Mike paced on the old floorboards, looked out toward the light blue-green landscape of the ocean. Sometimes, on clear summer days, when the sun was just getting started and things seemed okay, he thought about his mom; found himself missing her more than usual, more than when he was busy with school and sports and homework. He had more time for reflection, he supposed, and smiled to himself at how easily such a mature thought sprang into his mind. He also worried about his dad, about their future. Mom had been everything to them, and he wished she was still around, still his mom, because life seemed too mysterious without her, a puzzle with broken-edged pieces, the finished assembly creating a hazy picture he could not understand. Mike thought his dad felt the same way, and that’s why he acted the way he did toward Mike. Because Mike was a mystery now, too. And maybe, when his dad looked at him, even loved him, he saw a fuzzier Mike. A Mike that was too hard to see clearly, too hard to understand. So he’d stopped trying.
“Hey, ding-dong!”
Mike spun, saw Joe smiling, a rifle and handgun clutched in his arms. He’d put on a worn, half-mesh Dodgers cap, changed into a pair of basketball shorts and thrown on a thin white t-shirt, making Mike feel a little exposed.
“You changed,” Mike said.
“So? You wanna borrow a shirt or some shoes? My folks are in town shopping so there’s no one home to worry about.”
Mike thought of wearing Joe’s clothes and begged off. They’d be swimming again soon enough, anyway. It’s what they always ended up doing when the afternoons got too hot.
“Nah,” he said. “Cool guns.”
The guns, he knew, were toys. They’d played with them before. They didn’t even shoot pellets, and the rifle had stopped making the winding-down piiing! noise it used to make whenever you’d cock and fire. Still, they would serve.
“I get the rifle,” Mike said, and grabbed it from Joe’s half-grasp.
“Fine,” Joe said. “But that means you’re the bad guy.”
Mike saw something sticking from the waistband of Joe’s blue shorts. Something metal.
“What’s that?”
Joe smiled. “You’ll find out,” he said, pulling the white t-shirt down to cover it. “The second I catch your sorry ass.”
Mike didn’t need to be told twice and, rifle clutched in two hands, leapt from the porch and started to run. “Thirty seconds!” he yelled as he sprinted away, and could only hope Joe had the honor to count all the way, nice and slow.
He’d need that time to hide.
* * *
Hank Denton sat baking in the lot of Dover Point’s one and only grocery store, the rear of the SUV filled with enough sandwich makings, light beer (for Hank), red wine (for Mariel), snacks, frozen veggies, steaks, hot dogs, hamburger meat, milk, juice and cereal to last them the remainder of their holiday. Hank was tired and hated shopping. It made him cranky. Small aisles, overpriced food, bad light, the inevitable long wait to check out, hauling all the crap from one place to another to another. If something small came up, Mariel could make a quick run, but for the most part, Hank made a point to limit the major shopping trips to a maximum of three over the course of a summer, two if the Lord was willing and little Joe wasn’t eating them out of house and home.
Hot as a buzzard’s asshole, he thought, not understanding the logic of his metaphor but too hot and too damned tired to give a can of beans. He looked at the dashboard’s digital readout: 8:58 a.m. Good Lord, top of the morning and already a scorcher, he thought, glad they decided to shop first-thing before the midday shopping rush and the real nasty heat took over.
“Let’s go, Mrs. Denton!” he yelled from the driver’s seat through the open passenger window, watching his wife’s ass, clutched tight in high-cut, thigh-clinging cargo shorts as she pushed their two empty carts toward the holding area, where they were corralled like wire-mesh cattle. She had a fine ass, did his wife, and it had been fine, for him anyway, going on twenty-two years now. As she pushed the carts awkwardly into their stall Hank imagined the other carts squawking irritably as they were shuffled deeper into the pen. Mariel tossed him a one-finger salute over her shoulder as she pushed in the last cart, then turned and gave him that electric smile she had always been able to pull out, regardless of the situation, like a magician might pull a white hare from his shiny top hat. Hank still got a quiver up his spine every time she performed that little trick. And she damn well knows it, he thought, wondering if Joe would be playing outside with the Klein boy and if the ice cream would hold out if he and the missus fell into a little afternoon delight upon their return to the Barn.
Their summer house was about the furthest thing from a barn there was, of course, but the wide vertical shingles painted “barn red” and the A-frame structure had given it the moniker, a holdout from when Mariel’s parents owned it before them. It was a drain on their finances, of course, even if it was just the property taxes and the upkeep they had to worry about. The house had been left them free and clear by Mariel’s folks when they realized their life-long dream and moved to France to live out their retirement. Her father was a writer and her mother a romantic, so while most couples pushing eighty were happy with the Florida or Arizona sunshine, her folks had gone against the grain and found a chateau nestled between two vineyards just outside Avignon, a place he and Mariel had promised they would visit. Soon. For now, Hank would be tickled as peach fuzz to drive out of here, get their asses back home, pull Mariel’s sweat-soaked t-shirt off her body and carry her to the master bedroom.
“Let’s go, woman!” he barked, and was about to hit the horn when the Electric Smile turned into the Upraised Eyebrow. A cease and desist if there ever was one. He set his hands in his lap and shut his mouth as she opened the door and settled into the hot leather, rolling up the window to escape the baking heat.
“Woman?”
“Well, you are, ain’t ya?”
But Mariel was already twisting the vents toward her, closing her eyes against the cool air. Hank studied the sweat of her neck for a moment, then was caught red-handed when she flicked her green eyes at him, a knowing smile on her face.
“Oh, please, it’s too hot,” she said, slipping her shoes off and pushing her bare feet against the dashboard.
“What?” he said in his most innocent tone, now forced to deal with her bare legs in his direct line of vision—she must think I’m a fool, he thought. He put the truck in reverse, faster than he rightly needed to, and got them the hell out of the Dover Grocery parking lot.
It had been two seconds, he thought much later. At the most.
That’s how long Hank’s attention had been diverted by a last, longing look at Mariel’s tan calf when he gunned the black Tahoe onto Seaside Avenue, the pothole-ridden two-lane road that led out of Dover Point’s downtown.
“Hank!” Mariel had screamed as he started his left turn.
Seeing only the flare of metal against the sun and hearing the shotgun-bark of Mariel’s scream, Hank slammed down the brakes, stopping the truck’s grill about an inch from a worn green plastic handlebar.
Hank gawped. It was a damned cart. Somehow, someway, some idiot had pushed a cart out of the parking lot, over the three-foot grass dip that divided the edge of the lot and the road, and into the northbound lane of Seaside Avenue.
Being a veteran state trooper, Hank had his share of high-speed pursuits and been first on-scene at more highway accidents than he could count, so he chastised himself for being so careless and, even worse, for reacting like a jumpy schoolboy. He was a professional for fuck’s sake.
So why was his heart thumping like he’d just sprinted three flights of stairs over almost hitting a damned grocery cart?
He turned to Mariel, a wry smile already creeping on his face. “Well, that was a close…”
Past her half-stricken, half-annoyed face—that beautiful face that he’d looked forward to seeing every morning when he woke up and every night when he came home from a long, often horrible, day—was a white Ford Taurus
doing about forty miles per hour. Hank had time to register the car’s dented hood and the shocked face of the grizzled old-timer behind the wheel, his mouth forming an O of surprise at the large black truck idling stupidly in the middle of the road.
Running on instinct alone, Hank’s hands threw the truck in reverse and slammed down the gas pedal.
He got them about six inches of retreat when the driver of the Taurus swung his car to the right, the combined efforts of both drivers the split-second difference that likely saved Mariel Denton’s life.
The Taurus rammed the passenger side of the Tahoe between the door and front fender, the grill of the old Ford tearing into the truck’s door, fender and smoking right front wheel. It bounced off the truck like a rubber ball off concrete, its front grill crumpled into the engine, the single driver’s side airbag deployed and smothered the old man’s face. The passenger side of the Tahoe lifted off the ground and Hank watched, as if in slow-motion, as Mariel’s door exploded inwards, the glass of the window detonating in a cloud of fragmented glass, the windshield spider-webbing. Hank noticed, of all things, the glove box burst open and an array of papers, pens and a couple Washington State Police branded penlights throw clear. Mariel’s body was jolted forward and sideways, and Hank clearly heard a bone snap, the sound not hidden by her screams as her head and neck whipped like a rag doll against the seatbelt, her arms flung toward the roof, blood already spraying from some unidentifiable part of her. In the split-second that followed him watching his wife thrown and the truck’s front end disassemble into fragments, the airbag deployed with a THUMP and slammed into his face like a brawler’s left hook.
The truck fell back to the earth, the wheel giving way and folding under like a bad hand of cards, sinking the passenger side of the vehicle only inches from the hard, hot pavement of Seaside Avenue.
Time resumed its natural speed, the airbag wilted and Hank’s shock lasted only a few seconds longer. Then he was unbuckling himself, yelling her name and climbing across the truck’s interior to gather up his wife’s broken, unconscious body.
PART TWO
1st Low Tide
(9am—11am, approx.)
Mike ran along the coastline, dipped his eyes down the small drop that led to the skinny line of rough beach and the breaking white foam of the ocean’s edge. To his right was a hundred yards of tough grass and rock clusters, and beyond that the small grove of Douglas firs, the blanket beneath them ankle-high with dead needles. Mike looked at his bare feet, turned back to see if Joe was in sight yet, tossed one more glance to the rough coastline. The stairs leading down to the cove was about fifty yards ahead, but if he went down there he’d be trapped.
One way in, one way out.
Fingers coiled tightly around the cracked plastic pump of the rifle, he weighed his options. Then darted for the trees.
The shade felt cool on Mike’s bare neck and shoulders, already heated from the mid-morning sun. His knee-length red swimsuit had faded to a pinkish rose over the last couple summers, and it did little to keep the thin stray branches and shin-high plants from caressing his skin like wispy dry fingers as he burrowed deeper into the grove.
Slipping behind one of the larger trees, he hunkered down, ass-to-ankles, and peeked at the tree line, breathing steady, anticipating the flicker of shadowy movement beyond the black vertical bars of trunks, their drooping canopies allowing the sun to drip through into patches and slanted spills upon the brown needles. He could hear the soft recurring rolls of the surf as it lapped onto the land, a bird calling out above and behind him. His feet shuffled in the itchy needles, he wiped a runaway bead of sweat from his eye, tried to slow his heartbeat after the run.
There was no sign of Joe, and Mike’s knees were beginning to strain with the effort of crouching. He stood, swiped what felt like a bug from his knee, waited. He was about to dash to another tree, get another perspective, take his friend by surprise if he could. A twig snapped. He froze, breath caught in his throat.
Someone was behind him.
He didn’t turn, didn’t move a muscle. But somehow, some way, he knew it.
It must be Joe, but how? he thought, not believing it but wanting to, desperately wanting to. Yeah, he reasoned, swallowing hard, Joe must have miraculously snuck through the grove from the far side, the one that met the main road leading to town, or through the backyard of his house. Not impossible.
But Mike knew he would have heard him clomping through the trees, breaking the underbrush, especially now that he was wearing shoes. He would have been easy to hear from a hundred feet away. It couldn’t be Joe.
The moist shade of the trees tingled his skin, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up straight. Whoever it was could see him. Was close. He was being watched. He felt it as strongly as he felt the toy gun in his clenched, sweaty hands. An insect crawled onto his foot, but he didn’t dare move.
There was the sound of a step in the underbrush. The soft crunching of dry needles. Mike’s breath quickened, his eyes darted to the tree line, hoping to see Joe now, happy to be captured or shot as long as it meant he could run away, get out of the trees, escape from whatever was creeping up on him.
A sound, like an exhale, came from just behind his ear. He could almost feel the breath on his neck, just below his long, sea-roughened blond hair. He was paralyzed with fear and his body began to tremble as he waited for cold hands to rest on his shoulders, to turn him to face whatever it was that had emerged from the shadows.
A voice softer than the air, a whisper so frail and distant it may have come from his own subconscious, fell into his ear.
“Mike…” it said.
Something coarse and narrow—a finger, his mind whispered—slid against his skin, up his shoulder blade toward the curve of his sun-browned neck. He heard himself moan in terror, and when cold, wet fingertips brushed past his clenched jaw to caress his cheek, he burst from behind the tree like a hare and ran.
As the ambulance loaded Joe’s mother into its belly of needles and tubes—her body strapped across the forehead, chin, chest, waist and legs by blue Velcro, an oxygen mask over her mouth and an IV drip plunged into her arm—Mike rushed out from the line of firs and into the open ground between the cove and the ocean, the rifle left on the ground by the tree where he’d dropped it, forgotten; a spider crawled over its barrel, thinking it a potential home for her eggs.
“BANG!” Joe screamed. In the throes of his panic, Mike actually spun toward the sound, threw his hands in the air, wanting to yell, “Don’t shoot!” but instead simply let out a scream before realizing it was just Joe, pointing a plastic pistol at him from behind a stubby rock the size of a toy chest, his eyes narrowed behind the gun’s shaft, lining Mike up for the easy kill.
Joe’s eyes widened in surprise at the look on his friend’s face. Mike didn’t look upset, or startled. Mike looked scared, the kind of look reserved exclusively for childhood’s extra-special occasions: night terrors, being pulled into a car by a stranger, being told you were going to lose a parent who you deeply loved. But like all children, Joe didn’t care to explore that feeling, didn’t care to identify it or justify its reality, or the reality of what might cause your best summer friend to look like he just took an almighty dump in his swim trunks in the middle of a hot July morning. So instead of dropping the game and finding out what had happened, Joe hardened instead and made a joke of it, a whispering voice deep down in his subconscious informing him this was the best way to make it go away, to get things back to normal, by god.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he said. Then, as an afterthought, “You’re dead.”
Mike’s fear melted into relief, and then embarrassment. What was wrong with him? Hearing things in the trees? Running from shadows like a little kid? He lifted his trembling hands and felt his face flush red at the realization he’d dropped the rifle. Most likely by the tree where… he looked back toward the grove, studied the spaces between the brown trunks, the shaggy green carapace of the tre
es hiding what lay within, still watching even now.
“Uh, I…” he started. He inspected his arms, saw raw red scratches, a couple deep enough to bloom spotted red lines of blood. He looked at his stomach, his legs, saw a few welts, a little gash on his hip where he vaguely remembered bouncing off the broken stub of a branch as he ran by.
“You look freaked out,” Joe said.
“I’m fine. There was an animal in there, I think.”
“Ha! Raccoons, maybe. Well, whatever, you’re totally dead. Or, better yet, my prisoner!” Joe said, and yanked the metal object out from beneath his shirt, the thing Mike had seen stuck in his waistband earlier.
To Mike’s surprise, then delight, Joe had miraculously procured a very shiny, very real-looking, pair of handcuffs.
“Cool,” he said. “Can I hold ‘em?”
“Sure,” Joe said, shrugging, “they’re my dad’s. He’s got like three pairs with his cop stuff, uses them on real criminals. Neat, huh?”
Mike nodded, felt the cool weight of the shining metal in his palms, the thick short chain between the two circular clasps. He tried to open one cuff, was disappointed when it didn’t budge. He pushed it inward instead, and the cuff gave a satisfying click-click-click as the empty hole within narrowed. “Nice,” he said. “But it doesn’t open.”
Joe rolled his eyes, snatched the cuffs from Mike’s hand. “You gotta have the key, dummy.” With a flourish, Joe dug into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out a metal key. He pushed it into the cuff’s locking mechanism, twisted it, and the cuff sprang open.
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