Reprisal (4 page)

"Tell you what I think." Charis stood, and gathered her books. "--I've got Engletree's class, and I have to stop at the library after that. But then we can meet at the Griddle for lunch, if you want to."

"Okay."

"--Tell you what I think, Rebecca. I think your dad's goodness lives on in you

... and you should be proud of that, and not take advantage of his death to feel sorry for yourself." She slid her books into her old black bookbag, and touched Rebecca's cheek as she walked out of the room. Rebecca heard her talking to Grace Marcus for a moment, in the hall.

"I'm not satisfied," Joanna said, sat back and waited. He'd given her an uncomfortable ladder-back chair in a small sunny office--Asconsett Island's usual white-painted pine paneling ... its usual big double-paned windows looking out to sea. The chief constable's office was second-floor back; his secretary's and deputies' desks below. Cells, she supposed, were in the building's basement.

"Well," the chief said, "--here's the thing." His "here" was Asconsett's down-east he-ah. "Here's the thing, Mrs. Reed--Professor."

""Mrs. Reed" is fine."

"Okay. Well, I'm going to be very direct with you. The Coast Guard is satisfied--the commander over at Post Port is satisfied, Commander Anderson.

The state police are satisfied--you call in and ask them. ... And what counts out here, is that I'm satisfied." Carl Early sat back in what seemed to be a much more comfortable chair, and looked at her across a gray steel desk.

The chief constable was almost startlingly handsome, an elderly movie star with elegant cheekbones, parchment skin, perfectly blue eyes--eyes a little bored, uninterested--and wonderful hair, thick snow, combed straight back.

Very handsome, and had been tall and slender when he'd stood to greet her.

Neatly dressed as well, in a light-blue summer sharkskin suit.

Joanna supposed the chief's wife must always have been uneasy about his off-island trips on business ... duty trips that took him away from her to Boston, Providence, Portland. Mrs. Early must have had troubled visions of beautiful Carl in his hotel room with some woman he'd only just met. Just met that afternoon. ...

"--I'm the senior law enforcement officer for seventeen islands along the coast, Professor --Mrs. Reed. For this whole county. It's an elective post, same as some mainland sheriffs. And I have not had this job, haven't kept this job for over twenty years, by being careless."

"I didn't say your people had been careless. I said I'm not satisfied. Frank never--and I mean never--sailed without a life jacket on. He's ... he sailed since he was a little boy, and he always wore a life jacket. He never allowed anyone to sail with him unless they wore one. He was a fanatic on that; he taught boating safety for the squadron when he lived down in Gloucester."

Joanna felt herself getting out of breath, hurrying to say her say. "--And also, Frank sailed all his life and he never just fell off a boat--much less fell off a boat in good weather on a calm sea!"

Carl Early sat and looked at Joanna, an old man examining a woman who might have been his daughter. He sat for almost a minute without saying anything--a silence that must have been useful dealing with lobster-pot thieves and misbehaving tourists. ... Useful dealing with bereaved women, too. Joanna was surprised to find she wished her father had stayed after the service and come out to Asconsett again, at least for a few days. The chief constable would have found Louis a tougher article to handle--a surly old French-Canadian, a retired lawyer, and unimpressed by handsome blue Anglo eyes.

"--So, that's why I don't believe it." Wrong thing to say. Chief Early made a patient face, must have heard other women say they didn't believe it. "I do

... I can believe Frank--just once, just once--didn't wear a life jacket. I can believe he once, just this once, fell off his boat on a calm sea. But I can't believe he did both those things." Early's face still set in weary patience. "--ally didn't know him. If you'd known Frank, you'd know it couldn't have happened like that!"

A sigh. "Well, if it didn't happen like that, Mrs. Reed--then how do you think it did happen? Your husband was found a mile off Little Shell, and he'd drowned and he didn't have a preserver on. His boat was found beached and busted, drifted way down the coast."

"I don't know. But not like that. Not that kind of accident."

The constable surprised Joanna by reaching across his desk--reached over, his hand held out. Joanna didn't know what to do, it was so odd. It was embarrassing, too embarrassing not to take his hand. He had a strong dry grip, a politician's grip.

"Now, Mrs. Reed, you listen to me. I worked on lobster boats, fishing boats, all the time I grew up and years after that. I still go out. I've been a seaman and known seamen all my life." He released her hand, sat back in his chair. "--I sailed from the time I was a little kid, everything there was to sail, and I can still run anything that floats, and that's a fact. And I can tell you as a fact that when a man is out by himself --especially, especially if he's sailed for a long time and never had any trouble--I can tell you that a man will sometimes take things easy, let things go a little, not bother getting into a jacket. It's just simple human nature." The handsome head nodded agreement with itself.

"--.I've done it, and I've seen a lot of drowned people and I know better. But I've still done it. What a man tells his wife he does when his wife and kids are with him--is not exactly what he does when he's out there on his own. And that's a fact."

"Chief. ... All right. So, Frank--who never sailed without a life jacket on, no matter what you say--decided to do that. And then he just happened to fall off his boat--another thing that never happened before."

"--And that's exactly right, Mrs. Reed. What you just said is exactly right.

Your husband made a mistake--and then there was an accident. And just that way is how men are drowned at sea. That's all it takes, and I've seen it many times. Things that might happen on land--a mistake, and then some dumb accident right after that--you get away with it. But not at sea." The chief shook his head. His hair was really remarkable, white hair so strong and thick, so perfectly white it seemed that that was what hair was meant to be, and any other color not quite right. "--That's how all men are killed at sea, Mrs. Reed, except in wartime. There's a mistake, then just one more thing happens, and that's that."

"All right. ... All right. I happen to know that wasn't true with Frank, but you think I'm just being ridiculous."

"No, I don't. I think--"

"Oh the hell you don't!"

Cold blue eyes, now. "If you'll just be quiet a minute, Mrs. Reed. I'll tell you what I do think. ... I think you're trying to make some sense out of a tragedy. That such a terrible thing could have happened by just a little carelessness, by just a stupid accident. And what I've been trying to tell you is that most terrible things happen just that way."

"And that's it--that's the only way he could have died?"

"If you're talking about foul play, Mrs. Reed--unless you kept something back from my deputy when he talked with you about this case--if you're talking about foul play, because supposedly there was no reason for anyone to harm your husband. No money involved: no big inheritance; no big insurance; no gambling debts. And no known personal enemies." He shook his head at the lack.

"And no ... intimate involvement with another person by either of you to cause that kind of trouble. Now, is that right, Mrs. Reed? Or do you have something else to tell me?"

"No, I don't. I had no other "involvements," and neither did he. There was no reason for anyone to hurt Frank."

"All right. And the county coroner and a Coast Guard physician both examined your husband--and except for a bruise at the small of his back, probably from going over the cable rail when he went, there wasn't a mark on him--and also let me tell you something, Mrs. Reed. ..." Joanna watched the chief's left hand, lying relaxed on his desk as he talked. Was there the finest tremor there? Notice that his handsome and formidable machinery was beginning to decay? There was certainly a fine tremor. ...

"--Let me tell you, I attended the FBI Academy at Quantico. I have attended many classes and training programs with the state police. I have worked on a number of serious crimes out here through the years, very serious felonies--including homicides, you name it. They are not angels working these waters out here. And we don't always get summer tourist angels out here, either--"

"I'm sure--"

"So, when we get a death, we damn well check it out. I want you to understand that.--I do not take any drowning as an accident until my people have checked it out. You were asked right up front, day or two after we had to notify you--you were asked if there was any party at all who might have had an interest in harming your husband--"

"I said there wasn't."

"Well, if that's true, Mrs. Reed, then what are we talking about, here? Aren't we talking about an accident? Unless you want to change the statement you made."

"No, I don't."

"Well, then, where does that leave us, Mrs. Reed? You tell me."

"I suppose it leaves you satisfied about Frank's making a first-time mistake, followed right away by a first-time accident. And I still don't believe it. I just ... I know it didn't happen that way. That's all. It's just something I know."

Chief Early stood up. "Then we're wasting each other's time on this, aren't we? And frankly, I don't have any more time to waste--no offense, now. I am--"

Hand across the desk again. "I am real sorry for your loss. These things are never ... never easy."

"I think," Joanna said, and stood up, too. Couldn't just stay sitting there.

"--I think some are easier than others." She didn't want to take his hand, and was angry that she did.

Was still angry as she went down the station's steps --and furious with Frank.

Also felt foolish for having put on a dark-blue business suit in the summer, for God's sake, to seem a proper widow for that cold policeman.--But so angry with Frank about everything. For not wearing his life jacket; for falling off his boat ... if he had. But he hadn't. She'd tried to imagine that, Frank Reed managing to fall over a boat's cable rail in good weather, an easy sea. She'd tried to imagine it for almost two weeks now--and couldn't.

But if that hadn't happened, then something had happened, and the only thing she could think of--and not mention to Mr. Elderly Handsome Cop--the only thing she could think of was that Frank had been so secretly unhappy ... that he hadn't loved her or Rebecca ... and preferred to go into the sea with no life jacket, and drown.

But how could a man--although a secret person as all men were--even so, how could a man conceal such sorrow as that? Hide it for months ... years? How could he have kissed her, and held her, fucked her? How been so constantly sweet with Rebecca, so alertly protective from the hour she was born? --Often more patient with her, more attentive than her mother had been.

How could he have gone for groceries, laughed so much--and still preferred death? And if he had, if he'd done that, it was such a betrayal it deserved death. If he had wanted to die, then he'd deserved his death and good fucking riddance. ...

It seemed odd to Joanna to be walking alone through summer sunlight by the sea--the air sliding breezy and bright around her. People, tourists strolling along the harbor ... their children trailing after, asking for ice cream. The tourists would go back up Ropewalk or Clamshell to Strand Street, to Eddie's--the soda fountain's marble table and countertops, its wireback chairs profitably unchanged since 1905.

Strange to be walking in dazzling light, when it was the cave she'd longed for for several days--its perfect solitude, its changes slow past any human understanding.

After Merle Budwing fell, Concave became known to every caver on earth. And what had been a treasure for the few members of the Midstate Grotto to be first to explore, to survey, to enjoy in lamplit darkness, had become instead public knowledge. News.

Howard Newcomb, who owned Whitestone Ridge--or most of it--had closed the cave entrance two weeks after Budwing's death, afraid of lawsuits from the families of careless cavers who might go deep under his land and kill themselves falling down the pit. Or suffocate in some one-foot squeeze below, where two walls of rock--becoming gradually closer together as a caver struggled between--allowed him finally only a last breath out, but no breath in. Those possible deaths --or another when the White River, risen after rain and spilling to roar beneath the earth in blackness, might trap a caver in some low passage, leave him to press his face up against rough rock for air, find a little but no more than that, and drown.

Newcomb closed the cave. But in the two weeks before its entrance was gated and sealed, the Grotto had gone all out, mapping, exploring. And had found a labyrinth of corridors, some only wide enough, high-ceilinged enough, for crawling--some much narrower, for wriggling through ... and several with entrances under water, under the river still carving, shaping the rock in darkness beneath the ridge. --A web, a maze of miles of those passages, and long, long, curving galleries-gallery on gallery, passage on passage snaking through the stone to end several times in great chambers holding a million years of silence, and all the splendors of limestone carved by eons of running water.

These had flashed bright in the helmet lamps, chambers floored in fine mud dust sparkling with the sediment of ages, and decorated with gleaming white stalactites, helectites, soda straws and stalagmites, snowy limestone curtains, translucent fans of calcite, clusters of delicate stone flowers as white and finely wrought as snowflakes.

It was wonderful caving, and they'd managed to survey and map several miles of it with tape, compass, and inclinometer before Concave was closed, the narrow entrance barred with a steel gate, locked, and No Trespassing signs set on the access track up the ridge. The huge, deep, and many-storied paradise of perfect dark and coolness lay sealed again to its ancient stillness--broken only by distant echoes of water dripping, flowing, rushing through the earth.