Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One (30 page)

Out of the cabin and into the rain, he
tripped on the almost-empty whiskey bottle that Bill had dropped
while coming across the porch. A short ugly phrase, one that Jack
thought was long since removed from his vocabulary, slipped from
between bleeding lips, as he lurched into the porch rail, bringing
a fresh shriek of pain from his ribs.

*

Rolf Parker would tell Sheriff Bradley, late
the next afternoon as he sat in the latter’s office drumming
nervous fingers on his knees, that the clock on his bedside table
had read 3:45am when Jack had woke him, pounding on the wood front
door of the Moby Dick Hotel. Rolf had answered bleary-eyed and
confused, but woke up quick when Jack told him what had happened in
the little cabin.

“
I’m really sorry about
waking you up at this hour,” Jack said, shifting his weight from
one barefoot to the other on the cold concrete step, “but I've got
to use your phone.”

“
Sure, sure,” Rolf had said,
his eyes wide, “Luckily we have no guests tonight--Hey, you all
right Jack? You’re moving pretty stiff.”

Jack winced as he stepped across the
threshold, one hand still pressed firmly against his side.

“
Yeah,” he said, “I might
have cracked a rib or two in the scuffle. I think my refrigerator
got the worst of it, though!”

Rolf looked confused, but didn’t ask Jack to
clarify, instead, ushering him into the small office behind the
kitchen, he pulled out the desk chair for him, before turning back
toward the door.

“
I’d best let the Missus
know that everything’s all right.” he said, “I’ll be back in a
minute.”

Jack nodded absently as he dialed Karl
Ferguson’s number from memory.

Karl answered on the second ring, sounding
surprisingly alert and awake. He listened as Jack, again, outlined
the events of the last half hour.

“
Have you called the
police?” Karl asked, as soon as Jack paused.

“
Not yet.”

“
Do that as soon as we hang
up.”

“
Yeah, will do.” Jack
replied.

“
Jack,” Karl said, “I’ve got
what might be some more bad news.”

Jack waited.

“
I got a call from the
hospital about an hour ago,” Karl went on, “Kathy checked herself
out around one o’clock this morning. She told the nurse that she
couldn’t afford to stay the night and that she was fine. There was
nothing the nurse could do but call me.”

Jack felt cold. If Kathy had left the
hospital at one, she would have been home thirty minutes later,
which meant that she could have found Bill there before he came
over to the cabin. Bill’s words suddenly rung in his ears…

“
I’ll kill you both before
I’ll let you have her.”

“
Jack?” Karl’s voice raised
a notch over the telephone line.

“
Yeah,” he said, “I’m here.
Karl, we have to get over to Kathy’s and make sure she’s
okay!”

“
I’ll take care of that,”
Karl assured him, “You wait there for the police. They’re going to
need a statement from you and they’ll have a lot of
questions.”

“
No way, Karl,” Jack
replied, “I’m calling the police and then I’ll meet you at the
Beckman’s.”

Karl started to argue and Jack took the most
expedient route available to him and hung up the phone. He stood as
Rolf walked back into the office, two steaming cups of coffee in
his hands.

“
Here,” he said, holding one
of the mugs out for Jack, “I don’t think either of us are going to
get any more sleep tonight.”

Jack set the mug on the desk.

“
Thanks Rolf," Jack said,
"but I don’t have time. I need you to do me a couple of big favors.
First, I need you to call the police, tell them what’s happened,
and have them come pick up Bill.” Rolf nodded, taking a small sip
of coffee from the cup that shook in his thin hands.

“
Second,” Jack said, “I need to borrow your car. I have to meet
Pastor Karl right away.”

Rolf nodded wordlessly, as he reached above
the desk and took a small ring of keys from a hook on the wall,
tossing them to Jack.

“
Take the pickup,” he said,
“The Datsun's low on gas.” Jack nodded and was out the door and
across the parking lot before Rolf had finished dialing the
Sheriff’s office.

Bill’s big Ford was parked in the
turn-around and Jack looked through the open driver’s window and
saw the keys dangling from the ignition. Without thinking about it,
he pocketed them.

*

Jack pushed Rolf's little Toyota pickup for
all it was worth, barreling down Sandridge Road at roughly twice
the posted speed limit. The nearly weightless back end of the
compact truck fishtailed into the Beckman’s long gravel driveway
and, for a brief, sweaty moment, Jack was sure he was going to wrap
it around the big oak tree in the front yard. He missed it, barely,
and slid to a stop a few feet short of the walk.

Vaulting from the seat, the driver’s door
swinging half shut behind him, Jack raced up the sagging steps and
across the wide porch. The front door stood open and Jack’s heart
leaped into his throat at the sight of that flat, yellow light
pouring out into the darkness. He was calling Kathy’s name as he
crossed into the front room, his voice echoing hollowly through the
quiet house. Everything seemed normal; couches and love seat were
still beneath their dark green shrouds, photos hanging straight on
the walls, the place was the picture of peaceful domesticity.

Jack rushed upstairs, shouting for her, his
belly clenching with each room he entered, fearing the worst. Panic
almost overtook him as he flung wide the door of the Beckman’s
bedroom and saw what looked, at first, to be a woman’s body draped
across the back corner of the big oak bed.

Looked to be?

No way. For a dark and eternal two seconds,
Jack had seen Kathy Beckman’s corpse in the scant moonlight seeping
through the bedroom window. He felt his stomach heave and a harsh,
gasping, cry of shock tore from his throat. The world around him
tilted, and when it righted itself, the shape on the bed was only a
carelessly strewn pile of women’s clothes, cascading across the
comforter and down onto the hardwood floor.

Jack paused, sagging against the doorframe,
certain that he was going to throw up. A couple of deep breaths
later his stomach settled, and his legs, which had turned to jelly
on him, quit their shaking and firmed up enough to continue his
search. Coming back down the stairs, and rounding the corner into
the dining room, Jack ran directly into a shadowed, hulking form
coming out of the kitchen. This time Jack did scream and, blinded
by fear, threw a quick fist out in front of him. Karl Ferguson
blocked the punch smoothly and grabbed Jack’s arm, spinning him out
and away.

“
You know,” Karl growled,
“for a pastor, you sure hit people a lot!”

For the second time in as many minutes,
Jack’s heart resumed beating, and he looked at Karl for a long,
frozen moment, as predawn silence descended over the house again.
Suddenly he started laughing. The stresses and shocks of the last
twenty-four hours came crashing down on Jack and his knees buckled,
sending him to the floor in convulsions of silent, uncontrollable
mirth.

Karl watched him, pulling a chair from the
table and settling his big frame into it with a sigh. He chuckled,
watching Jack slowly regain control and sit up, wiping tears from
his eyes, as he held his aching ribs.

“
Rolf told me you were
hurt,” Karl said.

“
I’ll be okay.” Jack
replied. “Kathy’s gone, or at least she's not anywhere I could
find. There’s a big pile of clothes on the bed upstairs but,
besides that, everything looks normal.”

Karl snorted. “It’s a good thing you’re a
youth pastor instead of a detective.” He said.

“
Why’s that?”

“
The first thing I saw in
here” Karl said, “was that one of the dining room chairs was
overturned and there was a letter on the table in front of
it."

He pursed his lips. "I don’t think Kathy’s
dead, I think she left.”

Jack pulled himself to his feet, grabbing
the edge of the table for support.

“
What’s it say?”

“
I don’t know, but it's got Bill’s name on it.”

“
Yeah, and that’s Kathy’s
handwriting, so open it.”

“
Isn’t that against the
law?” Karl asked. “Opening someone else’s mail?”

Jack sighed, “It’s only mail
once it’s been
mailed
, and you know it. Now,
are you going to read it or do you want me to?”

Karl stared at him grimly. “I don’t suppose
telling you to leave it alone would do any good?”

“
You told me not to come
over here, didn’t you?”

“
Yes.”

“
And you can see how well
that worked. So, why don’t you just read the letter?”

Karl sighed again and picked up the
envelope, as Jack eased himself into the chair opposite his boss.
“Well?” he asked.

“
It’s empty.”

“
C’mon!”

“
Seriously,” Karl said, “It
really is empty!”

He tossed the envelope across the table to
Jack, and then stood looking around the room. “Aha!” he said, and
hurried over to the china hutch on the far side of the dining room.
Bending with a grunt, he scooped up a wadded ball of paper from the
floor and walked back over to the table with it.

“
I think Bill must have
already gotten his mail, and he didn’t like what he read.” Quickly,
Karl flattened the paper back out and read:

Bill,

I told you that if you ever hit me again I
would leave. You are not the man I married anymore, and I’m afraid
to stay here with you any longer. I know that what I am doing is
sin and I will have to pay the consequences for it myself, but the
risk has become too great.

I know what you think about Jack and I, and
this is the last time that I’m going to tell you you’re wrong. Stop
drinking before it kills you. Jack has always been your friend and
could help you if you’d only let him. I’ll write when I’m settled,
please don’t try to follow me.

Kathy

The two men stared at each other in silence.
Outside the old house, the storm resumed with full fury; sleet and
hail peppering the windows and rattling off the shingled roof. A
sudden clap of thunder, close by and shockingly loud, made them
both jump in their seats. Finally, Karl folded the wrinkled letter
and slipped it back into the envelope.

“
We should go, Jack,” Karl
murmured, “The police will be waiting at the cabin.”

Jack rose numbly and followed Karl out into
the storm to their vehicles.

As they headed back toward Nahcotta, this
time at a much more sensible speed, the storm began to dissipate.
By the time the two trucks pulled off toward the gravel parking lot
of the hotel, there was just a slight rain misting their
windshields.

As soon as they rounded the corner into
driveway, Jack knew that something was terribly wrong. A state
police car was parked sideways across the entrance, and a trooper
in a heavy black poncho stood, flashlight in hand, near the front
bumper, waving them to a stop. Beyond him, in the wane light of the
parking lot, Jack could see two more state police cars, Paul
Bradley’s suburban, and the boxy outline of an emergency rescue
van. Each vehicle had its flashers going, the big, flat front of
the hotel pulsed red, and blue, as the first purple smudges of dawn
began to ooze over the lip of the coastal range.

Karl spoke to the officer through the truck
window, and the cruiser pulled forward allowing them to enter. As
soon as the back bumper of the Toyota passed him, the trooper put
the car in reverse, blocking the entrance again.

They parked and walked together toward the
front doors, as troopers rushed back and forth around them, radios
squawking, without a second glance. Jack figured that if they made
it past the roadblock, everyone must assume that they had reason to
be there. Coming up the walk, the two men could see the shattered
remains of the hotel’s big picture window that were spread, like a
million tiny diamonds, across the stone path, and a great, gaping
hole centered the frosted pane.

Inside the hotel was only slightly less
chaotic.

Jack and Karl identified themselves to the
officer at the door, who ushered them into the dining room. There
they found a very pale Rolf and Tina Parker, seated with Sheriff
Bradley and two state troopers.

Rolf looked dazed, as he sat holding an ice
pack to an ugly gash on his forehead. A paramedic stood behind him,
just opening his med kit. The old innkeeper looked wearily up at
Jack, recognized him, and began to weep, his wife taking his
quaking hand in her own.

As all eyes turned to him, Jack’s mind suddenly filled with a
brilliant memory, almost a vision, of himself, rising slowly to his
feet from the cabin floor and reaching over Bill’s unconscious body
to lay the loaded pistol on the bookshelf.

He felt something cold and hollow form in
the pit of his stomach.

“
Jack,” the reticent little
man wept, “I’m so sorry Jack, I tried to stop him…”

“
My God,” Karl breathed,
“What’s happened?”

One of the state troopers confirmed their
identities again, and then briefed them on the events of the last
hour, reading directly from the hastily written notes before
him.