Gray Ghost

by William G. Tapply

  Leon disappeared through a doorway behind the bar. He was back a minute later holding an index card, which he handed to the sheriff. “Joanie’s a good kid. Hope you don’t hassle her too bad.”

  “I don’t hassle people.” The sheriff stuck the card in his shirt pocket. “Not me.” He slid off his bar stool, reached his hand across the bar, and said, “Thanks, Leon.”

  Leon shook his hand. “No hard feelings, okay?”

  The sheriff jerked his chin at Calhoun. “Talk to my deputy.”

  Leon held out his hand to Calhoun. “Sorry about being unfriendly.”

  Calhoun shook his hand. “Always be nice to your local sheriff.”

  They left the Keelhaul and climbed into the sheriff’s Explorer. Ralph lifted his head from the backseat, saw who it was, and tucked his nose back under his little stubby tail.

  “So you want to go talk with Albie?” said Calhoun.

  “I sure do,” said the sheriff. “What are we waiting for? You say you know where he’s got his boat moored?”

  Calhoun nodded. “I know the area. There’s no marina or dock there. There’s some boats anchored in the deep water out in the middle of the cove, and if we’re gonna go knocking on Albie’s door, ask him about his meeting with Mr. Vecchio, we need to get my boat.”

  They drove back to the shop and hitched Calhoun’s boat up to his truck. The sheriff retrieved some foul-weather gear and a big flashlight from his truck while Ralph peed. Then they drove to the East End boat landing.

  Calhoun asked Ralph whether he’d rather stay warm and dry in the truck. Ralph gave him his Are you serious? look and hopped into the boat.

  They launched the boat and putted out of the harbor and followed the shoreline southerly. Aside from the city lights, blurry in the fog off to the west, it was a black night, and the freshening easterly breeze was heavy with moisture.

  The sheriff braced himself in the front of the boat, and Calhoun stood in the stern running the motor. The city of Portland lay off to their starboard side, and off to port lay Cape Elizabeth. After a while they turned due west and went under the Veterans Memorial Bridge and then the Route 295 bridge where Long Creek came into the Fore River.

  Calhoun cut back on the throttle. “It should be up here ahead of us,” he said to the sheriff. “Get your flashlight out.”

  There were a few scattered boats moored in the river, ghostly through the fog in the beam of the sheriff’s light. Calhoun wound among them while the sheriff shined his light on their transoms.

  “Here we go,” said the sheriff after a few minutes.

  His light illuminated the words Friendly Fire on the transom of a sport-fishing boat with a tuna tower and folded-back outriggers and red-and-black trim.

  Calhoun shifted into neutral. Over the quiet burbling of the motor, he heard the clank of rigging and the slosh of waves slapping against the side of Albie’s boat and the wet swish of trucks passing over the bridge behind them. The sheriff scanned the area with his big flashlight. It showed four or five other boats moored in the area, none very close to Albie’s, none showing lights.

  “Shine on Friendly Fire again,” said Calhoun.

  The sheriff did.

  “Hm,” said Calhoun.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” said the sheriff.

  “Don’t look like Albie’s aboard,” said Calhoun.

  “She appears deserted, all right.”

  “That ain’t what I meant,” said Calhoun. “What I meant was, I don’t see any dinghy or rubber boat tied up to her.”

  “So how could he get here,” said the sheriff. “That what you mean r

  “Ayup. Doubt he swam. Must’ve locked her down and rowed himself ashore, left his dinghy there.”

  “Hey,” the sheriff called. “Hey, Albie? You aboard?”

  There was no rustle or bump of movement, no light flicking on, no response of any kind from inside the boat.

  “Well,” said the sheriff, “he’s not there, and that’s that. We can’t go aboard if we’re not invited. A boat’s like a man’s house. Damn sorry to’ve wasted your whole damn evening, Stoney, never mind half a tank of boat gas. I’ll make it up to you.”

  “I can go aboard,” said Calhoun.

  “The hell you can. You’re my deputy, and I’m telling you, we’re not going aboard.”

  Calhoun took his badge out of his pocket and put it on the seat. “I quit, then. Now I ain’t your deputy, and I can do whatever the hell I want to do, and I want to board this damn boat.”

  The sheriff turned and shined his light on Calhoun for a moment. Then he said, “Ah, the hell with it. Pick up the damn badge. Let’s go see what’s on Albie’s boat.”

  Calhoun shoved the badge back into his pocket, then put the motor in gear and putted over alongside Friendly Fire. The sheriff grabbed on to the ladder. Calhoun turned off his motor.

  “Tie us off,” said Calhoun. “There’s a line in the locker under the bow.”

  The sheriff found the line, hitched it around their bow cleat, and tied the other end to the ladder on Albie’s boat. Then he climbed aboard.

  Ralph roused himself from his spot on the bottom of the boat. He went to the bow, looked up at Albie’s boat, and started making a little squeaky sound in his throat.

  “What’s with you?” said Calhoun.

  Ralph turned around, came all the way to the back of the boat, and sat at Calhoun’s feet. He continued whining.

  Calhoun patted his head. “You can stay here. I ain’t gonna make you climb that ladder. We’ll be back.” He stepped over Ralph, walked down the middle of the boat to the front, checked the sheriff’s knots, then followed him up the ladder onto Friendly Fire,

  Ralph sat in the back of Calhoun’s boat, whining softly.

  The sheriff was shining his light around the inside of Albie’s boat. There were three or four mossy lobster pots piled in a corner, along with some loosely coiled line. Scraps of seaweed and dried bait and seagull splatters littered the floor. “Nobody home,” said the sheriff. “Looks like he hasn’t been aboard for a while.”

  Calhoun went over to the cabin, which was shut tight. He tried the handle, and it turned in his hand. “He forgot to lock up when he

  left,” he said.

  He pulled open the door that led below to the galley and the

  berths and the head—and the smell that came blasting out drove

  him three stumbling steps backward.

  “Jesus,” said the sheriff. “I hope that’s not what I think it is.” “Afraid it is,” said Calhoun. He pressed his jacket over his nose

  and mouth. “Dead human body,” he mumbled. “You never forget

  that smell, even when you can’t remember where you smelled it. You

  better shine your light in here.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  He was slumped on the floor, half sitting, his back wedged into the forward corner where the two lower berths met. His chest and arms were naked and caked and crusty with dried black blood. His chin was slumped down on his chest. His wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape.

  He was a small, sinewy man with thin gray hair. Both arms were plastered with tattoos.

  “Looks like we found Albie,” said Calhoun.

  In the white glow of the sheriff’s light, Albie’s skin was purplish and bloated. It appeared to shimmer and twitch. It took Calhoun a minute to realize that bugs and maggots were crawling all over it. It was repellent, but he forced himself to look at it, to see that it had been a living human being, not some ugly decomposing thing. A man named Albie.

  “Jesus,” whispered the sheriff.

  “I’d say he’s been dead for some time,” said Calhoun.

  “All that blood.” The sheriff grabbed Calhoun’s arm. “We’ve got to call it in.”

  Calhoun turned to move out of the cabin. Then something caught his eye. He stopped. “Shine your light there,” he told the sheriff. “On the shelf by that berth there.”

  The sheriff moved
his light and stopped it on a book. It was one of those large-format paperbacks. The pages were curled from the dampness. On the cover was a black-and-white photograph of a submarine in the fog with some rocky coastline in the background. The title was U-Boats on Casco Bay: German Submarine Warfare on the Maine Coast. Under the title it said: “Now a PBS miniseries.”

  The author was Paul R. Vecchio.

  “There’s your connection,” said Calhoun. “That’s how Albie knew about Mr. Vecchio.”

  The sheriff nodded. “Read his book and gave him a call, maybe.” He blew out a breath. “Come on, Stoney. We gotta get out of here before I puke.”

  “Suits me.”

  They backed away from the doorway. The sheriff shined his light around the inside of Albie’s boat one more time, and then they climbed down the ladder onto Calhoun’s boat.

  Calhoun went back and sat on the stern seat. Ralph, who was lying on the floor, looked up at him. Calhoun scratched his muzzle. “Another damn dead body,” he told him. “You smelled it, didn’t you ?”

  The sheriff sat up front and took out his cell phone and made a call. Calhoun couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  After a minute, the sheriff folded his phone and jammed it back into his pants pocket. “They’re on their way. We’re supposed to wait here. Sorry, Stoney. This might take a while.”

  “Okay by me,” said Calhoun. “I got no appointments. Wish we’d brought some coffee is all.”

  The fog had thickened into mist. Calhoun and the sheriff pulled on their rain jackets.

  Pretty soon the mist turned into rain. They huddled in Calhoun’s aluminum boat, tied up to Friendly Fire, the three of them, waiting for the troops to arrive. The sheriff sat up front with his back to Calhoun. They didn’t talk. There wasn’t much to say.

  After a little while, Ralph crawled up on the seat beside Calhoun. He sat there for a minute, then twirled around a couple of times and flopped down with his chin resting on Calhoun’s thigh.

  It probably was no more than an hour, but it seemed longer, until the Coast Guard boat came burbling down the river with all of its lights blazing through the misty rain and its searchlight sweeping the river.

  “You called the Coast Guard?” asked Calhoun.

  “Ayup,” said the sheriff. “Murder on a boat on the high seas, which includes the tidal part of rivers, is their jurisdiction. Those islands in the bay where you found Errol Watson, they’re part of Portland. It was Gilsum who I talked to. He called the Coast Guard. There’ll be local and state cops along with the feds. Talk about chaos.”

  Someone called over a bullhorn: “Sheriff Dickman? Are you there? Is that you?”

  The sheriff squinted into the searchlight and raised his arm.

  “Go aboard Friendly Fire and wait for us. Leave your deputy where he is.”

  The sheriff waved, then turned in his seat. “Okay by you, Stoney?”

  “I don’t care,” said Calhoun. “Do your job. I’ll wait for you.”

  The sheriff climbed the ladder onto Albie’s boat. A minute later the Coast Guard boat slid alongside. Calhoun saw the sheriff reach over and give somebody a hand. The man was wearing a rain slicker with USCG printed on the back. Calhoun knew some Coast Guard people, but he didn’t recognize this one. Then Lieutenant Gilsum boarded, and he and the Coast Guard guy shined their lights around Albie’s boat and down the hatch into the cabin where the body was. They conferred with the sheriff for a while.

  Then, while Calhoun sat there in the rain with Ralph shivering beside him, several other people climbed over the gunwales of the Coast Guard boat onto Albie’s. Among them was Dr. Sam Surry, wearing an oversized yellow slicker with the hood covering her red hair. She was lugging her old black leather bag.

  There ensued a confusion of lights and voices and winking camera flashes on Friendly Fire.

  After a little while, the sheriff leaned over the side of Albie’s boat and said, “Hey, Stoney.”

  “I’m right here,” said Calhoun, “being obedient.”

  “You can go home. I got a ride.”

  Calhoun shrugged. “I ain’t a suspect? They don’t want to interrogate me ?”

  The sheriff laughed. “No. Not now, anyway. Go home, get dry, feed Ralph. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”

  “Okay. I ain’t going to argue with you.”

  The sheriff waved and ducked away from the side of the boat.

  Calhoun walked up to the front of his boat, untied the line from the ladder, and cast off from Friendly Fire, Just as he turned to move back to the stern where he could start the motor, a soft voice above him said, “Hey, Stoney.”

  He looked up. Dr. Sam Surry was smiling down at him.

  Calhoun grabbed ahold of Albie’s ladder so the tide wouldn’t drift him away and said, “Hi, Doc.”

  “So we meet again,” she said.

  “Yup. Another dead body.”

  “I’m looking forward to Friday.”

  Calhoun had to think for a minute. Right. Their half-day fishing trip. Four o—clock Friday afternoon. “Me, too,” he said. “Let’s hope to hell it ain’t raining.”

  “I heard that fish bite better in the rain.”

  “That’s a damn myth,” said Calhoun. “Fish under the water don’t know what it’s doing in the air. Only good that rain does is keep the other fisherman away.”

  “Rain or whatever,” she said, “it’ll be fun, and I can’t wait. Anyway, go get warm. See you then.” She gave a quick wave and turned away.

  Calhoun let go of Albie’s boat, went to the stern seat, started up his motor, turned his boat around, and headed back through the rain to the East End boat landing.

  By the time he got to the landing, backed down the trailer, hitched up his boat, and got the truck headed to his house in Dublin, he figured it was sometime after eleven. A long day, and neither he nor Ralph had had any supper.

  Whenever he drove past a meadow or pasture or some other open area, the rain came sweeping across the road at an angle. At times it came so hard that it drummed on the truck’s roof like handfuls of buckshot. The winding two-lane roads from Portland west to Dublin were slick and shiny in the headlights and littered with broken pine branches and windblown wet leaves.

  It was a classic New England autumn nor—easter. Behind the storm would come a high-pressure front, with crisp, dry days and cold nights. Mud puddles would be frozen in the morning. Frost would coat the pumpkins in the fields and blacken the annual flower plants. The leaves would fall from the maples and poplars and oaks. The striped bass and bluefish would hasten their southward migration, and so would the Canada geese and black ducks, and pretty soon it would be winter.

  Ralph was curled up on the passenger seat. Calhoun reached over and stroked his back. His fur was wet. Calhoun turned up the truck’s heater and switched on the fan.

  By the time he turned off the road onto his driveway, he figured it was after midnight.

  As he started down the long, sloping, unpaved driveway that ended at his house in the woods, he noticed fresh tire tracks in the muddy ruts. He stopped, pulled on the emergency brake, and got out, leaving the door hanging open. In the truck’s headlights, he scootched down to look at the tracks. They’d been made by a small truck, not an automobile, which ruled out the Man in the Suit, who drove an Audi sedan. Dirty rainwater had begun to seep into the grooves the treads had cut in the mud, but the edges were still sharp. Calhoun figured they’d been made less than an hour earlier.

  He stood up and scanned what he could see of his driveway in the headlights. There was just one set of tracks. Whoever had driven in had not driven back out.

  He went back to the truck, where Ralph was now sitting up and looking around. “You better come with me,” said Calhoun. “I’ll want you to heel.”

  Ralph stood up on the seat, stretched and yawned, then slithered out.

  Calhoun reached behind the seat and retrieved his Winchester Model 94. He levered a cartridge into the chamber. Then he shut off th
e truck lights, turned off the ignition, pocketed the keys, and eased the door silently shut.

  He stood still for several minutes, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Without moon or stars, it was all shades of blackness, but gradually he was able to sense, if not actually see, how his driveway twisted down through the woods.

  “Okay, let’s go,” he hissed at Ralph. “We got ourselves another damn visitor, and I just hope to hell he ain’t dead. And for Christ sake, you better heel. I don’t want something happening to you again.”

  Ralph plodded along a few feet behind Calhoun’s left heel, and they moved down the driveway. Calhoun hugged the right side, outside the muddy ruts where the weeds were bent down and the footing wasn’t too bad.

  He knew they were approaching the opening in the woods where his house stood by the way the driveway began to flatten out, and a minute later he detected a new lighter shade of black that signified the opening in the woods that was his yard and parking area.

  Then he saw something else, so quick and sudden that he wasn’t sure he’d actually seen it. It was a momentary spark of orange light in the place where he usually parked his truck.

  He whispered, “Whoa,” to Ralph.

  They both stood there. Calhoun looked hard at the place he’d seen the light. Then he saw it again, and this time the spark lingered a bit longer.

  “Stay,” he said to Ralph.

  He didn’t bother checking. He knew Ralph would stay right there, sitting on the ground, for five minutes or for an hour or for however long it was until Calhoun released him.

  He had his finger on the trigger of the short-barreled deer rifle. He carried it in both hands, ready to fire from the hip if necessary.

  He crept closer to where he’d seen the wink of orange light. Then he identified the gray outline of a pickup truck parked there. Another spark of orange. It was coming through the back window from inside the truck.

  He was barely ten feet from the pickup when he stopped, let out a long breath, and smiled.

  He went up to the driver’s side and tapped the muzzle of the Winchester against the window.