Black Tide Rising (6 page)

Walker was grinning at him again. “Come a long way in a couple of years: advising a known criminal to leave the scene.”

“Fuck off, Walker. I'm just trying to help here. You don't like talking to them any more than they like talking to you.”

“True.” Walker nodded. “And you're right. Maybe I'll go find Sanford and his folks. Tell them what's happened.”

“Good idea,” Dan agreed. “Better make it soon. The boys could arrive any time.”

—

The “boys” arrived twenty minutes after Walker left. They were neither the
RCMP
West Coast Marine Division nor the coast guard, but a couple of constables from the Gold River detachment, who tied their boat to the wharf and headed straight up to the lighthouse. Gene met them at the door.

“Hi, George. Parker. Figured it might be you two. Don't think you've met Jens yet. He's the new assistant lightkeeper. Came here when Walter retired.”

The two men nodded at Jens.

“And this is Dan Connor. He just stopped by on his way up north. He's one of your guys. At least, he used to be. He's been helping with the search.”

George and Parker—Gene didn't share their last names and their heavy parkas hid their name tags—shook Dan's hand with the odd mixture of reticence and camaraderie reserved by serving police for those who had left the force.

“You here when they discovered her missing?” George asked Dan. He was a dark, heavyset man with a square jaw, thick neck, and steeply sloping shoulders that suggested he spent a lot of time in the gym.

“No. I arrived here around nine this morning,” Dan answered. “That's my boat out in the cove. Came up to the lighthouse to introduce myself to Gene and Mary.”

“Huh.” George appeared to lose interest in Dan and turned back to Gene. “You checked the cove? Everywhere she might have gone?”

Gene nodded. “Yeah. Dan and I checked the church and the house and studio down there. Mary and Dan checked Jens's place and the workshop.”

“You didn't find any sign of her?”

“Not exactly.” Gene shot an awkward glance at Jens.

“Sounds like maybe you did find something,” George said, his gaze sharpening.

“Yeah, well, not really.” Gene was obviously uncomfortable talking in front of Jens. “What we found was the old totem. Someone had dragged it out onto the beach and destroyed it.”

“You can't be serious!” Mary stared at him in shock. “You said it was damaged, but destroyed? Margrethe would never do that. It must have been one of those people that were here on the weekend.” She turned to George. “There were a bunch of them: kayakers, boaters, hikers from the trail.”

Gene shook his head. “The damage is too new. And we found some blood. It was still tacky.”

“Blood?” The news was greeted by a chorus of horrified voices. One of them belonged to Jens.

“I'm sorry, Jens,” Gene said. “I didn't want to tell you.”

“Oh God.” Jens collapsed into a chair. “Oh God.”

—

Gene and Dan led the two constables down to the beach and pointed out the mutilated totem and the blood on the driftwood. The constables returned to their boat and used their radio to call back to the detachment and request assistance. Dan shook his head. He knew they were following procedure—they were constables, not detectives—but it meant the trail of footprints would have completely disappeared by the time investigators arrived. It also meant he would have to spend even more time here, unable to do anything practical and surrounded by feelings of fear and grief that brought unwanted memories of Susan surging back.

“I'm going to head back to my boat,” he said to them. “There are things I need to be doing.”

“You need to stay here until the detectives arrive.” Parker spoke for the first time, his voice gruff and his tone officious. He was considerably younger than his partner, with thin, blond hair and a round, pink face that made Dan think he might be on his first posting. “They'll want to talk to you.”

“I know,” Dan replied. “I was a cop, remember? A detective, as a matter of fact. I'm not going anywhere. I'll come back up to the house as soon as I've finished.”

He felt them watching him as he made his way across the walkway and back down to the beach where he had left the dinghy. It didn't bother him. He would have done the same.

Back on board, Dan went straight to the wheelhouse and slid into the captain's chair. He had lied. He had nothing to do—except deal with his memories. The look on Jens's face, the agonized clenching of his body as he listened to Gene explain what they had found, had stirred up feelings Dan thought he had left behind. He would have looked exactly like that the day he found Susan, her body slumped on the dining room table in a pool of blood. He could still taste the grief, smell the emptiness, hear his sobs of anguish. He was back there, feeling the pain twist in his gut, listening to his brain scream. That was what he had run from when he quit the force. That was what had driven him to
Dreamspeaker
and pointed him north into a maze of empty islands and channels he could lose himself in. That is what he thought he had beaten when he met Claire.

And what about Claire? She would be waiting for him to join her in Kyuquot in just a few days, excited to see him, eager to share what she had learned about the otters she loved, ready to share her life and her body with a zest and openness that delighted him. Was it fair to her to share that life and body if he was still tied to Susan?

He came back to the present to find his world blurred by tears he hadn't realized he'd shed. He glanced at his watch as he brushed them from his face. Had he really been here over an hour? They'd be coming to look for him soon, wondering what the hell he was up to. He looked across at the wharf. There was still only one boat—the one the two constables had arrived in—so the detectives weren't here yet. Thank God for that. They'd be really pissed if they had to come and get him.

He went down to the head and splashed cold water on his face. At least the trip back to shore in the dinghy would hide the evidence of his emotional meltdown. Too bad it couldn't take care of the issues that had caused it.

The sound of an inboard engine caught his attention, and he watched through the porthole as an ancient cabin cruiser appeared around the eastern point and headed for the shore. It ran up onto the beach and a young Native man jumped out, almost falling in the sand as he struggled toward the totem. He slowed as he neared the yellow rope and, before Dan could yell a warning, stopped and grasped it with both hands, his body suddenly rigid. He stood there, completely still, for several minutes and then slowly bent his head down until it touched the bright strands of nylon.

Dan figured it had to be Sanford. More grief, thought Dan. More loss. He felt a quick surge of gratitude that Walker had been able to reach the man and forewarn him. It would have surely been even harder if he had come home unprepared.

A detective and a forensic specialist arrived a few hours later. As he had done with the constables from Gold River, Gene led them down and showed them the totem and the driftwood where he and Dan had found the blood. By the time they had finished questioning, and searching, and scraping, and bagging, the long twilight of late May had deepened into night.

Dan went down to the wharf with Gene to see them off, then said good night and returned to his boat. He had told them about the footprints, but, as he had expected, when he led the forensic guy over to point them out, they had already disappeared, and he was pretty sure the man hadn't believed him. Not that it mattered. The trail hadn't led anywhere except to the outer beach, and he hadn't wanted to involve Walker by explaining how he had found them. He gave a snort of derision as he thought about it and wondered how many of the witnesses he had questioned over the years had withheld information from him for similar reasons: didn't want to involve a friend; didn't want to sound like a weirdo …

He wandered into the salon. There was no way he was going to be able to sleep anytime soon. Too many thoughts rolled around in his head. Too many memories. Too many questions, all of them unanswered. Maybe if he could just concentrate on the questions, he would be able to push the memories back. Store them away until he could deal with them. Yeah, like that was ever going to happen!

He went back to the wheelhouse and tried to call Claire, but there was no answer. He guessed she was probably out for dinner with friends. After all, she was going to be away until at least September, maybe longer, so she would want to say goodbye. He left a message and went back to the salon.

Maybe it was time for a beer and some music: a little jazz to help smooth out the brain waves and get his gray cells working. It had always worked for him in the past. He found
Jazz Samba
by Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz, and let the honeyed sounds flow around him as he made his way out to the aft deck.

It was time to concentrate on the present. What the hell had happened here? It looked like Margrethe had left the house voluntarily, but why? If she hadn't gone to meet someone, she had to have seen something. And it would have needed to be something major to take her outside on her own and down to the beach. This was a woman who was uncomfortable around the water. He hadn't checked the line of sight from the house, but if she had seen someone down by the totem, would that have been enough to pull her out? She wouldn't have been able to see exactly what was going on—not at that distance and not at night, even though there had been a moon—so why would she go? And wouldn't she just assume it was Sanford?

He thought about that for a while, trying to put himself in Margrethe's head, trying to find a scenario that worked, letting the music wheel and dance around him before it drifted out over the dark water, but nothing came to him. He shook his head. The pieces didn't fit. He was missing something. He needed to get back out there, talk to Jens again, check the house and the bedroom window, go down to the outer beach the footprints had led him to and make a wider search … but there was the problem. He was no longer a cop, and that meant he was useless. Goddamn it! Back to square one …

He turned off the music and turned on the weather channel. Maybe the forecast had changed. Maybe the bad weather had hung up farther north or slid to the east, and he would be able to head up to Kyuquot tomorrow, a little later than he had planned but still in plenty of time to meet Claire when she arrived. He could stop off at Rugged Point Marine Park, maybe catch a salmon or two. He could even dig out his carving tools, start carving again. He had been away from that for too long …

The careful, cultured voice of the weather announcer filled the wheelhouse, and as if to emphasize the words emanating from the speaker, a gust of wind rocked the boat. The weather had indeed changed, but for the worse. The front was moving in faster and would blow harder than was previously forecast. Winds from the southeast, gusting to storm force. Heavy rain squalls. Great. Looked like he was here for at least another couple of days, maybe longer. So much for all those distractions he had been playing with.

He got another beer from the refrigerator and put Sonny Rollins on the stereo. It was going to be a long night.

—

A noise pulled Dan from a restless sleep. He was sprawled on the settee, the speakers silent and his glass empty. He looked around the salon in confusion. Something had woken him, but he had no idea what. The cove looked peaceful and quiet under a moonlit sky muted by the first thin clouds of the coming weather. There was almost no wind, and the water in the cove was calm, not even a line of foam marking the beach.

He stood up and started toward the wheelhouse, but was stopped in mid-stride by three loud knocks that seemed to come from the stern. He moved back toward the aft deck, bare feet silent on the night-damp wood, and peered over the railing. There was a dark shadow on the swim grid, and he thought he could see something underneath. He leaned to the side to get a better view, and the shadow turned to face him. It was Walker.

“You're a hard man to wake, white man.”

“Walker? What the hell are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

Walker's teeth gleamed back at him. “Figured it was a good time to talk.”

Dan checked his watch. “It's three o'clock in the morning. This is when people usually sleep.” He wasn't sure, but he thought Walker might have shrugged.

“You gonna invite me up?”

Dan laughed. “Why not? I'll put some coffee on.”

Walker didn't drink alcohol, and Dan knew better than to offer him any help, so he simply walked back inside and headed for the galley.

—

“The cops find anything?”

Dan and Walker were sprawled on the upholstered settees that ran the length of the salon, the planes of their faces lit by the faint moonlight seeping in through the windows. “Nope,” Dan replied. “Dusted the totem, but getting a print off that old wood is pretty well impossible. They scraped up the blood. Found a few places I missed. Should get some
DNA
off that.” He glanced at Walker. “They couldn't find the footprints.”

“Big surprise.”

“You really think she left with someone?” The idea still didn't sit right with Dan, but he had learned to respect Walker's abilities.

“Yeah,” Walker answered. “I think she left with the guy who wrecked the totem.”

“Doesn't fit,” Dan said. “If that was their footprints we saw, how did the blood get onto that driftwood? They were heading the other way.”

“Might be his,” Walker offered.

“Maybe. But there's no blood on the totem. And if he came and went from the other side—left his boat over there on the outside beach—he wouldn't have any reason to climb over that driftwood.”

“He didn't have a boat over there.” Walker's voice held complete conviction. “Whole place is a mass of rocks. There's a reef just offshore too. No way he could have come in there.”