“No-shit-nothing like that, Stevie.” Jack sighed. “Just drop it, okay? It doesn’t matter now.”
“Maybe it doesn’t. But it sure did matter back then. That must have been why the cops got interested in you-because everybody knew how much you’d hated her, how you’d always referred to her as a bitch, a cunt, every ugly word you could think of.”
“All of them entirely appropriate.”
“You think you’re so goddamn smart. So fucking superior. But if you are, how come you never anticipated that you’d become the most obvious suspect? How come you didn’t prepare an alibi in advance?”
Irrationally, Jack bristled, his criminal competence challenged. “I assumed the coroner would say she’d struck her head on the bottom of the pool after a dive. Which is what he did say-eventually.” His shoulders moved in a shrug. “I didn’t mess up so bad. In the end, things worked out exactly the way I’d planned.”
“Oh, sure. Everything worked out great, just great-thanks to your quick thinking. Did you come up with that story of yours on the spur of the moment?”
“More or less. I worked it out on my way over to your place. It sounded plausible. You knew Lisa and I had a little thing going.”
“That part was true, I suppose.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, mildly surprised to taste the bittersweet flavor of nostalgia in the words. “It was true.”
Lisa Giovanni had been a married woman of thirty-three, recently separated from her husband. She’d liked sharing her bed with an eighteen-year-old lover, tanned, muscular, virile; and Jack in turn had enjoyed her small, firm breasts and slender legs and silky dark hair, her finely chiseled Italian features, the perfume that wound around her like a flower’s fragrance.
Their trysts had been secret, of course. A scandal if the relationship should come out. Only Steve had known.
So it had been easy enough to formulate the lie and sell it.
“The cops are going to want to know where I was the night Meredith drowned,” Jack had said, pacing Steve’s bedroom on that humid August evening, while Steve listened, first puzzled, then concerned, then afraid. “They’re desperate for somebody to pin it on. Here’s the thing: I’ve got an alibi, but I can’t use it. ’Cause I was with Lisa. She gave me the world tour, as usual. But if I mention her name, it’ll be all over town in two days.”
“What can I do about it?”
“Tell the cops we were together that night. Doing something-I don’t know-maybe we took a drive. A long drive, say, down to Asbury and back. We’ve done that before.”
“Lying to the police-”
“It’s not a real lie. I’ve got an alibi. Just can’t use it, that’s all. Come on, Stevie, you don’t want this thing between Lisa and me to come out, do you? My folks’ll fucking kill me.”
It had taken some time and some talk, but Steve had agreed to go along. No other suspects had emerged, and finally the coroner had been persuaded to close the case. End of story, or so Jack had supposed.
“You already admitted you believed me at the time,” Jack said now. The wind kicked up; the boat rode gentle swells. “What changed your mind?”
“A rumor I heard around town a few weeks later. Story was that Mrs. Giovanni had been trying to get back with her husband. They’d spent a weekend together in Cape May-the same weekend Meredith died.”
“Oh, Christ. You mean the little guinea bitch was two-timing me?”
“Apparently. Of course, it was only gossip. Might not have been true. Or maybe whoever started the rumor got the details wrong. Even so, I started to think I’d better go to the police. But if I did, it would look really bad for you-and I still didn’t believe you could have killed Meredith.”
“So you went off to college,” Jack said slowly, as faint hope stirred in him, revived by the beginning of an idea, “and forgot about it.”
“Tried to.”
“Never said a word-for all these years.”
“All these years.”
Jack smiled then. Smiled like a jackal on a flyblown mound.
“We are friends,” he said with rising confidence. “We really are. Better friends than I knew.”
“No.”
“You kept my secret.”
“Wrong. I kept… my secret.”
Jack understood. And suddenly he knew he could master this situation. He could turn things to his advantage. He could take control.
“Yes, Stevie,” he said softly. “That’s right. It was your secret, as much as mine. You lied to the police in a homicide investigation. You were an accomplice after the fact.”
“In a sense.”
“Not in a sense. That’s the way it was.”
“You could say so.”
“Anybody would say so.”
“I didn’t know your story about Lisa Giovanni was a lie-”
“But you knew the alibi you gave the cops was a lie.”
“You asked me to do it.”
“And you agreed.”
Steve closed his eyes, conceding the point. “Yes.”
“And later,” Jack went on, pressing harder, “after you heard the gossip, you began to suspect the truth. Began to realize what you’d done.”
“Maybe so. On… on some level.”
“On a pretty conscious level, I’d say. At first, anyway. But you didn’t want to think about it. So you buried it. Buried it deep.”
“Not deep enough.”
“No. Of course not. Never deep enough.” Jack leaned forward, stronger now, taking charge. “Guilt’s like toxic waste. No matter how deep a hole you hide it in, it always leaks out somehow and pollutes everything around it. Isn’t that right, Stevie? Isn’t it?”
Steve said nothing this time, nothing at all-and that was good.
20
Kirstie ran along the boardwalk, the tattoo of her sandals on the planks thumping in rapid counterpoint to the beat of her pulse.
Her fear had been steadily swelling, battening on itself, as she traversed the island. A sense of desperate urgency possessed her, yet a corner of her mind stood back from her escalating panic, appraising it with cool skepticism, reminding herself that her terror had no logical basis, no solid foundation at all.
The swamp matched her mood. Past the railing of the boardwalk lay clumps of mangroves divided by narrow channels of brackish water. Things flitted among the trees’ twisted roots and branches; ribbons of glossy darkness slid soundlessly through the ooze. But no detail was visible, nothing specific, only a teasing impression of movement, as indistinct as the forebodings that shadowed her awareness.
She was certain of only one thing. She wished Jack Dance had not come here. She wished he had stayed a hundred miles-a thousand-from Pelican Key.
The boardwalk completed its zigzag course and deposited her on the marly loam near the cove. She emerged onto the mud flats, out of breath and flushed from running.
She scanned the area, looking for Jack’s dinghy. It wasn’t there. She saw nothing but mud and seaweed and a few reddish egrets harassing the minnows in tidal pools.
Had Jack lied about beaching the boat here? Had he come ashore someplace else?
Then her drifting gaze fell on a mound of palm fronds a few yards away. Something grayish and rough-textured, like whale skin, was concealed beneath.
The runabout. Thank God.
She approached the boat. At first she assumed the fronds had been blown over it by some freakish breath of wind, but as she got closer, she saw how carefully the leaves had been arranged.
Camouflage. Jack had hidden the dinghy. But why?
Kneeling, she brushed the fronds away. Inside the boat she found a suit jacket and pants, expensive items, badly soiled and wrinkled.
She remembered wondering if Jack had slept on the island last night. Now she was certain of it.
In the bow were three bulging grocery bags stuffed with canned goods and other nonperishable supplies. Near them, a manual can opener and an emptied can of peaches.
“He came here last night,” Kirstie whispered. “Brought enough food for a week. Slept till dawn. Woke up, had breakfast, then went for a walk-and found me.”