The Stalker (3 page)

“You go out,” he said, “and people will get hurt.”

We all squeezed into my truck. I drove, and Liz sat between Jason and me in the front seat. Sam and Gerald sat in the crew cab behind us. As we started the drive to our launch site, I could see Sam in the rear-view mirror. She was eyeing Jason. “What exactly did you mean earlier?” she asked him. “You said on the west coast we have to be prepared for anything.”

Jason shrugged. “Just what I said. Out here we learn to expect the unexpected.”

“Like what?”

“Like that tourist who went missing a while back,” Jason said.

“They don’t need to hear that story,” I said.

“Yes we do,” Sam and Gerald said at the same time. In the rear-view mirror, I saw them scowl at each other. They were like a couple of bickering kids.

I gave Jason a warning glance. “They don’t need to hear that story,” I said again.

But Jason ignored me. “This tourist went out kayaking alone,” he said. “No guide. Then a couple of fishermen found his boat just barely afloat. The kayak was full of bullet holes. And the guy’s gun was inside. A few days later, his body was found.”

“Suicide?” Sam asked.

“No bullet wounds on him,” said Jason. “He had drowned. The thing is, his backpack was still in that kayak, filled with arrowheads, beads, cutting tools, and several animal skulls.”

Gerald looked at first alarmed and then elated. “Indian artifacts?” he asked.

“Very likely taken from a First Nations burial cave,” I said. “There used to be several skeletons in one of the caves I took clients to. Now there’s nothing in that cave.”

Gerald sat on the edge of his seat, leaning over my shoulder. I could smell the coffee on
his breath. “People are allowed to take things from these caves?” He sounded far too excited.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “Taking things from those sites is illegal.”

He sat back in his seat, clearly disappointed.

“Tourists steal things from these sites and get away with it all the time,” said Liz. “The items rarely get back to the bands they belong to.”

“Indian bands, you mean?” asked Gerald.

“The First Nations communities,” I said. “The families the items belonged to. And around here we use the term First Nations, not Indian.”

“Ah.”

Liz turned to look Gerald in the eye. “How would you feel if your grandmother’s grave was dug up? What if some guy took her wedding ring or even her bones home as a souvenir?”

I nudged Liz with my elbow. I didn’t like this guy much, either, but I couldn’t afford to lose clients or have them badmouth my company when they got home.

“The location of these burial caves is all hush-hush now,” Jason said. “We’re not supposed to know where most of them are.”

I caught Jason’s eye and shook my head, but he didn’t catch on. I didn’t want Gerald to get any ideas. I wouldn’t be taking him or any other client to the hidden caves. But Jason kept on talking. “In fact, there are islands that don’t appear on maps,” he said. “These islands have sacred sites on them that the government and the First Nations don’t want anyone to know about.”

Gerald sat forward again. “Really?” he said. “There are still arrowheads and tools on these islands? Oh, you’re going to have to take me to some.” When his eyes met mine in the mirror, he added. “I just want to locate them with my GPS.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That won’t be possible.” There was no way I would let this guy use his electronic mapping toy to record where these sacred sites were. Lord knows what he would do with that information. He might add the locations to maps on the internet. Before long, tourists even more thoughtless than he was could disturb the burial caves. “We are allowed to take you to the cave you’ll see today,” I said, glancing back at Gerald. “But no others.”

“Allowed?” he said. “By who?”

“We have the permission of the band.”

Gerald put a hand on my shoulder. “But you know of other burial caves, right?” he said. “Caves no one is supposed to know about? Caves other tourists may not have seen or disturbed?”

I wished to god Jason hadn’t opened his big mouth. “Yes,” I said. “But we’re not going there.”

“I could make it worth your while.” When I raised an eyebrow to Gerald in the rear-view mirror, he added, “I promise I won’t take anything.”

Bullshit, I thought. “That’s out of the question. I have to stay on good terms with the band.”

Gerald was pissed. He sat in the seat behind us, pouting. “I came on this tour to see Indian artifacts,” he said. “And I want to see an undisturbed site.”

“Oh, no,” said Sam. “We both know you’re here to make nice-nice with me.”

Gerald grunted and crossed his arms. He and Sam stared out their separate windows.

Jason attempted to joke Gerald out of his funk. “You wouldn’t want to end up with bullet holes in your kayak, would you?”

I held up my hand. “There was no evidence of foul play in that tourist’s death. The authorities said he drowned and closed the case. Who knows? The guy may have committed suicide for all we know.”

“Yeah,” said Jason. “To kill himself, he first loaded his kayak with things from a sacred site. Then he shot holes into his kayak to sink it. You know what I think?” he asked, as if that wasn’t already obvious. He turned and looked back at Gerald over his shoulder. “I think some local got fed up with tourists messing with the burial grounds.”

“You mean someone from the Indian — er, First Nations — band,” said Sam.

I had to stop such dangerous guessing. “If it was someone from the band,” I said, “then he would have taken those items back to the grave.”

“Unless he wanted to send a message,” said Jason. “Maybe he wanted to warn tourists to stay the hell away from the burial caves.”

“Then why would the murderer try to get rid of the evidence?” I asked. “Remember, it looked as if someone had tried to sink the
kayak with the things from the burial site still inside. There were all those bullet holes in the hull.”

That stumped Jason.

No one knew what had really happened to that tourist. His death simply didn’t make sense. But the conversation got me thinking. Tourists trespassed so often on the sacred sites that some band members wanted to ban kayak tours altogether. The guy who had phoned me that morning had told me to stay home, to stay off the water. Was he warning me to stay away from the burial caves?

At the launch site, Jason and I carried the four kayaks down to the beach. Liz started unloading our gear from the truck. Gerald ate his donuts and watched us work. Sam stood beside him with her arms crossed. She wouldn’t help us, either. At one point, I saw Gerald offer Sam one of his donuts. She took it. Progress, I thought. We were only an hour into our trip, and they were already starting to bond.

Liz loaded her dry bag and the bags of food into her own kayak, pushing them under the enclosed front and back ends of the boat. I had learned that Liz liked to do things her own way. There was hell to pay if Jason loaded her kayak and she later found her food supplies damaged.

We said our goodbyes to Jason and put on our life jackets. Liz and I stood in shallow water as we held the kayaks steady for our clients. I helped Gerald and Liz helped Sam climb into their boats. We told them to sit just to the rear of the cockpit, placing their feet inside. Then, using their arms for support, they slid their behinds down onto the cockpit seat and stretched their legs out in front of them.

Once we were all in our kayaks and on the water, I taught them how to paddle. They each held the paddle in the middle, gripping it with both hands. Then they dipped first one end and then the other into the water. As they pulled each blade back through the water, they propelled their boats forward. Paddle on the left, then paddle on the right. Once they felt safe doing this, I taught them different paddle strokes that would help them steer. Then we were away.

But after less than a half-hour of paddling, Gerald’s cell phone rang. “All right!” he said. “We’re still getting reception.”

Gerald stopped paddling to take the call and fell behind. I slowed my paddling so I didn’t get too far ahead of him as Liz continued on with
Sam. I would have to talk to Gerald when he got off the phone. If he took a call every ten minutes we’d never get anywhere.

Then my own cell phone rang. I looked for a number before answering, but there wasn’t one. “Hello,” I said, expecting the worst, and I got it.

“Turn around and go home,” the space-alien voice said.

“Screw you,” I said.

“I can see you. I can see that Liz and the other woman are far ahead of you.”

I looked around at the string of islands ahead of us and at the shore. The mist was heavy along the shoreline, but as far as I could tell, there was no one out here but our little group. Jason had driven away long ago. I couldn’t hear what Gerald said as he talked on his cell phone, but he had to be my caller. There was no one else around.

“I can see that bald guy talking on the phone,” the voice said. “I can see you looking at him.”

So the creep wasn’t Gerald. Or was it? Gerald could be trying to make me think it wasn’t him.

“If you value your life, you’ll turn around,” the guy said. Then he hung up.

I tucked the phone back in the pocket of my dry suit and ran a hand over my mouth. Gerald was still talking on the phone. Up ahead, Liz and Sam had stopped paddling as Liz answered her phone and began to talk. Sam immediately took out her own cell and started text messaging. After a moment, Liz turned in her kayak and, still on her phone, waved for me to catch up.

“Gerald,” I called. “We’ve got to go. We won’t reach that burial cave before dark at this rate.”

“All right, all right,” he called back. I waited until he caught up with me and then we paddled to catch up with Liz and Sam.

Liz signalled for me to hang back as Gerald and Sam paddled on ahead. “We’ve got a situation,” she said when they were out of earshot.

“You got a call from some creep, right?”

“He’s been phoning you, too?”

“I got several calls this morning. Was this your first?”

“Uh-huh. No name, no number.”

“Yeah, he must have a block on it.”

“He said he can see us, Mike. He’s got to be watching from the shore somewhere.”

“Or he’s with us.” I looked ahead at our two computer experts.

“Gerald?” said Liz.

“He was on the phone just now. And he was on the phone back at the marina when I got one of the calls. No one else was.”

“What’s your history with him?” she asked me.

“I don’t have a history. I didn’t meet him until this morning. But who else could it be?”

“Sam started texting after I answered my phone,” said Liz. “So I think we can rule her out.”

“In any case, it was a man’s voice.”

“That doesn’t mean much these days. Anyone can download software off the internet to change his or her voice. And the voice of this caller was certainly changed.”

“What did he say to you?”

“To turn back,” she said. “To go home. He said I didn’t belong here.”

“Then maybe Gerald isn’t the stalker,” I said. “He wants to be out here, to see those caves.”

“The caller could just be playing a prank, right?” Liz said. “Jason does this kind of thing, doesn’t he? Didn’t he put a garter snake in your kayak once?”

“Yeah. Another time it was a squirrel,” I said. “Halfway to Cedar Island, I felt it crawling up my leg. Very funny.” I didn’t tell her I had screamed like a girl. “But the stalker isn’t Jason. He wasn’t on the phone when I got one of the calls.”

“What if he got one of his friends to do it? Remember, in the truck, Jason made a point of telling that story about the tourist found dead. He tried to scare us.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “This isn’t like Jason. I think we should call the cops.”

Liz shook her head. “They won’t do much until the stalker threatens to hurt us.”

“He did. He said someone would get hurt if we came out here.”

“You can trace the call,” said Liz. “The telephone company will make a note of the number of the last call made to your phone. Their staff will hand that number over to the police. But the operator won’t tell you who the caller was. At least, that’s how it all works on my home phone.”