Black Tide Rising

“R.J. McMillen's mastery of description and amazing ability to create enriched metaphors adds so much to this chilling mystery. This is a book to read in the comforting light of day” —Judy King, author of
Living at Lake Chapala

“A pure pleasure to read.” —Roberta Rich, author of
The Midwife of Venice
and
The Harem Midwife

A DAN CONNOR MYSTERY

BLACK TIDE

RISING

R.J. McMILLEN

To Jesse, Shelley, and Virginia, with love.

ENLARGED SECTION OF VANCOUVER ISLAND, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

The chisel slid into the soft wood as easily as an eel slips through water. He had known it would. The carpentry instructor inside the joint had taught him well and had praised his ability to use tools. He wasn't used to hearing praise, but it had felt good. After he was released, he found a hardware store a couple of blocks from the halfway house they put him in, and over the course of three or four weeks he stole a whole box of woodworking tools—although woodworking wasn't what he planned to use them for.

He'd spent long hours honing the edge, first sharpening it with a file, then whetting it on water-stones, each one finer than the one before, coaxing each molecule of metal into perfect alignment. It would have cut into a living ironwood tree had he needed it to, but this was cedar: soft, porous as a sponge, grayed by age and rain and sun. The totem had been lying here for decades, cradled by the sand and the seagrass. It still held its form; the intricately carved figures of eagle and bear, deer and salmon, all wrapped in the coils of a lightning snake, but its substance was decaying back into the same soil that had nurtured it all those years before.

He pushed the chisel in again. The blade tore into the bear's snout, slid down into the gaping mouth, and stabbed into the striped coils of the snake. It gouged and ripped, dug deep, its path traced by the pale glow of new yellow cedar exposed to the air for the first time, and against the surrounding darkness of the night the snake seemed to shiver.

The man cursed as more and more new wood gleamed up at him. He had been so certain this was the place, but there was nothing. Nothing but weathered wood smudged with faded patches of blue, green, and red paint. He searched his memory, sure of what he had heard but wanting to hear the words again. Pat and Carl had been in the dining room of the house they had broken into, huddled over a table. They had sent him out to the kitchen on some pretext or other—they always did that. Sent him to get wood. Sent him to get beer. Sent him to get food. Whatever. He knew it was because they thought he was too stupid to be included in their fancy plans. They said he was unpredictable. Had too short a fuse. It had pissed him off at first, but then he had decided to just play along. Why not? He was going to get the last laugh anyway. They'd find out soon enough just who was stupid.

So he had gone out to find coffee, but some trick of sound in the empty house had brought him every word.

“We gotta hide it, man. The cops know. They followed us here. That was them we saw up at the hotel. They're lookin' for us, but even if they find us, they got nothin' if we don't have the stuff.”

“So if they can find us so easy, they can find this shit too.”

That had been Carl, always the downer. Not quick like Pat. Pat was the brain.

“We can take it out to the cove. Hide it there. Nothing there but the lighthouse and the church. No one's gonna find it there.”

He had known right away what cove they were talking about. He had taken them there. It was called Friendly Cove on the charts, but the Indians called it Yuquot. “The place where the winds blow from many directions” or some such shit. Had to be there. It was the only place around with a lighthouse and a church, and the Indians that had once lived there had all left and moved down to Gold River years ago. Even the houses were gone. Only one left there now, and that was often empty.

“How the hell we gonna get to the cove? That boat only goes a couple a times a week and the cops'll probably be watchin' it anyway. We ain't never gonna get on that.”

Carl again. Asshole.

“Water taxi. Get it to take us out to that fishing lodge where the old cannery used to be. We can walk over, easy. Walk over, hide the stuff, then walk back. Who's gonna know?”

It had been quiet for a few minutes then, and he had made a show of slamming cupboards and clattering dishes so they wouldn't know he was listening.

“So where the hell would we hide it? Like you said, there's nothin' there.”

“There's plenty of places. How about the old cemetery? All those graves have stones or markers or something. We could put it somewhere there.”

“I dunno, man. I don't wanna be diggin' up graves and shit.”

That was Carl again. They should've put that miserable bastard in a grave.

“So we can use the church. Plenty of places in there too. They got all those poles in there now. That carver guy made 'em. Took out all the religious stuff and carved a bunch of totems instead. Gotta be some real good places to hide it there.”

“It's May. They're gonna have a bunch of tourists there now, man.”

Bloody Carl. Nothing was ever right for him and he always made sure you knew it.

“They take 'em over on that supply boat and drop 'em off. They got cabins there and everything. Goddamn people all over the place. They'd see us for sure.”

Carl again. The man could find something wrong with a million dollars if it fell out of the sky in front of him.

“Yeah, maybe.”

Even Pat sounded down now. Hell, talking to Carl could bring anybody down. It stayed quiet for a minute or two, and he was about to go back and join them when they spoke again. He had been almost at the door, so he heard Pat's words clearly.

“That's it! The old totem. We can shove it up the bear's snout. No noise, nothing. Just wait till there's no one around and push it in. No one will look there.”

He would have waited to see if there was anything more, but they yelled for him and told him they had to go out. Told him to wait there and they'd be back in a couple of hours. Yeah, right. The only ones who would be there in a couple of hours were the cops. He was the fall guy. The gofer. Too stupid to be trusted. Those assholes were planning on taking off and leaving him to face the cops alone. Well, he'd show them!

Five minutes after they were gone he was out of there. He'd given them a few hours, and then he'd gone down to the wharf and stolen a runabout. He could get the stuff for himself and they'd never know. So who was the stupid one?

Now he stood back and looked around him. Maybe there was another totem. A second bear. Shit, there were bears on every goddamn totem he'd ever seen. This was an Indian village—or at least it used to be. Sure to be more totems. He moved the narrow beam of his flashlight farther up the bank. There! What was that? Looked more like a bundle of old clothes than a totem, but it was worth checking out.

A following sea pushed
Dreamspeaker
up the west coast of Vancouver Island, the swells lifting her stern as they passed beneath. Dan Connor stood barefoot at the helm, letting his body move with the rise and fall, the soles of his feet transmitting the surging power of water forced up from a depth of eight thousand feet by the steep face of the continental shelf. It was everything he had hoped it would be, and he was enjoying every single thing about it: the challenge; the sense of accomplishment; the high he felt just being out here, alone, on this vast ocean.

He was a big man, a couple of inches over six feet tall, with a lean, rangy build and a face that showed the marks of both a year on the water and recent grief. Time on the boat had bleached his dark hair and darkened his light skin. Grief had added shadows to his eyes and lines to his face, but out here, with the morning breeze fresh in his face, time and grief were both suspended.

He had left Barkley Sound as the first pale light of dawn seeped into the night sky, excited by the looming prospect of the trip up the “outside” and eager to reach his destination. Nootka Island had held him enthralled for years, ever since he had sailed past it on his father's fishboat the first summer he had been allowed to join him. Now, as the early rays of sunlight glinted off the wave crests, patterning the ocean with shafts of light, he watched the remembered names of childhood scroll past—Ucluelet, Amphitrite Point, Tofino, Clayoquot Sound, Estevan Point—each one as familiar as an old friend yet suddenly new again.

He had stayed at the marina in Victoria longer than he had planned. It was late May, and soon it would be summer. The winds of winter that howled into the inlets and bays and coves of the west coast of Vancouver Island, twisting the stunted trees into misshapen and grotesque forms, and tossing unsuspecting boats aside like so much flotsam, were calmer now, and only light gusts teased the cool morning air.

To port, Dan could see the Pacific Ocean stretching out to the horizon. To starboard, the solid mass of Vancouver Island slid steadily southward, its rugged peaks silhouetted against the early-morning sky, while the treed slopes still held the darkness of night. A mist had formed, and it writhed and twisted near the shore, now hiding, now revealing the foaming surf. Dan hoped it would lift by the time he reached Nootka Island. He wanted to anchor in Friendly Cove and visit the lighthouse and the lightkeeper he had spoken to as a child, but he also wanted to see the cove itself, and he knew that out here on the rugged west coast of British Columbia, mist could easily turn into a heavy fog that lasted for days.

He checked the radar and
GPS
and altered course, feeling the motion change as he rounded Estevan Point and entered Nootka Sound.
Dreamspeaker
was a heavily built boat, a converted fish packer nearly sixty feet long and over seventeen feet wide, with a solid wooden hull. He had done the last of the conversion himself, equipping her with every piece of modern navigation gear he could think of, but she still needed a careful hand on the wheel.

Dan slowed the engines and nudged the big boat deep around the curving headlands of the cove, keeping an eye on the depth sounder as the bottom shelved beneath him. At thirty feet he pressed the anchor release and waited for the slight change in movement that told him the anchor had settled on the gravel. Now he could let the wind and water do the work of settling the boat.

He went back to the galley and poured himself a cup of coffee before returning to the wheelhouse. In front of him, the land rose in a gentle sweep to a low crest. The trees had been cleared in the center portion of the crest, and in the open area a tiny white church huddled close against the tree line on the western side, while a square white house sat boldly in the center. Lower down, a smaller building, also white, nestled into the bank, just above a sandy beach that was mostly covered by driftwood. That was all that remained of the village he had seen in his grandfather's old photographs, taken many years ago when there had been a cannery operating a short distance away up the coast. They had shown a cove studded with wooden houses, smoke drifting up from the chimneys, children playing, and people standing in doorways as they stared toward the camera.