by David Daniel
“His daughter, yeah.”
“How old is this?”
“A few years.” I was watching him closely. “Do you know Nickerson?”
“I’d like to find him,” he said.
“So would I.”
The man sucked the last smoke from his cigarette, pitched it down and stepped on it. “What’s your interest?”
“I’m trying to locate him or his daughter. What about you?”
He ran a hand across his mouth, watching me, like a man deciding whether or not to come clean. “You’re not really interested in a board, are you, bro,” he said.
“A board?”
“Actually, I followed you. I went over to the place on the beach you’re staying, but you were just splitting. I tagged along. I got your message.”
I wasn’t expecting a tail, so I’d missed it. I hadn’t been expecting company, either, but I made the connection now. “Are you Van Owen?”
“You’re a private investigator, huh?”
Somehow I’d expected a lean, blond-haired guy, younger. “I’ve been hired by Nickerson’s former wife.”
“What did Ben do?”
“He and his teenage daughter seem to be missing.”
“Hmm. Maybe why he hasn’t picked up his stick. The blue one,” he added for my sake. “In the shop.”
“Deep Sea Ryder.” I was making all kinds of connections now.
“I saw him in town the other day, coming out of the bank. We only got to talk for a minute. He seemed hurried—so much for California laid-back. I told him his board was ready. He said he’d be by to get it.”
“What day was that?”
“Day before … three days ago, actually.”
“Is the board paid for?”
“On a custom job I’d generally take a deposit, but I know him.” Van Owen shrugged his thick shoulders. “He said he’d square with me when he got here.”
The cruiser I’d spotted earlier was back, doing a slow prowl among the rows of parked vehicles, coming our way. Van Owen reacted first. “I’ve got to rock,” he said. He was already climbing into the beat-up truck.
It was full dark now, the moon down, but in the light from the teen club I could make out the shine of the cop’s reflective lenses. I went around to the other side of Van Owen’s truck and climbed in, too. He looked at me but said nothing. When the cruiser had crawled past, I said, “That looked like an instinctive shying away from the law.”
Van Owen grinned. “The chief sends a car out here on a regular run. Community-policing effort, keep the youth of Standish on the straight and narrow. Parents around here love him.”
“But you don’t?”
“The chief and I are both townies. Let’s say I’m warily respectful of him, but I believe policing works better if it’s a cooperative arrangement. I don’t think keeping people under constant surveillance and making them afraid is good policy. That spook in the car—Shanley—he can be a hassler.” He didn’t elaborate. “That do it for you? Or do you want to ride awhile?”
We headed north. The truck’s interior was pasted with decals for surfboard makers, the dashboard covered with tattered maps and papers, the floor littered with fast food wrappers and coffee cups, the remnants of gulped meals en route to secret surfing spots, I imagined. Van Owen checked his mirrors several times, but the road behind us was dark. He pulled a deck of Old Golds from the pocket of his island shirt and offered them. It seemed an oddly old-fashioned gesture, though I guess it could be considered hostile these days. I declined, and he tapped out a cigarette on the steering wheel and used the dashboard lighter. His arm was thick and muscular. I reeled the conversation back to Ben Nickerson and his surfboard.
“He ordered it by phone back in late winter. Wanted something a kid could learn on. I shaped it to the specs he gave me.”
“That design on it—the red logo—”
“He drew it in his letter and—” He snapped his fingers. “That’s where I saw the girl. My boards are all about performance. I build them to the person, to their body style. Usually I like them to come in and I take measurements, but because he was in California, I asked him to send a photo. I’ve probably still got it in the shop. It’s newer than what you have there.”
“May I see it?”
“Next time I’m there I’ll look for it.”
“I’d like to see it now if possible.”
He glanced over. “Hell, man, it’s late.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, too. If the Nickersons have disappeared, it’s getting later all the time.”
He was silent a moment, then he slowed and swung a U—turn. I thought he was bringing me back to the Beachcomber and my car, but he took a side road and turned inland. We rode awhile on roads winding through farm- and woodland. In the mild air I could smell mown hay and see fireflies winking in the meadows. Considering the crowding on the South Shore, I was surprised any open land still existed. Taking my cue from Van Owen, I kept silent. The old truck rattled along. Soon, we crossed the highway, and I recognized the Hanover Mall, night-lit and deserted. Actually, somebody was still inside the Wide World of Sporting Goods, doing inventory. The man recognized Van Owen and let us in with minimal explanation. At this hour, nearing midnight, the place had a strange feel: all this equipment for the active life seemed ghostly. Van Owen led me back to his fabrication area, and after a brief hunt among papers, he found what he was after.
It was a Polaroid snapshot taken only a few months ago, according to the date stamp. It showed Michelle Nickerson standing under a tree. She was a pale, pretty girl, with short, jet-black hair. She was wearing a long black skirt, black T-shirt and a studded vest. A small ring glinted above her right eyebrow. Van Owen moved beside me to see it. “Under the goth garb,” he said, “she looks athletic enough, like she could handle a board. That’s the kind of thing I’d look for in custom-fitting a board.”
“Can I hang on to this?”
“Take it. Do you think something happened to her?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. Do you?”
“No reason to. Still …” He went over to the surfboard, Deep Sea Ryder. An instant classic, the salesgirl had called it. “I was hoping Nickerson would be eager to get it.”
“Did you know beforehand that he was going to be staying out there at the beach?”
“No. Not till you told me.”
“Do you know a young woman who drives a red Daytona? Jillian something?”
“Big hair and a brain no bigger than you’d expect?”
“Who is she?”
“A club rat. I don’t know her last name. Does she figure in this?”
“I don’t know. Nickerson seems to have picked her up in a place called the Sand Bar three nights ago. They spent some time together. What’s her scene?”
“What else? Girls just want to have fun.”
I slipped the Polaroid into my shirt pocket.
“Are the cops in on any of this?” Van Owen asked.
“I’ve met with Delcastro, but they’re not officially involved yet. Nickerson’s former wife and her husband believe Ben and the girl will turn up, that maybe they’ve been away for a few days.”
“Off beachcombing?”
“Is that possible?”
He lifted his shoulders. “Nickerson was always poking around tide pools and marshes. He did tenth-grade science projects even the teachers couldn’t understand.”
“So did I.”
“I hope that’s what it is—his being off on a brainstorm.”
Something in the way he said it made me curious. He said, “There was a case five or six years back of a girl about that age, a runaway. Apparently she was hitching through town, supposed to meet some friends in Boston. Several people saw her because she’d camped out in a field along the Old Cape Road—but she disappeared. You got me thinking, that’s all. But this doesn’t sound like that.”
“No,” I agreed.
The outside air had cooled. He brought me back to my car and let me
out. “I hope they turn up,” he said.
“Me, too. What are you out on the surfboard?”
“No big deal. I can find a buyer if need be.”
“There’s a cute little salesclerk at the sports store who sounds as if she’d like some surfing lessons.”
He grinned. “Save it. She and I have been there. What she really wants is a ring on her finger—or through my nose.”
I handed him another of my cards, which he glanced at. “Is that how you spell it?”
“It’s a misprint. Hang on to that; it’s an instant classic.”
He laid the card on the cluttered dashboard, then gave me a hand sign, thumb and pinky finger extended. “Paddle easy, Dog. Old hodaddy’s advice—keep one eye on the horizon and one on the shore. This is where the hungriest sharks are.”
When he had gone, I stood in the cool night. The Beachcomber parking lot was still packed, the club still going strong, rampant with teen hormones and metal music. I had a yearning for something to drink, but espresso wasn’t going to do it for me. Out on the starlit sea, the mantle of fog had crept closer to shore. I could see the rhythmic sweep of the lighthouse farther up the coast, like a blurred and restless eye. The tide evidently had turned, bringing the tangy brine of ocean. In Lowell, once a year if the wind was right and you were lucky, the scent might carry upriver from Plum Island, make its way past the brackish currents at Newburyport and Amesbury, through the industrial stinks of Haverhill and Lawrence, sneak by the dank churn of the Duck Island wastewater treatment plant, and on a downtown street, thirty miles from the sea, you’d flare your nostrils bracingly and say “Smell that!” Then the wind would shift, and in fifteen minutes it was all a dream. Here in Standish, I was becoming aware that the sea was a constant, bearing change, moment-to-moment, oblivious to the tides of human affairs around whose puny shorelines it washed.
No wonder Matthew Arnold and Rod McKuen were poets.
12
Standish Center was night-wrapped when I drove through it: locked up, buttoned down, rolled tight. In my city, things would just be starting to cook. I wasn’t sure which to prefer. Just beyond the center, I stopped at a late-night gas station to fill up. I paid for a bag of ice, and the clerk gave me a key for a refrigerated locker outside. As I unlocked the insulated chest, I happened to glance across the street. On the opposite corner, fifty yards from me, two men were standing in a small alley between the Wash Tub laundry and a martial arts studio, both enterprises closed at this hour, talking. The men were just out of the glow of an overhead lamp, but my eye was struck by a gleam of white hair. I realized one of them was Ted Rand. I glanced at my watch. Midnight. Rand looked as if he had thrown on clothes over pajamas. The other man wore jeans and a windbreaker, so it took me a moment to recognize him, too. It was Police Chief Delcastro.
I watched from my shadows. At this distance, I couldn’t hear a word of their conversation, but the way they were facing each other gave me to believe it was tense. Ted Rand’s hand gestures looked insistent. Delcastro stood with a kind of glowering posture, making only occasional replies. Above them, moths spiraled in the cone of lamplight. I had an idea to try to move closer, but it would mean getting across the bright-lit gas station lot, so I let it go. I’d learned that almost any detail, no matter how small or insignificant seeming, was worth noting. I’d also learned that it was important to be curious without being paranoid. I returned the key, and when I came out, the two men were gone.
13
On the stage, a group of musicians stood in a smoky glow of spotlights. A corpse-white man was singing, his voice a guttural snarl. The lead guitarist worked his instrument with such furious intensity, there was a physical discomfort in listening to the sound. I wanted to get away from it, had even turned to go … when I saw the child. She stood to one side of the stage, as if frozen. Around her, oblivious to her presence, couples were moving in a jerky dance rhythm. The air was almost opaque with smoke, giving the figures on stage a dreamlike presence. At the rim of the sound another vocal had begun, a frail voice crying in the wilderness of noise. It was the child, I realized. Her words were indistinct, but I felt them, felt their pain and fear, and all at once I was slick with sweat. My muscles were tight, and breathing was difficult. The drumming kept on, like the thunderous footsteps of something terrible approaching. The sound banged off the walls, trying to escape. I needed to escape, too.
But not without the child.
I started forward. I edged around dancers, avoiding contact (something told me it wouldn’t be a good idea to touch them) until at last I was close. I was reaching for the child, about to gather her to myself, when a laser beam blistered my face and sent me recoiling.
Bars of moving light drew my eyes open, and I was suddenly awake. I’d been dreaming. I was in a bed in a dark room, both unfamiliar. I stank of tobacco smoke. There were bright shapes sliding over the ceiling. Headlights? I knew then where I was. Except the lights weren’t coming from the narrow road in front of the house, but rather from in back, from the beach. With a pounding heart I lay frozen between wanting to know what was going on and simply willing it to go away. I eased back the sheet and rolled quietly from the bed. The rattan roughness on my bare feet wakened me more fully. I drew on pants and moved with hushed steps to a window on the seaward-facing side of the room. Keeping to one side, I peered out.
Two high, close-set lights were piercing yellow eyes. Fog had engulfed the house, and it was as though some beast from the sea had come with it. Through the glare I could make out its vague, elongated shape. I thought I could hear a sound now, too—a low rumble, as of an engine, though I wasn’t sure.
I made my way downstairs, cat-footed through the dark house to the kitchen, but when I reached the door to the deck, the lights were gone. The sound seemed to taper to the thin edge of dream, and then it disappeared. The beach was fog-bound again, silent. I drew open the sliding door and smelled the sea. I stepped out onto the deck, the planks cold underfoot, and blinked into the seamless shroud. Was there a large, humped form going down the beach toward the water? Perhaps I imagined it. I stood in the cold night, feeling the wild thud of my heart. I didn’t begin to shiver until I got back inside.
I left the lights off. The digital clock on the kitchen counter said 3:33. It was about as wee as the hour got. A slot player might have listened for a jingle of coins, or a prophet warned of a cut-rate beast of the Apocalypse. I tried to remember my dream, but it was hash. I told myself to make a list of things to bring back from Lowell and at the top to put my .38. I sat in the dark and watched the clock go through a lot of numbers before I finally dozed upright in the chair. I woke once around dawn, stiff-necked, and went to the slider and looked out.
The mist had thinned and paled. The beach had been swept clean by the tide. Waves were gliding shoreward in calm, unruffled rows. I started to go back upstairs to finish my sleep when I noticed something in the sea off the point. A lone figure in a wet suit sat on a surfboard, gently rising and falling with the waves. More from lethargy than real interest, I watched him for a few moments, wondering if he’d catch a ride, but he let the water roll emptily under him and just sat out there, like a sentry on watch. I roused myself and went up to bed.
The next time I woke, it was to sunlight and the high music of children’s voices outside. It was after nine. I went downstairs and stepped out onto the deck, squinting. People with beach chairs and blankets had materialized. I thought that some of them were looking up at me, but I rubbed my eyes and realized it was just the leftover heebie-jeebies of my busted sleep. The beach folk had other agendas, chief among them working on tans. I could smell the sunscreen. A jagged line of seaweed, broken shells, and bits of trash delineated the high-tide mark: flotsam and jetsam, I imagined, though don’t ask me which is which. Seagulls chuckled overhead. Thirty minutes later, showered and shaved and dressed in a gray rough-silk sport coat, pale blue shirt, and chinos, I was at the police station. The young female officer at the desk frowned in
consternation when I told her what I’d seen on the beach during the night.
“It wasn’t a squad car,” she assured me. “Not down on the sand. Around three A.M., you say?” She checked the log. “No one called in to report anything unusual. But that doesn’t necessarily prove much. This time of year, we sometimes get off-roaders, or kids on a toot. Though that’s a pretty private stretch of beach. I’m noting it now, sir. How do you spell your name?”
As she wrote it in, I was scanning the notebook that served as the Standish police log—an old cop habit, I suppose. An entry from several nights before caught my eye. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at it when she’d finished writing.
The officer looked. “A call came in just before midnight that a young female was walking along Sea Street. It was just a safety issue—there’s no sidewalk along there. An officer was sent over, but the person wasn’t there when he arrived.”
Before I could ask if there were any further details, a cop rushed in to say there’d been a bad accident. A car had gone off the road south of town sometime overnight. They were pulling it from the ocean now: a red Daytona.
I fought a desire to speed. At last I came around a curve and onto the scene. The already narrow coast road was further narrowed to a single lane by a line of emergency flares. In the midmorning sun they were no brighter than Fourth of July sparklers. It appeared that most of the town’s police force was already on site. I made out Chief Delcastro talking with several people. The Daytona, its windshield gone and its roof crunched at an angle, oozing water from every seam, was being winched onto the back of a wrecker. I told the officer directing traffic that I had information to share with Chief Delcastro. Trustingly, he waved me through.
When Delcastro saw me, he did a double take. “Get out of here,” he snapped.
“What about the driver?” I demanded. “Was it a young woman named Jillian?”
He fixed me with his gaze. “What do you know about this?”