Kyle had engaged the services of a private detective agency — Joe believed it was the same one that film producer mogul hired to discredit all those actresses accusing him of sexual assault — to find out everything they could about Lisa Carver. Bugged her penthouse, outfitted it with hidden cameras, including one in the ceiling directly above the kitchen island where Lisa most often worked on her laptop. That was how they figured out her password and how she changed it every day. They’d done some digging, learned Lisa Carver gave a child up for adoption when she was in her teens, twenty-two years earlier.
Zenia.
It was a secret she’d managed to keep from most everyone, although Joe had assumed Ruskin would have known. It was convenient that, at a time when Sandra desperately needed him to get into Carver’s computer, Ruskin was there. Not because Ruskin could provide a password, but because Joe needed to have Sandra believe he could have provided a password.
Yes, Joe thought, I’m damn good with computers. But I’m not that good. It would have been difficult to explain how he’d figured out, on his own, a password that obscure.
But it wasn’t the unearthing of long-hidden information on Lisa Carver that had made the greatest impression on Joe. It turned out she wasn’t the only one Kyle’s investigators had looked into.
Kyle knew that, for his plan to work, he needed someone on the inside. Someone who would have access to Carver’s laptop. Who better than the chief of police, who’d be expected to do a walk-through of the event to make sure it was secure. Not that Joe was Kyle’s first choice. He wondered about the mayor of Garrett Island, but it turned out she would be in France, visiting relatives, on the day of the event. Besides, investigators had found no skeletons in her closet. Would the governor come in from Boston? Evidently not. The administrator of the community center was also going to be away. Kyle’s people looked for some dirt on this Sandra Montrose person who was helping organize the event, but found nothing that would give them any kind of leverage.
But then they looked at Police Chief Joe Bridgeman. That upstanding local lawman, seemingly above reproach.
Well, yeah, for the most part.
Had the Garrett Island council done the kind of digging that Kyle’s investigators had, they might have reconsidered their decision to hire him. He looked good on paper. First of all, he was an islander. Born and raised here. Knew the terrain and its people. A computer whiz from a young age, he went to work for a tech firm in Boston, but that work didn’t suit him. He wanted to be a cop. He enrolled in the Massachusetts State Police Academy in New Braintree, graduated near the top of his class. Became a state trooper, did well.
But there was a problem: women.
Two, at least. They came forward and complained to Bridgeman’s superiors. They were both women Joe had pulled over, supposedly for speeding. But what he really wanted was to get to know them. Joe had something of a history of pulling over young women, and once he’d had a good look at them and determined they had potential, he’d put his ticket book away.
Not before getting their names and addresses, of course.
Calls followed. Hey, let’s have a drink, maybe catch a movie. Both women had agreed to go out with him, once or twice — he did have a certain charm about him — but neither wanted to continue a relationship, and both made that clear. The guy came on too strong, they’d both felt. Tried too hard. In each case, two dates in, he’d be talking about them moving in together, making a life for themselves.
They didn’t just want to slow the merry-go-round down. They wanted to get off the ride altogether.
But Joe wasn’t very good at taking the hint. He’d been so nice to them. He’d been so attentive. He’d meet them when they finished work, hang around their places of residence, call them in the middle of the night to make sure they were okay, bombard them with emails to tell them how much he cared about them.
If they changed their email addresses, he’d leave notes on their windshields.
Over a period of six months, the two women came in to speak with Joe’s superiors. The man, they said, was a stalker.
There was a quiet investigation. Joe Bridgeman’s superiors put him on notice. If he pulled this kind of shit again, he’d be out on his ass. But Joe knew that even if he behaved himself going forward, he was never moving ahead with this department. Not with those complaints in his file.
When the opening for a Garrett Island police chief came up, it was kismet. He already made regular trips there to check in on his mother, whose health was in decline. He knew many of the people who’d make the decision about hiring him. Had grown up with them. He could move back into the house he’d been raised in, look after his mom, and start a new job with more prestige and responsibility than the one he’d left.
A new beginning.
But what if the town’s elders, and those who’d hired him, learned about his past? What if they knew what Kyle had uncovered?
So when Kyle sought a meeting with Joe, a month before the Arrival event, he laid it all out. Download onto a stick the data from Lisa’s computer and put it in the media kit for one Ben Stapleton. Spike Carver’s coffee, giving Joe time to do what he had to do.
The audacity of the proposal stunned Joe. “No,” he said. “I couldn’t do such a thing.”
Which was when Kyle told him what he knew. The complaints against him. How would the Garrett Island council — and this widow he was so interested in — react to that information?
“In fact,” Kyle had said, “while we’re on the topic of Ms. Montrose... It struck my investigator as quite the coincidence that you should end up with the woman to whom you had to deliver such devastating news. He’s good at spotting those kinds of connections. Has what you’d call a suspicious mind.”
“It’s not that big an island,” Joe had responded. “We all kind of know each other, even if it’s just to say hello. Her husband had an accident. I went to the scene, then notified the family. There’s nothing funny about it.”
“Of course. I’m sure that’s all there was to it. But the timing is a bit curious.”
“The timing?” Joe had said.
Kyle had said nothing more. He simply smiled.
Jesus, the smile on that arrogant fucker’s face.
When it had looked as though it was only the stalking incidents Kyle knew about, Joe’d thought maybe he could ride it out. Call Kyle’s bluff. Let him blab about what Joe had done before returning to the island. There’d always been the chance it could come out, anyway. Joe would admit his mistakes, make the case that he’d been doing a good job as chief. Do his best to persuade Sandra that he wasn’t that kind of man anymore.
On top of that, he’d do the right thing and arrest Brandon Kyle. Trying to bribe an officer of the law. Corporate espionage. Sabotage. Joe would have to consult with the prosecuting attorney to figure out what the actual charges should be.
But when Joe saw that smile, he knew Kyle had an ace card he’d not yet played.
“Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to do all this just to protect your reputation,” Kyle had said. “I am more than prepared to compensate you.”
Money.
If Joe did this man’s bidding, there’d be more than enough cash to find a first-class home for his mother. A place where she could be happy, Joe told himself. He’d have to do plenty of rationalizing to ease his conscience, but sometimes you did what you had to do.
Like killing Albert Ruskin.