Stuart Woods - Dark Harbor

Sergeant Young stood up. “I’d better get back to the land search; I’m not doing any good here.”

“Ham, do you want to come?” Stone asked.

Ham shook his head. “I want to stay here in case Holly turns up, and Ginny is still working on Esme’s diary.”

“Grab a jacket, Dino,” Stone said. “It’ll be chillier on the water.”

They met on the dock, and Stone started the engine. “Will you cast us off?” he said to Dino.

Dino undid the bow, stern and spring lines, then pushed them away from the dock and jumped on board.

“We’ve got to get you some Topsiders,” Stone said.

“Huh?”

“Wingtips don’t cut it on a boat.” Stone switched on the GPS plotter and let it warm up. A few seconds later, an image of Islesboro appeared on the screen.

“Hey, that’s neat,” Dino said.

Stone played with the image. “Yes, and you can zoom in and out, too.” He dug out a paper chart from below and studied it.

“Can we get moving?” Dino asked.

“I just want to take a look at possible hazards,” Stone said. “Maine is a rocky place.”

“Good idea.”

Fifteen minutes later they were under way. They passed the yacht club, which seemed mostly deserted.

“Where is everybody?” Dino asked.

“A lot of people have left the island,” Stone said, “and Sergeant Young says a lot of those still here are staying home until this thing is resolved.” Stone was staying close to shore, looking intently at the water.

“You looking for rocks?” Dino asked.

“No,” Stone replied.

“Oh.”

Stone continued to watch the water as they made their way toward the southern tip of the island. He hoped to God he didn’t find what he was looking for. He zipped up his jacket against the breeze.

“Besides that, what should we be looking for?” Dino asked.

“Look for places ashore where she might be hidden,” Stone replied.

“She could be hidden in any house on the island,” Dino said.

“Most of the houses are occupied by families who are spending the summer here. Look for other outbuildings-barns, sheds, that sort of thing. If we find something that looks promising, we can always get Young and his people to go search it.”

Dino looked intently toward the shore. “We’re grasping at straws,” he said.

“I know,” Stone replied. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

STONE AND DINO ARRIVED back at the dock, tired and cold, a little after seven o’clock. They put out bumpers and made the picnic boat fast, then went into the house. Everybody was sitting around looking disconsolate.

Lance got up and went into the little office, silently waving Stone to follow him.

“What’s up?” Stone asked.

“I’ve heard from our ex-Boston cop,” he said. “He found nothing new in Caleb Stone’s background, but something cropped up on his two sons, Eben and Enos. You remember, they had a sealed juvenile record.”

“Yes. Was he able to crack it?”

“He was. The twins were arrested when they were thirteen for torturing and killing small animals, neighborhood pets.”

“That’s a marker for later criminal behavior,” Stone said.

“Yes, but there hasn’t been any further criminal behavior. The boys got a year’s probation, the family moved to another neighborhood and it was over.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. You asked me to check with the Yale campus police and the New Haven force.”

“Right. Anything turn up?”

“Same as before with the Yale cops: They’ve had no problems with the twins. Neither has New Haven.”

“But?”

“But, you were on the money about something else: There are four unsolved cases of kidnapping, rape and murder of women in New Haven over the past two years, none of them students. Three were townies, girls who hung out in local bars, and one was a young housewife.”

“Is there anything to connect them to the twins?”

“No, there’s nothing to connect them to anybody, so calling the twins suspects is a real stretch. You can’t accuse them of four murders because they harmed some animals when they were kids.”

Stone picked up the phone and called Sergeant Young’s cell phone.

“This is Young.”

“It’s Stone Barrington. You have a list, don’t you, of everybody who’s present on the island and those who have left?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Will you look up Caleb Stone’s family? I’d like to know where they all are.”

“Just a minute.”

Stone could hear papers being shuffled.

Young came back on the line. “Caleb Stone and his wife are at home on the island; his twin sons left five days ago to participate in a yacht race in Newport, Rhode Island.”

“Has the location of the twins been confirmed?”

“We confirmed that they took the ferry, but nothing after that.”

“Will you see if you can confirm their location for every day since they left the island?”

“And this is important why?”

“We’ve learned that the boys have a juvenile record for torturing animals.”

“That’s not good.”

“We’ve also learned that the City of New Haven has four unsolved murders of local women over the past two years. The boys are students at Yale.”

“Yes, I know. Can they connect any of the murdered women to the twins?”

“They have no suspects.”

“I’ve pretty much eliminated the twins as suspects here because of their absence from the island.”

“I’d very much like to know if their presence in Newport can be confirmed.”

“So would I. I’ll call Mr. Stone and find out how to reach them.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

Young hung up.

“What do you think?” Lance asked.

“I think this theory is too thin to mention to Ham; he’d want to hunt down the boys. Still, we don’t have anything else to go on, so this lead, however slim, needs to be run down, and Young is on it.”

“Oh,” Lance said, picking up some acetates, “we’ve got the thermal images for last night.”

“Let’s take them into the study; everybody needs to be involved, especially Ham. He’s worrying me.”

They left the little office.

“We’ve got last night’s satellite thermal images of the island,” Lance said.

Everybody gathered around the coffee table, and Lance spread them out and pointed as he talked. “As you can see, at three-twenty-six a.m., when these images were captured, the public parts of town are empty of warm bodies: The yacht club, the Dark Harbor Store, the dining room at the inn are all empty. Everybody is in bed, pretty much.”

Ham pointed at a warm spot. “Is that a car?” he asked.

“Yes, probably a police car on patrol,” Lance replied.

“What is all this telling us?” Ham asked.

“That people are where they’re supposed to be. Nobody’s out prowling the island, kidnapping people. They’re all at home in bed.”

“A lot of empty houses,” Stone said.

“That’s because so many people have left the island,” Lance pointed out.

Mabel Hotchkiss came into the room and announced dinner.

They had finished dinner and were on coffee when the phone rang. Stone took it in the study.

“It’s Tom Young,” the sergeant said.

“What did you find out?”

“I called Caleb Stone and got a cell phone number for the twins, then I called the number and got voice mail instead of an answer.”

“So we know nothing more about their whereabouts?”

“Not exactly. Eben called me back a few minutes later and reported that they were off Martha’s Vineyard in a race around the Vineyard, Nantucket and Block Island, then back to Newport. They started this morning.”