by John Bushore
It was time for a lunch break. He wasn’t really hungry, however, and the duck blind had been on his mind all morning. Jumping down off the dock into the smallest boat, he cranked up the engine.
In moments, he was skimming over the flat surface of the bay. The skies were clear, the water was flat, and a run out to the blind and back would only take a quarter of an hour. The wind evaporated the sweat from his shirt as the boat sped along.
The duck blind was a simple structure built on pilings sunk into the soft bottom of the shallow bay. Really only a framework with a floor, the sides had been covered with reeds so hunters could crouch down to hide from waterfowl. There was also a hidden nook where a boat could dock, Shadow eased the johnboat inside. He tied it off and climbed a short, wooden ladder to the hunters’ platform.
The blind was unoccupied, of course, and there was nothing to show hunters had ever been there but a couple of paper bags, crumpled in a corner. Disappointed, Shadow turned to leave but stooped down and picked up the sacks as he did. No use leaving trash to float away in the storm. He felt the weight of something inside and opened the bags to find empty sardine cans. He re-closed the bags and chucked the whole mess into the johnboat so it wouldn’t end up blown into the bay. Then he climbed into the boat and headed back toward Wash Woods, disappointed.
He was almost back to the pier when he absent-mindedly rubbed a tickling on his upper lip. The odor of sardines on his finger reminded him of the last time he’d smelled the preserved fish. Had False Cape Frank been using the blind?
Shadow looked up at the approaching dock and saw Alex there, waiting for him. “Where the hell have you been?” Alex asked. “You’re supposed to be getting ready for the storm.”
“Catch.” Shadow threw him a line. “I went out to the duck blind off False Cape.”
“What for?” Alex walked with the line, pulling the boat into shore, rather than tying it to the dock.
“Just one of my hunches.”
“Find anything?”
“Some trash, that’s all.”
“Oh. Better not waste any more time. I brought you some sandwiches, chips and a soda. The volunteers brought in food again, like they always do for a search or a disaster, bless them.”
“Great. I finished the E.E.C. Let’s put the boat away and then I’ll grab a quick bite before we tackle the rest of the gear around the boathouse.”
They stowed the boat and motor, then Shadow wolfed down the food, using the hood of his truck as a table.
“What did you think—son of a bitch!” Alex swatted a deer fly that had bitten his neck, “—you might find, out at the blind?” He looked down at the smear of blood and insect on his hand. “Little vampire.”
“I don’t know. I remembered having a feeling once, like someone was watching me from out there. Figured it would be a good idea to check it out real quick, in case the city-boy cops didn’t think of it.” Shadow waved a wasp away from his open soda can. “Be a good place for someone to hide out.”
Alex changed the subject. “What’s left to do?”
“Let’s go see.”
They spent an hour or so putting everything away. While they were at it, the detectives, apparently finished with their investigation, took the yellow crime-barrier tape from around Shadow’s yard.
“We’re out of here,” one of them called to the two rangers. “They’re going to need all of us for traffic control. You’d better clear out, too; the roads out of town will be packed tonight.”
“We’ll be right behind you,” Alex called.
He and Shadow finished soon after. “Want any help packing?” Alex asked.
“No, I don’t need much.”
“You sure? Lillian has everything packed up and ready at my place. I can spare a few minutes. We’re going up to a hotel in the mountains—way out in Charlottesville. Lillian said she was lucky to get a room anywhere, what with everyone leaving the coast.”
“Naw.” Shadow shrugged. “I’ll be alright.”
Alex looked at him suspiciously. “Do you have some place to go? I mean, we could share a room with you if you’re in a bind.”
Shadow hadn’t thought about where to go, but he didn’t want to admit it. “Yeah, I keep that little pop-up trailer in a storage lot, remember? I’ll drop by there, hitch it up, drive far enough west so the wind won’t blow me and the trailer into Oz like Dorothy and her little house, then take it easy for a day. I’ll come back as soon as they give the all clear.”
“Just be careful. Even though the hurricane’s been downgraded to three it’ll still be a hell of a blow.”
“You go ahead and get Lillian out of here. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Okay. See you in a couple of days.” Alex went to his truck and drove away, giving a wave.
Shadow knew he should go directly to his house and begin packing, but he’d been thinking about the sardine tins the entire time he had been working alongside Alex. It was a clue, but not much of one. It didn’t tie False Cape Frank into the murders in any way, but he knew it was important, and he wouldn’t have found it if he hadn’t gone back to investigate one of his earlier hunches. Hmm, what other things might he have overlooked, he wondered.
There was another place he had experienced a strange sensation besides near the women’s bodies. The cemetery. And that was where Steve Slocum had said he’d seen footprints going across the old road. Hmm, footprints, not tire tracks. Hadn’t False Cape Frank carried his bike out of the grove, back when they’d first met? Carry a bike and there are only footprints. There was no way Shadow was going to evacuate the park without looking into it. Since it wasn’t far away, he decided to walk rather than go back to the house for his truck.
Shadow strode away from the boathouse, walked past Jenny’s cottage and turned south along that section of road from long ago. He broke into a sweat again, walking through the dry, shifting sands. A quarter of a mile later, he turned off the road, wondering if the wind was beginning to pick up slightly. Then, he went among the moss-covered oaks and it was dead calm, as if the breeze had been forbidden to enter the hallowed ground.
Looking left toward the tombstones, with Mamie Bunch’s marker beyond, he wondered again if his guess about False Cape Frank’s relationship to her might be correct, but his destination was the remains of the old church. Without hesitation, he stepped over the low brick foundation.
He’d expected to be overwhelmed by the same feeling of evil as before, but he wasn’t. True, he felt uneasy, but not like the last time. The tiny animal skulls were still there, perhaps even more of them than before, but they didn’t seem so threatening. So, what was different?
Shadow walked around inside the perimeter and studied it. Most of it was loose brick, set back on the original foundation by park rangers and volunteers when they’d restored the old cemetery. Jonesy had told Shadow that the steeple had been on its side in the weeds, where it had fallen, but had been set upright inside the foundation. All other unsightly remains of the church had been hauled away.
When Shadow had decided the bricks and skulls held no secrets, he turned and faced inward. The steeple—actually, only the peaked roof of the original steeple—was a steep, twelve-foot high cone that appeared circular at a casual glance, but actually had twelve equal sides. Now that he considered it, the ramshackle structure seemed to be the source of his disquiet. He stepped closer. His discomfort increased.
Yet there was nothing unusual about this last vestige of the old church. The weathered, gray wooden shingles were old and ragged, some of them fallen off. Since it sat in shade most of the year, green moss had grown on all sides of the structure. He walked around and suddenly noticed something unusual. Two of the shingles, a couple of feet apart but in a vertical line with each other, were raised on one side and something showed beneath each of them. He stepped closer and lifted one of the clapboards slightly. A hinge! There were three hinges in all, he soon discovered. Now why would the church’s builders have put some type of doo
r in a steeple that would have been far above ground? The hinges were not old and rusty, but fairly new. Someone had smeared mud over them so they wouldn’t stand out.
He took a few paces back, until he was at the brick foundation again. He was now on the far side of the steeple from the marker and the cemetery, where no one was likely to stand. As he looked at the area in question, he could clearly see some clapboards had been cut in half, but left attached. The line of cut boards resulted in a trapezoid pattern turning one of the twelve sides into a narrow door. Now that he knew what to look for, it was easy to see.
He went back to the structure and examined it even more carefully. What appeared to be a knothole in a shingle was actually a drilled opening at the edge of the door, away from the hinges. The new wood exposed by the drill bit had been darkened with dirt or mud. Although it didn’t look recently done, it must have been bored out within the last year or two. It would double as a peephole for anyone inside, he realized.
It dawned on him, if someone was inside they would know he was there.
He took his gun out and cocked it. Holding his pistol ready, he stuck the thumb part of the claw into the fake knothole. Nothing held the door, but he had to pull hard since it was built into a slanted wall and gravity held it shut. It was as much hatch as door. There was no squeal from the hinges or any other sound as he eased it open. When the door had moved perhaps six inches, he suddenly yanked it the rest of the way, pulled the claw free and jumped back, aiming into the dark opening.
Nothing moved inside. After a few seconds he stuck his head in.
The first thing he noticed was False Cape Frank’s bicycle hanging vertically on an inside wall, tied so it was out of the way, front tire toward the ceiling. He looked carefully at the tread pattern on the tires, comparing to his sharp memory of the marks where Helen had been killed. The rear tire matched.
The chamber was fairly large, almost ten feet across, and packed with gear. A sleeping bag covered a section of the ground, several cardboard boxes beside it. A battery lantern and a portable radio sat atop one of them. In another area was an electric trolling motor and a car battery. There was also a cook stove with a propane bottle attached, a pile of clothing, a pair of boots and a well-worn Bible. Leaning against the wall was a surveyor’s scope on a tripod, beside a long measuring stick. A board with a hook on it had been attached to one wall, but nothing hung from it.
Shadow looked into a couple of the boxes; they contained food and bottled water. He noticed an abundance of crackers and—sardines again! There were also several opened cans and tins in a trash heap, along with assorted, crumpled food wrappers. The place smelled slightly of sardines.
Shadow also felt an aura within the small space. It was evil and familiar, but faint, like the perfume of a woman departed. He touched the empty hook—and felt the now-familiar tingle.
The motor and battery intrigued him. Their presence suggested he had been right about Frank using the water to get in and out of the park—that and the sardine tins in the duck blind. They also hinted he must still be in the park, if the boat was still here, so the old man should be.
Shadow thought for a moment, then backed out of the steeple and closed the door quietly. Reflecting that it was possible someone was watching him, even though he didn’t sense it, he watched his back trail as he walked quickly back to the Wash Woods dock, but saw nothing.
At the dock, he dragged the johnboat to the water and went back to the boathouse for the outboard. It would be noisy he knew, and wished for the stealth of an electric motor but the rangers never used fishing motors. He had no choice, however; it would take days for one man to search the shoreline south on foot through the underbrush and swamps.
He cranked the motor into sputtering life and eased south along the shoreline, noticing a slight chop to the water and a smell of rain in the air. The boat he sought, Frank’s boat, must be well hidden, since it hadn’t been seen in any of the prior searches. He watched closely, but as it turned out, now that he knew what he was searching for, it was easy to find.
Less than a half-mile away, he saw where something wide had been dragged ashore, crushing the shoreline reeds flat. It had been a couple of days, at least, since the boat had been pulled through, because some of the plants had straightened out. But to Shadow’s sharp eyes, it looked like this was a regular event, since so many of the reeds had been snapped off and regrown to different heights. This landing had been used for weeks, at least.
He pulled the johnboat into shore, put out the anchor on a line, snubbed it short, and stepped out of his boat. The track, easy to follow, ended only a few yards ashore. A johnboat, painted in camouflage colors, had been shoved under a rusty piece of corrugated metal roofing that must be the remains of a barn—no, probably a boathouse this close to the water—from way back when. The johnboat could only be seen if approached directly from the bay and even then, it was hard to make out in the shadows. From any other direction, the piece of roofing would appear to be only one more remnant of the old Wash Woods community.
He knelt down and stared into the boat. It was empty except for normal boat gear: spare oars, lifejackets, line, and an anchor. He lifted what appeared to be a tarp, then saw the pole-sleeves that marked it as a tent. It was torn and stained. Shadow sniffed it. Blood. He remembered finding a tent stake in the meadow, way back at the start of all this, and wondering if the tent had been struck in a hurry.
There was nothing else of interest, but the craft’s presence, since the bicycle was also still in the park, meant Frank was somewhere on the cape. Unless he had walked out past all the searchers, which was unlikely.
Shadow reached into the boat’s stern, over the transom, and pulled loose a rubber stopper—the bilge plug—used to drain rainwater from the boat when it was ashore. He put the stopper in his pocket and chuckled. If Frank didn’t notice the missing plug—and it was beneath the rear seat, hard to notice—he’d shove off in a boat that was sure to slowly sink.
Chapter Twenty Six
Hoo, boy, what don’t I have?
Shadow walked back to his own boat, suddenly aware it would soon be nightfall. He slid the boat off the shore and high-tailed it back to the dock. The speeding boat cut into the choppy waves, spraying him with water. A mild rain had begun to fall.
By the time he got there, he was soaked. Swiftly, he stowed the boat and motor where they would be safe from the storm and walked back to his house. It was time to get out, he decided, pulling off his soggy shoes and going directly into his bedroom to finish packing. The light on his ancient answering machine was flashing on the nightstand, which was wet from a fine spray of rain blowing in through the window screen. Pulling the window down until nearly closed, he punched the playback button on the machine.
While the machine pronounced the date and time of the call—four twenty three in the afternoon—he reached up in the closet for his old duffel bag, and began pulling clothing from drawers. Lorene’s voice came on.
“Shadow, are you there?” A pause. “Damn, I hope you haven’t evacuated yet. You need to give me a call as soon as possible. I’ve got information on Frank Waterfield saying you were right on the button. Call me at the office—481-2230 or on my cell 783-9456. Bye.”
Shadow glanced at his watch. Damn, almost eight. Would she have left by now? He knew the police and firefighters and such would stay, but F.B.I.?
He called her cell phone first. No answer, so he left a short message and then called the second number.
“Agent Walker.”
“Lorene, it’s Shadow. I got your message. What do you have?”
“Hoo, boy, what don’t I have? You were right about him being a nut case. He’s been in and out of mental counseling for years. Schizophrenia with acute paranoia. Supposedly he’s under control because of medication, but I don’t think he’s been taking his pills. He stopped showing up for his regular appointments eight months ago and his prescriptions would have run out long ago.”
“I kn
ow. I’ve got more...” Shadow began, but Lorene forged on.
“You were also right about him being a surveyor, or at least an engineer, although that was twenty years ago; he hasn’t worked since then. He’s got money, though, an inheritance, plus disability social security.”
“Listen, Lorene, I have to tell you...”
“I also—what?” she said. “I missed that. What did you say?”
“I found his hideout and I think he’s still in the park.”
“Holy shit! You’re not kidding, are you?”
“No. I found his bicycle and some other stuff in the old church steeple. He cut a hidden door into it and he’s been camping out in there like it was a tent. Searchers probably walked right past him several times.”
“You actually found his bike? In the steeple? What else was there?”
“Food, water, a radio, shit like that. But there was a surveyor’s transit, too, for what it’s worth.”
“Jesus Christ—the old cemetery—I have to see it! Are you at home? I’ll be right there—don’t go anywhere—maybe forty, forty-five minutes.”
“I’m getting ready to leave. We’re evacuating, remember?”
“Shadow, you can’t do that! I have to process the area, get some forensics people in there.”
“You can do that after the hurricane.”
“Like hell! It might not be there after the storm. Listen, let’s try this—there’s a forensics guy here in the office, I’ll bring him. We’ve got to at least get a look. If the tide comes over the cape—and I understand that’s common—it’ll wash away any evidence or the wind might blow the steeple to Bumfuck, Egypt. The hurricane won’t be here until tomorrow and I have to see it now!”
Shadow hadn’t considered that the storm might destroy the steeple.