The Winter Beach

by Kate Wilhelm

  She put her head down on the steering wheel and tried to think of someplace to go. The motel was closed for the season. She knew no one in town well enough to ask for a room for the night. Back to her house? She was afraid to go back. Saul would give her something to make her sleep again.

  She jerked upright with the thought and knew it was right. He had given her something both nights. Why? She had no answer, only the question that kept slipping away as if she was not supposed to ask it, as if she had touched on a taboo that sent her mind skittering each time she came too close.

  She remembered a gravel road that led from town up into the hills, following Salmon Creek to a picnic spot, going on upward past that. A logging road, dirt and rough, no doubt, but protected from the wind, and unused now since logging had stopped. She drove again, turned at the next corner, and headed back toward Salmon Creek. It churned under the wind, whitecaps slapped against the boats at anchor at the docks. No one was in sight as she turned onto the gravel road, and within seconds she was out of town with only the grass on both sides of the road. At the picnic grounds she stopped to take aspirin and drink the Coke. She was very feverish, she knew. This had been a good idea, she decided, waiting for the aspirin to dull her headache and ease the ache in her arms and legs. She would rest until the storm passed—they never lasted more than a few hours—and by the time it was quiet again, probably after dark, she would go on, drive to Portland, return the car to the agency, get a flight back home.

  She had no home, she remembered. She had leased her apartment. But them were people she could go to, she argued. Jackie, Chloe, Mildred and Jake ... Neither Lasater nor Saul could find her here, and tomorrow she would be safe. The aspirin was not helping very much; reluctantly she turned on the key and drove; the little park was too open, too accessible. Now the road deteriorated rapidly, from gravel to dirt, to little more than ruts. She should have stayed at the picnic area, she realized. No one would be there on a day like this, and she could not find a place to turn around, or to park, or ... The road forked. Both sides began to climb steeply after this junction. Maybe she could turn around here. It took her a long time, and she knew she was scratching up the car, and scraping the bottom on rocks, but finally she had it pointing back down the dirt road and, exhausted, she turned off the key again and leaned back with her eyes closed.

  The wind was distant, high in the trees, hardly noticeable at ground level. She could not hear the surf, and that surprised her because her head was still pounding with the same rhythm and urgency as before when she had thought the thunderous waves were causing her headache. The rain was starting finally a pattering at first that eased up; soon it was falling harder. She had to get some things from the trunk. Warm clothes, her poncho, her afghan. It would get cold in the car. Still she sat quietly, wishing she did not have to move again for a long time. The rain let up and now she forced herself out. She was appalled by the mess in the trunk. She had tossed stuff in randomly. Her camera case was not there, she realized, and remembered she had left it at Saul's house when they had gone down the beach. She had no further memory of it. She found a long coat, her poncho, boots, the afghan, notebooks. She knew she would not want anything to read; her eyes were bothering her too much. There was a fire banked just behind them.

  She arranged the car, put down both front seats all the way, made sure her bag of groceries was within reach, and the can opener she kept in the glove compartment, and only then allowed herself to lie down and pull the afghan over her and finally close her eyes. The rain on the car roof was too loud, but presently she grew used to it and found it soothing. She slept.

  Her sleep was fitful and restless, beset by dreams. When she wakened, she was very thirsty; her lips were parched, and her eyes felt swollen. Her headache had intensified and her body hurt all over. She swallowed more aspirin and drank orange juice with it. She slept and dreamed:

  Saul was her lover and they ran down the beach like children, hand in hand, laughing, tumbling in the surf, which was as warm as blood. They started to make love in the gentle surf, and she woke up suddenly, aching with desire.

  She should drink again, she thought, but it seemed too much effort; she was too tired. She was curled in a tight ball, chilled throughout, and burning with fever. She would die, she thought then, and they would find her here one day and wonder what had happened to her. She dreamed they were finding her, poking at her body with sticks because no one wanted to touch her, and she woke up again. This time she rolled until she could reach a can of juice and she drank it all, and only then remembered she should have taken aspirin. She pushed herself up enough to reach the bottle, and she opened a second large can of juice and took aspirin again. It was nearly dark, the rain was hard and steady. She could not tell if the wind was blowing.

  She dreamed she was telling her mother she had to go to the bathroom and her mother said not now, dear, wait. She woke up squatting near the car; the shock of icy rain on her back, face, arms, thighs brought her out of delirium. She was shaking so hard she could hardly get the car door open again, and, inside, her hands seemed uncontrollable as she pulled on her clothes. She could not remember undressing. Her hair was wet, ice water ran down her back, down her face. She found a dishtowel she kept in the car to wipe the windshield with and she dried her hair with it as much as she could. It was too dark to see her watch. She was so cold that she turned on the car engine and let it run long enough for the heater to warm the car. Then she was so hot that she began to tear off her clothes again.

  She heard Carmen's voice: “Don't be scared. I'll come get you and take you home. We'll take care of you.” She looked for him, but he did not come. He lied, she thought dully. Just like Lasater. Saul and Carmen examined her carefully; they looked at her throat, her eyes, listened to her heart, took a blood sample, and took her blood pressure reading. She answered Saul's questions about her medical history, her parents, everything. It was reasonable and thorough, and he wrote everything down.

  “I'm dying,” she said, and he nodded. She woke up. She remembered hanging the dishtowel outside the window to get it wet and cold. She dragged it inside and wrapped it around her head. She could hardly move now because of weakness and pain. It was not the flu after all, she thought distantly, as if diagnosing someone else. He had poisoned her, she thought clearly. He was paranoid and he had known from the start that she was a spy. He told her so. He poisoned her and now she was dying from it. And they would find her body and prod it with sticks. She wept softly, then slept.

  * * * *

  At noon the wind was rising enough to shake the motor home from time to time. The trees around the campsite bowed even lower, and the air tasted of salt. The tent in the campsite collapsed, started to fly away. The kid who had been camping out rolled it up and stuffed it in the trunk of his car, and then he joined Lasater, who was standing at the railing of the park, overlooking the lagoon. The normally placid, protected waters were churning around and around; the wind-driven waves were meeting the outgoing tide in a free-for-all.

  “Follett says something's wrong at Taney's house,” the boy said, close to Lasater's ear.

  “What?”

  “Didn't say—”

  “Tell Turk to get his ass up there and find out.” The boy watched the water another second, then left, leaning against the wind. A few minutes later the rain started and Lasater went inside the motor home. Follett came in dripping a short time later.

  “She never came back,” he said, stripping off his wet clothes. “Werther's kid came over in the car at ten, carrying her camera gear. He went inside and came back out, still with the camera bag. He left. Been back twice on foot. Must wade the creek and come up the bank.”

  Lasater watched him with loathing. Follett's flesh shook when he moved; he had fatty flaps on his chest, like a woman who had been sucked dry.

  “After he left the second time, I went to the house and looked around. She's flown. Half her stuff's still there, as if she wanted to fool you into think
ing she'd be back. She left the refrigerator on, but she stripped it, and her toothpaste, deodorant, stuff like that, all gone.”

  Lasater could feel his fury grow and spread as if it were heartburn and it scalded him just as heartburn did. She had sat there looking stupid, pretending she was sick, and all the time she had her car packed, her plans to skip out all made, everything go. And they were back at the starting post.

  Wordlessly he got out a map and looked at the roads, the distances. She could be halfway to Portland by now. And he did not have a man in Portland. Or, if she was heading south, she would be in the Siskiyous approaching the California border.

  “Okay, so we change plans,” he said brusquely. “Take me up to her place and then you get down to the village and ask around, find out who saw her, which way she was going. Come back up to her place. And for God's sake, keep your mouth closed until we have a new play to run with. Let's go.”

  She had taken out maybe a third of the stuff she had brought in, he guessed, judging from the condition of the living room where there were still books and papers, and even mail. She had not bothered to open many of the letters. He did so and scanned them quickly. Nothing. He went through her drawers, and the darkroom, where there were many prints of the coast, trees, hills, and an empty nest. Nothing. She had started to make notes in a new large notebook, nothing. His search was very methodical and when he finished, everything was as she had left it, and everything had been examined. Nothing.

  He built a fire in the stove and made coffee. She had cleaned the refrigerator but had not taken the coffee or sugar, or anything from the shelves. It looked to him as if she had left in a dead run. Why? Something had scared her out of here, what? Not his doing; she was already running by the time he had talked to her that morning. Werther? He heard his teeth grinding together and made himself stop. His dentist had warned him that unless he quit doing that he would be in dentures within a few years. He even did it in his sleep, he thought disgustedly. The thought of wearing dentures made him uneasy and irritable. It made him want to work his dentist over.

  He sat facing the door and waited for Follett to come back, and prepared his story. By the time the soft tapping on the door stirred him, he had made a phone call, and he had the new play ready.

  Carmen stood with the wind whirling his hair into his face. “Is Mrs. Taney here yet?” he asked, and the wind swept his words away.

  Lasater stepped back and motioned him inside. “What? Are we going to have a hurricane or something?” He slammed the door as soon as Carmen was inside. “My God! It must be a hurricane!”

  “I don't think it's that bad. Is Mrs. Taney back?”

  “Oh, you're a friend of hers? Do you know where she is?”

  Carmen shook his head. “Who are you?”

  “Oh. But we do take turns, you understand. I'm Richard Vos, assistant editor at Rushman Publications. Your turn.”

  “Carmen Magone, just a friend. I got worried that she's out in this weather. She's sick with flu or something.”

  “When did you see her? Today?”

  “Last night. How'd you get here?”

  “I was just going to ask you that. I didn't see a car out there.”

  “I walked over from next door. You walk in from New York?”

  Lasater didn't like him, too young, too flip, too bright-eyed. Mostly, too young. He had found his dislike of young men increasing exponentially during the last few years, and while he was prepared intellectually to admit it was jealousy, that did not prevent the feeling nor did it help once he recognized his antipathy had been roused yet again...

  “I'm with a friend,” he said. “Milt Follett, you ever see him play? We're doing his book on college football. He's gone to the village to buy some things. We thought Lyle would be here, she said she would be here. I brought her contracts to her.” He indicated his briefcase, which he had brought in with him. Aggrievedly he went on, “I could have mailed them, but she said she'd be here, and Bobby, her editor, said it would be nice to visit and see how it's coming, since I had to be in Portland anyway to see why Follett's stalled. We'll end up with a ghostwriter,” he confided. “I could have mailed them,” he said again then. “You say you saw her last night? Did she say anything about going somewhere for a few days? Maybe she went somewhere to wait out the storm. Maybe she's scared of storms.”

  Carmen shrugged. “She didn't say, but she seemed pretty sick, running a fever. I've got to go. If she comes in will you ask her to give us a call?”

  “Camping out with a buddy?”

  “Not exactly. See you later, Mr. Vos.” Carmen had not moved more than a few inches inside the door, and now he slipped out before Lasater could ask anything else.

  That was a real bust, he admitted to himself. Briefly he had considered slapping the kid and giving the old man a call, tell him the punk fell and broke his leg, wait for him to drive over to pick him up and then grab him. How easy it could be, he mused. Grab him, make him tell us where the paperwork is, be done with it. He took a deep breath and went back to his seat on the couch. Maybe later it would come to that, but not yet. Taney would stay out a day or two, simmer down, but she would come back for her stuff. Someone like her wouldn't abandon a thousand-dollar camera. He'd twist her arm just a little and get what he needed that way. No suspicions, no fuss. And then, he thought coldly, Mrs. Taney, you and I have a little party coming up, just the two of us. First work, then play, right? Besides, he added to himself, the old man made a habit of killing off kids Carmen's age or a little older. No way could he believe Werther would lift a hand for this one. He made a bet with himself that Follett would suggest they grab the kid and use him for bait.

  All afternoon Carmen was out in the white Volvo during the height of the storm. There was a report that he had shown up at the park twenty miles down the road. He had checked it out, then had left, heading south. An hour later he had driven past again. He had checked out the Lagoon camp, and had gone north from there. Looking for Taney, Lasater knew. Why? It had to be something that had happened at their house. He was convinced the old man had said or done something that had scared her off. At dark the Volvo made its way back up the steep driveway next door, and stayed put the rest of the night. Early the next morning Carmen was at it again. The storm had blown itself out overnight.

  At eleven Lasater could stand it no longer and he called Werther's house. After six rings the old man answered, and Lasater released the breath he had been holding. Belatedly it had occurred to him to wonder if Werther might sneak out in the trunk of the Volvo. He told his story about being an assistant to Lyle's New York editor, expressed his concern about her, suggested calling the police.

  “I have done so,” Werther said. “They obviously were not very impressed. You, however, have a vested interest in her, and you had an appointment with her that she missed. They would have to pay more attention if you voiced your fears.”

  Lasater had no intention of calling the police, and he was mildly surprised that Werther had been willing to bring them in, if he had. Hugh Lasater seldom expected the truth from anyone. Truth, he was convinced, was of such a nebulous nature that no one should expect it more than once or twice within a lifetime. You have to ferret out facts, data, scraps of information wherever you can find them and arrange them in a pattern that seems to make sense, always knowing that tomorrow you might have to rearrange the same bits and pieces to make a different pattern. That was sufficient, that was truth, always relative, always changeable, always manipulable.

  Late in the afternoon the sun broke through the clouds and the air was spring-warm and fresh. The sea had turned a deep unwrinkled blue; it rose and fell slightly like a blanket over the chest of a sleeping woman moved by gentle breathing. Sunset was breathtakingly beautiful without a color left out. Carmen returned home an hour after sunset. He was alone in his Volvo. He looked exhausted, the report said, and mud was so high on the car that he must have been up and down logging roads all day.

  At dark they al
l settled in to wait yet another day. Lasater felt he was caught up in a preordained configuration like the constellations of the zodiac, where each star is going at its own rate of speed in its own direction as a result of actions started long ago, which today resulted in this particular arrangement of parts. Although their motion might be imperceptible, they were all on the move; some of the stars were as close as they would ever get to one another and their destiny now was to separate, draw farther and farther apart. Others, he knew, were on a collision course that was equally determined and unavoidable.

  He was nervous, and was keeping in very close contact with the watchers up and down the coast road. He had a man in Portland now, and another one on I-5. If anyone moved, he would be ready, and eventually someone had to move. Until then he had to wait. He had ordered Follett out to the motor home when he felt he would have to kill him if he remained in sight another minute, yawning, scratching, foot-tapping, too dumb to read, too restless to sit still. He wanted to go over and peek inside Werther's house, see what they were up to, and he knew there was no way. Heavy drapes, window shades; they were well hidden.

  By late afternoon the next day fog moved in after a morning brilliant with sunshine. Carmen had gone out at dawn, and was back by two, and Lasater began pulling his watchers closer to the driveway. Fog was the most treacherous enemy of a surveillance job. The white car could move through it like a ghost, appearing to a watcher to be no more than a thicker drift, if it was spotted at all. The walkie-talkie unit remained silent through the long afternoon; no one was moving yet.

  That afternoon Lasater felt like a chrysalis tightly wrapped in a white cocoon. The way the fog pressed on the windows gave him the illusion that the windows were giving, bowing inward slightly but inexorably. He half-expected to see tendrils of fog forced through small entrances here and there, writhing like snakes as they squeezed in, then flowing down to the floor where they would spread out like wide shallow rivers, join, become a solid white layer, and then begin to rise.