Black Tide Rising (19 page)

Pat wheeled away and stared out toward the ocean, his mind racing. Behind him, he could hear Carl's rage start to build.

“Shit!” Carl accompanied each word with a smack of his hand on the fence. “Goddamn it! It's gone.”

“I told you,” Pat answered. “Jerry's got it.”

“Shit,” Carl said again. “I'm gonna kill that little bastard.”

“Yes,” Pat said. “But first we have to find him. Let's get back to the boat.”

“The boat?” Carl asked. “What the hell good's the boat? You said he was on the trail.”

“He probably started on the trail,” Pat said, working through the probable scenario as he spoke. “But he wouldn't stay on it. He knows the logging roads. The cops won't be watching them.”

“Logging roads? What the fuck good are logging roads? We can't find him on those. They're all over the goddamn island.”

Pat looked at him, an unpleasant smile twisting his mouth into a sneer. “Yes, they are. But, as Jerry told us, they all end up in the same place.”

Dan checked his watch. Almost six o'clock. Still a few hours of daylight left, but not enough to do a proper search, and Leif's boat could be anywhere by now. Even if he convinced Markleson to contact every marina and resort in the area, it could still take days—or even weeks—to find it. There were just too few people and too many inlets, and too many deserted coves and bays, but he had to try. He shook his head as he reached for the microphone yet again.

“Run that past me again,” Markleson said after Dan had made his request. “You figure this wasn't an accident?”

“It could have been, but unless Nielson can tell us what happened, we're not going to know. Either way, we need to find the boat. We know where he ended up, and we know he wasn't in the water long, so if it was an accident, we should be able to figure out where the boat would have drifted. I'll work on that tonight. I've got all the tide and current tables loaded into my computer, and I can talk to the coast guard people at Comox. But if it wasn't an accident, it's even more important that we locate the boat. We need to find out what happened as fast as possible.”

There was a brief silence on the other end, and then Dan heard Markleson sigh.

“Okay, I'll have someone get to work on this right away—assuming they're not already working on one of your other requests.”

The sarcasm was clear, but Dan thought it was more in jest than in anger.

“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it. Sorry to dump all this on your plate.”

Markleson laughed. “No need to apologize. That's the nature of the job up here. I'll let you know if we get anything.”

He clicked off, then came back on. “Hey, you still there?”

“Yeah,” answered Dan. “Why?”

“Just wanted you to know we're still working on one of those requests. You asked my opposite number down at the south end—who, I believe, is a friend of yours—to check up on the Reverend Steven? Well, he called us when he couldn't reach you and asked us to let you know he's working on it. He had to contact the head office of the mission to get the guy's full name. Said he had to give them a bullshit story about checking the records of everyone involved in youth camps so they didn't try to stall him. He got a response a couple of hours ago, but he hasn't had a chance to run it yet. He said he'll let you know when he gets anything.”

“Uh, thanks. That's great.”

Dan grimaced as he replaced the microphone. Between finding Leif Nielson and learning of Sleeman's and Rainer's disappearance, he had completely forgotten about his request to check out Reverend Steven. Not that it mattered. The reverend was another issue entirely, and Dan already had enough on his plate to worry about: Jared and his group were wandering around Nootka Island somewhere, and Walker was out there paddling up some godforsaken creek. He couldn't contact any of them, and he didn't know if or when they would contact him. He gave a snort of derision. Two days back on the force, with two major crimes on his docket, and all he had done was send civilians into danger and make phone calls. Reverend Steven could wait.

Hunger pangs drew Dan down to the galley. He hadn't eaten lunch, and breakfast—a cup of coffee and a handful of granola—had been a long time ago. He would have liked nothing better than to sit down to a full meal, but he didn't have the time or will to raid the freezer. A peanut butter sandwich would have to do. In a couple of days he and Claire could cook up a real dinner and sit down together in the salon with glasses of wine. Her hair would gleam in the light from the old brass lantern he had salvaged from his father's boat, and which hung from the cabin ceiling above the table, and she would smile across at him—unless, of course, he hadn't found Margrethe and the guy by then and had to spend all his time looking for them. And unless Claire decided she couldn't cope with the idea of him being a cop. Why the hell hadn't he told her? Because he was an idiot, that's why, and he would have to explain to her why he had delayed.

He threw the jar of peanut butter back into the cupboard and slammed the door. The latest volume of the tide and current tables was on the bookshelf, and he grabbed it and took it with him to the wheelhouse. It might not be much, but at least he could do something to get this case moving.

It was late when Dan finished his research. He had checked every parameter he could think of, going back and forth from the chart to the current tables, adding in the wind directions and velocities he had received from the coast guard weather station, checking them against the probable time Nielson had gone into the water and figuring in the height of the tides that could either allow passage or block it completely. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his shoulders. His eyes stung and his head hurt—probably from low blood sugar as much as fatigue—but the maze of pencil lines he had created converged into a satisfyingly small circle. He had been lucky. The tide was rising when Nielson left the marina in Tahsis and the current would have been running east, flooding north into the inlets. If the engine on the boat had been switched off or in neutral when Nielson went overboard, the boat would have been pushed back in, rather than out toward the open ocean where it could be impossible to find. Even if he had fallen off with the engine still running, the current would have caught the bow of the boat and pushed it north and east. Either way, the boat would end up somewhere around Graveyard Bay or Espinosa Inlet. If Dan grabbed a few hours of sleep and left early, as soon as it was light, he had a good chance of finding it. Unless, as he suspected, Nielson's injury had been no accident. Then he would have to search in an entirely different area, and that could take all day.

He set the alarm for 4:30
AM
and climbed into his bunk, his mind full of lines and angles, circles and contours, which spun and merged as they dissolved into sleep, but it was only three hours later, and still full dark, when he was woken by a loud noise. Struggling up through the layers of sleep, he thought first that
Dreamspeaker
had dragged her anchor and was on the rocks.

“Shit,” he yelled as he fought his way free of sheets and blankets to fumble for the light switch. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

He hadn't checked the anchor when he'd gotten back on board yesterday. Hadn't thought he needed to. He should have known better. It was always the things left undone that came back to haunt you. Hadn't his father taught him that? And hadn't his years in the
RCMP
reinforced it? If he lost
Dreamspeaker
through his own negligence …

His hand was reaching for the electrical panel, fingers searching for the switch that would turn on the spotlights up on the mast, when the noise came again, and he froze. That wasn't the scrape of rocks. That sounded more like something—or somebody—knocking on the hull. Surely it couldn't be happening again. If that was Walker, arriving again in the middle of the night …

Dan grabbed a pair of jeans as he passed his cabin and took the time to put them on. The sweater he had been wearing when he went to bed was lying on the chair, and he pulled that on too. Whoever it was, Walker or Jared or some other nocturnal visitor, they could damn well wait till he got dressed.

It was Walker, of course. He was sitting in his canoe, one hand on the swim grid, the other shielding his eyes as he stared up into the beam of the flashlight Dan was holding on him.

“You want to turn that off before it ruins my night vision entirely?”

“Night vision, hell,” Dan answered. “You've got to stop doing this. Can't you just paddle around in the daytime and sleep at night like the rest of us?”

Walker shrugged. “Doesn't work that way for me. I sleep when I can, where I can. Sometimes I can't.”

Dan sighed, and his anger evaporated as he reached down to take the rope Walker had held out to him. “Fine, but do you think you could at least let the rest of us get some sleep? I work better when I've had at least a few hours in the sack.”

Walker's only answer was the infuriating grin that Dan had come to recognize as the end of any further conversation.

“I guess I'll go and put on some coffee,” Dan said, resignation in his voice, as he started back to the cabin. “No way I'm going to get any more downtime tonight.”

—

The coffee was brewing by the time Walker made his way to the salon. He stopped in the doorway to take off his jacket, then sat down on one of the settees and slid along it till he reached the table. Dan poured two cups and then joined him.

“You find anything, or are you just here for a social visit?” Dan asked as he pushed one of the cups across the table to Walker, his smile taking the sting out of his words.

“A little of both, I guess,” Walker answered. “I was kind of hoping I could get one of those fine frozen meals you make so well.” He grinned at Dan, waiting to see if he would take the bait, but Dan let it go, simply staring at Walker over the rim of his coffee cup.

Walker shrugged. “I've got some news,” he continued. “I didn't find anything, but a couple of Jared's people found me. They said they hadn't seen anyone on the trail itself, but the other group—Jared split them into two teams of three—has found a track. Seems someone came off the trail and headed east through the forest.”

Dan stared at him. “Only one person?”

“That's what they said.”

“I guess there's no way of knowing who it was—or where he or she is headed?”

“Not yet, but whoever it is might not be heading anywhere. Might just be lost. On the other hand, if he—and the boys said ‘he,' not ‘she'—knows the island, he might be trying to find one of the logging roads. Guess there's a lot of them. That's how Jared and the boys get around—they follow the old roads. Either way, it shouldn't be too long till Jared figures it out. I'm going to go back over there and wait. One of them will come and tell me when they've caught up with him.”

“One person.” Dan was talking to himself as much as to Walker. “So maybe we're wrong thinking Margrethe and the killer are together. Maybe she went on the trail by herself, and whoever killed the kid came and left by boat.”

“Maybe.” Walker looked doubtful. “Or maybe he's killed her and it's him on the trail. Sounded like a pretty tough trail for a woman who's scared of the water. Sanford says a lot of it is along the beach.”

Dan nodded. “Yeah. That's what it says on the computer too. But maybe that's why she left it. She's scared of the ocean, so she figured the bush would be better.”

The alarm sounded and Dan went to turn it off.

“Going somewhere?” Walker asked when Dan returned to the cabin.

“Yeah,” Dan answered. “But I might have to leave a little later than I'd planned.”

He hated the idea of getting back on the phone instead of going out and doing something concrete, but he needed to talk to Markleson again and ask him to have someone contact the logging companies, tell them to be on the lookout for anyone on one of the roads. He also needed to check with Gold River to see if they had come up with a definite
ID
on the boat that had been found on Bligh Island and to find out whether they had found any fingerprints on it. If it had been Darrel who stole it, it didn't tell him any more than he already knew, but if they could put Jerry Coffman on board, Dan would at least know for sure that Coffman had been—and probably was still—on Nootka Island.

“You planning on coming back? I don't want to spend hours paddling around waiting to give you Jared's information if you're not going to be here.”

“What?” Walker's question had interrupted Dan's train of thought. “Oh, sorry. I'm going to take the inflatable and go out and look for Leif Nielson's boat. Shouldn't take too long.”

“Who the hell is Leif Nielson?” Walker asked.

Dan laughed. He was usually the one asking Walker questions. Now it was the other way around. “Hang on. I'll go get us another cup of coffee and then I'll fill you in. It's been a pretty busy day.”

—

“So Nielson is the guy who identified Darrel?” Walker asked when Dan had finished bringing him up to date.

“Yeah. He's a fisherman, or at least he used to be. Now he works as a fishing guide. Guess he's lived in Kyuquot all his life. Seems like everybody knows him.”

“You think he's going to make it?”

Dan shrugged and mentally added yet another call to his growing list.

“Claire still going up there?”

“Claire?” Dan asked, confused by the sudden change of topic.

“Yeah, you know. Blond. Cute. Lost her boat last year to those guys in the black ship. I think she spent some time with you for a few months over this past winter.”

“Very funny, Walker. I know who you're talking about. I just wondered where you were going with your question.”