Cinq-Mars stares down his imposing beak at him. “Don’t tell me,” he says.
“Professor DeWitt,” Brown admits.
“And what can you tell me about that?”
“Nothing. We’re in shock. That’s why no on is here today. We don’t understand it. Honestly, he gave us no indication. I’m sure it was an accident. Had to be. Unless—. Did someone kill him, too?”
Cinq-Mars is unsure of his own response. He proceeds slowly. “What is it, Mr. Brown, that requires you to be here today? Why aren’t you with the others? What are you protecting? You’re obviously guarding the place.”
Geoff Brown from Pawtucket raises an eyebrow and purses his lips briefly, nothing more. Cinq-Mars is being informed that that is none of his business, and a murder investigation doesn’t change that opinion.
He rises. “Thank you,” he says. “I’m sorry for your loss. And I hope you get off the ground soon.”
“Sure you do,” Brown says.
At the front door, while being ushered out, Cinq-Mars surprises him. “I agree with you, by the way. I find that especially true in my profession. If you think about it, you might understand why.”
“What’s that?” Brown, tall in his shoes, is stumped by his comment.
“Always good to remind the soul how fleeting life is. Thanks, Mr. Brown.”
He hates it when he comes to respect someone he’s previously dismissed, but he imagines that he’ll get past his umbrage with himself soon enough.
* * *
At the height of his powers as a big-city detective, Émile Cinq-Mars wouldn’t have done this, and he wonders if he’s being lazy, hazy, or caving in to a pending old age. Perhaps, after a long career, he’s finally being efficient with the public purse. He’d normally line up witnesses and suspects in an order that permitted his investigative prowess to step along a path taking him from pillar to post logically. Later, should he find it possible to connect the dots with a thread, the line might show circles closing in around the culprit. Perpetually tightening. He never minded crisscrossing the city daily, or getting stuck in traffic, or missing a meal because of a zany schedule. What mattered more was to proceed along a preconceived, virtually ordained, pattern. On this job, he is not dipping into any public purse, so even his willingness to be efficient makes no sense, yet he’s finding that he prefers to interview people according to their proximity, not according to any plan. Pending old age is the answer he selects. What else accounts for the shift? That, and saving on gas money, which is now a personal expense.
So the next person he seeks to interview is Pete Briscoe. He’s closest.
His mental preparation with respect to Briscoe has been halfhearted, in part because he doesn’t really expect to find him in. Don’t fisherman fish? They’re in fishing season, the man should be out on the water. He’s surprised when he finds him puttering outside his house, packing his pickup before heading down to the waterfront. Mildly cross with himself for not performing his due diligence on this guy, Émile warns himself to be circumspect, to make this an initial fact-finding tour only. He can always bring a keener focus once he has his ducks in a row.
The man greets him warmly. They no sooner shake hands than Ora Matheson pokes her head out from behind the screen door onto Pete’s porch. “Petey? Going yet?” Then she sees Cinq-Mars. “Oh. Hello.”
Not as a question, Cinq-Mars looks at Briscoe, who shrugs. “Girlfriend,” the fisherman states, an explanation neither requested nor required.
Ora bounces down the steps. “You’re him, aren’t you? Tall, with a big—” About to say nose, she censors herself, something that Émile determines is uncommon for her. To bring attention to what is already an attention grabber crosses a line that she recognizes as a social barrier. Émile now knows how complete strangers are managing to identify him so confidently. “I mean,” she says, “you’re tall. Petey told me you’re so tall.”
Briscoe is embarrassed. Cinq-Mars couldn’t care less.
“Yes, I have a massive honker. So did my dad, and his dad, and so on, going back who knows how many generations. I wear it with pride.”
“Oh my God,” she says, “it is huge!”
“Ora,” Briscoe snaps back.
She checks in with him, then looks at Cinq-Mars. Then makes a comic face, as though to suggest that some people are too uptight to suit her, although nothing’s to be done. “Aren’t I the stupid mutt,” she says.
Catching them together is unfortunate, he thinks initially, yet Cinq-Mars quickly calculates an alternative strategy to take advantage of this development.
He addresses Briscoe. “You’re not fishing.”
“On my way. Crew’s on the dock. I’m not late, but I will be.”
“Oh, you can give the great detective—we heard you’re a really great detective, that you sent the Mafia packing—we can give him the time of day, Petey.”
“I suppose,” Briscoe says.
Cinq-Mars is adding up what’s been said about him lately and understands that his reputation has probably ignited and is now a brush fire. By dusk, he’ll have been responsible for solving the Jack the Ripper crimes, and in a week he’ll have been credited with arresting twenty of the world’s worst serial killers and uncovered that Osama bin Laden remains alive, living on the dole in Wichita.
“He’s trying to register for health care,” he says, but the young couple has no clue what he’s talking about, and can only glance at each other.
“You were Mr. Orrock’s housekeeper?” he asks, returning to seriousness.
“He was a slime bucket,” Ora claims. “You know? Really. There’s no excuse to treat good people the way he treated good people. I had to stand my ground with that man. Always trying to feel me up, he was.”
“If you’d’ve told me that, I would’ve throttled him myself,” Briscoe brags.
“Do you know who did?”
“What do you mean? Who? Who what?”
Émile’s hoping that this ploy works, knowing that it could easily backfire. Telling these two that Alfred Orrock was murdered will not merely ripple across the island and have an effect—in this community, it will be a tsunami. Shake people up. More talk might surface that way. The murderer will be surprised by what is common knowledge, and might show a hand unwittingly. Or not. Risk forms a big part of the strategy.
“Alfred Orrock was suffocated to death. People are going to gossip, I should warn you, about whether or not his nurse did it.”
“I was never his nurse.”
“Housemaid, then.”
“I looked after him, but I was never his nurse. I stood my ground on that.”
“His housemaid. You were there, though. That’s the thing. The night he died.”
“When I left him he was alive!”
“That may be true. I’m betting that you have no witnesses. Am I right?”
She starts to utter the Reverend Lescavage’s name but stops herself. That’s not going to do her any good.
“He was alive when I left him.”
“Then the minister showed up and he was killed, too. A busy night for somebody.”
“Wasn’t me!” She’s vehement about it, he’ll give her that.
“Of course not,” Pete Briscoe says.
Cinq-Mars grants them that. “He did tick you off, though, didn’t he? Feeling you up and being mean. You can see why people might talk. What they might say. They’ll think you despised the man. Not an overstatement, is it? People might say you’d had enough. A moment of rage, it wouldn’t take long, and suddenly he’s not breathing anymore. All you have to do is adjust the pillow and call up Lescavage to come on over, then if he puts up a fuss about the dead guy, off him, too. Or have your boyfriend do it.”
“Hey! You shut up now!”
“Why? I’m only pointing out what people will imagine, what they’ll say. The inevitable, don’t you think?”
Funny, Cinq-Mars notices, that the man is hot to defend himself when he is rather tepid about protecting his girlfriend when she’s accused.
“What were you burying up on the ridge the day I saw you, Mr. Briscoe?”
“My dog.”
“Why dig eight different holes?”
“What?”
“Where’s your dog now since she’s not there? What have you done with her remains?”
“Petey?” Ora asks, perturbed by the expression on her boyfriend’s face.
“I moved her. I dug her up again. Moved her.”
“Pete?”
“Never mind, Ora!” he barks. “A personal-type thing.”
“Eight holes?”
“I had trouble finding her again is all.”
“That’s not what it looked like to me.”
They’re still outside in Briscoe’s yard. Cinq-Mars wouldn’t mind going inside, talking within that confined space, which would be cooler, undoubtedly. Any moment for that shift has passed. He won’t be invited indoors now.
“What did it look like to you?” Briscoe asks him, and then to the surprise of both men, Ora asks exactly the same question, word for word. The look on her face suggests that she’s defending the honor of her man.
“I saw that digging site as an experiment,” Émile says, “a trial run, if you will. To discover where to dig your next grave.”
“What are you talking about?” Ora interjects. “Petey? Petey, what’s he talking about?”
“Bullshit,” Petey explains. “He’s talking bullshit, Ora.”
“I figured. Smart-ass detective, my royal ass.”
Perhaps by the end of the day, his island reputation may yet be mud.
“You’ll be going now,” Briscoe says.
Cinq-Mars decides that he might as well. He drives comfortably to North Head. Along the way he sees Briscoe’s pickup make an appearance, hanging back. Two can play at that game, and in North Head Cinq-Mars pulls over and Briscoe, with Ora along as a passenger, goes on by. He watches Briscoe unload at the docks with Ora’s help, then they kiss, then Ora heads off on foot alone. Briscoe greets his crew. Émile reminds himself to talk to that crew one day soon. They launch a dinghy to go fetch the fish boat, and while they do that, Cinq-Mars starts up again, and intercepts Ora down the road. He slows, and drives beside her while she walks.
“Need a lift?”
“I’m not gong far.”
“Hop in anyway. Escape the heat.”
She thinks about it and mops her forehead, then climbs in.
“Which way?” Cinq-Mars asks.
“Straight on except for the curves.”
They don’t have much to say to each other. Émile is not interested in developing a relationship that has to be advanced by his constant probing. His questions pertain only to the island, to what growing up here was like, to how anybody can ever eat dulse, let alone every day.
“It’s healthy! Loads of iron.”
“Maybe that’s why it tastes like iron ore.”
“Dulse chips beat potato chips hands down. Eat too many potato chips, they’ll kill you. Eat too much dulse and you’re Superman. Feel like him anyway.”
Turning down the sloped driveway to her home, which sits in a bit of a gulley, they are met in the yard by a woman he recognizes. She had the traffic incident with Professor DeWitt, in which she ended up in a ditch, later the hospital. Ora’s mom is coming across to see him. As he’s rolling down his window, Ora gives her an earful about who he is.
These women might be helpful someday. They might never trust him, but he feels that his cause will not be advanced if they fear him. The woman’s first words are, “Detective Big Shot.”
“I’m just trying to help out, ma’am.”
“Ma’am. Ma’am! Nobody’s called anybody ma’am around here since sharks wore bikinis.”
He doesn’t know for sure, but assumes that that means never.
“So the guy who nearly ran me down went over the cliff. You better not try to pin that one on me.”
“Mrs. Matheson, is it? Same as your daughter’s last name?”
“She’s not somebody’s doorstep drop, no.”
“You say,” Ora interjects.
“All that wailing was for you, my dear, not some figment of my imagination.”
She’s got her there.
“What are you driving Ora around for? What’s she done?”
“Aw, Mom.”
“Just saving her some walk time, Mrs. Matheson. On my way home anyway.”
“Home? Home! You mean you live here now?”
He smiles. “Temporarily. I used the wrong word. I was on the way to the rental cottage where I am temporarily residing.”
The woman seems satisfied that she’s won the day, and Cinq-Mars backs up, careful to avoid the big DULSE FOR SALE sign, underscored by the word SPECIALS! He carries on home. He’s happy to arrive, to put his feet up and have a drink. He tells Sandra so. “Good to be back in the rental cottage where I am temporarily residing.”
What? Some bee is in his bonnet about the case, she assumes.