previous day that I was beyond suspicion, nodding and making notes as I spelled out the details of Aaron's battle with the gravestone. Once I had finished he escorted me to the door with the customary: “If we need anything else…” disclaimer, carefully adding: “I know you and Aaron were friendly. I'll be sure to let you know as soon as we get the bastard responsible for this.”
I sat around for as long as I could that morning, wasting time over my coffee and eggs. I figured I'd wander into town eventually, but there was only one clear thought in my head: Evan.
Overnight I’d had the idea circling in my head that Aaron had been marked. After all, what were gravestones if not markers? It was, of course, possible that Aaron's murder had been nothing more than a horrible coincidence. I would have liked to believe that, but Travis told me that his men had searched Aaron's house and garden from top and bottom and hadn't found anything even closely resembling a gravestone. Travis may well have taken that to suggest I was lying, but it meant something very different to me: it meant that whoever had murdered Aaron had taken the stone with them. I was starting to believe that Aaron's murder and that gravestone were irrevocably linked. And now someone else on the island had been marked.
Neither Evan's house nor Gail's were on my usual route into town. There was no way I could find my way past either without it looking at least a little bit suspicious. I decided Travis could add me to his list of suspects if he wanted. I picked up the phone and dialled Gail's number.
There was no answer.
I searched my phone book and tried Evan's house next. I didn't expect anyone to be there, and I was right.
I called Gail again. I figured between Gail, her husband, Evan, his wife and their two children, that there should be at least one person around to answer the phone.
No one answered.
Finally I called Travis.
“Chief Travis here,” he answered, sounding just a little stressed.
“It's Greg Michaels—”
“Yeah, Greg, what can I say? I’ve nothing to tell you just yet.”
“No, it's not that. I was trying to get hold of Evan, but there's no one answering at Gail's …”
“Bloody tart's late, had to make my own coffee this morning, I'm sitting here answering the phones…” Then Travis broke off. “No answer, you say?”
“Nothing. I had a thought about asking Evan if it was the same gravestone in his garden—you know, the same one I saw at Aaron's.”
“The mythical gravestone, eh?”
I ignored the dismissal. “You didn’t go and check Evan’s garden?”
“No. If you were at my job, which you’re not, you’d find that a murder takes precedent over garden inspections.”
I could have probably told Travis a thing or two about following a line of investigation, but his tolerance for me was one of the few things that kept the raw hostility of the other islanders at bay. I needed to keep him on side.
“Have you been able to get hold of Gail or Evan?” I asked.
Travis didn't say anything.
A moment later: “Hang on …”
I waited another minute before Travis came back on the line: “Listen, can you meet me, uh, can you meet me at Evan's? Let's go see if that gravestone is still there.”
“Sure.”
I got to Evan's house quickly, but only because I wasn't planning on staying there for long. As I expected there was no one there, not even Travis.
As I also expected there was no gravestone either.
I took a few moments to study the front garden. Evan hadn't mentioned where the gravestone had been, but there was a small patch below one of the windows that looked like it could have been freshly turned over. Across the entire garden that was the only visible sign that anything might have been disturbed in the last day.
Then I hurried over to Gail's house
It was immediately obvious that something was very, very wrong.
I saw Travis standing with his back to the open front door of Gail's house. A small crowd had already gathered on the threshold of the property. The mood was tense. Travis was trying to keep the people at bay, but even in the time it took me to walk over I saw him retreat another couple of steps. Something was starting to break down on the island, and it looked like Travis could end up first in the firing line. Eventually someone managed to push past and storm their way through the doorway. The same person returned just seconds later, looking pale. At the same time, the fire seemed to go out of the crowd and everyone drew back. Travis slumped, all but collapsing on the front step.
I walked over to him. As I reached the house I saw a terrible vision of death through the door. I immediately looked away, but knew I would never forget what I had seen—the inside of the house had been savagely wrecked, someone's arm lay motionless in the hallway, there was dirt everywhere.
And blood. So much blood.
“Travis?” I asked.
He looked up and I could see the sight had fractured him. There wasn't so much left of the man I'd spoken to just that morning. “All of them,” he whispered. “Dead. Gail, Alan, Evan, the children … the children are dead.”
I tried to say something sensible, but the only word that came out was: “What …?”
“Just like Aaron,” Travis continued, then broke off. For a ghastly moment I thought he was chuckling, then I realised he was sobbing.
The man who had pushed his way into the house marched back up to us. He was almost hysterical. “Gail opened her house to them and look what happened. The police aren't safe. No one's safe. What are you going to do?”
He looked at me accusingly, perhaps thinking because I stood next to Travis I was his new deputy. I shook my head; I had nothing to tell him. He continued to stare at me, wild-eyed. Having glimpsed for myself what was inside I could understand how his senses might have left him. If this was the same death that had visited Aaron, then any of us on the island could expect the same. The man glared at me for a few more moments then simply wandered off, drawing most of the crowd away with him.
“Travis?” I looked down at the Chief. “Travis?!”
Eventually his eyes found me. “Uh … I need to phone the coroner …” he said, climbing to his feet. He took a few steps to his car, then turned back to me.
“Will you … stick around? Stay … here with me? Just for a bit?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
Travis looked up at the sky and breathed deeply. After a few quiet moments he said to me: “You realise what your biggest mistake was?”
I could think of several, but I’d never bothered to rank them. “No?”
“You came back. That's what you did wrong,” he replied, without a trace of accusation in his voice. “Everyone … they all forgave you for leaving in the first place, they forgot about you. But when you came back we all had to deal with that. We had just given up wondering why you left, and then we all had to start trying to figure out why you came back.”
“You could have just asked.”
“No one likes to ask the hard questions around here,” Travis replied.
After that we waited together, silently, for the coroner to arrive. As soon as he turned up I excused myself. I didn't care to see anyone else's reaction to what was waiting inside Gail's house. More importantly, I was starting to get an idea of what was coming. If I was right then I wanted to make sure I was prepared.
As I expected, it was on that same day that the range of emotions elicited by Aaron's death—alarm, curiosity, denial—turned to outright fear. Not many people had known Aaron, and not many people had really cared about him, but everyone knew Gail. She was young—or had been. She had never been able to accrue the same level of respect that had automatically been granted to Travis, but she was still supposed to be one of our protectors. Now she was dead.
The fear was grew. It spread around the island faster than gossip, and it quickly turned to anger. In that situation what else could anyone do but call a town meeting? I still have no idea who called
it—I know for sure it wasn't Travis—but here was a murderer on the island, and no one wanted to be the next victim. I suppose everyone thought they'd shout about it for a while and that would make them feel like something had been done. No one knew what was happening, or why, but as the meeting drew to its close, and without anyone else to point a finger at, it seemed that they might just settle for Travis's head instead.
“You didn't do anything for Gail—your own deputy and you didn't save her. How do you think you're going to protect the rest of us?!” It was the same man who had blundered into Gail's house that morning. It seemed he'd spent the day gathering his own force of deputies. By that point he had the might of more than half the attendees backing up his anger.
I'd finally put a name to his face at the start of the meeting: Bruce Mitchell. I'd designed his house some years back. He hadn’t wanted me, but by the time he realised who he was dealing with he’d already stumped up his deposit. Just like every other house I designed it was based on the same tired set of prints. When I'd suggested something a little different for Bruce's house he looked at me as though I'd just asked for a free night with his daughter. After that he’d done his best never to speak to me. Bruce wasn’t the only one. No one ever wanted anything new. Work had become easy over the years. Mind-numbingly easy.
“You should all calm down and let the police handle this …” Travis countered, but it was clear he was already beaten.
“We’re taking care of ourselves