The Stalker

by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  “Thanks,” I said. “For the clients?”

  “For you,” Sara said. “They were always for you.” Her smile took my breath away.

  Liz cleared her throat. “Ready to go?” she asked me.

  “Yes, yes of course,” I said. “All right, everyone. Let’s head out.”

  “Will we get cell phone reception out there?” Gerald asked.

  “Absolutely,” said Jason. “We count on it in case of emergencies.”

  That pulled Sam’s attention away from texting on her phone. “Emergencies?”

  “We’ve never had one in five years,” I said, trying to reassure her. “But of course we have to be prepared.”

  “Prepared for what, exactly?” she said.

  “This is the west coast,” said Jason. “We have to be prepared for anything.” He winked at Sam and she turned pale.

  “We’re not likely to run into any killer whales, are we?” she asked.

  “Orcas?” said Jason. “Yes, there’s a good chance you’ll see a pod.” That was true. We were likely to see a group of these beautiful black and white whales. They might even swim along beside our kayaks.

  “They don’t eat humans, right?” asked Gerald.

  “We’re not a staple in their diet,” said Jason. “But we would make a good snack, don’t you think?”

  I gave Jason a hard look to get him to shut up. The last thing we needed was to make Sam and Gerald more nervous than they already were. “Orca attacks on humans are very rare,” I said. “And orcas tend to attack only when they are captive in marine parks. You will be perfectly safe. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Gerald didn’t look convinced. “So you can guarantee cell phone reception,” he said.

  Jason shook his head. “We can’t guarantee anything. Most of the time we have reception, but like I said, this is the west coast. Phone reception sometimes cuts out around the back sides of the islands. And if a storm comes up —”

  “I doubt we’ll have a problem,” I said quickly, and I nudged Jason. He had a habit of saying far too much.

  “I better make a call before we leave,” Gerald said. He walked over to the grassy area by the children’s playground, dialling his cell phone as he went.

  “And I better go home,” said Sara. She turned before reaching her truck. “I’ll make sure Jason remembers to pick you up tomorrow.”

  I watched Sara get in her truck. She was so lovely, and after five years of running kayak tours with her I figured I knew her better than anyone. She was the closest thing I had to a best friend. Like her, I missed our time together.

  As Sara drove off, my cell phone rang. The caller was the guy with the strange alien voice. “I know where you’re going,” he said. “You go and I’ll be out on the water with you.”

  I held the phone against my chest. “Jason, are you playing one of your sick jokes on me?” I asked.

  Jason held up both hands. “What?” He wasn’t using his cell phone.

  “Never mind.” I put the phone back to my ear.

  “This is no joke,” the guy said. “I know where you’re going. I can see you right now.”

  I looked around the marina. There was the fish and chip shop, the tiny artists’ studios lined up one beside the other, the empty picnic tables, and the children’s playground. I noticed a guy sitting in a pickup truck down the road, but I couldn’t tell if he was on the phone or not. Liz and Sam were out of view, waiting behind my truck. Gerald was still on his cell phone. Surely Gerald wasn’t the creep talking to me now? Gerald saw me looking at him and raised his hand as if he thought I had asked him to hurry up. Then he turned his back on me to finish his call.

  “You’ve been warned,” the voice said. “Don’t go out on the water.”

  Was it Gerald? The weird voice on my cell didn’t carry even a hint of an English accent. But then Gerald’s accent came and went. But why would Gerald try to freak me out? I didn’t even know him.

  “Who is this? What do you want?” Maybe it was the guy in the truck. When I walked towards the truck to see if the driver was in fact on the phone, he drove off.

  “Go home,” the caller said.

  “Stop phoning,” I said. “I’ll track your number, find out who you are, and call the cops.”

  Actually, I had no idea how to find out this guy’s phone number. He must have blocked it, because it didn’t show up on my phone display or call history list. In any case, my threat didn’t scare him off.

  “You go out,” he said, “and people will get hurt.”

  Chapter Four

  We all squeezed into my truck. I drove, and Liz sat between Jason and me in the front seat. Sam and Gerald sat in the crew cab behind us. As we started the drive to our launch site, I could see Sam in the rear-view mirror. She was eyeing Jason. “What exactly did you mean earlier?” she asked him. “You said on the west coast we have to be prepared for anything.”

  Jason shrugged. “Just what I said. Out here we learn to expect the unexpected.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that tourist who went missing a while back,” Jason said.

  “They don’t need to hear that story,” I said.

  “Yes we do,” Sam and Gerald said at the same time. In the rear-view mirror, I saw them scowl at each other. They were like a couple of bickering kids.

  I gave Jason a warning glance. “They don’t need to hear that story,” I said again.

  But Jason ignored me. “This tourist went out kayaking alone,” he said. “No guide. Then a couple of fishermen found his boat just barely afloat. The kayak was full of bullet holes. And the guy’s gun was inside. A few days later, his body was found.”

  “Suicide?” Sam asked.

  “No bullet wounds on him,” said Jason. “He had drowned. The thing is, his backpack was still in that kayak, filled with arrowheads, beads, cutting tools, and several animal skulls.”

  Gerald looked at first alarmed and then elated. “Indian artifacts?” he asked.

  “Very likely taken from a First Nations burial cave,” I said. “There used to be several skeletons in one of the caves I took clients to. Now there’s nothing in that cave.”

  Gerald sat on the edge of his seat, leaning over my shoulder. I could smell the coffee on his breath. “People are allowed to take things from these caves?” He sounded far too excited.

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “Taking things from those sites is illegal.”

  He sat back in his seat, clearly disappointed.

  “Tourists steal things from these sites and get away with it all the time,” said Liz. “The items rarely get back to the bands they belong to.”

  “Indian bands, you mean?” asked Gerald.

  “The First Nations communities,” I said. “The families the items belonged to. And around here we use the term First Nations, not Indian.”

  “Ah.”

  Liz turned to look Gerald in the eye. “How would you feel if your grandmother’s grave was dug up? What if some guy took her wedding ring or even her bones home as a souvenir?”

  I nudged Liz with my elbow. I didn’t like this guy much, either, but I couldn’t afford to lose clients or have them badmouth my company when they got home.

  “The location of these burial caves is all hush-hush now,” Jason said. “We’re not supposed to know where most of them are.”

  I caught Jason’s eye and shook my head, but he didn’t catch on. I didn’t want Gerald to get any ideas. I wouldn’t be taking him or any other client to the hidden caves. But Jason kept on talking. “In fact, there are islands that don’t appear on maps,” he said. “These islands have sacred sites on them that the government and the First Nations don’t want anyone to know about.”

  Gerald sat forward again. “Really?” he said. “There are still arrowheads and tools on these islands? Oh, you’re going to have to take me to some.” When his eyes met mine in the mirror, he added. “I just want to locate them with my GPS.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. �
�That won’t be possible.” There was no way I would let this guy use his electronic mapping toy to record where these sacred sites were. Lord knows what he would do with that information. He might add the locations to maps on the internet. Before long, tourists even more thoughtless than he was could disturb the burial caves. “We are allowed to take you to the cave you’ll see today,” I said, glancing back at Gerald. “But no others.”

  “Allowed?” he said. “By who?”

  “We have the permission of the band.”

  Gerald put a hand on my shoulder. “But you know of other burial caves, right?” he said. “Caves no one is supposed to know about? Caves other tourists may not have seen or disturbed?”

  I wished to god Jason hadn’t opened his big mouth. “Yes,” I said. “But we’re not going there.”

  “I could make it worth your while.” When I raised an eyebrow to Gerald in the rear-view mirror, he added, “I promise I won’t take anything.”

  Bullshit, I thought. “That’s out of the question. I have to stay on good terms with the band.”

  Gerald was pissed. He sat in the seat behind us, pouting. “I came on this tour to see Indian artifacts,” he said. “And I want to see an undisturbed site.”

  “Oh, no,” said Sam. “We both know you’re here to make nice-nice with me.”

  Gerald grunted and crossed his arms. He and Sam stared out their separate windows.

  Jason attempted to joke Gerald out of his funk. “You wouldn’t want to end up with bullet holes in your kayak, would you?”

  I held up my hand. “There was no evidence of foul play in that tourist’s death. The authorities said he drowned and closed the case. Who knows? The guy may have committed suicide for all we know.”

  “Yeah,” said Jason. “To kill himself, he first loaded his kayak with things from a sacred site. Then he shot holes into his kayak to sink it. You know what I think?” he asked, as if that wasn’t already obvious. He turned and looked back at Gerald over his shoulder. “I think some local got fed up with tourists messing with the burial grounds.”

  “You mean someone from the Indian — er, First Nations — band,” said Sam.

  I had to stop such dangerous guessing. “If it was someone from the band,” I said, “then he would have taken those items back to the grave.”

  “Unless he wanted to send a message,” said Jason. “Maybe he wanted to warn tourists to stay the hell away from the burial caves.”

  “Then why would the murderer try to get rid of the evidence?” I asked. “Remember, it looked as if someone had tried to sink the kayak with the things from the burial site still inside. There were all those bullet holes in the hull.”

  That stumped Jason.

  No one knew what had really happened to that tourist. His death simply didn’t make sense. But the conversation got me thinking. Tourists trespassed so often on the sacred sites that some band members wanted to ban kayak tours altogether. The guy who had phoned me that morning had told me to stay home, to stay off the water. Was he warning me to stay away from the burial caves?

  Chapter Five

  At the launch site, Jason and I carried the four kayaks down to the beach. Liz started unloading our gear from the truck. Gerald ate his donuts and watched us work. Sam stood beside him with her arms crossed. She wouldn’t help us, either. At one point, I saw Gerald offer Sam one of his donuts. She took it. Progress, I thought. We were only an hour into our trip, and they were already starting to bond.

  Liz loaded her dry bag and the bags of food into her own kayak, pushing them under the enclosed front and back ends of the boat. I had learned that Liz liked to do things her own way. There was hell to pay if Jason loaded her kayak and she later found her food supplies damaged.

  We said our goodbyes to Jason and put on our life jackets. Liz and I stood in shallow water as we held the kayaks steady for our clients. I helped Gerald and Liz helped Sam climb into their boats. We told them to sit just to the rear of the cockpit, placing their feet inside. Then, using their arms for support, they slid their behinds down onto the cockpit seat and stretched their legs out in front of them.

  Once we were all in our kayaks and on the water, I taught them how to paddle. They each held the paddle in the middle, gripping it with both hands. Then they dipped first one end and then the other into the water. As they pulled each blade back through the water, they propelled their boats forward. Paddle on the left, then paddle on the right. Once they felt safe doing this, I taught them different paddle strokes that would help them steer. Then we were away.

  But after less than a half-hour of paddling, Gerald’s cell phone rang. “All right!” he said. “We’re still getting reception.”

  Gerald stopped paddling to take the call and fell behind. I slowed my paddling so I didn’t get too far ahead of him as Liz continued on with Sam. I would have to talk to Gerald when he got off the phone. If he took a call every ten minutes we’d never get anywhere.

  Then my own cell phone rang. I looked for a number before answering, but there wasn’t one. “Hello,” I said, expecting the worst, and I got it.

  “Turn around and go home,” the space-alien voice said.

  “Screw you,” I said.

  “I can see you. I can see that Liz and the other woman are far ahead of you.”

  I looked around at the string of islands ahead of us and at the shore. The mist was heavy along the shoreline, but as far as I could tell, there was no one out here but our little group. Jason had driven away long ago. I couldn’t hear what Gerald said as he talked on his cell phone, but he had to be my caller. There was no one else around.

  “I can see that bald guy talking on the phone,” the voice said. “I can see you looking at him.”

  So the creep wasn’t Gerald. Or was it? Gerald could be trying to make me think it wasn’t him.

  “If you value your life, you’ll turn around,” the guy said. Then he hung up.

  I tucked the phone back in the pocket of my dry suit and ran a hand over my mouth. Gerald was still talking on the phone. Up ahead, Liz and Sam had stopped paddling as Liz answered her phone and began to talk. Sam immediately took out her own cell and started text messaging. After a moment, Liz turned in her kayak and, still on her phone, waved for me to catch up.

  “Gerald,” I called. “We’ve got to go. We won’t reach that burial cave before dark at this rate.”

  “All right, all right,” he called back. I waited until he caught up with me and then we paddled to catch up with Liz and Sam.

  Liz signalled for me to hang back as Gerald and Sam paddled on ahead. “We’ve got a situation,” she said when they were out of earshot.

  “You got a call from some creep, right?”

  “He’s been phoning you, too?”

  “I got several calls this morning. Was this your first?”

  “Uh-huh. No name, no number.”

  “Yeah, he must have a block on it.”

  “He said he can see us, Mike. He’s got to be watching from the shore somewhere.”

  “Or he’s with us.” I looked ahead at our two computer experts.

  “Gerald?” said Liz.

  “He was on the phone just now. And he was on the phone back at the marina when I got one of the calls. No one else was.”

  “What’s your history with him?” she asked me.

  “I don’t have a history. I didn’t meet him until this morning. But who else could it be?”

  “Sam started texting after I answered my phone,” said Liz. “So I think we can rule her out.”

  “In any case, it was a man’s voice.”

  “That doesn’t mean much these days. Anyone can download software off the internet to change his or her voice. And the voice of this caller was certainly changed.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “To turn back,” she said. “To go home. He said I didn’t belong here.”

  “Then maybe Gerald isn’t the stalker,” I said. “He wants to be out here, to see those cave
s.”

  “The caller could just be playing a prank, right?” Liz said. “Jason does this kind of thing, doesn’t he? Didn’t he put a garter snake in your kayak once?”

  “Yeah. Another time it was a squirrel,” I said. “Halfway to Cedar Island, I felt it crawling up my leg. Very funny.” I didn’t tell her I had screamed like a girl. “But the stalker isn’t Jason. He wasn’t on the phone when I got one of the calls.”

  “What if he got one of his friends to do it? Remember, in the truck, Jason made a point of telling that story about the tourist found dead. He tried to scare us.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “This isn’t like Jason. I think we should call the cops.”

  Liz shook her head. “They won’t do much until the stalker threatens to hurt us.”

  “He did. He said someone would get hurt if we came out here.”

  “You can trace the call,” said Liz. “The telephone company will make a note of the number of the last call made to your phone. Their staff will hand that number over to the police. But the operator won’t tell you who the caller was. At least, that’s how it all works on my home phone.”

  “How do you know?”

  She paused for a moment. “My ex-husband stalked me after we split up. I finally had to get a restraining order to stop him. He’s not allowed to phone me or come near me. He knows he’ll be arrested if he does.”

  “Oh, god, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s over now.”

  “Or is it?” I said. I held up my cell phone. “Could this guy be your ex-husband?”

  She looked out over the misty shore for a moment before answering. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I saw a guy sitting in his truck down at the marina. He drove off when I walked towards him.”

  “What did he look like?” Liz asked.

  “I don’t know. He was too far away for me to see his face.”