Fire in the Stars (12 page)

When boats putted into the bay occasionally, he studied their occupants through his binoculars. Most looked like regular fishermen or locals out on an errand. But how would he know? The killer would hardly be waving a banner saying
KILLER
. He cursed his own stupidity. He should have asked Casey for a description of Old Stink's boat. He assumed it was small, since Stink operated it by himself, and it was probably decrepit, but so were most of the boats that passed by. Wealth was a scarce commodity in these fishing communities.

After his futile examination of the shore, he had moved inland to search the path for signs of disturbance. The three of them had all trekked up and down it, of course, as had the dog, so he wasn't surprised to find nothing useful.

He worked his way past the cabin and up the hill to Stink's body. As the sun heated the day, more flies gathered. He felt an urge to cover the body but knew he had to wait for the tarp. He forced himself to look closely at the corpse again, at the mass of tangled hair and blood. The poor man had been hit from behind, and, judging from the amount of damage, more than once. The rest of his body, although smeared with blood, seemed unharmed. Chris noticed that his feet were bare and he was wearing stained yellow clothes that had probably once been white. Long johns. Had Stink been in bed when the killer surprised him? Something to check on when he returned to the cabin.

Stink's feet were filthy, but there were dirt streaks on the top as well as on his knees and palms. Stink had not been dragged here, but rather had crawled, mortally wounded, until he collapsed. There was no sign of a scuffle in the vicinity of the body, so if his attacker had followed him, he had not bothered to strike him again.

Stink's fingernails were chipped and so encrusted with dirt that Chris doubted forensics would be able to extract much usable evidence even if Stink had managed to scratch his attacker.

Looking beyond the signs of violent death, Chris studied the old man. His skin was like a parched prairie plain, with dirt embedded in every crevice. His hair and beard blended together in a long, stringy tangle of white. Chris could not bring himself to check, but imagined he had few teeth left.

The long johns hung on his body, draping loosely over the contours of his body. He was a tall man, probably once a big man possessing a strength to be reckoned with, but now his collarbones and ribs stuck out. Either sick or starving, he would not have presented much of a fight. Chris felt a twinge of pity as he pictured the poor man, living by choice in the familiar isolation of his homestead, awakened abruptly in the night by a terrifying axe. Fighting for his life. Crawling, still fighting, up the path to what he hoped was safety. Only to have his life ebb out of him little by little.

Chris returned to the cabin to see what tales it could tell. He stood just inside the room, careful to stay clear of the blood, and studied it. An ancient mattress lay on the floor in the corner, but it was stripped bare. No one faced a Newfoundland winter without several quilts or blankets, but there were none in sight. Perhaps Stink had dragged them outside with him. Chris made a note to check around.

A
pot-bellied
stove occupied the middle of the room, with a single blackened pot on top. He felt the stove. Stone cold. He peered inside but could see nothing unusual in the thin layer of ash. Beyond this, the room looked stripped. No clothes on hooks, no boots. In what appeared to be the kitchen area, there was a single chair, a small table, and rows of shelving. One shelf held a few dishes, three bags of salt, and four jars of pickles, but the rest were empty. Had the man run out of food?

The room was surprisingly tidy. The axe and the blood were a violent intrusion, smearing the floor and speckling the walls. As part of his police training, Chris had taken a lecture on
blood-spatter
analysis, which he tried to remember now. If Stink had been struck more than once, there would be transfer blood from the axe to the walls and ceiling. Chris studied the spatter. It did indeed run in a single streak up one wall and across the ceiling, as if the killer had raised the axe over his head for a second blow. On closer examination, he found another streak near the door, where there was also a large pool of congealed blood.

Chris tried to picture the sequence. He was no expert, but it appeared that Stink had been struck at least three times as he moved toward the door. He had not been in bed, at least when the second blow had struck, but rather in the middle of the room, and the killer had been standing with the axe in the kitchen area. Stink had been nearer the door when the third blow struck. This one had felled him and he'd bled for quite awhile before getting up and escaping outside.

There were a lot of smears, but only one recognizable bloody footprint near the door. Likely Stink's, but given the quantity of blood on the floor, maybe the killer had stepped in it.

That would be one lucky break for forensics.

Outside, there were scuffs and footprints
criss-crossing
the clearing, but Chris could make little sense of them. He checked the shed, which contained very little. A shovel, a winch, some cable, lots of broken old tools, a bag of seed, a few gardening tools, and pots stacked away on shelves. No rifle.

He headed back down to the shore to check the fishing stage, holding his nose as he stepped inside. In the gloom, he saw piles of rotted old netting, rusty tackle gear, several broken fishing rods, and paddles. A stack of lobster traps and crab pots, a couple of functional fishing rods, but still no Winchester.

Chris sat down on the dock to think. Sometimes the clue to a crime lay not in what was there, but what was not. The boat and gun were both gone. But also missing were blankets and clothes. Stink must have had a winter jacket, hat, and mitts, but there was no sign of them.

There was also no food. Stink could have been running out, which explained why he was so thin, but it was unlikely he had nothing, not even the usual staples like canned beans, dried capelin, or hard tack. Nor, Chris realized now, had he seen any matches. Without matches, a homesteader would be doomed.

Chris didn't like the conclusion that he was staring at — that the killer had taken it all. Quite a lot to haul unless you have a boat to put it in. And why? It was sure to be worthless old junk, useful only if you needed those things — blankets, clothes, food — to survive. If you were on the run and had left most of your gear behind.

Don't even think it
, he told himself.
Just listen for Casey's boat
.

A
fter her phone call to Corporal Willington, Amanda lingered awhile inside Casey's house studying her topographical map and trying to imagine where Phil might have gone. Conche was tucked into the protected inner nook of a gourd-shaped peninsula, with a long, thin neck connecting it to the mainland. On the other side of the thin neck was the back harbour and another, larger, cape jutting out into the ocean. Stink's homestead was on that cape, but the map showed a few other homesteads as well, before the vast emptiness of rugged, barren wilderness to the north. Only three roads ran through the wilderness, the middle one to Conche, an upper one to the coastal settlements of Croque and Grandois, and a lower to the town of Englee farther south. Below Englee, there were no roads into the interior at all.

If Phil were on foot, rather than in a boat as the others believed, he could wander the wilderness for days without seeing or being seen by a soul.

But what if he'd taken Stink's boat? Far out in the ocean were the two large islands that the villagers in Grandois had mentioned. They were deserted now except for birds and the occasional adventurer. Phil had expressed an interest, but to get out there, he would have to cross twenty or thirty kilometres of open ocean swells. Surely too daunting a prospect for a Prairie boy.

Galvanized, she rolled up her maps and strode back down the harbour to Casey's wharf, where the man was readying the engine on his spare boat for Chris. Endlessly patient, fingers black with grease.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “This is turning out to be much more adventure than you were looking for.”

He still looked a little green, but he managed a shrug. “Least I can do for poor Old Stink. Did Willie say how long before he gets here?”

Willie, she guessed, was Corporal Willington. “He left about twenty minutes ago. Said he'd be an hour, tops.”

Casey nodded. “Good. Might be she needs a new motor.”

Amanda eyed the little skiff. Compared to the assortment of semi-buoyant junk heaps she'd used in developing countries, this one looked impeccable, although perhaps it dated from the First World War. She pictured Phil and Tyler all alone out on the ocean, piloting an unfamiliar boat in a cold, alien sea. Where would he go? Back up the coast toward the safety of the small coastal villages? Or down the coast into the wilderness farther south?

“What kind of boat did Old Stink have?” she asked.

Casey rolled his eyes. “He's had dat boat going on sixty years. Sixteen-foot dory, used to row 'er until he put a fifteen-horsepower outboard on 'er.”

“Does it have a cabin on it?”

“Oh no, my dear, it's just a dory. Like dat one.” He pointed to a boat lying on the grass, its hull gouged and its white paint scraped off. “Stink never went far out to sea with 'er. Mostly in the bay and around the head.”

“Is it seaworthy, though?”

He shrugged. “Depends. Water's calm, you couldn't ask for a better boat. They'll all swamp in a good blow. But Stink's boat, now, the motor has a mind of her own. She'll cut out on you if you look at her wrong, especially in a headwind. Doesn't like the waves.”

Amanda could see that the wind was picking up, rippling over the ocean and through the long shore grass. Would Phil know enough to keep the boat going? Overseas, they had both learned how to keep the most cantankerous of generators and trucks running and the most precarious of boats afloat. Phil could read river patterns and monsoon skies, but he knew nothing about the oceans, the tides, or the bruised black clouds of an incoming Atlantic storm.

Casey had been watching her, his expression softening. “Your friend likely won't get far. If he pushes 'er over ten knots, she'll quit on him. Mind you, if he heads south to Englee, he could go up Canada Bay to Roddickton. He could go by road from there.”

“How long would that take?”

“No more than three to four hours, even in Stink's boat. And he'd be out of the ocean swell.”

Too many options!
Amanda thought with dismay. Phil's truck was still stranded here in the village, of course, but in his desperate state, that wouldn't stop him. He knew how to hot-wire just about any vehicle, and most of the locals left their keys in their trucks anyway.

“Speak of the devil,” Casey said, jerking his thumb toward the road. Amanda turned to see an official RCMP vehicle from Roddickton crest the hill and began to curve down toward the centre of the village. Amanda and Casey watched as it slowed to a stop in front of the pier. Willington and a young woman piled out, along with an impossibly young-looking constable.

Willington gave Amanda a quick nod before turning to Casey. “Anything new to report, Case?”

“Body's not gone anywhere, Willie,” Casey replied. “I'll take you all straight over.”

“Constable Bradley will stay here to conduct interviews. Saves time, and details are forgotten so quickly.”

“We already got a pretty good suspect,” Casey began, gesturing to Amanda. “This lady's friend —”

“We don't know anything for sure,” Amanda interjected before he could say more.

“Still, the feller's truck is back there —” Casey pointed toward the entrance to town. “He was after buying one of our boats a couple of days ago. Now he's gone missing, and Stink's boat's missing too.”

Willington hesitated. Amanda could see him eyeing the truck and then the boat, debating how to proceed. The medical examiner, a vibrant young woman with olive skin and cropped black hair, laid a hand on his arm.

“Let's have a look at the body first, okay, Willie?”

Willington gestured to Phil's truck. “Check that out, Bradley,” he said to his constable. “Get the man's ID and find out what people saw. I'll be back in an hour or two.”

After they left, the village hummed with that peculiar mixture of excitement and horror that always surrounded a major disaster. Some of the houses were vacant, their owners away at jobs in Labrador or Alberta, but a handful of children, their mothers, and grizzled old-timers were visible, the children running happily in the September sunshine and the adults doing house repairs or laying in firewood for the coming winter. They all stopped their work to watch the police drama unfold.

As Bradley questioned them, Amanda edged close in an effort to eavesdrop. Several villagers gestured down toward the back harbour and Amanda caught the words “truck” and “boy.” After a few interviews, Bradley climbed in the RCMP cruiser and drove down the road to Phil's truck. Amanda watched as he circled the truck and rifled through its interior before pulling out his radio.

She drifted closer. “Right, sir,” she heard him say before signing off and placing another radio call. This time he turned his back on her so that she couldn't hear, but she could clearly see him reading the numbers off Phil's licence plate. Her heart sank. Soon the police would know there was a missing-persons report out on him, with concern expressed about his mental health.

After Bradley had signed off and was heading back toward the harbour, Amanda walked up the hill leading into the village, hoping to snag a wayward cellphone signal from somewhere. After a few minutes of searching, she climbed on top of a picnic table and got lucky.

Sheri snatched up the phone on the second ring. “Any word?” she asked.

“Not directly.” Amanda chose her words carefully, opting not to mention Old Stink or his murder, for Sheri sounded tense enough. “We found his truck in the village of Conche, but we're still a couple of days behind and we're not sure what direction he took. The police may contact you with questions about his …” she groped for neutral words “… his state of mind.”

Sheri didn't seem to be listening. “Jason thinks he's got a lead on him.”

“What?”

“He said a fisherman spotted a man and a boy in a small boat near a place called Nameless Cove. I've looked it up on the map. It's near the tip, just north of Flower's Cove.”

And Deadman's Cove, Amanda recalled with a shudder. She'd spoken to a fisherman there a few days earlier, on her way up the western shore. If Jason was correct, she and Chris were way off track. Yet Phil's truck was here. That made no sense!

“When was this?” she asked.

“I don't know exactly. But he called this morning, so it was probably in the past day or so. Jason's going to rent a boat and check out the coast. That's good news, right? Phil and Tyler are still safe, doing what they'd planned.”

Amanda forced a cheerful agreement. “Keep me posted, and I promise to do the same. The minute you hear from Jason, call me. And leave a voice message if I don't answer. Cell service is pretty iffy where I am.”

Sheri laughed. “Welcome to Newfoundland, my dear.”

Amanda hung up, glad that at least one of them was able to laugh. She wasn't nearly as optimistic about this latest news from Jason. Phil's truck was sitting in plain view at the bottom of the hill, probably 150 kilometres across the northern peninsula from Nameless Cove, and according to the locals it had not moved in several days. There were only two ways he could have shown up in Nameless Cove; either he had succeeded in piloting Stink's dilapidated old boat all the way up and around the northern tip of the peninsula and down the western side, or he had stolen a vehicle in Roddickton, and had made his escape across the peninsula. Toward airports, ferries, and places far away.

More likely, Jason's witness was mistaken. How could anyone clearly identify two people in a boat on the ocean, probably wearing hats and lifejackets, caught in the glare of the sun off the ocean?

She was just turning to head back down the hill when her cellphone chirped. She glanced at the text message. From Matthew Goderich, succinct and pointed.

WTF???

She sucked in her breath. She knew Matthew was back in Canada, having abandoned Nigeria at the same time she and Phil had, and she knew he was trolling for worthy stories that could rebuild his connections to the major papers. He checked in on her and Phil periodically, out of what she hoped was sympathy and concern rather than a thirst for juicy follow-up material. He'd known she was going to meet Phil in Newfoundland, but those three letters
WTF???
suggested something more ominous than idle curiosity.

She stayed on the picnic table and punched in his contact number, hoping the cellphone signal remained strong enough for a proper conversation. The smallest cloud or puff of wind seemed to defeat it.

The line crackled to life almost immediately. “Amanda, thank god! What's going on?”

Matthew's voice sounded even more ragged than usual. Decades of smoking and bad air had left his lungs starved and his throat lacerated, but she wondered whether he was taking enough care of himself. Like herself, he was a global wanderer with no place to call home and no one to nag him. She pictured his short, fireplug body and the perpetual five-o'clock shadow that lent him a seedy air, and she felt a rush of affection. How like Matthew to forget everything, even hello, in his headlong pursuit of a story.

“Hello to you too, Matthew. What do you mean — ‘going on'?”

“Are you with Phil?”

“No, why? What's up?”

“I just got it off the police scanner! There's a province-wide alert out on him. What the fuck has he done?”

“I don't think he's done anything, Matt. What does the alert say? Wanted for questioning? Suspect?”

“Wanted in connection with a suspicious death. They say he may be armed and dangerous.”

She drew a sharp breath. “That's ridiculous! Armed with what? A Swiss Army knife?”

“It didn't say. You know how these things are — cop bafflespeak. The alert covers all of Newfoundland and Labrador, land and sea. What happened, Amanda?”

Amanda hesitated. Matthew was a friend, bonded by their shared horror, but he was also a reporter hungry for a story. In the silence, she heard his whispered curse.

“I'm not looking for a story! Trust me, I've been worried about him for months. What the hell has he got himself into?”

She took a deep breath. She had few friends and allies in this part of the world, and none, except Chris Tymko, who would understand Phil's struggles and his lines in the sand. But Chris was also a cop.

“An old fisherman was found murdered. He lived alone out on a remote cape and Phil was last seen heading in his direction.”

“Murdered how?”

“Axe to the head. But that's not public knowledge, Matt, so keep it zipped.”

“Oh god,” Matthew breathed.

“It makes no sense. Even as desperate and screwed up as Phil was, you know how much he hated violence.”

“Did he and this man have an argument? Could he have gotten angry?”

“They didn't even know each other.”

“Then why was Phil going to see him?”

“I think to borrow a boat.”

Matthew was silent a moment and when he spoke again, his voice was tentative, as if he was loath to venture further. “What if the man refused?”

“What are you getting at, Matt?”

“Has Phil been having any weird PTSD symptoms recently? Beyond the usual mood swings?”

“He gets anxious, yes. He gets short-tempered. So do I.”

“No, I mean worse than that. Flashbacks, hallucinations.”

It took a moment for the implication to catch up with her. She had vivid memories that flooded in due to the most unexpected triggers. Darkness could make her mortally afraid. Fires still made her tense. Running footsteps, the smell of meat … all those triggers could throw her right back into that awful time. But she recognized them as such. She wasn't reliving the nightmare, just remembering it. Sometimes she heard screaming that she thought she might have imagined. But true flashbacks? Not in a few months. And hallucinations, never. But she had sought professional help and, although she knew she would always be haunted by them, she'd insisted on confronting and trying to conquer those dark days.