Chances Are . . . Read online

  Okay, the narrative wasn’t fully formed, and right here, Lincoln had to admit, was where it broke down. Yes, Troyer was a lout who according to Google had a history of harassing women, but that didn’t make him a murderer, which was what Lincoln’s half-baked narrative needed him to be. No matter how hard he squinted, however, the story refused to track. In the first place, Jacy never would’ve gotten into a car with him, not after he’d groped her. And even supposing she had done such a foolish thing, and supposing Troyer actually meant to harm her, exactly how would his intention have played out? Sure, a young woman hitchhiking alone was always vulnerable, but Troyer couldn’t have been sure that she’d be either alone or hitchhiking. In fact, he naturally would’ve assumed she and Lincoln and Teddy and Mickey would all be leaving the island together. Which meant that if he’d somehow managed to abduct her, he’d acted on impulse. Which in turn made no sense. State Road, where Jacy would’ve been hitching, was, if not exactly busy that early in the season, at least well traveled, and you could never be certain another driver or walker or jogger wouldn’t appear at exactly the wrong moment. And even if Troyer, fueled by rage, had been willing to roll the dice, to what logical end? He was a big guy, so sure, if he somehow got Jacy into the car, he could overpower her, but then what? If he meant to rape her, he’d have to take her someplace where there wouldn’t be any witnesses, but again, then what? How would he keep her from going to the cops afterward? Well, he could threaten her. That often worked on terrified young women who felt not just fear but shame. But often wasn’t always, so how could he count on it? And what if, instead of going to the cops, she returned to Chilmark and told her friends? Mickey had already laid the asshole out cold for—compared to rape, at least—a relatively minor transgression. What sort of punishment would he mete out for the greater offense? No, to keep his victim quiet, he’d have to kill her, but kill her how? Dispose of her body how? And later, when she was reported missing, the cops would question Lincoln and Teddy and Mickey, who’d be quick to tell them about the incident in the kitchen, after which he’d be the prime suspect.

  No, it was a fever dream. Loathing Troyer, he’d turned a lout into a monster so as to explain the inexplicable.

  “Turns out I was looking for a ghost,” he reluctantly admitted to Beverly.

  “Oooh, tell me,” she said, motioning for him to take a seat. “I love ghost stories.”

  No, he told himself. Just leave.

  “Unfortunately, this one lacks an ending,” he said, taking the offered chair.

  “That’s okay, I’m excellent at endings.”

  And so, keeping Troyer out of the narrative, he gave Beverly the short version of that long-ago holiday weekend and Jacy’s disappearance. As he spoke, she made notes on her blotter, as if there might be a quiz later. When at last he finished talking, she said, without hesitation, “She’s here on the island.”

  Lincoln swallowed hard, feeling his face go white. For a moment he was unable to locate his voice.

  “In a story, I mean. You and your friends look for her all over the world, only to discover that she’s been right here the whole time. That’s how I’d write it.” Then, having apparently registered his expression, she winced. “Ouch. I forgot we were talking about an actual person. Somebody you—”

  “It’s okay,” Lincoln assured her, though what she’d said had given him the bends, as if she’d recognized Jacy today from his description of her in 1971 and knew right where she lived on the island. As if her name and phone number were waiting there on Beverly’s Rolodex. As if they could all meet for lunch. “It was a long time ago. Who was it who said to let the dead bury the dead?”

  “That would be Jesus, I believe.”

  “Right,” said Lincoln, glad that Dub-Yay wasn’t here to witness this lapse. Except that of course he was. Like many fathers, Lincoln’s now had two permanent residences—one in Dunbar, Arizona, the other in his only son’s head. This right here is what comes of attending college in New England and marrying a Roman Catholic, he heard the old man say in his whine. I’m glad your poor mother didn’t live to see this day. “I’m not sure what he meant, though, Beverly. Are you?”

  “Maybe that we should focus on what we can change and not what’s beyond our sphere of influence?”

  “Not bad advice,” Lincoln said, getting stiffly to his feet. Too much sitting in front of that damn microfilm machine.

  Beverly’s handshake was warm and firm. “Why don’t you leave me your cell number,” she suggested. “I’ve got a couple reporter friends on the Cape. Maybe a follow-up ran in one of the papers there.”

  At the door, he paused. “While I’m here,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant, “I wonder if you know a neighbor of mine out in Chilmark. Mason Troyer?”

  Immediately her expression darkened with suspicion and, unless he was mistaken, fear. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “Barely know the man. He wants to buy my house.”

  “He’s fifty different kinds of trouble,” she said. “If you tell him I said that, I’ll deny it.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  He was halfway out the door when he heard her gasp, and when he turned around, Beverly’s hand was covering her mouth.

  “Oh my God!” she said. “Are you thinking—”

  “No, Beverly,” he was quick to tell her. “No, I’m not.”

  Teddy

  So long ago, that euphoria, and so short-lived. And, like life itself, over before it could be fully comprehended. A cheat, really.

  Returning to the picnic table where he’d made small talk with the Christians, Teddy took out the postcard he’d purchased earlier and studied its painted cliffs, themselves a cheat, their colors brighter than the real ones. When Jacy’d bought this same card back in ’71, he had no idea what she meant to do with it, though he remembered thinking it odd, given how cheap they were, that she’d bought just one. Only later would he learn who she’d sent it to.

  Later that summer her fiancé—Vance? Lance? Chance?—had somehow learned that Tom Ford had helped Teddy land an internship at the Globe and called him there, wondering if he’d heard from Jacy. When Teddy told him no, he seemed satisfied but went on to say he’d be in Boston the following week and suggested they meet for coffee. Teddy, surprised by the invitation, hadn’t been able to come up with an excuse on the spot, so they’d met at a Greek diner not far from the Globe offices, where Lance/Chance/Vance, with his short hair and preppy attire, couldn’t have looked more out of place. Who, Teddy remembered wondering, did this guy remind him of?

  They’d taken a booth in the back, “away from prying ears,” as Vance hilariously put it, as if their conversation would naturally be of interest to others, maybe the entire readership of the Globe. When Teddy ordered only coffee, Lance said, “You sure you don’t want some pie? I’m buying.” Teddy said no, just coffee, to which the would-be lawyer replied, “Suit yourself,” and ordered a slice of Boston cream to go with his coffee. For someone left a few scant blocks from the altar, Chance seemed to be in excellent spirits. “So,” he said when his pie arrived, fixing Teddy with his pale blue eyes, “there’s news.”

  At this Teddy’s heart leaped. It was August by then and she’d been gone for a solid two months. “About Jacy?”

  Vance shook his head. The news was actually about her parents, and get this: they were divorcing. Nobody’d seen that coming, Lance said, including his own parents, and the two couples had been best friends for as long as he could remember. Teddy started to ask how any of this was relevant, but Chance cut him off—because there was more. Jacy’s dad had apparently been caught up in the latest insider-trading Wall Street scandal. Did Teddy know? It was in all the papers. Word was he’d be lucky to escape jail. Jacy’s mother, originally from California, planned to sell the Greenwich house as soon as it was legally hers and move back. Which meant that if Jacy didn’t show up
soon, she’d have neither a home nor married parents to return to.

  To Teddy, none of this was as surprising as the fact that Vance seemed to have adjusted to the fact that if Jacy ever did come home, it wouldn’t be to him. “I guess some things just aren’t meant to be,” he said, causing Teddy to wonder if he’d begun to see the writing on the wall prior to his fiancée’s disappearance. Had they been quarreling in the run-up to the wedding? Teddy knew they argued about the war, and gathered there were other serious disagreements as well, such as where they’d live after they married. Jacy wanted out of Greenwich, whereas Chance was in favor of finding a place near their parents. Why not? Free babysitting once they started having kids, which Lance apparently thought would happen right away, despite Jacy’s stated disinclination to ever have any. So, when he said that some things just weren’t meant to be, was he acknowledging that they were fundamentally mismatched? Or had he, in Jacy’s continued absence, begun recalling the hundreds of minor irritants that inevitably cropped up between any two people, stuff that in the moment didn’t rise to the level of genuine discord?

  “For a while, it felt like the end of the world,” Chance was saying, “but you know what, Teddy?” (He didn’t, but was surprised to hear his name, in direct address, from the mouth of a man he’d only just met.) “Turns out that only the end of the world”—here he paused so Teddy could savor the profundity of what was coming next—“is the end of the world.” In fact, Lance went on, his knuckles drumming on the table, did Teddy know why he was really in Boston? (No, how could he?) Well, Vance was visiting a girl. They’d only lately been introduced, so it was too soon to know if it was serious, but jeez, you know what, Teddy? Stranger things happened all the time. When he offered congratulations, Lance said, “Thanks, pal. Really, that…means a lot.”

  Was it the pal that made the penny drop? Whatever the reason, Teddy was suddenly sure that Vance, with all this phony camaraderie, was setting a trap. Had, in fact, already set it.

  “But, you know what, Teddy? There’s one other thing you could do for me that would mean even more.”

  “What’s that, Lance?”

  “Vance,” he said, his friendly façade falling completely away.

  “Right.” Well, now he knew.

  “You could tell me what really happened on that island over Memorial Day. The four of you all alone in that house. Three guys. One girl. Make me understand.”

  “Nothing happened,” Teddy told him, a lie that put Jacy in his arms all over again, their bodies rising and lowering, weightless in the swell. “We were all just good friends.”

  “That’s what I want you to make me understand. How that works. Because I have some questions.”

  He wasn’t kidding, either, and once they started, the questions came fast and furious. He barely gave him the opportunity to answer one before asking the next, as if Teddy were hooked up to a lie detector and the answers to the initial questions—name, address, age, occupation—were already known to the questioner, worthwhile only to establish a baseline for what followed. Had Jacy said anything about not wanting to go through with the wedding? Anything about Vance himself that would indicate why she would want to break off their engagement? Was she nursing a grievance of some sort? Did she seem unhappy? Was she worried about anything? Was she acting strangely? Because otherwise—you know what, Teddy? It didn’t really add up, did it? In fact, the whole thing was troubling. Deeply troubling.

  And did Teddy know what troubled Vance most of all? It was this whole just-good-friends deal: was he actually supposed to believe that? Because if they were just good friends, why had Jacy been so secretive about where she was going that weekend? Okay, sure, he could understand her not leveling with her parents, who definitely would fucking not have approved. But why not tell him, her fiancé, unless of course she was feeling guilty about something? What did Teddy think? Did Jacy have some reason to feel guilty? What were the sleeping arrangements like that weekend? Did Jacy have her own room, or was it like one big pajama party? Did they wear pajamas, Teddy? Had they smoked a lot of marijuana? (That was the actual word he’d used, not pot or weed or even grass.) How much did they drink, these three guys and one girl? Did they get her drunk? Who tucked her in at night? “Explain these things to me, Teddy. Explain what good friends means to somebody like you.”

  Teddy chose his words carefully, partly because precision was called for, but also because with each new loaded, sarcastic question it became evident that the young man sitting across the booth from him was seething with rage. “Well, it’s true we were good friends,” Teddy said, “but as you know, Vance, it’s impossible to be around Jacy without being in love with her, at least a little.”

  “You, too, Teddy? Were you in love with her?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess,” he said, sneering now. “Did you fuck her? That’s a question you should be able to answer without guesswork.”

  “No,” Teddy told him, wondering if he actually had been connected to a lie detector right then what the needle would be doing. “I did not.”

  “How about your two pals? Did they get any luckier?”

  “She had her own room. Us guys took turns sleeping on the couch.”

  “Did the doors have locks?”

  “They didn’t need to. Look, Lincoln’s in love with someone else, a girl named Anita. They’re practically engaged. The two of them headed to Arizona later that same week.”

  “And the big guy? What’s his name again?”

  “Mickey.”

  “Bingo. He’s the one she liked the best, right?”

  Teddy felt a powerful urge to deny this, but held his tongue. “Nothing happened between them, okay?”

  “Yeah, but how would you know that?”

  Because, Teddy thought, Mickey wouldn’t have been able to contain his joy. “Because we’re friends.”

  “That word again,” Vance said. “Okay, let’s go back to you. Tell me again that there was nothing going on between you and my fiancée.” Teddy, noting the accusation was phrased differently this time, said nothing. For his part, Vance didn’t seem to care whether he answered or not. “I mean, you would’ve, right? If you had the chance? Sure, she was fucking engaged. But you were in love with her, right? So, what was the problem? Didn’t she like you?”

  “She did, actually.” Chose him, in fact. Over Mickey and Lincoln. Also over this aggrieved rich kid sitting across the table from him now. And the rapture of that simple fact was every bit as powerful now as it had been in the surf off Gay Head, so powerful, indeed, that Teddy was seriously tempted to tell Vance everything. Paint him a picture he’d never forget.

  “Why not, then?” Vance continued. “Are you a queer, Teddy? I heard you might be.”

  “You heard wrong.”

  Vance ignored this. “Girls like fags, right? Tell ’em things they wouldn’t even confide to their best girlfriends. Did Jacy confide in you, Teddy? Like which one of your asshole friends she preferred to me?”

  Somehow Teddy managed to keep his voice under control. “Judging by how things turned out,” he said, “she preferred all of us to you.”

  Vance had eaten only a few bites of his pie, his professed appetite another part of an elaborate ruse that he couldn’t quite pull off. Picking up his fork, he pointed it at Teddy. “You know what I ought to do?”

  This whole time Teddy had been racking his brain, trying to remember who Vance reminded him of, and now, threatened with serious bodily harm, it came to him: it was Nelson, the high-school kid that Coach instructed to bang Teddy around, to “toughen the pansy up.”

  “Yeah,” Teddy said, feeling strangely calm. Usually when violence was imminent he felt physically ill. “I do know. You ought to believe everything I’m telling you, because except for the fact that you want me to be lying, there’s no reason not to. Because my friends and I have no more id
ea than you do where Jacy went or why. When she comes back, you can ask her, and then you’ll know.”

  Vance, still clutching his fork, leaned toward him across the table. “Except she’s not coming back, is she, Teddy?”

  And just that quickly Teddy’s righteous anger leaked away. Looking down at his barely touched coffee, he was suddenly unable to meet his companion’s eye. All summer long he’d waited for the phone to ring with the news that Jacy had returned, safe and sound. Lincoln, also expecting such news, had called from Arizona twice to see if he’d heard anything. At some point, though, and Teddy didn’t know exactly when, a switch had flipped in his brain: if Jacy was coming back, by now she would’ve.

  When he finally forced himself to look up from his coffee, Teddy saw that tears were streaming down his companion’s face. A moment earlier he’d expected him to come flying across the table and stab him with his fork, but now he realized that Vance had also been on an emotional roller coaster these last two months, hope giving way to despair, despair to grief, grief to rage, and all of it over again. “Did you kill her, Teddy? You and your pals? Did you kill my girl? Did you get her drunk and force yourselves on her? Did you bury her on that island? Or take her out on a boat and toss her over the side? Did you guys do that?”

  “No, Vance,” Teddy told him, feeling his own eyes fill now. “Of course we didn’t.”

  “Ah…fuck,” he said, dropping his fork and pounding his broad forehead violently with the heels of both hands. “I thought if I talked to you, I’d be able to tell if you were lying, but I can’t.”