False Mermaid

She printed out each story as she read, trying to piece together the facts from the sketchy details provided. Benoit told police he had paddled his canoe out to the victims’ sailboat anchored in the harbor, and had gone on board intending to kill the couple as they slept. They’d been bludgeoned to death, Nash first, and then his wife, their faces completely destroyed. The murder happened while their son was away for the weekend, visiting a girlfriend in another part of the state. The murder weapon had never been recovered, but the police had found Jesse Benoit’s bloody fingerprints at the scene. Traces of the victims’ blood turned up in his canoe, and on clothing found stuffed in the back of his closet. A classic open-and-shut case. According to the newspaper reports, even though he confessed, Jesse Benoit had never offered any motive for the murders. After a psychiatric evaluation, he was found incompetent to stand trial and sent to the Augusta Mental Health Institute. After only a few weeks at Augusta, Jesse Benoit had taken his own life.

So far the only connection to Peter was the anonymous note addressed to him. What had he done? What was his connection to Constance and Harris Nash? From the physical evidence, there was never any doubt that Jesse Benoit had committed the murders.

After Tríona’s death, the police had searched for Peter in all the national databases, looking for criminal history, family connections, known aliases, previous addresses, job history. The information they’d been able to find was limited: Peter’s parents had been killed in a car accident when he was very young; his legal guardian was a widowed grandfather he barely knew. He had grown up mostly in boarding schools, then graduated from Galliard College in Maine and attended the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice. After graduate school, he had spent several years in Europe. Nora had tried to envision him going around the streets and squares of Venice, sitting in cafés, speaking Italian. It was a side of him they had never really known. She couldn’t imagine he’d ever gone long without female companionship—it was something he sought out, something he seemed to need. So why was there no prior history? No former girlfriends, no domestic assault charges. Of course there were many actions, many degrees of shocking behavior that didn’t rise to the level of crime. But Peter paid his taxes, his professional licenses were up to date, he had a good credit history, sat on the boards of several respected charities, and gave generously to the arts and social causes. All part of the elaborate front he’d cultivated and presented to the world, Nora couldn’t help thinking. Cover for the creature inside who got pleasure from hurting people.

Peter’s only visible connection to the Nash murders was the fact that they had happened in Maine, where he went to boarding school and college. He would have been seventeen or eighteen at the time of the murder, about the same age as Jesse Benoit and the murdered couple’s son. Could he have been at boarding school with Tripp Nash? Nora stared at the article on the screen before her now, the last piece about Jesse Benoit’s suicide, the same one Frank had found in Tríona’s stack. Gordon MacLeish, a detective from the Maine State Police, was quoted in some of the newspaper pieces. Maybe he’d be worth a call. But the Nash case was long closed. There was no practical connection to Tríona. She could spend days following crazy tangents, as she’d been doing all morning here, getting distracted from the real thread. And meanwhile, Peter Hallett was preparing to leave the country, maybe never to return. It was time to move on to the next lead, to find Harry Shaughnessy, or the Cambodian fisherman from the river.

Before leaving the nonfiction room, she took a quick detour down into the stacks once more, just to check on the book that had led her to the article about Natalie Russo. She counted down the row of bookcases again, and turned in at the same spot, but the back-to-front book—Tríona’s book—was not there. There was a gap on the shelf. Maybe it had been checked out. She found an empty computer terminal, and quickly typed the title into a catalog search.

No matches found; nearby TITLES are:

Married to a Stranger

** Married to Magic: Fairy Brides and Bridegrooms

would be here **

Married Woman Blues

The Marrow of a Bone