Adermoor Cove Part 3: Many Sleepless Nights - 1. Chapter 1

Ever since he'd returned to Adermoor Cove, Carlos Santino hadn't been able to sleep. Hardly a wink. One second he was hot and then cold the next, and he couldn’t keep his eyes shut even when they were heavy. When he actually did sleep he'd wake up thinking there was someone in the house.

It was a problem that had only existed in Adermoor Cove; as a kid, up until he went to Boston for law school and to become a cop, sleep hadn't been a problem. In fact he slept like the dead, without the help of anxiety medication.

But not here. Perhaps it was something in the air.

He laid in bed, staring at the ceiling with the whir of the fan in his ear, blowing cool air on him. Carlos had bought the fan in hopes the white noise would help lull him to sleep; he'd tried Melatonin, and ordered Magnesium off Amazon, even tried CBD oil; he'd done everything but see a psychiatrist. He didn't want to do that: The medication they gave you had always made him too groggy. They slowed down his senses, made him stupid. He needed to be able to function. He was a deputy after all.

If I could just get a few hours…just a few hours.

He turned his head and glanced at the alarm clock. The red numbers on the display screen said it was three-twenty-two in the morning. In just four hours he would have to get out of bed, shower, put on his uniform and drive to the station, where he would have to deal with his father the sheriff for the next three hours.

Carlos closed his eyes and forced his body to remain still. He turned his mind to the hum of the fan, felt the air circulate the room before blowing cool on him. A moment later he felt his mind begin to drift, the white noise fading into darkness…

He was twelve again, down in the boiler room of Adermoor Cove middle school. He knew he shouldn’t be down here but it was so much better than being in social studies...or maybe not. Because she was down here too, the lunch lady with the beetle-black eyes. He knew she was lurking behind the furnace but he couldn't stop and make himself turn around. He wasn't in control of his legs, the dream was.

She's there! his mind screamed. Can't you hear her? Can't you hear that awful sound she's making? Turn back, turn back!

I can't.

Yes he could hear her, just on the other side of the furnace, making that terrible retching sound. She would come out at any second and grab him…

Carlos opened his eyes, and sat up. He looked around deliriously. Somewhere in the house an alarm was going off, hurting his ears. His first thought was, It's the smoke alarm! There's a fire!

But it wasn't the smoke alarm because there wasn't a fire. It was his cell phone with a ringtone set to sound like a fire alarm.

Why did I set it on that one?

So you can hear it in case your father calls for help in the middle of the night.

Carlos pressed the phone to his ear.

"I'm on my way to your house." It was his partner, Ramona Sterling.

He groped around for a response, trying to kick his mind into high gear. What the hell was happening that was so bad Ramona needed his help? After all this wasn't fucking Boston. All he could say in the end was, "Okay."

"I'll be there in five." Click.

He frowned at the phone. Am I still dreaming?

He stepped out onto the porch just as Ramona was pulling up to his tiny one bedroom house. He was dressed in his uniform, sidearm holstered to his belt. The blue-and-red flashers hurt his eyes. He came around the side of the car and got in.

"What the hell's going on?" he demanded.

Backing out of his driveway, she glanced quickly at Carlos, long enough for him to see there were dark circles under her eyes. "I just got a call from Dolores Abernathy. She was working third shift at the old lighthouse."

"Why is she calling?"

Ramona's face darkened. "She said someone threw Vanessa Stanton off the tower."

Carlos felt his blood turn to ice. I woke up from one nightmare just to find myself in another. "Who?"

"Dolores says it's Vanessa’s great nephew."

He blinked, wondering if he'd misheard her. "Great-nephew."

Ramona nodded.

"I didn't know she had a great-nephew."

"Neither did I."

What the fuck is going on? "Why would anyone throw a dying old woman to her death?" He felt stupid for asking the question. Why did human beings do terrible shit to one another? Five years as a beat cop and an additional ten as a homicide detective hadn't given him the answer he needed, how could he expect Ramona to tell him?

"We're about to find out," his partner said.

                                                      …

They reached the lighthouse. Carlos watched it loom closer through the windshield. There was something about it tonight that made him feel uneasy. Lighthouses aren't supposed to make people feel uncomfortable, he thought. They're supposed to guide ships through stormy nights. They're supposed to give you light when there is only darkness. But underneath the blackened sky and pale moonlight it looked haunted.

Gravel ground under the tires. The brakes squeaked slightly as Ramona brought the cruiser to a stop. Dolores came running towards the cruiser, arms flapping dramatically in the night. Carlos and Ramona exchanged knowing glances. Tonight there will be hysterics, he thought, thinking about the calls they usually got: Wives complaining about their drunken husbands, or senior citizens about how the youngsters were playing their rap too loud. Very rarely did you hear about murders in Adermoor Cove, which is why Carlos had moved back from Boston.

Now you know that's not the truth, a cruel voice in the back of Carlos's head whispered. People die all the time in Adermoor Cove. You've just forgotten.

"Thank God you're here!" Dolores cried. "I've been scared sick out of mind! I've been hearing gunshots from upstairs...everything's been quiet for about a minute now."

"Get somewhere safe, Dolores," Carlos said.

She nodded and ducked behind the toolshed. For an older lady she could move pretty quickly.

Carlos and Ramona nodded at one another and pulled out their sidearms. Watching the windows, Carlos kept his head low, moving towards the lighthouse at a sprint. Before they reached the porch the screen door opened and a man stepped out. At first it was impossible to make out his features, but as Carlos came to a stop and raised his gun, he recognized him.

It was the man he'd bumped into at The Treasure Cove and then again at The Netted Eel. The one who looked like a model straight from a tattoo magazine. What had he said his name was? Lane. Lane Something.

"Freeze!" Ramona shouted, pointing her gun at Lane.

Lane stopped, held his hands up in the air, and folded them behind his head. He dropped to his knees. There was a dazed look on his face that matched the emotion Carlos was feeling.

While Carlos kept the gun trained on him, Ramona handcuffed Lane’s wrists and recited Lane's rights. When she asked him if he understood his rights he simply murmured a yes and resumed his silence.

"Check around the lighthouse," Ramona said. "I'll keep an eye on him."

Carlos nodded and trudged around the side of the lighthouse. The peaceful crash of the waved belied the horrific scene that was taking place on the other side. Looking up at the tower, he wondered just what all the lighthouse had witnessed in the time since it was built.

It didn’t take him long to find Vanessa's body. He found her at the edge of the cliff just before it dropped off into the sea. Her lifeless face appeared serene as if she hadn’t plunged hundreds of feet to her death but passed in her sleep, on the cloud of her dream. That made the state of her body, limbs twisted at all angles.

He’d never know Vanessa Stanton very well and it was safe to say most people didn’t. Of course there was plenty of talk about her - there always was in small towns. The Stantons were one of the first founding families that had come to Adermoor Cove. It was Henry Stanton who had built the lighthouse and here it had stood since. It was said Henry Stanton, while a genius of his time, had been eccentric and reclusive and that he had passed his eccentricities onto his kin, throughout the generations; some stories even went as far as to call them sorcerers. Vanessa had been considered no less eccentric though she had been somewhat involved with the community since she owned several of the establishments here in town. She only became more talked about when she was diagnosed with cancer and was incapable of going into town.

Once he would have found the sight of her to be grotesque but he’d seen worse crime scenes in Boston. Once he’d investigated a crime scene in which a father had blown his teenage son’s brains out. There had been masses of pulpy brain matter all over the living room. Carlos tried to recall what the father’s reasoning had been for shooting his own child and found he couldn’t recall. When he’d been younger and more earnest and naïve he’d wanted to understand why people maimed each other. Now that he was close to being forty he found it no longer mattered...he was just tired.

Ramona was waiting for him over by the car. Lane sat in the back of the cruiser; his head hung towards the floorboards. For a suspected murderer he looked as if he felt guilty. But then again, in Carlos's experience, when the killer realized what they'd done, that they couldn't undo someone's death, they usually did.

"Did you find anything?" Ramona asked.

"Vanessa Stanton. It looks like the fall killed her."

"Fuck," Ramona said. "Poor woman." She shook her head and turned so Carlos couldn't see her face. "I know you moved to the city and became a homicide detective, but I've never seen someone who's been murdered...and I'm not so sure I want to."

"You’re doing fine," Carlos told her as gently as he could.

"Did she look like she was in pain when it...when it happened?" Her voice was small, so unlike the athletic tomboy he'd graduated highschool with; he pitied her.

Carlos held the picture of Vanessa's peaceful expression in his mind. "No, she didn't look like she was in pain when it happened.”

“Good,” Ramona sounded relieved. “I never knew her of course but still...”

“I doubt anyone did,” said Carlos, thinking of his father.

As if catching the tail end of his father, Ramona said, “I’m going to call your father and get everyone else out here.”

                        …

Moments later the lighthouse at the edge of the island was crowded with light and activity. Adermoor Cove’s very own forensic team had combed the inside and outside of the lighthouse, snapping pictures of the body. Ramona was in the middle of taking a second statement from Dolores.

“Jesus,” Enzo Santino said, looking over Vanessa Stanton’s body. Bright white paint had been sprayed around her corpse, outlining the position of the body. “She’s actually dead.”

Carlos stood off to the side, staring at his father in shock. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard his father sound so sad. His father had always been an unemotional man and never very nurturing. Now Carlos didn’t know what to do. He imagined trying to hug his father, console him, but couldn’t. Instead he said, “I didn’t realize you knew her so well.”

Enzo looked up at his son with sad basset hound eyes. Not for the first time since returning home Carlos noticed his father’s moustache was almost completely white now. Will my hair look that white when I get to be that age? Carlos thought. It seemed he was finding more grey hairs on top of his head each day. Enzo’s eyes had grown distant. It seemed he was remembering something from the past, another thing the sheriff was not prone to do. He’d always been a man who chose to keep his head in the present, not the past.

“I knew her better than most people in this town. She was beautiful in her youth. Stunning, even. Coal-black hair, dark blue eyes. An infectious laugh. Strong mind. A rare specimen for her generation. Now she’s dead and there are no more Stantons.” Enzo sighed. “Since the day this island was founded there has always been a Stanton. Now there’s none left.”

Carlos decided not to mention the man still sitting in the back seat of the cruiser was Vanessa’s great-nephew. At the moment it wasn’t important.

“Why don’t you and Ramona take the suspect back to the station,” said his father. “I’ll finish here and be back before the sun comes up.”

On the way back to the cruiser Carlos crossed paths with Ramona. “You okay?” Ramona asked him.

“Yeah.” They stopped outside the cruiser. “Tonight’s just full of surprises I guess. After all the shit I’ve seen I didn’t think it was possible to be surprised anymore.”

“Jesus. Was Boston that bad?”

He thought of the father who had blown his son’s head out. “Yes.”

Ramona sighed. “All I know is I want to go back to Moira’s house. We were in bed together when the dispatcher called us. This is why I never left for the big city. I thought if I stayed here I’d just be handing out speeding tickets and getting cats out of trees, not this shit. C’mon, let’s take this bozo back to the station.”

Carlos was glad to be away from the chaotic scene back at the lighthouse. Ramona drove through Adermoor Cove’s darkened streets. This time she kept the sirens off: There was no point in having them on. He was grateful the town was still asleep. Had this happened during the day everyone in town would have crowded around the lighthouse to get sight of what had happened. No matter, the island would be full of gossip soon enough; in a town this small, where people lived for fishing and gossip, it was inevitable.

He glanced back in the rearview mirror. Lane was sitting in the backseat, looking out the window. Fresh tears had beaded his eyes, trailing his cheeks with black eye makeup. Carlos thought back to when he had bumped into the younger man at The Netted Eel. He’d seemed tense then, as if he’d had a lot on his mind. Both times Carlos had bumped into him he’d been mistrustful, almost hostile. Carlos hadn’t taken offense - in his experience most people didn’t like cops. Most cops were assholes who liked to use their badge to get and do what they wanted.

“Why?” he asked the man through the rearview mirror before he could stop himself. It took listening to the tone of his own voice to realize he was angry. He couldn’t stand people who preyed on those who were defenseless, whether they were a child or someone old or disabled. It didn’t help that he had thought Lane to be cute and tried to hit on him.

Lane turned his head and met his eyes through the reflective glass. The lights and shadows passing through the window made his face look more sculpted and hollowed out. “She was infected,” he said after a moment. “The darkness...it got inside her. There was nothing else I could do.”

Carlos and Ramona exchanged uneasy looks.