Black Tide Rising (8 page)

Dan interrupted the rush of questions. “Yes, I told the police, but by the time they got here, the grass was dry and standing up again. There was nothing for them to see. And the trail only led down to the outside beach anyway. The tide had washed anything else away. Walker figures they might have gone onto the trail—the one that leads up to Louie Lagoon—so we're going to go up there and keep an eye on things at that end.”

He watched as all the same doubts and questions he had asked himself played across their faces, until Mary broke the silence.

“We should tell Jens. He—”

“No,” Dan said. “I don't think that's a good idea. He would probably take off on the trail himself, and he's in no shape to do that.” He looked from one to the other. “Look, we don't know for sure that it was her—and even if it was, she might be with someone who's armed. Someone who could be dangerous.” He looked pointedly at Gene. “Remember the blood we found?”

Gene nodded. “Yeah, you're right. But damn, it seems crazy to think of Margrethe out there on that trail. A lot of it's along the beach or crossing rivers. If it's her, she sure as hell didn't go voluntarily.” He turned to Mary. “We'd better keep this to ourselves.”

She nodded, a troubled look on her face. “I guess you're right.”

Dan smiled at her. “Just keep an eye on the cove. If you see anything odd—anyone that looks out of place—call me.” He paused and looked around the room. “You do have full phone service here, don't you?”

Gene nodded. “We do now. The coast guard in Tofino added some bandwidth to the microwave tower a few years back.”

“Great,” said Dan. “I've got
VHF
,
SSB
, and satellite on board. The works. I'll turn them all on. You shouldn't have any trouble reaching me.”

He turned to go. As he stepped out of the doorway, a shrill ring tore through the air.

Gene laughed. “And speaking of phones,” he said, “I'd better go and answer that one. You take care of yourself. And keep in touch.”

“Will do.” Dan nodded to the two of them and headed out to the walkway. He was almost halfway across when he heard Mary calling him.

“Dan! It's for you.”

He turned and stared at her. “For me?”

She nodded and held out a receiver.

Who on earth would be calling him at the lighthouse? Who even knew he was there? An image of Claire flashed into his mind. She was the only person who knew where he was. If she was in trouble … He ran back and snatched the receiver from Mary's outstretched hand.

“This is Dan. Are you okay?”

There was a pause on the other end, and then a very male voice drawled, “I'm fine, but thanks for asking.”

Dan felt relief mingled with shock. It was his old boss, Mike Bryant, now promoted from head of the anti-terrorist squad to commander of the South Island Division.

“Mike? How the hell did you know where to find me?”

“I didn't. At least, not until a half hour or so ago when I got a call from the marine squad. Tried calling you on the boat but didn't get an answer, so figured I'd try the light.”

Dan shook his head. “The marine squad? How would they know where I am? And why would they care? What's going on?”

“That's what they want to know. They got a call from North Island Division asking them to check the beaches for a missing woman. Seems they're stretched pretty thin, so when they were told you were in the vicinity, they asked me to get hold of you. I didn't know if you'd still be there, but …”

“Well, I'm glad you're not telling me the Nootka lighthouse was just a lucky guess. I was beginning to think you had found a psychic!”

“Nope—no psychic, although the fact you're still there may very well be lucky for us. I just got off the phone with my boss. I'm putting you back on the job.”

This time Dan jerked the receiver away from his face and stared at it as if it had turned into a venomous snake. It was several seconds before he brought it back to his mouth. “You're what?”

“Listen. You had an incident there, right? Some woman went missing?”

“Yeah. Her name's Margrethe. She's the wife of the assistant lightkeeper here. Why? Has she been found?” Dan looked over at Gene and Mary. They stood transfixed, their eyes glued to his face.

“No. But there has been a body found. A couple of fishermen found it. It was in the water up at Aktis Island. That's just off Kyuquot, which I understand is pretty close to where you are?”

“Yeah. Not too far. I'm heading up there in a few days to meet Claire. But if it's not Margrethe, then what has this got to do with me? Or you, for that matter? That would be North Island.”

Mike ignored the jibe. “It's got nothing to do with Margrethe—at least as far as I know. The body is some Native kid. Just a youngster. Maybe thirteen or fourteen. The guys from the detachment at Tahsis went out to pick him up, and one of them asked a couple of the folks he knew in the village there if they recognized him. They did. Seems the kid might have been from Gold River.”

“Huh.” Dan noticed Mary and Gene still staring at him and moved away. Hearing about a dead kid was not something they needed to experience right now. “Well, that's a bitch, and I'm really sorry to hear it. It's sure going to be tough for his folks and all that, but I still don't see why you needed to track me down. There's nothing I can do about it, and I know there's a detachment in Gold River. Two of them were over here yesterday: their names were George and Parker, as I recall. I met them.”

“Yeah, well, that's part of the problem. Just let me finish, okay?” Mike's voice had lost its jovial tone and become completely serious.

“Sure.” Dan felt a familiar current of excitement shimmer through his body like a low-voltage electric shock as old circuits and neurons responded to the first scent of a new case. But it was tempered by something else. Something new. Reticence? Fear? Caution?

Mike continued. “Okay,” he said. “Seems the kid—if it is the same kid—wasn't quite right. His mother's an alcoholic, and they figure he had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Lived with his grandfather, but kept running away. Hated school. Wouldn't wear shoes. Wanted to live in his traditional territory like his ancestors lived. Hunt and fish and all that. They caught him stowing away on the freight boat, the
Uchuck
, a couple of times, but mostly he hitched a ride with fishermen or tourists. Couple of times he stole a boat. Always ended up in the same place. Want to guess where that was?”

Dan sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly before he answered. “Nootka Island.” He made it a statement rather than a question.

“Yep. Right first time. But not just Nootka Island. Friendly Cove. I think the proper name is Yuquot?” Mike didn't wait for confirmation. “And that's where you are, right?”

“Right.”

“Good. So here's the thing. First, the timing is right. Seems the body hadn't been in the water long—that's why it's in such good shape—but the coroner figures it was just about the right amount of time for some kind of current that runs along the coast there to carry it up from the lighthouse at Nootka. She says it couldn't have come all the way from Gold River. Would have taken too long, plus the water is warmer in the inlet that leads out of there—Muchalat Inlet it's called—so there would have been more deterioration. Same thing for Tahsis or Zeballos.

“So anyway, the Tahsis guys called Gold River and asked them to check to see if the kid is missing. Turns out he is. And Gold River told them about that missing woman and some blood they found on some driftwood over there in the cove—I think you know about that too? So they put a rush on the
DNA
analysis. They don't have all the results back yet, but it looks like the blood type is a match. So the kid was probably stabbed to death—did I tell you he had stab wounds?—and put in the water right there in Friendly Cove.”

“Jesus!” Dan's mind had kicked into high gear. “So now we've got a mutilated totem, a murdered kid, and a missing woman? This whole thing gets weirder by the minute!”

There was a slight pause on the other end of the line, and then Mike came back again. “Glad it's got your attention, because it's your case now.”

Dan straightened. “What? Are you nuts? I'm retired, remember? I haven't been on the force for two years!”

“Year and a half, actually. If it was two years, I couldn't reinstate you.”

“Reinstate me? You're crazy! Check your records. I retired in April, after …” Dan didn't—couldn't—finish the sentence. He remembered not only the day, but also the hour and the minute.

Mike ignored the hesitation. “April is when you handed in your papers, yes, but you had a whole bunch of accrued leave and overtime, so it didn't take effect until late December. So—a year and a half.”

“Mike, listen: this is crazy. You can't do this. It won't work. I've forgotten most of the stuff I knew. I don't have the resources. Don't have the contacts. Shit, I've been pulling a pension every month. No one is going to buy it!”

“Already done—and I'll e-mail you a list of all our assets on the island.” Mike paused for a minute. “And if I recall correctly, you did pretty damn good last year without any of those resources and contacts.”

“That was different and you know it.”

There was silence on the line, and Dan could hear the sound of his own breathing.

“Dan, listen to me. We're spread very thin on the west coast. You know that. And you're already there, on the ground. The Gold River guys who went out there said you already had some ideas—”

“Which they totally dismissed,” Dan interrupted.

“Whatever. You're there. You know the people there. You know what's happening. All I'm doing is giving you the authority to call in whatever assistance you need to get the job done—and my guess, knowing you, is you're already working on it anyway.”

Dan blew out a deep breath he hadn't known he was holding. It seemed Mike knew him all too well.

“Shit. So if I agree to this—and I'm not saying I do—who would I report to?”

He could almost hear Mike grinning on the other end of the connection.

“His name's Gary Markleson. He's the commander for the North Island Division, based in Port Hardy. He's got all the details.”

Mike gave Dan the phone number and then added, “He's even got a name for you to check out. Seems you might have one of our nastier customers up there in your neck of the woods.”

“Please!”

He didn't know which was worse, trying to make progress on this piece-of-shit trail or listening to that whiny voice squeaking at him. Every time he heard it—and he heard it often—it set his teeth on edge.

It had all gone wrong. He should've known better than to join up with Pat again, especially now that Pat was with Carl. Sure, Pat was smart. Hell, the whole thing had been his idea in the first place. But ideas were nothing. Everybody had them. “Let's do this” or “Let's do that” or “Hey, how about …”

Ideas were great and wonderful and all that, but it was the planning that counted, and those two couldn't plan their way to the outhouse. They were bad luck, both of them. He should've just done the job on his own. He was familiar with the city of Victoria, knew the gallery—knew all the galleries, for that matter. And he'd had a good head start, too. He'd been released over a month before Carl, and nearly three months before Pat. Plenty of time to set it up. And he could have done it, no problem. It wasn't like he was some low-life street punk holding up liquor stores and snatching purses for a living. He was a pro. He'd been doing the high-end stuff for years: galleries and professional offices and the rich-bitch mansions with their fancy security systems. He could do it all. Would have still been doing it if he hadn't taken on Marty as a partner. That had been a mistake. He'd let himself be talked into it by the slick son of a bitch, and Marty had landed both of them in the slammer. Well, at least that wouldn't happen again. Marty wouldn't be talking anyone into anything anymore. He had made sure of that.

Now look where he was. Scrambling along some godforsaken trail that wasn't really a trail at all, just … west coast: rough, wet, slippery, and at times so overgrown with salal it was damn near impassable. Jerry cursed as one of the tough, gnarled stems caught his foot. Salal was a pestilence, put on this useless bloody island for no good reason he could think of. Its leaves were like leather, and the tangled stems formed an almost impenetrable barrier that filled every open space. You couldn't break it or step over it or even push your way through it. No, you had to thread yourself through, one step at a time, untangling each branch, placing each foot carefully so you didn't twist an ankle—or worse—as you tried to pull it free. It even encroached on the trail in places, and he had been forced to stumble and dodge through the goddamn stuff, dragging the stupid bitch behind him, until he finally found his way down to some rock-strewn beach, and then the fucking tide had come in and he had been forced to scramble back up again.

And then there were the creeks. He'd crossed two already, wading halfway up to his ass in freezing water and dragging the whiner behind him. The whole thing had been cursed from the start. What were the chances that in a place as remote and empty as Yuquot there would be some fucking Indian kid asleep in the grass? Or that some goddamn woman would happen to be up at four o'clock in the morning, looking out the window of one of the only three houses there? It was crazy. He should have finished her off down there on the beach. Left her with the kid. He didn't know why he hadn't. But she had come out of nowhere, like a goddamn ghost with her long, pale hair hanging down around her face and that white jacket with some friggin' Indian picture of a thunderbird and a snake painted on it. He'd thought at first she was an apparition, some kind of spirit the kid had conjured up, and he'd panicked. Nothing surprising there. He had seen pictures that looked like her before, when he was a little kid, at some of the gatherings his mother had dragged him to, and he'd heard the stories about
Bukwas
, the king of the ghosts, who only became visible at night, and
Dzunukwa
, the cannibal woman, who could speak to you with your grandmother's voice and lure you to your death. The Indians in the joint had told the same ones. He hadn't really believed them, of course. He knew better. He knew they were just stupid Indian stories, but out there on the beach, it was like they had suddenly come true. It wasn't until the whiner had tried to run from him, and he'd grabbed her arm without thinking, that he realized she was real. A real, live woman—and he'd never killed a woman.