“I should dock you a week of viewing time,” Martha says.
“No, please don’t! I’m sorry! You said you would come when I needed you and I need you now. I want you to assure me that Cruz wasn’t the one who hit me. I would forgive him—I would forgive that child anything. But I’m afraid the world won’t forgive him. I’m afraid the court system, the judge, the Nantucket Police, and my own kids won’t forgive him. Please, Martha, tell me Cruz wasn’t the one who hit me.”
“You seem a little slow in learning the rules,” Martha says. “I can’t tell you who hit you or didn’t hit you.”
“Is that because you don’t know or because you don’t want to tell me?”
“Oh, Vivian, the same rules apply to us here as down there.”
That’s not really true, Vivian thinks.
Martha shakes her head and the scarf moves like a curtain in the breeze. “Some things you have to figure out on your own.”
The Chief
Dixon, again with the bad news. A janitor at the Stop and Shop found bloodstained sneakers in the trash in the break room and he called the police to report it. Dixon went himself to retrieve the sneakers, and they exactly matched the description of Vivi’s missing sneakers.
“For crying out loud!” the Chief says, because his mind travels right to Cruz DeSantis.
“This is good,” Dixon says. “They were lost, now they’re found. And you know, Chief, the DeSantis kid works at the Stop and Shop.”
“Did the janitor find the clothes as well?”
“No, just the shoes.”
Just the shoes. That makes no sense. And what’s valuable, from a forensics standpoint, is the clothes—the shorts and the tank—in case there are flecks of paint. Every contact leaves a trace.
“Do you want me to bring the DeSantis kid in?” Dixon asks.
“Not yet,” the Chief says. “I need to think.”
The Chief asks Dixon to air-freight the shoes to Lisa Hitt on the Cape. He should probably request a homicide detective from the state police—the Greek would be his best option—but he doesn’t want to call one in just yet. The Greek is a busy man and they have no forensic evidence tying this death to any suspects.
Cruz DeSantis is a smart kid—he’s too smart to tamper with evidence, too smart to throw bloody sneakers into the trash at his place of employment. Right? The Chief will go talk to him.
It’s eleven o’clock in the morning. A phone call to the Stop and Shop confirms that Cruz is working. The Chief arranges for him to take a break so that Cruz can help with an ongoing investigation.
The Chief is waiting out back by the employee entrance when Cruz comes out. He looks…tired, sick, traumatized.
“Cruz.”
“I heard the news already,” Cruz says. “I work here, Chief Kapenash.”
“Right,” the Chief says. “Let’s take a drive.”
They have only thirty minutes, so they can’t go far. The Chief goes around the small rotary, then the big rotary. Traffic is bad; everyone is driving while talking on a cell phone or texting. It’s amazing there aren’t motor-vehicle homicides every day.
“I know Donald found running shoes in the trash of the break room,” Cruz says. “I didn’t put them there. Why would I have Vivi’s sneakers?”
“They went missing from the hospital,” the Chief says. “Somewhere between the hospital and the station, we lost track of them. The clothes still haven’t been recovered.”
“Check my car, check my house—I don’t have the clothes. I never touched or saw or knew about any of this. Why would I?”
“Calm down, son,” the Chief says.
“I’ve been pulled out of work to ride around with the chief of police,” Cruz says. “Would you be calm in this situation?”
“No.”
“I didn’t hit Vivi,” Cruz says, and again, there’s something in the tone and timbre of his voice that makes the Chief want to believe him. “I found her. Finding her wasn’t a crime.”
The Chief takes a left off Polpis Road toward Monomoy. It’s been three years since the last homicide on Nantucket. The maid of honor in a lavish wedding at a waterfront estate called Summerland was found floating in the harbor. They chalked that up to an accident, but it still irks the Chief and he knows it bothers the Greek as well. If Ed called the Greek now, he would jump at the chance to investigate this hit-and-run—maybe. Or maybe he’d think it was a lost cause, or maybe he’d think the answer was sitting right there in the front seat.