Deception Cove

by Owen Laukkanen

  “Damn, boss,” Whitmer said. “So what do we do?”

  Harwood drove in silence for a moment or two. He was headed the wrong way, headed into Neah Bay. There was no goddamn reason to be here.

  “We got a few hours until Okafor shows,” he told Whitmer. “We’re going on back to town, and we’re going to search that bitch’s little house, high and low.”

  “What, Jess’s?” Whitmer frowned. “You don’t think she’d have taken the stuff with her if she was going to skip town?”

  Harwood gritted his teeth. “Probably, Dale,” he said. “You probably have this broken down exactly right.” He hit the brakes, yanked on the wheel, spun the truck 180 degrees, and stood on the gas pedal. “But trashing Jess Winslow’s house will make me feel better about this whole fucking mess, and right now, bud, that’s good enough for me.”

  Twenty-Nine

  “Cops already been up here,” Rengo told Jess and Burke. “Harwood and his boys. Tossed the whole goddamn camp upside down. Believe it or not, I had the place pretty well organized before they came a-calling.”

  Jess looked around. Made a face. “If you say so.”

  It smelled marginally less bad inside Rengo’s trailer than outside in the compound, but that was only because of the twenty-five or so car air fresheners the kid had hanging from the ceiling like Christmas ornaments. The air wasn’t so much fresh as it was some chemical approximation of Royal Pine, and the effect wasn’t so much soothing as it was suffocating. Jess had been in some smelly situations in her brief time on Earth, and she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t take a sewage cesspool in Afghanistan over Rengo’s dank little home.

  The trailer was set up like the usual: bedroom on one end, and a kitchen and living area on the other.

  “Shitter don’t work,” Rengo said, leading them to a filthy couch and an armchair bandaged clumsily with duct tape to keep the stuffing in. “Still working on those creature comforts.”

  Burke remained standing. Lucy nosed about, wandered into the kitchen, took a cursory glance down the hall to the bedroom, then came back to where Burke stood by the front door, and lay down at his feet.

  “We won’t be staying long,” Jess replied, brushing off the couch before sitting down, the shotgun in her lap. “Don’t want to take up too much of your day.”

  “My day?” Rengo grinned for the first time. It was a wide, boyish smile, and she realized he was younger than she’d pegged him for. “Shit, lady, I wasn’t exactly full up with appointments before you all came along.”

  He sat in the armchair. Leaned forward. “Now, what is it you think I can tell you about?”

  “My husband,” Jess said. “I want to know exactly what he was into, and why it’s got Kirby Harwood and his two useless deputies making my life hell.”

  Rengo’s smile disappeared. “You think I had something to do with that?”

  “You worked with Ty, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, we cooked together,” the kid said. “But shit, that wasn’t nothing that Kirby cared about. Not unless he was coming around for a taste.”

  “He killed the lady’s husband.” Burke, from the door. “And he tore up your spot, looking for something. We aim to figure out what it is.”

  Rengo raised his hands. Glanced at Lucy again, tried a smile at her, and the dog—damn her—scrambled to her feet and went over to him, wagging her tail and licking at his hands and turning around to put her big butt in his face for scratches. Rengo laughed, a childish giggle, and pet her like a boy would a puppy, delighted.

  “Big, tough pit bull, huh?” he said as Lucy twisted back with her long pink tongue, trying like hell to lick his face. “You’re a vicious dog, aren’t you?”

  Jess and Burke swapped looks, and Jess rolled her eyes. Traitor. Burke cleared his throat. “We were talking about Ty,” he said. “Maybe you want to focus.”

  “Now listen.” Rengo scratched Lucy’s butt once more. Then he looked at Burke square. “Ty drowned under that dock because he drank too much and got stupid. Didn’t have nothing to do with Kirby Harwood, the way I heard it.”

  “Yeah?” Jess said. “And who told you that?”

  “People.” Rengo fidgeted again. The dog twisted and nuzzled her snout between his hands, and he pet her, absently, as he talked. “I mean, it’s just common knowledge. Anyway, like I told Kirby, I don’t know anything about whatever it is you all are looking for. Ty never told me nothing, and if he’d have hid something here, I’d have found it by now.” Rengo looked at Lucy again, then at Jess. “But listen, if you’re looking for what turns Kirby’s motor, it ain’t what me and Ty was up to out here. This is small-time, comparatively speaking.”

  “And why’s that?”

  Rengo sat back in that beat-up old armchair and regarded them, smiling like he had the upper hand now, like he knew a secret. Lucy settled down at his feet, sighing contentedly. It seemed she’d decided the kid wasn’t a threat.

  “You go down to the docks downtown Deception Cove, look out across the water, what do you see?” Rengo said.

  “Canada?” Jess said after a beat.

  “Fuck Canada,” Rengo said. “Try again.”

  She thought about it. Burke did the same. Lucy laid her head down on the floor of the trailer, her collar tinkling, metallic, as she shifted. Then Burke let out his breath.

  “The ships,” he said. “Those cargo ships out there.”

  Rengo slapped his hand on his knee. “Give the man a prize. It’s ships, man, thousands of them, from everywhere in the world you can think of, carrying anything you can think of—legal or not.”

  “Harwood has that boat,” Burke said, nodding. “Seemed awfully proud of it.”

  “As well he should be,” Rengo replied. “Boat’s probably paid for itself and that big old truck many times over by now. You don’t buy that shit on a deputy’s salary. Not cooking meth, either.”

  “So what?” Jess said. “Spell this out for me, Rengo.”

  “Coast Guard can’t search every ship that comes by here,” Rengo said. “Ship comes through, dead of night, pissing rain, nobody’s going to notice if someone throws a package off the back. Give it a life jacket, GPS beacon, and you’re set.” He sat forward again. “Rumor is, Kirby’s got a deal going with some heavy hitters from back inland—Nigerians, I believe. I heard it’s heroin, but I also heard other stuff. But whatever he’s doing, he takes a nice cut for his troubles.”

  Jess frowned. Rubbed her eyes. This had been a long day already, and it was still only midafternoon. What else was she going to find out about her goddamn husband before her head hit a pillow tonight?

  “You think Ty got hold of one of Kirby’s deliveries,” she said. “That’s what we’re dealing with here. He took it, stashed it somewhere, and they killed him before he could give it back.”

  Rengo looked uneasily at Burke. “Well, yeah. But knowing Ty, he was probably out for his end.”

  “Of course he was,” Jess said, disgusted. “And look what good it did him.”

  Burke shifted his weight, Lucy watching him, her ears perked. “This is good,” he told Rengo. “But Ty never told you any of this directly?”

  “No, sir,” Rengo replied. “He was pretty buttoned up about it.”

  “He must have told someone. Did Ty have any other friends, anyone else he ran with besides you?”

  Rengo gave him a pained look. Glanced at Jess and sucked in his breath. “I don’t—I don’t know if she wants to hear about it.”

  Here it comes, Jess thought. Ty, you worthless sack of shit.

  “I want to hear it,” she said. “Spit it out.”

  Rengo didn’t know the full story.

  “He was pretty tight lipped about this, too,” he said. “Even while we were cooking, I’d try to get him to open up, you know, guy stuff. He never said much about her.”

  Her. Despite herself, Jess felt it like a knife in her chest. Figured that pretty well marked the end of any residual sadness she’d felt over Ty’s passing. She
felt pissed off, instead, that she’d let him play her like he’d done. That she’d fallen in love, and all she’d gotten in return was a goddamn drug dealer who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants or even stay alive.

  The men were watching her like they were scared she was going to break down, and she hated them for it.

  “Go on,” she said, avoiding their eyes. “Tell me what you know and quit being a pussy about it.”

  “Wellll, she was younger—”

  “Damn it.”

  Rengo wilted. “I mean, she was young. Like, too young for Ty, he kept saying. She worked in the cove, lived in town there. I could never get much out of him.”

  “Name,” Jess said. “Give. Me. A. Name.”

  Rengo looked at Burke, a helpless expression on his face. Looked to the dog, like she could somehow save him. But Lucy couldn’t, and Burke wouldn’t, and eventually Rengo sighed. “I guess her name’s Shelby.”

  “Shelby Walker? The little tramp who works at the sheriff’s detachment?”

  Burke started. “The teenager?”

  “I mean, I think she’s about twenty,” Rengo said. “And I sure as hell didn’t know she worked at the detachment. But that would make sense, wouldn’t it? Give Ty a pair of eyes on the inside?”

  Jess stood. “I know where she lives,” she told Burke. “We need to get her story.”

  Burke was already reaching for the door, Lucy standing and stretching. Burke pulled the door open, stepped back for Jess to go through. Then he dug into his pockets, came out with cash, a pair of hundred-dollar bills.

  As Jess watched, he held them out toward Rengo. The kid was leaned over, scratching behind Lucy’s ears, the damn dog loving every second of it, Rengo’s smile coming back, Christmas morning and Santa’d brought him a puppy. “What, just for talking to you?”

  “No,” Burke replied. “For your gun.”

  * * *

  “You know they’ll send you back if they catch you with this thing,” Jess said from the passenger seat, studying the pistol as Mason drove them back toward town. “No record of sale, and you’re already a felon? Hell, they’ll put you away for a long while.”

  Mason navigated the narrow road, the wipers working now, sheets of water cascading across the windshield. He’d talked Rengo into throwing in what spare ammunition he had, three magazines’ worth of nine-millimeter shells. A couple hundred bucks was probably a bargain, but the kid hadn’t had much leverage, what with Jess and her shotgun standing right there in the doorway. Mason figured he should feel bad, but money was getting tight, and anyway, the kid was going to hurt somebody, waving that piece around.

  “They’ll throw me in jail if they catch me regardless,” Mason said, eyes on the road.

  “This isn’t your fight, Burke,” she said. “I appreciate what you’ve done, but this is serious now. You spent half your life in a jail cell; you haven’t even barely lived yet. Why on earth would you risk going back?”

  Mason said nothing. They’d come to a steep spot in the road; he focused on braking the Blazer down the slippery terrain.

  We do not admire the man of timid peace. That wasn’t scripture; it was Teddy Roosevelt. We admire…the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life.

  “You want me gone, I’ll get going,” he said when the road leveled out again. “I’ve still got enough money for a bus ticket home. But it seems to me you could use a friend right now.”

  She said nothing and Mason kept driving, listening to the wipers across the windshield, and the mud and gravel beneath the tires. They reached the forestry main line, and he turned the Blazer north, toward the highway and the town.

  They drove in silence. Even Lucy was quiet in the back seat.

  Finally Jess spoke. “You must think I’m really stupid.” Her voice was soft, and she was staring out the passenger window at the trees passing by, her face hidden. “Marrying a guy like Ty.”

  “No,” Mason said. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “He wasn’t always like that.” She continued like he hadn’t said anything. “High school, he was different. He was handsome, and he was smart, he was a smooth talker, always had some kind of plan or a scheme.” She laughed, humorless. “I guess he never lost that side of him, anyway.

  “His daddy was a highliner, back when that meant something. You know what a highliner is, Burke?”

  “I guess it means he was good at fishing,” Mason said.

  “The best. He built a good life for Ty, and Ty’s mom, before the bottom fell out. Wound up drinking himself to death just about the same time the town died. But Ty and me, we were bound for something better, somewhere else. Even from day one, we had a plan.”

  Mason didn’t say anything. He figured he would let Jess speak her mind, tell her story. Truth be told, he’d been curious.

  “I joined the marines out of high school,” she said. “All I ever wanted.” She smiled a little bit, and there was real joy in it this time, mixed with a wistfulness Mason could feel in her words. “My dad was in the corps, fought in Iraq. He loved the marines, and I loved my dad, and so that was that, I enlisted, Ty and me got married, and off I went.”

  “To Afghanistan.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Dad died midway through my first tour. They found cancer inside him, and it caught up to him quick. And then it was just me and Ty.”

  Headlights on the road ahead. Mason pulled to the side of the logging road, crept the Blazer along slow. Beside him, Jess thumbed the safety off on the pistol.

  It was a white pickup truck, a Ford Super Duty. The driver gave Mason a wave as he passed, didn’t look twice at the Blazer. Mason waited until the truck disappeared in his rearview. Then he continued down the road.

  “What’d Ty do while you were overseas?” Mason asked.

  “What didn’t he do? He tried to make a go of it fishing, made a little bit of money, but not nearly enough for what he wanted out of life. Then he was going to open a restaurant in town, cater to tourists, and then he was thinking about getting into the septic tank business, but I guess the smell drove him off that.”

  She sighed. “Long story short, he must have run out of ideas. And I guess somewhere along the way, he ran out of patience with my being gone all the time.”

  They’d reached the highway. Mason hit the blinker, left turn. “This girl, Shelby, she live in town?”

  Jess nodded. “Behind the old cannery, a little white house.”

  Mason turned left, toward Deception Cove, drove a ways. The wipers, back and forth, the tires in the rain.

  “You know it’s not your fault,” he said after a bit. “None of this, Harwood taking the dog, what happened to Ty. Your man running around while you were off fighting. That’s on him, not you.”

  She laughed. There was a harder edge this time, and when he looked her way, she was kind of smirking at him, like he’d said something wrong and crossed some kind of line.

  “You don’t have to counsel me, Burke,” she said. “I married a real piece of shit, and that’s a plain fact. I don’t need you holding my hand.”

  “I’m not…” He felt lost. Immature, unprepared. This wasn’t a conversation he’d ever had before. “Yeah,” he said. “All right.”

  He kept driving. Felt her eyes on him, didn’t look. Jess sighed. “Listen, I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re only trying to…”

  She stopped when she saw the look on his face. He was scanning the road in front of them, just coming to the outskirts of town now, a haze hanging in the air, thicker than the rain.

  The smell, too. Smoke. Something burning.

  “You smell that?” he asked her. “Something’s on fire.”

  Thirty

  Even with the rain falling, the place burned pretty good.

  It was a wood house, after all, and once Harwood and Bryce Whitmer had spread a few gallons’ worth of regular grade all over
the widow Winslow’s floors and her meager collection of furniture, the fire was a foregone conclusion.

  Harwood and Bryce retreated to the edge of Jess Winslow’s weedy, muddy lawn, watched the place burn from there until the flames got too high and the heat overpowering, and then they retreated farther up the road and sat in Harwood’s truck and stared at the inferno.

  Nobody bothered them. Jess lived at the far end of a going-nowhere road, and Harwood had dispatched Dale Whitmer to stand guard at the head of it, his county cruiser angled across and his blue-and-reds flashing. Harwood knew the odds were nobody would bother old Dale at all, but it was better to be safe. He’d left Cole Sweeney in the detachment, let the kid feel like he was doing some good in the world, playing cop instead of helping Harwood work out his frustrations with a jerry can and a match.

  Harwood felt a little bit of remorse as he watched the fire, but not much. The arrangement with Okafor was supposed to be easy cash, a little boost to the community economy. And if Harwood hadn’t taken the deal, the boys in Clallam County surely would have.

  Shit, the whole goddamn town was dying. Harwood had thought he might have to let one of the boys go, Sweeney or Dale, wasn’t really enough county resources to justify keeping them both on. So if some slick motherfucker wanted to come through waving hundred-dollar bills in Harwood’s face, well, damn. It was practically his civic duty to jump aboard, when you thought of it that way.

  It was supposed to stay easy. Stay civil. Pick up a package, hand it off to Okafor’s guys, pocket ten percent for the trouble. Money rolled in. Terri-Lee got her kitchen redone. Cole and Dale kept their jobs. Hell, the whole town reaped rewards.

  And then Ty Winslow got greedy.