Fire in the Stars (10 page)

“Even tried to buy my old boat over there,” said the older man, pointing to a small skiff lying in the grass. “I said she hadn't been in the water for five years and she'd sink like a stone before she got half a mile off shore.”

Amanda shielded her eyes from the glare of the water and stared out to sea. The coastline curved and looped into points and peninsulas, with several small islands within easy view.

“Are those the islands he wanted to visit?” she asked.

“Oh no, m' dear. Some much bigger ones way out in the ocean. You can't see them from here.”

She followed his finger but could see nothing but shimmering silver. “How far are they?”

“Oh … a good fifteen, twenty kilometres?”

She shivered. That was a long way to travel in a sinking boat. She fetched her binoculars from her side bag and trained them on the ocean. Even with the powerful magnification, she could see nothing beyond the low-lying points and islands that cluttered the waters in between.

“Nothing but birds there now. Used to be villages on them islands,” said Tom. “Until the government shut them all down and moved everybody to the mainland back in the fifties. My father was born out there, so was Ted here. That was some rugged life, b'y.”

Kaylee had been frolicking along the water's edge, trying to engage the sandpipers in play. One of the men hurled a stick of driftwood out into the water and she splashed out after it, diving headfirst into the surf and emerging with the stick clamped between her teeth. She raced back to the fisherman and flung it at his feet.

“Oh, now you're done for!” Chris laughed. “How many hours do you have to spare?”

Another stick, another gleeful dive. Amanda shifted her binoculars to the nearby islands and shoreline beyond the village, searching for signs of habitation. For Phil's truck. For any clue. The land stood empty and untouched as far as she could see. Nothing but scoured rock, grassy heath, and tangles of spruce, battered and misshapen by relentless time.

A twitch of movement shot across the lens. A moose browsing the shore? A bear? She focused harder. Rocks and scrub hid her view, but then the figure emerged again. Two, three, maybe four separate figures, leaping nimbly across the open rock before disappearing behind spruce again.

Human. Running full tilt toward the village. She waited with her binoculars trained until they came into view again. Closer now. A faint shout drifted in on the wind.

Kaylee perked up her ears and turned in the direction of the sound. Spotting the figures, she grabbed her stick and raced toward them. The fishermen turned to watch the figures approach. Running, leaping, flailing over the rocky shore.

“What in the love of …? What have those boys got on their tail?”

Amanda could see now that they were children, gangly-
limbed and fearless on the treacherous rocks. She thought they looked more excited than afraid, but the fishermen were frowning in apprehension. When the boys finally splashed through a shallow tidal pool and came within earshot, Tom held up his hand.

“Where you to, Bobby?”

The lead boy reached them and bent over, panting to catch his breath. Before he could speak, a second one arrived and managed to blurt out, “'Dere be a boat!”

“A boat? Yes, b'y. Das an ocean out there.”

“No!” exclaimed the first boy. “On the shore, washed up in the bush.”

“Lots of stuff washes up on the shore over the years, son.”

“No, Dad! This weren't there last week when we went clam-digging. And it's not a fishing boat. More like a lifeboat, with a big hole punched in its side.”

Chris was instantly alert. “What kind of lifeboat?”

The boy shrugged. “Can't tell, but maybe it's that boat the cops are looking for.”

Chris was already on the move. “Show me.”

The boat was upside down under an old spruce whose spreading branches shielded it from view until the group was almost upon it. Chris tramped around it, fighting the spiky spruce branches as he looked for a registration number. Amanda could see that a section of the siding had been smashed and broken off where she figured the number should be. Deliberately or victim of the ruthless sea, she wondered?

Beneath her curiosity, dread needled into her gut. What if Phil, in his single-mindedness, had taken this boat, and foundered on the rocks? She wasn't even sure he had lifejackets, let alone other survival gear. Were he and Tyler lying on the bottom of the sea, or washed up on the shore somewhere farther down?

Chris raised his head to study the stony shore. It was low tide, but the wavering line of broken shells and seaweed clearly marked the high water mark, at least fifteen metres below the boat. His face was a mask of dispassion. “Could the waves wash it up here?”

Bobby's father shook his head. “There been some big storm surges this summer, but none strong enough to toss the boat that far.”

“Looks like it's been hidden, then.”

The boys were dancing around, excited now that Chris had identified himself as an RCMP officer, each eager to impress him with their detective skills.

“We never seen anybody,” Bobby said, “but there are footprints in the sand.”

Chris whirled around. “Where?”

“We'll show you!” The boys raced off.

“Stop!”

The boys froze in place until Chris reached them. “Stay on the rocks and don't go close. You point out where they are and I'll check.” As if seeing their disappointment, he smiled. “We don't want to destroy evidence, do we?”

Amanda called Kaylee over and leashed her so that she wouldn't add excited dog prints to the scene as well. Together the small posse worked its way farther along the shore, careful to stay on the rocks. Chris bent his head to scrutinize each small patch of silt and mud in the crevices between the rocks. Amanda recognized bird tracks and small mammals, but no humans.

Farther along in a sheltered inlet, a swath of natural sand beach sparkled in the sunlight. Surf had washed seaweed, shells, and other ocean flotsam up to the high tide line. Below that line, the sand was washed smooth and clean, but above it footprints and other gouges were easy to make out. Some were the boot treads of small children, but at the far edge of the beach, larger prints had dug deep holes in the soft sand.

Amanda felt a rush of relief. Whoever this was, they had survived the wreck. Chris signalled for them all to stop while he walked cautiously forward, staying in the soft wet sand below high tide. Amanda watched with frustration and anxiety as he circled the patch of sand, clambered up on the nearby rocks, and took out his camera. He snapped a dozen shots, fiddling with the zoom and the angles, before disappearing over the ridge ahead. Kaylee strained at her leash, mirroring the impatience they all felt. Gulls wheeled overhead and sandpipers returned to capture the minute creatures the waves lapped up. The wind rippled through the low-lying bushes, where bright coral berries nestled among glossy leaves. Amanda idly wondered if they were Newfoundland's famous partridge berries.

After an apparent eternity, Chris's tousled head bobbed into view above the ridge and a moment later he came back along the edge of the rocks to the safety of the beach. He signalled Amanda with a slight shake of his head before skirting the footprints and returning to the group.

“No more sign of them. I have to report this boat, but there's no signal here. The town of Roddickton has the closest RCMP detachment, so we'll go there and give them these photos. Meanwhile I need to rope off this section of the shore until the police arrive. We have to protect the evidence. It could be our friend and his son, or it could be those potential fugitives.”

He sent two of the boys back to the village for a long length of rope. The other boys had a dozen questions. Will the police bring dogs? A helicopter? Trackers? Can Kaylee track? Chris teased them with bets that Kaylee could find every last ball in the village. Once they realized that he was not going to speculate further, the boys sensed the drama was over and began drifting away. Amanda and Chris were left to the silence of the surf and the gulls.

“What do you think?” she asked.

His brow furrowed unhappily. “I don't like it. That boat's not a regular fishing skiff. Possibly a lifeboat, although it's pretty small to be out on the open sea.”

“Phil might have settled for any boat in the mood he was in.”

He nodded. “But the fugitives were also in what looked like a lifeboat. And they were spotted in the sea only about thirty kilometres north of here.”

“What about the footprints? Could you tell anything from them?”

He nodded. “Two people at least.”

Her eyes widened.

“Both adults, I'd say.”

“But Tyler is eleven. He might be at that age where his feet have outgrown the rest of him.”

“I know.” He gazed into the distance, chewing his lip.

“What? There's something else, isn't there.”

“Two things. They could mean anything, but I have a cop's suspicious mind. First of all, the footprints were barefoot.”

“So? Maybe their shoes were wet.”

“I hope so, because those rocks will shred feet in no time.”

“And second?”

“The village is barely a kilometre to the north, yet they headed south. Away from help. Into the wilderness.”

A
fter another bone-jarring rollercoaster ride, they retrieved Chris's truck and drove on to Roddickton to talk to the detachment commander. Roddickton had only three RCMP officers who were responsible for a vast swath of remote wilderness, and one was on a training course, but the commander, Corporal Willington, seemed thrilled at the possibility of genuine intrigue. He was a chubby, jovial man with a loud, infectious laugh who plied them with tea and filled every spare moment with chatter while they awaited instructions from the investigator in St. Anthony about the seizure of the boat. It was nearly an hour before the order came for Chris to return to protect the scene until reinforcements arrived the next day to remove it.

“If Sergeant Poker-Ass thinks I'm camping out on those sharp rocks with the bugs and the bears, he can dream on,” Chris muttered once they were safely out of the station. “We'll set up camp on the village heath; that's close enough.”

By the time they returned to Grandois, the long shadows of the mountains had stolen over the village, and the salt air had chilled. They set up their tents in the meadow and were just about to cook dinner when Bobby arrived with an invitation to dinner from his parents.

Grabbing a bottle of wine, Chris and Amanda headed gratefully to the white bungalow perched on the slope above the cove. The kitchen was clearly the centre of their house. It was large, welcoming, and redolent with the smells of frying fish and cabbage. The wooden table, which bore the scars and burns of decades, easily fit ten people. Bobby's mother, a stout woman of boundless energy and talk, whirled around the kitchen tending the stove, fixing tea, and piling up platters of fish, potatoes, cabbage, and fried salt pork.

“This looks fabulous,” Amanda said as she helped to set out plates. “Thank you so much.”

“A real Newfoundland meal,” the woman said. “Nudding fancy, mind, but it'll fill you up.”

As they ate, it seemed as if the entire village drifted in, carrying cakes, berry pies, and bottles of blueberry wine, so that by the time the meal was finished, the room was packed. People laughed and traded quips so rapidly that Amanda struggled to understand every third word. She could tell from Chris's expression that he was equally befuddled.

Then someone produced a harmonica and a bottle of screech, Bobby's father dug out a guitar, and soon the whole house vibrated to the beat of Celtic rock. Kitchen spoons and pot lids became percussion instruments while the wood floor shook with the beat of dancing feet.

“It's a kitchen time!” Bobby's father shouted. “In the old days, before all this TV and Internet, there was nudding to do on the long, cold nights but play songs and tell stories.”

Amanda's first shot of screech nearly tore her throat out, but by the third, she was tossing it back like a native. Chris was keeping up too. As one song finally came to an end, he reached over and took the guitar. Tucking it into the crook of his arm, he ran his long fingers across the strings in a rich, warm chord. Once, twice, and then with a grin, he broke into a rollicking rhythm and began to sing. Amanda recognized the melodies of Slavic folk music. The villagers hooted and began to stomp their feet. Before long they were joining in the chorus even though they didn't understand a word.

Amanda's mind flashed back to similar experiences in Africa, where the village gathered in the common, and drums and flutes were magically produced.
Music is a universal language of joy and community
,
she thought. The melodies and instruments varied, but they all mimicked the beat of the heart.

It was past midnight by the time she and Chris staggered out of Bobby's kitchen. Their voices were hoarse and their heads spun. She stumbled in the darkness and linked her arm through his to keep her balance.

“You're quite the balladeer, you,” she murmured.

“Country folk have to do something on those cold Saskatchewan winters,” he laughed. “But I haven't sung those songs in a long time.”

Swaying slightly, she gazed out across the rolling meadow, where pinpoints of light still glowed in some of the houses. A thousand replies sprang to her mind, but they were all too intimate.
I'm drunk
, she thought.
Really drunk. And in danger of doing something stupid.

Instead, she hugged his arm briefly before drawing away. “Well, if you're ever fired from the RCMP, there's a job waiting for you on stage,” she muttered before marching resolutely on ahead to her tent.

The police reinforcements weren't due until late the next morning, but even so, Amanda and Chris were barely coherent when a police cruiser towing a trailer pulled into the meadow. A single constable climbed out and greeted Chris with a curt nod.

“Protesters are still up on the highway at St. Anthony,” he said by way of explanation for his lateness. “Tempers are getting ugly because it's slowing down the shrimp trucks. The sergeant said he'd send out more help if I asked for it. Plus HQ in St. John's is interested in having a look.”

As it turned out, more help wasn't needed. The constable interviewed the boys and took more photographs of the boat and the footprints before wrapping the boat into a huge plastic tarp with Chris and Amanda's help and dragging it by ATV back to his trailer. He was gone by mid-afternoon. He'd shared barely an extraneous word with either Chris or Amanda, except to thank Chris for his help and to tell him he was free to continue his holiday.

“Talkative guy, isn't he?” Amanda said as they watched the plume of dust from his cruiser trail up the hill. Even with her sunglasses and her hat pulled low over her eyes, the sun seemed too bright.

“Under orders from Poker-Ass, I'm sure,” said Chris. “But this news will be all up and down the coast by nightfall, if it isn't already. A boatload of fugitives in this little village? That'll be a legend told for years. It'll be a whole ship and a heroic rescue by the time those boys are grown, with songs written about it too.”

Amanda chuckled, the beat of the kitchen party still thrumming through her body. “I wonder what will happen to them,” she said. “Especially if they're fugitives from one of those foreign boats. People in most parts of the world don't realize how vast and desolate the Canadian wilderness can be. There are no roads or villages for miles, no shelter or food unless you make your own.”

“We know they didn't show up at Croque, but there are two more villages farther down the coast,” Chris said, spreading the map out on the hood of his truck. “Two more places they might have passed through, if they stick to the coast. I think we should check with the locals at both places. Not just for the fugitives, but also for Phil. If it wasn't his boat we found, then he might still be looking for one.”

And getting more and more bitter with every failure
, she thought. She leaned over Chris's shoulder to pinpoint the next village down the coast. Conche. No road connected it directly to the one they were in, so they'd be forced to retrace their route inland to the main highway. More miles on that bone-jarring dirt road.

“Do you think we can make it to Conche this afternoon?” she asked. “We've lost a day with this lifeboat business, and we're falling farther behind him.”

He folded the map and glanced at his watch. “Days are still pretty long, so yeah, I think so. Unless the road is even worse than this one.”

The road was rough, the terrain even more rugged, and the hills steeper, but at the end of the trip, they were rewarded with a spectacular jewel of a village nestled in a bay between towering green mountains. The village of Conche was larger and more settled than Grandois, with a grocery store that doubled as a hardware store and a bustling harbour filled with boats. No sooner had they begun their inquiries at the local store than the villagers drifted in to offer help and to volunteer information. Word of their quest had already travelled from Grandois.

The villagers had seen no trace of barefoot men possibly speaking a foreign language, but Phil and his son had been through a couple of days earlier, wanting a boat. This time he had wanted to buy one outright, but he hadn't enough cash.

“Boats are our life out here,” one man said to Chris. He was a burly, weatherbeaten man with a florid face and hands the size of hams, who introduced himself as Casey. “I offered him my wife instead, but it was no go.”

Laughter ensued among the other men in the store.

“I might have liked my chances with him,” one of the women shot back.

“The boy really wanted to go out on the sea, so Thaddeus took them out for a spin around the peninsula to the back harbour,” said Casey, pointing out the window to a man unloading wood from his truck. “It was a short run, didn't even get to show them one whale before your friend wanted to go back in. Then he took off without even a thank-you.”

“Your friend needs a good slap upside the head,” added the wife with the caustic tongue.

“Where did he go?” Chris asked. “Back up the highway toward Roddickton?”

“No, he was after a hike along the shore —”

At that moment Amanda spotted what had escaped her notice in the sea of old pickups parked helter-skelter by the wharf. A rusty black Chevy like the one Phil owned was parked near the entrance to town. She broke away and jogged down the steps of the store and along the street for a closer look. Phil's licence plate! Her heart leaped. She shouted to Chris. As he made his way over, she cupped her hands to the glass to peer inside. Maps and chocolate-bar wrappers littered the floor. She peered into the truck bed, which was piled high with camping gear and clothes, along with several two-fours of empty beer cans and a pile of empty vodka bottles.

“Looks like Phil was doing some serious drinking,” Chris muttered.

Casey came puffing up behind them, his face now nearly purple. “Yeah, I was getting to that. We never touched the beer. He already had a snootful when he arrived. Like I was telling your boyfriend here, he and the boy took off on foot across to the back harbour. Never came back. The kids went looking yesterday but didn't see hide nor hair.”

“What's in the back harbour?” Amanda asked, visualizing the map. Nothing but cliffs and woods, she recalled. She didn't like the sound of this. Phil's behaviour sounded erratic and desperate — driving drunk on rough mountain roads with his son by his side and no clear idea where he was going. As if he were in full flight mode.

Casey shrugged. “Just Old Stink. Keeps to himself. Your friend won't get much help out of him. He hasn't hardly said a word in sixty years.”

“Except to himself,” the wife added. For all their apparent discord, they were clearly in sync, Amanda thought.

“Is he dangerous?” Chris cut in.

“Old Stink?” Casey snorted. “Might have been at one time if you got in his face, but he must be getting up toward ninety by now. Harmless as a fly.”

“Well —” the wife began, but Chris was thinking like a cop.

“Does he have a gun?”

“For hunting, yeah,” Casey said. “An old Winchester 94. Shoots mostly ptarmigan and rabbits these days, and last time I saw him, his eyesight wasn't so good.”

“How far away is he?”

“Oh, a couple of miles up the back harbour, on the cape across the way. You have to reach it by boat, but my brother's got mine out. Maybe in the morning —”

Amanda jumped in impatiently. “But if it's across the bay, our friend won't be able to reach it on foot, either. He'll still be on this side.”

“There's an old boat,” the wife said. She was getting in the spirit of the drama. “Part way up the harbour. You can walk to it, and there's a footpath that we use for berry-picking.”

Amanda glanced at her watch. The sun had already slipped behind the mountains to the west, and within a couple of hours, darkness would settle in. Another day lost, another day farther behind. She called Kaylee, but before she could set out, Chris shook his head at her.

“We might make it there before dark,” he said, “but we can't make it safely back. And Old Stink's doesn't sound like the ideal spot to spend the night.”

“But every night is a night wasted! We have flashlights. Kaylee will keep us on the path.”

Chris's eyes narrowed as he studied the distant cliffs and the steep forested mountains along the shore. “One wrong step, and we could be in serious trouble.”

“Please, Chris. I don't like the sound of things. Phil sounds desperate!”

She knew he wasn't happy, that as a cop he should be the voice of caution. But damn it, you don't trek through the gun-toting jihadi hordes of northern Nigeria without learning how to survive.

She threw some power bars and emergency supplies into her day pack, tossed it over her shoulder, and set off. A short reconnaissance trip, that was all.

Either he'd follow, or he wouldn't.

He followed, as did Casey and an entourage of villagers, who picked their way single-file along the shore path. The tide was coming in, and tongues of foam licked over the rocks toward their feet. As the harbour widened, Amanda scrutinized the distant cape ahead. Had Phil been fool enough to try to swim across? Even if he could manage the distance, the waves and tides, not to mention the cold, would kill anyone who ventured out.

As she was crossing a small patch of stony beach, Casey suddenly called out from behind. She turned to him inquiringly. He was scanning the rocky hollows and scrubby bushes along the side. Finally he shook his head.

“Boat's gone.”

“Whose boat?”

He shrugged. “Everybody's. We leaves it here for those that wants to get across the harbour. Good berry-picking up on Cape Rouge over the other side. Old Stink chases the kids off when he catches them.”

She studied the pebbled sand. It was still damp and washed smooth by the last high tide, and all traces of the boat and footprints had been erased. The distance to the other shore looked nearly a mile, and the waves packed a punch as they rushed in. Phil was an inexperienced Prairie boy and Tyler was eleven years old. Moreover, they had left almost all their gear in the truck.