After we turned off Indian Hill Road, J.W. followed a lot of back roads and switchbacks, and a couple times after taking a sharp curve he pulled quickly to the side of the road and turned off the headlights. He wanted to make sure nobody was following us, he said, and when I asked him what he’d do if somebody was, he said he’d drive straight to state police headquarters in Oak Bluffs, jam on his brakes in the middle of Temahigan Avenue, and hope for a rear-end collision.
Nothing short of a Mack truck, he said, could run his lumbering old Land Cruiser off the road.
After a while it became clear that we were not being followed. That seemed to disappoint J.W., who always welcomed an excuse for a little derring-do.
It was well after midnight by the time we got back to the house. Aside from the soft yellow glow of a night-light in the kitchen, the Jackson residence was dark. I was glad that Zee had already gone to bed. It meant that I didn’t have to participate in our fishing lie.
A goose egg throbbed on my head, and a jittery brew of adrenaline and anger and fear was pumping through my arteries. It didn’t look like I was going to fall asleep anytime soon. So I whispered good-night to J.W., found a beer in his refrigerator, and took it out onto the balcony. From up there, the Vineyard was moonlit and quiet and altogether peaceful, the way it must have looked to the seagoing wanderers who discovered it more than three hundred years ago.
Now what? After that brief, frustrating encounter with glassy-eyed Christa, I’d been mentally preparing to go back to America and tell Mike and Neddie that I’d delivered their message to their daughter, that she was alive, at least, if not necessarily well, but that I doubted they’d see her before Mike died.
But then all the lights had gone out and I’d found my cell door unlocked and we’d escaped, and I was pretty much convinced that Christa had arranged for those things to happen. If she had, it meant there was more going on behind those glazed eyes than she was letting on. Maybe she wasn’t simply a brainwashed victim of Alain Duval’s charisma—or the tranquilizers he was feeding her, or some combination of both.
Maybe Christa Doyle was Duval’s unwilling prisoner, being guarded by those bulky Simon Peters the way J.W. and I had been—and by the Simon Peter named Frank Dyer in particular, it seemed.
I wondered if each of Duval’s so-called Followers had a personal full-time Simon Peter to guard her, or if Christa was special.
If she was being held against her will, I figured my job was to spring her and take her home, personal bodyguard or not.
To do that, I needed a good plan. And to make a good plan—as opposed to my usual half-assed plans, such as the one that had gotten me and J.W. whacked on the head and locked up—I needed more information. To get useful information, I needed to know what questions to ask.
By the time my beer bottle was empty, I didn’t exactly have a plan. But I’d figured out some of those questions.
It was a start.
I woke up late, and when I wandered into the kitchen, Zee and the kids had already left and J.W. was heading for the door.
“Sleep well?” he said.
“No. You?”
He smiled. “I had Zee to curl up with.”
“How’d she swallow your lie?”
“I didn’t have to lie. When I crawled in next to her, she sort of mumbled, ‘Catch anything?’ And I said, ‘Nothing. Didn’t have a hit, either of us.’ And that was the truth.” He lifted his hand. “Evangeline’s waiting at the Skyes’ farmhouse, and I’m running late, so I’m outta here. Stay out of trouble, at least until I can join you. I don’t want to miss any of the fun.”
I got to the tattoo parlor in Vineyard Haven around ten-thirty. A hand-lettered sign on the door said they opened at eleven. So I got some coffee to go from the deli on the corner and took it to a bench across the street. At five minutes before eleven, Buster, the tattoo artist, arrived. He unlocked the door and went in. I went in two minutes later.
The front room was empty. I called, “Hey, Buster. You here?”
A minute later his head poked out of the curtained doorway. “We’re not open yet. Gimme five minutes.”
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
He blinked at me, then smiled. “Oh, yeah. I remember you.” He came into the front room. “What’s up?”
“I want to pick your brain some more.”
“About that tattoo I did for that girl? The eye?” He shrugged. “I think you picked clean what little is left of my poor old brain the other day. Sorry.” He turned and shuffled some papers on the counter.
I took out my wallet. “I’ll pay you for your time.”
He turned back to me, frowned at me for a moment, then waved the back of his hand at me. “Money? Shit, I’m making more money than I know what to do with as it is. Put that away and have a seat.” He gestured at a chair, and we both sat down.
“I know you’re looking for that girl,” he said. “I ain’t seen her since you were here before. I’m guessing you haven’t caught up to her.”
I shrugged noncommittally. “I wanted to ask you about the guy who was with her.”
“I didn’t pay much attention to him, man.”
“Did she call him Frank?” I said.
“Maybe.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a minute, then shrugged. “Could be. Yeah. Now that you say it, that sounds right. The girl might’ve called him Frank.”
“What did he look like?”
Buster smiled. “You know, she was awfully cute, and there she was, laying there on my table with her pants down around her knees and her pretty young butt sticking up for me to draw a picture on…and I’m supposed to be noticing the guy?”
“Try, will you?”
“Okay, okay,” he muttered. “The guy. Frank. Grouchy bastard, I remember that. I like to talk with folks when I work, but this guy, he didn’t want to talk. Seemed like he was in a big hurry. He was in charge. He’s the one who gave me that eye picture, told me where he wanted me to draw it. Like she was a piece of meat, like he owned her. She didn’t say three words the whole time.”
“What did he look like?” I repeated.
“Oh, right.” Buster frowned. “Well, okay, um, glasses, long hair in a ponytail. Older than her, I’m pretty sure of that.” He shrugged.
This, I thought, had to be Frank Dyer, the guy I’d seen last night snuggling with Christa while they sang about how much they loved the Lord and He loved them.
“So this Frank was the one who wanted the Eye of Horus tattoo?”
Buster nodded.
“Did either of them say anything about its significance?”
He shrugged. “I don’t, ah…wait. One of ’em—the guy, I think it was, that Frank—he said something about a commitment. In my business we talk about what we call the tattoo commitment. You know, how a tattoo is permanent and getting one commits you to something that’s going to be with you for the rest of your life, and how there are two kinds of people—those who have tattoos and those who don’t. I remember the girl didn’t seem very enthusiastic about her tattoo, and that Frank guy talking about a commitment.”
“Like it was a commitment to him?” I said.
“Nah. More like a commitment to God or something. It sounded like the two of ’em had been through it all before. Frank, there, he was not very patient with her. Basically told her to lie still so I could do it, get it over with. When I finished, she didn’t even glance at my little work of art. Just climbed down from the table, hiked up her drawers, and walked out.”
“Get it over with?” I repeated.
“The guy, like I said, he was in a big hurry. It was like getting the girl her tattoo was some chore on a list of things he wanted to get done.” He shrugged. “For most people, getting a tattoo is a big deal. Not these two. She didn’t seem to care one way or the other, and the guy, he just wanted to get it done.”
“What about the girl’s mood? You said she didn’t care. Did she seem…normal?”
Buster shrugged. “She was real passive, I remember that. Did what the guy told her to do. Didn’t have much interest in her tattoo one way or the other. Didn’t react to the needle at all.”
“Could she have been on something?”
“On something?” He smiled. “Like some kind of, um, controlled substance, you mean?”
“I mean drugs,” I said.
Buster fixed me with a sincere look. “People come in here drunk, stoned, I turn ’em away. I don’t want anybody waking up the next morning wondering where that spider on their tit came from.”
“I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”
He shrugged. “Kinda sounded like it.”
“So Christa…?”
“She could’ve had a glass of wine, popped a red-and-white, taken a toke for courage,” he said. “But she knew what she was doing. Hell, half the people on the Vineyard pop Prozac, and the other half are alcoholics. If I turned away every customer who uses chemicals, I’d be broke in a week.”
“What about him? Frank?”
“He was as sober as you are right now,” he said.
“Last time I was here,” I said, “you mentioned that you’d done a number of Eye of Horus tattoos. All on youngish women, you said. Were these women usually accompanied by a guy like this one was?”
He nodded. “As I remember it, yes. But it’s really not something you pay much attention to. I bet three-quarters of the women who come in for their first tattoos have guys with them.”
Just then the door opened and three young people—two girls and one boy—came in. They all looked to be in their late teens, early twenties. They started looking at the tattoo designs on the walls.
I turned to Buster. “Looks like you’ve got some business. I appreciate your time.”
He nodded. “If I see your girl, I’ll let you know.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
I’d gone about a mile along the road to Oak Bluffs before I was certain that the big green Range Rover in my rearview mirror was following me. It had fallen in behind me shortly after I’d pulled out of the municipal lot in Vineyard Haven, and it stayed with me as I weaved through some side streets, and it didn’t seem to be making much of an effort to avoid being spotted.
I’d seen a couple of green Range Rovers parked in Alain Duval’s driveway and a couple more in his garage. It wasn’t much of a stretch to deduce that the one on my tail was one of them.
And then I understood why they hadn’t come after me and J.W. last night after we’d made our daring escape from Duval’s place. It was a small island. There weren’t that many places to hide. Sooner or later, if they tried hard enough, they’d find you.
And now they’d found me, and they were flaunting it. I was supposed to feel intimidated. Or frightened. Their message, I supposed, was: Back off.
Well, I had a message for them.
I continued into Oak Bluffs, drove directly to Temahigan Avenue, and stopped in front of the state police headquarters. I got out of the Land Cruiser in time to watch the green Range Rover drive slowly past.
I was tempted to flip whoever was sitting behind those tinted windows a middle-fingered salute, but I rejected the idea as immature. I thought about crooking my finger and beckoning them toward me. Bring it on, baby. Let’s see what you’ve got.
That wouldn’t be particularly grown-up, either.
So I put my hands on my hips and just watched them go. I assumed they’d report to Duval that the guy who they’d captured the night before had gone to the cops. That ought to give them something to chew on.
After the Range Rover passed out of sight, I leaned against J.W.’s Land Cruiser and tried to think about it. I didn’t get very far, but one thing seemed pretty clear: This wasn’t just about Christa Doyle.
I went inside. As I’d hoped, Olive Otero was on duty.
She was sitting behind a desk staring at her computer. When she saw me, she rolled her eyes at the ceiling, then said, “Mr. Coyne. Now what?”
“I know you and J. W. Jackson don’t hit it off,” I said. “But I’m not J.W. I come in peace.”
She stifled a smile. “Okay, fair enough.” She gestured at the chair across the desk from her. “What can I do for you?”
I sat down. “You can exchange information with me.”
“I don’t exchange information,” she said. “I gather it. What have you got for me?”
“I assume you’re still working on the Princess Ishewa case.”
“Anita Montgomery,” she said. “Yes.”
“I can tell you where the car that forced her off the road is hiding.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You sure of that?”
“Sure? No. But I’d bet a lot of money on it. I’d bet that if you checked this car you’d find paint from the princess’s car on it. It’s got a long dent on the passenger side, and he’s keeping it hidden in his garage.”
“Who’s he?”
“If I tell you, will you tell me what you know about him?”
“Probably not.”
I held up my hands and shrugged.
“Mr. Coyne,” she said, “you’re a lawyer, so I shouldn’t have to remind you that withholding information about a crime is itself a crime.”
“I am an officer of the court,” I said. “I know my duty.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t try to bargain with me.”
“I just want to know what’s going on around here,” I said lamely.
“I’ll tell you what I’m at liberty to tell you,” she said. “That’s all I can do.”
“There must have been paint scrapings on the princess’s old Pinto,” I said. “Your lab can analyze them and determine what kind of car ran her off the road. I bet that paint was green. I bet your forensics people have told you it came from a Range Rover.”
Olive Otero looked at me without expression.
“Okay,” I said. “You win. Alain Duval. That green Range Rover is in his garage.”
Olive Otero stared at me for a moment. “You’re telling me that Alain Duval drove Ms. Montgomery off the road with the intention of killing her?”
“He or one of his henchmen.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. But I believe it has something to do with Christa Doyle.”
She narrowed her eyes. “That’s the girl you’re looking for.”
“That’s the girl I’ve found,” I said. “She’s being held prisoner at Duval’s place in West Tisbury.”
“Prisoner?”
I shrugged. “They let me talk to her. She seems to be drugged, or brainwashed, or both. Anyway, when I was there, I saw a green Range Rover in the garage. It’s got a big long dent on its side.”
She smiled. “What else have you got for me?”
“What else? Isn’t that enough?”
“I wish it were,” she said. “How about a motive? How about an eyewitness? How about something I can take to a judge that will convince him to issue a warrant to enter that garage? Come on, Mr. Coyne. You know how it works.”
“You must have some idea about motive,” I said. “We both know something’s cooking here on the island. People are being killed. Duval has this army of tough guys around him. They drive green Range Rovers like the one in his garage with the dented side. One of them followed me over here just now. That setup of Duval’s doesn’t look like any spiritual commune to me.”
“What does it look like to you?”
I shook my head. “That’s what I hoped you could tell me.”
“Well,” she said, “I can’t. But I can give you some advice.”
“What?” I said. I was pretty sure I knew what was coming.
“Leave the police work to the police,” she said, “and we’ll leave the lawyer work to the lawyers.”
“If J.W. or I get killed,” I said, “it’s on your head.”
“If one of you guys gets killed,” she said, “it’s because you didn’t mind your own business.”
“Check out Duval, Ms. Otero.”
“I appreciate your help,” she said. “Please deliver my message to your friend Jackson.” She lifted her hand. “Have a good day.” She turned her attention to her computer.
“While you’re at it,” I said, “you should check out Frank Dyer, too.”
Her eyes didn’t leave her computer monitor. “We check out everybody,” she said. “Good-bye, Mr. Coyne.”