Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

“Want a popper?” the Chief asked, secretly wishing Addison would end up with a sore, dry spot on his tongue like the Chief now had.

“God, no,” Addison said.

And they both chuckled.

Jeffrey said, “Sorry I’m late.”

He had not left Delilah at home at night since Greg and Tess had died, he said, because he was worried about her. Crackerjack Delilah, the bat out of hell, Joan Jett meets Julia Child, a woman formidable in a dozen different ways-and she was a mess now.

“I can only stay for one beer,” Jeffrey said.

Jeffrey was a cop also, the Chief thought. He was a cop’s cop, incorruptible.

“I’m sorry to hear about Delilah,” the Chief said. “I miss her cooking.”

“I miss her cooking, too,” Jeffrey said.

“Have a burger,” the Chief said, nodding at his own plate, half demolished.

“I can’t stay that long,” Jeffrey said. The man was a Supreme Court justice.

“Right,” the Chief said. He had to put aside his feeding trough-the extra horseradish in the coleslaw had his mouth buzzing in a way that made him want to shovel in more and more food-and deal with the unpleasant business of the evening. Or he could just forget about it. He had a choice here-he could open up the Pandora’s box that was the tox report-or he could let it go.

He cleared his throat. “I asked you both here for a reason.”

Pause. Jeffrey and Addison leaned forward over the Mafia Table. The waitress again looked afraid to approach, but she had the extra mayonnaise for the Chief’s burger and she wanted to get Jeffrey’s drink order. Stella draft. Okay. She fled.

The Chief said, “The ME ran a toxicology report on the bodies. They had both been drinking. And Tess was high on something.” The Chief paused. “The opiate most commonly found in heroin.”

“Heroin?” Jeffrey said.

“Did either of you know about Greg or Tess mixed up with heroin? Or any other kind of street drug?”

“No,” Addison said. “Well, Greg smoked weed. We all knew that. And he did cocaine back in his Velociraptor days.”

The Chief looked at Addison and remembered his Ferragamo loafers iced with mud; a three-hundred-dollar pair of shoes had gone into the hotel trash without a second thought. The bill for the abandoned canoe had come in at a whopping forty-two hundred dollars, and Addison had paid it. (The Chief had always felt crummy about that, but Addison had the money and he’d convinced the Chief that it had been his idea to orphan the canoe. That was the robber in him; he’d saved the Chief two thousand dollars but stolen his dignity.) The Chief also remembered Addison toking up with Deep Purple and Scrawny Sideburns and how envious he’d felt. The lost-in-the-woods story with Addison was the Chief’s best story, but right this second the Chief didn’t find it amusing at all. Five phone calls to Tess on the day she died. Addison was hiding something.

“I just thought you both should know,” the Chief said. “The accident can’t be taken at face value. Something else was going on.”

“Well…” Jeffrey said.

Pause. The waitress dropped off his Stella.

“Anything else I can get you?” she asked.

“No,” they all said at once.

She scooted away.

“Well, what?” the Chief said. Something was coming. The Chief had heard hundreds of people bear witness, leak secrets, confess. The human need to spill the beans, to tell, could not be underestimated. Even Jeffrey, the judge, had this urge. He was about to share privileged information. But what the Chief had learned over the years was that his thirst to find out led him to be burdened with information he would have been better off not knowing.

“When I spoke to April Peck at the funeral,” Jeffrey said, “she told me she’d been with Greg the night before he died.”

Suddenly the Chief felt full. He pushed his plate away. He exhaled, burped beer and horseradish, felt nauseous. April Peck.

Yes, he thought.

Beautiful women were dangerous. But beautiful girls were even more dangerous, because they weren’t seasoned; they didn’t know that beauty was a weapon and so they flung it around carelessly. April Peck had been after Greg; she had been hunting him on the night of October 23. Of this, the Chief was convinced. He believed that April had gone into Greg’s classroom on purpose, wearing a wet T-shirt without a bra; he believed that she had only been pretending to be upset; she needed an excuse for physical contact. The Chief believed that she had forced herself on Greg. The part the Chief had a harder time with was Greg’s response to that. Had he resisted from the get-go? Or had he succumbed to what would have been as irresistible as a bowl full of juicy berries with whipped cream on top? Had he accidentally grazed a nipple? Had his skin heated up when April put her mouth on his neck? Had he responded, for even just a second? Of course he had.

In his seventeen years as police chief, Ed Kapenash had pressed the boundaries of his authority only once. That was on October 27, when he met clandestinely with school superintendent Dr. Richard Flanders at the station. The Chief and Flanders had gone over the details of both Greg’s account of what happened and April’s account. They came up with the following conclusion: April probably did initiate; Greg probably did, in some way, respond. (What man wouldn’t respond to April Peck? Both men agreed it would take someone very strong-the pope, for example.) The important thing was that Greg had not capitulated, he had not crossed the line; he had not slept with the girl. Flanders said he would continue with the inquiry-he had to, for protocol’s sake-but he assured the Chief that unless any new information was revealed, Greg would keep his job. Flanders shook the Chief’s hand, looked him in the eye; they were men, they understood each other and they believed they understood Greg. The Chief was able to go home to Andrea and say he’d taken care of the problem.

But Greg had the temperament of a spoiled child. His whole life he had gotten whatever he wanted. He had gotten a taste of April Peck; it was not surprising to learn that he’d wanted more.

Greg was a robber.

There were two incidents that the Chief had chosen to overlook. The first was this: On the night of February 2, a domestic disturbance call had come into the station. It was a mother-daughter situation; the mother had stolen the daughter’s car keys in order to keep her at home. The daughter was threatening to stab the mother; she had pulled a kitchen knife. The mother called the police. A squad car was sent to 999 Polpis Road, where they found Donna and April Peck in a messy catfight-hair-pulling, face-scratching, a strap ripped on an expensive camisole top (April’s). There was a knife on the counter-a five-inch serrated sandwich knife-but no one had been cut or stabbed. There was screaming and name-calling, even after Walker and Dickson, the officers, separated the two women. Walker was a ten-year veteran, a deer hunter and early-morning fisherman; he lived alone and had neither the time nor the patience for hysterical women, even though April was, in his words, “one of the hottest chicks I have ever laid eyes on.” Dickson, on the other hand, was the Chief’s secret weapon. Dickson was too smart to be a policeman; the Chief had him marked for a detective in the near future. Dickson had an incredible memory. So he recalled for the Chief, later, word for word, what the women had said.

She put me under house arrest! I’m eighteen years old!

She’s going to see HIM!

Him who, ma’am?

The teacher!

I am not!

Don’t lie to me, April. I’ve checked your phone.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. The cancer has gone to your brain.