The Castaways

THE CHIEF

T he freezer at the Juice Bar went on the fritz. It was such a sophisticated machine that they needed a team of NASCAR mechanics to fix it, and so Kacy had the night free from work. She had volunteered to take the twins out to Tom Nevers for the carnival, a shabby slice of mainland American life visited upon their beloved island for ten days. The carnival meant neon lights, rickety rides, rigged games with rinky-dink prizes, and heart-stopping, teeth-rotting fare such as cotton candy, fried dough, corn dogs, and sausage grinders. The twins had been begging to be subjected to the depravity of the carnival for nearly a week (Drew and Barney had apparently already been twice ), and the Chief was relieved when Kacy said she would take them. Andrea could not handle the manic chaos of the carnival, and the Chief felt he had put in enough carnival hours with his own kids. He gave Kacy eighty dollars, told her not to let the twins eat too much sugar, and wished her well.

He then called Andrea to see if she wanted to go out to dinner, just the two of them. Somewhere nice. The Straight Wharf?

She said no. She was exhausted. (From doing what?) She was going to take advantage of the peace and quiet by going to bed early.

The Chief was deflated. He was, if he could just say it, lonely. There had always been the specter of his own grief floating around somewhere, and he acknowledged it now. He, like Andrea, missed Tess, but he also missed Greg. Greg, despite his faults, had been his friend. The friendship had been uneven, sure. The Chief was the police chief, and Greg had been a rock star. Morally, they were a heavyweight and a lightweight, a total mismatch. But the Chief had loved Greg anyway.

If they still lived in the Before and the Chief found himself stranded at work without options or obligations, he would have wandered over to the Begonia, taken a seat at the bar, hammed it up with Delilah, ordered a bleu burger with extra onions, and listened to Greg play a set. It was, in the Chief’s opinion, a nearly perfect way to spend an evening.

He couldn’t handle the Begonia now: no Greg, no Delilah, Faith with her smothering concern, the grating Irish trio onstage. He had a pile of backlogged work on his desk, the result of his preoccupation with the details of the accident, his distracted frame of mind, and the extra hours he had to devote to Andrea and the twins. He should stay and work. He would ask Freda, the evening dispatcher, to pick him up a burger from the Begonia, even though Freda was unfriendly, and especially so when she felt like she was being treated like a secretary or an errand girl. He would have to ask nicely.

At nine-thirty he was still at his desk, the burger, fries, and double dill pickles demolished. He had eaten three Rolaids and was two thirds of the way through his stack of paperwork. The attendant feeling of relief and accomplishment was keeping his melancholy at bay. He wouldn’t even have realized it was as late as nine-thirty—his office was a concrete bunker, without windows—had Dickson not knocked on the door, making the Chief look up. Dickson had that goddamn look on his face.

“What is it?” the Chief asked.

“April Peck is here,” Dickson said. “She got called in by the bouncer of the Rose and Crown for trying to pass off a fake ID.”

The Chief fell back in his chair. “Jesus.”

“I dealt with her. She said she got it somewhere online, couldn’t remember the name of the site. I fined her three hundred bucks, took the ID, threatened to suspend her real driver’s license. She said she wanted to talk to you.”

“To me?”

“To you.”

“Jesus,” the Chief said.

“Normally I would have told her no. Normally I would have slapped her with a ninety-day suspension for trying to go over my head. But then I wondered if maybe you wanted to question her.”

Question her. Dickson understood more than the Chief wanted him to. The Chief’s stomach squelched. He’d eaten all that food and he hadn’t moved a muscle. And he was nervous.

“Send her in.”

Dickson opened the door and poked his head out into the hallway. “Hey, Dancing Queen,” he said, “the Chief has agreed to see you.”

April entered, resplendent in some kind of sparkly black-and-silver disco dress and silver stiletto heels. Her hair was up. She wore reddish black lipstick. She looked twenty-five, not eighteen.

“Miss Peck,” the Chief said.

“You can call me April,” she said. She offered her hand. “I feel like I know you.”

“Do you?” the Chief said.

“Yes,” April said. She sat demurely, thank God, with her legs angled to the side. “Greg used to talk about you all the time.”

The Chief quietly burped up Roquefort and onions. “Greg?” he said.

“Greg MacAvoy.”

The name reverberated against the concrete walls of the Chief’s office. April’s face was open; her eyes were wide and innocent. She did not look like a kid who had just been booked for identity fraud. Was she drunk? She had been steady on the stilettos. Was she a good actress? Or maybe the three-hundred-dollar fine and the fact that she might not be able to drive for the rest of the summer didn’t bother her. Who was he kidding? If they took her license, she would drive anyway.

“Mr. MacAvoy was your singing teacher?” the Chief said.

“He was.”

The Chief looked at April’s shining blond hair and thought of how lost Greg must have been to let her lasso him. Had Greg been in that place men found themselves in when they needed bolstering? His sweet and pretty wife wasn’t enough? His two healthy kids weren’t enough? He needed more, he needed someone to worship him, someone to think he was a hero?

“And…?”

“And he was my friend.”

“Your friend?” the Chief said. Nerves jitterbugged across his chest and arms. April Peck should have been just another pretty girl in high school, not so different from the Chief’s own daughter, but instead she was a repository of information, answers, the truth. Had Greg and April Peck been having a thing—one time, three times, every week, every day? Would Greg have a reason to want to drug Tess? The Chief understood that knowing the answers wouldn’t bring Tess or Greg back, it wouldn’t help the kids, but the Chief, as an enforcer of the law, wanted the truth.

He had to be careful. April Peck had been brought in for trying to pass off a fake ID. She was not here to answer questions about Greg. He could not make her answer. For all the Chief knew, April Peck would leave the office saying that the Chief had been inappropriate with her. Thinking this, the Chief felt the first true wash of sympathy for Greg. April Peck was a suicide bomber. The Chief should send her out right now with a ninety-day suspension. If Andrea knew April Peck was here, what would she say?

April said, “I know what people think.”

“What do people think?”

“They think Greg and I were lovers.”

The Chief burped again, and whispered, “Excuse me.” He had to tread so carefully here. “Why would they think that?”

She shrugged.

The Chief said, “I’m a little confused, Miss Peck, about why you wanted to see me.”

Her face transformed from a placid surface to a stormy one. She was going to cry, and immediately the Chief’s guard went up.

She said, “This has been so hard.”

The Chief nodded, though barely.

“I wanted to talk to you about Greg.”

“What about him?”

“He was my friend. I miss him. I loved him. I mean, I really loved him. He listened to me. I have all this stuff going on—Derek, my ex-boyfriend, stalks me, my mother is dying of freaking breast cancer, and my dad and brother are in New York hell-bent on pretending my mother and I don’t exist…” She snatched a tissue off the Chief’s desk and noisily blew her nose. “And really, the only person I could talk to was Greg. He was so nice to me. He was kind. He was the kindest, because he could have gotten into so much trouble…”

“You accused him of sexual misconduct,” the Chief said. “He was nearly fired.”

“I know! I was confused. It was so completely fucked. I was jealous because it was clear he loved his wife and kids. I was never going to get the best part of him. They were.”

“So did you lie to the administration?” the Chief asked.

April narrowed her eyes at him as if he were crazy. Crazy to think she lied or crazy to think she would now tell him the truth? She blotted her eyes. “The amazing thing was that Greg forgave me. After all that, I mean. He forgave me, he listened, he was kind, and then…”

“And then what?” the Chief said.

“And then he died!” April said. She stood up and paced the back half of the Chief’s office.

“You were in love with him?” the Chief said.

April threw up her hands.

“Was he… did he say he was in love with you?”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” April said. In the back corner of his office was a filing cabinet topped with a philodendron and some framed snapshots of Kacy and Eric when they were young. April picked up the pictures and studied them. The Chief did not like her touching pictures of his family.

“What am I trying to do?” he asked.

“You’re trying to get me to admit to something,” she said.

“Admit to what?”

“See? You’re doing it again.”

Were you lovers? Was he in love with you? Would Greg have a reason to drug his wife? The Chief could ask April these questions and she could lie or tell him the truth and he wouldn’t know the difference. He cleared his throat. “Okay, Miss Peck, it’s time for you to go. We are going to issue a sixty-day suspension of your driver’s license.”

April whipped around.

“That’s a reduction of the maximum penalty, which is a ninety-day suspension,” he said. He could have lowered the penalty to thirty days, but he would not do it. And if she gave him lip, he would up it to ninety.

“You’re throwing me out?” she said.

“I’m not a therapist,” the Chief said. “I am the chief of police. Since you don’t have any new or pertinent information about Greg MacAvoy or your involvement with him, we have no further business. Should you ever decide there is something else I need to know, you are free to come in anytime and talk to me. Understood?”

April chewed her bottom lip. “Do you know what Greg said about you? Do you know what he told me?”

“Honestly, Miss Peck, I don’t care.”

She took a deep, resigned breath. “He said you were the greatest guy in all the world.”