The Silent Bride (35 page)

"Welcome to Martha's Vineyard, and thanks for flying American Eagle," the pilot announced.

April saw the police cruiser parked on the runway and unhooked her seat belt with a little sigh of relief. The local sheriff was waiting for them as he had promised. As soon as she and Mike broke away from the other disembarking passengers and headed his way, he stuck out a paw. If he felt any surprise by the New York team, he didn't show it.

"You got here right on schedule. Bert Whitmore, at your service." The sheriff was five-ten, heavy build, wearing a khaki uniform with a considerable belly protruding over his belt, bristly gray hair growing out well past the crew-cut stage, sharp blue eyes.

"Lieutenant Sanchez and Sergeant Woo. Thanks for coming out for us," Mike said.

"No trouble at all. We don't get too many requests from Nu Yawk. We have a lot of respect for you folks, what you did last fall. Anything to help." Whitmore smiled at April. "You the one who called me last night?"

"Yes, sir."

"You didn't tell me much." He waved his hand at the new-looking cruiser with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts seal on the front doors. It was real clean and neat, had a cage separating the front and back seats, and all the modern technology. "What's your time line?" he asked.

"We're going back out at fifteen hundred. You okay with that?" Mike asked.

"Anything you want is okay with me. I'm here to help." Whitmore glanced back at the wind socks on the runway, snapping hard in a rising wind and deepening haze. He shrugged big shoulders, then climbed stiffly into the car. "You'll be fine getting out if the weather holds."

"What if the weather doesn't hold?" Mike asked, checking his watch, then opening the front passenger door for April.

"Ferry to Woods Hole. Bus to Baaston or Hyannis. Or you can wait it out."

Cold, wet air gusted at them. April shivered and shook her head. Spring was several weeks behind here; maybe they wouldn't get home as easily as they got here. She chose the backseat, happy to let Mike do the talking for the moment. His hand grazed hers as she climbed into the back.

"You're here about those wedding shootings down there, huh? Terrible thing. One of you want to fill me in?" The sheriff started the engine and drove around a fortune in private planes parked in a grid next to the runway like cars in a big lot.

"How long have you been on the job, Sheriff?" Mike asked.

"Call me Bert. Going on nineteen years now," he said.

"You know a family up here called Lotte?"

"Oh, sure. Over on Lake Tashmoo. The little lady told me you wanted to go out there and take a look."

"You had a shooting incident there back about seventeen years. Do you remember anything about that?"

"Sure, I do. I went to grammar school with Barry Wood. We looked into it pretty carefully because of the sticky situation." The cruiser bumped off the field onto the service road and threaded through a bunch of buildings that looked like army barracks. At the entrance to the airport, he turned left onto a road that was empty but for cars leaving the airport.

"What kind of situation?"

"Missus Lotte took up with Barry's father, and there was a lot of bad feeling between the families over the divorce. Barry and Wendy went away to school. Then in college during the summers the two were running around the island together, getting into trouble."

"Oh, what kind of trouble?"

"Oh, you know, the usual kind of thing for here. Vineyard Haven is a dry town. They'd run into Oak Bluffs and get beer, drink out on the beach, light firecrackers. Once they set off a rocket across the cut. It set the beach grass on fire and burned out a couple acres." He thought about it for a few moments.

"They weren't malicious, though. They alerted the fire department right away. Otherwise we could have lost a couple of houses out there. Everything's shingle on the beach, and pretty much everywhere else, too." He let out a chortle. "And they grew Mary Jane out in the vegetable garden. Those two were pretty wild for here, and their families, too."

He turned left again at a four-way intersection with a blinking yellow light. The weather was deteriorating fast. Fog rolled in at around a hundred feet April could see it move forward like a wall. Unlike New York, where it just thickened the air until you couldn't see the tops of the buildings.

"What about the shooting?" Mike asked.

They passed a farm with fields just planted, houses, all gray shingle with shutters. Now they were on a main road with fancy SUVs and only white people driving them. April tried to imagine Wendy's life here as a kid growing up. A few miles on they turned left again, passed a cemetery, a grocery store, a couple of small strip malls. Then a sudden deep curve in the road brought them to a grassy hill overlooking a cove with bobbing sailboats below and they were in picture-postcard land.

"This here is the inland side of the lake."

They passed a horse farm with barns and an elegant white clapboard house, and soon turned onto a dirt road. Bert resumed his story.

"Wendy cleaned up pretty good after she went to college. No more trouble before the shooting. They had a twenty-eight-acre place and did trapshooting out there, target shooting. Harry Lotte had always been an enthusiastic sport shooter, and somebody was always complaining about him and the kids shooting out there in the dunes. Wendy was into it pretty big. Did you know she almost went to the Olympics her senior year of college?"

"Yeah, we heard something about it."

"Why did she shoot Barry?" April asked.

"The way they told it, Wendy was target shooting, didn't see Barry behind it. Bullet went through the target and hit him in the shoulder."

"What kind of target?" April asked.

"Old fashioned bull's-eye target," he replied. "Like for archery. Not much to it. It could have happened that way." He shrugged.

But that wasn't the way Wendy told it.

"Humph. Is shooting like that legal out here?" April asked.

"Nope, but as I told you, they did it."

"Did you compare the heights of the target and the victim to see if it could have been an accident?" April asked.

"I was pretty new on the job. I wasn't an investigator back then. That's what they said, and that's what they stuck to. It got in the paper, but it wasn't a real big deal, except those two broke up afterward, and the families moved away."

"What about the gun?" April, still asking from the backseat.

"AR-7."

"Takedown," Mike finished.

"Yep."

The classic survival rifle used first by the military and then on countless RVs, boats, and planes for the last forty years. Not much in favor on the market anymore, but hundreds of thousands of them were out there. It was a good gun for the wilderness, for shooting small game, and for plinking tin cans.

"Pretty neat little thing. The barrel, action, and eight-round magazine each have a compartment in the stock."

"Caliber .22," April said from the back.

"Yes, ma'am."

That's what they were looking for.

"Was the gun confiscated?" Mike asked.

"It was registered." Bert turned to Mike briefly. Up went his shoulder.

"Any complaints about shooting out there this season?" April asked.

"We have strict gun laws here in Massachusetts. We don't let anybody get away with any reckless shooting now." Tins he was sure about. "They can own, of course, but they can't just shoot anywhere."

The cruiser traveled down a deeply rutted, bone-jarring dirt road that wound through a dense scrub-oak forest, posted with NO HUNTING signs. Other signs pointed down branching roads to houses named Chateau, Swindle, Osprey Nest. Suddenly a deer with two tiny fawns crashed through the brush and crossed the road ahead of them. April caught her breath at the dazzling sight.

"Troublesome creatures." Bert didn't even slow down.

Mike turned around to smile at April. Nature. Unexpectedly lovely. Then he asked a question April didn't hear. Bert answered with a laugh. He was acting like a tourist guide, still hadn't asked how the old case pertained to the homicides in the big city. At twenty yards a .22 bullet might well travel through a soft target at close range, but it didn't play well to April, and it wasn't the story Wendy had told her. Why tell a different story now? She thought about it as the trees thinned and sand and sea grass filled the ruts that pretended to be road. Maybe Wendy's story changed in her mind over the years. Maybe she just lied all the time. They were almost there.

A tight turnaround with a scrub oak in the center formed a wheel off of which one road led out to beach and open water and two doubled back inland. The cruiser dipped into a pothole a foot deep and followed a crude hand-painted sign for Blueberry Farm, then turned again onto another bumpy road. He stopped in a clearing where the pine forest edged the lake.

"This is it?" April was surprised. The house was hardly more than a cottage.

"The main house is down the road. It was sold off years ago. The barn here, along with a few acres and about a hundred feet of waterfront, was kept, built at the same time. I think Wendy owns it. The water's brackish, so she can't rent."

So what Wendy had told her in the interview room was half truth. Sea grass was high in front of the house. A badly rusting van and a moped were parked there. April's heart spiked as they got out of the cruiser and hiked along a narrow path through the wet grass.

Bert went first and knocked on the door. Wet wind slapped at their clothes and faces as they waited. April shivered in her cotton jacket. It was downright cold up here.

"Open up, police," Bert said.

They waited some more. Bert turned the handle and the door opened. "Anybody home?"

A girl wearing a long flowered skirt and a sweatshirt opened the door. Her hair was messy and her face didn't know it was morning.

"Who is it?" A male voice called from the other room.

"Lori Wilson?" April asked.

"Yes." Lori squinted out at them in sleepy surprise. "Hello. It's the police," over her shoulder. A warning.

"Sheriff Whitmore," Bert said.

April went next. "Sergeant Woo, Lieutenant Sanchez, NYPD."

"Jesus. What's going on?" Lori glanced around the small living room that was as folksy and American-country as Wendy's city apartment was urban-spare. At the moment it was in murky light and a mess. The faded, flowered sofas were littered with take-out food bags, empty beer bottles, and large soda cups. On the wood floor, the multicolored braided rugs were covered with sand. The fireplace was full of charred wood from many fires, and the room had a stale, smoky smell.

"You haven't heard?" Whitmore said, looking around.

"Heard what? We don't have a TV. She hasn't turned the phone on yet." She looked embarrassed when a young man in army fatigues emerged from one of two doors. One side of his face had a row of piercing on the eyebrow and another ringing the ear. Symmetry. A stud in his nose. The other side of his face was randomly pierced. His light hair was a huge nest of dreds. He appeared to be a young person trying to look as messed up as possible and succeeding very well. April guessed he had not reached legal drinking age, and Lori was a few years older.

"Hey, what's going on?" The kid raised his fingers in a peace sign at the sheriff.

"What are you doing here, Rod?"

"Just hanging with, uh, Lori." The kid shook spider webs out of a brain he didn't know how to use. "I was just on my way to work," he added, edging toward the door.

"I don't think so, Rod. It's Sunday."

"Already?" Rod seemed surprised by that and got defensive right away. "Whatever your problem is, I didn't do anything. We just hung out for a couple of days, okay? That's it." He gave the wash sign with his hands. Done. Could he go now?

"I'd like to talk to Lori," April said.

"Okay. You can tell me your life history, Rod." The sheriff moved him out the front door.

Mike moved inside. "Anyone else here?" he asked Lori.

"Uh-uh." She stuck a finger in her mouth.