Children of the Storm (2 page)

    She asked no questions, and he started no conversations until they were out of the busiest sea lanes and in the open water, the heavy ocean swell rolling rhythmically toward, under and beyond them. “How far to
Distingue
?

    “Twenty-five minutes, half an hour,” he said. “It's not actually very far from civilization, but the illusion of isolation is pretty good.” He handled the wheel nonchalantly, setting course by some method which she could not divine.

    “I'm sure the children like living in a place where there's no one to compel them to go to school,” she said, holding fast to a chrome hand railing as the boat slapped through the crests of the foam-tipped waves.

    “They've been pretty rambunctious since the family came down here from New Jersey,” Peterson agreed. “But you're a school teacher as well as a nurse, aren't you?”

    “Yes.”

    “So their days of freedom are limited.” He grinned, very warmly, very reassuringly, a man almost any young woman would be attracted to.

    “I hope they don't see me as an old dragon,” Sonya said. “I don't intend to make their studies burdensome, if I can help it.”

    “No one could see you as an old dragon,” he said. “Absolutely no one at all.”

    She was not accustomed to flattery, and she was unable to respond with more than a blush.

    He said, “You seem to have picked up quite a bit of education for a girl so young.” He looked sideways at her, then back at the sun-dappled sea.

    She said, “One of the few things that bills and taxes couldn't touch in my father's small estate was a trust fund he had established for my education. It couldn't be used for anything else; and I took full advantage of it. After nurse's school, I wasn't really certain that I wanted to spend my life in hospitals watching people die little-by-little. So I enrolled in the elementary education curriculum at a small college near my grandmother's place. I don't know whether I would ever have enjoyed teaching in a normal grade school atmosphere. This job-governness and tutor, is just about perfect, though.”

    “The kids are bound to like you,” he said, smiling at her.

    “I hope so. I also hope I can teach them well enough to keep up with the island government's requirements.”

    “Whatever you teach them,” he said, the tone of his voice having suddenly hardened a bit, “they'll be safer on
Distingue
than in a town somewhere, in any regular school. Safer than they'd be in private schools, too, for that matter.”

    
Lady Jane
rose, fell, groaned as the water slapped her hull, whined on through the choppy seas.

    Sonya felt a shiver course the length of her spine, though she was not sure of the cause. The day was not chilly, nor the company-thus far- full of gloom. Yet there was something behind what Peterson had just said, something in the way he had said it that was distinctly unsettling…

    She said, “Safe?”

    “Yes. The island puts them out of the reach of anyone who might take it in mind to hurt them.”

    He was completely serious now, with no more white-toothed, bright-eyed smiles for her, his big hands gripped hard about the wheel as if he were taking his anger out on that hard, plastic circle.

    “Why should anyone want to hurt them?” she asked, genuinely perplexed but uncomfortably certain that he had an answer. Bill Peterson seemed a level-headed man, not the sort to generate wild stories or unbased fears.

    “You don't know about what's happened?” he asked.

    “No.”

    He turned away from the water and looked at her, obviously concerned. He said, “Nothing about the threats?”

    “Threats?” she asked.

    The chill along her spine had grown worse. Though she had by now gotten accustomed to the rollicking progress of the speeding craft, she still held tightly to the shining hand railing, her knuckles white.

    “Back in New Jersey, someone threatened to kill both of the kids-Alex and Tina.”

    The
Lady Jane
rose.

    The
Lady Jane
fell.

    But the ship and the sea both seemed to have receded now as the thing that Bill Peterson was telling her swelled in importance until it filled her mind.

    She said, “I suppose wealthy people are often the targets of cranks who-”

    “This was no crank,” he said. There was no doubt in his voice, not a shred of it.

    “Oh?”

    “I wasn't up in New Jersey with them, of course. This house on
Distingue
is their winter home for four months of the year, and I'm here the year-around, keeping it up. Mr. Dougherty, Joe, told me what happened up there, though. It scared him enough to finally move his family and servants down here ahead of schedule. What he told me happened up there would have frightened me too, no question.”

    She waited, knowing that he would tell her about it and angry with him for having brought it up. Yet, at the same time, she wanted to know, had to know, all about it. She remembered her roomie's warnings about coming to an unknown place, to work for unknown people…

    “It was telephone calls at first. Mrs. Dougherty took the first one. Some man, obviously trying to disguise his voice, told her what he would do to both the children when he found an opportunity to corner one or both of them when they were alone.”

    “What did he threaten?”

    Peterson hesitated for a moment, then sighed wearily, as if it required too much energy to keep such awful things secret. “He was a damned ugly man. He promised to take a knife to them.”

    “Stab them?”

    “Yes.”

    She shuddered.

    He said, “And cut their throats.”

    The chill had become a positively arctic line along her slender back, had frozen her to her place by the safety railing, sent cold fingers throughout her body.

    “There was worse than that,” Peterson said. “But you wouldn't want to hear what he said he'd do, not in detail. Basically, he made it clear he wanted to mutilate them before he killed them.”

    “My God!” Sonya said, quaking openly now, queasy inside. “The man sounds mad.”

    “Very obviously, he was,” Peterson agreed.

    “Mrs. Dougherty listened to all of this, put up with the filthy things he was saying?”

    “She says she was frozen by that voice, that she couldn't have hung up even if she'd wanted to. And believe me, she wanted to!” He concentrated on the instruments for a moment, seemed to make a course adjustment with the wheel, then said, “He called twelve times in one week, always with the same kind of patter, though it got even worse, even more brutal than what I've told you.”

    “And they listened?”

    “Mr. Dougherty began taking all the calls, and he hung up. At first he did, anyway.”

    “Why'd he change his tactics?”

    “Well, they began to wonder if they had a real psychotic on their hands-instead of just a crank. They went to the police and, finally, had a tap put on their phone. The guy called six more times while the cops were trying to trace him.”

    “
Trying
to trace him?”

    “Well-”

    “Good God, you'd think they'd want to find out what kind of a depraved-”

    It was Peterson's turn to interrupt. “Oh, the police wanted to find him, sure enough. But tracing a telephone call, in these days of direct dial systems, isn't all that easy. You have to keep the man on the line for four or five minutes, until they get it pinned down. And this character was getting clever. He was making his calls shorter and shorter, packing more and more violent rhetoric into them. The police wanted him, because that's part of their job, but also because the pressure was on them. I'm not giving away any secrets when I say that Joe Dougherty wields influence and can force an issue when he wants to. In this case, he wanted to. But it took them six more calls from this crackpot to locate the phone.”

    “And?”

    “It was just a payphone.”

    “Still-"Sonya said.

    “After that, he didn't call again for a while, for more than two weeks, Joe said.”

    “The police kept a tap going?”

    Peterson said, “No. After a week, they packed it up and convinced Joe that their man was only a hoaxer, perverted, to be sure, but not serious. They didn't explain how he got hold of the Doughertys' unlisted number, but they were ready to ignore that. So were the Doughertys. Things were much easier if they believed it, you see.”

    “I see,” she said.

    She wanted to sit down in one of the command chairs by the controls, but she was afraid she would lose her balance if she let go of the railing.

    “Then, after two weeks without any calls, they found a note in Tina's room, pinned to her pillow.”

    “Note?”

    “It had been written, so far as they could tell, by the same man who had made the telephone calls.”

    Sonya closed her eyes, tried to ride with the rocking vessel and with the story Peterson was telling her, but she did not think she was going to have much luck.

    “The note made the same threats as before, only elaborated on them-blood-curdling things, really obscene.” He shook his head and looked as if he would spit out the taste of the memory. If it were this unpleasant to recall, for Peterson, what must it have been like for the Doughertys, who had experienced it all first hand?

    “Wait a minute,” Sonya said, confused and not a little frightened by what he had told her. “Are you saying that they found the note in their own house-that this madman had been in the little girl's room?”

    “Yes.”

    “But
how?”

    Bill looked at his instruments, held the wheel steady in his powerful hands as he spoke. “No one saw or heard him-even though the butler, maid, cook and handyman must have all been around when he entered the house. Perhaps even Mrs. Dougherty was there, depending on the time the note was placed.”

    “They called the police.”

    “Yes,” Peterson said. “And the house was watched by plainclothesmen in unmarked cars. Still, he managed to get into the house, three nights later, leaving notes on the doors of both the kids' rooms.”

    “The police didn't see him?”

    “No. They started trying to convince the Doughertys that one of the servants was involved-”

    “Sounds reasonable to assume,” Sonya said.

    “Except that Joe has had these people with him for years-some of them served his mother and father when they were alive and maintaining a big house. Joe just couldn't see what any of them would have against him or the kids. He treats his employees well, as you'll soon discover. Besides, none of that crew would be capable of such a thing: a gentler lot, you'll not find anywhere. When you meet them, you'll see what I mean.” He looked at the sea, looked back at her and said, “Besides, neither Mrs. Dougherty nor Joe recognized the crackpot's voice.”

    “You said, before, that he tried to disguise his voice.”

    “Yes, but even disguised, they would have recognized the voice of someone they talk to every day and have known for years.”

    “I suppose,” Sonya said, reluctantly.

    For the first time, Peterson seemed to realize what the story had done to her composure, and he forced a smile for her, an imitation of his genuine grin. “Hey, don't let it upset you like that! No one got hurt. And, obviously, the kids are safe down here on
Distingue.
They've been here since the middle of June, going on three months, with no more incidents.”

    “Still,” Sonya said hollowly, “the man who made the threats is on the loose.”

    “Oh, brother,” Peterson said, slapping his forehead, “I must have come on like a real doomsayer first class! I really didn't mean to worry you, Sonya. I was just surprised that Joe hadn't explained the situation to you. Look, he and Mrs. Dougherty are sure the crisis is passed. They're so sure that they want to take a few weeks off for a trip to California. Once you're settled in, they'll pack and be off. Now, would they leave their kids if they thought there was still the slightest breath of danger?”

    “No,” she said, “I guess they wouldn't.” However, all of this sudden attempt to reassure her had actually done very little to erase the image of a deranged and murderous child molester which he had first painted for her.

    To distract her, he grinned even more broadly, and a bit more genuinely, and waved his arm dramatically ahead of them. “What do you think of our island, our lovely
Distingue
? Isn't she about the most marvelous piece of real estate you've ever seen?”

    Sonya looked up, surprised to see the island looming before them through the curve of the sun-tinted, plexiglass windscreen, like the opening scene in some motion picture, too beautiful for anything but fantasy. She had not noticed it growing on the horizon, but that might have been because, except for the central spine of low hills, the island was nearly as flat as the sea which lapped at all sides of it. A thick stand of lacy palm trees backed the startlingly white beaches and shaded, on the nearest of the hills, a mammoth house that must surely contain two dozen rooms or even more. It was of white board, with balconies and porches, several gables and many clean, square windows that reflected the golden-red brilliance of the sun and gave the place a look of warmth and welcome.

    If she had not just heard the story which Bill Peterson had told her on the way over from
Pointe-a-Pitre,
she would have thought that the Dougherty house was absolutely charming, a beautiful mass of angles, lines and shapes, the product of a good architect and of expert craftsmen spurred to do their best by a customer who could afford any expense whatsoever, any luxury that struck his fancy. Now, however, with the real-life nightmare hovering always in the back of her mind, like a dark bird of prey, the house seemed curiously menacing, swathed in purple shadows, full of darkened niches, harsh, sharp, a mysterious monolith against the sweet Caribbean horizon, almost a sentient creature lying in wait on the brow of that tropic hill. She began to wonder, more seriously than before, if her old college roommate had been right about the dangers in coming to this place…