Vineyard Fear (7 page)

“I've got to go home,” she said.

“Sad words for one who has plied the maiden with his best booze and food.”

“I have to go to work in the morning.”

“You can go from here.”

“I don't have a clean uniform here, J.W.”

“Wear this one.”

“This one needs to be washed. It has smudges from when I helped today's first moped accident up onto a table where we could patch him up. No, I've got to go.”

“I want to see you a lot before you leave.”

She put her arms around my neck. “Why don't you come to my place for supper tomorrow?”

“Can I bring a clean uniform with me?”

She laughed. “Yes.”

The next day, early, I was on East Beach looking for bluefish that weren't there. Coming back to Wasque, I found Iowa with his head under the hood of his pickup. Two small bluefish lay at his feet.

“Glad to see you, J.W. By Gadfrey, will you look at this? Broken radiator hose! What next? First a muffler and now this. I have to get me a new truck. This one's beginning to fall to pieces. Your truck there is even older than this one. How in blazes do you keep it going?”

“Good Japanese engineering. You should stay away from American machines.”

“By Gadfrey, maybe you're right.”

“Actually I use the ride-it-a-day, work-on-it-a-day technique. I spend a good deal of time underneath this monster.
I'll give you a ride into town then bring you back out. Toss your fish in my box.”

“Damned glad you came along. Not another soul on the beach. Thought I was going to have to radio for help.”

We drove through the dunes and then along the south side of Katama Pond until we got to the pavement.

Iowa looked at his watch. “Let's go to my place first, so I can put the fish in my big cooler. Have a cup of coffee. By that time the parts place will be open.”

Iowa lived out near the big airport. In the early morning, there wasn't much traffic, so we were there in pretty quick time. As we pulled into his driveway, Iowa cursed and said, “What's that son of a bitch doing here?”

There was a car with Iowa license plates in front of the house. As we stopped behind the car, I could see the front door of the house hanging open. Suddenly Iowa's wife came running out. Iowa caught her in his arms.

“What's going on, Jean?”

Her voice was high. “He's in there, Dan! He broke in the door and came right in! He went into her room! I've called the police, but . . . He's in there with her now. I think he's going to kill her!”

I didn't have to be told who “he” was. I turned Jean to me. “Does he have a gun? A knife? Anything like that?”

“What . . . ? No! I don't know! I didn't see anything, J.W. . . . I tried to stop him . . .”

Jean was small and in her sixties. Far away, I could hear sirens. I put Jean back into Iowa's arms.

“Get out to the road and make sure the cops don't go to the wrong place by mistake. Go on!”

“My shotguns are upstairs in my closet,” said Iowa. “He may have gotten to them . . .”

“No,” said Jean. “He went right into Geraldine's room!”

“Get to the road,” I said and turned and ran to the house. I slowed at the door, listened, and went in through the splintered frame.

The grunting of a man's voice and the moans of a woman came from a room down the hall from the living room. I went down the hall and into the room. Furniture was overturned and a throw rug was wadded in a corner. Geraldine Miles lay across the bed while Lloyd Cramer knelt over her, his left hand on her throat, his right rising and falling, striking with sodden thumps against the bloody thing that had been her face. I thought I saw a bit of bone through the blood. With every blow he grunted and between grunts he cursed her with vile and unimaginative names.

He heard me and turned as I came in. His face was glowing with a kind of happiness.

“I got the bitch,” he said.

I took him by a shoulder and his belt and jerked him away from the bed. He hung on to Geraldine's throat and brought her with him. I let go of his belt and hit him as hard as I could under the ear. He let her go and staggered back against a wall. I went after him and his hands came up. He was possessed by the strength of a sort of madness. He got hold of my throat with his left and hit me with his right hand, a punishing blow which I partially blocked. He was a big man and in good shape, so I jerked away and kicked him in the knee. The sound of the kneecap dislocating mixed with his cry as he felt the pain. As he reached for his knee and started his fall, I grabbed his hair with both hands, jerked his head forward and brought my knee up into his face. His nose disappeared in a spray of blood. I brought my knee up again. Then, hanging on to his hair, I drove his face into the floor. He lay there and didn't move.

Geraldine Miles lay on the floor. Her face was making little red bubbles. I put a finger on her pulse. It was faint, but still there. I heard the siren die in the yard. I turned and kicked Lloyd Cramer in the head. A moment later, the cops were in the room. There was an older cop and a young summer cop.

“You'll need a couple of ambulances,” I said, and kicked Lloyd again.

“Hey!” said the summer cop. “Don't do that.”

“Aw, just one more time,” I said, and kicked Lloyd again. “This is the guy who did that to her,” I said, pointing at Geraldine. “I'll wait for you outside.”

“That'll be all right,” said the older cop, looking at the figures on the floor. He looked at the summer cop, who was getting pale around the gills. “Joe, go out and put in a call for two ambulances and another car. Tell 'em it's a Domestic.”

“They flew them both to Boston by helicopter,” said Zee. “I was on duty when they brought them in. It was pretty bad. Her jaw and cheekbone were broken. She may have a fractured skull. I don't know whether they can save her eye. She had some broken ribs and a broken arm, and she was bleeding internally. He had a broken nose and a dislocated knee and head injuries of some kind. They both had blood coming out of their ears. I never like that.”

We were having a drink at her house that evening. Normally Zee didn't talk much about her work. Like a lot of doctors and nurses, she had learned to put her work away when she went home. Unless they learn to do that, many people in the medical game would soon become dysfunctional. They are like cops in that respect. Of course, also like cops, some of them can't put aside the sights they see and the things their work obliges them to do, so you're never surprised to learn of doctors and nurses on the bottle or taking pills or other drugs. It's a professional hazard.

I had calmed down a lot since morning and no longer regretted that I'd been wearing only sandals when I'd kicked Lloyd Cramer. I had spent some time reminding myself that I had quit the Boston PD because I'd had enough of trying to save the world. But there was a perversion in me; I still doubted if I'd be sorry if I'd been wearing steel-toed boots.

“Is she going to be all right?” I asked.

“I don't know. I think he will be. As right as he ever was, anyway. Why do men do that to women?”

I thought it was for the same reason I might have beaten Lloyd Cramer to death if the cops hadn't walked in. “I think we hate the things we fear,” I said. “I think we're afraid that those things will win out, that they'll ruin our worlds.”

“How could she have frightened him? It doesn't make sense.”

“Somebody said it's transference. We transfer our fear to someone we can hurt,” I said. “Cramer's world is a bad one for him, so he beat up Geraldine because he couldn't beat up his real world, the one that scares him.”

“That doesn't make any sense.”

“We don't make sense when we take symbols so seriously that we'll kill for them. When we kill you because you're Catholic or because you're a different color, we're all crazy. I think we're the same way when we die for the Cause. The flag, our country, whatever. Fear makes us do it.”

“It sounds to me like you're saying we're all like Cramer. I don't think I am, and I don't think you are, either.”

“I think all of us have that little monster inside us. Most of us keep it caged up most of the time, but when we feel threatened, the cage door opens. I know that every time I've been angry, it's been because something frightened me. I don't get mad at things I don't see as dangerous.”

“You're waxing philosophic this evening.”

“I'm the guy who sent Lloyd Cramer up to you in pieces. I guess I'm just talking it out.”

Zee looked at me in surprise. “You did that to him? I never heard your name mentioned.”

“I got there just before the cops did. Afterward I talked to Iowa and Jean, and Jean said that Geraldine had come home and said she'd argued with Cramer and decided not to go back to Iowa with him. I think that after a while everything built up inside of him and he came after her. I stopped him, but I don't know if I was in time . . .”

She put her healer's hand on my knee. “Let's put the subject away. If I'd known you were involved, I wouldn't have brought it up. I'm sorry.”

“Me, too.” We sat for a while, then I said, “How are the Red Sox doing?”

“Now there's another sorry tale,” said Zee. “Don't you have anything cheerful to talk about?”

I narrowed my eyes, wet my tongue, and licked my lips. “How about your primary and secondary erotic zones?”

She grinned and her hand patted my knee. “Now, now. You haven't had supper yet. I think you're probably too weak to even think about such things. I don't want you to hurt yourself. Get us more drinks while I start on the cooking and maybe we can talk about it later when you've got your strength up to a satisfactory level.”

I got it up to a proper level later in the evening.

• • •

The next morning Zee went off to work and I hung around to wash up the breakfast dishes and make the bed before heading home. As I drove through West Tisbury I stopped at the general store and got a
Globe.
On the other side of the street was the field of dancing statues. I crossed and went walking among them, looking for a new one but finding the old ones quite adequate. As usual, they cheered me up. They told me not to take myself too seriously,
that life was comedy, that the universe was an ode to joy and whimsy in spite of death, in spite of pain, in spite of chaos. I heard the song of birds and saw them flashing through the trees. The wind stirred the grasses, and clouds floated across the blue sky. I willed Lloyd Cramer out of my life and felt better for it.

Too soon, as it turned out. At noon I heard the phone ringing as I was picking veggies (lettuce, radishes, a tomato, and a small zook) for a luncheon salad. It's always a toss-up whether I can get from my garden to the phone before it stops ringing. It rang again before I decided to try to get it. I put down my basket and galloped into the house. The chief was on the other end of the line.

“Just thought you'd like to know that Cramer signed himself out of the hospital this morning. He's gone and the last thing anybody heard him say was that he was going to get you and the bitch both. I've arranged for a guard to stay outside Geraldine Miles' hospital room. Do you want one too?”

“The guy's got a wrecked knee. How dangerous can he be? Besides, they're sure to pick him up before he can get here. Even Boston cops should be able to capture a man on crutches.”

“Yeah, if they wanted him for anything. Right now, there are no charges against him. He could be anywhere by now.”

“If he comes here, he'll have to come by plane or bus, and he'll be easy to spot and remember. Crutches and a face wrapped in bandages and all. His car's still down here, isn't it? And he can't drive it anyway, if his knee's no good. You going to call Dan and Jean Wiggins? Cramer might have a grudge against them, too.”

“I did that already. They'll keep their eyes open and I'll have a car swing out that way every now and then.”

“Well, you don't have to have a car swing out by my place. Thanks, anyway.”

The chief rang off and I went out and got my veggies. I brought them in and washed them off and cut them up in a largish bowl. I added some salty olives and feta cheese I'd found at the A & P Deli, laced the works with some good olive oil and just a tad of vinegar, and
violà!
, an excellent Greek salad appeared. I ate it with homemade Italian bread and washed it down with a couple of bottles of Dos Equis, Mexico's best beer. International cuisine. Nothing like it.

That evening, I showered and got into my go-to-town clothes—a blue knit jersey with a little creature over the pocket and Vineyard Red shorts, both found almost new in the thrift shop, and boat shoes without socks. I know a guy at the yacht club who, on racing days, wears his captain's hat with scrambled eggs, his blue blazer and tie, his gray slacks and boat shoes, and a red sock on his left foot and a green one on his right, symbolizing port and starboard. I was not so formal because I was only going out to eat, not out to watch the races.

At seven, Zee's Jeep came down the long, sandy road to my house. She got out wearing a pale pink summer dress that perfectly set off her deep tan and long blue-black hair. She was dazzling.

“You're dazzling,” I said.

“You look pretty Vineyardish yourself.” Her teeth flashed between lips colored to match her dress. She came to me and put her face up and I kissed those lips, then licked my own as I looked down at her.

“We don't absolutely have to go out,” I said.

“Yes, we do! I don't often get an offer to eat at the restaurant of my choice and you're not going to weasel out of taking me. So let's go to Edgartown. You can romance me later.”

“Not a really bad idea. Food first and then lust. It worked like a charm last night.”