Joe felt a flush of anger in his cheeks but held back saying anything. Maybe he was a bit of a klutz at times but he didn’t need to be reminded of it when he was going out of his way to be helpful.
Lillian said, “Why don’t we get rid of that bump, get it fixed? I could call what’s his name? You know, who fixed the furnace?”
“Hold off on that, Mom.”
“Why? He’s very reliable.”
“Leave it with me,” he said. “Where do you want to be? Here on the porch, or down by the road?”
“I can take it from here. You go be a police chief.”
“Mom, if you want to be down by the road, I’ll take you there.”
Lillian laughed. “That’s what the car says! Isn’t it? ‘I’ll take you there.’ Isn’t that what the cars say?”
He nodded. “Yes, that’s what the cars say.”
“You know,” she said, “I could use one of those. Old lady like me, car like that is a dream come true. Mobility! I’d just need some help getting into it. Do they build one with a ramp?”
“I don’t know,” her son said. “I’m sure they have something like that in the works.” She had a point, he thought. The Arrival was perfect for old folks who could no longer pass their driving tests. And even for those that still had them, an autonomous car would be a godsend. Take backing up out of parking spots. No more trying to turn your stiff neck around to see where you were going. No more bumping into the car behind you.
“You want to watch the cars go by?” he asked.
His mother nodded.
“Okay, let me take you down to the end of the driveway.”
“If it’s no trouble.”
“Mom, I’m here.”
“Okay, then,” she said.
As he pushed, one of the wheels squeaked as it turned. “Need a little oiling there, Mom,” he said. He wheeled her across the porch, down the ramp, and found her a spot on the sidewalk where she could watch the world pass by.
“Now,” he said, “if you have to go to—”
“I’m good for a while,” she said. Then, whispering, she said, “I’m wearing a—”
“It’s okay, Mom. I don’t have to know everything.”
“You remember him getting on the ferry?” Chief Bridgeman asked the young, blonde woman whose name, he had learned, was Annabelle Harper. She was twenty-seven, from Boston, and worked with an agency that handled special events.
They were standing at the Garrett Island ferry dock, which, at the moment, was empty. The ferry had departed for the mainland more than an hour ago and was probably already getting ready for a return crossing, although given that regular cars were banned, it would be mostly empty. A few walk-ons, at best, a few with bicycles.
“I remember him,” she said. “I chatted everyone up a little as they were getting on.”
“So you’re sure this Clyde Travers boarded?”
She nodded. “But I never saw him get off.”
“Maybe he walked past you without you noticing,” Joe suggested.
Annabelle shrugged. “Like, it’s possible. But I don’t think so. I talked to Fay, who’s working the registration desk at the event site? She said he never picked up his ID tag or his leather case.”
“You mean the pouches they gave out with the press kits?”
She looked impressed that he knew about those. “That’s right. Travers never picked his up. I mean, if he did slip past me, why didn’t he go to the event? That was the whole point of coming, right? I mean, if you want to visit Garrett Island, you can do it anytime. You don’t have to wait for some press conference to get a lift over.”
Joe nodded in agreement.
“The other possibility,” he ventured, “is that he got off the ferry before it left the mainland. Changed his mind about going. Maybe he got a call, family emergency, something like that, and he disembarked without you seeing him.”
Annabelle shook her head adamantly. “No, that’s not what happened. I saw him on the boat.” She screwed up her face, as if she might have committed some kind of sin. “Is it okay to call a ferry a boat? Or is that insulting or something? I guess it’s a bit big to call it a boat.”
Joe smiled. “Call it anything you want. But you say you saw him during the crossing.”
“Yeah, a couple of times. Once at the buffet table. And I was doing a quick walk around on one of the lower decks — I was trying to find a washroom that wasn’t occupied — and saw him talking to one of the other attendees.”
“Oh,” Joe said. “Who would that be?”
She closed her eyes briefly. “I can picture him, but I can’t think of his name. When he got on he made a joke about his passport photo looking like a picture the police give out when they’re trying to identify a body.”
“Okay,” Joe Bridgeman said.
“I think it was Ben something. Ben Stapleton, that was it. They were talking, but then I had to be someplace else.”
“Well, I guess I can have a chat with Mr. Stapleton,” the chief said. A thought occurred to him. “You must have contact details for all the members of the media who are here today?”
Annabelle nodded.
“Has anyone tried calling Travers?”
“Yeah, I called, and there was no answer. Went right to voice mail.”
Joe sighed. “Okay, well, I guess I’ve got my work cut out for me, then.”
Annabelle shook her head. “I’m to stay here, greet everyone for the return trip.” She looked at the black-and-white Arrival that had been outfitted for the chief’s office. “How do you like it?”
“Takes all the fun out of police chases,” he said.
The woman’s face turned serious as she looked out over the ocean in the direction of the mainland. “What if he was depressed?” she asked.
“Sorry?”
“Like, what if he jumped?”
“Off the ferry?”
She nodded.
“Did he seem depressed?”
Annabelle shook her head. “No, but all I really did was say hi. I guess what I’m asking is, if he jumped off, or even slipped, would he survive?” She glanced back toward the mainland. “Out there?”
Joe shook his head. “Water’s cold. You find him fast enough, yeah, maybe.” He reached into his pocket for his cell phone. “I’ll give the coast guard a heads-up, just in case.”
Ten
Katie Montrose hadn’t planned on becoming friends with the serial killer across the street. She just got lucky.
Two weeks earlier, at three in the morning, Katie lay awake, staring at the ceiling. She’d managed to fall asleep, briefly, around midnight, but within an hour her eyes were wide open and all the problems she seemed able to handle during the day suddenly felt, at this hour, overwhelming.
Her troubles were many, and varied.
First, there was her mother. She’d had another fight with her about getting an appointment to take her driver’s test. Her mother was adamant there was no need for Katie to get a license. The island was more than ten days into this insane experiment with these goofy little self-driving shitboxes, and Mom had really drunk the company Kool-Aid. Greatest thing since sliced bread, her mom said. It’ll be like everyone has their own private taxi, except way, way cooler.
Blah blah blah.
Okay, Katie got where her mom was coming from. They were all still grieving. Her dad had died because he’d fallen asleep at the wheel, and her mom didn’t want harm to come to anyone else in the family. But she wasn’t being realistic. Arrival-type cars for everyone were years away. Katie needed her license now. And she was not going to fall asleep at the wheel. She would never drive a car if she believed, even for a second, that she might nod off.
The second thing keeping her awake was Ms. Sugarman, Katie’s history teacher, and, as it turned out, an incredible pain in the ass. She was of the opinion that Katie’s essay on the Emancipation Proclamation was somewhat on the thin side, all because it contained several sentences like this: “Of all the various proclamations that had been proclaimed over the years, the Emancipation Proclamation was the one that was most acclaimed, as well as proclaimed.”