Nantucket Five-Spot (16 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Conspiracy Theory

“That's preposterous,” said Jack Tornovitch.

“Jack, listen to me for a second. I just—”

“You're loyal to your friend, Kennis. I admire that. But you're getting desperate. I had to deal with 9/11 conspiracy theorists who thought the U.S. Government brought down the World Trade Center, fired a missile at the Pentagon and moved all the passengers on American Airlines Flight 77 to some black site in Montana. They made more sense than you do.”

We were sitting in Haden's old office, Jack barricaded behind Haden's desk, ignoring the forlorn beeps of incoming faxes, and his cell vibrating in little circles on the desk blotter with a weird animal urgency, bumping into the Steuben glass sculpture of an ice-fishing Eskimo that Jack had installed as part of his office makeover.

He turned the phone off and slipped it into his pocket with a terse, “Sorry.”

For a few moments there I had thought I was getting through to him. But I was kidding myself.

“Are you familiar with the phlogiston theory, Kennis?”

“I studied it in college.”

“Then you see my point.”

“Not really.”

“Let me refresh your memory. It was a seventeenth-century theory of combustion. Phlogiston was an element that got released when things burned, supposedly. The idea was shot down a hundred years later when someone noticed that ash weighed more than the log it came from. Something was being added, not taken away and that something was oxygen. Ring a bell?”

“I think so. Lavoisier had something to do with it, right?”

“Very good. He did the experimental work that debunked the theory. But the phlogiston supporters—particularly one Joseph Priestley—had their own explanation for his results. Phlogiston had ‘negative weight.' Negative weight, Kennis. Do you see the point now? Negative weight! If the results don't fit the facts, make up new facts! Priestley's the poster boy for junk science. He's been a cautionary tale and a fucking joke for more than two hundred years.”

I sighed. “And I'm Priestley. Because of my theory.”

“You're Priestley because you won't let it go. Let it go, Kennis. You're wasting your time. More to the point, you're wasting my time, which actually has value. You're like my Eskimo here,” he said, gesturing toward the sculpture. The sterling silver Inuit fisherman crouched on the frosted glass slab and drove his spear through a hole, stabbing at the fish in the clear glass below. “Striking blind, hoping for the best? That's not how we do things at the Department of Homeland Security. Now get out of here. I have phone calls to make.”

***

Crossing the parking lot to my car, I knew my next move. I still had one ally in the JTTF, or so I thought. When I called Franny, she was driving out to Sanford Farm for a walk. She always thought best in motion.

I beat her to the property, and was sitting in the dirt parking lot, listening to Diane Rhem on NPR discussing yet another ‘extraordinary book' with yet another annoyingly successful author, when Franny pulled up in her rental Ford Focus.

I killed the engine, got out and stretched my legs. The lot was full today, and there would be dozens of people scattered along the seven-mile path to the ocean. A couple with two golden retrievers came through the gate. The dogs paused to greet an old man's standard poodle, and then trotted over to me. The old man tipped his beret, with a gesture not unlike picking up a puppy by the scruff of its neck. He and his wife ran an antique store in town. Someone had broken into the shop last month, but they refused to update their alarm system. I liked them for their stubborn opposition to the world of high-tech electronics and lower insurance rates. I also liked the sight of their big, tightly clipped poodle bounding into the field beyond the fence. I lifted a hand and the old man smiled. Everyone knew I wasn't there to enforce the leash laws.

Franny knelt down to rub the golden retrievers' heads. She was wearing a v-neck white t-shirt and cut-off jeans; I looked away from the glimpse of her bare breasts to face her thighs below the ragged edge of denim. It had been almost a week since I'd seen her last, and I felt a surge of inappropriate desire. It was like climbing the bluffs at Eel Point, the tilting vertigo as the sand gave way beneath your feet and you started slipping backward down the slope. And it carried the same belated knowledge: this was too steep. You shouldn't have even begun.

I righted myself, got my balance back, stood up. This was business. I needed to convince her to help.

“You got here fast,” she said.

“I know all the shortcuts.”

She straightened up with a wintry little smile. “A police officer shouldn't really brag about that, Hank.”

“I'm not a cheater. I just know the island.”

“Maybe you know it too well. You don't even recognize your own conflict-of-interest problems.”

She had obviously talked to Tornovitch.

“This is no shortcut, Franny. Just the opposite. That's the whole problem.”

“Let's walk.”

She started away and pushed through the wooden turnstile, to the open fields beyond. I followed her. A quarter of a mile farther on, the path forked and took a rise into a stand of pitch pines that my kids always called the Hundred Acre Wood. People approached us along the path, couples, parents with their kids, old guys with old dogs, bird watchers. Everyone greeted me, with a word or a nod.

We walked through the pines on a carpet of brown needles and paused to take in the distant view of the ocean. Then we started down toward the loop path again, walking along the edge of Hummock Pond, among the milkweed and the Queen Anne's lace, past the osprey nests.

For the moment we were alone.

“What I'm asking you to do is start from scratch and rethink everything,” I said. “That's not a short cut. It's a lot of work. It requires mental resiliency. You have to—”

“You don't have to do anything. You just blink and everything's inside out! That's all it is—throw away the photograph and look at the negative. Light is dark. Dark is light. But it doesn't mean anything, Hank. It's the same picture.”

“It does mean something. It means you arrested an innocent man.”

“Why? Because all the reasons we think he's guilty are the reasons he's innocent? He was alone for two hours on the day of the bombing, he has no alibi for the time frame when the bomb was set…and that's why he didn't do it? There was enough evidence in his house and on his computer for a two day trial and a double life sentence, and that's why we should know he's innocent?”

“Franny—”

“That's what you're saying. That's what you told Jack. Everything's opposite. The green light means stop on Nantucket.”

“Actually, we don't have traffic lights on Nantucket.”

“Exactly. That is so perfect. You refuse to install traffic lights because you want to feel special, but you have traffic jams and traffic accidents just like everyone else. You need traffic lights. You won't admit it.”

“So we're all deluded.”

“Maybe I'm just hanging out with the wrong people.”

We walked along between low bushes. Some kids ran past. A group of women wearing University of Nantucket t-shirts ambled toward us examining a Conservation Foundation map of the property.

Finally the path was clear again.

“Haden is innocent,” I said. “It's all too tidy. Someone is setting him up.”

She was losing patience. She didn't want to be here. “Okay…so someone is setting him up to look like he's setting someone up? But who's setting up the person who's setting up Haden? That's the real question, Hank. And why stop there? Maybe somebody's framing that guy, too. Maybe it's Billy Delevane. He's been cleared, he's walking around free. So he must be guilty. That's your logic.”

“So my theory is impossible.”

“It's far-fetched. And it's contaminated, Hank. Because he's your friend.”

“But that's the whole point! He's my friend. I know him, Franny. He's a bird watcher! They're the least violent people on Earth. We have a tradition here—the Christmas bird count. It started out as a hunt. Nantucketers went out on the day after Christmas and shot everything that moved, everything they could see. Birders changed that. They watch and cherish. They don't hunt. I watched Haden Krakauer spend almost an hour untangling a hummingbird from a spider's web. That's not a killer.”

She wasn't buying it. “He takes his anger out somewhere else, that's all. He loves birds and hates people. Birds you can tag and study. They don't talk back.”

“Actually, birders are the most sociable people I know. They travel in packs, they talk to each other constantly. They're enthusiasts. They like being outdoors and studying the world around them. It's healthy.”

Franny took a breath. “Whatever. That's fine. But Krakauer admitted to planning this whole crazy scheme. During yesterday's interrogation. Turns out, he was thinking about it all through the Iraq war, all the time he was stationed in Kuwait—how to get Billy Delavane. How to frame him for a bomb scare.”

“That's bullshit.”

“It's true. I'd show you the transcripts but you don't have clearance.”

“Wait a minute. There's no way—”

“Listen to me! Stop and listen to me, Hank. He worked it all out—the e-mails, the watch…stealing the credit card, everything. He obsessed over it.”

“So what does he think of what's happening now?”

“I—”

“You must have asked him.”

“No, I—it's…”

“What?”

“I just read the transcripts. Jack conducts the interrogations. No one else is allowed in there. It's just the two of them.”

“That doesn't strike you as odd?”

“It's the way Jack works.”

“And Jack didn't ask him? ‘All your weird fantasies are coming true. Any thoughts on that?' No interest there?”

“No. At least not yet.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know, Hank.”

“Haden wanted to talk about it. That night, at the golf course, he brought it up—but there was too much going on, and it got lost in the shuffle.”

“Did you follow up?”

“No. I should have. That was a mistake. But he didn't bring it up again either. I think he was embarrassed. You can see why, now. It was a long story, and he didn't want to tell it. Would you? It makes him look bad. He comes off as an angry loser. He sounds paranoid, like some kind of weird stalker type.”

Her smile was cold. “My point exactly. Someone called, the night of the bombing—trying to make them evacuate the place. Sounds like a gentle bird-watcher type to me. He didn't want to hurt any innocent people. It fits. Every redeeming thing you tell me about this nut just makes him look better for the crime.”

Checkmate. But I wasn't ready to give up yet. “Look, if I'm right, Haden has to know he's being framed. He might even have some idea who's doing it. Jack has to at least ask him. You have to convince Jack—”

“Have to?”

“No, I mean—if you could just—”

“Listen to me, Hank. Jack is the senior investigating officer on this case. He's an acknowledged expert on terrorist debriefing techniques. He wrote a monograph on it. They use it as a primary text at the Academy. Okay? He's the best in the world at this particular thing.”

“But he couldn't get a confession out of Roy Elkins.”

“That was a long time ago. And Haden Krakauer is no Roy Elkins. Look, if there's some line of questioning Jack's not pursuing, I'm sure he has his reasons. It's not my job to second guess him on this. I could lose my job doing that. All right? The point is, Haden was having every one of the bad thoughts you seem to think he's incapable of. Every single one. In fact, that was all he thought about, literally for years. He admitted it.”

“Okay, fine. Maybe he did. But thinking about it is one thing. Doing it is something else. People fantasize about crazy stuff all the time. But we don't put them in jail for that.”

“No we don't. Not until they start acting out. Until it stops being a fantasy.”

We topped a small rise to where the old barn creaked in the steady south wind. I could smell the ocean. I sat down on the bench nearby. A tractor was cutting one of the fields. I listened to the faint insect buzz of it and let the humid air caress my face. We had been walking fast, Franny always walked fast. My legs were tired.

Jane Stiles trudged past, giving her eight year old a piggy back ride. Her face was flushed. The hike to the sea had obviously been too much for her. I knew how Jane felt. I had carried Tim halfway up Mount Batty on a trip to Maine a few years before.

She lifted a hand. “Hi, Chief.”

“Hey.”

Franny shot me a quick look when they disappeared down the hill “Who was that?”

“Just a local. Name's Jane Stiles. Landscaper, single mom. Excellent writer. I've heard her at readings.”

“Attractive woman. Slim but strong. That's a lot of kid to carry.”

“I guess.”

We were getting sidetracked. We needed to focus. I had an idea. There was a possible loophole in Franny's argument.

“Who did he talk to?”

“What?”

“When Haden was in Kuwait, did he tell anyone about this idea? Because that's something else I know about him. He talks a lot, especially when he's drinking and he was drinking hard in those days. If he told someone, and that someone had some reason to hurt him, some grudge…”

“You're reaching, Hank.”

I stood up. “Let's head back.”

We were halfway to the parking area before either one of us spoke again. I was working out exactly how I wanted to phrase my final attempt.

“Franny, listen to me. The person behind this is evil. And Haden Krakauer isn't evil. He just isn't. I know him. That's not a conflict of interest. That's a tactical advantage you're throwing away. That's an investigative tool you're wasting.”