Double Jeopardy (Stone Barrington #57)(24)

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Later, after the dinner party had dissolved, Stone and Primmy lay in bed, kissing and fondling.

“Which was scarier?” he asked her. “The bear or the twins?”

“The bear, when I thought it was the twins,” she replied. “I thought they had come for revenge over the ear wound.”

“I don’t think they’ll forget that,” Stone said. “For the next few days, I don’t want you to go anywhere alone.”

“That’s easy,” she said. “I don’t want to go anywhere alone. Maybe ever again.”

“I understand your feeling.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a Fish and Wildlife for rogue people, in addition to bears? If we could just call them and they’d come, anesthetize them, put them in a cage, and take them away.”

“Something like that exists,” Stone said.

“Oh? What is it called?”

“It’s called the criminal justice system. These two have already been there once, but I don’t think we’ll ever get them back there again.”

“What’s the alternative?” she asked.

Stone sighed. “That remains to be seen.”





22

Early the following morning, Stone had an idea. He made love to Primmy (not a bad idea), they had breakfast, then they dressed and went downstairs. Dino and Viv were just finishing theirs.

“Dino,” Stone said, “I’ve had an idea about how to go after the twins.”

“Does it involve running around in the woods in the dark with flashlights chasing bears?”

“It does not. It involves police work, something you and I know a bit about.”

“I thought you had forgotten,” Dino said.

“Only when I can persuade you to do it for me.”

“Is that what we’re doing now?”

“No, we’re going to call Sergeant Tom Young at the Maine State Police and persuade him to do it for us.”

“I thought you’d already spoken to him, and he was unwilling to get involved.”

“That’s true, but you should always give a man a chance to change his mind.”

“Okay, let’s call him, and you do all the talking while I listen.”

“That’s what I had in mind.” Stone led him to Dick Stone’s little office, concealed behind a bookcase. “We’ll use the landline and put it on speaker.” They sat down, and Stone called the number.

“Sergeant Young.”

“Tom, it’s Stone Barrington and Dino Bacchetti.”

“Uh-oh. You’ve hit a dead end on the Stone twins thing, and you’re going to try to talk me into helping.”

“We’re not asking you to stick your neck out, Tom, just to review the unsolved rape/homicide files of the Islesboro cases, and those in Boston and New Haven.”

“Hold it right there, pal,” Young said. “I have already been over those cases with a giant magnifying glass, and there is nothing there that would help us make a case against the twins.”

“Oh.”

“Except, maybe, one thing.”

“Ah. Which one?”

“Let’s call it the Nantucket file, for want of a better name.”

“What does Nantucket have to do with this?”

“It has to do with the twins’ alibi for the last of the rape/homicides.”

“What was their alibi?”

“They said they were on board a yacht that they had raced to Nantucket and were delivering to Boston.”

“Did that check out?”

“At first. I had a local Nantucket cop, Lieutenant Jake Potter, run it down for me. He found the owner of the yacht, which is named Hotshot, on somebody else’s yacht in the marina. When Jake spoke to him, he said that the twins had left Nantucket to deliver Hotshot to Boston, and the murder had occurred during the time when Hotshot would have been at sea. There would have been no way they could have gotten to Islesboro during that time, so their alibi was airtight.”

“That’s discouraging.”

“That alibi was all that I knew at the time, but when I went through the files last week, there was an addendum to the file that I hadn’t seen before.”

“What did the addendum say?”

“It said that, after Jake had sent me the file, he had gotten a call from a kid he had wanted to interview but couldn’t find. The kid delivered groceries to yachts in the marina. He had arrived aboard Hotshot as they were ready to cast off. He had handed the groceries aboard, got paid, and helped them stow everything below. It was a choppy day, and they didn’t want loose cans of tomatoes flying around the cabin.”

“So how does this relate to the twins’ alibi?”

“According to this kid, there were four people aboard, and none of them were twins. He cast off their last line and watched them head out of the harbor.”

“So they lied about their alibi?”

“Right, and the owner of Hotshot backed their lie, saying that the twins had sailed on her.”

“Is that enough to charge them?”

“Wait, there’s more.”

“Tell me.”