After the Darkness

Chapter Thirty-One

MITCH 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?

HANNAH COFFIN 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."

"ARE 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.

NANTUCKET 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?

THE 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."