“Shit.” Then: “I’ll have to call Harn.”
“I know,” said Brad. “But before you do I should tell you that I’m not going to let Glen talk to him tonight. As a doctor I’m putting him under my care.”
“Of course,” Chip said. “I don’t think anyone would expect anything else.”
“Don’t you?” Brad said mildly, almost tiredly. “I wish I could share your thought.”
If Chip even heard what Brad said he gave no sign. Instead he called Harney Whalen and quickly reported what had happened.
“I’ll meet you out at the Palmers’,” he said as he finished. Then he hung up the phone and looked at Glen, who had not yet spoken.
“Glen, can I ask you something, as a friend?”
“Sure,” Glen said dully.
“Did you do it?”
Brad was about make an angry reply but Glen put a hand on his arm, stopping him.
“No, Chip, I didn’t.” The two men stared into each other’s eyes, and finally Chip stood up and came around the desk.
“Try to take it easy, Glen. I’ll find him for you, so help me.” Then he turned to Brad.
“Can you give him a pill? To make him sleep?”
Brad frowned slightly. “I’m not sure he needs one.”
“Well, if it won’t hurt him give him one, will you?” There was a pause, then Chip shook his head sadly. “You were right about what you said before. Harney does want to talk to him.”
“I’ve just changed my mind,” Brad said. “What this man needs more than anything else is a good night’s sleep.”
But it wasn’t a good night’s sleep. Before dawn Glen Palmer woke up and reached for Rebecca.
She wasn’t there. She would never be there again.
Quietly, Glen Palmer began to cry.
27
There was a quality in the air the following morning, a numbing chill that lay over Clark’s Harbor like an invisible fog, shrouding the town.
The people of the village went about their business, tending their shops and boats, greeting each other as they always had. When they spoke of Rebecca Palmer, and of Jeff Horton, it was not with the worried clucking of tongues and expressions of concern that might have been expected, but rather with the knowing looks, the almost lewdly arched eyebrows of people who have finally witnessed that which they had known would come to pass.
When Glen Palmer arrived at the police station in midmorning, he was not stared at, not subjected to the hostile glares he had been expecting. Nor were there any expressions of sympathy at the loss of his wife. Rather — and to Glen even more frightening — it was as if nothing had changed, as if what had happened to him was not a part of Clark’s Harbor at all, not an event that touched the lives of the Harborites.
Only when he was inside the police station, inside Harney Whalen’s office, did reality intrude on the sense of surrealism that surrounded him.
Harney Whalen sat impassively at his desk, staring at Glen.
“Are you ready to talk about it now?” The words were more a challenge than a question. Glen braced himself. He knew what was coming.
In the old house on Sod Beach Elaine Randall did her best to keep Missy and Robby occupied, to keep them from dwelling on the loss of their mother. After Glen left the house, insisting on going alone to see Whalen, the children had wanted to go out on the beach.
Elaine had refused, not so much out of fear that anything would happen to them, but out of her own inability to face the beach that day.
She was not sure she would ever again be able to enjoy the beauty of the crescent of sand. For her it was permanently soiled.
Around noon she set the children to work on a jig-saw puzzle, then went to the kitchen to fix lunch.
“Keep an eye on them, will you, honey?” she asked Brad as she passed through the dining room. Brad glanced up from the charts he was poring over.
“Hmm?”
“The kids,” Elaine replied. “Keep an eye on them for me while I put lunch together.”
“Sure,” Brad muttered, and went back to work. Elaine smiled softly to herself and continued into the kitchen. The house could fall down around him without his noticing. She poked halfheartedly at the fire in the ancient stove and decided a cold lunch would do just fine.
Fifteen minutes went by, then Robby appeared in the kitchen.
“When are we having lunch?”
“In about two minutes. Are your hands clean?”
Robby solemnly inspected his hands, then held them up to Elaine for approval. She looked them over carefully and nodded.
“Okay. Take these into the dining room and see if you can get Brad to make room for us.” She handed the little boy a tray of sandwiches, then followed him a few minutes later with napkins, silver, and a jar of pickles. The table, she noted, had miraculously been cleared, and Missy and Robby sat flanking Brad, all of them patiently awaiting her arrival.
“Isn’t Daddy coming?” Missy asked as Elaine sat down.
“He’ll be back as soon as he can get here,” Elaine explained.
“Can I save my sandwich for him?”
“What’ll you eat?”
“I’m not hungry,” Missy said softly. “I’ll just drink some milk.”
“I’m sure your—” Elaine began, then stopped short. She had been about to say “mother,” but quickly changed it. “—father would want you to eat your lunch,” she finished.
“No, he wouldn’t,” Missy assured her.
“He would too,” Robby said. “He’d say the same thing Mother would say—‘you eat what’s put in front of you!’ Even if it
“Are we going to have to go away?”
“Go away? What do you mean?”
“Are we going to have to move away, after what happened to Mommy?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Elaine replied carefully. “That depends on your father, I suppose.”
“Do you want to move away?” Brad asked. Robby shook his head emphatically but it was Missy who spoke.
“Yes! I hate it here! Mr. Riley told us a long time ago that there are ghosts on the beach, and he’s right. I’ve seen them. They killed Mommy and they killed Mr. Horton and they’ll kill everybody else too.”
Elaine half-rose from her chair, intent on calming the child, but Brad signaled her to stay where she was. “Ghosts? What kind of ghosts.”
“Indians,” Missy said sulkily. “Mr. Riley told us they used to kill people on the beach, and sometimes they come back and do it some more. And I’ve seen them. I saw them the day Mr. Riley told us about them, and I saw them the night Mr. Horton got killed, and I saw them last right.” As she spoke the last words Missy fled sobbing from the table. Elaine immediately followed her.
Robby seemed unperturbed by Missy’s outburst. He picked his sandwich up again, took a big bite, and munched on it thoughtfully. Brad watched the boy eat, sure that he was turning something over in his mind. He was right, for Robby suddenly put the sandwich down again.
