Chapter Eight
“They don’t look like murderers,” Cora said.
She cocked her head, examining the front of the paper at Tito’s corner store.
She and Dina each had an ice cream—vanilla with nuts for Cora, peppermint for Dina—while they waited for the ferry to take them back to Pelican after school.
They had recently become something close to friends.
Before that, Dina had thought Cora was babyish and Cora thought Dina was stuck up.
But Cora realized that she would never have to explain to Dina about the dog tags, or the way the city lights winked at Pelican through the morning fog as the Bay turned a hundred different shades of blue.
So a tentative friendship had formed while they waited for the ferry, and on juicy news days, they ordered a single scoop of ice cream each and pooled their money for an additional bottle of pop and an illicit tabloid.
The ice cream left a thin film of white on Cora’s upper lip.
“Most murderers don’t look like murderers,” Dina said, licking the melted ice cream from her fingers.
“The Gasper does.”
“Gasper does,” Dina agreed.
They sat down on the side stoop at Tito’s and cracked open the bottle of pop before the ferry came to take them back to Pelican. They took turns sipping it and looking at the newspaper.
“Hurry up,” Dina said, tapping her foot on the pavement. She bummed a cigarette from a passing teenage boy and lit it while Cora surveyed the pictures.
BUTCHERY AT THE BASTION!
EXCLUSIVE PHOTOGRAPHS! the page shouted.
The carbon image that accompanied the article was dark and gritty; but if Cora squinted, she could make out a wall where a painting had been carved clean out.
She could see knife gashes in the satin damask wall behind the empty picture frame.
In the bottom right of the photograph was a leg, splayed awkward and lifeless on the floor.
The angle of it made Cora’s ice cream taste too sweet.
Mar 24—BOSTON—A theft at the Dolores Williams Bastion Museum occurred just after ten o’clock last night. By 10:23 PM, blood ran red in the prestigious museum—and five pieces of priceless art had vanished.
Early eyewitness reports place at least three masked thieves at the scene of the crime. The suspects used razor blades to butcher the art masterpieces straight from their frames, and then brutally dispatched two guards who got in their way.
Two suspects were apprehended at the scene, but their accomplice—or accomplices—escaped!
“ ‘Five irreplaceable masterpieces in total are currently missing,’ ” Dina read breathlessly over Cora’s shoulder. “ ‘The Bastion reports that the pieces taken were two Vermeers, two Rembrandts, and a Renoir. Their joint value is estimated at close to a million dollars.’ ”
She whistled.
“Here,” Cora said, handing over the paper. Cora waved her hand in front of her face and scooted away so that her father wouldn’t smell the smoke on her.
“They’re kind of handsome,” Dina said, inhaling, studying the picture.
Cora wrinkled her nose. “They’re murderers.”
Dina shrugged. “Doesn’t mean they’re not handsome.”
Cora studied the picture once more as the ferry whistle sounded. “They won’t come to Pelican.” She licked the last of her ice cream, pushing it down into the hollow cone with her tongue. “They’re too young.”
Dina stubbed out her cigarette. “Just because they’re young doesn’t mean they don’t have to pay for what they did.”
Three months later, Jack and Leo Yates arrived on the same ferry Cora rode to school each day, only it was outfitted with a black flag that meant prisoners were aboard.
They were already dressed in chambray, their hands cuffed behind their backs.
They looked different from their mug shots—even younger in the flesh.
The older one looked sick, almost as if he were frightened.
It was hard to imagine either of them being a murderer.
But Dina was right. Murderers and monsters wore normal human masks.
It wasn’t what they looked like that made the difference.
It was what they did in the dark of the night, when they thought they could get away with it.
Cora and Dina watched through the fence.
The crowd that gathered to watch them was a larger crew than usual, because the crime was so infamous, the boys so young, and there were two of them.
Brothers. Cora stood next to the Johnson baby in a pram, who had almost no hair and crystal blue eyes that peered out from behind the fence.
Even Cora’s mother came. She usually never did.
And her mother’s silent, weighty presence suddenly made Cora feel as though she were watching something shameful that she shouldn’t be.
It took seventy-five guards and personnel to run the prison, and a third of them lined up to meet the disembarking prisoners, including the island’s chaplain who always smelled like peppermint. He came out to watch grimly. There were two new tattered souls in his care.
Cora’s mother took her hand as the brothers stepped onto the island. The older Yates brother looked up to where they were standing and said something in surprise, and Guard Johnson swiftly rapped him on the wrist with his baton. Beside Cora, her mother flinched.
She dropped Cora’s hand. “They aren’t animals,” she said softly. Then she turned away, as if she had seen enough.
Leo kept his head down after that, and Cora had shifted to watching his brother. Jack Yates had a slight cowlick. He followed behind his brother; but instead of shuffling with his head lowered, he turned and looked at all of them.
“That one’s going to be trouble,” Dina whispered next to her. “Mark my words.”
Cora felt a strange, electric crackle inside her when she met Jack’s gaze. She was struck most of all by the fiery look in his eyes, because it wasn’t hateful, defeated, or full of fear like his brother’s.
It was just defiant.