It was obvious Walker knew the whole area as well as Dan had known his backyard, and in his terse, laconic way he provided a commentary that, while it probably didn’t stop her worrying, at least appeared to take Claire’s mind off what was happening in Shoal Bay. “Big mama bear there,” he said, pointing ahead to what looked like a dark rock on the beach. It was only when they came right up to it that the rock came to life, and they watched a black snout lift into the air, sniffing the wind.
“How’d you know it’s a mama?” Dan asked, watching the bear carefully as they passed by her no more than thirty feet away.
Wordlessly, Walker turned and pointed to two smaller rock-like forms behind and to one side of the big bear. Two miniature black heads had lifted to look at them, and as they watched, one of the two young ones stood up and started to amble along the beach.
“Swallowtail.”
Walker’s quiet announcement a few minutes later drew their attention to the tumbling flight of a brilliant yellow butterfly.
Later, Dan would not be able to figure out when he stopped worrying and let the peace of the afternoon steal into his soul. Maybe it was their proximity to the shore, which put them in almost intimate contact with the wildlife as they wove through the narrow passages. Maybe it was the serenity, which they could discern even above the steady hum of the motor as they idled over rocks and reefs. Maybe it was Walker’s quiet voice, pointing out a weasel or a mink scouring the beach, or the plummet of a tern as it dove for a fish, or the magnificent sweep of an eagle flying low overhead.
Whatever it was, he suddenly found himself in a time warp, transported back to a land where humans held no sway. The sky and sea were full of birds: terns, oystercatchers, mergansers, and cormorants. Weasels and mink scoured the beach. Bears foraged on the shore, and the wind carried the slightly astringent scent of hemlock and cedar. It was magical and oddly euphoric.
As they exited the narrow passage just a couple of miles from the place where Annie’s boat was anchored, they picked up speed and Dan was snapped back to the present. He remembered entering this channel just a few days earlier, although it seemed much longer ago than that. Within minutes they had turned a bend and the big old workboat appeared, looming up against the far shore.
A decrepit wooden rowboat was tied to the bottom of the ladder, blocking their access. Dan figured they would have to move it before they could climb aboard, but Walker directed him around to the shore side of the hull and up onto a patch of shingle where two wide wooden planks formed a steep walkway up to the deck, providing relatively easy access to the rocky beach. Annie was standing at the top of it.
“Took your time,” she said.
“Still quicker than my canoe,” Walker answered.
“Huh.” She turned and disappeared into the cabin. A few seconds later they heard an odd moan. It wavered in pitch and then was cut off by another voice, this one obviously Annie’s.
“Shut the fuck up!”
Dan grinned as he looked over at Claire, who was just stepping off the planks and onto the deck. “Don’t think I would want Annie as my nurse,” he said sotto voce. “She doesn’t seem to have terrific patient skills.”
She smiled. “I doubt Tom is a terrific patient.”
“You know him?” Dan was surprised, although he didn’t know why he should be. She had spent a good few months in the area, and now that he thought about it, it seemed obvious that she would have come across him. But she hadn’t said anything till now, and he had simply assumed she had never met the man.
“Of course. We all know him—or at least we know who he is. He’s a hermit. Lives in an old shack made of driftwood on Starfish Island. I’ve never talked to him . . . don’t think anyone has. And I’ve never seen him out on the water before, either.”
“Huh. Must be something pretty serious to drag him all the way here.”
She nodded in agreement just as Annie re-emerged from the cabin.
“You wait out here. If you all come in, you’ll set him off again and he’ll start that moaning shit. Drives me nuts.” She pointed a grimy finger at a porthole as she turned to go back inside. “I’ll open that so you can hear. May take a while to get him talking.”
“Talking? I thought he needed medical help,” Dan said to her back as she disappeared through the door.
She stopped and backed up. “Not the kind you can give him!” She gave a harsh laugh and shook her head. “I lied when I told you he was hurt. Made that up—although he scratched up his arm a bit getting over here. But he ain’t sick—at least, no more than the crazy old bastard always has been. I just needed to get you over here, and I remembered Walker saying it might not be good to talk on the radio. I figured saying he needed help might do it.” She spread her hands in what Dan figured was the closest to an apology he was going to get. Her eyes slid across to Claire. “I figured this dead guy might be tied to what happened to your boat.”
“Dead guy?” Dan, Walker, and Claire spoke in unison. “What dead guy?”
“I’ll get him to tell you,” Annie said as she disappeared inside.
A second or so later the porthole opened, and Dan could faintly make out someone hunched over the table. His back was to them, but Dan could see enough to tell that the man was both skinny and filthy, and the shirt he was wearing was so threadbare, it looked as if it might fall off at any moment. He also stank: his sour body odor drifted out the opening with Annie’s voice.
“Tom.”
There was no answer.
“Tom.” Annie’s voice grew louder and sharper. “What’d the dead guy look like?”
The ululation caught them all off guard.
“Jesus!” Walker breathed. “Sounds like an animal caught in a trap.”
“Probably how he feels,” murmured Claire. “Stuck inside a little cabin with someone he doesn’t know—and having to talk and tell her his story. Must be tough for someone like Tom.”
“Yeah. Poor bastard.”
Dan thought Walker might have been joking, but his face was full of compassion.
“Tom!” Annie’s voice was now a yell. “Cut it out. What’d he look like?”
The shriek subsided to a moan and gradually faded to the occasional wheezing gasp.
“Dead!” the reedy voice quavered.
“Yeah, I know he’s dead, but who is he?” Annie asked. “What’s he look like?”
“Man! Dead!”
“Yeah. Okay. Anything else?”
There was a pause, a snuffle, and then the answer came. “Red hair. Beard.”
Another pause, then, “Wood shirt.”
“Wood shirt? What the hell is a wood shirt?”
Annie’s patience was obviously wearing thin and her voice was rising. Tom’s moan started up again.
“Okay. Okay. Wood shirt. What color was this wood shirt?”
There was a silence lasting several seconds and then Annie’s voice could be heard again. “So where is this guy with the red hair and the wood shirt?”
Another pause, another moan, then two words that turned into a shriek that set their teeth on edge and drove them all back from the porthole. They also sent Annie back out of the cabin with Tom’s words twisting on the air behind her.
“In water!”
“He’s off again,” Annie said as she joined them on the aft deck, as far away from the shrieking as they could get. “But at least it’s the same story. I thought at first it might be one of his invisible friends he was talking about.” She saw Dan’s puzzled look and gestured at Walker. “Ask him. We’ve all heard him talking to them.”
Walker nodded. “Yeah. But this seems pretty solid. I mean, red hair and a beard? But what the hell is a wood shirt?”
“He’s talking about the same thing I’m wearing,” Annie answered, pointing at herself. “You couldn’t see him from out here, but he kept pointing at me when he was saying it. Finally figured out he was pointing at my shirt.” She shook one of her lapels. It was made from a heavy flannel cloth in
a green-and-blue plaid design. “Loggers wear them.”
Dan looked at her shirt. “Yeah. It’s called a lumberjack shirt.” He smiled. “Lumberjacks are loggers and loggers cut wood. A lumberjack shirt—a wood shirt. Guess that makes some kind of sense.”
“So where’s this dead guy supposed to be?” asked Walker.
“Said he found him floating in the water by his shack.”
“Where’s that?” Dan asked.
“About five miles up that way.” Walker pointed northeast.
“Huh. Maybe it’s someone from that crew boat,” Dan said.
“Could be, I guess.” Walker didn’t sound convinced.
“He’s not from the crew boat.”
They had completely forgotten about Claire. Now they all turned to stare at her. She was clinging to the stern rail, looking as if she had seen a ghost.
“Claire?”
She continued to stare off into the distance, her face ashen.
“Claire? Are you okay?”
“His name is Robbie. He’s my boss.”
NINETEEN
“Jesus! Yeah, you told me your boss was coming up,” Walker said. “You think this could be him?”
Claire swayed and Dan stepped toward her, gripping her arms to steady her. She stared up at him, a pleading look on her face. “I completely forgot about him! How could I do that?” Her eyes were begging him for forgiveness, for help, for relief from a sin she seemed to think was so huge, it was unforgivable. “I didn’t even think about him once.”
“Why would you, with everything else that’s been going on?”
Claire pulled away from him, then buried her face in her hands. “Oh, God! This is insane.”
She started to crumple to the deck and Dan reached for her again, pulling her to him. He felt a brief moment of resistance, but then she leaned into him and pushed her face into his shoulder, her body racked with sobs. Instinctively, Dan’s arms wrapped around her, cradling her against him, and he lowered his chin to rest gently on her head. He inhaled the scent of her hair: fresh, clean, a mix of sunshine and the ocean that seemed to run along his nerve paths like a mild electric current. Over the top of her head, his eyes met Walker’s and he saw not only concern but also approval. That was . . . interesting. He was not sure if he approved himself. If he had still been on the job, he sure as hell wouldn’t be doing this. She was both a witness and a victim. But to hell with the job. He was out of that now. Those rules no longer applied and this felt right. And good.
He held her and let her cry, listening as Walker and Annie discussed what they should do.
“Sounds like him, huh?” Annie’s attempt at a whisper sounded more like a croak. “I guess you’ll have to go over to Tom’s shack and check it out. Better make it soon too. The tide’ll be turning in half an hour, and if there’s a body floating there, it’ll be carried out on the current and you ain’t never gonna find it.”
Dan met Walker’s gaze and a silent communication passed between the two men. There was no doubt that Walker thought Tom’s description of the body made it pretty well a certainty that it was Claire’s boss, but it needed to be checked out, and they needed to do that as quickly as possible.
There was no way Tom was going to go back to his shack until he was convinced the body was gone, and Annie couldn’t—and wouldn’t—leave him. That meant Walker had to go, as he was the only other person who knew where Tom lived. And he needed Dan to help him move the body if they found it.
But they needed Claire to go with them. Robbie was her boss, and she was the only one who could identify him. A troubled silence fell as the two men looked helplessly at her shaking form. It was something that neither of them could find the courage to ask her to do.
“You have a camera?” Dan asked Annie quietly. If they could take photos, they could get the ID later—assuming the body was still in decent shape: immersion in salt water meant rapid decomposition, and scavengers would not be slow to use the opportunity presented.
She shook her head. “Nope.”
“It’s okay.” Claire’s voice was muffled against his chest, but she had obviously picked up on their concern. He felt her take a gulp of air, and then she lifted her head and looked up at him. “I can do it.”
He started to shake his head, but her hands pressed against him and stopped him.
“Really. I’ll be okay.” She moved away from him, and he felt a chill on his chest. He touched his shirt, feeling the dampness from her tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she saw his gesture, and he felt a surge of . . . what? Concern? Compassion? It couldn’t be anything more than that. He barely knew her.
He wanted to hug her to him again but knew she wouldn’t allow it. All he could do was watch helplessly as she straightened her shoulders in an effort to prepare herself for what lay ahead.
The three of them crowded into the dinghy and stowed the tarp and rope that Annie had provided under the seat. Annie stood at the top of the plank walkway, watching them go. Tom, of course, didn’t make an appearance, although his moans followed them as they moved away.
Dan would have liked to keep Claire close to him, but the requirements of the dinghy made that impossible. Instead, she sat by herself on the thwart in the center of the boat, her shoulders hunched, a forlorn and lonely figure that wrenched his heart. He half hoped that Walker would provide some distraction with more of his commentary, but he too remained silent, his eyes focused on the water ahead.
The body was easy to spot, floating face down among the rocks close to shore. It was almost directly in front of Tom’s shack, so it couldn’t have moved much since Tom had seen it, and Dan wondered if the shirt was caught on something that was holding it in place. They would have to drag it to shore if they were going to be able to wrap it up, although what they would do with it then, he had yet to figure out. They could maybe drag it over closer to Annie’s boat and leave it on the shore till they could get hold of someone from the coast guard or the police to come and get it, but a tarp wasn’t going to keep animals away.
Over the top of Claire’s head, Dan saw Walker nod toward a shingle beach where a huge driftwood log lay half buried. It was well past the body, and if they could get Claire to wait there, they could spare her the worst of it.
The dinghy bumped gently as Dan brought it up to the beach. He stepped out and reached down to Claire. “Give me your hand.” He spoke to her gently, as he would to a child. “You can sit here. Walker and I will take care of everything. We’ll come and get you when we’re ready for you.”
She looked at him mutely, then stepped slowly out of the dinghy and let him lead her, unresisting, to the log. Her quietness was so out of character that it worried him and he exchanged a glance with Walker. They couldn’t leave her alone for long. They would have to work quickly.
The two men returned to the dinghy and headed back to where the body floated face down in the water. Close up, the red hair was obvious, although checking the beard would have to wait until they could get the body to shore. The limp form was hung up on some kind of underwater obstacle, and even though Dan jockeyed the dinghy back and forth, a patch of jagged rock that lay just below the surface repelled his efforts to get in close enough to get a hold. He was starting to get frustrated when Walker solved the problem in the simple, direct fashion Dan was beginning to expect.
“Hang on a minute,” he said as he removed his shirt, pulled off shoes and jeans, and slipped overboard into the water.
Dan shook his head. It was typical Walker: no discussion, no argument, he just did what needed to be done.
“You want to find a place to beach the dinghy, I’ll try and work this guy free.” Walker already had a solid grasp on the “wood shirt” that still clothed the body, and as Dan watched he ducked underwater, presumably to see what was holding it. Dan quickly turned the dinghy and took it back to the first landing place he could find, hauled the tarp and rope out, and dragged them back along the beach toward the gruesome scene.
By the time he got there, Walker had worked the body free of the rocks that were holding it and was guiding it in. Dan shucked his own jeans, put his shoes back on, and waded in to help, gasping as the cold knotted his muscles and puckered his skin.
“Jesus! How can you stand this? It’s freezing!”
Walker smiled. “Hey, we Indians are tough. Not like you wimpy white guys.”
Dan snorted. “Yeah, right.” He knew banter helped to keep his mind off what they were doing, and he guessed it was the same for Walker. “We need to get him somewhere we can slide him out onto the tarp.”
They clambered carefully over the slippery rocks, gently easing their burden toward an area of sloping sandstone.
“Can you hold him for a couple of minutes?” Dan asked as they neared the edge. “I’ll get the tarp and spread it out.”
The body was heavy. Robbie—if it was Robbie—was a big man and he was still fully clothed. The sodden flannel shirt, heavy jeans, and boots added to the weight, and the frigid water was rapidly draining Dan’s energy, to the point where it took all his strength and determination to keep going. Several times he came close to quitting, but both the thought of Claire sitting by herself on that lonely beach and the sight of Walker’s blue lips and clamped jaw made him keep going.
In the end, they had to pull the tarp into the water and slide it underneath the corpse. The muscles in Dan’s legs were starting to cramp, and pain knifed down his calf. He lost his footing more than once and his ankle stung where he had grazed it against the rough edge of a rock. Across from him, Walker stumbled several times and Dan realized that he too was nearing the end of his endurance. As soon as the top edge of the plastic had been secured by tying it to a rock, he staggered out of the water and flung himself down on the ground, panting and shivering.
“You okay?” he asked when he had caught his breath enough to speak.
“Yeah,” Walker answered. “Better than that guy, anyway.”
They both lay there shivering for a few more minutes, and then the cold drove Dan into action. He tugged his jeans back on and went to collect the clothes Walker had left in the dinghy.
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