“”Day started blank.“ Where I couldn’t read a word, I just wrote down ”blank.“ Then there are two or three paragraphs that are completely illegible, then this: ‘X and blank said blank blank”-several words unreadable-then ’blank house, blank blank blank drinks. Z wanted blank blank go, so I said okay.“ Then more unreadable paragraphs down to the last one: ”Z blank crying, me too. Blank blank Y laughing, drunk. Z threw blank, and I got her out blank blank.“ Then the only whole sentence I was able to get: ‘Z swore me to secrecy.”“
Lance spoke up. “I want to send the diary to Langley and see if they can recover more of those pages.”
“I think you should,” Ginny said. “I don’t think I can get any more of this particular incident.”
“Do you have an interpretation of all this, Ginny?” Stone asked.
“It sounds to me that there are four people involved: X, Y, Z and ESE. It sounds as though Z and ESE were persuaded to go to somebody’s house for drinks, then got drunk and Z threw up, and ESE got her out of there.”
“Z could be Janey Harris,” Stone said, “and X and Y could be Eben and Enos Stone.”
“Could be,” Ginny said,“ but there’s nothing here that I can read that identifies X and Y. It could be two other boys on the island or two other girls or even two men. Wouldn’t be the first time grown men tried to lead teenaged girls astray.”
“All right,” Stone said. “Here’s a theory: Labor Day is everybody’s last day on this island. When I spent that summer here, the day after Labor Day, everybody abandoned this place as if it were a sinking ship. By five in the afternoon, the island was practically deserted.”
“What’s your point?” Dino asked.
“Something happened to the girls while they were there- maybe they were raped-but Z, or Janey, swore Esme to secrecy, so she didn’t tell anybody, and the next day they left the island with their parents. Dick and Barbara took Esme back to London, and Janey went home to Boston with her parents.”
“Okay. Say you’re right, then what?” Dino asked.
“X and Y are the twins, and they went back to Yale for the fall semester. Neither of the girls told anyone. Maybe they talked on the phone and reinforced their secret that way. But somehow, Dick Stone learned what had happened. Maybe Esme’s mother read her diary.”
“Mothers will do that,” Ginny said. “Mine did.”
“So Dick is furious. On his way from London to Washington, Dick stops in Boston and confronts Caleb with this information. Maybe Caleb doesn’t believe it or believes it and refuses to do anything about it, so Dick, in a fit of pique, draws a new will disinheriting Caleb and, by extension, the twins, and sends the will to me.”
“Wait a minute,” Dino said. “Are you saying that the twins murdered Dick, Barbara, and Esme because they were disinherited?”
“No. What’s more important is that they didn’t know they were disinherited. They wouldn’t have known, because Caleb didn’t know until I told him.”
“So they killed the whole family thinking they would inherit Dick’s wife’s money? That seems like a stretch, Stone.”
“No, no, at least not directly. Esme had talked, or at least her parents had read her diary, so they were at risk for being sent to prison for two rapes.”
“So they killed both the girls, and Dick and Barbara were either collateral damage or killed because they knew about what happened. What about Don Brown?”
“Janey must have told him about the gapes, or at least Eben and Enos thought she did.”
“Well,” Dino said, “your theory covers most of what we know, but what about Caleb?”
“What about him?”
“If his boys raped these girls, then, according to your theory, he knew about it because Dick told him. Do you think he wouldn’t do anything about it?”
“I don’t think he would send his sons to jail for rape,” Stone said.
“How about five murders? Would he take exception to that?”
“It’s hard to imagine he would,” Stone said, “but maybe he didn’t know the boys were connected to the murders or at least was in denial about them.”
“Then there are the other two women or the island who were murdered,” Dino said.
“Right,” Stone said, “and four more in New Haven.”
“Christ,” Ham said suddenly. “That just doesn’t sound possible. If your theory is right, then these boys from a nice Boston family have murdered, what, eleven people?”
“Ham,” Stone said, “when you learn about serial killers on television or in the newspapers, what do people who knew them say after the fact?”
Ham nodded. “That they were nice boys.”
The doorbell rang, and Stone let in Sergeant Young.
“I just had a call from Nantucket,” he said. “The Stone twins didn’t sail on the yacht when it left this morning, but two young men answering their description left Nantucket airport yesterday afternoon in a light airplane, some sort of Cessna.”
“You’d better take a seat, Tom,” Stone said. “We have some things to tell you.”
Chapter 55
CALEB STONE GOT INTO the big Boston Whaler tied up at his dock, started the engine and motored slowly out to open water, then he increased power and headed for the southern end of the island. Once clear of the island he turned for Camden and increased his speed to thirty. It was a sparkling clear day, and the water was flat.
In Camden he tied up at the local marina and walked a couple of blocks into the business district. He went into a Radio Shack and bought a throwaway cell phone and a kit for hooking the phone to a computer, asking the sales clerk for instructions on how to use it to connect to the Internet.
He then returned to the marina and headed back to Islesboro. He made it before sunset, having been gone less than two hours. Then, instead of returning to his own dock, he motored past it for another half a mile and, with the engine at idle, turned into an overgrown creek, dodging low branches as he went. Within half a minute his boat was invisible to any passing boat. He continued slowly up the creek until he came to the boathouse.
The boathouse had originally been an adjunct to a large, shingled summer “cottage” that had been destroyed by fire many years before. The owners still had the land but had not rebuilt and had not put the property up for sale.
He cut the engine and let the boat coast into the boathouse, tied it up, gathered his purchases and the other items he had brought from his house and walked quietly up the stairs, so as not to wake the woman, who was tied to the bed, until he was ready. He checked to be sure she was still asleep, then he took a small table and chair from one side of the upstairs room and set it into a corner, facing the wall.
He opened his computer case and set up his laptop, which was fully charged, and a small printer. He connected the cell phone to the laptop and installed the Internet software as the salesclerk had instructed. Everything worked perfectly, and he was soon on the Internet.
He donned the electronic device that changed his voice, something his sons had bought when they were in high school, then he went to the bed, gently untied the woman’s feet and duct-taped them firmly together. He bent over her and slapped her sharply across the face. “Time to wake up,” he said, his voice sounding mechanical and expressionless.
She came to, and he spoke loudly, to get past her earplugs. “Listen to me carefully,” he said. “For the next few minutes, your life is going to be in great danger if you do not do exactly as I say. Do you understand?”