01.03.18

This is Erin D’costa writing this, begrudgingly so. Klaudia thought I should do it. I have been trying to listen to her more, though writing my ‘feelings’ or whatever in a newsletter that has only one sad reader is utterly senseless to me. Antonio better be proud of me for doing this, wherever he is at, because this has taken a lot of willpower for me to do. How Klaudia convinced me to do such a silly thing is truly a mystery. I guess I finally get a little bit of what Antonio talked about. She has strange ways of getting you to do exactly what she wants while making it seem like it was your idea. I see through her though, and I think she knows this too.

Between me and Antonio, I had always been the stronger one, I would always win when we wrestled as children. I had never imagined I would have to use that strength to pull him back from the sea onto the shore. We were always supposed to win together when it was against the world. That is all I have to say about that.

I moved into that dreary Kabot Manor after the funeral. I didn’t want to, believe me. Nothing about those cold halls, the uneasy proximity to the sea, and the imposing darkness of the woods sound particularly habitable to me. And god knows Akeno is too happy with the worlds inside his head to actually function in life on his own. But then I thought about Antonio and the twenty-year-old who now lived all alone in that house. I knew the right thing was to help Klaudia out, at least till things returned a little bit to normalcy.

It is not easy living with Klaudia. She is unapproachable and always angry and she lives through life with that egoistic belief of being right all the time which is characteristic of people her age. I have no time for people like that, so this has been a real test of my patience. Yet I have been warming up to her a little too. I can see that she is extremely clever, her mind is sharper than her tongue, which sounds almost impossible given that she has no qualms about unleashing hell when she opens her mouth. She has kindness in those sad eyes and I can see her physically trying to always be better. She pretends to not care but she loves fiercely and quickly—I have seen it in the way she talks about Antonio, the way her eyes light up thinking of that Drew Smith and the way she always speaks a little softer when she talks to her sister who she claims to hate. I guess she is acceptable and surely a better person than the imbeciles that populate this island.

We have been talking as much as we can when we have time. I have been very busy. I am still running my garage, of course (Akira has been on holiday for almost a fortnight now–I know her reasons so I am not going to call her back to work just yet), Akeno is practically living at the Manor too at this point because he is always coming over with all of his incomprehensible problems and all of Antonio’s responsibilities have fallen on my shoulder too, though I have been getting a lot of help from my sister-in-law with those. It’s stressful, to say the least, but it is good to have people helping me along the way.

Klaudia mentioned once that she wanted to solve the murders going on in the town herself now that Antonio’s gone. She talked about feeling a sense of responsibility. I understand that because I have felt it too. Antonio always looked out for everyone notwithstanding what he felt about them. Now that he’s gone I feel like somewhere, it is my duty to finish what he started. So yesterday, I fetched Antonio’s notes and Klaudia and I went over them. There were observations that Antonio had made that we made note of too. By the end, everyone around seemed suspicious. Everyone seemed capable of committing these crimes. So, we decided to do a little investigation of our own today. We decided to start from the beginning to the first crime scene: the ferryman’s house. Unfortunately, it was fully boarded up. Besides, there wasn’t going to be much proof to be gathered from the crime scene anyways because Harry Mathews, that rat, had contaminated the scene on its discovery by walking all over it and touching everything. Klaudia and I sat in my truck parked just outside the house, discussing things.

Antonio had been pretty thorough with his own investigation and had been organised enough to have all of his information collected in one place. We learnt significantly about the ferryman’s murder through his notes alone, so we weren’t very disheartened. The key thing that we found out through what Antonio had found out was the ferryman’s schedule of distributing imports. Every week, the ferryman sailed to the mainland on a Friday night. He bought goods ordered by various businesses and organisations on the island over the weekend and returned by the dawn of the coming Sunday. On Sunday morning, he would distribute his imports to their owners personally. Antonio found this information on a list that was stuck to the ferryman’s mini-fridge and confirmed it by speaking with the people on his list.

The thing is, that day, on the fourth of February, there was a change in this routine that the Ferryman had followed for years. Instead of the morning, the ferryman delivered all his goods in the evening. All the people that interacted with him while he made his rounds noted how he smelled so strongly of alcohol. Piecing together a list from Antonio’s investigation, we figured that on that day, the ferryman first visited the pharmacy. Then he visited Ant’s Nest. After this, he visited the coal and gas agency, the school, Mocair’s bar and finally went to MommyJune’s grocery store at 07:00 pm. Klaudia grimly noted that this most likely meant that June was the last person to see him alive.

Klaudia and I then went through all of the suspects in our heads. Both of us immediately thought of Harry Mathews first. He was the one to find the body, in fact, he was the one to find two bodies with no strong alibis both times. He claims that that morning, he had gone to deliver a six-pack in exchange for ‘help’ that the ferryman had given him for some article he wrote. This could very well be a lie. I mean he could very well have killed the ferryman the earlier night and then “discovered” his body later.

The next most suspicious person we could think of was Mocair. Klaudia pointed out how Antonio had noted that Mocair had refused questioning when Antonio went to him. This is certainly interesting and very, very dubious of him—I told this to Klaudia too—given how big of a suspect he was in the last series of murders that happened twenty years ago. I mean, before Callahan was caught, more than half of the town was more than sure that it had to be Mocair at fault, and not for no reason.

We visited the mortuary after that, to talk to Drew Smith about her insights. While we were talking, I mentioned that it had to have been someone big and formidable, I guess, to have committed the murders since it was no easy feat to harm a man of the size and strength of the ferryman. He was nothing compared to me and Antonio but he was definitely bigger than most on the island. To my surprise, Drew said that it did not have to be that case. Apparently, there was an extremely high percentage of alcohol found in his bloodstream during his autopsy—he had to be unbelievably drunk, maybe even to the point of unconsciousness when he was killed. So, it was very possible for someone who wasn’t as well built to kill him too. Besides, the wounds and cuts indicated that it wasn’t brute force that killed him, it was the killer’s surgeon-like precision. This was a very interesting observation and it made it so that we couldn’t discount anyone.

As I was driving Klaudia and me home, I hesitantly mentioned that we should also consider Drew as a suspect. Klaudia immediately exploded, as expected. I knew she would have that reaction, but when she heard me out, it made sense to her too. I told her that there was only one person on the island who had the skill set that we just found out the killer had, and it was Drew. Besides, one could not ignore that incident with Drew that happened some years back.

Klaudia quietened at that but then very pointedly mentioned that we couldn’t forget Akeno and June either. I told her that there was nothing that pointed to them, and honestly, picturing their faces in your head should tell you that none of them has the brains to do something like this. Klaudia said that they both were on the ferryman’s list, though. In fact, June was the last person to see the ferryman alive. I couldn’t refuse that because this is true.

We are at the manor now, we just had dinner made by June. As I was retiring to my room, Klaudia stopped me, saying that she just remembered something. She said that on the tenth of February, while Klaudia had been exploring the island, she had seen Sariah Jaques standing in the driveway of the ferryman’s house, just staring at the place. According to Klaudia, she had given her a foreboding look. I don’t think this matters much, Klaudia thinks the same, but I’ve made a note of it nevertheless. Possibilities and scenarios are all swirling in my brain. Nothing makes sense anymore.

by Erin D’costa on March 1, 2018