Stuart Woods - Dark Harbor

“Afternoon,” Sergeant Young said when Stone opened the door. “Have you heard the news?”

“Yes, but no details. Come on in.”

The two men went into the study and sat down.

“Tell me,” Stone said.

“Two young housewives, Joan Peceimer and Terry Brown, played golf together late yesterday afternoon and left in the same car, telling someone they were having dinner together at Brown’s house. This morning, Brown’s car was found abandoned in a dirt lane, and we started a search. Joan Peceimer’s body was found in the water, in Dark Harbor, much like Janey Harris’s.”

“And the other woman?”

“Still missing.”

“Good God. Two of them?”

“Just between you and me, I don’t think there’s much chance of seeing Terry Brown alive again.”

“Then what we’ve got here is a full-blown serial killer,” Stone said.

“No doubt about it,” the sergeant replied. “And he’s accelerating the pace of killings.”

“They had to know him,” Stone said.

“You think so?”

“Otherwise it would have been very difficult for him to kidnap two women. They must have recognized him when he approached them.”

“Well, that’s not a startling conclusion, given that everybody on this island knows just about everybody else.”

“What steps are you taking?”

“Peceimer’s body is on its way to the M.E. in Augusta. My partner has organized a search party of volunteers, and they’re covering every inch of the island. I’ve got half a dozen more sergeants on the way here. There’s not much more I can do.”

“I had a conversation with Ed Rawls and his buddies yesterday,” Stone said. “They think that Dick’s family and Don Brown were killed by one man, and Janey Harris by another. They have a point.”

“That had occurred to me,” Young said. “If you accept that premise, then it seems to me that the idea of the Stone family’s murder is probably related to Dick’s work.”

“I don’t know, Sergeant. It’s hard for me to accept that we’ve got some European assassin and a serial killer on this small island so close together in the time line.”

“I’ve seen weirder, and I expect you have, too,” Young replied. “Frankly, I don’t know what to think, and my superiors in Augusta are all over me. The papers are going to have a field day, too; there’s already a reporter from Boston here, and we can expect TV crews when word gets out about these two women.”

“The Old Farts’ principal suspect is Caleb Stone,” Stone said. “I’ve just had lunch with him, and we went through his alibi thoroughly.” Stone read Young his notes, then tore out the page and handed it to him. “If you can substantiate all this, then Caleb is in the clear.”

Young read through the notes again. “We already have substantiated it,” he said, “point by point. Caleb’s in the clear, as far as I’m concerned.”

“If the alibi checks out, then I’m with you,” Stone said. “Nothing about Caleb strikes me as guilty. The only thing he wouldn’t talk about was his last meeting with Dick, when Dick was passing through Boston on his way back to Washington. He says it was family business and deeply personal, and he wouldn’t talk about it. He told me to tell you he wouldn’t talk about it to you, either.”

“Do you think what they talked about might be relevant to all these killings?”

“I can’t think of anything they might have said that would precipitate the situation we have now. Certainly not the murders of Janey Harris and Joan Peceimer and possibly Terry Brown.”

“Doesn’t seem likely,” Young said. He got up. “Well, I’d better get back to work. Thanks for having a go at Caleb; you’ve saved us some time. Where’s Holly?”

“Out for her run, I expect.”

Young’s eyebrows went up.

“Don’t worry, she’s armed, and she’s very, very capable of taking care of herself.”

“She gives that impression,” Young said.

They shook hands, and the sergeant left.

STONE SAT DOWN in the study with a book to await Holly’s return. Over the years he had found that if he distracted himself from a problem for a while, his subconscious seemed to work on it in the background, and it would become clearer.

He read on for half an hour, then became drowsy. He rested his head on the back of the chair for a moment, and shortly he was sound asleep.

When he awoke, the shadows were long outside, and he looked at his watch: nearly seven o’clock. Mabel Hotchkiss came into the room.

“Excuse me, Stone, but will you and Holly be dining in tonight?”

“Yes, I think we will,” Stone said, standing up and stretching. “I was asleep for a while. Did Holly come back from her run?”

“I’ve been in the kitchen, so I haven’t seen her,” Mabel replied.

Stone sat down, picked up the phone and pressed the page button. “Holly? Are you in the house?” He could hear the echo of his voice around the place. “Holly?”

He hung up, then picked up the phone again and called her cell phone. He was shunted immediately to her voice mail.

“It’s Stone,” he said. “I’m worried about you. Please call me the minute you get this message. If I’m not in, try my cell phone.” He hung up.

Holly had been gone way too long, he reckoned. He grabbed his cell phone from the desk, then went and backed the MG out of the garage. At the end of the driveway, he stopped and wondered which way she had gone. A right turn would take her toward the village; he turned left, assuming she would want empty roads.

He drove along the road at a steady twenty miles an hour, checking every driveway as he passed. As he came around a curve he saw Holly down the road, running toward him, apparently just returning home. Where the hell had she been?

He slowed to a stop and pulled over, letting her run on toward him, vaguely angry with her for having worried him. As she ran, she pushed her sweatshirt hood off her head, and she wasn’t Holly. She was a teenaged boy. He flagged the boy down.

“Evening,” he said. “My name is Stone Barrington.”

“Oh, yes,” the boy said, “from the Stone house. I’m Tyler Morrow.” They shook hands. He appeared to be sixteen or seventeen.

“Have you seen another runner along your route?” Stone asked.

“A couple of them,” Tyler replied. “A man and a woman; I didn’t know either of them, which is unusual around here.”

“Were they together?”

“No. I saw them separately.”

“Can you describe the woman?”

“Oh, let’s see: mid-twenties, dark hair, five-three or -four, slim.”

Not Holly. “Are you sure you didn’t see another woman? I’m looking for a friend of mine who runs out this way.”

“Nope. Just the two.”

“Thanks very much, Tyler. If you should encounter a woman in her late thirties or early forties, five-nine, a hundred and thirty pounds, medium brown hair, will you please ask her if her name is Holly, and if it is, ask her to call Stone on his cell phone right away?”

“Sure. Be glad to.” With a wave, Tyler Morrow continued on his way.

Stone put the car in gear and began his search anew. He drove all the way to the southern tip of the island, checking every side road and driveway, seeing no sign of Holly. He turned the car around and got out his cell phone. No signal, low battery.

On his way back he turned down every side road and checked it, and by the time he got back to the house it was dark and lights were on inside. He garaged the car and let himself in. “Holly?” he yelled. “Are you home?”

Mabel came out of the kitchen. “I was just upstairs putting away some linens, and she wasn’t anywhere up there,” she said.