Randy White - Dead Silence

The man took another slow step toward the house, his anger draining along with his certainty. “I was sure you were him. Fifteen years, I’ve waited.” He stopped and turned. “Always knew what I was gonna do when we finally come face-to-face.”

I said, “So I see,” because I could make out details now. He had the gaunt eyes, thick forehead, the nose, skin and ears a distant mix of slave islanders and North Sea fishermen. He wore suspenders beneath a heavy coat. In his hand was a gaff, a steel hook lashed to a handle.

“If you’re going to use that, I should at least know your name.”

After a long silence, he said, “Sylvester. Virgil Sylvester,” before repeating, “Fifteen years, I’ve watched this place. In summer, it’s a rental. Billionaires and film stars. But winters, it’s just him who sneaks in.”

I couldn’t bring myself to ask who because I expected him to add a name: Tomlinson.

“Word used to travel fast on the South Fork. Now there ain’t many locals left. Those still here are afraid to tell me who comes ’n’ goes at this place. He killed my Annie-you know that, bub? We never found her body, but it was plain what happened. He raped her, then beat her to death with a golf club. A golf club.”

I had never heard such bitterness attached to these words.

“A rich kid. One of the summer brats. He used my girl like some damn country-club sport before taking the luxury bus back to college. A plaything to screw, then put on a tee.” His chest was heaving. “He’s up there, ain’t he?”

I said, “I have children. What you just described, it’s the worst imaginable. How old was your daughter?”

“Thirteen. Pretty girl. She’d read me little poems and stories sometimes.”

“Something like that sticks. I’m sorry, Virgil.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The man still faced the mansion but his breathing was slowing. “Since that morning, I’ve been a dead man just waiting for the lights to go out.”

I glanced toward the cottage, hoping Tomlinson wouldn’t choose that moment to exit and call my name. I was calculating the possibilities. Virgil Sylvester would either come at me with the gaff, or charge the house, or realize that attacking was pointless and contrive an excuse for doing nothing.

I relaxed a little when he turned and said, “You really a cop?”

“No. Someone asked me to help find the boy. He’s fourteen. Lives in Minnesota, but has an Oklahoma accent.”

“Why tell me?”

“He might still be around.”

The man nodded as if it made sense. “I can’t picture anybody being friend to a child killer.”

“I’m not. I don’t know the person who killed Annie.”

“Looking for a missing child, it’s the only hell I believe in. You think one of the summer people took the boy?”

“If I was sure, I think I’d ask to borrow that gaff.”

Sylvester faced me, and I could smell his clothing again. “Sounds like you mean it. But you don’t. You’re just trying to talk me out of it.”

“I’d want someone to talk me out of it. Kill a man for revenge and he lives with you the rest of your life.”

“Let the cops handle it, I suppose?”

There wasn’t much I could say to that.

“You don’t know what it’s like out here. The power these summer people have.”

On the drive to this remote peninsula, we had passed estates that were small sovereignties, mansions as ornate as cathedrals, visible only because their twelve-foot hedges were frost-barren.

“A man can’t fight that kind of power. Since Annie died, I’ve visited family in California… Texas, too. Rich people everywhere, but it’s spread out. Not like here, the Hamptons. I saw an iceberg once, fishing in Nova Scotia. It comes into my head when I try to tell people. Peaks lit up like fire at sunrise, but the ocean was dark under the surface, a whole mountain of ice down there, and cold. It’s that kind of power they got. Even when they use it, you don’t see it.”

Sylvester looked at the mansion. “Is someone up there? Besides the caretakers, I mean.”

“A friend of mine.”

He said, “One of the Tomlinsons.” It wasn’t a question.

“My friend didn’t kill your daughter. Even if he’d lied to me, I would know.”

Because I had provided a reason to retreat, I wasn’t surprised when Sylvester used me as a target for self-contempt. “If you’re such a fuckin’ genius about who did what, why is that boy still missing?”

I said, “You’ve got a point. I shouldn’t be standing here wasting time.”

The man said, “Hah! Cops”-I was watching the way he held the gaff-“they sell coffee and doughnuts uptown at the 7-Eleven.”

“Probably my next stop-once you’re gone.”

“Uh-huh, now you’re tellin’ me to leave. I’m fifth-generation Bonnacker. My people killed whales on this beach.”

I said, “Virgil, if I ever hear anything about your daughter, I’ll find a way to get in touch. I’ll let you know, okay?”

The man appeared to sag. I had robbed him of his anger. “You cops, you think you know so much. Let me tell you something about them Tomlinsons. They’re evil. Big brains and dried-up hearts. You know how the old man made his fortune?”

I did, but he didn’t expect an answer.

“It’s blood money. Three generations fed on it. Everything crazy all rolled into one family, that’s the Tomlinsons. I should know. I worked for those sonuvabitches. When one of them murdered my Annie, they gave me a month’s bonus and fired me after they was all safe, gone back to Florida for winter.”

Tomlinson’s brother, Norvin, had been a member of an elite secret fraternity, Skull and Bones, at Yale. Tomlinson hadn’t volunteered the information, which irritated me. I knew because of things I saw in Norvin’s room.

Tomlinson pretended not to hear me say, “I’ve read that Skull and Bones stole Geronimo’s skull. Pancho Villa’s, too. They have a place off campus, not a typical frat house, called the Tomb. Some say they still have the skulls.”

I was looking at a photograph of fifteen young men standing in front of a grandfather clock. Norvin Tomlinson was near the center. The family resemblance was eerie. Norvin was a little taller, with short pale hair, but the haunted eyes were familiar. The brothers had the same look of sinew, bone and muscle.

Norvin was near the fraternity banner, which I recognized. It was similar to a Masonic symbol I had seen on rings: a primitive skull and crossbones, the lower jaw of the skull missing. The number 322 was prominent.

My uncle had been a Freemason, as was Hooker Montbard. He wore an antique Skull and Bones ring. It was Hooker’s interest in Masonry and the Knights Templar that had fired his conviction that artifacts from the Crusades were somewhere in the jungles of South America.

I stood, looking at the photo, until Tomlinson finally had no choice but to comment.

“That was Norvin’s senior year at Yale. It’s a weird fraternity, but our father was so stoked he bought Norry an MG convertible when he was tapped.”

“Tapped?”

“Chosen. Members of Skull and Bones are considered chosen people. I didn’t realize it’s such a huge deal until later, because Norry’s best friend was tapped the same year.”

Tomlinson pointed to one of the men in the photo. It was Nelson Myles, he said, the man who owned Shelter Point. I now understood the horse trainer’s reaction.

“They were our neighbors practically, that’s why I took it for granted being tapped. It seemed common. But it’s not.”

I turned to him. “You don’t think I’ve heard of Skull and Bones? Why didn’t you tell me your brother was a member?”

“I didn’t think it was important.”