Gabriel tolerated the False Colors. He came here often with Denne, and sometimes with Seavy County politicians. No one worried about outsiders listening into the local conversations. When no tourists came to the place, the owner turned the sea chanteys off and put on some nice jazz (which would be replaced midnote if an outsider walked in), and the atmosphere became almost pleasant.
A waitress Gabriel had never seen before led him to a booth near the fireplace. Because it was the height of summer and the sun hadn’t yet set, no fire burned. Still the faint scent of woodsmoke lingered.
Gabriel had just ordered a Rogue Ale when Denne walked in. He had changed clothes—now wearing a button-down shirt, open at the collar, and a pair of khaki pants that looked neatly pressed—and his hair was wet.
So the smell had gotten to him too. Gabriel smiled and made himself look at the menu. Lots of little pirates, with scarred faces and greasy hair, decorated the pages. He looked at the specials card, which no one had had time to dress up, and made his decision.
“Figured I’d get here first,” Denne said as he slipped into his chair.
Gabriel closed the menu. “Nope. I didn’t have a lot to do. I canvassed, but I didn’t find any witnesses, at least to the death. No one saw the body wash ashore either, although it had been lying there all morning before someone realized it looked human.”
Denne set his menu aside. “She. She looked human.”
Gabriel put his menu on top of Denne’s. “She’s not human, is she?”
“No, but she is female, and damn close to human, close enough that I feel odd calling her ‘it.’”
“You think there was an intelligence there.”
“I know there was.” Denne picked up his water glass and took a sip. Then he leaned back in his chair and looked over his shoulder.
The waitress who had seated Gabriel held up a hand. “Just a minute, sir,” she said to Denne.
“Is June here?” he asked.
“She’ll be here soon, sir.”
“Sir.” Denne set his chair back down on all four legs. “Crap. She’s new.”
“That’s all right, isn’t it?” Gabriel asked, not sure how it mattered.
“Always have to educate the new ones,” Denne said.
The waitress came over, and as Denne ordered, Gabriel began to understand why someone new irritated him. His order wasn’t on the menu, and it was complicated, and every time she told him that his request wasn’t possible, sir, he told her to check in the kitchen.
When Denne finished and Gabriel had ordered, and the waitress had gone back to the kitchen, Gabriel said, “You know, you could have just told her you were a regular and you’d done this before.”
Denne grinned, which made him look like a cherubic prepschool student. “There’s no sport in that.”
Gabriel shook his head. “I’m never going to understand you.”
“And now you sound like my ex-wife.” Denne finished his glass of water and set it at the edge of the table, so that the waitress couldn’t miss it when she returned.
Another waiter came by and dropped off Gabriel’s pale ale, along with Denne’s Scotch.
“So you didn’t get anything from the canvass?” Denne asked as the waiter left.
Gabriel wrapped his hand around the glass of ale. The liquid was slightly cool, nearly room temperature, the way they served beer in England. He liked it that way; the warmer the beer the more flavor it had.
“I didn’t say that I didn’t get anything,” Gabriel said. “No one saw her wash up, is all. What killed her?”
Denne shrugged. “I’m taking it slow, but I’m thinking that she suffocated. Her gills were filled with that gooey substance we saw. I haven’t gotten to her lungs yet, but I suspect they’ll be filled with it too. Then again, I’m just guessing. I’ve never autopsied one of these creatures. I have no idea if the goo is a natural substance or not.”
“I thought you said the physiology was similar to ours.”
“The physiology of an ape is similar to ours too,” Denne said, “but there are enough differences that I wouldn’t trust myself to know exactly what killed one—if whatever it was was subtle.”
“And this was subtle?” Gabriel asked.
“I was hoping for a bullet through the abdomen, or spear hole in the back or a smashed skull, something that would tell me unequivocally what killed this thing. But I didn’t find anything like that. For all I know, she died of old age.”
“Like a whale washing ashore.”
Denne shook his head. “This is mysterious in a whole different way. When whales beach, they’re usually alive. We just can’t get them back out to sea. I’ve always thought it’s like animals in the wild. The old ones somehow know they’re going to die, and they leave the pride or whatever and go off on their own, so that they don’t jeopardize the herd.”
“A herd is not a pride,” Gabriel said, a smile playing at his lips. He loved the chance to correct Denne the expert. Gabriel took a sip of the ale, savored the taste of slightly sweet hops, and swallowed.
“You know what I mean,” Denne said. “I think the whales are beaching themselves so that they’ll die here—like a suicidal man will dive into the ocean. I always had the sense that beached whales get very annoyed with humans who try to save them.”
“You don’t think she did that, though,” Gabriel said.
“I found no sand in her mouth, and nothing to indicate that she was alive when she reached the beach. Judging from her position in the sand, she came in with the tide.”
“But didn’t go out with it?”
Denne sipped his Scotch, winced, and set it down. He had a constant battle going with the False Colors to get them to buy the higher-end Scotches.
“I have a hunch the water moved her around. She wasn’t in the best of shape, and if she were human, I would say she’d been in the water for a while. But she isn’t, and I don’t know if that rubbery feel to her skin is natural or not. None of my usual cues work in this case. I’m not even sure the smell is one of decay or her usual odor.”
Gabriel’s stomach turned and he set his ale down. “Thanks for that reminder.”
Denne smiled. “You didn’t have to spend all afternoon with her. You should have been there when I opened the body cavity. You could practically see the odor molecules.”
Gabriel held up his hands. “I’m crying uncle. In fact, uncle half this conversation ago.”
“You’re not normally squeamish, Gabe.”
“I don’t normally find a fish woman on my beach, either.”
“All right. We’ll stop focusing on her for a moment.” Denne pushed his Scotch glass away. “If you didn’t get time of death, what did you get?”
“Something interesting,” Gabriel said. “Most of the tourists had no idea that the body wasn’t human. A few said they thought it was a weird-looking fish. But that nervous guy, the one by the cliffs?”
“I really wasn’t paying attention to the crowd,” Denne said.
The waitress brought Gabriel’s meal. He had ordered the Gut-Buster burger—a thick, well-done hamburger patty, with three different kinds of cheese, guacamole, bacon, and salsa—along with a side of french fries and coleslaw.
“Planning to live forever, are you?” Denne asked with some amusement. Usually Gabriel ordered healthier foods.
“I can’t handle anything fishy right now,” Gabriel said. “Especially after that last description.”
Neither, apparently, could Denne. The waitress set grilled chicken, rice, and a side of tomatoes down in front of him. The meal looked lovely, even though it wasn’t on the regular menu.
“So,” Denne said. “Tell me about the nervous guy.”
“He’d seen her before.”
“Her?”
“Or creatures like her.” Gabriel took a bite from his burger. Juice ran down his chin, and the guacamole spurted out the back side of the bun, plopping on his plate.
He was coping with his meal and not watchin
g Denne’s reaction. When Gabriel finally looked up, he realized that Denne’s face had turned pale again.
“What do you know?” Gabriel asked.
“Nothing about your man.” Denne had set his fork down.
“No, but you know something about our fish woman.”
“I know a lot about our fish woman, but you didn’t want to have that conversation during dinner.”
“Hamilton,” Gabriel said. “Stop playing with me.”
Denne’s fingers found his Scotch glass. They rubbed its sides as if he could absorb the liquid through his skin. “Just tell me what this guy said.”
Gabriel took another bite of his burger before reluctantly setting it down. It would take him a while to pick it back up again. The sandwich was falling apart.
“He waited until I got through everyone else,” Gabriel said. “Then he made sure no one was listening. He asked me if I had ever seen creatures like that before.”
“Had you?” Denne asked the question sharply. He seemed more intense than usual.
“No. But I’d heard about them, mostly from some oldtimers.”
And Gabriel accepted those stories, because he’d seen stranger things than fish women on this stretch of Oregon beach. He had grown up here and had had terrifying experiences as a child. When he’d started traveling as an adult, he’d realized that nothing would compare to the experiences he’d had in Anchor Bay. Finally, he came home and started the slow process of accepting the supernatural as part of life.
“What did they tell you?” Denne asked.
“What the old-timers told me isn’t important. What the guy told me was weird.”
“Does the guy have a name?”
“Yeah.” Gabriel shrugged. “I have it written down somewhere.”
Denne picked up his fork and pushed the rice around. It seemed like his appetite was gone. “So he saw her.”
“And two others. They attacked his car one night.”
“Attacked?”
“His word. I got the sense he was covering something up. He said that was the beginning, and they’ve harassed him ever since. He said he was happy to see one dead.”
Denne pushed the rice so that it lined the edges of his plate. “I trust you asked him what he meant by harassed.”
“He said they came into his house at night, and then he blushed. I thought that part was weird. He said that they left seaweed trails and sand, and sometimes they left sucker marks on the outside of the windows.”
“Sucker marks?” Denne said.
“She didn’t have suckers?”
“Not like an octopus.” Denne frowned. “I don’t recall seeing anything like that at all.”
“You’re telling me he’s making all this up?”
“No. I’m not saying anything of the sort. I haven’t finished examining that body. I just did a cursory, looking for cause of death. I’m going to have to do much more, obviously.”
“You believe him then, even though you didn’t find anything to make the marks?” Gabriel didn’t understand what Denne was getting at.
“Just keep going.”
“He said that these women were driving him crazy. He couldn’t sleep because they sang so loudly, and if he did sleep, he’d wake up on the beach, and they’d be there. He said he hoped her death meant he was done with them for good now.”
Denne nodded.
Gabriel picked up his burger. A slice of bacon fell off the side and into the pile of guacamole. The bun squished between his fingers, and he took a bite before everything slid off.
Denne still hadn’t eaten any of his meal.
Gabriel finished the burger in four quick bites, knowing he would probably regret that later. Then he wiped off his fingers.
“Tell me what I should think of this guy,” Gabriel said. “His story sure made you quiet.”
“What do you think of him?” Denne asked as if he were a shrink, unwilling to express his own opinion for fear it would taint Gabriel’s.
“I don’t know what to think of his story, but his emotions are consistent with someone who’s being harassed. He’s nervous and confused and angry, and he’s pleased that she’s dead. I would expect all of that.”
“But?”
Gabriel gave Denne a sideways look. Denne was always too perceptive.
“But,” Gabriel said, “he’s hiding something.”
“He’s hiding a lot of somethings. Have you ever heard of the Lady June?”
“The Oregon Coast’s answer to the Titanic.” Gabriel picked up a french fry. “What does that have to do with fish women?”
“A lot, actually.” Denne pushed his plate aside and picked up his Scotch. He took a sip, then looked at the glass as if he were contemplating something in the liquid. “But the Lady June really isn’t anything like the Titanic. We don’t have icebergs, and she didn’t run aground.”
Maritime disasters didn’t interest Gabriel. He sometimes had to deal with their aftermath—he’d called the coast guard more times than he cared to think about to help disabled yachts in the surf—but he had no real interest in ships and sailing. Which was, he knew, rather odd for someone who had grown up on the ocean.
“Fish women got her?” he asked, trying to lighten the conversation a little.
“She went down in the middle of a storm. Pretty common for the Oregon Coast.”
Gabriel nodded. He ate another try and watched Denne play with his alcohol glass. Gabriel had never seen Denne so reflective, and it bothered him.
“Pretty common, except that there were lots of famous people on the yacht, right?” Gabriel asked, mostly to get Denne to continue.
“Not as many as there could have been,” Denne said. “Only thirty of Oregon’s best families got touched by that disaster.”
Only thirty was disingenuous. Oregon was a small state—and had been even smaller in the 1930s when the Lady June had gone down. Thirty families had probably been a significant portion of the “important”—i.e., wealthy—families in Oregon at that time.
“I don’t understand how the Lady June relates,” Gabriel said.
“Long story short. There was only one survivor that night. A man by the name of Henry Dyston. He claimed he was brought ashore by mermaids.”
“Our fish women?”
Denne nodded.
“Did anyone believe him?”
“The locals did,” Denne said. “But the press made a fool of him, not that he cared.”
“Why would they rescue only one man?”
“Well, that’s where local history comes in.” Denne set the Scotch glass down. He ran his finger along the rim. For a moment, Gabriel thought Denne wasn’t going to go on. Then he picked up his fork, scooped up some rice, and ate some.
Gabriel let him eat. Denne had always been strange, but Gabriel had never seen him behave quite like this.
After he ate a few bites, Denne pushed his plate away. He picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth. Gabriel thought he was going to leave, but instead, Denne pushed his chair away from the table.
“The fish women,” he said quietly, “have a song like the sirens did. It lures men, charms them, makes them do things that they wouldn’t normally do.”
Gabriel nodded. He decided not to interrupt again.
“Most of us can’t hear it. The women issue an invitation, and the man must take it. I’ve heard that it’s a simple thing, usually something found in the sand. One man . . .” Here Denne paused, as if he were remembering. Then he shook his head. “A man I knew said that he found a bottle of wine, an expensive old one, on the beach. He shared it with his wife and, shortly thereafter, heard the mermaids.”
“The wife too?”
Denne reached for his Scotch. “She died not long after that. An accident on the beach—at least, that was what it looked like to me. The husband seemed guilty and Dan Retsler—remember him?”
Gabriel did. Retsler had been police chief of Whale Rock for a number of years. He left after the freak New Year’s sto
rm of 2000. Something had broken in him, something Denne once hinted had to do with the strange supernatural activity of Seavy County.
“Well, Retsler had me do a full autopsy to see if I could find anything suspicious.” Denne paused, staring into his Scotch glass. “I didn’t—at least at the time. Although she did have sucker marks on her arms and neck. At the time, I thought they were something sexual.”
“You don’t any longer?” Gabriel asked.
“Sucker marks are a theme with these fish women. I had no idea then, although I should have.”
“Why should you have had an idea?”
Denne gave a small half-smile and didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said, “My friend knew a lot about these women. He could hear their song. It made him crazy. He’d wake up on the beach—naked. I think he was convinced they killed his wife.”
Gabriel frowned.
Denne swirled the Scotch in the glass. “They killed him, I know that much. But I could never decide if it was suicide. All of the men these women killed—it’s like they have an addiction, and they don’t know any other way to cure it except to let it take them.”
“All?” Gabriel asked. “How many have there been?”
“I don’t know. A dozen. A hundred. Most of them don’t talk.”
“So how do you know there’s been more than one?”
“I know of three,” Denne said. “Henry Dyston, my friend.”
Denne paused, swirled the Scotch again, then downed it in a single gulp.
“And you?” Gabriel couldn’t resist the question.
“Close.” Denne set the glass down. “My father.”
Gabriel’s heart started pounding as hard as if he had been running. “I thought your father drowned.”
“That’s the official story.”
“And the unofficial story?”
“The night he died, he came into my room.” Denne’s fingers played with the table edge. He wouldn’t look at Gabriel. “He gave me some earmuffs, and a copy of Dyston’s testimony at his trial, where he was defending himself from charges that he sank the Lady June and murdered all those people. My father told me to read the testimony, reminded me that Dyston was acquitted by a jury of his peers—which at the time was an all-male jury gathered from Seavy County—and he begged me to wear the muffs whenever I slept.”
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