Nantucket Grand (6 page)

Chapter Seven

Witness Interviews: Alana Trikilis, David Lattimer, and Mark Toland

A few seconds later I was pushing into the blissfully warm air of the police station. Jane Stiles was waiting for me. I was happy to see her, but momentarily confused. She hadn't made an appointment, and as far as I knew she had no connection to any ongoing investigation. Could she be here inquiring about resident visitor status for someone on her crew? Protesting a parking ticket?

It turned out she was making a social call.

She lifted her hand in a half wave. “Hi, Chief. I wanted to remind you about Emily Grimshaw's salon tonight. You're not listed in the phone book and there's no way to get anyone's cell number, so I thought I'd just stop by. Someone should put out a listing of people's cell phone numbers. They could make millions.”

She was dressed in the usual jeans and Fair Isle sweater, under an old tan barn jacket, the whole outfitted topped off with a battered Patriots cap. Her curly blond hair was wind-scattered and it looked like the cold had slapped her face recently, so she hadn't been waiting long.

“You could have called the station,” I suggested.

“I suppose so. But I had this theory that it might be more fun to see you in person.”

I smiled. “How's that working out?”

“Pretty good, so far. But you look like a man on a mission, so maybe my timing was bad.”

“A little,” I admitted. “I have to keep moving now. I'll see you tonight, definitely. What time does it start, again?”

“Oh—seven o'clock or so. The stragglers show up by seven-thirty. Eight Orange Street, first floor. See you then.”

She dodged past me and out the door. I watched for a second and then turned away. The view was distracting, and I needed to concentrate.

We have three fully outfitted interrogation rooms at the station, with state-of-the-art camera and recording equipment and ergonomically designed uncomfortable chairs (the seats tilt down just slightly) for the suspects. But the people I was meeting were not officially under suspicion and the last thing I wanted to do was make them feel that way. I made sure Barnaby Toll gave them coffee and a fresh box of Downeyflake donuts, and took them one at a time into my office upstairs.

I suppose I should have taken the tourist first. But I felt bad for Alana Trikilis. She had better things to do than cool her heels in a police station waiting room. Plus she was probably scared, since police stations are designed to be scary, and she had no reason to be. She was no arsonist. She drew cartoons to make her points, though she had certainly burned some people with those drawings during her tenure at
Veritas
, the NHS student newspaper: the Peeping Tom coach she sketched from behind with his plumber's crack showing, the school board emerging in full makeup from a circus clown car. She almost got suspended for that one. She had done a drawing of me a couple of years before, a far more flattering one, which I still kept.

She edged into my office now, unbuttoning her cable-knit cardigan.

When we were both settled, I said “Would you like coffee? My assistant chief is obsessive about his Chemex, and I have to admit, it tastes pretty good.”

“No thanks. I'm fine. I mean—actually…my stomach is kind of upset. Coffee would probably be bad right now.”

“So…can you tell me what you were doing out at the Thayer place today?”

“That's a long story.”

I smiled. “My favorite kind.”

She shifted in her chair, pulled off her sweater. I took that as a good sign. “I guess I just wanted to feel like I was in control of something. Like I could do something that made a difference.”

“Life was getting out of control?”

“I applied for early admission to some art schools. RISDE? Parsons and Pratt? I didn't think I'd hear from any of them until January, but I got the last rejection letter today. So I'm done. And it's still only December.”

“I'm sorry. That sucks.”

“I felt…it was like I'd been launched into outer space. There was no air to breathe, no air pressure…nothing was holding my insides in. I had nothing—no present, no future. I blew it all, I've got the magic touch. I couldn't move. There was nowhere to go. I just stood there, looking down at this Formica counter top with the crumbs and I thought maybe I'd just stay there for the rest of my life. I wanted to go upstairs, close my door, put on dry socks, climb into bed, pull the covers up and hide under the sheets. But I couldn't move. Finally, I took the letters to the wood stove and burned them. That felt good.”

“Direct action,” I said. “Beats legislation.”

She perked up. “You know, Ford Madox Ford got furious when Hemingway stole that line. He said he was sick of reading his private conversations in other people's books.”

“I didn't know it was stolen,” I admitted. “Some detective.”

“Well, Bill Gorton is, like, the only character in any Hemingway book who had a sense of humor, so…”

“Good point. I should have been suspicious.”

“What a pair.”

“Excuse me?

“You don't see the clues in the book and I don't—I can't even…I just—I'm not good enough. That's the point. That's what they're saying.”

“What do they know?”

“They know who's good enough and who isn't. That's their job. They know who deserves to go to their school and who doesn't.”

“So you're going to let some admissions guy at Parsons decide if you have talent?”

“No, but—”

“You were good enough for Superintendent Bissell.”

“What?”

“You were too good for him. You think he tried to suspend you because you did a bad drawing? That drawing was great. I always think of that clown car when I have to attend a School Board meeting. And I still have the sketch you did of me—at Osona's auction.”

She smiled. “I forgot about that. I'd seen you at the school the week before, talking to Bob Coffin. Ugh. I couldn't believe it when he passed the police exam. But I knew it was true when pulled me over on Bartlett Road last Halloween. I thought he was wearing a costume, like he was out trick-or-treating or something, But he was really a cop. Do you mind if I say ‘cop'? I mean cops say it, but is it like the “c” word and only cops can say it?”

“It's more the
way
people say it. You're fine.”

“Anyway…all I had was a learner's permit, and he wouldn't let me go with a warning. You probably think that's great. But getting a traffic ticket from some ex-babysitter who ate your dad's Captain Crunch cereal straight out of the box? While he made you watch Japanese anime DVDs? That's one of the best reasons I can think of for getting the hell away from here pronto. That's my dad's word—pronto. ‘I want you to get that bed made, pronto!'''

“So, you saw me at school, talking to Officer Coffin. I remember that day—it was like…a year ago, last November. Someone tried to frame your friend Jared Bromley for drugs.”

“He never used drugs.”

“I know.”

“Jared's probably the nicest boy in school. He's definitely the smartest. No one else ever says anything interesting. He'd be a good policeman, Chief Kennis. No, seriously—better than Bob Coffin. Jared notices things, like when Ms. Hamer stopped wearing her wedding ring last month, or when I got this haircut. They took off less than an inch, no one else paid any attention. My own dad didn't notice, and neither did Mason. Mason Taylor, he's—”

“I know who he is.”

I had helped Mason at a bad moment a couple of years ago, and secretly played Cyrano for him with Alana. But she didn't need to know that. More recently, I'd been reading his increasingly political editorials in
Veritas
—attacking Israel's Gaza blockade, defending Edward Snowden, talking about drone strikes, suggesting that Yemeni shepherds who'd had their flocks dry-roasted by American missiles might hate us for more than our freedom. The school principal loathed Mason, but hadn't censored him yet, most likely because he didn't relish the prospect of a visit from the boy's bloviating dad, Selectman Dan Taylor, storming his office in high dudgeon, declaiming the First Amendment and threatening a lawsuit.

I tipped my head, gesturing her to continue.

“Well, he's kind of why I'm here,” she said. “He's why I was out at the house, I mean—him and Jared.”

She stopped at that point, the way you stop when you're driving in the moors and the dirt road narrows into an overgrown footpath. She couldn't go forward and I wasn't letting her go back. “Alana?”

“I'm not supposed to tell you this.”

“What aren't you supposed to tell me?”

“Any of it. Why I was there, what's going on, who's involved. Any of it.”

I sat forward. “Did someone threaten you?”

“I should go.”

“Because we can protect you.”

“The Nantucket Police Department?”

“It's possible.”

“Twenty-four hours a day?”

We sat staring at each other. I tried to regroup. She had to be the girl Liam Phelan mentioned. But she'd assume he'd broken his word if I used his name. I'd have to work around it. “No one needs to know you told me anything. There's no way they can know—unless the NPD goes after these people, whoever they are. And I can promise you we won't do that until we have enough evidence to put them away.”

“Well, that won't happen. That's the whole point.”

“I think you should let me decide that.”

“But no one threatened
you.
”

I stood and walked to the window. I found the dreary view of the parking lot and the traffic on Fairgrounds Road obscurely comforting at that moment. Everything looked dull and ordinary—just the way I liked it. The wind rasped against the big window and the gray sky promised snow. But the office was warm. The big furnace in the basement made the building hum softly. I touched the pane of glass—the fragile integument of civilization.

I turned to face Alana. “Here's what I can offer you. Nothing you say leaves the room, until I know I can take action, and if I do choose to arrest these people, I'll make sure you're protected. If we gather enough evidence, we'll never mention you at all.”

“But you won't gather any evidence. It all got burned in the fire.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about.”

“You won't believe me anyway.”

“Try me.” I walked back and sat down. She was looking down, picking some dirt or a speck of dried food off the knee of her jeans. I said nothing and waited. Silence exerts its own pressure, and I let the pressure build. When she began, it was as if I'd caught her in the middle of a conversation. Maybe she had just turned the volume up on the monologue running inside her head.

“This group of men is getting girls hooked on a new drug like oxy, I don't what it's called, and then using them in these…movies they make. Mason asked me to help him. We're just sort of friends now and he was totally sprung over Jill Phelan.”

“Sprung?”

“Sorry. He was falling in love with her. He knew she was with Oscar, but I think he likes being—unrequited? When you feel as much as Mason does, another person just gets in the way. At least that's how it seemed with us. We're much better just being friends. Anyway, he was freaking out and he had this crazy scheme where he'd pretend to recruit me and we'd both hear their pitch and then we'd know what was going on.”

“And you did that?” She nodded. “That was incredibly brave.”

She studied her knees with a rueful smile. “Now he tells me.”

“Go on.”

“We went out to this man's house in 'Sconset. His name is Howard McAllister…I went back the next day and looked at the letters in his mailbox. My dad picks up his trash, but I didn't want to ask my dad about him. There were other people there, too—Chick Crosby and Ms. DeHart from school, Charles Forrest from the Land Bank, and this contractor Jared knows, Brad Thurman. I made a list—”

“Jared was there too?”

“He followed us that night. He had come to the house to bring me a textbook I left at school, and he wound up following us. We never would have gotten out of there if not for him. We've been trying to identify the rest of them, but…I saw a couple of them on
Mahon About Town
, but he never includes any names and I thought if I started poking around and someone found out…”

“That was smart. So what did you do?”

“First I tried to get Jill to come forward—Jill Phelan? She's in my class, and she was out there that night. She was obviously involved, but she denied everything. Then she admitted everything, but she wouldn't talk to anyone about it, and got mad at me and made me swear I'd never tell anyone, but she must have told someone about me because this guy, Doug Blount? He's a caretaker? He came up to me in the Stop & Shop and walked me back into the stockrooms where they have a bathroom and pushed me inside and told me if I said anything to anyone I'd be next, and I didn't know what he was talking about, so he said they'd get me hooked on heroin, or that other horrible stuff they use. It only takes, like, one hit sometimes, and then when I needed drugs bad enough I'd be their next little movie star. That's what he said, their next little movie star. I started crying and he slapped me and told me to shut up and left me there in the bathroom. I didn't come out for like an hour.”

“His name was Doug Blount?”

“You can't talk to him! That's what I was telling you! You promised!”

“Okay, okay. Don't worry. I just want to get all the names straight. The ones you know.”

“He was serious.”

“I'm sure he was.”

“He was trying to scare me and it worked, and I could tell he really, really liked that.”