“How long since this happened?”
“Four, five years. Good night.” Billy hung up.
Later, after the dinner party had dissolved, Stone and Primmy lay in bed, kissing and fondling.
“Which was scarier?” he asked her. “The bear or the twins?”
“The bear, when I thought it was the twins,” she replied. “I thought they had come for revenge over the ear wound.”
“I don’t think they’ll forget that,” Stone said. “For the next few days, I don’t want you to go anywhere alone.”
“That’s easy,” she said. “I don’t want to go anywhere alone. Maybe ever again.”
“I understand your feeling.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a Fish and Wildlife for rogue people, in addition to bears? If we could just call them and they’d come, anesthetize them, put them in a cage, and take them away.”
“Something like that exists,” Stone said.
“Oh? What is it called?”
“It’s called the criminal justice system. These two have already been there once, but I don’t think we’ll ever get them back there again.”
“What’s the alternative?” she asked.
Stone sighed. “That remains to be seen.”
22
Early the following morning, Stone had an idea. He made love to Primmy (not a bad idea), they had breakfast, then they dressed and went downstairs. Dino and Viv were just finishing theirs.
“Dino,” Stone said, “I’ve had an idea about how to go after the twins.”
“Does it involve running around in the woods in the dark with flashlights chasing bears?”
“It does not. It involves police work, something you and I know a bit about.”
“I thought you had forgotten,” Dino said.
“Only when I can persuade you to do it for me.”
“Is that what we’re doing now?”
“No, we’re going to call Sergeant Tom Young at the Maine State Police and persuade him to do it for us.”
“I thought you’d already spoken to him, and he was unwilling to get involved.”
“That’s true, but you should always give a man a chance to change his mind.”
“Okay, let’s call him, and you do all the talking while I listen.”
“That’s what I had in mind.” Stone led him to Dick Stone’s little office, concealed behind a bookcase. “We’ll use the landline and put it on speaker.” They sat down, and Stone called the number.
“Sergeant Young.”
“Tom, it’s Stone Barrington and Dino Bacchetti.”
“Uh-oh. You’ve hit a dead end on the Stone twins thing, and you’re going to try to talk me into helping.”
“We’re not asking you to stick your neck out, Tom, just to review the unsolved rape/homicide files of the Islesboro cases, and those in Boston and New Haven.”
“Hold it right there, pal,” Young said. “I have already been over those cases with a giant magnifying glass, and there is nothing there that would help us make a case against the twins.”
“Oh.”
“Except, maybe, one thing.”
“Ah. Which one?”
“Let’s call it the Nantucket file, for want of a better name.”
“What does Nantucket have to do with this?”
“It has to do with the twins’ alibi for the last of the rape/homicides.”
“What was their alibi?”
“They said they were on board a yacht that they had raced to Nantucket and were delivering to Boston.”
“Did that check out?”
“At first. I had a local Nantucket cop, Lieutenant Jake Potter, run it down for me. He found the owner of the yacht, which is named Hotshot, on somebody else’s yacht in the marina. When Jake spoke to him, he said that the twins had left Nantucket to deliver Hotshot to Boston, and the murder had occurred during the time when Hotshot would have been at sea. There would have been no way they could have gotten to Islesboro during that time, so their alibi was airtight.”
“That’s discouraging.”
“That alibi was all that I knew at the time, but when I went through the files last week, there was an addendum to the file that I hadn’t seen before.”
“What did the addendum say?”
“It said that, after Jake had sent me the file, he had gotten a call from a kid he had wanted to interview but couldn’t find. The kid delivered groceries to yachts in the marina. He had arrived aboard Hotshot as they were ready to cast off. He had handed the groceries aboard, got paid, and helped them stow everything below. It was a choppy day, and they didn’t want loose cans of tomatoes flying around the cabin.”
“So how does this relate to the twins’ alibi?”
“According to this kid, there were four people aboard, and none of them were twins. He cast off their last line and watched them head out of the harbor.”
“So they lied about their alibi?”
“Right, and the owner of Hotshot backed their lie, saying that the twins had sailed on her.”
“Is that enough to charge them?”
“Wait, there’s more.”
“Tell me.”
“Jake Potter checked the local airport to see if they could have left the island on a plane or chopper, and he learned that a small airplane left before Hotshot sailed.”
“What kind of airplane?”
“A light, high-winged airplane. That’s got to be a Cessna, but Cessna has several high-winged airplanes, and there are other manufacturers, too.”
“Did Potter get a tail number?”
“No, they didn’t buy fuel, so there was no record of a tail number.”
“Anything else to add?”
“No, it’s just clear evidence that they didn’t sail aboard Hotshot, and that they could have left the island by airplane.”
“That would be very nice if there were some physical evidence, like a murder weapon or DNA.”
“But there wasn’t. Oh, there’s something else in the addendum that I didn’t know before.”
“What’s that?”
“Hotshot is registered as having Boston as a home port, and the owner of the boat, who backed their alibi, is named Kip.” He spelled it for Stone.
“Just ‘Kip’?”
“He may have many other names, but that’s the only one Potter got.”
“Okay, Tom. Do you have any suggestion as to what we could do with this?”
“Not a one, except to stick the story up your ass if you tie me into this. And that means not tying in Jake Potter, either.”
“So we’re back to square one.”
“Yeah, and the route from square one to an arrest is fogged in.”
“Well put, Tom. Are you sure there’s nothing else?”
“Not from me, there isn’t. You’re on your own. Bye.” He hung up.
“Well,” Dino said, “I’d call that convincing evidence.”
“Yeah,” Stone replied, “but the only ones convinced are you and I.”
“I don’t suppose anybody keeps a record of who lands at the airstrip on Islesboro.”
“I hate saying these words, Dino, but you are absolutely right.”
“So near, but yet so far.”
23
Stone and Dino were crouched over the computer, trying to penetrate the website for yacht registrations, when Stone, after a half dozen attempts and without a password, had a better idea.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he said.
“Yeah, sure. Remember what happened when you got your last idea, what, an hour ago?”
“We need the help of someone authorized, who can penetrate this website or, perhaps, do it the old-fashioned way and make a phone call. We need a tame cop.”