Seven Days Dead (26 page)

Outside, Cinq-Mars suggests a walk by the seaside.

“Too close to the fish plant. Do you love the stinkeroo of dead fish?”

Good point. Instead, they head off along a footpath by a brook. A few bugs assail them, but nothing serious.

“What do you want to ask me? My boss is right. I know nothing about those murders. My gosh. Not me.”

“This is touchy, Margaret. Let me explain it to you carefully, because I need your fullest cooperation.”

“You have it. Of course! I’m cooperating.”

“You know the people who live here. I don’t. I want to ask you about certain people. I don’t want you to think that someone is therefore under suspicion. No one is. I just need to start putting together how certain pieces interconnect and how certain people fit with others. I don’t want you to talk about what I say because, misinterpreted, if you make the wrong assumption, you could ruin a good person’s reputation.”

“I get you. Don’t worry about me, sir. I know when to keep it zipped. But thank you. That’s a compliment, and I thank you.”

Émile is momentarily lost.

“You’re saying out loud that you trust me. I appreciate that. Fire away.”

He does like this girl. Smart and able.

“Who,” he wants to know, “is Aaron Roadcap?”

First, she needs to lean against a maple, let her neck and head droop, and release several breaths without appearing to draw any back in.

“Isn’t he just,” she says, looking up and straightening again, “the world’s most handsome man? He’s so beautiful. You should see him with his shirt off. I have. Only when he was on a beach, you understand. Okay. I have not been all around the world, I’ve hardly been off this island. But oh my God, isn’t he the world’s most handsome man? He is so frigging cute! I just want to die whenever he walks in, which isn’t close to often enough. He should take his shirt off more often. I have a boyfriend, but I wouldn’t if Aaron clicked his fingers in my direction. Anytime he visits the store I need to go pee after.”

She makes him laugh. She won’t bore him, this girl. “The thing is, Margaret, where I come from, girls also take into account what a man does, what his place in the world might be. Sometimes it doesn’t mean so much if a man is handsome if he’s not also, let’s say, as an example, a movie star. Or just a good guy.”

“I know what you’re saying,” Margaret attests, and Émile believes she does. “He picks dulse. Aaron Roadcap wades in the cold waters off Dark Harbour with his shirt off on a hot day and picks dulse. He’s not a banker. He’s not even a fisherman. He’s one step above shining shoes for a living, not that anybody around here makes a dime doing that! I can’t believe that anybody on earth can’t shine their own shoes.”

“You do understand me,” Cinq-Mars confirms, hoping to get her on point.

“He lives in a hovel. How can an attractive man live in a hovel? Probably with rodents for pets. Or maybe he has a cat, I don’t know. I wish I knew. I would gladly visit his hovel to find out. But the thing is, what you need to understand is, Aaron Roadcap is not
just
a dulse farmer.” She resorts to a conspiratorial whisper, and checks around to see if anyone else is listening. But they occupy these quiet woods on their own.

Émile Cinq-Mars is wholly confident now that he has come to the right person to fortify his local knowledge.

“Go on,” he says, encouraging her.

TWENTY-ONE

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?”