Fairstein, Linda - Silent Mercy

Mike got on his cell and again called the lieutenant. The reception was patchy, but it would be his last chance to reach out to anyone. The up-island half of the Vineyard had no cell service, so I knew that Penikese would be a dead zone too.

“Where’s the frigging Coast Guard, Loo? I can’t hear you,” Mike said, shouting over the noise of the engines. “I know there was an accident. We’re on our way to this leper colony, you got that? Call the Navy, call the Marines. I don’t give a shit what you have to do, but we need — hello? Hello?”

“You’re talking to the wind out here,” Maggie said.

“You got that right.”

“We’re into the bay now. It’s going to get bumpy.”

The water was practically black. The boat heaved in the waves and tossed us from side to side. Maggie held on to the wheel, keeping an eye on the radar and GPS to guide us toward our destination. I knew the moon was almost full, but fog had blanketed Buzzards Bay and it was impossible to see the heavens.

“What’s your plan?” I asked Mike.

“I’m working on one.”

He was a nervous flier, and I worried that motion sickness might overcome him on this short ride.

“Are you queasy?”

“It’s not like a plane that’s going to fall out of the sky on me, Coop. These are just bumps in the road.” He was trying to convince himself that was true.

The waves came at us hard. “I’m counting on you for a plan. It’ll take your mind off your stomach.”

“Just watching the captain calms me.”

Maggie smiled at him. “This is nothing. They’re predicting six-foot swells later this week.”

“Where are you able to put us off?”

“You know Penikese?” she asked me.

“I haven’t been in years.”

“It’s pretty uninhabitable. A few primitive buildings the school maintains, but they’re completely shut down ’cause next weekend is Easter. I picked a teacher up about two weeks ago. There’s a jetty on the eastern end. If the rip doesn’t smash me up on it, it’s the best place to let you go.”

“Can you try for something a little more optimistic?” Mike asked.

Maggie flashed a big, pretty smile. “Hey, I can be as upbeat as the next guy, but there’s not much hope on Penikese. You sure you don’t want me to wait for you?”

Mike was clutching the rim of the life preserver that was mounted on the wall behind his bench. “What I’d really like you to do is play Paul Revere for us. Hightail it back to base and raise an armada for me. Come back with any able-bodied seamen you can find. You’ll get extra credit if they bring weapons.”

“That’s a deal, Detective,” she said. “We’re half a mile out. You get ready to offload.”

I stood up and steadied myself by holding on to the metal rails above my head. The color had drained from Mike’s face. I thought he was going to be sick.

“Don’t look at me that way,” he said. “I’m good.”

“Do you have any flashlights we can use?” I asked Maggie.

“Sure. Lift up the top of that bench.”

I removed two from her supply stash. “And this length of rope?”

“Go for it,” Maggie said. “It’s likely to be slippery on the rocks, so watch your step.”

She had killed the engine and was maneuvering the boat along the end of the jetty. She stepped to the side and tossed another rope around a rotting wooden upright that once must have been part of a pier to hold us in place long enough to disembark.

I stuffed one flashlight in my rear pocket and hoisted myself up on the gunwale of the sturdy boat. Mike slowly got to his feet, and while I wrapped the rope I had taken around my waist, he stepped off onto the large, moss-covered rocks of the jetty.

“Thanks a million, Maggie.”

“I’ll be back,” she said softly. “I promise. You watch yourselves, will you?”

“You keep your half of the deal and we’ll keep ours. See you later.” I pushed against the stern of the boat with one leg and waved her off.

The wind howled across the barren landscape. Scrubby trees bent and blew, and the spray from the waves dashing against the jetty drenched the calves of my jeans.

Mike started to walk toward land, taking deep breaths and being careful to step on the flattest rocks.

If either of us thought that moonlight might break through the mist to guide us onto the island, we were greatly mistaken. Our flashlights stayed lodged in our pockets. We were both unwilling to attract Zukov’s attention, hoping he hadn’t seen the lights of the boat.

The breaking of the waves was the only sound I could hear as we made our way forward, single file, and stepped at last on the hard earth of the desolate outpost.

“You recognize anything, Coop?” Mike said in a whisper.

I shook my head in the negative.

“Anywhere to hide?”

“A few wooden school buildings. Really small. We’re talking only ten or twelve kids here at any one time, living dorm-style, and a couple of teachers. I don’t know what’s left standing.”

A gull screeched as it flew overhead and I ducked at the sound, though it was nowhere near me.

“Stay close,” Mike said. “I’m flying blind, but let’s get going.”

I was on his heels as we started along the shoreline. We had only gone about twenty yards when the night sky was pierced by a bloodcurdling scream.

Mike reached back for my hand and squeezed it. “He’s made us, Coop. He’s putting on a show for our benefit.”

“You really think he saw us land?”

“He wants an audience for his next silencing, kid. That wasn’t one of your Penikese ghosts.”

“I know that, Mike.”

It was the voice of Chastity Grant, who’d been carried to this pitiful island to be tortured and killed.

“WEhave to show ourselves,” I said to Mike. “He’ll go on torturing her until we do.”

“Correction, Coop. I’ll show myself. You’ll be my fogenshrouded second, okay? You’ll hang back until we know the lay of the land.”

There was no point challenging his machismo until we knew what Fyodor Zukov was doing to his prey.

“Where did it sound like her scream was coming from?”

Chat’s cry had resonated around us like a thunderclap, carrying its mournful wail high above the open space of the small island.

“Everywhere,” Mike said. “What’s the shoreline like?”

“At low tide like this, there’s a spit of sand — well, sand and rocks — that rings the place.”

“That’s how we’ll start, on the perimeter.”

I was tempted to take off my driving moccasins, which were soaked through, and go barefoot in the sand. But I knew that the stony, unforgiving landscape of Penikese would make me regret doing that before too long.

We moved fast, going northwest along a crescent beach. Waves lapped the sand, and beyond that steady sound, there was none of the noise I hoped to hear — no boats circling nearby, nobody looking for a spot to land his craft and aid us.

“What’s on top of that rise?” Mike asked, coming to the end of the short beach.

“There’s a pond up there. I’d expect it to be all dried up this time of year. It’s kind of like a mud hole, so let’s avoid it.”

Another fifty yards and I could see that the low cliffs that once faced westward had eroded and were nothing more than sand dunes.

“There, Mike. We can probably climb over those.”

The terrain slowed us down. Our feet sunk into the wet beach-front as crabs scampered away from the dead fish that had washed up in our path.

Each leg felt heavier as I pulled up, step after step, to go forward. Then, as I mounted the rising dunes, the dry sand crumbled beneath my moccasins and filled them like an hourglass turned upside down.