The Storm King Page 15

  “What did her body tell you?”

  “Nate, I said I’m not—”

  “Cause of death. Trace evidence. The scene.”

  “Stop it!” The chief’s face cracked, and he was suddenly shouting.

  It’d taken less to provoke him than Nate had expected. A furnace of stress churned under those layers of granite.

  “Know your place, son. A girl’s dead, and I’m the chief of police. And don’t forget that I know what you are.” He rapped on the stack of journals.

  “Even if there’s any truth in there, it happened half a lifetime ago. I’m not that kid anymore.”

  “You better not be. Because this kid”—he patted the journals again—“is poison.”

  “Come on, Chief.” For a weak moment, Nate wanted the man to like him again, to be the uncle and father figure he’d once been. “You can’t think I’d actually hurt anyone.”

  Now it was the chief’s turn to laugh. “I guess a good liar can even fool himself. You wouldn’t hurt anyone? Damn, Nate. We both know that’s not true. What about Tommy and Johnny and Bea and how you abandoned them once you got what you needed out of them?”

  “I didn’t abandon them. Our lives went different ways. It happens to everyone. I tried to stay in touch.”

  “What, an email twice a year? And Bea must be so grateful to see her only kin in this world every other Christmas.”

  Nate saw Grams more often than that, but he knew this was a game he’d lose just by playing. Time for a new strategy. He could push the chief on the increasingly inexplicable runaway note, or edge the conversation toward the Lake’s current crime wave, but leaving the man to stew felt like the best option.

  Time and pressure. That’s how gems are made.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it, Chief,” Nate said. “Sounds like you’ve got a murderer to catch.”

  “The people in town think I’m looking at him right now.”

  “Oh, I know.” Nate started to put on his coat. “The Lake loves its stories. The Night Ship Girls. Just June and Morton Strong and the Century Room. The Boy Who Fell.” He spat the words like they were acid on his tongue. “Everything here becomes a story. It makes it seem like life makes sense, but it doesn’t. It never has.”

  “You’re a cynic.”

  “Cancer doesn’t care if you’re a saint or a serial killer. The kids I treat don’t get it because they smoked for fifty years or never wore sunscreen. They’re innocents. There’s no purpose or meaning or justice. There isn’t an iota of sense to their suffering. There’s no more reason to it than a car going off a cliff because a kid wanted a peach pie instead of cherry. Because he played baseball instead of running track. Because he hit a triple instead of striking out.”

  They stared at each other, and for a moment it seemed like the chief had run out of things to say.

  Nate started for the door.

  “I didn’t bring you here just to talk about Lucy,” the chief said. He pulled a photo out of a manila folder and slid it along the table.

  The photo was of a kid. It looked like a yearbook picture. What did the chief expect him to do with this? How could Nate know anything about her?

  Yet he did. Seeing her with a shy smile in full color and direct light had thrown him off, but now he recognized the curve of her lips and the delicate arch of her nose.

  “She was there,” Nate said. “Last night. With some tall kid. The guy who hit me over the head. They were going to deface Grams’s house or something. You have to bring her in. You’ve got to question her.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Why? This is the same group of kids who greased Johnny’s stairs. The same ones who killed Tom’s dog and blew up the Union with Grams inside it!”

  “Because she’s dead, Nate.” The chief turned the photo so he could look at it himself. “Her body washed up on the shore this morning.”

  BANNERS CELEBRATING THE end of the year were hung all around the high school. The jubilation in the halls was unrestrained. Other seniors were clustered in front of Nate’s locker, and they grinned as they let him through. Michelle Duchannes kissed him on the cheek, and Parker Lang thumped him on the arm.

  Nate himself felt nearly delirious with joy. Exams were over. High school was over. After so long, after so much, his real life was finally about to begin.

  Johnny leaned against the locker to Nate’s right. He was the only one in sight not visibly beaming.

  “How did physics go?” Nate asked as he flicked through his locker’s combination.

  “Sixty-three.”

  “Sixty-three!” Nate slammed the locker shut as soon as he opened it. Johnny had needed at least an eighty-five to bring his average up enough to pass. “We studied so hard.”

  “Kritzler had it out for me from the beginning.”

  “Did you talk to him? Is there homework you can make up or an extra project or—”

  “He’s not budging. I tried everything.”

  “I’m so sorry, man. But one course in summer school won’t be that bad. I bet it’ll only be a few hours a week.”

  “My dad, Nate. Christ, my dad.” Johnny hit his head against the bank of lockers.

  “They’ll still let you walk, right?”

  “Yeah. They’ll just hand me a blank envelope.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t need to know.”

  “But Tufts will know! And he had to pull every string there was to get me in there.”

  “There’s always another string.” Nate opened his locker again. All that remained were a few books from AP biology that he hadn’t gotten around to returning and the photos that decorated the inside of his door. Lucy had made a big blue and white Columbia pennant and hung it just above his locker. “If he got you in, he can keep you in. It’s going to suck telling him, but I can be there with you if you want.”

  “What happened?” Tom approached them, holding hands with Emma Aoki. Owen loomed behind them like a walking refrigerator.

  Nate let Johnny update the others while he carefully peeled the photos from his door. Nate and Lucy as homecoming king and queen. He, Tom, Johnny, and Owen fishing off the Vanhoutens’ deck. They were good memories, but the best ones he had from the last year weren’t the kind you recorded for posterity.

  Emma tutted and patted Johnny on the shoulder. “Me and Laurie are going to get bagels then help Jim set up for tonight,” she told Tom. “Want to come?”

  There was an officially sanctioned graduation celebration after tonight’s ceremony, but the real party would follow that at Jim Tatum’s house at the edge of the headlands.

  “I’m eating with the guys, but maybe I’ll swing by Jim’s after,” Tom said. “Call if he needs me to pick up anything.”

  Emma clutched Tom by the back of his head and kissed him before sauntering down the hall.

  “Thunder Run tonight?” The hallway was loud, but Owen whispered anyway.

  The question and the pain in Nate’s arm made him smile. The meteorologists forecasted the rain to begin midafternoon, but Nate guessed they’d see the first drops closer to dusk. He was rarely wrong.

  “Yep. Going to finish out on a high note,” Nate said.

  “We gotta get Kritzler, Nate,” Johnny said. “He ruined me.”

  “We already planted those termite nests in his walls.”

  “I don’t think he even noticed. Wouldn’t they have tented his house or something?”

  “The longer it takes him to find them, the more damage they’ll have done. A debt past due accrues interest.”

  “But Nate—”

  Silken hands wrapped themselves around Nate’s eyes. He slid around in their grasp to hoist their owner up and onto his hips. Lucy clutched the sides of his face as her thighs gripped his waist. He kissed her as he spun them around in the center of the hall.

  “Love,” he said as he slowed their pirouette.

  She kissed him once on the forehead before letting him lower her to her feet. He paid no attention to
the group of underclassmen girls staring at them with their hands clasped over their chests. He pretended not to hear Johnny sigh next to him.

  “So who are we getting tonight?” Owen asked.

  “Lindsay.” Nate grinned at Lucy.

  In the wake of Adam Decker’s forwarding of her private photos, none of their peers had been more vicious to Lucy than Lindsay Stone. The two had been best friends before the trial and hostile afterward, but the release of those photos had marked an escalation to open warfare across the battlefield of high school politics. Their relationship had lately cooled to a détente, but Nate selecting Lindsay as the Thunder Run’s final target was symbolic. This was his graduation present to Lucy.

  “Again?” Johnny rolled his eyes. “But we have to get Kritzler next, come on.”

  “Nate’s done with the Thunder Runs after this.” Lucy addressed the others, but her gaze was fixed on Nate. “The Night Ship, too.”

  He nodded to confirm.

  Johnny slumped against the walls of lockers.

  “One more wouldn’t be that big of a deal though, would it?” Tom said. “We could play it really safe. Nothing risky. Like maybe we could—”

  “Are you deaf, Tom?” Lucy asked. “He said he was done.”

  Tom took a step backward, stung by her venom.

  “I’m getting my nails done,” she told Nate in a gentler tone. “Then I’m going to see if Jim needs any help.”

  “A manicure?” Nate asked. Lucy had never shown any interest in such things. Nate had only seen her in a dress maybe a half dozen times in the last two years.

  “And a pedicure.”

  “Whoa, really?” He was genuinely surprised. Money was always tight for the Bennetts, and it wasn’t like Lucy to splurge.

  Nate’s compensation had been feeble compared to what he’d lost, but his misfortunes had netted him more assets than he could imagine spending. Whatever black arts his financial adviser employed ensured that these resources grew quarter by quarter. He would have bought anything for Lucy. He would have paid the rent on the Bennetts’ house if it gave her one less thing to worry about. But she rarely accepted his gifts. She was proud and tough, and Nate admired her for it.

  “Our new lives start today, McHale.” She dug a finger into his sternum. “Remember that.”

  He thought about it constantly. In three months, they’d be living in Manhattan. On weekends they’d go to plays and visit museums and walk in those famous parks. They’d meet Tom for dinner a couple times a week. Next year, they’d move in together. They’d get a one-bedroom somewhere between Columbia and NYU. There’d be artwork on the walls and someday a dog. Eventually there’d be a ring and a pair of children. One day they’d have everything they ever dreamed of, and their journey to that perfect place started today.

  He kissed her hungrily, feeling the bones of her face against his palms. He ran hot and she ran cold, and he kissed her until they reached perfect equilibrium. Before he pulled away, he landed a peck on the crown of her fiery hair.

  She smiled at him before she walked away, and it lit a blaze deep inside him.

  When he turned back to his friends, they avoided his gaze.

  “So, we’re grabbing pizza, now, yes?”

  “I guess.” Tom still seemed hurt by what Lucy had said.

  “I bet I could eat a whole pie right now,” Nate continued. He grabbed his books, carefully folded the Columbia pennant into his bag, and closed his locker for the last time. He hammered a fist against it by way of farewell.

  His friends accompanied him to the room where he was supposed to return the books. They walked down the center of the hall, and people parted to let them pass. He nodded to everyone and returned the pats and playful punches he received.

  He dropped off his books, accepted a manly half hug from Mr. Davidson, and slid through the school’s front entrance into the bright sunshine.

  Summer was brief and erratic in this corner of the North Country, but today was a furnace, the humidity making the air thick enough to sip.

  “I’m not built for this weather,” Nate said as he pulled off his T-shirt. The June sun on his skin made him feel immortal.

  “It’s going to be a lot hotter in the city,” Johnny said. Nate knew Johnny didn’t like the idea of them going different places next year. But Johnny was tight with Owen, and Owen was going to a branch of UMass not far from Tufts. It’d take some getting used to, but they’d be okay.

  “Can’t you keep your clothes on for five minutes?” Tom muttered.

  “You know, we could still do another Thunder Run,” Johnny said. “Lucy wouldn’t have to know.”

  Nate stopped dead in his tracks. He was in the most buoyant of moods, but he hated to repeat himself. “Was I not clear?” He turned the full glare of his blue gaze on Johnny.

  Johnny looked away and somehow became even further slumped.

  “You guys can still get Kritzler, though,” Nate said as they started walking again. He’d given Johnny the stick, and now it was time for the carrot. “You don’t need me.”

  Johnny made a sound somewhere between a moan and a wheeze.

  Nate hooked his arm around Johnny’s neck as they walked. The trees lining the street brimmed with blossoms. The aromas of flowers and mowed grass layered the clean mountain air. He was sorry his friend couldn’t share in the euphoria of the day. The future and all of its spoils lay spread before them.

  “It won’t be the same.”

  And Nate’s heart thrilled at the thought, because Johnny was right. After today, nothing would ever be the same again.

  Ten

  Her name was Maura Jeffers, and she was dead.

  She’d been fifteen and a sophomore at the high school.

  Jeffers was the last name of a thrift shop owner Nate and his friends had done a Thunder Run against in the old days. The man had gotten handsy with Lucy, so they’d painted the windows and walls of his shop with sugar water. In no time, the place had been infested with insects. In case people weren’t already suspicious of secondhand clothes, a front window clogged with carpenter ants gave them pause. The town along the shore was a small one, so odds were good that the groper and this girl were somehow related.

  The chief handed Nate a flimsy cup filled with coffee.

  “I assume you take it black,” the chief said.

  He didn’t, but Nate smiled anyway. He even managed to conceal the fact that he was being scalded by the sleeveless cup.

  The chief had made Nate give an official statement about his scuffle with the kids on Grams’s lawn. Nate had been honest, except for the preamble of standing sentinel over the house for hours in the rain. The story he offered stated that the vandals had woken him as they prepared their mischief and so he managed to stop them before they did any damage.

  Chief Buck had significantly dialed down the heat of their interview. Whether this was because the man had softened or because he’d simply decided to change tack, Nate wasn’t sure. He intended to be cautious until he figured this out. The chief had moved their conversation from the interrogation room to the relative comfort of his personal office.

  “Didn’t this place used to be bigger?” Nate asked.

  “Added a closet during the remodel.” He pointed to a door on the side of room.

  Nate sipped the coffee. A bouquet somewhere between pond water and petroleum.

  “How is it? Probably not up to city standards.”

  “It’s perfect. How did the Jeffers girl die?” Nate knew she’d been found along the shore, but that didn’t mean she’d drowned.

  “Medical examiner hasn’t looked at the body yet.”

  “You must have an idea.”

  Chief Buck ran a finger around the rim of his coffee mug. The phone at the front desk trilled through the silence. Though it was early, the line had been ringing virtually nonstop. Medea had Greystone Lake’s finest stretched thin.

  “She was strangled.”

  Nate winced. The idea of strangulation bo
thered him nearly as much as the idea of drowning. “I guess I was hoping it could be explained away as an accident.”

  “The ME will make the official call, but we’re treating it as homicide.”

  “Strangulation’s an intimate way to kill someone,” Nate said. It was something he’d read, but it seemed true.

  He imagined wrapping his hands around a slender young neck and tightening his grip until something essential snapped under the pressure. Crushing the trachea would feel like squeezing a stalk of celery to pulp. He’d have to be face-to-face with the girl, staring into her wide eyes as delicate capillaries exploded like fireworks under the strain. He’d have to be utterly unmoved by the desperation on her dying face. No, Nate thought.

  I’d have to like it.

  The chief raised his eyebrows.

  “Maybe you should let me handle the profiling.” He picked Nate’s statement off his desk. “What about the boy she was with? You say you didn’t get a good look at him.”

  “He was tall. Taller than me, but all arms and legs. At least it seemed that way. They were both wearing baggy raincoats.” In his official statement, Nate had downplayed the physical elements of his confrontation with the teens.

  “Boys grow like weeds. Remember when you shot up that one winter?”

  Nate grinned. This could have been the casual remembrance it appeared to be, but was more likely just another halftime substitution for Bad Cop. Either way, a smile was the smart response.

  The chief looked at Nate and chewed the side of his cheek. “You think you could identify him?”

  “From a picture? I don’t know. Maybe in person.”

  The chief pulled a photo from the folder and slid it across his desk.

  Like the portrait of the Jeffers girl, it looked like a yearbook photo. The boy in the image had an aquiline nose that seemed familiar. His smile had a mischievous twist to it, and his cheeks were ripe with baby fat. It was hard to imagine a teen as skinny as the one Nate had tussled with owning such a cherubic face. Nate tried to imagine the boy in profile.

  “I don’t know,” Nate said.