It was only around cocktail hour that my mother asked me if I knew where Faye was. I told her I didn’t, of course, then quickly spread word around to the other Pirates that no one should mention what we had done to my sister. I must have been worried at that point, worried about Faye I mean, but for some reason I thought she’d be just fine, and that maybe she was hiding somewhere else to get us all into trouble.
Word spread fast that Faye was missing, and several of the adults fanned through the resort grounds and the beach to look for her. My group all met together in the half-filled dining room and pledged to never say a word.
It was after dark by the time they found her body, still in that little cave. The tide was already going out again.
That was sixty years ago, and I’ve never forgotten what I and those eight other kids did to her. We might not have tied her hands behind her back, as we’d planned, but our words did the trick just as well.
My whole life I’ve thought about Faye in her final moments, and what it must have been like for her to die alone in the rising tide. I wonder if she tried to get out from under the rocks, or had she been determined to wait until the last possible moment, hoping to impress the older kids who’d already forgotten about her. Or maybe she’d gotten so cold lying there in the frigid water of the Atlantic Ocean that her muscles could no longer move. And I wonder who she thought about as she died. Our parents, I imagine. Our Mum. Or maybe it was me she was thinking of, her big brother who knew where she was. Maybe she was waiting for me to come back and rescue her.
Two years ago, I hired a private detective to find the members of the Pirate Society. Surprisingly, they were all still alive, and except for Frank Hopkins, they had all had children. At that point, I had begun to form a plan. I was old enough to know that there is no justice in the world. Bad people go unpunished all the time. And innocent people suffer outrageously. My own parents were never the same, not even remotely, after Faye’s death. They lost faith in the world, and I’m not sure either of them ever truly felt joy again. I decided that the best punishment—the only punishment—for the people responsible for my sister’s death was for them to lose a child as well.
It wasn’t simply revenge. It felt like something much more than that. Karma, maybe. I had the money, and I had the will, to do what the natural world would never do. I could set the world to rights, in one small way.
Was it fair that these people would lose a child because of a single careless act they did at the age of ten or eleven? Of course it’s not. But life is seldom fair to anyone. It wasn’t fair to my parents, having their beloved daughter taken from them, and life hasn’t been fair to me, either. I lost my own daughter when she was on the cusp of a happy life, and now my brain has turned against me in multiple ways. My ex-wife, I am sure, will tell you all about it.
I didn’t like killing those eight innocent people, but I decided that it was the only thing to do. In the long history of humans inhabiting this planet, my small act of retribution was minuscule, I know, but it was something. And for those of you who say that two wrongs don’t make a right, then I suspect you’re a person who has never been wronged.
My hand is cramping up, and it is past midnight, so I’ll be quick with the rest. When you’ve made a million dollars many times over, a lot of doors open up for you. I won’t name names, but my money bought me not just information, but surveillance on all of my targets. I knew where they’d be, and when they’d be there. I knew their weaknesses, and strengths. And I was able to buy them painless deaths. All except for Frank Hopkins. I drowned him right near Faye’s watery grave, and I even whispered her name into his ear as he died.
Matthew Beaumont was Debbie MacReady’s son. She’d been a mousy thing who barely talked, although I remember her almost hysterical giggle, especially as Faye slid underneath the rock that would be her final resting place.
Matthew was quite wealthy himself, and it made me wonder if he’d hire a private security detail to protect himself after receiving the list. For that reason I took him out quite early. That was me in the woods in Dartford, shooting him in the back. He looked quite peaceful on the orange mat of fallen pine needles.
Arthur Kruse Junior was Art Kruse’s boy, and I heard through my sources that Art had already abandoned his son because he was gay. Not surprising since I remember the young Art as the most enthusiastically fascistic of the pirate society. He’d been sorely disappointed when we decided as a group to not tie Faye up. His son, Arthur, by all accounts, seemed to be a decent man. I almost considered killing the father and not the son, but that would have gone against my plan. And if there’s one thing I like in my life, it is order. Still, I made sure Arthur would have a painless death, dying in his sleep while the police watched his house. A source who shall remain nameless provided me with the canister of carbon monoxide and the ingenious timing mechanism.