Just a Corpse at Twilight (10 page)

He did find a stain, not too clearly visible, a dried-up spot ofa different, deeper red than the granite's natural pink-and-red shades.

"Has it rained since this happened?"

It hadn't.

Grijpstta leaned against the pagoda's balustrade. "Now then, show me what you did after Lorraine disappeared from your view."

De Gier stood on the veranda. "I was here." He pointed at the top stone step. "Lorraine stood there. I do recall shoving her. Next thing she wasn't there. I didn't hear her scream. Maybe she groaned. I recall some sound but I might have thought she was talking while walking down the steps."

"Not a lot of blood," Grijpstra said. "Maybe her clothes soaked it up." He coughed. "Vaginal? Possibly."

De Gier coughed too.

De Gier's cough irritated Grijpstra. "Irresponsible movie sheik on the rampage, even here." He glared. "You have a nasty habit there, my boy. And it isn't getting any better."

De Gier looked away. "Bad George claims she miscarried," he admitted. De Gier sat on the steps, jerking the ends of his mustache, baring his teeth that way. His voice seemed higher than normal. "I didn't ask him to produce proof either. Didn't want to know. That would have been in the boat, and they would have thrown it overboard, yes?"

"Baby could be yours?"

"I used condoms."

"Any breaks?"

"Yes," de Gier said.

"You've been here four months," Grijpstra said. "You were intimate straightaway? When did you meet Lorraine?"

"First day," de Gier said. "That answers both questions."

Grijpstra was shaking his head. "Lorraine was around forty? Did she mention pregnancy?"

"Irregularity," de Gier said. "She said it was normal, she'd been like that for a while. It seemed to bother her, though."

"So it's Flash and Bad George, who're trying extortion, who assert subject was pregnant."

"Who's
subject?"
de Gier asked. "This is Lorraine."

"Subject." Grijpstra slapped de Gier's shoulder. "Nothing is personal to me here. You're nothing but my client. If I cared I would be useless." He poked de Gier's chest. "We continue. The extortionists brought the body back. Let's see how they did that."

De Gier became Bad George, coming up the steep path from the little harbor below, carrying Lorraine's body lightly across his arms.

"Hmmm," Grijpstra said. "Not a heavy woman, I see."

"Slender," de Gier said. "Lovely body. Bit of a monkey face, though, wrinkled up, because of a bad marriage, divorce. She lived with her parents for a while, in a trailer park in Arizona. Parents own Bar Island over there, bought it as an investment when they were young, thought it would appreciate in value, which it didn't."

"Subject had money?"

"She was a biologist. Her university provided income.

Subject had a grant to study birds here, and planned to teach in Boston later on. Bar Island is a sanctuary for terns, but there are fewer each year. She had to find out why."

"Why?"

"Sea gulls," de Gier said. "They're bigger than the terns and they keep taking the eggs or the young. Lorraine had statistics. She knew where the gulls breed and was proposing that she and Aki take their eggs."

"Aki is a biologist too?"

"Not as well-qualified as Lorraine."

"Sanctuary," Grijpstra said. "Subject thought she'd get a break from her divorce mess here." He looked at the island to the east, Bar Island. "Nice. So she wasn't really from around here?"

"New York, originally. This was the family's summer place, they used to camp out here, built a nice cabin. Her parents thought they might winterize the place and retire here but the mother got emphysema and Arizona has dry air."

"Smoker?"

"So subject said. The mother sucks cigarettes and oxygen at the same time from a cylinder she carries around. A cripple."

Grijpstra coughed painfully.

"How's your affliction?" de Gier asked.

"Doctor says I stopped just in time," Grijpstra said. "So subject really was a nature woman?"

"Sure." De Gier gestured. "Paddled a kayak to stay happy. Lived on health food. Lots of energy. The terns got boring and she started a paper on loons. She and Aki were out most mornings. Loons like daybreak."

"Loons?"

"Birds, water birds, fairly big," de Gier said. "You'll love them. Impressive patterns of black and white, with piercing red eyes. Endangered species but still abundant on Maine bays and lakes. Make unbelievable sounds, like opera singers who have gone beautifully crazy."

"Male opera singers?"

"Female opera singers."

"So what we have here is a lonely and sensitive fairly attractive female subject," Grijpstra said. "I'm familiar with your case history and profile." He clasped his hands in back of him and studied de Gier sternly. "Your modus operandi is that you make yourself available but you don't actively seduce. So subject came on to you. You told her okay, but nothing serious please; the human race is a mistake, you don't want to add to its numbers. You're in principle against homo sapiens but as you find yourself in human shape you'll go along with that for as long as the condition doesn't get too uncomfortable. You don't believe in relationships either but short-time lust can be exciting. If, on those conditions, subject is interested. . . . And so on. Yes?"

De Gier sighed affirmatively.

Grijpstra looked fatherly. "Rinus?"

"Henk?"

"Your attitude, does it ever make you feel guilty?" De Gier looked away.

"You look guilty now."

"Lorraine is a nice woman," de Gier said.

"You don't believe subject is dead?"

De Gier got up, walked a few steps down, came up again. "Sure, she's dead. I saw her corpse."

"Now," Grijpstra said, "I'm only trying to ascertain whether you were out of your mind and in that state murdered Lorraine. Tell me, is this whole thing of yours here"— Grijpstra pointed at the pagoda, at heads of seals popping up out of the sea, at pine trees on cliffs, at de Gier himself—"a continuation of what you tried to do in New Guinea?"

De Gier nodded. "The shaman reminded me ofjeremy here."

"Shaman," Grijpstra said. "Sorcerer. Witch doctor. Did the medicine man suggest you should do drug-induced vigils?"

"He did," de Gier said. "There was an island there he would go to. He told me he would use music, dance, sing, take his preferred drugs, seek out animals, birds. Collect rocks, shells, driftwood. Make shapes."

"Exactly," Grijpstra said, "and your preferred drugs are bourbon and marijuana, which are easily available here, and this is an island, and your favorite music is Miles Davis's funk-jazz now and you have your own mini-trumpet, and everywhere in the pagoda I see your compositions of rocks and shells laid out, and you're trying to meet Mr. Bear, and the loons are singing."

"You can't quite call it
singing,"
de Gier said.

"Something unique," Grijpstra said. "You mixed that in with all your other ingredients, and you finally work up to the final pitch. . . ."

"Maybe alcohol is not such a good idea," de Gier said. "The New Guinea shamans don't care for it but as I'd been using alcohol more or less successfully before I thought I might try. . . ."

Grijpstra was reverting to his police mode, being pleasant but firm. "After Lorraine fell, did you go after her and do some kicking?"

"So Farnsworth says."

"But he wasn't there."

"He and Bad George watched her die on the
Kathy
Three."

"And she said you had kicked her? Again and again? In her belly, so that she lost her baby?"

"Not in so many words."

Grijpstra nodded, as if all this were only too clear. "How about this theory to explain your motivation: Lorraine's interference with your experiment, with all that effort, first in New Guinea on the other side of the world and now here, to reach the fourth, the spiritual dimension, enraged you. The bourgeoisie, unwilling to see you escape, tries to pull you back to your original level. You fight back." Grijpstra patted de Gier's shoulder. "What do you think?"

De Gier mumbled.

Grijpstra kept a hand behind an ear.

"Could be, Henk."

"Now," Grijpstra said. "What about
this
theory? Would you admit to being bourgeois yourself, an ordinary, limited, petty true Dutchman? No? Bear with me a little longer. I say you're ordinary enough but you don't like that. You try to free yourself, be on your own, the lone cowboy. You can't do it, though. You submit to subterfuge, you replace your ordinary parents by a little less ordinary, but still quite ordinary folks, Katrien and the commissaris. You appoint me to replace your moralizing born-again Catholic sister as the older sibling. Meanwhile you stay what you always were, a self-seeking little boy reluctantly growing up as an emotionally retarded adult. Think of all those faxes from New Guinea—letters from summer camp, right? Trying to impress your parents and outdo your older sibling, me. It's all so obvious, Rinus. Remember that snapshot of you and the exotic girl on your moped?"

De Gier stood over Grijpstra, swinging his fists through the air. "Outrageous, Henk . . . what the hell. . . where do you get that bull? That was a Kawasaki 2000, and the lady was Lieutenant Jennifer Jones of the Tobriands. . .a colleague at the time. . . ."

"But," Grijpstra said triumphantly, "but what happens here? You can't fool the subconscious, my boy. You always knew you were being silly. You dislike that. Now, by happenstance, you manage to impregnate Lorraine, and you're about to double your bourgeois aspect. You can't handle one of you and now there'll be two. Self-hatred can lead to suicide, but suicide, in your case, would be too heroic to expect. You can't kill yourself so you help Lorraine to have an accident so that she may lose your clone."

De Gier squeezed his face with both hands. His distorted features stared at Grijpstra.

"Yes?" Grijpstra asked.

"Dr. Shrinkski," de Gier said. "Go fuck yourself, Dr. Shrinkski."

Chapter 7

Ishmael, who showed up later in the afternoon, making his dinghy go backward by pushing the oars with short frantic movements, said it was a piece of cake. Always confront the enemy. Live free or die. Buy American. Reduce the deficit. The attitude doesn't always work but isn't bad in simple cases. He used de Gier's CB in the pagoda's living room. "This is Ishmael, Sheriff. Are you listening? Over."

The answer came through clearly. "Deputy Billy here. How may I help?"

"A question," Ishmael said. "You know I know a bit of the law, but I don't know all of the law."

"You don't know all of the law," Billy echoed.

Ishmael, turning the microphone off, looked at Grijpstra. "There's this book,
How to Take Care of Your Own
Divorce in Maine,
but it's hard to read. I can read the book, so I help folks out some. I've been doing that. Billy knows."

"Ishmael?" the radio asked.

"Also did a spell in the military police, Billy Boy knows that too."

Ishmael clicked onhis microphone. "I was telling Krip here about the Constitution, Billy Boy. We the people. Maybe we better switch out of the open channel. This may take some time. Meet me on channel eighty?"

Ishmael turned the radio's dial and switched on the mike.

"Billy Boy?"

"Right here."

"Tell me, Deputy, ifpeople have a complaint about you folks where should they take it? State police? The attorney general in Augusta? I'm a bit rusty on that."

"You got a complaint about the sheriffs office?"

"On behalf of an esteemed and well-connected tourist from a friendly white Protestant country," Ishmael said. "Remember Kripstra?"

"Just a minute now," Billy Boy said. "You hold on."

Hairy Harry's benign voice, avuncular, sounding concerned about others' welfare, made Grijpstra jump. "Sheriff here. What's this complaint, Ishy?"

"Criminal negligence," Ishmael said. "Is that the right term?" Ishmael released the microphone's button and smiled at Grijpstra.

"Sounds good to me, Ishy. You have a for-instance?"

"It's like the example you had last winter, Harry. The raped college girl who got left at the roadside, with five inches of snow and the temperature in the low teens and this Portland couple came by in the rental and they didn't stop and the girl froze to death. But they did phone you much later, from a motel somewhere. Remember charging that couple with criminal negligence? Recall the court case?"

"It's summer now," the sheriff said.

"Yep." Ishmael winked at Grijpstra. "Summer. You're right, Harry. But kind ofchilly, especially on the water. And we had quite a wind, more ofit oflshore, and we had low tide rushing out like Boston traffic and we had our confused friendly tourist in a bare dory, trying to get to Squid Island, but being swept out to nowhere, and then we had you and Billy Boy, Jameson's finest, in the exercise of your duty to serve and protect, in a powerboat designed and equipped to do just that, financed by us taxpayers." Ishmael paused. "And
then
what happened?"

"How's Kripstra doing?" the sheriff asked.

"Badly shaken, Harry."

"Witnesses who would support this complaint?" the sheriff asked.

"Recall, Sheriff, that when you returned to shore you went to Beth's Diner, and talked to Beth herself, and to Aki too, and you said Kripstra didn't want any assistance. They didn't believe you, as any reasonable witness subpoenaed by the prosecution wouldn't. So what do we have now? Aki in court. Stating under oath that she radioed the skipper of the
Kathy Three
to save said tourist. And now we have old salts Flash and Bad George in court too, describing said tourist's condition. And now the district attorney questions victim Kripstra here, a former law enforcement officer, a skilled and reliable detective-adjutant out of the right side of Europe."

Ishmael watched the momentarily quiet CB.

"Hairy Harry? Over?"

"Yes, Ishmael," the sheriff said softly.

"So where do we go? The attorney general? You have a number I can call, Hairy Harry?"

"That won't be necessary," the sheriff said. "Tell the complainant from the right side of Europe that we're truly sorry. Me and Billy Boy thought that a citizen of a watery country like Holland might be used to . . . well. . . never mind now. Ishy, we were wrong. Tell Kripstra he doesn't have to come in tomorrow. Tell him he's our guest. Tell him to make sure that nothing happens to him that Billy and I don't want to happen to confused tourists. That'll be it for today."