“Where did you find this stuff?” I asked Martha as I scrolled through the news item.
“It was in the locked file called Sinclair/Thompson,” she said. The same name Rosemary had told me to search.
“But the password?”
“I remembered what you said about Stacey loving sea turtles. And I remembered you called the hatchlings last night Caretta caretta.”
“The Latin name for the loggerhead sea turtle,” I said.
“So I tried Caretta2.”
“September 25, 1986.” I scanned through the article and there it was: Stacey — she’d been eighteen at the time and home alone. It didn’t say much more than that and so we flipped through some of the other clippings, some of which dealt with a different case, to glean more information. I keyed in the name and more articles popped up. But there was very little detail on exactly what had happened. Then Martha had the brilliant idea of looking through Stacey’s autobiography. Half an hour later I had found the entry. I read it out loud to Martha.
It was the trees that really bothered me. Their dark shadows spilled across the sidewalk and the branches blocked the streetlights. When I looked up, their shiny green leaves were dull, black and menacing. I began to walk faster — I was only a block away. A pebble scraped on the sidewalk and I whirled. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw a dark silhouette among the shadows of the trees. Just my imagination. I stepped off the curb onto the narrow suburban road where the streetlights lit me up and made me feel both vulnerable and safe. I tried to block out the images coalescing inside my brain like so many unwanted wasps. I started to run. Only a block away. As I stopped and listened I heard the braking footfall of someone behind me. I turned to look, scanning the sidewalk, but it was too dark to see. Was I hearing things? I began walking again, resisting the urge to flee hysterically into the night.
My house was just past the Wilsons’ who were long since in bed. As my house came into view I stopped, momentarily confused. There were no lights on. None. The house stood dark, silent, and soulless. I shivered and looked behind me. No one. I approached the front door. Why had my parents not left the lights on? They had said they would. Promised they would. There was no car in the driveway either. Where were they? Had they forgotten I was coming home tonight? One year away at college and they’d forgotten me?
I grabbed the knob on the front door and turned. It was locked. Thank god it was locked. The Wilsons’ dog began barking and I quickly inserted my key in the lock and let myself in. I’d never come home to an empty house before. It seemed so alien, so cold. Where was Chili? He should have been at the front door to greet me. I turned on the switch and flooded the hall and the front stairs with light. A note on the bottom stair. I picked it up.
Grama had a heart attack. They’d call. I held back a sob, scrunched the note up. Had my parents taken the dog with them? To the hospital?
Cautiously I entered the living room, groping for the switch on the wall. From dark indefinable shapes the living room leapt to life with the familiar black leather sofa and matching chair, the Blackwood print over the fireplace, my mother’s silver candelabra with five red candles — always red — wall-to-wall bookcases, and the double window and back door to the yard, leading off the living room. It took me awhile to notice it, because it was very subtle, but the sheer curtain covering the eight little windows on the backdoor was moving. My heart rate went up as I stared, willing it to stop its gentle billowing. Gingerly I approached and pulled back the curtain. My heart stopped for a blinding instant. Someone had broken the window closest to the lock. Someone was in the house.
I whirled around, looking for a weapon, saw the candelabra and grabbed it. I had to get out of the house. I was moving silently through the living room back toward the front door, when a movement on the stairs to the second floor made me look up into a face of terror. A large man with a nylon stocking deforming his face, making it grotesque, stood at the top of the stairs, his right hand holding a baseball bat.
I fled to the phone in the kitchen, putting the candelabra on the counter, but it fell on the floor — the loud clanging noise a hideous beacon of where I was. I tried to dial 911 while the panic clawed its way into my mind, enveloping it and infecting it with its contagion. The sight of one dangling wire drilled its way into my brain and I dropped the phone, picked up the candelabra, and ran for the back door where I nearly tripped over him — Chili, lying on his side right in front of the door, as if guarding it for me. Too late. I could see that from the way his little neck lay at an unnatural angle, that and the sightless eyes. I felt nauseated as I frantically moved Chili out of the way with my foot and unlocked the door. I only got it partway open when out of the corner of my eye I saw the baseball bat arcing down toward my head with vicious speed. I threw up the candelabra in defence and I tried to duck, but the blow was shattering and the darkness complete.
I stopped reading. “That’s it. Christ. He must have raped her when she was unconscious,” I said. “She just talks about the horrors of the rape kit and how that made her feel. Nothing about the rape.”
“Why did he get off?” asked Martha.
I skimmed through the pages.
“Oh boy. Her brother bribed a judge and the case was sent to retrial but was thrown out on a technicality. Actually, key evidence, including the rape kit, went missing after the bribe was discovered.” I looked up. “David bribed a judge.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It says here that he hoped the judge would convict Wyatt. Instead it led to Wyatt’s release.”
“No wonder he and Stacey didn’t get along very well. David tries to help her and ends up ruining her chances of seeing her rapist go to jail,” said Martha.
“If this book is published he can kiss his job as a lawyer goodbye.”
“If he knows about the book. Gives him another dynamite motive.”
“What about Wyatt? He comes to Spaniel Island and Stacey recognizes him. She must be really bitter that he walked free and suddenly she has two things to hold over him, the fake vaccine and the rape. He’s turned himself into a respectable guy with a new name. He’s not going to want her ruining that. So he kills her.”
“It all fits. He beats women. At least, we think he does. He rapes Stacey. He fakes the vaccine. He kills Stacey,” said Martha.
“Yeah, but too many other people have motives almost as good.”
“But we can’t place them at the scene of the crime.”
“You mean the cricket?”
Martha looked at me as if she knew I was about to do something stupid, which I was. “What are you thinking, Cordi?”
“That I need to have a talk with Wyatt.”
“Not alone you’re not.”
Duncan waylaid Martha in our search for Wyatt – so much for her worries. I bumped into David in my meanderings and pigeonholed him.
“It seems you have another motive,” I said as he made an effort to detach himself from me.
He puffed out his cheeks. “Do you ever let up?”
“She was writing an autobiography.”
He looked startled for a moment and then regained his composure.
“So you knew?” I asked.
“Yes, of course I knew. She did talk to me, you know, from time to time.”
“So you know she detailed your bribe to the judge all those years ago. Before you were even a lawyer, no doubt.”
“Yes, I knew.”
“Was she aware of what it could do to your career if it got out?”
“I tried to reason with her but it didn’t work. She always blamed me for the fact that her rapist went free.”
“So you killed her.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. I didn’t kill her.”
“So who did?” I said.
“You tell me,” he retorted.
“Maybe nobody,” I said and then wondered why I’d said it.
He looked at me strangely and was about to say something, when Darcy happened upon us. He looked from me to David and said, “Interrupting something?”
To which David replied, “Not at all,” and he turned hastily and left.
I asked Darcy where Wyatt was. He said Wyatt had gone to the local watering hole, which had reopened, and he gave me directions.
“Are the boats running again?”
“Yup. They started first thing this morning and there are a gazillion islanders coming over to look at the damage.”
“What about the police?”
“They said they are coming, maybe later this afternoon or evening.”
I waved to Darcy and headed toward the watering hole.
I was feeling pretty good. What safer place than a restaurant to confront Wyatt? Delsey’s Spot was an A-frame building on stilts with a huge balcony full of tables, most of which were empty. I scanned them all but Wyatt wasn’t there.
I went inside, where it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The restaurant was one big marine motif. There was a bar built like a small jetty with bar stools made out of the spoked wooden steering wheels of boats — nicely capped with thick Plexiglas, for the sake of comfort. Various fishing nets festooned the walls, punctuated by buoys of all sizes and colours.
Wyatt was sitting at a booth right by the tall plate-glass windows that overlooked the balcony. One thing was consistent about this island: no one had a view of the sea from any building. It made the beach feel isolated and free, but it made the buildings feel claustrophobic and lacking in something. But they made up for whatever it was by being built on stilts with wonderful staircases and wraparound verandahs.
I called him by name and he looked up in surprise.
“May I join you?”
“Do I have a choice?”
I took that as a yes and slid in along the vinyl-
upholstered bench.
He’d been reading a paper and nursing a coffee. He made a point of carefully folding the paper and placing it on the table.
“I know all about you,” I said.
“No you don’t,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Not a good start. I didn’t like being on the defensive.
“I’ve read the articles about September 25, 1986,” I said.
“I was acquitted.” He pinioned my eyes with his steely gaze. I couldn’t get over how calm he was. It was unnatural.
“On a technicality,” I said.
“What’s your point?” he asked irritably.
“That as far as Stacey was concerned you are as guilty as they come.”
“Too bad she’s dead.”
“Too bad you killed her.”
He laughed at that and said, “Too bad you have no proof.” He was enjoying this so I went for the jugular.
“I found a cricket in your boot.”
He looked at me quizzically. “How would you know what was on my boot?” he asked and I kicked myself for not preparing an answer to that. So I ignored him.
“It puts you at the scene of the crime.” And I told him about the spilled crickets.
“Conviction by cricket? Can’t you do better than that?”
“It means you lied. You were in Stacey’s cabin that night.”
“Precisely — that night — it only means I was there sometime after the crickets escaped, but it is all speculation anyway. It wasn’t me.”
“How can you say that?”
“My boots were taken from my cabin the afternoon that Stacey was killed and someone returned them the following morning.”
I tried to hide my surprise. I had not thought of that scenario.
“Are you a diabetic?” I asked.
“What has that got to do with anything?”
“So you are?”
He moved his hand up to his neck as if looking for something and then let it drop. He gave an imperceptible nod.
I said, “Your MedicAlert necklace was found in Stacey’s hand.”
“So that’s where it went,” he said.
“So you admit to struggling with Stacey, who ripped off your necklace while you were killing her.”
“This is getting tedious. I did not kill Stacey.”
“So how do you explain your necklace in her hand?”
“It was taken the same afternoon.”
“Someone just strolled up to you and took it from around your neck?” I said.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. No. I took it off to take a sauna and it was gone when I got back.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?”
“Why would I want everyone to know I’m a diabetic?”
I changed tacks. “What did Stacey tell you when you met?”
“I didn’t recognize her. She was big and fat, not at all like the lithe little thing who cried rape.”
The waitress came and interrupted us. I ordered a tea as he said, “Don’t make yourself too comfortable here. I’m only humouring you, you know. It’s really rather stimulating to think you think I’m a murderer,” he said, his eyes sharp and piercing.
I tried again. “What did you talk about?”
“Our twenty-five year reunion? What does anyone talk about? Husbands, wives, kids, dogs, cats.”
I sat there stone-faced and he said, “Oh, lighten up, Cordi. It’s not all bad.” But I didn’t lighten up. “Okay. Okay. She told me she’d drag everything up again and see I was devetted, if there is such a word.”
“What did she want in return?”
He laughed.
“It couldn’t have been money.”
“No, it couldn’t. She was one fat wealthy bitch, wasn’t she?” he said as he took another sip of what had to be stone-cold coffee.
The waitress arrived with my tea and I waited for him to continue.
“No,” he said, “it wasn’t money. She wanted me to promise to keep a secret.” He started laughing.
“What secret?”
“Never to tell Mel that I was her father.”
He looked at me and laughed again. “You didn’t know?” I felt sick.
“But that means she had proof that you raped her. Your own daughter. Her DNA. Your DNA.”
“Oh come on. Be real. It was consensual.”
“A baseball bat over the head is consensual?”
“You’re assuming I am guilty but there’s no reason to believe the rapist is Melanie’s father. Stacey obviously had intercourse with more than one man.”
He was daring me to agree with him and I was feeling slightly unwell.
“Besides, if it was me, which it wasn’t, I’d have to say Stacey played the martyr card. She would rather save her daughter from ever knowing me than see me in jail. How’s that for female idiocy?”
I tried to ignore him but he was getting to me. “But if you are the rapist you’d damn well have to get rid of Stacey.”
“Back to that again, are we? You’re pathetic. So was she.” He laughed again. “It was so deliciously funny.” He fixed me with his glacial eyes. “Aren’t you going to ask me why?”
“Why?”
“Because until she told me I had no idea Mel was my daughter.” He laughed again. “Stupid bitch.”