by John Bushore
The dock poked out into the base of a U-shaped body of water, Tripp’s Cove, which opened onto Back Bay. On such an overcast day, he couldn’t see the Virginia mainland on the far shore to the west. He barely distinguished the dark blur of a duck-hunting blind at the mouth of the cove.
He scanned the water without bothering to fetch the pair of binoculars he kept under the truck seat. Since his arrival at the park, his eyesight had astounded the other rangers. Some wondered if it might have to do with his oddly colored eyes, but Shadow knew his vision was a gift from his Indian Grandmother.
Shadow rarely gave a thought to his Native American ancestry; after all, there were plenty of people around here with Indian blood. He had more than most. Grandmother Min claimed they were descended from the Accomattoc, a long-vanished tribe, which had once been part of the Powhatan Confederation.
Shadow’s grandparents had raised him after his unmarried mother died in childbirth. They’d lived in a double-wide trailer on a wooded, isolated spit on Virginia’s middle peninsula, between bay and river. Grandfather, who was also part Native American with a bit of Scottish about him, had taught him trapping, hunting and how to be a Baptist. Grandmother Min, quite the eccentric, had taught him the spiritual side of being a Native American and how not to be a Baptist.
Now, for no apparent reason, Shadow got the sudden feeling he was being watched. Without being obvious about it, he turned his attention to the duck blind, but even his vision couldn’t pick up anything strange about it. He ignored his intuition and resumed his search of the water.
When satisfied nothing floated on the open water, he turned his gaze to the shoreline of the cove, where the tall, beige marsh grass and the brown water merged. His eyes quickly found a speck of yellow, far off on his right, near the cove’s mouth. It seemed to be merely a piece of flotsam, a bright yellow piece of shiny fabric billowing with the rippling motion of the waves. Nothing unusual, but he saw something else. A pale forearm and hand stuck out of the bright fabric, which had become snagged by a piece of driftwood. Since the hand hung limp and the rest of the body had to be underwater, he knew he had found his second corpse of the day. This one was human.
Shadow felt the hair rise on the back of his neck and he stared at the faraway arm for a minute, hoping for some sign of life. When he was sure the arm would never move again, he resumed his scan of the shoreline. Two girls were missing, not to mention two kayaks. If he had found one of the girls, where was the other? He spotted nothing else.
The swampy shore of the cove would be impossible to traverse on foot. He needed a boat to get to the body. Going back to his truck, he picked up the microphone.
“False Cape Base, this is False Cape Six, over.”
After a short delay, there came a response. “Go ahead Six.”
“Alex, I need someone to bring a boat to the pier at False Cape Landing.”
“I’m the only one here, but I could come myself if it’s important. Is it something to do with those two girls? Jonesy called in from Little Island. Their SUV is still in the lot.”
“Yeah, I’ve got something. You’d better come yourself, after you call the Coast Guard and the Back Bay refuge. I believe something happened to the girls while they were on the bay. We’ll need to mount a search.” Shadow didn’t want to spill the beans about the body over the radio since their frequency was shared by several other agencies. Also, anyone with a police-band scanner could monitor the conversation. Since he was fairly new to being a ranger, he decided it would best to keep this quiet until Alex could assess the situation.
After a two-second hesitation, Alex replied. “Ten-four. Commissioner Barnett is due in the park sometime this morning, but I guess he’ll have to wait. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Call me back if anything else comes up.”
“Ten-four. Six out.”
As he waited, still scanning the area for any sign of the other girl, he considered the irony of finding a body in such a tranquil location. It didn’t seem right. After a while, he got a chocolate bar from his stash in the truck, and returned to the pier. Edgy, he nibbled on the candy as he looked about, hoping he wouldn’t see a second corpse.
This job was supposed to be a piece of cake, and, so far, it had been. The duties of a ranger, while physically demanding, were not particularly stressful, and working in the park was exactly what he needed. The pay wasn’t great, but he was provided with a residence so he could put away most of the money he got from the government, except for the child support he paid, of course.
His wife, Jessica, had left him shortly after he got out of the Navy hospital. Their twelve-year marriage had always been a rocky road, but Shadow didn’t think that was all of it. Jessica married her attorney so quickly after the divorce that Shadow wondered if they might have been having an affair during his frequent deployments. She now lived with her new husband in Williamsburg, a couple of hours away. Shadow was able to drive up to see his daughter now and then, but Jessica had certainly put the screeching halts on his getting joint custody of Ashley. Then again, Jessica sure didn’t mind gouging him for child support, did she? Even though she drove a Jaguar now, courtesy of husband number two.
He roused from his daydreams as a johnboat came around the point, holding a single man in an orange lifejacket. Soon Alex, a deeply tanned man with kindly brown eyes, eased the flat-bottomed craft up to the dock. Shadow caught the thrown rope with the claw and pulled the boat tight against the pier, tying it off.
The claw consisted of four plastic bendable fingers across from a passive thumb. Even though he had no control over the thumb, he could reach over with his right hand and position it for a wider or narrower grip—the difference between holding a key or a beer can. The fingers, with polyethylene fiber strings running inside jointed digits, would close and bend with the flex of a surgically altered wrist muscle. A realistic, latex ‘skin’ covered the whole affair, including soft foam that molded the contraption to the same shape as his real hand.
There’d been many amputees in this latest mid-east war. Body armor meant you’d probably survive a bombing, even if you lost a few parts. So a few Hollywood prop men had volunteered their services to match the skin tone, size and details of a prosthesis to the amputee. A casual observer wouldn’t guess it was ‘special effects,’ as long as Shadow wore long-sleeve shirts.
Alex killed the engine and pulled his small, thin frame up on the pier. In his late fifties, he displayed considerable gray in his dark brown hair and close-trimmed mustache, yet moved with the agility of a much younger man. Low key in his management style, he had been helpful since Shadow came to the park.
Straightening up, Alex smiled and asked, “What’s the word? What couldn’t you tell me on the radio?”
“I think I found the body of one of the girls. It’s a body, anyway. I figured I’d better get you down here with the boat to confirm before announcing it to the whole world on the radio.”
“Good thinking. Now, where’s the body?”
Shadow pointed to the forearm in the distance. Alex took a small pair of binoculars from a case on his belt and scanned the shoreline.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Looks to me like a yellow piece of plastic, nothing more.”
“It’s a body. I can see an arm.”
“You’re not using binoculars. How can you be so sure? Especially at this distance?”
“I’m sure.”
“Only one way to find out,” the chief ranger said. “Let’s go.”
Minutes after the two men left the dock, Alex eased the flat-bottomed, square-nosed johnboat close to the shoreline.
The yellow material turned out to be a raincoat, ballooning slightly above the water from the air trapped inside the fabric. She was face down. The arm poking from the sleeve was obviously female; slender and graceful. Her skin had turned a shiny, fish-belly white. A bracelet adorned the girl’s wrist, a thin golden chain with a small, plain cross, adding counterpoint elegance to the harsh reality of death.
> Alex cut the engine back to idle as they nosed into the marsh grass. Once in position, he steadied the boat with an oar while they considered their find.
“What now?” Shadow asked, feeling uneasy. “Do we leave her so they can get pictures or anything?”
He hoped it would be the case. He’d seen plenty of bodies in his time, but never a young woman and he hadn’t had to pull one out of a bay. Maybe the rocking of the boat was throwing his stomach into a cauldron of nausea.
“No, we’ll take her in. It’s obviously nothing more than a drowning.” Alex pushed the boat closer with the oar. “Can you handle it?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Shadow reached out and grabbed the dainty arm with his right hand. Bile rose in his throat at the unnatural coldness of no-longer-quite-human-feeling skin and the sponginess of slack muscles beneath. The corpse emitted no strong odor, but the rotted-fish stench of the tidal marsh, which Shadow normally didn’t even notice, clogged his nostrils. The putt-putting of the idling outboard motor seemed far away, but the reek of the engine’s oily exhaust seared the tissue inside his nose.
He sensed something else, too. His inner soul responded as he touched the cold, dead wrist. He had once shocked himself with a faulty extension cord and this cold feeling was the spiritual equivalent of that physical electrical shock—a shiver of dread whispering its way up his arm. The knowledge of evil having recently been here was intangible, but undeniable. He’d sometimes been present when his grandmother Min had called upon ancient spirits, even though she worshipped alongside her husband at the Baptist church. Now, many years later, he recognized the presence of something not of this world.
Ignoring his emotional turmoil, he concentrated on the job at hand and applied a steady pressure while he pulled the arm closer to the boat. Her brown hair floated in the water, undulating with the waves. Leaning over the gunwale, he switched and grabbed the arm with the claw and reached his clumsy right hand down into the frigid water, searching around for a grip to pull the body up. By accident, he went down into her shirt and under her bra. Suddenly, to his surprise, he cupped a breast in an obscene parody of a teen-age grope.
“He’s a pervert, your honor. Who knows what more would have happened if I hadn’t come in?”
Shadow quickly removed his hand and got a grip under her arm. He pulled. The waterlogged body seemed to weigh five hundred pounds. Forced to reach down and grab the rain parka with the claw, he could feel the boat tipping to the side. His arms and hand felt numb from the near-freezing water. Slowly, the yellow-clad corpse rose to the surface and, as more of it cleared the water, the effect on the boat increased dramatically. There was no way he could lift the cadaver into the unstable craft by himself.
“Could you give me a hand?” he asked. “Grab her legs and we’ll hoist her aboard.”
Alex slid carefully forward until he could also lean over and grip the body. The craft tipped at a dangerous angle and small amounts of water sloshed in.
“I’ve got the legs,” Alex grunted.
“On three,” Shadow said. “One. Two. Three.”
The rangers rolled the body over the gunwale and into the boat, exposing the girl’s slack and puffy face. Her open, brown eyes reminded Shadow of the dead sea-mammal he had found earlier. She had obviously been quite pretty, but Shadow could only stare in horror. A terrible wound gaped below her once-attractive face.
The girl’s throat had been ripped out.
Chapter Two
What do you suppose killed her?
“Jesus Christ, what the hell did that?” Alex blurted.
The chief ranger’s voice barely registered on Shadow, who desperately held his gorge until he could turn his face enough not to vomit in the boat. His skin went clammy in the cold, damp air as he continued to retch. Every time the spasms began to ease, he thought of what he had recently seen and a new round of heaving began. A sour, rank taste seemed to permeate his entire being.
He heard Alex talking to Mark Wilson, the assistant chief ranger, on a hand-held radio. Alex informed Mark of their find and told him they would be bringing the body back to the Barbour Hill dock. He also instructed Mark to contact the appropriate agencies to set up a search for the other girl.
When Shadow had finished vomiting, still sick to his stomach but with nothing left to expel, he wiped his face with his hand and turned back to face Alex. He kept his eyes on the chief ranger, but, at the edge of his vision, he could tell Alex had covered the torso and head of the body with a blanket from the box of first-aid gear and supplies kept in the back of the boat.
Alex looked at him closely. “You okay? It usually hits people pretty hard the first time.”
Shadow nodded, trying to ignore the bitter taste in the back of his mouth. He swallowed carefully and breathed deeply through his nose. It wasn’t like him to be sick and he was somewhat embarrassed.
“I did the same thing my first time,” Alex said. “And it wasn’t as bad as this. It comes with the job and you get used to it—sort of. Enough to get through it, anyway. You well enough to head back to Barbour Hill?”
“Yeah, I’m okay, I guess.” Shadow spat into the water and wiped a trail of drool from his chin. No need to remind Alex he’d seen plenty of bodies.
He looked around as Alex put power to the outboard engine and realized they had drifted away from shore while he had been vomiting; the wind had carried them out into the bay, nearly to the duck blind. He kept his face forward, glad for the refreshing wind because his lifejacket smelled of puke.
Shadow’s emotions were in turmoil. After all the killings he’d seen over all the years, this was somehow different in a way he couldn’t fathom. Perhaps it bothered him because this death hadn’t happened in the impersonal slaughterhouse of war. This was a wanton killing, and the evil that had washed over him made his stomach knot in disgust. How had he even felt that malevolent aura? Something to do with his Native American heritage, he assumed, without knowing exactly why. Completely wrapped up in his inner unrest, he was surprised when they rounded a point and neared the dock.
This northern landing was their destination, situated a half-mile from the contact station. The small, former hunting cabin had been rebuilt to serve as the park headquarters. Not much farther north, the five-mile-long Back Bay Federal Wildlife Refuge separated False Cape Park from Sandbridge, a resort enclave of houses on stilts. False Cape park visitors could make long hike or bicycle journeys along the refuge’s ‘dike trails,’ packed-sand roads that followed the dikes controlling the depth of large, man-made ponds set aside for wildfowl nesting. Private vehicles didn’t have access because they would disturb the birds.
As for the rangers, the refuge warden allowed them to cross the refuge in vehicles as a ‘courtesy.’ Except while migratory birds were present, from November to March, when even the rangers’ trucks were restricted to the beach route.
When they came close to the pier, Alex cut the engine. Shadow lashed the boat to a cleat, which was at chest height to him, since the tide was out.
“Let’s get her up on the platform,” Alex ordered.
Shadow reached down beneath the blanket to grab under the girl’s shoulders, while Alex wrapped his arms around her upper legs and said, “On three again. One...two...three.”
Shadow lifted the limp body and felt the boat rock down and then back up against his braced legs, threatening to throw him off balance. The girl’s arms and head hung limply, making his task difficult. He wondered if the cold water had kept rigor mortis from setting in or if it had worn off already. Either way, she would have been easier to lift if she had been more rigid. As they hoisted the corpse up onto the pier, Alex nearly lost his grip and had to make a grab to keep from losing her.
With a mighty heave, Shadow shoved her upper body onto the boards. He tried to push her farther in, but couldn’t slide so much dead weight over the rough surface. Climbing up onto the dock, he pulled the sodden, blanket-covered corpse entirely up onto the pier, haulin
g the dead girl like butchered meat.
“I’m going to uncover her again for a closer look.” Alex joined Shadow on the dock. “What do you suppose killed her?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve got a bad feeling.”
“It looked like some sort of animal bite to me.”
“It does, but I think she was murdered.”
Alex’s eyes grew wide. “Murdered? Her throat was ripped out, sure, but people don’t kill that way. They shoot their victims or stab them or poison them.”
Shadow shook his head. “When I first touched her, I got the sensation of something awful, something not of this world. It wasn’t an animal—something evil did this. I suppose it could be a person, but maybe not.”
“What do you mean? Like a monster, or something? Come on, Shadow!”
“Well...I...” Shadow searched for a way to state his feelings without his boss thinking he was a nut case. “Do you believe in ghosts?” he finally asked.
“No, I don’t.” Alex shook his head emphatically. “I don’t believe ghosts are anything more than figments of people’s overactive imaginations.”
“But what if you’d seen one yourself? Something you couldn’t explain in any other way?”
“I’d check to see what I was smoking in my pipe. No, seriously, I guess I’d have to reconsider but it’s never happened.”
“I grew up around spirits.” Shadow said, hesitant to mention it, even though Alex knew his background. “My grandmother Min, was a—well, she sometimes worshipped in the old ways and called on the spirits she’d learned of from her grandmother—and I’ve seen and felt things I couldn’t explain.”
“This was the same grandmother you’ve told me so much about, the old gal who named you?” Alex asked with grin.
“Leave off. I’m serious. Today I could sense a force from the girl’s arm and—I guarantee you this—it was nothing from this world.”