The Night My Sister Went Missing (14 page)

"The crew probably just went home to get a couple hours' rest," he said. "They can only do so much in the dark. They'll be back at first light"

My heart fell into my gut, and Drew grabbed my arm, probably in case I decided to run down there. I didn't get the chance.

Drew's dad pulled up in his chief's car, and four very tired-looking cops piled out. Chief Aikerman came over and tried to hug me, tried to tell me in his calmest voice that Casey could be somewhere on the island; she could be treading water in the down-seas, but they'd have better luck finding her out there at first light.

"I wanna go down to the beach. I need to see for myself," I said urgently.

"It's pitch-black, Kurt," he argued, pointing at the half moon, which loomed over the horizon of Atlantic City. "Look, I'm not giving up, so I don't want to see you give up. Sun'll be back in an hour and a half. Besides, if you're not here when your parents call, that will be ... not good. Think of them. They need to hear one of their children's voices."

Aw, bullshit,
I wanted to say. They could give me back my phone, trust me not to stand there and pick my boogers if my sister tried to call ... but I could tell it was pointless to argue. The other cops spoke to me nicely, then went for their own cars, and Chief Aikerman said, "The DeWinters are here?"

Drew jerked his head at their Bentley. "They came to get Stacy out of hot water, I guess. She's in some, in case you haven't heard. I'll say no more."

"I'm aware," his dad said, and disappeared inside. I supposed he was being kept apprised of everything while on the beach.

I felt torn up about Stacy. If she had an incest problem in the family, I felt sorry for her because that was terrible—but I really didn't want to hear about it. Not before my sister was found. But I turned toward the inside of the station, anyway, scuffing my feet like a zombie. With Stacy's life unfolding like some sort of horror movie, I felt like I ought to try to accept that she could have shot at my sister. After all, everyone else I'd heard tonight thought she was guilty. If I couldn't get to the beach, the least I could do was face the
truth of what happened. I could listen to the DeWinters and read between the lines.

Drew followed as I sneaked past the doorway to the back lobby, and we took the hallway back around to the window.

Sure enough, Chief Aikerman was in there, so we didn't have to worry about being caught. Mr. DeWinter was still a pretty muscular guy. He had a swarthy, self-confident way of walking around, and it reminded me that fifty years ago he had gone to West Point. There were no Naval Academy graduates on the barrier islands, so when my acceptance was formally announced at the spring awards assembly at school, the principal had picked Mr. DeWinter to give me Coast Regional's 44th Dream Big Award.

The lights on the school stage were blinding, and I'm a fish out of water on a stage, so I barely remember anything except that the applause reminded me of battlefield gun-shots—and that Mr. DeWinter's handshake had been gripping to the point of being painful. He was one of the people I thought of when I pictured myself telling folks I wasn't going to the Naval Academy. In the Mystic Museum, half of which was early island photos from the DeWinter estate, were also his Vietnam medals, his Vietnam guns, his grandfather's World War I guns, his great-grandfather's Civil War pistol, and a couple of swords that dated back to the family's arrival here from England in the 1700s. He would just never understand my decision. Maybe he'd post a big sign in the museum with my photo on it, just under the words:
MYSTIC MORON
.

For the moment I could make out confusion and suffering in his eyes. They darted, and his brow was drawn in, and the way he breathed was actually scary. He kept making an O shape out of his mouth after he sat down, and he would blow his breath out through it like that was helping him keep a steady heart.

I glanced at Drew, who was shaking his head. "If he kicks the bucket over his kids and grandkids, they all better haul it back up to Connecticut and never show their faces around here again," he whispered.

Mrs. DeWinter seated herself beside him, patting his back and gazing at Lutz.

"Chief, why don't you go home and get some sleep?" Mr. DeWinter said in his amazingly gallant way. "You'll have to be back at it at first light—"

"I'm going, Cliff. I just wanted to stop in and say I really appreciate your coming down here. I'm sure you've got enough problems." He stood up and said, "Also, I don't want the Carmody kid to see me leave. I don't want
him
leaving, and being among the missing when his folks call, but..."

He turned to go and I almost laughed.
Podunk island ... How in hell can the chief of police forget what he'd taught his son about this room?
I grabbed Drew's arm to draw him back outside, thinking his dad would remember any second and come around to check on our whereabouts. We needed to be out front again.

But Drew said, "He'll go out the back to check his desk
first. If he doesn't, we'll see him go past the window in the door."

So I just stood there amazed as the window stayed clear. I think Chief Aikerman is a good chief of police—as far as maintaining order goes on islands where little happens. But the fact that the cops could be so electronically lame made me wonder about other things ... like if they were psychologically lame, too. They probably had a better shot at finding my sister than understanding what had happened to Stacy in her house.

I watched Mr. DeWinter intently.

"Of course, my primary intent is to clear Stacy's name of any wrongdoing, but we'll take things in any order that's helpful to you."

Drew nudged me to let me know he had correctly named this The Stacy Show.

Lutz picked up his pen yet again. "First off, you must have heard by this time that there's a rumor floating around that Stacy bought a small handgun. Were you aware of that?"

"Yes, I was," he said to my amazement. He brought the bubble envelope out of his lap, took his time unfolding the flaps, and pulled out a document and handed it to Lutz.

"Gun license...," Lutz mused, looking the document over, "with your name on it."

Mr. DeWinter then handed him an envelope that looked like it would hold a card. "'For Granddaddy,'" Lutz read,
and stared at them in confusion. "So ... you're saying that Stacy purchased it ... as some sort of gift?"

"My birthday is August first. I do have a collection, which of course I keep at the museum and not in the house. Believe me, I was unhappy about the purchase. Especially when I found it in her dresser drawer last week,
not
under lock and key. I told her she might be of legal age, but I don't think an eighteen-year-old ought to be making presents out of guns—for just this reason. Something unusual happens on the island, and
Boom!
—the blame falls in the wrong place."

Lutz handed the license back, watching the DeWinters. "And where is the gun?"

"At this moment we don't know," he confessed. "Around midnight I unlocked my desk to get out my heart medicine, and I noticed then it was missing. I thought maybe Dorothy had moved it..."He jerked his head at his wife."Unfortunately, I've been having more problems with my ol' ticker this spring. I thought my angioplasty last summer had resolved all of that. At any rate, I'm not as sharp with my ears and eyes as I used to be. I don't know when it was taken or by whom. It might even have been yesterday."

His heart was probably giving way over the Kearneys' divorce, I thought, and I wondered if Stacy's mom could do anything except suck the life out of the people around her. And the father? I had no words.

"So someone took the gun?" Lutz asked.

"Someone took the gun." He nodded unhappily. "I should have had it sent down to the museum the first day I saw it. I don't know what I was thinking. However, don't lose sight of the point here. Stacy had a normal and sane reason to buy such a thing—as a gift, not as a weapon to do damage to anyone, least of all to another young person."

It helped a little, but not all that much, I felt. Stacy obviously had something to do with the gun ending up at the pier. She probably had known where the key to the desk was. "Here's one question I have: A half dozen kids have walked through here tonight, claiming to have been in the McDonald's one night when Stacy and her boyfriend said jokingly that she had bought a gun. If it were simply an antique and a gift for Grandpa, why not just say so?"

"Stacy can be ... very flamboyant." Mr. DeWinter defended her, "It's a thing I love about her, but at times it has a downside. I could see her not admitting it just to ... have an audience."

"Let me reword that ..." Lutz shuffled around like the answer didn't satisfy him. "Could the gift element be an excuse? Could Stacy have bought a gun because she thought she needed, um, protection from someone?"

"He wants to ask about Mr. Kearney ..." Drew muttered, "find out if it could be true, and find out if Stacy was unstable enough to fire the thing at someone"

I glanced at my watch, figuring I would never follow this. 4:26.

When I looked back Mr. DeWinter was doing a bunch of his O-shaped exhales. "Lutzie ... I wasn't going to bring Wally into this tonight. He obviously has nothing to do with the missing Carmody girl, and we expect that you need to solve that immediately. The missus and I, we can handle what comes our way."

"I understand that, but I need to know. There may be a second crime here that needs looking into, and one might have to do with the other." Lutz forced himself to look up. "I need to know what the deal is with Wally's ... character. Anything you know."

Mr. DeWinter dipped his head and brought it back up tiredly. But he said point-blank, "We ... don't have any proof."

Ker-blam!
Nothing said, but it all hung in the air. I could barely look.

Mrs. DeWinter spoke up. "My husband found Wally just outside of Stacy's bedroom on two separate occasions"

Her wide eyes looked bewildered, and I tore my eyes down to the floor again. Mrs. DeWinter had always come across to me as a sweet little old lady—not a rocket scientist by any means. You'd probably think that she wouldn't even know about stuff like this. "It was after the second time that Clifford told Wally to pack his bags."

Lutz raised his eyebrows at Mr. DeWinter, who only shrugged. "Of course, I suspect something. I suspected after the first time—his and Sam's bedroom is in the other wing
of the house! But the first time Stacy merely said that he had walked in his sleep and she had woken him up."

Lutz rubbed his forehead with two fingers. "Please tell me you didn't believe that."

"I didn't, but Stacy swore up and down he didn't do anything to her, so I guess I'm naive. I expect every man out there to be a straight shooter like I am. The second time I found him outside her door, he was packed and out of the house by morning. I know now I should have done it the first year they came. I might still have a good heart. Maybe Samantha could have dated openly, maybe changed her tastes a little. I just ... thought that if I kept turning the other cheek, one day the man would stop hating us. He hated us from the first day he met Samantha, and it just never got any better. Jealousy does strange things"

He laughed so sadly, with the same befuddled look as Mrs. DeWinter. "The world's a mysterious place sometimes, Lutzie. If you can tell me how Wally wielded so much influence over two strapping boys, and yet their grandmother and I can do nothing right ... I'll never question anything else in my life."

Lutz sat rooted and stared at the couple almost defensively. "Is Sam's face covered in scratches right now?"

"Yes," Mr. DeWinter admitted, and watched Lutz in even more confusion. "Don't tell me ... Stacy's being blamed for that, too?"

"Can you tell me how it happened?"

"Samantha didn't say..." His voice got so soft it scared me. "We assumed it was a boyfriend, but we can find out for you. Listen, we're not stupid. We know Sam's been dating for quite some time. We simply couldn't blame her, being that her choice of a husband had not been, er, good. I had hoped her regrets would improve her taste. I cannot say that has happened."

"But ... scratching someone in the eyes? That's a lady's fight," Lutz said. "That's not a boyfriend"

"Well, maybe there was a jealous third party." Mr. DeWinter shrugged, making his O-shaped mouth a couple times. "Samantha is still quite striking. No one can deny that. And—"

"It
was
Stacy." Mrs. DeWinter's eyes rose from the table again. She glanced sideways at her astonished husband, then met Lutz's gaze. "I... was there. I saw the end of it"

Mr. DeWinter's voice was still low ... maybe from weakness, I thought. "You ... kept that from me?"

"Because of your heart, Clifford." Mrs. DeWinter laced her fingers through her husband's with one hand, and brushed a tear from her eye with the other. "When I walked in on it, Stacy had her mother backed into the corner. She was crying and screaming, 'You should have protected me! You're my mother!'"

The room got deadly silent except for Mrs. DeWinter's occasional sniffs and Mr. DeWinter's blowing exhales.

Mr. DeWinter finally muttered, "Oh my god"

Lutz forced himself on anyway, in a tone that sounded almost like that of a father talking to small children. "I just have to wonder, Clifford, if the birthday present for you wasn't a ruse. Could she have, in some convoluted teenage way, thought that she was protecting herself—"

"Protecting us all, maybe?" Mr. DeWinter rested his head on his fingertips. "I had thought of that. Despite Stacy's flamboyant streak, the purchase of a gun ... for a gift ... It always seemed a little nonsensical, since all my guns are kept at the museum. Maybe she felt that her father would break back in ... hurt someone while drinking ... She's so loyal to family. She would do anything for us."

And for friends?
I thought of my sister in the halo again, wondering what had come over me. I ought to be more ready to hang the girl than anyone. But I still felt the vibrations of a big-time railroad going on here. Maybe I was stupid, but that's what I felt.