Nantucket Grand (2 page)

Jared felt a crazy vertigo. He felt himself moving while he was standing still. Sam Wallace, star running back for the Nantucket Whalers, sole bright spot of yet another losing season, burst out of the door, sprinting for the truck. Jared threw himself wildly at the monstrous running form. He managed to catch an ankle—a perfect “shoestring” tackle. Sam pitched forward face-first into the dirt as Jared heard Mason yelling at Alana, “Put in the clutch, put in the clutch!”

She flooded the engine. Sam was thrashing to his feet. Jared jumped up first and hurdled at him, face-planting him again. Jared banged his shin on the front bumper and reeled around to the driver's side of the truck.

“My car's on Baxter Road!” he panted.

Alana stared at him “Jared?”

“Come on! You've gotta get out of here. Come on!”

He opened the door and pulled her out. But he couldn't make her step away from the truck. It was like her feet were stuck in the mud.

“Mason!” She called out.

Mason was bailing from the passenger side. In a second he was face-to-face with Sam Wallace. Another figure was bounding out of the front door, pounding toward them: Yacht Club.

“Go,” he shouted to Alana.

“But Jill—”

“You heard her! She's not going anywhere. Get the fuck away from me!” This last was directed at Sam. They tussled beside the car as Yacht Club reached them.

But he grabbed Sam, not Mason. “Fuck are you doing? I told you to get the kid!”

“Somebody tackled me! How was I supposed to…?”

Mason used the momentary distraction to scramble back into the truck and over the seat to the driver's side. He locked the doors.

“He's okay,” Jared said. “Let's go.”

“But what if he can't—?”

“This is for you! He's stalling them for you! Now come on.”

That cut the cable holding her to the scene behind them. They were almost out of time and she finally realized it. Jared took her hand and they dashed up the shell driveway, along the road to where he had parked his crummy white Ford Focus station wagon, possibly the most uncool car ever produced in the continental United States.

They heard the engine note of Mason's truck—he had gotten it started!

As they climbed into the Focus, the truck skidded out of the driveway in a fan of shells and accelerated toward Polpis. He was going to have to cut back to Sankaty Road on one of the little side streets. There was only one left before the street dead-ended at the lighthouse. Bayberry Lane, it was called. Mason knew the streets. The turnoff wouldn't slow him down too much, and he had a good head start.

Jared started the Ford and headed in the opposite direction, back toward 'Sconset.

“This way they won't know who to follow,” he said.

Alana just nodded. They said nothing until they turned onto Milestone Road. Jared realized he was speeding, pushing the little car up to seventy miles an hour. He lightened his foot on the gas, let his breathing and his heart rate slow to normal.

“What was going on in there?” he said finally.

“I don't get it. What are you—how did you find us? Why were you even—?”

“Your book. On the floor. By your feet.”

It had fallen off the seat at some point. Alana leaned over to pick it up. She stared at it. “This is—wait a second. How did you…?”

“You left it in class. I was returning it. That's all. But I saw you get into the truck with Mason.”

“And you followed us.”

“I was worried.”

She sighed. “You were worried? Why would you—?”

“I don't know. It was a school night, your parents weren't home. I mean—their car wasn't in the driveway. And it kind of—it looked like he was dragging you.”

“He wasn't.”

“Okay.”

“It was my idea.”

“Okay.”

“I was worried about Jill. She broke up with Oscar Graham for no reason and started dating that creep and acting weird, like nodding off in class. And she snapped at me when I asked her about it and…I don't know. There were lots of things. She hasn't taken a shower in a week. She's dressing like a slut and, seriously—Sam Wallace? He's a total druggie. And I don't mean weed or whatever. He sells oxy. And God knows what else. Mason said they were both going to be there tonight, so—”

“There? Where? What was going on?”

“The house belongs to this McAllister guy. I don't know his first name. My dad picks up his trash.”

“So what was he doing with a bunch of high school kids? And what was Ms. DeHart doing there? What the hell is happening? This makes no sense.” They drove in silence for a minute or so. “Alana?”

“This so totally sucks.”

“Tell me.”

“There's nothing I can do about it. I don't even know what I was trying to accomplish out there. I can't save anybody. What am I supposed to do—draw a stupid cartoon? That would get me kicked out of school for good. I should have stayed out of it. But Jill's been so fucked up lately and Oscar was freaking out and…I just—Mason invited me out there and I thought…I don't know. I have no idea what I was thinking. You can't talk people out of doing drugs. Obviously.”

“So—they're doing drugs?”

Alana laughed a hard nasty laugh and turned in her seat to face him. “No. They're making dirty movies and paying girls to be in them, with drugs.”

“What?”

“Don't make me say it twice, Jared.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

She turned away again to look out the window, pitch pines blurring past in the dark. A line of cars behind a slow-moving van swept past them and disappeared in a smear of red taillights. They were alone on the road again, no houses in sight. They could have been driving down any deserted country road, anywhere. Jared liked that idea. Anywhere but here.

“That old guy? And Chick Crosby? Brad Thurman?”

Alana sighed.

“Okay, whatever, they're all assholes. Fine. But what was Ms. DeHart doing there?”

Alana picked up a crumpled scrap of tinfoil and started pulling it open with her fingernails.

Jared pushed on. “I really need to know what she was doing with those people.”

“Why? Are you in love with her?”

He almost blurted “No, I'm in love with you,” but some part of him, some heroic World Cup goalie, managed to block that ball before Team Crazy could score.

Instead he said, “Are you kidding? She's like thirty years old. She's my guidance counselor. Jesus.”

“She's giving great guidance out there. She should be fired.”

“She seems okay to me.”

“Well, she's not! What do you think she was doing out there? Want to guess?” Alana stared at him, letting silence build up under the word, letting the pressure push it out of her. “Recruiting.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

They drove along, listening to the wind against the car and the rasp of the engine. Finally Jared let out the breath he'd been holding. “I don't believe this.”

“Well, believe it. She tried to recruit me, okay? Like I was some kind of drug addict. I don't even take aspirin.”

They started around the rotary.

“I'll take you home,” Jared said. Then, as they passed the Stop & Shop construction site, he asked, “What are we going to do?”

“We can't do anything. If we go to the police, they'll just deny it. Jill's the only person who'll get in trouble. And maybe Sam Wallace.”

“Yeah. He deserves it, but…”

“She doesn't. It would be our word against theirs. A guy like McAllister could really hurt us, too. I mean—my family. If he got all his friends to cancel my dad's contracts…Miles Reis has been trying to get that route for years. We'd be fucked. I'm not supposed to know how close to the line my dad lives. It's always paycheck to paycheck, and he doesn't even charge some people! His dad didn't, so…” She shook her head, as if there were gnats in the car. “Like this was the old Nantucket! If there ever was an old Nantucket.”

Jared was thinking. “Thurman could blacklist my dad. All those contractors stick together. The big ones.”

“Yeah.”

“But we have to do something.”

“Yeah.”

“We could report it anonymously.”

“They know I was there. And Sam saw you. They could hurt Mason's family, too. His dad's a Selectman, and with Mason involved…”

Jared nodded. “It's a small town.”

“That's why I'm moving to the city. As soon as I get my diploma.”

He glanced over at her. “Which city?”

“Any city. Kabul. Detroit. I don't care. Except, not Manhattan. No more islands. Ever. Not for me. I want dry land around me and lots of escape routes.”

Jared had to laugh. “I know what you mean.”

They drove past the high school and the softball field. He turned up Bartlett Road.

“So what can we do?” Alana said.

Jared squinted into a set of oncoming headlights—some asshole in a truck who refused to lower his brights. There were assholes everywhere and so many ways to be one.

“Chick Crosby must be shooting the movies. We could steal them from him.”

Alana closed her eyes. It seemed to take her a few seconds to summon the energy even to answer such an idiotic point. “You think he has cans of film sitting around? People don't even use film anymore. They're probably encrypted files on his computer. Anyway, I'll bet you anything he locks his house, with all the equipment lying around. I mean, he's a criminal, and criminals always lock their houses because they think everyone else is a criminal, too. He probably has alarms. In case you were thinking of stealing his computer and having some super-geek get past his firewalls and passcodes and whatever, which by the way we don't even know anyone like that.”

“Okay.”

“That's just stupid.”

“Okay!”

Jared pulled into her driveway. “So here's what we have to do,” he said. “First we have to figure out who every one of those people were—the ones we didn't recognize. They probably have their pictures in the
Foggy Sheet
. Gene Mahon probably knows their names. He might help. Or the newspaper. They take pictures at those fundraisers. Then we have to figure how they're all connected to each other. And we have to talk to Jill. And Ms. DeHart.”

“Ms. DeHart would just close me down, and I already tried talking to Jill.”

“But now you've seen what's going on. Everything's different after tonight. If she goes to the police she could trash the whole operation, single-handedly.”

“And lose her drug connection.”

“That has to happen anyway. She's seventeen years old. I mean, fuck. You can't be a drug addict at seventeen years old! Or, that is—you can, obviously, but…”

“I know. She wants to get clean. But it's not that easy, okay? My dad wants to quit smoking. He's been trying for twenty years and he's finally down to one pack a day. If you were ever addicted to anything you'd know what I mean.”

But he was addicted. He was hooked on the rush of feeling he got talking to this girl. It was a legitimate drug addiction, even if the drugs were manufactured inside his own body: adrenaline, testosterone, endorphins—a potent mix. He certainly didn't want to give it up. That was why he had followed her tonight, that was how he had gotten into this mess in the first place.

Then a thought slid into his mind like a cold wind under a doorsill.

He turned off the motor, twisted around to face her. “Tell Jill you'll go to the police if she won't. Her best shot is to talk to them before you do.”

“That's harsh.”

“But it's a plan. And it just might work. She'd be fucked if you turned her in.”

“I'm supposed to be her friend.”

“You are her friend. This is what friends do. Like an intervention.”

“I guess.” They sat in silence for a while, then Alana nodded. “I'll do it.”

Good decision—but it was already too late.

Chapter Two

Bedside

The day after Thanksgiving, I started the morning at Nantucket Cottage Hospital and finished it at a friend's memorial service—not much to be thankful for.

At the hospital I was visiting a girl named Jill Phelan in the second floor ICU. At least that's what they call it; in fact our Intensive Care Unit is one room they can seal off while they stabilize patients. Anyone in critical condition, they transfer by helicopter to Mass General. This girl had dropped into a coma after a drug overdose, but with the winds gusting up to fifty miles an hour the medevac crew was stuck waiting for a break in the weather. For the moment they were grounded.

My most experienced detective, Charlie Boyce, took the initial call. He'd already talked to her family and friends, her teachers at the school, and the doctors at the hospital, but no one knew anything and so far he'd gotten nowhere. He was determined to track down her source, but drugs were all over the island these days. She could have gotten it from anyone; she could have even been selling the stuff herself.

I was interested in the girl, though. She didn't fit the profile of a juvenile opiate addict. She had come in second at the previous year's Junior Miss Pageant where she played something by Mozart on her flute for the talent section. She was shockingly good, and you didn't get that far by the mere accident of talent. You had to work, you had to practice long hours to burn those arpeggios into the muscle memory of your fingers, and that kind of discipline didn't square with a drug habit. Something was drastically askew. I needed to check out the situation for myself.

I had plenty of time. My ex-wife, Miranda, and the kids were back in Los Angeles with her parents for the holiday. They'd made the right choice. Los Angeles was at its best in the late fall, when the occasional storm off the Pacific scrubbed out the smog and the crystalline desert air flooded the basin. Not much chance of that in a drought year, but you could always hope.

Nantucket was having its own storm, a dark gusty nor'easter. The island presented itself to the odd straggle of visiting homeowners and tourists at its most bleak and dreary: cold rain, raw wind, gray skies, the Sound torn with turbulent chop, the streets slick with rotting leaves. Christmas trees lined Main Street, set up but not yet decorated. The stores were full of Christmas merchandise, but nothing could draw people out into the penetrating damp and the Atlantic gale.

I had gotten a twelve-pound turkey from the health food store—Annye sourced them from a farm in Vermont—and defiantly cooked it for myself. I could warm it up in the gravy for a few more dinners, have a week's worth of turkey sandwiches for lunch, and there'd be soup when the kids got back from L.A. But it made for a lonely night. I had slept badly, and my mood fit the weather when I got to the hospital.

It was quiet inside the old building as I walked the long corridor to the elevators, my shoes squeaking on the linoleum. Upstairs at the nurses' station, Marilee told me the patient already had visitors.

I could hear their voices before I got to the room: a deep Scottish brogue and the higher lilt of a Jamaican accent—Liam Phelan, the father, and Oscar Graham. I'd only met Phelan a couple of times—he had helped me break up a drunken fight on the docks during Race Week the year before. He was chief engineer on one of the big yachts, a burly Santa with a mean left hook. No sign of his wife, Margaret. They were estranged, separated but not divorced. He had refused her ultimatum to stop working the big yachts and settle down on the island. No doubt there were other problems. They made it a point to never be in the same room together, even their daughter's hospital room. That took careful planning in a small town, but I guess they thought it was worth the effort.

Oscar, I'd known since I first arrived on the island. He was my first near-arrest, in fact, brought in for throwing a snowball at Lonnie Fraker's cruiser. I often felt like pelting those dark-blue-and-green cars myself, but this had been my first exposure to the State Police, as well as the local juvenile delinquent population. I have to admit I preferred the juvenile delinquents. I let Oscar off with a warning—Lonnie had just launched his “scared straight” crusade, and wanted to ship the boy off to Walpole for a week. Oscar and I had been good friends ever since.

I paused outside the door now to eavesdrop.

“How did this happen?” Oscar was saying. “How could she even—?”

Liam's intimidating baritone: “You tell me!”

“Wait a second. I—”

“You're the boyfriend! You're the one she refuses to talk about and now I see why!”

“That's—I am not…what are you talking about?”

“You're black! And she thinks I'm some kind of racist, as if I cared a row of pins for that shite. All I want to know is where did you get the drugs?”

“I didn't—I'm trying to tell you, I'm not—wait a second—”

“Did you steal someone's prescription?”

“Hold on. I'm telling you—”

“Or do you know a doctor? Some of these bastards will do anything for a few extra bucks under the table.”

Tim Lepore appeared behind me. He was doing his morning rounds, about to walk in on them. I grabbed his arm, crossed my lips with a warning finger. He shook his head, raised his eyebrows in an expression of amused contempt. He had no business acting surprised at my snooping, though. It's part of my job description.

“I'm not Jill's boyfriend,” Oscar was saying. “I'm just her friend. All right?”

“Her friend, are you? Her school chum? Then what the hell are you doing here? How did you find out she was in hospital in the first place?”

“Everyone knows. It's a small town, Mr. Phelan. Other people have come to visit. School friends. Teachers. I wanted to see her, I wanted to talk to her for a few minutes. Maybe find out what's going on.”

“Well she's not talking just at the moment.”

“No.”

“So you're not the boyfriend.”

“No.”

“And you didn't sell her the drugs.”

“No.”

“Jesus Christ. What a cock-up. How could a thing like this happen?”

“Well, if you were ever around you might—”

“I've got a job, you little prick. I work for a living. I was halfway between here and Bermuda when I got the news. What was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to get back here, and you did.”

“Fucking right, I did. Thank you for that at least. Have you seen Margaret? Mrs. Phelan?”

“You just missed her.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

“She couldn't stay. She had to go to work.”

“But you stayed.”

“I got the day off, Mr. Phelan. I just want to be here, you know—when Jill wakes up.”

“If she wakes up.”

“She'll wake up.”

“You're sure of that are you?”

“A hundred percent.”

“Good lad.”

I nodded at Lepore and we entered the room together.

“Mr. Phelan—Oscar,” the doctor said, nodding at them in turn. “I'm going to have to ask you to leave now. You can wait downstairs. I'll let you know if there's any change in her condition. The same goes for you, Chief. They'll be taking her out in a few minutes, and you'd only be in the way.”

We left the doctor to organize the airlift, and walked back to the elevators together.

“You have to do something about this, Chief,” Oscar said. “You have to—I don't know, find the drug dealers and arrest them and…”

“And?”

“I don't know. Hurt them somehow.”

Phelan laughed. “That's my boy. But I wouldn't count on the police, begging your pardon, Officer, sir. Could be it's a policeman who sold her the drugs in the first place. They confiscate a lot of contraband and who's to know if a bit goes missing here and there?”

Oscar slumped. “So what can I do?”

“I'll tell you what I'm going to do, lad. I'm going to find these bastards for myself and fucking shake them until their brains scramble.”

I touched his arm as the elevator doors opened. “Not a good idea, Liam.”

“And you have a better one, then?”

“Leave it to me. It's my job. And I'm good at it.”

“That remains to be seen, Officer. That remains to be seen.”

Outside in the parking lot, the storm had cleared off to the north, and we watched the medevac team wheel Phelan's daughter to the helicopter. It lifted off slowly, the blades chopping the air into a private hurricane, then it arched away over the hospital toward the harbor.

“They'll take good care of her at Mass General,” I said.

Phelan's storm was still raging. “They better. I'll take care of the rest.”

“I don't want you getting yourself in trouble, Liam. That won't help anyone.”

He was staring away at the diminishing speck of the helicopter. “That's my daughter in there, Chief Kennis. You've got a daughter. And an imagination, I've heard. So don't talk like a fool.”

I left him standing there studying the clearing sky. There was nothing more I could do for him, and I had a memorial service to attend, half the length of the island away. I didn't want to be late.