The Tempest (6 page)

“Oh. Yeah.” Hank Moore chuckled. “I was thinking figuratively.”

“I know.”

“It's late. Let's talk in the morning.”

“All right.”

L
OOKING UP FROM
his laptop, Luke followed the thin white line of surf that traced the shoreline down to Widow's Point, where it suddenly vanished into darkness. The early-­morning air was cool and unsettlingly quiet, the moon veiled by drifting clouds. Unable to sleep, Luke had come out onto the back deck to sip a glass of bourbon and to ponder his Sunday sermon. Falling was no longer a feasible topic.

Yesterday, Susan Champlain had come to him asking for help. Luke had advised her to rely on faith, to surrender her fears and troubles to God.
Ask and he will reveal himself to you
. He'd prayed with her, and for her, and quoted lines from Psalm 37, the psalm of patience. The next evening, Susan Champlain was dead.

Luke knew he wasn't supposed to explain that. Tragedies happened every day for no evident reason, the result of cruel or random violence, indiscriminate disease, other ­people's carelessness. “Why does God let them happen?” was for many ­people the defining question, the simplest and most persuasive argument against the existence of God. There were good answers in Scripture, but not the sorts of answers ­people wanted to hear. The good answers required patience, and the long, slow learning of a new language, a language of faith. There were better
questions
, too. Better than, “Why does God let them happen?” But that was a question that never went away; and on nights like this, when the tragedy felt personal, Luke even found himself, against his better judgment, trying to answer it.

He surfed through the local news again, seeing that there was a short item now on the Channel 14 website: “Tidewater PD Investigates Fatal Fall.”

An unidentified woman died tonight in an apparent accidental fall from the bluff at Widow's Point in Tidewater County. The woman was discovered on the beach by a ­couple walking their dog at around 8:30. Details are pending.

The bulletin was followed already by a ­couple of anonymous posters: “RIP.” And: “Sad story. Supoosely the lady'd been drinking?” Which drew another reply: “SUPOOSELY?
WHOSE
been drinking?”

Luke glanced again at the darkness where Susan had fallen, thinking about the famous passage from James 4:14, comparing life to “a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” Maybe
that
would be his sermon.

Realizing he hadn't checked e-­mails for several hours, Luke called up his AOL account. Perhaps Susan Champlain had responded during the day, he thought. But she hadn't.

He logged on to his church account, checked e-­mails and spam, for something else to do.

And there it was, in spam: an e-­mail from SWilkins79. Sent to him at 2:47
P.M.
that afternoon.

Wilkins was Susan Champlain's maiden name.

Luke's heart began to race. He clicked open the e-­mail, and read the brief message she had sent him:
Pastor Bowers, I'll call this aft. Thanx for listening. These are the pix. Please keep in STRICT confidence until we can talk. SC.

There were three photo attachments with the e-­mail, which was probably why it had been kicked into spam.

Luke clicked on the first: side view of a large, paint-­chipped Victorian house. The second was a mangy field of weeds; in the distance a chain-­link fence and a basketball hoop, beyond it some buildings.

The third he recognized right away: it was the image she'd shown him from her phone. The empty wooden room, two men talking, a mirror, a slant of sunlight.

Moments later, the screen door squeaked, startling him. Sneakers's toenails clicked enthusiastically onto the porch. Just behind him was Charlotte in her silk bathrobe and flip-­flops. She hadn't turned on any lights.

“What are you doing?” she whispered. Her nose twitched and she made a face, detecting the bourbon. “Come to bed.”

“Can't sleep.”

Charlotte leaned down so her face was touching his. Her skin felt warm and smooth.

“That's the photo,” she said.

“Yeah. She sent it to me at church this afternoon. I just now found it.”

“How about that.” She straightened up, breathing in the air. Luke looked down at the line of surf again, to the darkness at Widow's Point. “You better send it to Hunter,” she said.

“Yeah, I know.”

He looked at the clock on the bottom of the screen. “Probably too late to call her now.”

But, of course, it wasn't.

 

Chapter Nine

A
my Hunter looked more disheveled than usual Thursday morning, wearing a wrinkled blue men's shirt, tails out, faded jeans, work boots, her dark medium-­length hair sticking up in back. A can of Diet Coke was on her desk, two empties in the recycle can.

It was seven and a half hours since Luke had discovered Susan's images in his church e-­mail account, and he was now looking at them blown up on the three monitors in Hunter's office at the PSC. The FBI had them, too, she said; she expected she might hear something back later in the day.

Luke hadn't come in to talk about the pictures, though. He'd come in to tell her what he hadn't said yesterday. And to hear what
she
thought might have happened to Susan Champlain.

Before he'd ever met Amy Hunter, Luke had heard this about her: that she could look at a crime scene and tell what was there, what wasn't and what should've been there. She'd proven that several times over in the Psalmist case. But there was another thing about Hunter, something that was harder to figure—­an intuitive intelligence about ­people's darker motives, a surprising quality at odds with her wholesome, youthful appearance. Hunter picked up frequencies that most ­people couldn't access. She was also the most single-­minded person he'd ever known, for better and for worse.

“Two things,” she said, nudging him.

“Right.” Hunter flipped through her steno pad full of scribbled pages, looking for a page with space enough to write. Notes were jotted every which way, on each page—­sideways, diagonally, even upside down.

“A ­couple hours before the e-­mail was sent,” Luke began, clearing his throat, “our office manager, Aggie—­Agnes Collins—­” Hunter's brow crinkled involuntarily; Aggie and Hunter didn't much like each other. “—­saw Susan Champlain at the Old Shore Inn. This would have been about 11:45. Talking, very intently, she said, with someone. A man.”

“Any idea who?”

“No. She said she'd never seen him before. Which is sort of odd, since Aggie tends to know everyone. She described him as well-­dressed. With elegant shoulders.”

A single line creased Hunter's smooth brow. “What are elegant shoulders?”

“No idea. Her phrase.”

Hunter wrote something down, and underlined it. She reached for the Diet Coke, her large light brown eyes never leaving his as she drank.

“The other thing that's been sort of bothering me is the odd word choice she used. She told me she was afraid some
one
was going to get hurt. Not that
she
was going to get hurt. Some
one
.” Hunter set down her soda. “It just struck me as odd.”

“What do you think she meant?”

“At the time, I guess I thought she was talking about herself. But I've begun to think maybe she was talking about something else.”

“Something to do with the photo.”

“Maybe.”

Luke could almost see the ideas networking inside Hunter's head.

“You think this was a homicide?” he said.

“Probably.”

“The husband?”

“I think he was involved.” Her eyes turned to the window. “I don't know how yet.” She looked back to him. “Did you ask her, by the way, if she had mentioned the photo to anyone else?”

“Indirectly.”

She raised her eyebrows, meaning, “And—­?”

“She said no, she hadn't. It's funny, though. For some reason, I got the feeling that she wasn't telling the truth about that.”

Hunter nodded, as if she'd been thinking it, too, although he didn't see how that would have been possible.

“This puts us in a small club, I guess, doesn't it?” Luke said. “With just three members.”

“Oh, with your wife, you mean, yeah.” Hunter wasn't quite tracking with him. She scribbled a word on a corner of her note page and underlined it.

“Three that we know about, anyway,” she said.

S
TATE'S
A
TTORNEY
W
ENDELL
Stamps called a Police Commission meeting for four o'clock to discuss Susan Champlain's death. The PC was made up of the state's attorney and representatives from the sheriff's office, state police, and municipal police. The purpose of this meeting, Hunter knew, was to agree on a story to tell before the real one was known. That gave Hunter several hours to conduct follow-­up interviews. A copy of the preliminary autopsy report had been promised Homicide by 2
P.M
.

She walked down the hall first to talk with Frances Neal, the state investigator in charge of gathering evidence at the bluff. Neal looked tired this morning, more tired than Hunter felt.

“You were right about the book,” she said, giving Hunter an accusatory look from behind her metal desk. “Kairos forty-­eight.”

“What does it mean?”

“A password?” She had a photocopy of the receipt right in front of her. “The way the forty-­eight is flush against the
s
?” She pointed with her middle finger, her nails all bitten to a nub. “Don't know what forty-­eight means.
Kairos
is an ancient Greek word. Meaning ‘opportune moment.' ”

Hunter nodded; she'd already looked it up.

Susan Champlain's other sandal hadn't turned up and there was still no sign of a phone or a purse, Neal told her.

“Footprints?”

“Three separate imprints on the bluff trail besides Champlain's. It also looked as if someone may have tried to smooth over the dirt on the bluff itself. But that's a guess.”

“What size impressions?”

“I got a ten and a half Reebok,” Neal said. “The others aren't clear, one larger, one smaller.”

They'd also taken tire impressions from the edge of the road, and footprint impressions down below, near where Susan's body had been found—­which, judging from the length of the stride and the size of the foot, were probably a woman's.

“What time's your meeting?” Neal asked.

“Four o'clock.”

“I'll call you before then if we have anything else.”

Hunter drove to the Old Shore Inn and talked with the manager and the lobby bartender, both of whom were cautiously helpful, telling her that Susan Champlain came in several times a week, always by herself, to read and drink iced tea; neither remembered seeing her on Wednesday, though. The manager told her that Sonny Fischer from Homicide had already contacted him about surveillance video and that they'd turned over what they had.

Elena Rodgers, Champlain's “personal assistant,” who'd been renting a room at the Inn for the summer, was out. Hunter left her card at the desk with a brief note asking her to call.

She walked beneath the fluttering awnings of Main Street to talk with Carly Talbot, a poised, chalk-­skinned woman who managed Cool Beans, the health-­food store where Susan had bought breakfast the day before. Talbot had been described by the bartender at the Old Shore as a “friend” of Susan Champlain, who'd met her for tea a ­couple of times at the Inn. But Talbot smiled dismissively at the characterization.

“Not really friends.” Her eyes fixed on Hunter's for a long moment. “I talked with her after church a few times, and she came in here occasionally. Never stayed, always picked up something to go. We met once to chat. I liked her. We kept making plans to do things, and then Susan would always back out. It got to be kind of weird, actually. I hate to say.”

“Why was that, do you think?”

“I don't know, she was just very private. And, I thought, scared about something.”

“Did she ever give any indication what it might be?”

“Not really. I almost got the impression that—­she acted like someone was following her. But I don't know. Her husband's so-­called bodyguard, maybe? That's a total guess. Probably not fair.” She exhaled dramatically, looking at the street. “I don't know, just the idea of someone having a ‘bodyguard' gives me the willies. You know? I can't imagine that kind of lifestyle.”

“Did she ever talk with you about her husband?”

“Never.”

“Did you see her at all this week?”

“Sunday. That was it.”

“Not yesterday?”

“No.”

“Supposedly Susan came in here for breakfast yesterday.”

“I wouldn't know, I wasn't working.” She exhaled again, as if she was very tired all of a sudden. “I thought she was a sweet person, with a lot of style. But hard to know.”

“What
did
she talk about with you?”

“Oh, just—­Not a lot, really. Her family. The weather. Growing up in Iowa. Her artwork. She did tell me that one of her photographs had gone on display for a ­couple of days at the Empress Gallery in town, and then was taken down. Which struck me as kind of weird.”

Hunter thought so, too. Considering what she'd heard about Nick Champlain monitoring her activities.

“Taken down why?”

“I have no idea. She wouldn't talk about it. That's how she was.

“Oh, and she talked about animals,” she added. “She'd always had cats and dogs growing up, she told me, and I think she really wanted to have a pet here in Tidewater. But her husband was allergic, she said. That's about all she ever told me about her husband.”

Hunter thanked her and walked to the Empress Gallery at the other end of Main Street. But the gallery didn't open until noon. She cupped her hands and looked through the glass. It was mostly Eastern Shore art, paintings and wood carvings, along with abstract glass sculptures.

Her interview with Agnes Collins at the church went about as expected. Collins was prickly, hesitant to answer questions the way Hunter phrased them. Amy tried to be patient, and finally came away with a better description of the man with “elegant shoulders.” But not much else.

She left a voice mail with Susan Champlain's parents in Iowa, with condolences, saying she'd like to ask them a few questions if they felt up to it. She introduced herself as a Maryland State Police officer, not mentioning Homicide, and gave them her direct number.

Joseph Sanders, the bodyguard, she found in the shade beside the house the Champlains were renting. He was shirtless, doing something under the hood of a Ford pickup.

“I really have nothing to say,” he told her, as soon as she'd identified herself, wiping his hands on a rag. His bald head glistened with a thin layer of sweat.

Sanders repeated what he'd told state police the night before at the PSC, how he'd gone out fishing alone and then stopped at the Harbor Loon bar. He smiled impatiently at one point, showing several misshapen teeth.

“I really have nothing to add beyond what I said last night.”

“What do you think happened to Susan?”

“No idea.” He frowned, continuing to wipe his hands. “What I heard was she fell. I don't know any different.”

“What was the nature of your relationship with her?”

“Ma'am?”

Hunter asked again.

“There was no relationship, ma'am,” he said, giving her a steady look under hooded eyes. “I work for her husband. I explained all that last night. Otherwise, I have nothing to say.”

He was standing facing her, arms at his sides now. Hunter watched his belly go up and down as he breathed.

“Do you know any reason anyone might have wanted to hurt her?”

“Hurt her? No, ma'am.”

It went on like that for a ­couple of minutes. Hunter left with the idea that she'd come back to him once she had something more specific to ask.

The Champlains' housekeeper, Sally Markos, was a petite, pretty woman with olive skin who wouldn't look Hunter in the eye. She'd met the Champlains at the beginning of summer, she said, and worked for them only once a week.

“It's just awful,” she said repeatedly, sitting on a narrow bed in her cottage looking out toward the cove, her eyes misting over; she seemed more composed, though, than she had the night before. The air was dusty, a warm breeze puffing out the sheer curtains.

“Do you know anyone who may have wanted to hurt her?” Hunter asked.

“Mrs. Champlain? Oh, God
no
, I can't imagine. No. It's just awful. They were good ­people. I just hope nothing happens to Mr. Champlain.”

Hunter cleared her throat, trying not to seem surprised. “To Mr. Champlain? Why do you say that?”

Her eyes were downcast. “Because he's my
employer
.”

“No, I mean: why do you think something might happen to him?”

“I didn't say that. I said I hope it doesn't.”

“But what makes you think it
might
? That something might happen.”

“I didn't say that. I said I hope it
doesn't
happen.”

“Okay.”

Hunter glanced at her notes. She'd be back to her, too.

She picked up an oyster sandwich from Kent's Crab House on her way back to the PSC. The place was bustling with sunburned tourists, cracking crabs and drinking beer in the sun on the decks, oblivious to what had happened the night before at Widow's Point.

The preliminary autopsy report was back by the time Hunter returned. Fischer had placed it on her desk in a sealed envelope.

She skimmed through the findings as she ate her sandwich: Susan Champlain appeared to have a contusion at the back of her head, and a slight swelling of the brain. BAC level was .09, just above the legal .08. Her injuries were “consistent with a fall,” the summary claimed, with “multiple traumatic injuries” including a broken left arm. Hunter flipped through the death photos again, the disturbing way she'd ended up crumpled on the beach. Pending toxicology and final autopsy, the ME was calling her cause of death “inconclusive.”

The State Police had also sent over a report, requested by the state's attorney, Wendell Stamps, for those attending the Police Commission meeting. It was exactly what she'd expected: wordy generalities with a strong bias bolstering the state's theory that Susan's death was accidental.