Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery

by Dallas Murphy

  “Maybe it’s Sid,” said Crystal in a tight whisper.

  “Think I should call out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sid! Sid, is that you?”

  No response. No movement.

  “Hawley! That you!” Nope. “We’re armed!” I squeaked. I got a hold of my voice and screamed, “We’re armed! And I’m gonna fucking kill you if you don’t get out of this house!” I was working myself into a rage, and it took little effort. Like when I kicked that guy’s lunch. I was atwitch with the impulse to kick open the door and fire, screaming, like in some jack-off G.I. Joe fantasy. I did, however, decide: If someone appears in the doorway, I will shoot him without a word of warning. That decision was clear and unequivocal. I cocked the gun and braced it on the bed. I couldn’t miss.

  We waited. Silence…Had we scared them off? I couldn’t sustain this level of readiness over the long haul.…

  “You think I should go out and see?” I asked.

  “Hell, no,” she said.

  “What if they’re gone?”

  “Then what difference will it make?”

  Jellyroll was trembling so hard it looked like he was running in place.

  Then, suddenly, it was dawn, a gray pasty one, but we had made it through the night. Everything is easier in the daylight. We must have slept, at least periodically, at our stations, but now we were both awake. Crystal, I noticed for the first time, was wearing only a pair of green bikini panties and I only a T-shirt. I hugged her close. And then we went into the living room together, but I led the way as the designated shooter. The boathouse was empty.

  Jellyroll sniffed the edges of the floor. He knew someone had been here. I went out on the porch. I peered over the railing down to seaweed-covered rocks. No one was lurking down there. From the porch, I looked along the sides of the house. No one was hiding there, either.

  Then I realized there was a stiff wind blowing, not so much down in the cove, but the tops of the tall pines were swaying, and the fog had dissipated but not lifted. I still couldn’t see the mouth of the cove, but I could see fifty feet in that direction, and I felt a vague disquiet as I looked. Something was different out there. Something was wrong. What?

  The boat.

  “Crystal, the boat’s gone!”

  She came out, Jellyroll trailing. She had a grim look on her face. “Artie, where did you leave the telephone?”

  “Right on the table.”

  “In clear sight?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s gone.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  They took our phone and our boat?” We stared out dispiritedly. We were too tired to fight anymore. The psychos had taken our only means of communication and our only means of transportation.

  “Wait a minute,” said Crystal, pointing out into the murk. Maybe her gaze hadn’t been blank and helpless, maybe only mine had. “See out there? Isn’t that the boat? I can’t see it if I look right at it, but if I look to one side or the other…I see a shape.”

  I looked out the corner of my eye. I saw it. I got the binoculars, but they didn’t work in the fog, magnifying obscurity. “I’ll go see,” I said.

  “How?”

  “In the dinghy.”

  “No, Artie, suppose it’s a setup,” she said, squeezing my forearm so hard it hurt. “Suppose they’re waiting out there in the boat. Suppose that’s how they planned it all along. You come rowing up, and pow.” She made a fatal chopping motion with the side of her hand.

  That was a factor, all right, the chop. But what if the boat had come loose because I didn’t tie it on very well? The tide was ebbing. In a little while our boat would be irretrievable, and we’d have no way out except by foot along a rocky trail ripe for ambush. That could have been the setup.

  “Then we’ll go together,” said Crystal.

  “I couldn’t row the dinghy fast enough with all of us in it.” We argued briefly over who’d take the shotgun. She insisted I take it.

  “Do you have a life jacket?”

  “Yes, but it’s in the boat. Crystal, maybe you ought to pack a few essentials while I’m gone. Maybe we should get out as soon as I bring the boat back.”

  “Okay,” she said grimly.

  It began to rain fat, heavy drops. The sky was black and low. There was another storm coming.

  It was a hard row. The wind kept blowing me off course. In the gusts, the raindrops stung when they hit my face. Water ran freely over my glasses. I was almost blind now…I could see why the Indians invented the canoe. This facing backward was a drag. Looking over my shoulder, I feared I wasn’t gaining on the shape. Maybe the tide was carrying us out of the cove even now. Maybe I’d never catch up. Maybe I’d soon look around and realize I was alone on a gray sea. In a dinghy. In a building storm. With no idea where I was, and my body would never come up.

  No, I was making progress. I was rowing marginally faster than the Hampton boat was drifting. The next time I looked around, I could see I was actually closing on it. I could distinguish bow from stern.

  I couldn’t detect any activity aboard, but then if they were lying in wait for me in the bottom of the boat, they wouldn’t show themselves yet. They’d wait until I was closer, within ax range, maybe when I was trying to climb aboard. Thwack. Five minutes later I had pulled within two dinghy lengths of the Hampton boat. I put the shotgun in my lap and gave two final, straining pulls on the oars to get up some momentum. Then I slid off the seat, crouched in the bottom, and let the nose of the dinghy hit the bigger boat, but I didn’t look up over the gunwale. Not yet. We drifted together for a while. I listened…silence.

  There was no one aboard, I decided, but I still didn’t risk it. I grabbed the side of the Hampton boat so we wouldn’t separate, waited still longer, before, gun first, I peered over the rail. There was, in fact, no one there, but I got a scare climbing aboard. I did one of those Buster Keaton splits between two quickly separating boats, and I nearly went in the drink. I always expect the ludicrous, even in extremis. On the second go I got aboard.

  I tied the dinghy to the cleat in the stern. I retrieved my keys from under the seat cushion where I kept them, but I stopped myself before starting the engine. The sniff test. I wouldn’t even feel the explosion, a flash of white light, then nothing. Atomized within sight of the boathouse. Maybe little bits of me would drop into Crystal’s hair with the rain. Jellyroll would eat the bigger parts when they came down. I’d been noticing an increased stink lately. I raised the engine box. It reeked of gasoline, but the wind quickly blew the fumes away. Did I have a gas leak or was that normal? I started the motor with the cover open. Then I headed for home—

  I hadn’t gone more than two boat lengths before I hit something. I put the transmission back into neutral. It wasn’t a rock—I was well clear of the sunkers. It felt like a rotten tree trunk or something. I looked into the water, saw nothing unusual, so, gingerly, I put the lever forward and we began to move…No problem dead slow. Everything felt fine. I sped up—and I hit it again with the same thunk.

  I yanked the lever to neutral and stood there frozen, my shoulder bones pressing against my ears, water running down my spine. I went back to look over the stern, because it felt like only the propeller or the rear part of the boat had hit the thing. I watched the water longer this time. Twice I checked my position. Was I way off course? No. There was still fog, but it wasn’t opaque anymore. I could see the boathouse ahead. I could make out landmarks, a dead tree hanging over the water on the right, the big round boulder cracked in half on the left. I knew exactly where the sunkers were—

  Something pale was rising slowly from the green, turgid water. I had read somewhere that cold northern waters are murky because of the rich plankton and other minute marine organisms in suspension, and tropical waters are clear because they are relatively barren. This water was rich in life; I couldn’t identify the pale thing until it was about to break the surface.

  It was a man’s naked leg.

  It floa
ted up right under my nose as I leaned over the stern. The leg was pudgy. It had been severed at the hip. The sickening white cartilaginous ball remained intact as if the propeller had wrenched, not chopped, the ball out of the socket. Two parallel bone-deep gashes in the calf streamed raggedy red tissue. Little black hairs danced on the pale flesh as water sloshed over it. His forlorn foot still wore a brown-and-white argyle crumpled around the ankle.

  Where was the rest of him? In a kind of trance, I circled my boat looking—

  There was a line hanging over the bow. I hadn’t noticed that before. It was taut. That meant there was something on the other end of it, some weight. The anchor? No, I was standing on the anchor. I knew it wasn’t the anchor, anyway. I knew what it was.

  I untied the line and held the end in my hand, felt the weight, while I decided what to do with it. After all, I could just cast the line overboard and not pull on it at all—

  An empty shoe, an oxblood wingtip, surfaced languidly. It bobbed upright but awash. I knew that shoe. That was Sid’s shoe. Then Sid himself surfaced. I hadn’t consciously pulled on the rope.

  “Crystal!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Again. But I knew in a wave of despair that it was futile; she’d never hear me in the wind. “Crystal!” I screamed again, nonetheless.

  They had tied the rope around Sid’s waist, and his body had bent around it. He surfaced in that attitude. He had hung straight down until the boat moved forward, and then the force of water had brought him up right into the propeller. His pants had been ripped off his body, his shirt and jacket rumpled under his armpits. I never saw Sid’s face, but I saw the back of his head. It was stove in, and triangular chunks of his skull had floated away. I heard myself whimpering, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. Sid had tried to help us. Sid sank back, opening up as he did so, arms and legs akimbo like a skydiver’s. I had let his body pull the end of the rope from my hands before I clearly understood that was happening.

  I shoved the throttle forward hard. The engine roared, but it seemed to take two days for us to pick up any speed. I strained to see Crystal on the porch as I drew near, but she wasn’t there. Neither was Jellyroll—

  I hit the flat rock a glancing blow that drove my knee against the steering console. Blades of sick pain stabbed up my leg. I threw the bow line ashore, but I didn’t take time to tie it onto anything. I leapt off the boat and hobbled to the stairs—

  “Crystal!” No answer from the house! “Jellyroll!” I ran around back, past Jellyroll’s woodpile, screaming their names, but they didn’t answer. I went up the steps three at a time, though I knew neither Crystal nor Jellyroll would be there—

  No phone! I was on my own. Where would they take Crystal and Jellyroll? That’s what I needed to think about. Where would I take them if I were a psycho stalker? I realized that I had the shotgun clutched so tightly my fingers throbbed. Where!

  They had no choice on foot. They had to take either the back trail toward the Castle or the coastal trail leading toward Kempshall’s crypt. I ran down the steps, skidded around the corner in the mud, and went down hard on my left hip. I heard myself moan. There was the woodpile. Jellyroll’s woodpile. Somewhere inside was his chipmunk.

  I crawled in the mud past the woodpile toward the Castle trail, looking for tracks. Wouldn’t I see tracks? If they’d just come this way—But what if they went the other way?

  Christ, tracks everywhere! Waffle-soled boots, dog tracks, and barefoot tracks. Crystal’s tracks. The imprint of her instep could break my heart. The wind howled. I was shivering.

  The tracks led unmistakably toward the Castle trail. I ran as fast as I could under the conditions. My pain—I could feel it— was focusing down into a hot, lethal rage. I was glad. I felt calm now. I loved my gun and the death it would deal. No matter what, the Desmonds would never leave the island alive. I skidded to a stop before I knew why. Had I heard something? I was gasping too loudly to hear anything. I held my breath…

  Crystal! She was calling my name! From where? Was it a trap? I ran along the flat part of the trail where the undergrowth thickened. I slowed. I couldn’t see around the next bend. Anything could be waiting.

  I turned a corner, and there she was—

  She was leaning against a tree. Waving her arms overhead. Was she unhurt? But why didn’t she come toward me? She was crying and holding her arms out to me, but she didn’t come to me. Why? She was naked from the waist up—

  They had chained her by the neck to the trunk of a fat spruce tree. I held her as best I could. I’d worn extra layers for the row. I peeled off my slicker and then my fleece jacket, which I wrapped around her.

  “It was Desmond! Desmond and that little fucker! His name is really Perry. It was his idea to strip me like this before chaining me—to slow you down. They’re going to the Crack to get their boat. They mean to take Jellyroll to the mainland because that’s where the press is, covering the murders. Hurry, you might be able to catch them!”

  “I can’t leave you like—”

  “Yes, you can! Go!” They had wrapped the chain twice around her neck and then locked it behind the tree, so there was no chance she could duck out of it even with my help.

  “What are they going to do to Jellyroll on the mainland?”

  “You know what they’ll do. They’ll do what they threatened to do. They killed Sid, Artie. That little fucker was laughing about it!”

  “…Is that strangling you?”

  “No. But I’m not going anywhere.” Her wet hair streaked over her brow. I pushed it out of her eyes.

  “Was Jellyroll terrified?”

  She cried. “It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. He kept looking back over his shoulder at me as they dragged him off.” She collected herself and whispered, “Go.”

  I turned and ran. I ran hard, sometimes leaping obstructions, jinking around holes. I wanted to make time here on the flat ground, because I wouldn’t be able to run once the trail climbed near the patch of wildcat granite on the way up to the Castle.

  I was near full speed when I saw the boots, the legs of someone lying face down across the trail. I saw this lower half of what I assumed was a dead man; it registered in my brain—look, there’s a corpse in the ferns—but my body couldn’t respond. I tripped on his feet, and went airborne. The gun flew from my hands as I threw them out to break my landing—

  Sharp pain. Something bad had happened to my left hand, but the pain didn’t have any specificity yet. I rolled on my side and cradled my hand against my chest as if it were a baby bird fallen from the nest. I didn’t want to look at it yet. I shimmied back on my ass in the mud and the rain to see who was dead.

  Perry was dead. Dick Desmond’s phony son from hell had left this life, and that was fine with me. Save ammo. His head was turned sideways—we were almost face-to-face before I realized my glasses were gone. His eyes were open, but they were milky. They didn’t blink when raindrops struck them. His lips were pursed as if he’d been slurping blood juice off his empty plate when the blow fell.

  The blade had hit him smack in the left ear. There was a deep puddle of half-coagulated blood beneath his head but curiously little on the point of impact. The guy’s ear was split in half horizontally, and most of the two halves had followed the blade into the black wound. What remained of his ear looked like a spring bud on a certain cherry tree in Riverside Park.

  A sweet little patch of wildflowers grew among the ferns near Perry’s crown, but I didn’t know what they were. Were they pearly everlasting? It seemed sad that my study of wildflowers had come to nothing before the corpses started showing up. A single mosquito landed on Perry’s brow near his wound, wiggled a couple of times getting set and plowed her thing through his skin. I could see it penetrate. I watched it with a terrible concentration. Oddly, I found the juxtaposition, the incongruity (or something) hilarious. I didn’t exactly laugh. I made some kind of noise, but it wasn’t exactly laughter. And I still hadn’t looked at my hand.

&nb
sp; TWENTY-FOUR

  I was about ready to look. I sat in the mud with my knees drawn up, my back turned on the corpse. If the corpse came here to harm Jellyroll, then he got what he deserved, tough shit. I wondered who turned him into a corpse, but I didn’t have time to speculate; I had to get running again. So I’d just take a quick look at the old digit, a glance, and get moving again. I didn’t need to dwell on it, to make myself sick with it—

  I flashed it up in front of my face. There was a clear problem with my pinkie. My pinkie flopped over at a grotesque angle like a fallen soldier behind its fellows. I moved it gently. I could see the socket gophering beneath the skin. I reached around behind my normal fingers, took hold of the errant one, and tried to lever it back into position. I yelped in pain, but I accomplished nothing. It wouldn’t go unless I wrenched it. Christ, I hated the thought of wrenching it. Maybe I would wrench it clean off; maybe only skin held it on.

  I began to sob. My shoulders bounced uncontrollably with it. I had reached the end of my rope. My dog was probably already dead. My lover was chained to a tree by her neck. Sid was murdered. What hope was there? None. I stopped sobbing abruptly without decision. I just stopped. I don’t know precisely why.

  I’d leave my finger like that for now—I could shoot the gun one-handed—but it would be better if I could cover the hand in something so it wouldn’t catch on objects as I ran through the woods. I still had a long way to go. I hadn’t even reached the Castle ruins yet, not nearly. How far was the Crack from the Castle? I didn’t really know, I’d never been from the Castle to the Crack. Why exactly was I going there, anyway? What was the point of fighting psychos if they just keep coming at you? Sooner or later you’d run out of will, energy, ammo. I clenched my jaw against that kind of hamstrung despair. My finger throbbed maddeningly, my dog was probably dead, but, goddamnit, I would keep struggling for the terrible retribution I would inflict, for the pleasure of rollicking in their spurting, arterial blood. The wind keened in the treetops. Or was I making that noise?