False Mermaid

CONFESSED KILLER OF OGUNQUIT COUPLE TAKES OWN LIFE

Jesse Benoit, who confessed to the brutal murder of an Ogunquit couple, was found dead in his room at the Augusta Mental Health Institute on Tuesday, an apparent suicide. Hospital officials did not issue a statement, but scheduled a press conference for this afternoon. Constance and Harris Nash were found bludgeoned to death aboard their boat, anchored in Ogunquit Harbor. The small, tightly knit resort community reacted in disbelief when Benoit, a childhood friend of the victims’ son, confessed to the brutal slaying, and was committed to state care at Augusta after being declared incompetent to stand trial.

“Where did this come from?” Frank asked.

“I don’t know—I didn’t notice it before.”

“Do you recognize any of those names—Jesse Benoit, Constance and Harris Nash?”

“No. But I know Peter went to college in Maine. Let me work on this, Frank. You’ve got too much to follow up as it is. This is something I can do.”

He was staring at her right hand resting on his sleeve. She had touched him without thinking. Nora pulled her hand away.

4

Elizabeth stayed in her room all morning with a pillow over her head. She could hear her father and Miranda talking and dragging suitcases up and down the hall. She was supposed to be packing, too, but her insides still felt upside down. Those awful words on the computer screen kept washing over and over her until she felt as if her head would burst. Hallett slaying. The victim’s husband. Primary suspect. If everyone was so sure her dad had done those horrible things, why wasn’t he in jail? They said her mother’s body had been identified by distinguishing marks. What exactly was a distinguishing mark? Elizabeth raised the pillow a quarter-inch to look down at her arms and legs. Nothing but freckles and chewed fingernails, the dark scab on her knee. That couldn’t be what it meant, she was sure.

She flung her pillow to the floor. They were talking about making her go with them on their stupid trip to Ireland. It was Miranda’s idea. Her dad was arguing against it; he said she should stay here in Saint Paul with her grandparents. Miranda was trying to convince him what a great time they could all have together.

Elizabeth knew what to do. She would go away, someplace they couldn’t find her. Wait until they were gone, and then go stay with her grandparents. How hard could it be, looking somebody up in the phone book? But first things first—she had to get out of the house.

She gathered up a few items of clothing and shoved them into her backpack, trying not to make any noise. She took her school ID from Seattle, and the book about the seal woman she’d stolen from the Seattle library. Almost as an afterthought, she stuffed in the worn and faded remnant of the baby blanket she still slept with at night. Finally, she tucked nearly two hundred dollars she’d saved from her allowance into a zippered compartment in the side of her shoe. She had a feeling her dad and Miranda would be glad to get rid of her. They might not even look very hard.

Peering out the door of her bedroom, Elizabeth made sure the coast was clear, and then scurried down the hallway to the front door. She cut through the leafy yard down to the road in front of the house. There were lots of other people on the path—running, biking, walking their dogs. It was so different from Seattle here. It wasn’t just the trees and plants; there weren’t so many people around when you lived on the edge of an island. She realized that she didn’t know where she was going—and staying on the main roads meant that her dad might be able to find her just by driving around. But the riverbank was steep here. She had to walk until she could find a quiet spot, someplace out of the way, where she could sit and think about what to do.