The Black Silent

by David Dun

  One sigh and we 're all dead. Feed them so we can breathe and it kills us, anyway. We must learn to empower the lungs of the earth and get more than breath. Let us not breathe only to watch us suffocate or roast.

  Under the magazine lay an envelope full of papers. Across the bottom of each page was the word ARCLES.

  "I've been meaning to ask," Sam said. "What's ARCLES mean?"

  "I don't know, but I do think I know where we're supposed to go next."

  A sound from outside interrupted them. It sounded like tires on gravel.

  Sam drew back the drape a half-inch.

  A car was nearing the end of the long driveway.

  "It's a patrol car," Haley said.

  "Do we need anything else here?"

  "I don't know," she said. "I'll tell you in a couple hours, when it will be too late."

  As Sam dropped the drape, a boom shattered the silence. Haley jumped and grabbed him. It was a deep, concussive roar that Sam associated with his 10mm Glock or some other similar weapon. Most 10mm gun models could not handle what was considered the optimum powder charge. The Glock packed the full wallop and sounded like it.

  "I think that might be Frick framing me." Sam hobbled on his bad leg in a weird sort of run to the front door. From the gravel driveway, only about fifty feet from the house, a patrol car had run off into the grass, lights on and its engine running. Sam could almost picture the neat round hole in the windshield.

  Opening the front door a crack, he listened and watched. The fields and yard had the still quiet of a chilly winter afternoon interrupted only by the faint sound of a beginning rain and the swirling breezes. There was no movement in the car and only a quiet hum from its engine. Sam was certain now: He and Haley were being set up. Again. Frick would be wearing surgeon's gloves and would leave no sign of his passing. Even the shoes on his feet would be discarded.

  "Someone's shot a deputy," Haley whispered frantically. "We have to help him."

  "Yes," Sam said. "And we will. Stay where you are. Call the dispatcher. Tell them to send an ambulance. Officer down."

  Sam went to a door in the family room that opened onto the patio. There was a small, glassed alcove, which protruded from the side of the house, that framed the door. If he stepped forward, he could see to the left and right through angled wing windows. Ahead, through the glass doors, against the perimeter railings of the patio, he saw flower boxes and billowing plants. Not wanting to show his body or his whole face, he peeked around the corner of the left wing's window. To his immediate left were barbecues along the wall of the house. To his right, steps led off the patio to a garden. He could not immediately discern any shooters waiting in the shadows.

  To the left an outline stood against the wall behind the barbecues. It was perhaps the top of a person's head, although he couldn't be sure. He watched quietly for a good two minutes before he saw movement. Someone had turned to look down the wall toward the alcove. Probably there were at least two men at the house, one in front and a second in the back. There was no easy way out the back-no easy way to stalk the shooter in front. Maybe they could make it through the side garage door again. But maybe not.

  He wondered how Haley was doing, imagining her standing in the gray light of the hallway, shivering in fear, and wanting to go to the fallen deputy.

  He hobbled as quickly as he could back to Haley at the front door. A fire truck emergency-aid vehicle was coming up the road and turning in.

  "Call the station," he whispered. "Tell them that we need more ambulances."

  "They'll think I'm nuts."

  "The truth grows on people. Tell them to send the fire department and ambulances. Tell them there's a chimney fire and that Frick has us pinned down inside the house. Tell them it won't be long before he burns down the house."

  "There's no chimney fire," Haley said.

  "There will be."

  While she made the call, Sam went to the garage, where he remembered seeing some paint thinner. Using sheets, towels, paint thinner, and furniture cushions, he built a fire in the living-room fireplace until the roaring flames indeed looked like they might burn the house down.

  Sam shuffled through the kitchen, grabbed Haley, and headed back to the garage. On their way there someone broke through one of the back doors. By that time Haley had run and Sam had limped at a half-run to the door to the garage. They went through it as quietly as they could. Sam imagined that the intruder came in through the dining room and headed into the living room. That would put him on the far side of the house.

  That left someone, probably Frick, at the front. He considered the odds. A lot of dead men in Sam's life had played the odds. Hopefully, the man inside the house would check the garage last.

  Sam found lawn mower gasoline and filled a canning jar with it. He screwed the lid down over a rag. He didn't have a match, but there was an acetylene torch in the garage and it had a barbecue lighter hanging from a string.

  Timing would be everything.

  Ben had a Jeep in the garage; they hid behind it.

  The sound of fire engines came through the walls, and hopefully the ambulance. Sam was pretty sure that with the paint thinner in the fireplace, flames were spewing out the top of the chimney. There was no sound from the house and now it had been three minutes. Any second the garage door could open and they would have a problem.

  When it happened, there was no time for thought. Slamming open the inside garage door to the house, a man jumped through and stood behind a hot-water heater for cover.

  Sam lit the rag and tossed the jar. For a split second the masked shooter stepped out with two hands on the gun, taut, braced, ready to shoot. He wore a police officer's uniform.

  The bullets started at about the same time the jar struck the wall over the door. Between the conflagration and the muzzle flash, the deputy was lost to sight.

  Bullets punched the wall where Sam's head had been, and then the firing stopped. From the concrete floor Sam saw the door and the shooter were burning. Flames rose from the man's arms and back, where gasoline had drenched him. His screams filled the air with his agony. Walking crazily, he reentered the house. Frick would come around to the garage, probably from the outside.

  Sam motioned Haley to run for the flaming door through which the shooter had disappeared. They found the man rolling in the hall, ripping off his jacket as he fought the flames.

  "Extinguisher," Sam said. He remembered one in the kitchen.

  Sam grabbed it from the wall, hurried back to the man, kicked the pistol far away, and blasted the burning man with fire suppressant.

  Haley came with a small bucket of water and a blanket to smother the flame.

  Sam grabbed the groaning man by the shirt.

  He screamed. He was burned badly over his back.

  "Who'd you shoot?" Sam asked.

  "I didn't shoot anybody," the man said in great pain. "Frick probably did."

  "Does Frick have any idea where Ben Anderson is?" asked Haley.

  "No."

  "Are you really a deputy?" Sam asked.

  The wounded man hesitated. "Not normally. I'm from Las Vegas."

  Sam knew it was past time to leave. They left the burned man and the shot officer in the car to the medics that no doubt were in the front yard. He took a risk and led Haley, crouching low, through the back door and into the trees.

  They heard more fire engines in the distance as they went. Sam ran as fast as he could.

  It took a little over three minutes to make it back to the forest edge near Haley's. They both puffed a bit, Sam more from the pain than anything else. They stayed low in a swale, but Sam worried about the open forest and the fact that they had already put a man at Ben's. He considered their options. Other than Haley's car, which was hidden in the orchard, they had nothing but one of her rental motor scooters.

  "You stay put. I'll go get your motor scooter out of the garage and we'll get out of here,"

  Sam said.

  "I'm supposed to stay
here while you get shot? I'm coming."

  "So you can get shot too?" Sam sighed, exasperated that she wouldn't just do as he said.

  "You stay here." He said it as if he were a fighter on the verge of a brawl. For some reason it worked. She nodded but glared.

  He and Haley were going to have to come to an understanding.

  Under the circumstances the motor scooter was the best choice. Haley had concluded the same thing. She handed Ben's papers over to Sam and devoted herself to starting the scooter. Unfortunately, with every cop on the island looking for them, the odds of making it on the scooter were not good. They climbed on and it was a tight fit, like two big men on a burro. Haley drove because Sam grudgingly had to admit that he was more accustomed to Harleys. As they ran down the highway, moving away from Ben's, he hoped they wouldn't run into a cop before they could turn off Beaverton. Once they got onto Boyce and other back roads, he breathed a little easier. It was hard to think about motor scooters and traveling after having just read the startling words of a very serious man, a man who seemed to think that a relatively ordinary event-comparable, at least in metaphor, to a sigh- would precipitate a catastrophe-roasting or asphyxiating.

  Dr. Ben Anderson had said, "All dead."

  CHAPTER 12

  Sam directed Haley to turn the motor scooter right onto Bailer Hill Road and then back to the southeast to a gravel drive that meandered past a house and led to an old barn.

  "Why are we going to Rachael's?" Haley said over her shoulder, obviously surprised at their destination.

  They dismounted and Sam pushed the motor scooter into the barn. Inside, he closed the doors and flipped on a set of fluorescent lights. As Haley watched, he pulled the tarp off his 1967 Corvette. Even without natural light it had a sheen that appeared three-dimensional, like the deep blue of the ocean.

  "That's yours?"

  Sam smiled. He put both piles of Ben's papers on the car hood.

  "Oh, I get it," Haley said. "You didn't say anything because that would actually give us information about you. I'd have died thinking you drove a two-year-old Taurus. And Rachael was a perfect choice for you. She is one of the few people I know that can really keep a secret. How did you figure that out?"

  "Ben told me. We discussed where to hide my car."

  "Ben told you?" she asked.

  Again the surprise was evident. More like shock, Sam thought.

  "I feel a little left out," Haley said. "She's my best friend."

  "Believe me, you weren't left out of much. Most of the time I've spent with Rachael was because you invited her to dinner at Ben's. Now let's talk about Ben's message in the National Geographic. Deadly sighs?"

  "I have no idea what that means," Haley said, her face still fallen. "The rest I think I understand. You've heard that the rain forests are the lungs of the earth? Well, plankton use photosynthesis and they're equal to all the forests of the world as a major source of oxygen. Given that Ben's talking about the sea, I'd call plankton the lungs of the earth.

  Some scientists have even suggested fertilizing the ocean to create more plankton to reduce CO and slow global warming. But it sounds like Ben's saying that's dangerous, 2 that if we make more plankton, we could have a big problem. I don't get that part."

  "Are you sure Ben was familiar with this plankton-feeding idea?"

  "For sure. He and his friend Lattimer Gibbons argued about the effectiveness of the idea all the time."

  "He seems to be leading us somewhere. Where do you think?" Sam asked.

  "Three possibilities: Lattimer Gibbons's place, Ben's office, or his beach house on Lopez."

  Sam nodded and signaled for her to continue.

  "Ben was part of a joint invertebrate project with the University of Washington lab. The committee he was on published a series of articles that used the subtitle: 'The Ocean Breathes for the Earth.' So I'd look for his copies of those articles. He used to have them all in a bunch of binders in his office. We can't get back in there."

  "Maybe we can, maybe we can't. Tell me more about Lattimer," Sam said. "The few times I met him, he seemed odd. Anxious maybe, sort of fussy, but thoroughly devoted to Ben. Ben has always been patient."

  "You know what I know. He's a retired engineer. He and Ben used to argue about fertilizing the ocean. I don't know if you were around for any of those arguments.

  Lattimer loved the idea and used to torture Ben with articles from other scientists who were touting it."

  "Could Lattimer have the binders? Or copies?"

  "Yeah," she said, "he definitely could have some of it. Maybe some copies. He could have a lot of things."

  "And the same for Ben's old family beach house on Lopez?"

  "There's deep-ocean stuff there, but that's actually related to the plankton because they die and rain down on the bottom."

  "So back to the sigh and everybody dies," he said.

  "I'm not following that part. At least not in relation to the plankton thing. But maybe Ben figured something out about that."

  "Lattimer strikes me as the type that might hide things for Ben," he said.

  "Yeah. And since his association with Ben is totally informal, I don't think anyone would think to look there. I could definitely see Ben hiding his real research with Lattimer. You know that nonconformist streak of his."

  "Or hiding with Lattimer himself," Sam said. "Let's go see Mr. Gibbons."

  Haley moved back toward the scooter, but Sam wasn't following her. Instead, he opened the trunk of the Corvette and removed and opened a small suitcase full of makeup.

  Haley raised her eyebrows at the sight.

  "This is pretty much what's left of my old life."

  "I wish you'd tell me about your old life."

  Inside the case was foundation makeup, skin-whitening cream, blush, prosthetic plastic, spirit gum, fake hair, and a host of other fillers and toners that you'd find on a typical movie set. Sam began placing the items on the hood of the Vette.

  Next he removed a heavy lockbox. It contained documents that he rifled through carefully. He found a car registration form that said Frederick Raimes and pulled out the corresponding license plates.

  "I really don't get this bit with the license plates," Haley said.

  "It's okay. All legal."

  It took him a minute or two to change the plates.

  "I'm going to call for a tow truck," he said.

  "Why?" Haley asked.

  Sam took out his cell phone and dialed 411.

  "State of Washington. San Juan Towing, on San Juan Island, please."

  The operator rang him through.

  "Hi," Sam told the mechanic. "My name is Fred Raimes. I'm a Triple A member. I was here visiting and I need to get my car back to Anacortes. What would you charge to take my car on the eight p.m. ferry tonight?"

  "Is it broke down?"

  "Yes. Blown head gasket."

  "You could have it fixed on the island."

  "Yeah, but I'm a mechanic and I want to get it home."

  A pause. "Uh, it comes out to be about two hundred fifty bucks, including the cost of the ferry."

  "Great." Sam read him the number off the AAA card in the name of Fred Raimes.

  They confirmed a time and place, and Sam hung up.

  "Frick's gonna be disappointed," Haley said. "You said you were Robert Chase."

  Sam put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. "Now you're catching on."

  "It's none of my business, but is Raimes the name you used in your life away from the islands?"

  "Sometimes. Now I go only by Sam Wintripp. I was born Samuel H. Browning."

  "The name we knew," Haley said.

  "You know about Helen's ancestry?"

  "Helen and your father were originally descended from the Scottish Highlanders,"

  Haley said. "Originally they were named Broun. Then their ancestors emigrated to England and changed it to Browning, right?"

  "Right."

  She stopped. He could tell she wanted to a
sk more, but there was a quiet reserve about her-a stubborn resolve. Sam nodded. He was pretty certain he knew what was really on her mind. The summer of 1994 still hung in the air between them. Instinctively, though, he felt now was not the time to break open the old scab and try to clean out the underneath.

  "I took the name Wintripp when I discovered that Mother was alive and not what my father claimed-a dead mestizo woman with a bad history."

  "I'm sorry about that. Everyone in the family was told the same story about your mother. Maybe that's why I identified with you. God knows my mother had her own problems." She was quiet again. "You would show up now and then, to visit, like an apparition out of the mist, saying nothing about yourself or your life. You were in the

  'export business'? Give me a break. Even now," she said, "today, I wonder who you were back then, I mean as a person. Around 1992 they said you went into the computer business and then as a person with a life, you mostly disappeared." There was a hint of frustration in her voice and he knew she was getting nearer the source of her feelings.

  Sam began shaving his beard away with a portable electric razor, using a mirror to watch his progress. There were things he had to work out in himself and they needed more time to talk if he were ever to bring up the past.

  "People who knew me, and there weren't many of those, called me Sam back then. No last name."

  "When did you find out that your mother was a Tilok Indian?" Haley asked.

  "When I was twenty-one."

  "I think I was eleven when you told us. Your father hid it from you then, as long as he lived?"

  "Yes. He was a shrill, bigoted, stubborn, macho Englishman-or actually Scotsman, if you will — emphasis on the macho. He was dead for a year when you came to live with Ben and Helen in '81. When I found my mother's family in '83, the Tiloks, I was given a new name: Kalok. Kids called me Kai and I liked it better. Anyway, fast-forward to nearly a year ago. After some tough circumstances-all these injuries and some worse things- I chose a new path in life. I decided, though, that Kai was too unusual for most folks and I was used to Sam; so outside the Tiloks, I'm still Sam."