The Graduation (16 page)

In the dark and relatively deserted hull of
Haven
, Polly McCoy, last surviving member of her unlucky family, stood above Clark Halley and watched as he attached a potent charge of plastic explosive to the side of the ship’s huge black fuel tank. He glanced up at her as he turned the setting on the timer, his thin, sweaty red hair plastered over the sides of his white bony face like streaks of caked blood, his dry cracked lips pulled back from his huge teeth in a skull’s grin of ecstasy.

“I’ll set it for an hour,” he said. “It will be almost dawn then.”

“If the tank goes, hardly anyone will survive,” Polly said.

“It can’t be helped.”

Polly was cold, even though she had on her biggest and warmest jacket. It was waterproof, but she didn’t know how well it would hold up in a fire. “When I was coming down here after you,” she said, “I saw Maria. She told me everyone who was at the party will be meeting here soon.”

The explosive looked like a lump of dirty orange Play-Doh. Twin red and black wires trailed from it to the tiny square clock. Polly had seen similar explosives and detonators at her parents’ construction company. Philip Bart had been in charge of the stuff.

“So?” Clark said.

She knelt beside him and put her right hand over his hands. A drop of blood from the incision in her wrist fell onto his clammy skin. “They are the only ones who matter. Let the rest go.”

He chuckled. He was in a great mood. He loved twisting the blue dial on the timer. “The boat’s going down, babe. Ain’t nothing going to change that.”

“It could go down slowly.”

He looked at her, holding her eyes. She had never realized before how similar their eyes were—both green, both red. “None of them would shed a tear for you,” he said. “Not a one.”

“Give them a chance. Please?”

He noticed her blood on the back of his palm, and his mouth twisted into a ravenous grin. “I told you a drop of it seeped through the floor.” He held up his stained hand proudly. “See, it escaped the room. It’s free now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He licked the drop away with his long tongue and bade her lean close, whispering a single black word in her ear. “Madness.”

“It’s you who’s mad,” she replied angrily.

He chuckled and let it pass. “All right, babe. For you, I’ll let the sleeping innocent try to swim back to shore. As long as you swear to keep our party people down here for the fireworks.”

“How can I keep them here if they want to leave?”

He showed her a few minutes later, after he had detached the bomb and dragged her into a small colorless room down the hall from the fuel tank. Here there was a tall metal cabinet pressed against the hull; he opened it, squeezing the plastic explosives into the bottom corner.

“It’s always darkest before the dawn.” he said as he decided on a final setting for the timer. The bomb couldn’t have been more than three feet from the ocean water.

His answer to her question about how to keep the others from leaving was already in the cabinet, in the green sack he’d brought to the cemetery—a double-barreled shotgun, covered with dirt. It looked familiar. He loaded it with fresh fat shells, and then set the weapon on the topmost shelf, almost beyond her reach.

“It belonged to your father,” he said. “Before he burned.”

“I know.”

He looked at her. “Sure you do. I’ve been telling you that all along. But it never mattered what you knew. It only mattered how much you cared. Me, I’m free as a corpse. I don’t care about nothing.” He added softly, perhaps even with a note of regret, “It’s too late to start remembering, Polly.”

“Too late,” she agreed.

He climbed into the closet, turned, and spread his arms. “Love me. babe, before they get here. It’ll feel good, like old times.”

“If you stay in there, you’ll die,” she said. Yet she followed him, into his arms, into the darkness. He was a liar. There were no old times. The door closed at their backs. She could feel his breath in her ear, like the whispering breeze in dreams she had long ago forgotten. But she could not feel his arms, only the cold steel of the closet, surrounding her on all sides, like a metal coffin.

“We’ll die together,” he promised.

Kats strode
Haven
deck alone, wearing the thick fog as if it were a cloak personally given to him by the night. The lounge was crammed with unconscious bodies. The few kids still awake had gathered in the galley to await the dawn. Kats felt as if he had the ship to himself, and the thought made him giggle. It was true what they said about the taste of revenge being sweet. He had a natural buzz singing cool music between his ears.

Kats knew about Maria and Michael’s desire to have a meeting below deck for all those who had been at Alice’s party. Both of them had told him to be sure to come. They hadn’t asked him if he wanted to come; they had simply given him the order. It was just like those jerks. Well, he had no intention of attending—at least, not until his plan was fully hatched. Then he might swing by, if only to see them squirm. He could get into that.

Kats leaned over the rail and spat into the fog. The foam tip of a swell caught his eye as it broke against the side of the ship. The waves were riding high; solid five-footers. It would be rough out there on the water.

Kats whirled and headed for the stern. He needed his bag, his equipment. It was almost time to set the trap. He’d hidden his materials well. He knew they’d be waiting for him, safe and ready.

He poked a lifeboat along his way and howled at the invisible sky. He loved it.

The reason Jessica wore glasses instead of contact lenses was because of the unusual sensitivity of her eyes, and this, in turn, was largely the result of allergies. When she was a little girl, she had suffered terribly with a runny nose and itchy eyes, particularly in the spring when Southern California’s many olive trees bloomed. Occasionally she had even been bothered with asthma. As she had grown older, she had left the majority of her symptoms behind, but her eyes had continued to remain easily irritated by dust and pollen. Also, probably as a psychological carryover from her few childhood asthmatic attacks, she had a strong dislike of closed and stuffy places. On several occasions during her high-school days, she had left an exciting movie right in the middle simply to get a breath of fresh air.

Haven
’s lower deck was as bad as a submarine as far as Jessica was concerned. It was not only cramped, it had an overall battleship look. There were huge thick pipes running along the gray walls and ceiling, and the door to the room Michael had chosen to meet in had a
wheel
on it. Michael had closed the door a second ago and turned the wheel. He had locked them in. Jessica could feel the tightness in her lungs and had to consciously remind herself to relax.

Why am I afraid? I am surrounded by my friends.

With the exception of Kats, everyone who had been at the party when Alice had died was present. Maria in her wheelchair sat near the door. Nick stood behind her—it was Nick who had carried Maria and her chair downstairs. To their left were Sara and Russ, sitting on what appeared to be a huge toolbox. Clair and Bubba stood opposite the door, leaning against the steel hull and looking sleepy. Bill was in the corner with The Rock, and he wasn’t giving Jessica a lot of eye contact, which was fine with her. Jessica didn’t know how Michael had persuaded Bill to come.

Polly was by herself; she was the only one sitting on the floor, a few feet to the right of a tall metal cabinet. Her bulky navy-blue ski jacket dwarfed her undernourished figure, and she’d tied her dark hair back in a ponytail, making her look all of twelve years old. As Jessica watched her, she noticed Polly’s gaze drifting between Michael, a red light above the door, and the cabinet to her left. Just these three places, nowhere else.

“Aren’t we going to wait for Kats?” Maria asked Michael. Outside the door, a few paces down the hall toward the rear of the ship, was
Haven
’s colossal fuel tank. Beyond that were the engines. Coming down the ladder, they had passed the engineer on duty, a big bearded gentleman taking an openmouthed nap against a control panel. They pretty much seemed to have the space to themselves.

“He won’t come,” Bubba said.

“I could go look for him again,” Michael said to Maria, apparently not bothered by Kats’s absence.

“I’d like everyone to be here,” she said.

“He won’t come,” Bubba repeated.

“How do you know?” Michael asked, the white gauze strip Jessica had obtained from the captain wrapped in a single strip around the top of his head. But Bubba simply waved his hand, as he often did when asked a question that wasn’t in his self-interest to answer. Although he was being sensitive to Maria’s desires, Michael obviously wanted to get on with things. “It’s up to you,” he said to Maria.

“Maybe he’ll show up,” she said, glancing up at Nick.

“I told him twice about the meeting,” Nick said.

Michael turned and paced in the center of the room, collecting his thoughts. The room fell silent. Watching him from her position in the corner behind the door, Jessica felt both love and fear. She was still sailing the sky from their time together in cabin 45. Of all the strange and wonderful things in the universe that could be true—he liked her! In the shower she had been amazed at how excited she had been, and at the same time, how comfortable; it was as if they had known each other intimately for ages. Yet there was still much about him that she did not understand.

Why didn’t he tell me he loved me?

It didn’t matter, he’d told her enough to let her know she was important to him, even if perhaps he meant more to her than she meant to him. You couldn’t have everything. Yet that was exactly Michael’s problem. He wanted the impossible. He wanted to change the past.

“I had a reason for calling this meeting,” Michael said. “But before I begin, I’d like to know your reason, Maria?”

“You go first,” she said.

“I would appreciate it if you could give me some idea?”

“So would I,” Nick said. But Maria never could be hurried.

“Later,” She said.

“All right,” Michael replied, pausing and scanning the room. “My purpose in gathering you here is to prove that Alice did not commit suicide. I know most of you have heard me say that before, but this morning I hope—with your help—to put together a number of clues I have gathered to show that suicide had nothing to do with it. I’ll start by explaining a couple of alternative theories I gave to the police a few days after the party. I won’t spend a lot of time on them, though, because I now realize they are fundamentally flawed.”

He returned to pacing, and Jessica noticed he was leaning slightly to the right. She continued to worry about his head wound, and exactly how he had received it.

“I told the officer in charge of the investigation that Alice’s murderer could have hidden in the bathroom after killing her, and stayed there until after we left the bedroom. Looking at it from a slightly different angle, I also suggested that the murderer could have stepped out of the bathroom and secretly slipped into our group moments after we found the body. But both of these scenarios have major problems. The murderer would either have had to enter the bedroom with Alice immediately after Nick had been in there, or else the murderer would have had to have been in the bedroom—with Alice—when Nick got there. With the first possibility, the time would have been incredibly tight. Nick was back outside the bedroom only a few seconds later. And with the second—I just can’t imagine Nick not knowing someone was in the room, even if it was dark.”

“I didn’t hear anyone, that’s for sure,” Nick said.

Michael nodded. “Because that isn’t what happened. Let’s get into that now. Let’s back up. Let’s go downstairs before the gun went off. There were three of us in the living room: Maria, Nick, and myself. Then Jessica and Sara entered. Sara, what was the first thing you did?”

Sara thought a moment. “I don’t remember.”

“You complained about how loud the music was,” Jessica said. “Then you turned it down.”

“That’s right.” Sara said.

“The music was loud,” Michael said. “I find that interesting. For all practical purposes, the party was over. But let’s not dwell on this point right now. Just remember it. Anyway, Sara lowered the volume on the stereo, Jessica and Sara sat down, and the five of us talked a bit. Then Polly came in.”

“I remember,” Polly said softly, her eyes big on Michael. He crossed the room and stood above her.

“You turned the stereo off,” he said. “You said your head hurt. Then you went outside to check on the chlorine in the pool. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“On your way out, you shut the sliding-glass door to the patio. I saw you walk over to the pool.”

“It needed chlorine,” Polly said.

“So you tested the water?” Michael asked.

“Yes.”

Michael resumed his striding back and forth. “Let’s pick up Nick’s story. He asked where the bathroom was. Sara said there was one in the game room, but that she thought someone was using it. She, in fact, said somebody was in there throwing up. Why did you say that, Sara?”

“When I passed it a couple of minutes before, I noticed that the door was closed and the light was on.”

“But you didn’t actually hear anyone throwing up inside, did you?” Michael asked.

“I was speaking figuratively.”

“Did you hear
anyone
in the bathroom?” Michael asked.

“Not really.” Sara admitted.

“Was I in there?” Russ asked Sara.

“Shh,” she said, and patted his arm. “Stay out of trouble.”

“Jessica told Nick to try one of the bathrooms upstairs,” Michael said. “So Nick headed for the stairs. Tell us, Nick, about that little walk you took, step by step.”

Nick cleared his throat. “I went to the stairs. I saw Bill in the kitchen. He was bent over the sink. He looked sick or upset. He didn’t look good.”

Bubba glanced at Clair, who took the occasion to stare at the floor. “What was wrong Bill?” Sara asked.

“I was—I’d had too much to drink,” Bill said.

“You hadn’t drunk that much,” The Rock said. “What was bothering you, buddy?”

“Nothing,” Bill mumbled.

“Come on, Mr. Treasurer,” Sara insisted. “Tell us what the problem was?”

“This isn’t important,” Michael interrupted.

“How do you know it isn’t important?” Sara asked.

“It’s not,” Clair said.

“But I want to know,” Sara said.

“Sara,” Jessica said, not exactly sure how this related to Bill’s homosexuality, but knowing it must. “Shut up.”

“Go on, Nick,” Michael said.

“I went up the stairs, both flights. In the first part of the hall there were four doors: three on the left, one on the right. I didn’t know which one led to the bathroom, but Jessie had said it was halfway down the hall, so I skipped the first door on the left.”

“Let me interrupt just a sec,” Michael said. “The police later checked that door. It was locked from the inside. I’m sorry, Nick, go on.”

“I tried the second door on the left. It was locked. I thought I heard water running inside.”

“I was in there,” The Rock said. “I was taking a shower.”

“You come to a party and you take a shower?” Sara asked, still smarting from the rebuff over Bill.

“I was washing out my eyes,” The Rock said defensively, glancing at Polly, who gave no sign that she remembered the chlorine she had thrown in his eyes.

“I tried the door on the right.” Nick continued. “It led onto a porch that overlooked the backyard. Kats was out there.”

“Did he see you?” Michael asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“But you could see him clearly?” Michael asked.

“Yeah. There was some light from the pool. It was Kats. I didn’t say anything to him. I tried the last door on the left. It was locked, too. But I thought I heard someone inside.”

“Was I in there?” Russ asked.

“Were you?” Nick asked.

“He doesn’t have to answer that,” Sara said. “Not when our quarterback won’t tell us why he was crying in the kitchen sink.”

“I crashed somewhere upstairs,” Russ said.

“You were in that room,” Michael said confidently. “Please continue, Nick.”

“The hallway turns. There were another two rooms, both on the left. I tried the first door. It was locked. There were people inside. I heard someone groaning.”

“That was Clair and me,” Bubba said without hesitation. “She was acting out a role in a play for me.”

“You told the police the two of you were outside looking at the stars,” Sara said.

“That was a misunderstanding,” Bubba said with a straight face.

“You’re not an actress,” Sara told Clair.

“So what?” Clair said.

“This isn’t important either,” Michael said. “All that matters is that Clair and Bubba were together in that bedroom and that they were so occupied that they couldn’t hear what was going on in the next room.”

“Why couldn’t they hear?” Sara wanted to know. This time everybody simply ignored her. Nick went on.

“I went to the last room. The door was wide open. It was dark inside. I tried the light switch, but the light wouldn’t go on.”

“What was wrong with the light, Polly?” Michael asked.

“It was broken,” Polly said, taking her wrist away from her mouth. She’d been holding it to her lips for the last minute. She looked exhausted.

“Had it been broken long?” Michael asked.

“I broke it when I tried to fix it.”

“When? How?” Michael asked.

“That night.” Polly shivered. “My hands were wet. I turned it, and it went on. Then it broke.” Polly lowered her head. “I fell off the ladder.”

Michael stopped dead. “You fell off the ladder?”

Polly nodded, her head still down.

“Did you get a shock, Polly?” he asked, his voice falling to a whisper.

“Yes.”

“Did it hurt?”

She looked up, her face sad. “Yes.”

Michael stood staring at her for a moment and something in his expression softened. Then he seemed to shake himself inside, throwing off whatever troubled him about Polly’s remark. He turned back to Nick. “Go on, and please give us as much detail as you can.”

“I stepped into the room,” Nick said. “It was cold, dark. The east-facing windows were wide open. The blinds were up. But the other windows—the ones that faced the backyard—they were closed. The blinds were down at least. I could hardly tell there was a window there. Polly must have turned off the pool light. I went into the bathroom and closed the door. I didn’t even try to turn on the light. My eyes were beginning to adjust a bit. I could see what I was doing. I wasn’t in there but a minute.” He shrugged. “Then I came back out into the hall.”

“Stop,” Michael said. “You skipped something. The day of Alice’s funeral, you told me that while you were in the bedroom, you felt something. Tell us about that.”

Nick hesitated, and it was obvious to Jessica that he would have preferred not to have been pressed on this point. Jessica did not like the course of Michael s analysis. It was too
real
. It brought it all back, the whole night. The claustrophobic dimensions of the room were not the only thing pressing down on her chest. She was beginning to feel—it frightened her as much as it gave her hope—that perhaps Michael
had
uncovered a truth beneath the obvious. A suicide was horrible to contemplate, but a murder—that wasn’t something she could simply forget.

Especially if the murderer was in the room with them.

“I felt scared,” Nick said.

“Of what?” Michael asked.

Nick moistened his lips. “I don’t know.”

“You didn’t see anything? You didn’t hear any-thing?”