The Last Place

CHAPTER 33

On their second approach to Notting Island, Tess imagined the residents watching them, waiting for them, laughing at them. It was a gray day, rain threatening, the bay choppy and rough. May had never been as moody as it was this year. Their old friend, the semi-ancient mariner, had been reluctant to rent them his boat, even at double the price. He quizzed them about tides, asked if Carl knew where the shallows were. But in the end he allowed them to go.

“Don’t know why anyone wants to go to Notting Island on a day like this,” he said, pocketing Carl’s driver’s license and credit card as insurance against their return. “Don’t know why anyone wants to go to Not-ting Island at all.”

The trip out seemed to take forever, now that they knew what they hoped to find. It couldn’t be more than fifteen miles, Tess calculated. But fifteen miles in a boat that vibrated if it went above 30 mph was a thirty-minute journey. Despite the overcast skies, the day was muggy and warm. She shrugged off her denim jacket, but she was still warm in her T-shirt and jeans.

“You going to go around like that?”

“Like what?”

“With your gun showing?”

She glanced down at her holster. She was getting used to its feel. After all, she wore it all day, up until dinner, when she placed the weapon on the table in front of her as she ate. At night, it sat on the bedside and waited, its barrel staring into the darkness like some one-eyed creature, for Crow to come home. The gun then watched, as they made love. And they made love every night these days, at Tess’s insistence.

Crow eventually fell asleep, but Tess didn’t, not really. She was untroubled by her insomnia, had no desire to fight it or cure it. She believed her body knew she could not afford much more than catnaps, like the one she had allowed herself this morning, on the long drive to Crisfield.

She would sleep again later, when she was safe.

“Why don’t you have a gun?” she asked Carl.

“I’m not a cop anymore, as you like to remind me all the time. I had a service revolver. I turned that in.” He looked wistful. “It was sweet, a nine-millimeter. I’m surprised you use a thirty-eight.”

“It’s what I’m used to. Look, I think you should get a gun. There may even be a provision to get the waiting period waived, or we could drive down to Virginia, pick one up there. They’re a lot looser about these things in Virginia.”

“I don’t need a gun.”

She sensed something beneath his words. Not machismo or mere contrariness. He had thought about this.

“Why not?”

“For one thing, he doesn’t kill men.”

“What about Michael Shaw?”

“I don’t think he wanted to kill him. And he did it with a car, not a gun. Killing men-it’s like The Leech Woman, you know?”

“Is this another movie reference?”

“Well, yeah.” Carl’s voice was stiff, as if she had hurt his feelings, but he kept going. “A woman, a vain woman, learns about this potion that keeps her young. The only drawback is it requires blood, a man’s blood. Like a junkie, she needs more and more. The effects don’t last as long. Finally, she kills a woman-only it turns out that makes her go the other way.”

“She becomes a lesbian?”

Carl blushed, as she knew he would. She loved baiting him. “No, she starts aging, really fast, and she’s so horrified she throws herself out the window.”

“So William Windsor didn’t kill Michael Shaw because that would-well, what would it do, Carl? I’m not following you at all.”

“I’m just saying it didn’t give him pleasure. He only did it because he thought he had to, for some reason. Hazel too, I bet. He shoots his girlfriends.”

“He shot Julie Carter.”

“She was an ex-girlfriend. Besides, that’s how a junkie is going to die. He tailored the deaths to fit scenarios that seemed possible-a jogging doctor gets killed in a hit-and-run, a spinster dies in a fire, a junkie gets shot in a drug burn.”

They bounced along the water, absorbed in their own thoughts. Tess finally broke the silence.

“Do you think he gets confused?”

“What?”

“About his names. He’s had at least three in the past thirteen years, probably four, maybe more. He has to memorize different birthdays, birthplaces, remember where his Social Security number was issued.”

Carl thought so hard his face puckered.

“My best guess? He’s probably a very quiet guy who listens more than he talks. He doesn’t trip up because he doesn’t speak about himself. Doesn’t tell stories on himself, turns the conversation back to others. I think he says things like Tell me what you were like as a little girl, that kind of stuff.”

It was just what Tess had decided, en route to Saint Mary’s.

“So he woos these women, loves them, takes care of them. Then one day, without warning, he kills them. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Carl said. “Maybe the answer is up ahead.”

Notting Island had come into view.

“Saying the name William Windsor around here,” Carl said an hour later, “is like farting in front of a duchess.”

Tess knew what he meant, although she might have expressed it differently. The locals’ faces had frozen at the mention of the name, and while a few said yes, Billy Windsor had lived in Harkness once, they offered little more. The family was gone, he had no kin here, no one knew what had become of him. One older man, who appeared to be hard of hearing, pointed out the Windsor house, but it was clearly vacant and had been for some time. Someone was keeping the lawn trimmed at the white clapboard house, but the snowball bushes at the front had not been cut back for years. Bursting with heavy blue flowers, they almost blocked the front windows.

When Tess tried to follow up with questions about Becca Harrison, the older residents of Harkness said pointedly, “She lived down to Tyndall. We didn’t know her at all.”

If Tess had been alone, she might have given up. But Carl wouldn’t let her. They had come too far, literally and figuratively.

“Remember the old lady down at the general store in Tyndall Point?” he asked, as Tess slumped on a splintery old bench on the dock.

“Sure.”

“At least she admitted to knowing Becca Harrison. Maybe she’ll tell us something about Billy Windsor, too.”

“It’s worth a try.”

The distance between the two towns was no more than three miles, and they thought about starting off on foot or trying to convince one of the local teens to drive them. But there was no road that went all the way through, begging the question of why people here bothered to have cars at all. The only way to get from Harkness to Tyndall was by boat. No wonder those who lived in Harkness felt so separate from the residents of Tyndall.

The old crone was alone today, listening to a shortwave radio that crackled with watermen calling back and forth to each other as they worked. She seemed bored at first, indifferent to her visitors. But something flickered in her eyes at the mention of Billy Windsor, something bright and hard.

All she said was, “Ah, half the people in Harkness were named Windsor once upon a time. But they weren’t a hardy lot. Billy’s long gone, his father longer gone, and his mother lives with you.”

The syntax confused Tess. For a second she thought it was meant literally, that she was harboring Billy Windsor’s mother without knowing it. Then she realized the woman meant only that the mother lived on the mainland.

“But there must be people here who remember Billy. No one in Harkness seemed to know anything.”

“Of course they remember him. But why should they speak of him to you? They don’t know who you are or what you’re after.”

Tess realized that gossip was the most powerful currency at this store, that the woman would give as good as she got. Yet how could they risk telling her the truth?

“Nothing bad,” she said. “Quite the opposite. He may have come into a bit of money. At any rate, we’ve been asked to find him.”

“By who, Becca Harrison? I’d like to see her face when you tell her he drowned himself over her all those years ago. But she was cold then, and I suppose she’s cold now.”

Tess hesitated, but Carl picked up the lie, sure and confident. “She didn’t tell us why she wanted to find him. Just to find him.”

“Well, it’s an old story, probably not worth telling.” The woman was being coy. At first Tess thought she was teasing for money, a bribe. But she was just trying to stretch out the encounter, enjoying this variation in her usual daily routine.

“Please,” Carl said. “We’d really like to know. Becca hasn’t told us why she wants to find Billy Windsor, only that it’s important to her.”

“It’s a short story. Becca Harrison and her father moved here when she was thirteen, maybe fourteen. Billy Windsor fell for her so hard he was never the same again. Swagger die, it was like he had a killick around his neck. And that’s probably how he ended up.”

Tess had no idea what a killick was, although she could infer from context that it was inappropriate neckware at best. But Carl seemed to understand, so she let it go. Now that the woman was talking, she didn’t want to get in her way.

“At least, we always’s‘posed that’s how he done it,” the old woman said. “I think he was being considerate of his mother, in his own way. More considerate than she was of him, I’d have to say. He could have used a shotgun, but no, you wouldn’t want your mother to see you like that. Pills would have been hard to get around here. Even over to Crisfield, word would have gotten back. So he must’ve weighted his body down. He knew no matter how much he wanted to drown, his lungs would have fought it. The body tries to live, even when the head wants to die.”

“So you think he tied a killick around his neck,” Carl prompted. “But you don’t know, because his body was never found.”

“They searched near Shank Island, where they found his skiff drifting, but there’s no guarantee that’s where he went over. My guess is Billy picked a deeper spot. He knew the bay, all the boys here do. He’d pick a good place to go in. His mother never admitted he was dead, though, and no one dared speak of it in front of her. She stayed here for a few more years. Then, come five years ago, she upped and moved. Still owns the house but keeps it empty.” The crone narrowed her eyes. “So for all her grief, I guess she had an insurance policy on the boy, and it finally paid off when she had him certified as dead.”

She had skipped over something. A piece of the story was missing.

“What does this have to do with Becca Harrison?” Tess asked.

“Didn’t she tell you? Maybe she doesn’t know. After all, she was gone.” The woman lighted a cigarette, a generic one. “Well, apparently she wanted to get away from here real bad. Went to Audrey Windsor for help. I think Drey-we called her Drey, although I can’t remember how that started.”

“Ma’am?” Carl prodded. She gazed at him over the haze of her cigarette smoke. Tess realized the old woman saw herself as Notting Island’s Lauren Bacall, even if no one else did.

“Drey Windsor helped Becca Harrison run away. She let people think it was because she felt sorry for the girl, but I think it was because she didn’t much care for her son being so over the moon in love. She thought she’d kill two birds with one stone: help the girl get away from her father and get her far away from Billy. So it’s her conscience she has to live with.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was the one took Becca Harrison to Smith Island, to catch the ferry that goes to Point Lookout, over t’other side. But when Billy Windsor realized his girlfriend was gone, he was never seen again. I guess his mother didn’t count on that.”

Point Lookout. Tess glanced at Carl, he had caught it too. Mary Ann Melcher’s boyfriend had disappeared from that spot in just the same way Billy Windsor had. A boat was found but not a body, not a body that could be proved to be Charlie Chisholm, because Charlie Chisholm didn’t exist. And Billy Windsor, if that was the man they sought, was not shy about repeating successful tricks. He had used his parked van to create alibis in the two homicides, driving all night in rental cars to return home and kill the women he said he loved.

“Where does Mrs. Windsor live now?”

“I couldn’t tell you for sure. I don’t have her address, but she left me her number. She likes to keep up with the local gossip. She likes to know”-the woman narrowed her eyes until they almost disappeared into the tortoiselike wrinkles of her face-“she likes to know if strangers come around looking for her.”

Again, Tess felt there was a way to get her to tell them more, but she could not figure out what this woman wanted from them. She had to rely on Carl, whose instincts were sharper here, surer.

He leaned across the counter. “Can we take you into our confidence?”

Her lashes were practically nonexistent, but she fluttered them at Carl. “Of course.”

“You’d do us a tremendous favor if you didn’t speak to anyone of this, but we probably should talk to Mrs. Windsor. If we had the number, we could make an appointment to talk to her face-to-face, tell her what we know about Becca Harrison.”

“So where is Becca?” The woman leaned forward, a little breathless. “I never thought she was much. She told people she was going to be famous one day, but I read the magazines when they come in, and I’ve never seen her, not once. I bet she married a rich foreigner, and that’s why her father never found her. She’s over in Europe, going parlez-vous. Some place where they think it’s a big deal to sing in that loud way.”

“Actually,” Carl said, “Becca Harrison’s life is not what you’d call charmed. She’s had some hard knocks.”

“Can’t say I’m sorry to hear that. She broke Billy Windsor’s heart- and her father’s, too, though no one cared about him. She was a senior in high school, just turned eighteen, when she ran away, so there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Billy was younger, a year behind her in school. I always thought that bothered Drey, too.”

Tess was confused. “That Billy was behind her in school?”

“That she was an older woman.” She made little hash marks in the air to underscore the irony. “Let me tell you, Becca was eighteen going on forty. She was a hard girl, out for herself. I can’t blame Drey Windsor, in the end. She paid a high price. A high, high price.”

With that, the woman handed them the phone number. Carl’s hand shook a little as he reached for it, but he was otherwise nonchalant. It was a 410 area code, which could be either side of the bay. Tess hated to head all the way back to her office and the crisscross directory, only to discover it was a Crisfield number.

“Where did you say she lived?”

“I didn’t. But I know it’s on the Western Shore.”

Tess and Carl turned to go, trying not to hurry, or seem agitated in any way. But this gave Tess time to think of one more question.

“Becca Harrison-what did she look like?”

“Well, you’ve seen her, ain’t you? You work for her, you said.” The old woman was cagey. Not much got by her.

“Yes, but-people change so over the years, and it’s rude to ask Becca what she looked like before she was fat.” The lie was calculated to please the old woman, and it did. She preened a little, aware her leathery body had no extra weight on it. “What did Becca look like as a teenager?”

“Small, to have such a big voice. Dark hair and light eyes. And because she was so little, she had a way of looking up through all that hair and her eyelashes. I was surprised when she cut it off, real short, because she was always flipping it and poking at it. She was a flirt, although I don’t think Billy knew the half of it. Oh, he was crazy in love. But then, you’d have to be, to do what he done.”

“Becca’s dead,” Carl said, once the island was well in the distance. They had not spoken since leaving the store. It was as if the residents of Notting Island could eavesdrop, as if the breeze would carry their words back. “If anyone’s at the bottom of the bay, a killick around her neck, it’s her.”

“I know. I knew even before she told us what Becca looked like. The question is whether Billy Windsor’s mother knows.”

“She could be the one who called me. Remember? He had some woman call me and Sergeant Craig, to tell us that Alan had been admitted to that out-of-state hospital.”

“Her or Hazel. Why kill Hazel, if she doesn’t know what’s going on? He cut off his own supply of fake names. What’s a killick, anyway?”

“Small anchor, used for oystering.”

“How did you know that? You never went oystering.”

“I lived on the shore, Tess. Upper Shore, but part of the shore. We understand one another. After all, we’ve got a common enemy.”

“You mean Baltimore and the rest of the state?”

“Yep. It’s us against you, and we don’t ever forget it. Among ourselves, we may note the tiniest distinctions. But when it comes to the big picture, we’re in this together. Remember when the governor called the Eastern Shore a shithouse?”

“The ex-governor, Carl. And he’s always been a few milligrams light of a Prozac prescription. Everyone knows that.”

“No, he was on to something. You don’t like us, and we don’t like you. He’s the only one who dared to say out loud what everyone thinks. We think you’re nasty, decadent people who live in filth and don’t understand what it’s like to be dependent on the water and the land for your living. You think we’re ignorant hicks who aren’t good for anything but putting food on your table.”

“So Billy Windsor isn’t a serial killer, he’s just a resident of the Eastern Shore who murdered these people as part of some complicated eco-political agenda?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. But I am saying I have a few insights. And I think his mother doesn’t have a clue what he’s been up to, okay? He’s kept her pure. She’s his mama.”

“Fine,” Tess said. “I’ll put my jacket back on when we visit her tomorrow. But I’m not going without my gun.”