A Lighthouse for the Lonely Heart: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series Book 5)

by Scott William Carter

  He grabbed the rope, fearing that the momentary lapse was all Denny had needed to get a bit of air in him. Yet the wall on top of him didn't move.

  Was he dead? Gage could barely take in short, shallow breaths. He tried to push the body off him, but his muscles were rubbery. Somehow summoning an even deeper reservoir of energy, Gage managed to push Denny off to the left. He gasped for air. He got his upper body free. Still, Denny didn't move. Gage got one leg free then the other.

  The storm, muted during his struggle, grew in volume; he heard the distinctive swish of the wind through the tops of the firs, the dull thumping of the rain on the cabin's shake roof, the rattle of his throat with each breath.

  As he gathered energy, he gave himself a few seconds to take inventory. His right knee felt like it had been severed at the kneecap. His face was a lumpy mess of bruises and cuts. A ringing in his left ear wouldn't stop. The rope, cutting into his wrists and ankles, felt like barbed wire. There were so many sharp jabs, dull throbs, and deep aches from all over that, in a way, the totality of his pain muted any particular wound.

  Nora.

  Her name sprang into his mind. Whatever sorry state his body was in, it would have to do. He got himself on hands and knees, wheezing for breath, then willed himself to sit up. Denny lay motionless next to him, eyes closed. If his chest was moving, Gage couldn't tell. Gage felt for a pulse. It was there, faint.

  Lucky fellow, Denny. He'd live to see another day. But if he woke anytime soon, he wouldn't be happy, that was for sure. As quickly as his numb fingers would allow, Gage untied the rope from his wrists and his ankles. Then he set to work on Denny, binding his wrists behind him, then his ankles, making sure to knot the rope tight enough. During all of this, a wave of dizziness passed over Gage, black cloudbursts flashing in front of his eyes, and he steadied himself with a hand on the deck. What now?

  Call for help.

  As much as Gage detested the police, it was not the time to let his personal feelings get in the way. He had to help Nora, but Florence was over an hour away. Did Denny have a car? The porch light did not shine far into the rainy murk, but it was obvious there was no white Mustang or any other vehicle parked in the gravel around the cabin.

  He searched Denny's jacket and pants for a cell phone and didn't find one. Elliott didn't trust his brother with a phone? Gage searched the cabin, just to be sure. No phone there either. Fine, then. He was going to have to hike down to Highway 101. Along the way, maybe he'd find help at another house. In the closet next to the kitchen, he found some shirts, a pair of overalls, and a black rain jacket. He put on the jacket; it was obviously Denny's, several sizes too big for Gage, but it would keep him dry. Flashlight? He searched and found none.

  A clock shaped like a salmon, hanging next to the door, caught his eye on the way outside. It was twenty to nine. Didn't Nora say she'd be arriving in Florence around ten? That didn't give him a lot of time. She might have arrived early. Maybe Elliott was already with her. But she might be late. If he hustled, Gage might still be able to intervene.

  I may just kill your girlfriend after I've gotten what I want out of her.

  That was what Elliott had said.

  The clock ticking, Gage hustled into the storm.

  Chapter 23

  It only took a few steps—painful, agonizing steps—beyond the porch for Gage to be glad he'd worn the jacket. The rain pelted him with all the force of a nail gun. The hood helped. The vinyl-like material may do little to keep him warm, but it did keep him dry. At least his upper body. It was nearly impossible to navigate around the puddles that littered his path like landmines, especially when he'd ventured beyond the reach of the porch light into the deeper darkness. One tennis shoe was quickly submerged, then the other, soaking right through to his toes.

  The only saving grace there was that he'd been in such a frenzied state earlier—yesterday?—that he'd never put on socks. At least he wasn't weighted down by a lot of soggy cotton.

  Mud clung to the treads of his shoes. When he rounded the bend into the trees, the darkness was so complete that more than once he ventured off the road into one of the ditches. He stumbled, fell, and bounded back up again, now with mud on his jeans and his hands. His right knee threatened to buckle, and it was only through intense concentration that he stayed upright.

  The wind blew back his hood repeatedly. He finally gave up on it and let the rain soak his hair and face. He bumbled along through the darkness, feeling his way from one tree to another.

  He came to a silver mailbox. A driveway through the firs, and past a massive woodpile, led to a cabin similar to the one he'd just been in; the soft glow of solar-powered lanterns lined the walk to the front door, though the cabin itself was dark. No cars. He was glad to get under the tiny overhang. The top half of the front door was paned glass, but it was too dark inside to see anything but the vague outlines of a couch and wood stove. He tapped on the glass, but got no answer. He tried the knob and found it locked.

  Maybe there was a phone inside. He found a rock and smashed a lower pane, managing to cut his knuckle in the process. On another day, the clatter of the glass might have carried, but today the sounds were swallowed by the storm. He reached through the opening, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

  "Hello?"

  No answer. He saw a lamp on the end table. He clicked it on. A sprawling Native American rug, fish decor all over the walls, and a few cobwebs hanging over the kitchen sink—no one had been there in a while. No phone in the living area. There were two bedrooms. No phone in either. He was starting to remember why he hated the era of the cell phone.

  The cut on his knuckle was bleeding profusely. He washed it in the bathroom and patched it up with Band-Aids in the cabinet. He drank straight from the faucet for a long time, easing his parched throat. When he stood, he looked at himself in the mirror and saw the haggard face of a man who'd been through hell and back, an ugly quilt of bruises and dried blood. He saw more purple than pink. One of his eyes was completely hidden behind a swollen mass as big as a golf ball.

  A wave of fatigue washed over him, powerful enough that his legs buckled and he collapsed onto the toilet seat.

  For just a second, Gage lingered. It would be so easy to let go.

  But then he was up. Moving out of the house, faster than before. The next house was also dark, and there was no easy way to break inside, so he walked on. The third house, ten minutes later, was much more promising. More than a single porch light, this place was all lit up, which meant people. He felt hopeful. The lower part of the driveway was paved, and the house was a big single-story ranch with lights on in the kitchen and the living room. There were no vehicles in the drive, but there was a trailer with two red and white motorbikes parked next to it, the kind used primarily for sport.

  The bay window was open. He saw the kind of cheap, generic furnishings that made him think it was a vacation home and not a principal residence. There was also a lockbox next to the door. No people. He knocked and nobody answered. He tried the knob, though, and was surprised to find it unlocked. Trusting folk.

  "Anybody here?"

  No answer. He smelled pizza and saw the empty boxes on the kitchen counter. As he searched the house, he called out a few more times, afraid he might surprise someone who was napping. There were suitcases, rumpled beds, but no people. No phone, either. His frustration rose, which only made all the aches and pains even worse. How many houses would it take?

  Then he spotted a key on the kitchen counter, a single key attached to a Honda chain. He stared at it, thinking about the motorcycles outside.

  "You've got to be kidding," he said.

  * * *

  Outside, straddling the motorcycle, Gage tightened the straps of the helmet he'd found by the front door. As he'd told Nora a week ago—had it really only been a week?—he hadn't sat on a motorcycle in decades. He'd certainly never ridden a bike so small and ungainly, more fit for dirt tracks than slick asphalt. He hadn't lied to Nora; it wa
s a particularly bad spill on a hairpin turn on the switchbacks outside of northeast Yellowstone that not only gave him a broken collarbone but also sapped him of any desire to ride again. He'd come this close to a hundred-foot drop to jagged rocks. So he'd sold his ruined Harley for parts and swore he'd never touch another motorcycle. And he hadn't.

  Until now.

  What he hadn't expected was the fear—not just nervousness, but outright fear. Once the exhilaration of the engine starting wore off, he felt a growing trepidation. What he wouldn't give to be that eighteen-year-old kid again, afraid of nothing and no one, the vastness of his life stretched out in front of him with endless possibilities. That person didn't know that sometimes, when you put yourself in harm's way, harm's way was only glad to be there to greet you—usually wearing brass knuckles, to boot.

  Yet this was now, this was who he was, and there was nothing to be done but shift into first with his right foot and go.

  Which was what he did.

  It had been so long that he nearly killed the engine, easing up on the brake too fast, a common rookie mistake, but the motorcycle roared back to life and away he went. The headlamp cut through the gloom, streaks of rain in the yellow beam of light. It being an off-road bike, the suspension was excellent. There were a few wobbles as he found his balance, but it was amazing how fast all the old knowledge came back to him: when to shift gears, based primarily on the pitch of the engine; the subtle dance between the two brakes, right hand and right foot working in tandem; counterturning, the non-intuitive act of pre-turning a little in the opposite direction, forcing a tilt the way you wanted to go and creating a sharper turn.

  Even so, he was so nervous that he actually drove too slow, easing around the dark bends at barely over ten miles an hour. Almost all motorcycles performed terribly at slow speeds, needing a certain a moment of momentum to maintain balance and create steadiness for the rider. So he picked it up as best he could, staying in third but giving it more throttle.

  Down the road he went, rain splattering against the visor, dirt and gravel spraying his jeans. He passed a few driveways, and considered stopping, but how long would that take? He'd have to explain this whole crazy thing to the police, and that would waste precious time. They definitely wouldn't want him going to Florence. And once he got off the damn bike, would he be able to get himself back on?

  Before long, he reached the highway, his headlamp shining on the guardrail. The ocean, beyond a rocky bluff, was invisible. No traffic in sight. He slowed but didn't put his foot down, turning south. He shifted into fourth, then fifth, and was surprised when there was a sixth gear. That was new. Most of the motorcycles he'd known had only gone up to five.

  A Safeway truck roared past. Should he stop and flag someone down? He knew exactly where he was, a few miles south of Barnacle Bluffs. But again, that would take time. The speedometer showed the bike climbing up to fifty, then sixty, the engine reaching a feverish whine that indicated it couldn't go much faster. It wasn't designed for high speeds.

  The tank was full, though. He could ride without stopping.

  * * *

  Later, when Gage tried to remember the drive to Florence, it would come back to him as a series of images and sensations. The steady roar of the engine. The way the rain seemed to fly straight him. His fingers so numb they no longer felt like they were attached.

  He knew, even then, that the drive must have taken over an hour, but in the present it seemed he buzzed onto the highway and seconds later saw the sign welcoming him to Florence. It was still windy and raining, but the storm seemed only tepidly annoyed instead of madly enraged. He hoped it would last—not just for the safety of Nora's boat, but for his own sake. It would make it easier to find her if he could see more than ten feet in front of him.

  He roared past the more rural outskirts of the city, full of spindly spruce trees and dark dunes, then the main commercial drag, Fred Meyer, Rite-Aid, Dairy Queen, plenty of cars out even in the bad weather. Some kids in a jacked-up truck yelled at him as he passed, saying, "You go, man!" He must have looked like a crazy person out on this dirk bike on a night like this. He was completely soaked, the windbreaker he'd nabbed from the cabin doing little to keep him dry when the water was coming from every direction. His face felt speckled with mud, and he smelled it in his nose, too. He was lightheaded with hunger, not thinking straight. When was the last time he'd eaten?

  A bank clock showed that it was a quarter past ten.

  He might be too late.

  Nora had a big boat, so she'd certainly dock at a marina. But where? Florence was at the mouth of the Siuslaw River, and the main marina was around Old Town, if he remembered correctly, but in his frenzied state he couldn't remember which side of the bridge they were on, and missed any signs telling him so. He was halfway across the double-arched Siuslaw Bridge when he realized the main marina was on the side he'd just come from, the north. He'd have to double back. He scanned the water below, both to the west of the bridge and to the east. And that was when he saw it.

  The yacht.

  He realized, seeing the turgid river, that few people would be crazy enough to be out on a night like this unless they had no choice, and that made the sleek and modern yacht heading west, up the river leading to open ocean, all the odder. Most of the windows on all three levels were aglow. There was a flybridge on top, a secondary bridge that was exposed to the elements, and Gage saw two figures under the awning. Blinking away the water in his eyes, he tried to make them out.

  It looked like a man and a woman. The woman had the wheel. The man stood next to her.

  The woman had lots of dark hair, billowing in the wind. She gesticulated wildly.

  The man was pointing something.

  A gun.

  After that, Gage was over the bridge, his heart hammering so loud in his ears that he heard it even over the motorcycle. The man had her at gunpoint. But why? And why head out to sea, unless he really intended to kill her? Gage made a U-turn right in the middle of the highway and gave the bike plenty of throttle, zooming back over the bridge. He took the exit to the Port of Siuslaw Marina hard, skidding so much he nearly lost the bike, but then he gave it more throttle and roared down Second Street until he reached the marina. A grizzled old man driving an RV, who was pulling out of the parking lot, gawked at him.

  Faster. He had to go faster. He raced across a mostly empty parking lot and screeched to a stop at the boat ramp. He jumped off the bike and ran—staggered, more like, his legs cramping—toward the rows of landing slips. The rain was already picking up, crackling on the water. He had to find a boat. Coast guard? No time.

  The wind cleared most of the fishy smell, but not all of it. There were boats everywhere—fishing tugs, double-masted sailboats, even a pontoon boat—but most of them were dark and tied up, and the chances of the keys sitting in them were slim. Then he came across a teenage boy in a bright red jacket who was tying a tiny aluminum boat to the dock next to a Catalina sailboat. He looked up as Gage raced up to him. His hair, plastered to his forehead, was nearly as red as his jacket.

  "Can I help you, mister?" he asked. His surprise turned to shock when he took in Gage's appearance, which must have been like something out of a horror movie. He swallowed. "Um, my dad is just over—"

  "I need your boat, kid," Gage said.

  "What?"

  "There's a woman on that yacht that just left who's in trouble. I've got to stop it."

  The kid, who couldn't have been more than fifteen, blinked hard at Gage, then sputtered nonsensically for a moment before the words actually turned into something coherent. "My dad—he—he—he just went to go get some dinner for us. We're—we're sailing up to Vancouver."

  "I don't have any money on me, but I'll pay you a thousand dollars for it."

  "I don't—"

  "Look, there's no time. My name's Garrison Gage. I want you to call the police and tell them I stole your boat, okay? I'll pay your dad a thousand dollars either way, but I have to go now. D
o you have a gun?"

  "A gun?"

  "Please, I'm not going to hurt you. I just need the boat. You and your dad call the police. Tell them what I said. If you mention my name, they'll come. Garrison Gage. I'm a private investigator, kid. It's okay."

  The kid stammered, a hopeless case. Gage didn't have time to make him understand. He hopped into the little boat. It was hardly more than a rusty bathtub, but there was no time to find something better. He didn't plan to take it onto the open ocean anyway, hoping to catch the yacht when it was still on the river. The kid, seeing that Gage really was going to do this, scrambled onto the dock. He jumped onto the Catalina and disappeared through the hatch into the cabin.

  Going for his cell phone, probably. It was just as well. Gage yanked the cord on the motor and nothing happened. He tried again and it sputtered to life. As it idled, he untied the rope, and that was when the kid emerged from the hatch. He was pointing what looked like a toy gun at Gage, bright red, with and oversized barrel, and then Gage realized it was a flare gun.

  Uh oh.

  The kid had decided to play hero.

  Gage, defenseless, raised his arms. "Don't do anything rash, kid. If this is the way it has to be, then I'll …"

  But the kid turned the flare gun around and handed it down to Gage.

  "It's all we have," he said, then smiled a little. "I hope you stop the bad guys, mister."

  * * *

  Gage did too. He'd already stopped one, but the bad guy on Nora's boat was much more dangerous. Gage was broken, beaten, and bruised. He was armed only with a stupid flare gun zipped in the pocket of his windbreaker, and his wits—whatever those were worth in his present state. Other than that, as he motored away from the dock into the Siuslaw River, numb fingers on the cold rudder, he had his determination. That was worth something, wasn't it? Maybe some luck, too. He usually had luck on his side, when things were most bleak. Sometimes all you needed was a little luck to have a chance.