Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness (29 page)

U
PSTAIRS, PARAMEDICS LEANED OVER
A
NDREW
P
RESTON'S
body, pumping the chest. Mitch could tell instantly that it was hopeless. They were just going through the motions.

“Crime-scene guys got here yet?”

One of the medics shook his head. “You're the first. Detective Falke is on his way.”

“Any note?”

“Yeah. Through there.”

The medic gestured toward the living room. The window was open. On the tasteful oak coffee table, between the two tasteful beige suede armchairs, a piece of paper fluttered in the breeze, pinned down by a heavy glass ashtray. Without bothering to put on gloves, Mitch moved the ashtray and picked it up. In neat, cursive handwriting, Andrew Preston had written seven words.

It was my fault. Forgive me
,
Maria.

“What the FUCK are you DOING?”

Mitch jumped, dropping the note. Detective Lieutenant Dubray's voice boomed off the walls like an angry giant's. “Are you out of your mind?”

Mitch opened his mouth to explain himself, then closed it again. What could he say? He knew he shouldn't be here. Still less should he be
messing with another detective's crime scene. Dubray was incandescent with rage.

“That's evidence tampering! Do you understand how serious that is? I could have you thrown off the force. I
should
have you thrown off the force.”

“I'm sorry. I needed to talk to Andrew Preston.”

“You're a little late for that.”

“Yeah. So I see. Look, sir, I would have waited for Falke, but I knew he'd be obstructive. He probably wouldn't even have let me see the note.”

“Of course he wouldn't! And why the fuck should he? This is
not your case,
Mitch.”

“But, sir, he's not even asking the obvious questions. Like what was Maria Preston doing in Sag Harbor anyway. And who knew she was gonna be there.”

“Don called me half an hour ago. He told me you were poking your nose in, rambling about Lenny goddamn Brookstein. He thinks you've lost it…”

“Oh, come on, sir. You know Don Falke's always had it in for me.”

“I think you've lost it, too. I'm sorry, Mitch. But you've gone too far this time. You're on suspension until further notice.”

“Sir!”

“Consider yourself on indefinite leave until you hear from me otherwise. And don't look so goddamn hard done by. You're lucky you aren't fired. If I didn't know how much Helen and Celeste count on that paycheck, I wouldn't think twice. Now get out of here, before I change my mind.”

 

O
N HIS WAY HOME
, M
ITCH PASSED
the bar where he'd first met with Davey Buccola. He went inside and ordered a scotch. “Keep 'em coming,” he told the barman.

“Bad day?”

Mitch shrugged.
Bad year. Bad life.
Part of him wished he had never laid eyes on Davey Buccola. If it hadn't been for Davey's ferretlike digging into Lenny Brookstein's death, none of this would have happened. Mitch would have arrested Grace and been done with it. Moved
on to the next case, like everyone wanted him to. Maybe even made captain.

Instead, here he was, alone, suspended from duty, all because of Buccola's file and the promise he'd made Grace.
Grace.
Mitch wondered again where she was. No one would tell him anything. He imagined her being interrogated, locked in solitary confinement, sleep-deprived. He thought about her sad eyes, her courage, her surprising sense of humor, even in the direst of situations, and hoped her spirit hadn't already been broken.

Through the whiskey haze, Grace's words floated back to him.

Forget about me.

It was much too late for that. Mitch realized that in the last two months, he'd barely thought about Helen. Grace had taken her place in his subconscious, his dreams. Now it was Grace he was letting down, Grace he was failing. Just as he'd failed Helen and Celeste. Just as he'd failed his father.
I've disappointed everyone I ever loved. I let them all down.

Fuck suspension. Fuck toeing the line. And fuck giving up.

Tomorrow Mitch would take a flight to Nantucket Island.

The truth couldn't wait.

M
ITCH COULDN'T UNDERSTAND IT.

You have all the money in the world. You can go anywhere you like—Miami Beach, Barbados, Hawaii, Paris. Why the hell would you buy a house in this dump?

Clearly, Lenny Brookstein didn't have the best judgment in the world. He'd had a beautiful wife who adored him, but had chosen to shack up with an ugly mistress who loathed him. His so-called friends were about as trustworthy as a bunch of used car salesmen. But this took the cake. As far as Mitch could see, Nantucket had nothing to recommend it. With its gray, clapboard houses and rain-swept, desolate beaches, it was the sort of place that could make anyone depressed.

“What do people
do
here?” he asked the pharmacist at Congdon's on Main Street, one of the few stores that kept its doors open off-season.

“Some people paint. Or write.”

Write what? Suicide notes? Leonard Cohen lyrics?

“Some people fish. It's pretty quiet in March.”

This was an understatement. The guesthouse in Union Street where Mitch was staying was as silent as the grave. The only noise in the evenings was the heavy
tick, tick
of an antique grandfather clock in the parlor. A couple more weeks of this and Mitch would end up like the Jack Nicholson character in
The Shining
.

But it wouldn't take two weeks. Within twenty-four hours of his arrival, word went around the island that a strange guy was in town, asking questions about Leonard Brookstein. Instinctively, collectively, the islanders clammed up. Felicia Torrez, Grace and Lenny's cook up at the Cliff Road estate, now worked at Company of the Cauldron, the only high-end restaurant that catered to locals outside of the summer months. Mitch went to find her there.

“I'm trying to get a clearer picture of the events in the days leading up to the storm, back in the summer of 2009. You were living at the Brooksteins' home at that time?”

Silence.

“How long had you been in their employ?”

More silence.

“Look, ma'am, this is not an official investigation, okay? You don't need to be nervous. Did you notice any tension among any of the houseguests that particular weekend?”

At first he thought she had poor English. Then he wondered if she was mute, or deaf, or both. Whatever it was, Felicia was about as forthcoming as a clam that had swallowed some Superglue. Mitch tried the housekeeper, the maid, the gardener. It was always the same story.

“I don't remember.”

“I didn't see anything.”

“I did my job and went home.”

Tomorrow he would head down to the harbor and talk to the fishermen. Some of them must have been out on the water that day. But he didn't hold out much hope.
It's like they're all part of some secret club, like the Masons or something.
But it made no sense. Lenny Brookstein was already dead. What did they think they were protecting him from?

 

H
ANNAH
C
OFFIN CALLED TO HER HUSBAND.

“Tristram! Come see this.”

“In a minute.”

The Coffins worked at the Wauwinet Hotel, a five-star retreat in one of the quietest, least-populated parts of the island. Like all the big hotels, they were closed through the spring months, but kept a skeleton staff
to work on maintenance and repairs. Hannah and her husband acted as caretakers, overseeing the off-season staff. It was a job with a lot of down-time, which Tristram Coffin spent tinkering with his Ducati motorbike, and Hannah spent watching daytime television.

“Tristram!”

“I'm
busy,
honey.” Tristram Coffin sighed.
Just buy the damn earrings already, or the super-duper potato peeler, or the
Greatest Hits of Neil Diamond,
or whatever it is they're selling! You don't need my opinion.

“It's important. Come on in here.”

Reluctantly, he put down his wrench and wandered into the living room of their modest ground-floor apartment. As usual, the television was on.

“Do you remember that guy?”

Hannah pointed at the screen. A man was being interviewed about Maria Preston's murder. The story was getting juicier by the day. It now looked as if the husband had done it, hired a Mob hit man to kill his wife because he suspected her of having an affair. Hannah Coffin was particularly interested in the murder because Maria Preston had stayed at the Wauwinet once.

Tristram studied the man's face.

“He looks familiar.”

“He
is
familiar!” said Hannah triumphantly. “Where's that cop staying? The one that's been asking all the questions about Lenny Brookstein?”

“Union Street. Why?”

“I'm gonna call him, that's why.”

Tristram looked disapproving. “Come on, honey. You don't want to get involved.”

“Oh yes I do.” Heaving her two-hundred-pound frame up off the couch, Hannah lumbered toward the phone. “I know where I've seen that guy before. And
when.
”

 

“A
RE YOU SURE
?”

Mitch felt like pinching himself. If he weren't scared of putting his back out, he'd have picked Hannah Coffin up in his arms and kissed her.

“One hundred percent. They checked in here together. It was the day of the storm. Him and Maria Preston.”

“And they stayed…”

“All afternoon, like I told you. I'll write it down for you if you like. Make a statement. He was on TV, acting like he hardly knew her. But he knew her all right.
Intimately,
if you know what I'm saying.”

Mitch knew what she was saying. He was due at the harbor in half an hour, but this called for a change of plans. He headed for the airport.

 

N
ANTUCKET AIRPORT WAS LITTLE MORE THAN
a shed, a simple L-shaped shingle structure with a pitched roof, one-half of which was designated “Departures” and the other half “Arrivals.” As single-and twin-engine Cessnas landed, passengers got out and helped the pilot unload luggage onto the tarmac. In the departure lounge, “security” consisted of a gray-bearded old man named Joe who glanced at the locals' bags before waving them through with a cheery smile and a “See you at the Improv Friday night. Baptist church, don't be late now.”

Mitch marched up to the desk of Cape Air.

“I'd like to see your passenger records, please. I'm interested in all flights in and out of the island on June twelfth, last year.”

The girl at the desk rolled her eyes. “And you are?”

“Police.”

“Darlene?” she called over her shoulder. “I got another one here. Wants those June twelfth records. Can you take him?”

An old woman in a tweed skirt emerged from the office. She wore her snow-white hair tied back in a neat bun, and a pair of pince-nez glasses perched on the end of her nose, like Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother.

Mitch looked puzzled. “Another one? Has someone else been asking to look at your passenger lists?”

“They have indeed. Darlene Winter.” She shook Mitch's big, bear-like hand with her thin, wrinkled one. “You policemen are like buses. Never there when you need one, then suddenly you all show up at once. Come on back.”

Mitch followed Darlene into an office that was as neat and orderly
as she was. There was a computer in one corner, but she led him to a desk on the other side of the room. A big brown leather book lay open. It looked like an antique Bible, or an enormous visitors' book from some medieval Scottish castle.

“All our records are computerized, of course,” Darlene told Mitch. “That's the law. But we like to do things the old-fashioned way around here. We keep a daily logbook of our flights as well, handwritten. I suspect I already know what you're looking for.”

She pointed to a familiar name, beautifully rendered in italics and black ink.

“He caught the six-ten
A.M.
to Boston, along with five other passengers. Landed at six fifty-eight. Whatever he was doing that day it looked like he changed his mind, because at seven twenty-five”—she flipped a page—“he boarded an eight-seater right back to the island. This is his landing record, right here. June twelfth, eight-oh-five
A.M.
Flight 27 from Logan. John H. Merrivale.”

Mitch ran his finger across the paper.

So Hannah Coffin wasn't a fantasist. John Merrivale really could have been at the Wauwinet that day, shacked up with Maria Preston.

According to Hannah, the pair of them hadn't arrived at the hotel until early afternoon. A full five hours after John got back to the island, after setting up his alibi. More than enough time to sail out to Lenny Brookstein's boat, get aboard and murder him.

“You mentioned someone else had asked to see this. Another cop?”

“That's right. FBI, I think he said he was, but he came off as more of a military man. Very brusque. A little rude, if you must know. He had one of those army haircuts, you know. Much too short.”

“You don't remember his name?”

The old woman furrowed her brow. “William,” she said eventually. “William someone-or-other I think it was. Went straight to the same page. June twelfth. John Merrivale. Is this Mr. Merrivale in some sort of trouble?”

Not yet,
thought Mitch. Then he thought,
Who the hell is William?

 

T
HE GUARD LOOKED AT THE MUD-SPATTERED
sedan and its lone occupant. He'd expected an armored vehicle, or even a convoy of some sort. Not a
middle-aged man in a dirty family car.
This guy looks like her dad coming to pick her up after a sleepover.

The camp outside Dillwyn in rural Virginia was a top secret OGA facility. OGA stood for “Other Government Agency,” which typically meant CIA, although the Dillwyn camp provided a temporary “home” for a variety of nonmilitary prisoners considered too disruptive or dangerous to be returned to a mainstream correctional facility. Some were terror suspects. Others suspected spies. A few were classified as “politically sensitive.” But none of the inmates at Dillwyn was more “sensitive” than the one this man had come to see. The prisoner was being transferred to an FBI holding cell in Fairfax.
In a sedan, apparently.

“Papers, please.”

The gray-haired man handed over his credentials. For a few moments there was a tense pause while the guard leafed through them. But everything was in order, as he knew it would be.

“Okay, go on through. They're expecting you.”

 

G
RACE STOOD IN THE CENTER OF
her six-by-eight-foot cell. Planting her legs in a wide stance, she stretched out her arms, focusing on her breathing as she lunged forward into warrior 2 pose.

She'd been at Dillwyn almost two weeks, locked for twenty-two hours a day in a spare, windowless box. With no one to talk to, no human interaction of any kind, yoga had been her salvation. She spent hours going through a series of poses, energizing her body and focusing her mind and breathing, staving off despair.

I'm alive. I'm strong. I won't be here forever.

But would she? Hours, days and nights had already merged into one, long, unbroken stretch of nothing. The lights in Grace's cell were permanently set on dim. Meals were pushed through a tray in the door at regular six-hour intervals, but there was nothing to distinguish breakfast from lunch or lunch from supper.

They're trying to break me. Make me crazy so they can lock me up in a mental institution and throw away the key.

It wasn't working. Yet. Between yoga sessions, Grace would lie on her bunk, close her eyes and try to conjure up an image of Lenny's face.
He was the reason she was living, after all, the reason she kept fighting. At Bedford Hills, and later when she was on the run, she'd found it easy to summon his kind, loving features at will. Grace talked to Lenny the way that other people might pray to God. His presence was a great comfort to her. But here, in this awful, mind-numbing place, she was distressed to find that his image was fading. Suddenly she could no longer remember the exact sound of his voice, or the look in his eyes when he made love to her. He was slipping away. Grace couldn't shake the feeling that once he was totally gone, her sanity would disappear with him.

The one face she could conjure, ironically, was Mitch Connors's. A few nights ago, for the first time in many months, she had an erotic dream, one in which Mitch was the lead actor. She woke up feeling embarrassed, guilty even, but talked herself out of it.
You can't help what you feel when you're unconscious. Besides, at least it proves I'm alive. I'm still a woman, still a human being.

The door of the cell opened. Grace startled. It wasn't time for her daily exercise. The guard said brusquely, “Come with me. You're being transferred.”

They were the first words anyone had spoken to her in over a week. It took Grace a moment to unearth her voice.

“Where?”

The guard didn't answer. Instead he slapped handcuffs on her wrists. Grace followed him mutely along a maze of corridors, trying to contain her elation.

This is it
.
I'm getting out of here. I knew they couldn't keep me here forever.

She wondered if Mitch Connors had had a hand in her release, and was curious as to where they were taking her. Wherever it was, it couldn't be worse than this place. The guard punched a seven-digit code into a heavy metal door. It swung open. Grace followed him outside into a courtyard.

“Hello again, Grace.” Gavin Williams smiled. “We've a long journey ahead of us. Shall we get going?”

 

T
HE COUNTRY ROADS WERE ROUGH AND RUTTED.
Each bump and jolt tore through Grace's frayed nerves like a razor. Williams was a madman. She
thought back to the last two times they met—once at the morgue, when he'd grabbed her like an animal—and once in the infirmary at Bedford. That second time Grace was sure he meant to harm her. The feral hatred in his eyes…she would never forget it. Of course, she had been heavily sedated at the time.