Crawlspace

by Sarah Graves

  That little whatever-it-was, there, though, all by itself at a finger pier of its own …

  He crouched to examine the craft. It was a homely little wooden vessel, broad and beamy, with a newish thirty-five-horse Evinrude and what appeared to be a pair of decent life jackets. The open boat had only a coffee can for bailing, too, which meant she didn’t leak.

  And … there was a key hanging in the ignition. Don’t even think about it, he told himself. Don’t be an idiot, make things worse, get into trouble.

  But he knew how to run this boat, how to start the engine and how to handle the tiller. The Old Bastard had owned one just like it up on Saranac Lake, and as a young teenager Chip had taken it out plenty of times, alone and with Sam Tiptree.

  So, how could it be a problem? Why shouldn’t he just hop in? Other than the fact that the boat didn’t belong to him, that is, and there didn’t seem to be anyone around here to ask if he could borrow or rent it.

  Hesitating, he scrutinized the craft more closely. Thick orange rubber gloves and what must be a chart folder wrapped in plastic were stashed under the boat’s bow.

  Not only that but the faintly visible dark line on the red plastic gas can stowed in the stern said there was plenty of fuel. Finally, there were oars set in decent oarlocks, so if worse came to worst he could always row.

  Someone will stop you. And if not, someone will catch you. You can’t just …

  But no one was even in sight. Looking around again, ready to jump back and stutter out an apology at the slightest hint of trouble, he stepped into the boat. It felt reassuringly familiar, and no one shouted at him.

  He sat and push-buttoned the ignition. The Evinrude fired up on the first try, with a low, confident rumble, and still no one made any protest.

  He couldn’t believe it. He wondered what it was like, living in a place where no one would steal a boat like this, where you could leave things out unlocked.

  Or at any rate, no one but Chip would steal it… . He spared a mo ment to switch his music playlist. David Byrne and Brian Eno’s “Strange Overtones” began coming out of his player, the electronic harmonies and a dreamy, faintly ominous vocal just strange enough to calm and energize him at the same time.

  It sounded … intelligent. Like not everyone in the world was stupid and brutal.

  Listening, Chip huffed a few breaths in and out. Maybe he would just sit here, and if anyone came along and yelled at him he would climb out, act like he was just some dope who didn’t know any better.

  But even as he thought about this, he was already getting up, shedding his topcoat and pulling on one of the life vests with its thick canvas straps and heavy-gauge metal buckles, and moving forward toward the gear in the bow. Hat, gloves, charts—rapidly he sorted through all the stuff and decided what to do with it.

  He put the hat and gloves on. They wouldn’t keep him warm forever, but-But what? a voice demanded suddenly in Chip’s head. Just what the hell are you planning to do here, pal?

  Got an idea? Or are you just muddling stupidly along with no plan at all, as usual?

  Chip didn’t know the answer to the questions that the voice in his head kept asking. He did notice, though—and not for the first time, actually; he’d had quite a lot of interior monologue going on lately—that the voice sounded like Carolyn’s.

  He thought that if you wanted a critical voice, hers was the one to use. Harsh, nasal, and much like the cry of the seagulls now clustering on the breakwater …

  What a mean thing to think, he scolded himself. He squelched the unkind comparison, atoning for it with the knowledge that he would have given plenty to hear Carolyn’s voice for real right now.

  But for the first time since he’d discovered that she was gone, he noticed also that he didn’t have that scary, untethered feeling, like a balloon whose string someone had let go of. Here in the wooden boat that he was about to steal—

  Borrow, he corrected himself. I’m bringing it back—

  Here, he still didn’t know what had happened to Carolyn or what to do about it. But he knew how to do something, and he had to, or he would go nuts.

  And this was it. So he would go out there and cast his eye around. After all, from what little he knew, it seemed logical that both Carolyn and Sam might’ve been taken away by water, and that they might even have been taken together.

  Sam’s abandoned bike, Roger Dodd’s guilty admissions, and Eastport Police Chief Bob Arnold’s report of a stranger on the breakwater last night, one who’d used a fright mask to scare away potential witnesses and who might briefly have stolen a car-There must’ve been one when Carolyn disappeared, Chip thought. There’d be few other ways to make her vanish right off the street like that, so suddenly and silently, other than by bundling her into a vehicle. He pulled the chart envelope open and unfolded the chart.

  Passamaquoddy Bay, it said, and at the number of tightly packed curving lines drawn on it, he paused in dismay.

  Channels, ledges, ridges, and peaks …

  That wasn’t a bay out there. It was a mountain range with a thin layer of water on top of it. There were a million things in it that a boat could hit, all made of granite.

  And to judge by the speed of the chunks of driftwood and clumps of seaweed scooting along atop it, the currents must be murder.

  You could die out there, warned the voice in his head.

  Because this wasn’t Saranac. If he got in trouble, the Old Bastard wouldn’t be calling out the cavalry, or a mechanic to fix things if the engine should fail.

  Not that the Old Bastard ever had done any such thing, but Chip had depended on the marine mechanic in Saranac more than once, when the outboard had suddenly crapped out. And there were a dozen other things Chip should be doing on land, anyway.

  Calling Siobhan, and possibly Carolyn’s parents. Keeping Sam Tiptree’s mother company, maybe finding a photograph of Carolyn so the police could …

  But he couldn’t imagine what to say to Carolyn’s editor or to her parents, either, even if he did get in touch with them.

  Hi there, just wanted to let you know your girl’s been snatched by a killer. …

  No, he couldn’t call them. Not yet. A sick, drowning feeling swept over him. And there was a picture of Carolyn on the back of every one of her books; the police could use that.

  So nobody needed him. No one but Carolyn and a guy named Sam Tiptree, who was older now but who once upon a time had thought Chip was the greatest sports expert in the world, because he could tell an inside fastball from a high curve, and throw one.

  He looked down at the chart again, and then back out at the choppy water. From here to the little island almost due north … It wasn’t far, really.

  Only a couple of miles, and he’d be within sight of land all the way. If worse came to worst, he could stand up and yell, and wave his arms

  Someone would see him. And the idea of sitting around Sam’s mother’s house waiting for something to happen was unendurable.

  He couldn’t do it. It was as simple as that. So he would have a look, just go out there and have what Carolyn would have called a “peekaroonie” at the situation.

  Do some research. And while he was at it, keep an eye peeled for a solitary buoy, right about—he squinted at the chart and then out at the waves—there. A buoy with money attached should be floating, right on that spot. Chip could just go out there and check.

  As he imagined it, the only useful thing the Old Bastard had ever told Chip popped into his head. Standing in his paneled study looking out over the skyline, Central Park, and the gauze of light spreading to the north and west, the old man had sipped bourbon contemplatively and said:

  “Ninety percent of everything, boy. Ninety percent of this whole damned shootin’ match is just showing up.”

  He’d knocked back the rest of his drink and glowered darkly. “And the rest,” he’d slurred, “is pure dumb luck.”

  Chip looked around a final time for someone to stop him. He debated leaving a
note, decided an undamaged, promptly returned boat and a hundred bucks would probably soothe any hurt feelings that developed.

  He pulled the iPod out again, chose another playlist of cuts he’d assembled himself. Hercules and Love Affair, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend …

  He resettled the earbuds in his ears. He centered himself on the boat’s transom seat. Then he slid the line off the dock cleat and reversed out of the slip.

  Finally he shifted forward and began motoring out of the boat basin, still expecting to hear someone yelling at him to stop. But no one did.

  “I DON’T KNOW WHERE HE IS. HE JUST WALKED AWAY WHEN I wasn’t looking.”

  Hours after Chip Hahn vanished out of the yard, Jake stood in the phone alcove clutching the phone, trying to make Bob Arnold understand that yet another visitor to Eastport had gone suddenly missing.

  Or rather, Bob got the missing part all right. It was the part about her not having anything to do with it that he seemed to be having trouble absorbing. And it was driving her nuts.

  “Bob, when I got up this morning, all I needed to do was put enough shredded cellulose to insulate a battleship into my house, and now Sam might be with a murderer.”

  She took a breath. “I can’t reach Wade, and in a situation like this it might be nice to have my husband around. Ellie’s got her hands full, because her husband is with my husband, so she’s on full-time parenting duty.”

  Ellie had gone straight home from the police station after they’d found Chip there. After that, she had called every twenty minutes to be updated on what was happening.

  But at age four, Ellie’s little daughter, Leonora, was a handful; whenever George was away, the mornings when the child attended prekindergarten were just about the only waking hours that Ellie didn’t spend dashing after her offspring. So when Ellie had Lee, Jake didn’t have Ellie—not for snooping purposes, anyway.

  “And as if that weren’t enough, I’ve got some idiot prankster calling here, saying he’s going to kill me,” Jake said. “So, Bob, if you could just stop—”

  Pestering me to tell you things I couldn’t possibly know, she wanted to finish. But of course he wasn’t doing that. He was trying to help, she told herself firmly.

  Which gave him a chance to talk, but he didn’t say that Sam had been found. And since that was the only thing she wanted to hear, it just made her furious again.

  “How’d Randy even get hold of a boat, anyway?” she demanded.

  “Seems Roger helped him out there, too,” Bob replied. “A few days ago, Roger called the marine store and asked them to get it out of storage, put it in the water.”

  In the boat basin, he meant. Bob went on: “Roger rented a slip for it, said he was going to sell it and wanted it out where somebody could try it out. So,” he finished, “we think Randy’s on that.”

  “Oh, that’s just great,” she began, but Bob was talking over her. Or trying to. Exasperated, she interrupted Bob’s well-meant advice to stay calm, sit tight, and—

  “Bob, I’ve been babysitting this phone for hours now. I’m losing my mind here, just doing nothing. Can’t I even—”

  Drive around some more. Walk up and down the street calling Sam’s name. Give one of the dogs his sock to sniff, and let them go roaming around trying to find him.

  But Bob just kept talking. In his voice she heard the same reassuring tone that in the past she’d heard him use while telling recent automobile accident victims that they weren’t seriously injured, even when they were.

  In other words, he was handling her. The thought frightened her badly. “All right,” she said, chastened. “And I appreciate it, Bob, you know I—”

  In the kitchen, Bella Diamond went on scouring the sink. Any minute now she would polish through the enamel, right down to the steel beneath.

  Jake thought about taking up a useful activity, too. Putting in all the insulation material using a teaspoon instead of an air compressor sounded about right at the moment.

  “Yes,” she told Bob Arnold again. “I know someone’s got to be here to answer the phone, in case—”

  But at the thought of what exactly she might need to answer it in case of, her throat closed.

  “—and if Chip gets in touch, I’ll let you know right away,” she finished.

  “Yeah, do that,” he agreed dryly. “I’ll get in touch with the wardens up north, too, see if they can get hold of Wade and George Valentine.”

  Wade’s hunting partner, he meant: his best friend, and Ellie White’s husband. “And, Jake, one more thing. Right now it seems like maybe Randy Dodd’s got himself some hostages. That’s bad enough. But—”

  “What?” Because what could possibly be worse? But he sounded very uncomfortable, so something must be.

  “Randy had to be somewhere all this time while we thought he was dead—when he wasn’t here, that is—and now Roger says it might have been South Carolina that Randy went to. I mean, after he supposedly drowned.”

  That traffic ticket, she thought. The one Chip had found a record of. She’d forgotten all about it. She told Bob about it now.

  “Yeah, well. Seems Randy’d been there before,” Bob continued, “and Roger thought that maybe he might’ve gone there to work construction.”

  “What?” she demanded again. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Jake, the thing is, some things happened down South.” Bob sounded sorrowful. “Women went missing. Three of ’em. While maybe Randy was around.”

  He liked it, Roger had said when they were with him in the police station. I think he got a taste for it.

  Killing, Roger had meant. Her knees went watery.

  “Of course, we’re not sure of anything,” Bob said. “Maybe it was just a coincidence, but—”

  She sat down. It was not a coincidence. There was no such thing as that much coincidence. She told Bob about the speeding ticket again, meanwhile trying very hard to keep her voice from quavering and her hands from shaking.

  But Bob already knew; cops, as it turned out, could check records better than even Chip Hahn could. And doing so was the first thing Bob had thought of, as soon as Roger Dodd mentioned his rogue brother’s possible hiding place.

  “So,” she said, “maybe we should try wrapping our minds around the idea that Sam’s in real—”

  Trouble. Bad trouble. The kind he wasn’t going to get out of without help. But Bob knew that, too. He was just trying not to scare her. Or no more than she already was.

  “Yeah.” He sighed resignedly. “I’m just saying, Jake. Don’t do anything dumb. Because Randy’s got his money, probably. That means he’s happy. But maybe he’s also got Sam and this girl who’s missing. One good thing, he doesn’t know yet that his plan’s gone all to hell. So let’s not do anything to make him feel—”

  Worse. Like he’s got to kill them right away.

  Unless he decides to do it for fun. She bit her lip.

  “Okay, Bob,” she managed, and after that he reassured her some more: State cops, Canadian authorities, local law officers, and marine enforcement, including two coast guards on both sides of the water, were on the job.

  The coast guard services were most familiar with possible hiding places and ways to get out of the country, Bob added. That last being what fugitive Randy Dodd would want most if he knew people were onto him.

  And Randy was very familiar with the water and coastline, too, from his fishing days. All the little hiding places, inlets and coves … There was no guarantee that anyone, even marine law officers, would be able to find him.

  “So let’s not any of us tell Randy, by word or deed, that he needs to get any sneakier than he already is,” Bob finished, and hung up.

  “Yeah, right,” Jake whispered to no one. Around her the big old house seemed to hold its breath, as if just waiting for Sam to return and bring life back into it.

  IN THE DINING ROOM, THE GOLD MEDALLION WALLPAPER glimmered in the thin light of a November afternoon. In the hallway, the stairs were silent
, no young-man feet thudding energetically up and down them.

  In the kitchen, the dogs sniffed around restlessly, hunting for their pal. At this time on any other day, Sam would’ve had them out for a walk.

  “Drink this,” Bella Diamond commanded as Jake wandered in there and sank down at the kitchen table. The room smelled like kitchen cleanser and lemon-scented spray cleaner, but the cup of tea the housekeeper handed her—her stepmother, Jake corrected herself impatiently—smelled suspiciously like whisky.

  Tall and rawboned, Bella wore her white bib apron over a navy blue sweatshirt, blue jeans, and loafers with white socks. “Your father’ll be back soon,” she said. “He’s just out walking around. Just in case.”

  Looking, Bella meant. Hunting for Sam. Jake felt a pang of envy for her father, who could at least be out there trying to do something, instead of sitting here just-She gulped the spiked tea. Bella’s face creased in sympathy. “Here,” she said, and held out a paper bag. “A little chore I’ve been waiting for someone to have time for.”

  In it were a half-dozen antique cut-glass doorknobs. All were coated in thick white paint, the result of some previous house owner’s ham-handed attempts at interior decoration.

  “You might as well be doing something,” said Bella, handing over an X-Acto knife to go with the paint-coated doorknobs.

  Jake looked at the doorknobs, and at the knife, and then at Bella, who had of course known Jake’s usual method of coping with problems, or at least of thinking about how to cope with them.

  But Bella had gone further, apparently taking some trouble to put together a sort of kit for this purpose. Touched, Jake looked down at the items again.

  The X-Acto knife consisted of a metal handle with a small, arrowhead-shaped blade sticking out of one end. She tested the blade with the tip of her finger and found it so sharp that she could’ve used it to split atoms.

  Perfect for paint-peeling. But it was no use. “Thanks, but I can’t just sit here and—”

  Bella wasn’t listening. “Finish that tea,” she said. “And a cup more, if you can. And while you’re working there, you just tell me about whatever it is.”