Stone picked up the phone and called Sergeant Young’s cell phone.
“This is Young.”
“It’s Stone Barrington. You have a list, don’t you, of everybody who’s present on the island and those who have left?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Will you look up Caleb Stone’s family? I’d like to know where they all are.”
“Just a minute.”
Stone could hear papers being shuffled.
Young came back on the line. “Caleb Stone and his wife are at home on the island; his twin sons left five days ago to participate in a yacht race in Newport, Rhode Island.”
“Has the location of the twins been confirmed?”
“We confirmed that they took the ferry, but nothing after that.”
“Will you see if you can confirm their location for every day since they left the island?”
“And this is important why?”
“We’ve learned that the boys have a juvenile record for torturing animals.”
“That’s not good.”
“We’ve also learned that the City of New Haven has four unsolved murders of local women over the past two years. The boys are students at Yale.”
“Yes, I know. Can they connect any of the murdered women to the twins?”
“They have no suspects.”
“I’ve pretty much eliminated the twins as suspects here because of their absence from the island.”
“I’d very much like to know if their presence in Newport can be confirmed.”
“So would I. I’ll call Mr. Stone and find out how to reach them.”
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
Young hung up.
“What do you think?” Lance asked.
“I think this theory is too thin to mention to Ham; he’d want to hunt down the boys. Still
, we don’t have anything else to go on, so this lead, however slim, needs to be run down, and Young is on it.”
“Oh,” Lance said, picking up some acetates, “we’ve got the thermal images for last night.”
“Let’s take them into the study; everybody needs to be involved, especially Ham. He’s worrying me.”
They left the little office.
“We’ve got last night’s satellite thermal images of the island,” Lance said.
Everybody gathered around the coffee table, and Lance spread them out and pointed as he talked. “As you can see, at three-twenty-six a.m., when these images were captured, the public parts of town are empty of warm bodies: The yacht club, the Dark Harbor Store, the dining room at the inn are all empty. Everybody is in bed, pretty much.”