The Last Summer of the Camperdowns (32 page)

There’s something satisfying in fascinating the devil. It’s not a good feeling to indulge.

I
LOOKED AROUND FOR HARRY,
searching everywhere, going from one tent to another, but I couldn’t find him. One of the attendants told me that he had gone for a little ride on a horse that he was interested in buying. “Stay in the designated area if you’re going to look for him,” he cautioned. With hunters on the prowl, it was a dangerous day to walk or ride the woods of the Cormorant Clock Farm, but I was confident of the route I had chosen. I knew exactly where Harry had gone. I saddled up one of the horses and went to look for him.

Gin maintained a large herd of Sikka deer, mainly for the purposes of the annual hunt. Shy and secretive, they made a pleasant whistling sound in the forest. Off in the distance, I could see groups of relentlessly social men and women in green and brown tweeds, with gloved hands and wearing lightweight Wellingtons, attended by rifle-toting gillies, spooky stalking in thick woodland glades or at the edge of the woods, waiting for the deer to appear to begin feeding. It was quiet but for the hollow sigh of the wind through the long grass and the melancholy whistling of the hunted Sikka mourning the loss of their own as gunshot after gunshot rang out in black volley. A grief so soft, a death so hard, side by side amidst the tall grass.

E
MERGING ON HORSEBACK FROM
the forest trail into the clearing, I knew I would see Harry, and there he was, his back to me, sitting at the end of the dock, feet dangling inches above the water. He glanced over his shoulder and waved, watching as I dismounted and walked toward him.

“I thought you might be here,” I said.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he said.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

“Oh, Harry . . .”

He held up his hand. “That wasn’t an invitation for you to start crying. I mean it, Hoffa. Don’t.”

“I’m just so sorry about Charlie. About everything.”

“I know. I’m sorry you had to be the one to find him.”

“Me, too,” I said, though I knew that if anyone deserved to find Charlie, it was me.

“You know, I’m just not buying it, this stuff about Charlie dying from drugs and booze and exposure. It’s bullshit. He was a fifteen-year-old kid who sneaked the occasional beer. He wasn’t Jimi Hendrix, for Christ’s sake.”

My heart pounding, my fingers gripped the dock. “What do you think happened to him?”

“I don’t know, but something bad happened. Don’t you think it’s strange that he was found here? My dad’s boyhood home? Sure, we came here, once in a while. We were just goofing off. It didn’t hold any real significance other than the obvious. The papers made it sound as if we viewed it as some sort of pilgrimage site. Anyway, you and I both know he just wanted to come home that night. So what did he do? Hang up after talking to my dad and decide to go for a drunken canoe ride miles away at two in the morning?”

I felt a rush of panic. I had hoped that Harry would eventually accept the police version of events. I mean, if I could accept their explanation for what had happened to Charlie, then why couldn’t Harry?

“I don’t know why. I don’t know who. My brother’s dead. For what? Jesus, sometimes I think I’m going crazy.”

Tears streamed down his cheeks. I turned away from my obligation to relieve his misery.

“Shit,” he said, wiping his eyes. “My mother’s dead, too.” He laughed unhappily. “Sorry, Hoffa, I’m doing a pretty good job of feeling sorry for myself.”

I wanted so much to tell him. I wanted to end his suffering. I could hardly hold up my head for the weight of my conscience. The problem of not telling had grown to epic proportions. I’d gotten to know Harry. I knew what it would mean if I were to tell him the truth.

I was no longer keeping the secret. I was protecting it.

“What does your father think?”

Harry shook his head. “You don’t want to know what my old man thinks.”

He took my hand in his and we sat that way for a long time not saying anything.

Sometimes when I’m upset or frightened, I draw on the memory of Harry’s hand in my hand and it makes me feel better. There was a day when it made me feel worse. Not so much anymore.

W
E BOTH HEARD IT,
a rustling sound in the area behind the dock, a thump and then the urgent sound of breaking branches. “Let’s get out of here,” Harry said, withdrawing his hand, looking toward the noise, the horses lifting their heads, ears pointing in the direction of the waning trample, now a whoosh through the woods as if something had been launched.

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

“Deer maybe. I don’t know. Poor things. I hope these guys wind up shooting one another.”

Harry rubbed his face with his hands, as if he were scrubbing up with a washcloth. “You know what?” he said, jumping to his feet. “I think I know why I’m so depressed.” He pointed to what he was wearing, a preppie uniform of bran khakis and white linen shirt. “Gin’s clothes. If I don’t get out of this outfit soon I might be tempted to kill myself.”

Reaching for my hand to pull me to my feet, he inclined his head slightly, face glowing, hair shining, eyes bluer than the sky. My mother was right! I was in love with Harry Devlin. I could have happily spent the rest of my life looking at Harry’s face. He was smiling. He was bending toward me. I hardly had time to say his name when I heard the report from a rifle as it rang out, birds scattering from overhead branches.

I fell back down onto the deck, then I scrambled to stand up as Harry, blown off his feet, fell facedown in the dirt, blood pouring everywhere, and I was standing over him and in that moment I finally found my voice. My screams drew the attention of a group of hunters on horseback. I saw them as they appeared on the crest of a hill, the horses coming toward us at full gallop and I screamed and I screamed and I screamed until I had no voice left to scream with.

“J
IMMY, WHY IN GOD’S
name did you and Harry go into the woods when you knew there would be people out hunting?” Gin was begging me for an answer.

“We weren’t anywhere near the hunting. We were at the dock,” I said. “I was being careful. It seemed safe.”

“But you’re always near the hunting when you venture away from the house,” Gin said, beseeching everyone to see his point of view, pleading for understanding. “You’re not safe anywhere when there’s a hunt going on. Didn’t I tell everyone? Wasn’t it clear?”

We were at the hospital in a private waiting room—my mother, Gin and Gula and a pair of detectives, one dark-haired, one fair-haired, who had been called in to investigate the shooting. I recognized the dark-haired one. He had been at the house when Charlie’s jacket was discovered. I was sitting on a long vinyl sofa, my clothes stained with Harry’s blood.

My mother stood alongside me. Gin was gesturing and bleating, ringed on either side by the two policemen as Gula looked on, casual and detached, removed from it all. He might have been an armchair for the extent of his seeming engagement, leaning against the open window, fingering the tangled cord of the aluminum blind.

We were waiting to hear about Harry. There was so much blood.

“Who among my guests would deliberately shoot Harry? I have members of the Dutch royal family in attendance, for God’s sake,” Gin said, addressing his final remark to the two detectives, who didn’t look especially impressed.

“Gin, if you make one more reference to European aristocracy I will take you out and shoot you myself,” my mother said, to the veiled amusement of the dark-haired detective.

“All right. That’s enough. This isn’t helping,” the blond detective said, before turning to ask me, as he had asked me multiple times already, if I had seen anyone at the boathouse.

“We heard something by the boathouse in the bushes. Harry thought it was a deer, and then a few minutes later that’s when it happened.”

“Well, Jimmy, you were out and about in the middle of a hunt,” Gin whined, looking like the injured party, staring over at me.

“Which brings me to another important matter.” The blond detective turned to address Gin. “You’re aware, I assume, that we have laws governing when deer can be legally hunted in Cape Cod, and you, sir, are in direct violation of those laws.”

“But everyone knows about my garden party weekend!” Gin said, sputtering and waving his hands in front of him. “It’s been going on for years. It’s an institution. Ordinary restrictions simply do not apply! The state attorney general was there! If it doesn’t bother him, then I don’t see why it concerns a couple of beat cops.” Gin carried on as he always did, inured to the impact of his remarks on his listening audience. “For heaven’s sake, it’s not as if anyone is wandering around in camouflage and hip waders holding a beer in one hand and a sawed-off shotgun in the other. It’s my land and they are my deer, after all. Anytime I want I could ship the whole lot of them off to the slaughterhouse and no one would bat an eye. So what sense do your laws make? Why do I need anyone’s permission to hunt my deer on my land?”

“Next time someone decides to rob a bank, I’ll be sure to tell him to put on a tux,” the detective replied. My mother looked at him with newfound appreciation.

“Surely you don’t think I have anything to do with what happened?” Gin said suddenly. Everyone looked at him as if he was crazy. “Why, I’ve never had a violent thought in my life. I adore those children, Riddle and Harry. Greer and Michael and Godfrey are my dearest friends in the world. I’ve known them since I was a small child. We’re a family! That’s what we are, aren’t we, Greer?”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed, adding for the benefit of the detectives, “we all have plans to change our last names to Borgia to make it official.”

Before anyone had the opportunity to respond, we were distracted by the sounds of a commotion in the corridor outside the waiting room. My mother’s shoulders drooped, then just as quickly squared off as she and I both recognized the loudest voice among several loud voices.

“My God, Riddle, are you all right?” Camp appeared at the waiting room door surrounded by flustered nurses and an ineffective and apologetic security guard. Bypassing everyone else, he headed to where I sat. “Jesus Christ,” he said at the sight of Harry’s blood soaked into my mushroom-colored jodhpurs, spattered on my white riding shirt, soaking the tips of my hair.

He spun around to confront my mother. “I told you I didn’t want her anywhere near that Devlin kid. Look what’s happened. She could have been killed. You,” he pointed at Gin, who shrank behind my mother. “See what your goddamn hunting is good for.”

“I’m fine,” I said, reaching for my father’s hand. “It wasn’t Harry’s fault.”

“You shouldn’t have been anywhere near those lunatics and their killing spree. This was Harry’s doing,” Camp said as Michael Devlin suddenly appeared in the doorway.

“What did you say?” He moved toward my father, the room filling with the odor of burnt acetone. Michael stepped in closer to Camp until there was little more than a shaft of light separating them. “Where the hell were you this afternoon?”

My mother and I gasped in unison.

“It was too much for you, wasn’t it? My family. My money.” Michael paused before continuing. “Your wife.” I looked over at my mother, who gave no sign she had even heard let alone understood the implications of what Michael had just said, unless you count the slightest elevation of a single eyebrow.

Camp laughed. “That’s right, I killed Charlie, then I went after Harry. Look out because you’re next, Devlin.”

“Camp,” I said. “Please don’t.”

“What was it that pushed you over the edge? Was it to punish me? Did you hope to distract me by murdering my sons?”

I burst into tears. “Harry’s dead,” I cried.

Michael looked dazed. “No. No. I’m sorry,” he said. “Harry is going to be all right. Thank God the bullet only skimmed the flesh. It entered at an angle above the temple, sparing him from permanent damage.” He glared at Camp. “No thanks to you.”

“You’re insane,” my father said. They were so tightly bound together they cast a single shadow on the wall, as if in combination they made up a third man, dark and unknowable.

I looked over at Gula, who was no longer fiddling with the cord. Taut and motionless—was he breathing?—he stared at Michael and Camp, his expression ruthless as piano wire.

Michael was the first to break eye contact. “Detective,” he turned to address the blond policeman, “I want this man investigated. I want to know where he was this afternoon.”

“This isn’t the first time you’ve made this type of accusation against Mr. Camperdown,” the dark-haired detective said.

“Michael, Jesus, are you kidding me?” Camp extended his hand, desperate and disbelieving, his bravado on the wane. I had never heard my father sound that way before. Michael knocked his hand away.

“Michael, it was an accident,” Greer said, reaching out to touch his forearm. “No one wants to hurt Harry, least of all Camp.”

“An accident?” Michael said, his voice rising in anger and frustration. “I’ve got one dead son, the other lying in an emergency room, both of them found in the same goddamn location, and you want to tell me it’s a coincidence? Or worse, you want to blame them?”

Camp decided to take charge. “I’ll come down to the station and you can ask me anything you want and I’ll answer you.”

The two detectives thanked him for his cooperation.

When he passed by me, Camp reached out and squeezed my shoulder. I can still feel the pressure of his hand, as if he made a permanent compression. I will never forget what he said next. “I just want to make one thing perfectly clear to everyone.” Camp was pointing now, his hand raised to the same height as his face, gesturing with his index finger. “If I had aimed a rifle and shot at Harry Devlin—and his father knows this better than anyone—I wouldn’t have missed.”

“My God, Camp,” my mother said.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said, the detectives on either side of him.

“I’ll join you,” my mother said, reaching for her bag, an offer that elicited a pointed glance from Michael, part inquiry, part appeal.

“No need for you to come, Greer. I’m fine,” my father said as my mother’s face flushed.