Folly (55 page)

“Jerry?” she asked uncertainly.

“No,” the ghostly figure replied. “It’s Alan.”

Desmond Newborn’s
Journal

June 6, 1925

At long last, the walls of my house have begun to rise up above the stones. And yet they bring me no small degree of sorrow, that walls are necessary at all. On a night like tonight, I should like to leave my house open to the breezes and the birds, to allow the moons great light to shine freely beneath the merest shadow of the roof.

However, the crows and the raccoons would rob me blind, and after four years here, the endless, nerve-racking feeling of vulnerability that comes of constant exposure, of sitting on a dark shore beneath a solitary light, grows no less wearisome.

Afterward, Rae could never quite believe that she hadn’t just shot him where he stood. Certainly the electrical reaction of that name among all others fizzing through her should by all rights have jerked her already twitchy finger tight against the steel tongue of the trigger. It would not have taken much of a pull. Instead, she froze, unbreathing and unblinking behind her fallen tree, staring across the leaping fire at the two wide-stretched hands, and then her heart gave a convulsive thud and time began to run again.

“I could shoot you right there,” she found herself saying, as if the words might take the place of the actual deed.

The man’s fingers spread a fraction of an inch wider. “Please don’t,” he said.

For some reason, that response brought Rae up short. After a minute, she cleared her throat, which felt inexplicably raw.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because I came to talk to you, unarmed, openly. I even waited until you had your gun with you. It hardly seems fair that you’d then use it on me.”

His voice was low and melodious, his words reasonable, his tone, incredibly enough, humorous, and Rae was opening her mouth to tell him to step forward into the light when a horrible thought occurred to her: If he knew about her gun, then he could have laid hands on it. Trying to keep one eye on him while she was peering into the opened chamber left her vulnerable, but he stayed where he was, and all five bullets
nestled securely in their spaces, untampered with as far as she could tell. She was tempted to fire one round into the night, just to be sure, but there were too many innocent people out there.

“Come forward so I can see you,” she ordered, her voice none too firm.

He edged up until she could make out the features of a tall, slim, wide-shouldered man in his fifties whose face had the vulnerable look of someone who had recently shaved off a beard. His short hair was newly cut as well, and for some reason looked as if he had normally worn it longer— perhaps because the drawn, almost ascetic lines of his face called for the frame of hair waving to below the ears. It seemed an oddly romantic image, for there was nothing particularly saintly about the rest of the intruder. He wore a faded plaid shirt under a short denim jacket, dark jeans that needed a wash, and stained hiking boots. No jewelry, not even a watch. His hands stayed up, fingers splayed, motionless as the rest of him under her gaze.

The naked skin of his face was the only remotely vulnerable thing about the man. His brown eyes were impassive—remarkably calm for a man with a gun pointing at him. Almost as if he were the armed one here. If he had come to kill her, she thought, he would do it efficiently; she wouldn’t get beaten up and raped first.

Cheerful idea. Her gaze went back to his face; it reminded her vaguely of someone she knew.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Allen Carmichael.”

“Alan—Are you related to Jerry?”

“He’s my brother.”

A few—a very few—things came together in her mind. “You’re the brother who disappeared. He told me about you.”

“Oh yeah? And what did he tell you?”

A faint sardonic shading to the question stung Rae into bluntness.

“Among other things that you’d never gotten over Vietnam.”

“Vietnam was one of those things that proved hard to get over, all right. Some of us have had to settle for working around it instead.”

“Are you Alan A-L-A-N?” she asked suddenly. That close a similarity really would be too much to bear.

“A-double L-E-N,” he said, to her relief. Then he asked, “You were close to someone with the same name, weren’t you?”

Suspicion flared again and the gun went back up. “How did you know that? Have you been in my things?”

To Rae’s astonishment, the man threw back his head and laughed, a
deep-throated, full-bellied guffaw. It was the most amazing thing he’d done so far, and truth to tell, she was sorry when a moment later he caught himself and raised his hands again.

“When you first got here,” he explained, “I was up on the hillside trying to figure out what the hell you were doing here, and I leaned against a dead branch. You must have heard, because you picked up a piece of firewood and threw it in my direction and then you started shouting— at me. ‘Allen, you son-of-a-bitch,’ on and on. You were furious, which I couldn’t figure out, and you knew my name—that really freaked me. I decided later that I must have heard you wrong, but at the time, I tell you, it had me worried. And then tonight when I said my name, you reacted so strongly, Allen’ itself must mean something to you.”

A brief silence fell across the fire pit. “My husband’s name was Alan,” Rae told him. “He died.”

“Ah,” he said, and then, in a different voice, “Oh. So tonight, when I told you my name, you must have thought… Christ, it’s a wonder you didn’t blow me away.”

“What are you doing here?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Can I sit down? My arms are getting tired.”

She thought about it, then said, “Sit down on that chair, in the light where I can see you.”

“I’d rather not be too close to the fire, if you don’t mind. If anyone came into the cove and spotted me, you might have problems explaining this. That could disrupt the plans of a lot of good people.”

She should have insisted; after all, she had the gun, and he was on her property, a potential threat. But what in her youth she would have called the man’s “vibes” did not raise her hackles. For a reason she could not have begun to explain, it seemed natural to nod and say, “All right, but sit at the edge of the light, so I can see you.”

Moving deliberately, the tall man picked up the chair Rae had been about to sit in several minutes earlier and moved it back from the light. He stepped forward, hesitated, bent down to retrieve her fallen tea mug and place it on a nearby stump-table, then sat down. When his hands were resting, clearly visible, on the chair’s wooden arms, Rae swung her leg over the tree trunk and dropped to the ground in front of it, her back to the bark. The firelight touched his nose and mouth, and she suddenly knew where she had seen him before, why his face seemed to require more hair.

“You were in the pickup, waiting in line for the ferry the night …”

She paused, and went on more slowly. “The night the Andrews girl disappeared.”

“Damn,” he said, his monk’s features relaxing into a rueful smile. “I knew you’d made me then. I should have pulled my hat down and pretended to be asleep, but I saw you coming up the road and, well, I couldn’t help trying to get a closer look at my landlady.”

Rae narrowed her eyes and adjusted her grip around the gun. “Would you care to explain that statement?”

“I live here. On Folly. Not all the time, just a few days here and there, and I’ll admit I’ve never put the address on my driver’s license, but for the last eight years this has been what I think of as home.”

“But… where?”

“A cave, on the other side of the island. A small cave, just above sea level but it’s dry and warm enough, and not far from fresh water. Pretty basic shelter, little more than a hole in the earth, but it’s actually comforting that way.”

“And where do you live when you’re not in the cave?” she asked.
Why are you interested?
she asked herself.
Because damn it, this is an interesting man
, came the response.

“Wherever work calls me. Los Angeles. Denver. Spokane. Last month, by mere coincidence, work called me here. As it has a handful of times in the past. And that’s why I’m talking to you now, because having you here on the island changes things. It would be difficult for you to plead ignorance, if I were caught here. You could be considered an accomplice. Now, if you chose to take the risk, that would be a different matter, but I can’t allow you to be made vulnerable in ignorance.”

“You’re doing something illegal on Folly,” Rae said. “Smuggling. What is it—drugs? guns? Freon?”

“Freon?”

“I understand there’s a lot of money in smuggling the stuff.”

“Freon. Live and learn. No, what I smuggle may be technically against various laws, but it’s not for money, and it’s never in my opinion immoral. I smuggle people.”

“People? People as in criminals, or people as in illegal immigrants?”

“I’ll take the fact that you differentiate between the two as an encouraging sign.” This time his smile was crooked, almost boyish, and something deep inside her flipped right over: That was Alan’s smile. “No, people as in abused children and wives who are in danger. People as in underground railway.”

“Caitlin Andrews—you
did
take her off that ferry.”

“And I kept her here for nine interminable days until her mother could join us. Poor kid—she was so sick and tired of my music collection by the end of it. Anyway, the two of them stayed together in the cave for a night, then I passed them on north.”

“Jerry thought it was something like that.”

“My brother?” He sounded alarmed.

“He figured it out, from the parents’ reactions and then the girl’s mother disappearing like that. He even used the same term: ‘underground railway’ He was sympathetic. At least, he didn’t seem to think anyone ought to search too hard for them.”

“Interesting,” he mused. “Still, Jerry’s a cop, through and through, and if he came across this section of the railroad, he could do a lot of damage. And that’s why I’m here now. If you feel you need to tell him, please, say so now. If you are uncomfortable about any of this, just tell me and I’ll remove myself from the island. I know you’re close to Jerry, and it’s not fair to ask you to keep something like this from him. If you’re having a relationship with him, just say the word and I’ll be gone.”

“I’m not.”

“But he comes here.”

“Jerry’s a friend. And you say he figures things out, but I’d say that when it comes to personal relationships, he’s a bit of a dunce. You know Nikki Walls? Of course you do, you were married to her… sister, was it?”

He did not answer, just asked, “Is Jerry interested in Nikki?”

“Well, no, but—” Rae stopped. Was any of this his business? Or was he simply maneuvering to get her guard down, and then—what? If he wanted to attack her, why wait until she had a gun in her hand? Something else that he had said then registered in her mind.

“Spokane. Two girls disappeared there.”

“Ellie and Joanna Rugeley”

“Your work?”

“Mine and others’.”

“Why?”

“Their mother was dead. The father was raping them. They had an aunt in Europe who wanted them. I helped them reach her.”

Four simple declarative sentences; two lives snatched out of hell. If she could believe him. “Do you have any proof?”

“Of what? That the bastard was abusing them, or that I helped them get out?”

“That the girls reached their aunt.”

“Ah,” he said, understanding what she was asking. “And proof that Caitlin and Rebecca are together, and alive.”

“Yes.”

“Of course I do. Believe me, I document everything, cover my ass every step of the way. Signed letters from friends, neighbors, and teachers, statements by their doctors, tape recordings of what goes on in the house when the doors are shut, videos if I have them. And afterward, I get dated proof that they’re still alive a couple of weeks later. I don’t know if the letter from Caitlin and Rebecca has arrived yet, but I have one from Eleanor and Joanna. You may have read about Joanna writing a friend to say they’d both run away? That’s part of the process, taking the heat off. They wrote at the same time to me, for my records. I could show you their letter, but I keep everything in Seattle. We’d have to go there.”