by G. M. Ford
“We’re looking into the shooting of that provincial constable,” Marty said.
The craggy face closed like a leg trap. “Got nothin’ to say about that,” he immediately said. “You want to know about that, you go talk to the cops.”
And that was that. Without another syllable, the guy turned, marched back to the office and disappeared inside with a bang, leaving Marty and me standing in the wet parking lot, glowering at one another in frustration.
Marty sighed and started for the car. When I didn’t follow along, he stopped walking and turned back my way. His face said he was losing his patience with me. I motioned at the Quonset hut with my head. He thought about it, shrugged, and started walking in that direction.
I bent at the waist, grabbed the handle, and rolled the door up over my head. The stern of an old purse seiner was facing us as we walked inside. The Kelly G occupied the front right quarter of the space. The rest of the building yawned dark and vacant.
The tall arched ceiling was filled with a cloud of welding smoke and the air was twitchy with molten steel. The leather-clad apparition in the welding hood turned our way. Two feet of scraggly white beard hung below the bottom of the hood. Unless I was mistaken, a thin line of smoke was rising from the bottom of the beard.
“I think your beard’s on fire,” I said.
“Happens all the time,” he said, as he pulled the welder’s hood from his head and set it on the bench. The hood had left a red furrow running across his forehead. His pale blue eyes had the red watery patina of a man who’d spent his life staring at the tip of a welding rod. He used his leather-clad hands to sweep an embedded ember from his beard.
He pointed with the welder. “Office is over there,” he said.
I said I knew. He picked up on my meaning.
“Barrel of laughs, ain’t he?”
“Mr. Personality,” Marty said.
“We wanted to ask him a few questions about the shooting incident they had out here awhile back.”
“About time,” the old guy said.
“How’s that?” Marty asked.
The guy draped the black rubber welding cable over the end of the bench and took off his leather gloves. I could see we’d touched a nerve. This guy had a speech stored up, and I felt pretty certain we were about to hear it. He flipped a couple of switches on the arc welder. The lights went out.
“Somebody shoulda asked right from the start,” he said.
“Asked what?”
“What the hell he was doing out here, anyway. Everything that son of a bitch knows about boats woulda fit on the back of a fuckin’ stamp. Never did a goddamn day’s work in his sorry-ass life and all of a sudden he’s renting the only shed in town where you can get out of the elements. Wants it all to himself too. Don’t want nobody else in the building with him.” He spat on the floor, hawked up something from the back of his throat, and then spat again.
We kept asking questions; he kept venting his spleen. Seems that about a year ago, the marina changed hands, which wasn’t surprising when you considered how bad business was. The Marino family took the dough and moved to the Azores, wherever the hell that was. Next thing you knew that idiot out there was running the place into the ground. Don’t do nothing but sit around the office with his thumbs up his ass, which was probably a good thing since he don’t know shit about the marina business. And then, all of a sudden—eight, ten months back—Cross-Current’s indoor workspace was no longer available to the general public. Seems it was leased by Trevor Collins, Dashwood’s homegrown crime wave. Paid six months in advance. Fifteen hundred a month for the whole damn building. Nobody else allowed inside. Just him and his damn boats.
“So…you knew Collins?” Marty asked.
“Everybody in town knows that little turd. He’s our very own village idiot.”
“What did he claim he was doing?” I asked.
“Refitting boats for sale.” He barked out a bitter laugh. Coughed again, spat again. “Like anybody’s buying highend boats these days. And like he’d know how to refit ’em if they were.”
“What do you think he was up to?” Marty asked.
“God only knows,” the old guy said. “What I wanna know is where he got the boats to begin with.” He waved an angry hand. “Hell, the night he got arrested, he was working on a Hatteras seventy. Local paper said the boat was registered to him. How in hell does a pissant like that come up with a half-a-million-dollar boat? Nobody in his whole goddamn family ever had a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, and then, all of a sudden, Collins owns a boat like that. Don’t make no goddamn sense.”
We mined his ire for all it was worth. Came up with lots of local color but nothing to bring us any closer to finding Rebecca. Mostly just that he was pissed off and, as far as he was concerned, the world was going to hell in a handbasket. I knew the feeling well, so I let him ramble a bit.
“So this wing nut takes a shot at an officer and you know what?”
“What?” I said.
“A week later he’s right back here doin’ whatever the hell it was that he was doin’ before. Like nothin’ happened. This time he’s got Broward flush deck. Real pretty boat. Three hundred grand if it was a nickel.” I started to commiserate but he was rolling now. “And the same prissy bastard he pointed the gun at in the first place…” He paused for effect. “Mr. Fancy Pants is right back here collecting the boats as soon as Collins gets through doing whatever in hell he’s doing to ’em. Does that make one goddamn bit of sense? You tell me. Does it?”
I patted myself down. Found the folded up photo of Brett Ward I’d caged from Rosemary De Carlo and held it in front of the old man’s face.
“This the guy?” I asked.
He nodded. “That’s him. Don’t seem like gettin’ a gun shoved in his face bothered him very damn much.”
“How many boats did he collect from Collins?” Marty asked.
“Least a dozen,” the old guy said. “Maybe more.”
We kept at it until the well ran dry, at which point Marty asked him if he knew someplace we might be able to get a bite to eat and, after that, maybe someplace we could spend the night.
“Same place,” the welder said. “Got a bed and breakfast about two miles down the road from here. Zeigler’s Roadside Inn. Probably the only thing open this time of night. This time of year, anyway. Ain’t exactly tourist season.”
And then, suddenly, his face darkened and he was looking out over my head. I followed the line of his eyes. The guy in the Rudy coveralls stood in the doorway.
“You spent more time working and less time running your mouth, no telling what you might get done,” he said.
“I’ll talk to anybody I damn well please,” the old man said.
An ominous silence swirled the smoke in the air.
“I’d be careful if I was you,” Rudy warned.
“You ain’t me,” the welder countered.
“I’m closing up,” Rudy said.
The old guy couldn’t believe it. “You said you was working till ten or eleven.”
“Changed my mind,” he said as he turned and walked away.
“Son of a bitch,” the old man said. He spat again and began to pick up his tools.
No room at the inn. All she had was a little cabin out back of the bed and breakfast where her son stayed when he came home from college. Brought his girlfriend sometimes, you know. Privacy concerns. The cabin was part of the original Currents Roadside Cabins. Back before her late husband, Harry, built the big house and tore down the rest of the buildings. Clara could let us have it for eighty dollars Canadian. A wink and a nod. “No tax.” Dinner for the guests was long over, but she had meatloaf and mashed potatoes left over from the family meal. By that time, my stomach had partially digested itself and comfort food had seldom been more comforting.
By the time we’d finished filling our faces, the rain had let up. The yard was filled with the sound of percolating water as we drove around the back of the inn,
across a wide section of lawn, and parked next to the rustic cabin. The door wasn’t locked. I snapped on the lights and looked around.
Knotty pine. I’d forgotten about knotty pine. All those evil little faces and those black eyes staring at me in the night. Used to scare the living bejesus out of me when I was a kid. Always sent me sliding down under the covers. Wasn’t like I’d conquered the fear either. I’d just stopped staying in places with knotty-pine paneling.
It had also been a long time since I’d stayed in a motel room with Marty Gilbert. Way back in the 1970s sometime, back when a bunch of us used to go hunting in Ellensburg on the opening day of pheasant season every year. Back when we’d all check into some fleabag motel and live on bullshit and bad whiskey for an entire week. Believe me when I tell you that half-a-dozen hungover suburbanites toting twelve gauge shotguns posed a far greater risk to one another than they ever posed to the birds.
Marty and I traded the obligatory macho jokes about nobody waking up with his shorts on backward. He reminded me that he was armed and dangerous and that I’d better stay on my side of the room, if I knew what was good for me.
I lay there in the dark. A couple of minutes passed before Marty said, “The old guy was right. The story doesn’t make any sense. Why in God’s name would Brett Ward continue to do business with somebody who pointed a gun at him and then took a shot at a constable?”
“Gotta be money,” I offered.
“From what? Selling the boats?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. I told him what the guy at Northwest Maritime had told me about Brett losing money on one of his boat transactions.
A minute passed. “I don’t have to tell you how bad this is, do I?” Marty said.
What he was being kind enough not to say was that we were past the point of no return. The point where any hope of seeing the victim alive again was statistically astronomical. I could feel his eyes on me in the darkness.
“No,” was all I said.
He let it go at that, so I lay there on my back, staring at the knots in the ceiling. Awhile later, I heard his breathing change as he drifted off to Neverland and left me in the dark with all those beady eyes taking my measure.
I don’t remember going to sleep, but I must have because sometime in the wee hours my eyes popped open. Took a second to remember where I was. Marty was snoring like a chainsaw, and I really, really needed to take a leak, so I rolled out the other side of the bed and cat-footed around the corner into the bathroom.
Trying not to disturb Marty, I closed the bathroom door before I reached for the light switch, which, as it turned out, wasn’t on either side of the door, where I’d imagined it would be. In the process of groping around like a mentally retarded mime, I managed to bang my shin against the old cast-iron bathtub.
I was hopping on one leg, alternately groaning and cursing behind my hand, when the universe took mercy on me and allowed the cord from the overhead light to brush against my forehead.
On my way back to bed, I made it a point to hang onto the cord until I had a firm grasp on the doorknob. I simultaneously pulled the cord and eased the door open. Whoever said timing was everything was right on the money. A minute either way and things would have turned out quite differently. Because that was the moment when I heard the sound of an automobile engine and saw car lights swing over a dark line of trees.
I stood there gawking like a fool, watching as the headlights swung in a wide arc, sleep-stupefied, trying to figure out why anybody would be driving a car on the lawn in the middle of the night.
And then the headlights bounced to a halt, bright white halogen beams shining directly at the cabin, lighting the room with blinding silver shafts. I shielded my eyes with my hand and waited for the driver to catch a hint and douse the lights, but instead, he flipped on the high beams.
The hair on the back of my neck immediately stood on end. I opened my mouth to speak at precisely the moment my ears picked up the snick of metal on metal, the unmistakable sound of a cartridge snapping into the breach.
“Marty,” I screamed.
The inside of the cabin door splintered as half-a-dozen high velocity rounds tore holes the size of my fist in the wood. Marty dove for the floor about two seconds before his bed was raked to pieces by another sustained volley.
By that time, Marty was flat on his belly, crawling under my bed, his eyes wide as he crabbed across the floor. I reached out, grabbed him by both wrists, and pulled him out the other side. Together we huddled on the floor, slack-jawed, wide-eyed, dazed, and panting.
The air inside the room was filled with bits of pulverized wood and pink fiberglass insulation. Feathers from Marty’s bedding wafted down from the ceiling. From the look of it, the front wall of the cabin had barely slowed the rounds before they plowed through the back wall and disappeared into the darkness.
Marty and I exchanged frightened glances in the dark. The firing stopped and all I could hear was my own breathing. Before I could form a thought, another burst of automatic fire ripped into the room, starting down at the far end and moving methodically in our direction, destroying everything in its path. We had to move or die.
With the room exploding behind us, we crawled into the bathroom just before things got quiet for the second time. Quiet enough to hear the shooter slam another clip into the weapon. Instinctively, I grabbed Marty by the shoulders and threw both of us into the bathtub. My head banged against the bottom. My vision swam as high-velocity slugs hit the cast-iron bathtub, ringing it, rocking it on its clawed feet as we huddled as far down inside as we could get, hoping to God the tub could withstand the onslaught. The air was thick with powdered porcelain as the hurricane of bullets scoured the finish from the tub.
I don’t know how long it went on for. Seemed like forever, lying there with Marty pressed to my chest, listening to chunks of steel-jacketed lead flattening against the cast iron. I think he reloaded at least once more and raked the room from one side to the other a final time, but I couldn’t be sure. It was all a blur.
And then…the eerie silence before the car engine raced and the bright lights swung across the trees leaving us breathless and too scared to raise our heads above the lip of the tub, for fear of having it blown off.
I heard a bell ringing. Maybe two. And then a siren whooping in the distance.
“Cavalry’s on the way,” I choked out.
Marty didn’t answer.
Roddy was bent forward, cell phone pressed to his ear, staring at the floor. I was leaning back in the chair, checking out the acoustic ceiling tiles. My hands were still shaky and the sound of gunfire still rang in my ears as I sat in the trauma center of Vancouver General Hospital, waiting to find out whether Marty was going to make it or not. Somehow or other he had taken a slug in the left armpit. Apparently it had rattled around inside him and severed the subclavian artery.
I flew in the helicopter with him and watched as a trio of EMTs scrambled to keep him alive. As fast as they fed fresh blood into his arms, Marty leaked it into his chest cavity. About halfway there, the pace of things got frantic, and I could tell they didn’t think he was going to make it, but somehow he hung on until we touched down at the heliport, where an ER team awaited with a fresh supply of blood.
I’d called Peg as soon as they rolled Marty into the trauma center’s ER. Tried to talk her out of coming up until we knew something more, but there was no dissuading her. She got their youngest daughter, Stella, to drive. I figured they were somewhere in the vicinity of the border by now.
The squeal of rubber soles on linoleum jerked me to my feet. Roddy whispered a sign-off, pocketed his phone, and levered himself upright.
The doctor was the future son-in-law of every mother’s dreams. Tall, dark, and handsome, with a thick head of curly black hair, and a great set of Hollywood teeth.
I held my breath as he squeaked our way.
“Damn near bled out on us,” he said.
“But he’s all right,” I stammered.
“He got very lucky,” the doctor said. “The muzzle velocity was so low the slug just bounced off his clavicle.”
“It had already come through a wall and hit a cast-iron bathtub by the time it got to Marty,” I said.
“Saved his life,” the doctor said. “Those AKs usually make a hell of a mess. Pulverize everything in their path. Kill you from the shock alone. We grafted the artery back together. Until that heals, he’s going to need to take it real easy.”
“Can we…is he?”
He read my mind. “We’re keeping him sedated,” the doctor said. “They’re airlifting him to Seattle in about an hour. Can’t think of any reason he needs to be awake for that.”
Neither could I.
He walked over to the nurse’s station, scribbled something on a piece of notepaper, and handed it to me. “You can call operations for the details of your friend’s air transport.”
Before I could thank him, the overhead speakers began to squawk hospitalese. He held up a finger and listened intently. “Duty calls,” he said with a resigned shrug.
I shook his hand and thanked him for his efforts. He seemed to think it was nothing special and double-timed it down the corridor.
I made the call to operations. Turned out to be complicated. Nobody seemed to know anything about Marty’s airlift. I was fighting to retain my composure when the last guy figured out that the Seattle PD was sending its own helicopter for Marty, which was why the flight didn’t appear on anybody’s manifest. My blood pressure dropped precipitously as I wrote down the details.
I took a moment to calm down and then called Peg. She and Stella were north of Bellingham, headed our way with a Washington State Patrol escort. I could hear the hitch in her breathing as she waited for me to say something. I remembered what Marty said about how she always expected the worst when she got these kinds of calls, so I just blurted out the good news and the details of Marty’s arrival in Seattle. She burst into tears and broke the connection without saying good-bye.
When I managed to pull myself back into the here and now, Roddy was standing by my side. “We’ll need a statement,” he said apologetically.