Seawitch (14 page)

The words ended in a red-blotted scrawl, and a long location number and heading were written below, large and messy, as if drawn by a child with a leaky pen. I swung away from the monitor and waved Solis’s attention to it.

“Hey,” I said. “Read this. It’s the last entry in the log.”

Solis turned and took my place at the monitor as I stood up to pace.

“A strange thing to say,” he commented.

I stopped pacing and turned back. “What is?”

“The writer says ‘I don’t know how I’ll live if I survive.’ Not
if
he will survive or
if
he will live, but
how
he will live. As if there’s something beyond survival that is just as frightening as death.”

“Interesting. You focus on that. What jumps out at
me
is he says someone is guilty of forcing himself on a woman—and that Castor Starrett’s death is also his fault. Sounds like a rape and a homicide, though the writer almost seems confused by it all. He also mentions a cove. But where? Are the numbers and heading at the bottom an indication of where he was going or where he was at the time?”

Solis gave me a wry look. “I did not ignore the rest of the statement; I merely found the one sentence very odd. It should be telling, but what does it tell? I agree that the writer seems upset and confused. He almost seems to imply that the storm was caused by the lady in question. . . .”

“Which one of the three?” I asked, not wanting to think about the question Solis was really raising.

Solis made his half shrug. “Who knows?”

“What’s the statute of limitation on rape in Washington?” I asked.

“Ten years, but if a death results, none.”

“What if the rape victim survived the wreck?”

“Why would you imagine she did or that she would not reveal herself?”

“I’m just thinking . . . someone had to bring the boat back to port, someone who knew where it had been and what had happened on board, or they would have come forward. If the victim did it, maybe it’s because she knows her rapist also survived. But it’s been too long for her to file a legal complaint so . . . she plays dead and waits to see if the reappearance of
Seawitch
will bring her rapist—now apparently her murderer—to light.”

Solis shook his head. “It seems woefully complicated.”

I frowned. “Possibly, but regardless, the writer—probably Gary Fielding, since the handwriting looks about the same as the entry we know he wrote, even though it’s deteriorating here—says he’s taking the boat somewhere. If he made it, the odds are good the boat stayed there all this time.”

“The whole twenty-seven years?”

“You saw its condition. That boat didn’t move from the time it docked after whatever happened on board until the day it turned up at Shilshole. Nothing had been disturbed enough for the boat to have moved under its own power. No one’s started those engines in years.

“Maybe, if we can find the place where it’s been sitting all this time, we may be able to find a witness to say who brought it and kept it there, at least. They might even have information about what happened aboard, who survived, and who died. Because I’m still betting that whoever brought the boat back to Seattle was aboard it when it was lost.”

Solis looked thoughtful and started to say something but was interrupted by the bleating of his cell phone. He answered it and listened for a moment, then killed the connection with a bitter expression on his face. “John Reeve is dead and it may be a homicide.”

THIRTEEN

R
eeve had died at Highline Hospital, which made his death a Seattle PD matter, but not Solis’s case. He wasn’t “on deck” when the call came in and the connection to the
Seawitch
investigation was tenuous, so it had been assigned to someone else. Still, the circumstances were strange enough that the detective on the case wanted to talk to Solis and me once he’d heard we’d been on the scene when Reeve had the heart attack that brought him to the hospital in the first place. We drove down separately and I found myself annoyed at the lost opportunity to pursue the discussions we’d begun at Solis’s house.

My disgruntlement took a backseat when we arrived at the hospital. Crime scenes at hospitals aren’t managed in quite the same way as they are anywhere else, since the place is always busy and space is generally at a premium and you don’t usually get to leave the body in situ for long. Reeve had already been removed from his cubicle in cardiac ICU and the area was screened off for privacy while a pair of technicians finished picking up what they could in the way of forensic evidence. Other patients had been rearranged to optimize the isolation of the scene, and we met with Detective Julian Plant in the cafeteria downstairs—it was empty since the regular meal service had already closed and no one seemed to be raiding the vending machines at the moment, though we could hear the patient nutritional services crew clattering away in the kitchen behind the metal curtain barrier.

I’d met Plant before. He was one of those tall, pale, lanky guys who always looks like he’s in desperate need of some sun, sandwiches, and sleep. Competent enough, but I’d never been overly impressed. He didn’t seem to go any further than he had to with anything and I had the impression he was marking time until he could retire. He wasn’t sloppy or a bad cop, but he was one of those aging, old-school detectives who’d gone the route of no longer caring rather than care too much. He gave us both a basset-eyed stare as we came and sat at his table.

“You two want some coffee?” he asked. “They’ve still got some in the patient services hatch round the corner if you don’t like the vending machine kind.”

We both shook our heads and sat, facing Plant at the awkward round table.

“Well,” Plant started, curving his hands around his dented paper coffee cup on the table. “So. Here’s the thing: seawater.”

I made the “Huh?” face at him, and Solis said, “Clarify, please. Seawater?”

Plant nodded. “Yeah. Mr. Reeve was either smothered with a wet something or he died of drowning. In seawater. In his bed. Now, they would have said pneumonia—which I guess they considered—except the bed was wet. Not that they aren’t wet a lot of the time when folks die, ’cause you know what happens. And there was the dog. So we’re waiting for confirmation from the coroner, but the attending medical team is saying Mr. Reeve was attacked by a dog that smothered him with a wet pillow. What do you think? Any connection to your case?”

Solis and I exchanged incredulous glances. “A . . . dog?” I asked.

“Yeah. Big dog, they said. Brown with a white stripe on its back. Mr. Reeve was resting and they’d pulled his curtains closed for privacy when the monitors started going crazy, and the first nurse through the curtain sees this big, wet, brown dog wrestling with a pillow on Reeve’s chest. The nurse said there was a stink in the room like”—he flipped open his notebook and paged around a bit—“like rotten vegetables. And the dog was sitting on Reeve’s chest, shaking the crap outta this wet pillow that was covering Reeve’s face. So the medical team can’t get near the guy and they call security to come shoot the dog, but Reeve’s already dead and the dog takes off. They couldn’t revive him and the attending physician called it at”—he looked at his book again—“six forty-one. Well, technically they’re saying cardiac arrest due to animal assault, but the amount of water in his mouth and on the bed is making the ME want a deeper look. So, what do you two think?”

“Are they sure it was a dog?” I asked again.

“Yeah, though they can’t decide on what breed. One guy said it was a German shepherd. Another said it was an otter hound. Another said it was . . . umm . . . a Portuguese water spaniel—you know, like the president’s dog. And one said it was a pit bull. A fat pit bull.”

“Fat chance.”

Solis smirked—there was nothing else to call it.

Plant made a sour face at me.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “No one can seriously believe a dog was trained to run in here, find Reeve, jump on his bed, and smother him with a wet pillow. When we saw Reeve he was afraid of something, and we saw something or someone moving at the back of the property. But if anyone did kill him—”

“Someone did,” Plant said, cutting me off. “He sure didn’t die of smothering himself or inducing his own heart attack.” He looked at both of us, then focused on Solis. “What do you think, Rey?”

Solis lowered his gaze to the tabletop, his brow creasing, then drew a slow breath before he looked back at Plant. “I think Mr. Reeve may have been frightened by a stray dog that got into the hospital. Or he may have been smothered by an attacker who was frightened off by a service dog, but that’s all I can imagine, if Reeve didn’t die of a simple heart attack, which seems far more likely. Doesn’t it, Plant?”

Plant sat back, closing his basset-hound eyes. “Yeah. And I hope that’s how the coroner will rule when he’s done. But if not . . . I guess I’m going to be looking for people who had it in for the old man and made a habit of carrying pillows soaked in seawater and training dogs to smother people with them.” He shook his head in disgust. “You two can go. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

We stood and Solis bent down to ask Plant to keep him in the loop; then we walked toward the exit together.

“Who murdered Reeve?” Solis whispered to me as we neared the door.

“Why ask me?”

“I hoped you had seen something.”

“Nothing you didn’t. We got only a glimpse at the scene before we had to go down to see Plant.”

“But what did you see that I did not? You have that look on your face, so no evasions. We are partners on this case, remember.”

“All right. I saw the same gray-green color around Reeve’s bed that I saw around him when he had the original heart attack, and I’d bet the description of the dog people claim to have seen here would match the thing I saw at Reeve’s place. Whoever killed Reeve is involved with
Seawitch
.”

“That is my thought, too.”

We walked on through the hospital without another word. Solis walked like something heavy and morbid had settled on him. I stopped him just outside the lobby doors in the dim greenish light of the emergency room driveway.

“Are you really ready for this? I don’t think we can pretend this whole business, from the boat to Reeve’s death, isn’t paranormal. And it’s going to get worse now that someone with the stink of magic on them is willing to risk exposure by coming into a hospital to kill an old man who was probably dying, anyhow.”

“This was not something accomplished from a distance?”

“No. There wasn’t enough magical residue or a spell circle around his bed for Reeve to have been killed by magic at a distance. Someone or something came here in person to do it.”

“If this person has magic at their disposal—”

“It costs. Magic is not free, especially not this kind. The farther you want to reach, the harder you want to hit, the more you have to pay one way or another. Both the spell circles we’ve seen were drawn in blood. That has to come from a live person or animal, not a plastic container stolen from the hospital blood supply, which means our spell flinger is powerful but has a major crutch and can’t do much without literally spilling blood. Smothering wouldn’t pay the piper. No blood here, but the residue was otherwise the same, so no major spell was cast but something or someone magical was in the room and they killed Reeve—or made sure he couldn’t be saved, at the very least.”

Solis looked troubled.

I sighed and felt like I was kicking a puppy. “Up to you to believe it or not,” I said, “but I am telling you the truth where magic is concerned, and I don’t see any other explanation or any other way of solving this without heading into the weirdness.”

“I am sorry I’m . . . difficult. Forcing my mind to go in these directions is . . . is like changing religions.”

“Have you tried that?” I asked.

“No. I think it wiser to challenge only one ingrained practice at a time.”

“You might find that some changes just come along with the package.”

He nodded. “That may be true. Your . . . partner. Mr. Lassiter? Mr. Purlis? Which does he prefer?”

Ah, so Solis
did
know the whole long, strange tale of Quinton. “I’ve never asked him,” I replied, which was true. I’d just assumed he was content with the nickname and didn’t really like either his alias or his real name much. One he’d adopted on the fly and the other he’d tried to walk away from. “I just call him Quinton and we go on from there.”

“Ah. How does he cope with this . . . blindness? I assume he is not like you. . . .”

“You assume correctly. He trusts me—most of the time,” I added, thinking of his unexplained discomforts and alarms lately. “And he has enough personal experience with things that don’t fit the standard paradigm that he’s developed his own Theory of the Invisible by observation and deduction. Most of the time he’s right. Sometimes he’s not. Some things you can’t see still leave observable traces—like, say, gravity. Some leave nothing concrete behind to prove your experience was anything other than imagination. Well,
I
have some unexplainable scars, but I’m strange that way.”

He seemed intrigued but he didn’t ask. He grunted to himself and nodded. “I see.”

I had the urge to put my hand on his shoulder, but I stifled it. I wasn’t sure this tiny, forced bud of acceptance could withstand any ham-handed gestures on my part yet.

“Just don’t go slamming any mental doors. If you can do that for a while I think you’ll figure the rest out. And I . . .” I hesitated, then finished, “I’m here.”

“So you are,” he said. “And I should return home. To see how things are.”

I smiled. “Understood. I’ll call you tomorrow if you don’t call me first. Then you can tell me if you’re still on board this crazy investigation or not.”

He nodded and turned away to find his car. I went to mine and started back toward home.

It was only ten minutes from Highline to my place in West Seattle, but when I reached the turn that would put me irrevocably on track for the condo, I went the other way, heading up to Ballard and back to
Seawitch
.

 * * * 

When I got to the marina, I didn’t go straight back to the boat, though I had thought I would. Instead I found myself walking up and down B dock as the last rays of our late-setting sun faded into purple and umber smears on the horizon. I wanted to confirm something I hadn’t been able to get a good look at before, and with the evening closing in, my ghostly act would be less noticeable than it would have been earlier. C dock and
Pleiades
were just across the water. . . .

I sank into the Grey, the chilly mist and ghostlight washing up over me until the world was a dim shape beneath shadows of memory and bright lines of energy. I walked out to the end of the finger dock closest to the big blue sailboat and sat down in the slow-pressing cold at the edge of the blackness that was water. From here the power grid of the Grey was easy to see in all its burning color and searing light.
Pleiades
looked like the cold shadow of a boat surrounded like Sleeping Beauty’s castle by a magical hedge of waving emerald and aqua vines spiked with fury red thorns that rose from the water in a tangled pillar. And over it all lay a coiling cloud of gray-green smoke. The same color and misty snakelike form I’d seen around John Reeve when he collapsed at his home and again lingering around his empty bed at the hospital. Was it attacking Jacque Knight or was it protecting her? I was pretty sure I didn’t want to attract the attention of our murderous magic user, even if he or she was depleted after killing Reeve. I eased back from the Grey, feeling as if I were swimming upward through thickened silver steam as cold as Siberian graves. I broke free, back to normal, and found myself gasping for air, not realizing I’d been holding my breath.

Something splashed and nudged my foot where my toe overhung the edge of the dock. I glanced down, looking for the surface ripples left by a leaping fish, and caught the limpid brown stare of a furry, whiskered face. I froze, hoping not to frighten it off before I could see what the creature was, but there was no danger of that when the beast heaved itself up, throwing the bulk of its upper body onto the dock beside me.

It bared its fangs, like the gigantic version of Chaos panting in excitement. I started at the creature, all wet, dark fur and compact, muscular body. Much too big to be a harbor seal and too hairy to be a sea lion. An otter of tremendous size but with a head bizarrely large and misshapen. It pawed at me and rubbed its weird head on my calf, soaking my jeans leg instantly. I thought about reaching out to pet it, but another glimpse of those teeth changed my mind. Whatever this thing wanted, I wasn’t going to tempt it to lose its temper by patting it on the head. Especially since that head was nearly the size of mine, to accommodate the finger-length incisors it flashed. It wriggled and the dying light flashed on its wet back.

“What do
you
want?” I tried.

“Har-per!” it barked. “Booooad!”

“Boat?” I asked. “Which boat?”

The noises it made didn’t make any sense to me this time; they were hisses and grunts cut off by a harsh barking scream as it thrashed back into the water, apparently dragged or shocked by a sudden eruption of energy from
Pleiades
that started with a whistle and a rising cry of sound, then flashed out in shades of red and searing white like lightning bolts directed by an angry god. The otter creature dove and dodged through the water, breaching the surface and cutting back down and around, faster and more nimble than the slickest fish. A trail of phosphorescent bubbles twisted through the water in its wake, the strange sound of it making ripples on the surface until the creature disappeared from view, tangled up in a gleaming creeper of jade and sapphire energy that faded into the depths as the gigantic mustelid swam away. Then the twining energy flashed bright and lashed through the surface in a shout of strange harmonies, recoiling toward me. I threw myself down on the dock and with a shriek, a crackle, and a whir of angry wasps, the bright line of energy whipped through the space my head had occupied. Then it reeled, fading as if exhausted, back to
Pleiades
, sighing like a broken wire pulling through a hole in a steel wall—a wire drawn too taut and snapped by a sudden flick of a giant’s wrist.