Rough Weather

13

We were clean and sprightly. We had drunk coffee and eaten sandwiches in the living room, and now we were talking to the cops. The state guys had the duty on the south-coast islands, and there were a lot of them. The first arrivals were a SWAT team in full battle dress who came in by helicopter, much as their opposites had. They went about securing the island. A second chopper brought some EMTs, who tended to people who thought they needed tending to. Later, by boat, almost sedately, came the detectives, led by the state homicide commander, Captain Healy.

When Healy came into the living room and spotted Susan and me, he gestured for us to follow him and we went down the hall to another room, which somebody called the parlor. In my youth the parlor and the living room were one and the same, but my youth was not spent on Tashtego Island.

“Susan,” Healy said when we were alone. “If I looked like you, I wouldn’t waste my time on the likes of him.”

“There are things you don’t know,” Susan said.

“Or want to,” Healy said. Then he turned to me and said, “Okay, tell me what you know.”

I told him. He looked at Susan.

“Anything to add?” he said.

She shook her head. He looked back at me.

“Just to be sure I understand,” Healy said, “Heidi Bradshaw hired you to be some sort of substitute husband for the wedding.”

“What she told me,” I said.

“You believe her?”

“No.”

Healy looked at Susan.

“You believe her,” he said.

“No.”

“Either of you have an idea of what she might really have wanted?”

Susan said, “No.”

I said, “No idea.”

Healy nodded.

“You have had some dealings with the Gray Man before,” he said to me.

“Yes.”

“Do you think it’s a big coincidence that you and he show up on an island off the south coast of Massachusetts?”

“No,” I said.

“What do you think it is?” Healy said.

“No idea.”

Healy nodded again. He looked at Susan and smiled.

“There you have the essence of my professional life,” he said.

“Oddly enough,” Susan said, “mine, too.”

“You know if Rugar was invited?” Healy said to me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Anything else either of you want to tell me?” Healy said. “Observation? Theory? Anything?”

I shook my head. I could see Susan thinking about it. So could Healy.

“What?” he said to her.

“Just… not even an observation… an impression, maybe,” Susan said.

“Yeah?” Healy said.

“I’ve seen a lot of traumatized people in my practice,” Susan said. “Heidi Bradshaw seems to be holding up awfully well in the face of a horrendous experience culminating in the murder of her son-in-law and the kidnapping of her daughter.”

“You think she’s somehow involved?” Healy said.

“Perhaps she’s simply numb with shock,” Susan said. “Perhaps she’s Mother Courage. I only can say that her behavior is not consistent with other behavior I’ve seen in other traumatic circumstances. And I’ve never seen circumstances as flamboyantly traumatic as these.”

Healy looked at me. I shrugged.

“We all know it’s hard to assess the performance of people under stress,” I said.

Healy was silent. He walked to one of the tall windows and looked out at the storm-littered lawn.

“Well,” he said, “we’ll see.”

He turned back to us from the window.

“You want to go home?” he said.

“Yes,” Susan said.

“I’ll tell my people at the dock to let you go,” Healy said.

Susan said, “Thank you.”

Healy looked at me and said, “You going to stay in this?”

“I think I will,” I said.

“Thought you might,” Healy said. “Just don’t muddy the waters.”

I grinned at him.

“Can’t promise,” I said.

“Didn’t think you could,” Healy said.