Dead to the World

by B. D. Smith

  Tom waited for an answer, but Nigel rested his head back on the pillow and returned to watching the TV, acting as if Tom wasn’t even there.

  “Nigel. Pay attention. You already know that Don Robertson was murdered. You also know John Eastman was murdered. But you might not have heard this yet – someone also tried to kill Ximena Lapointe a few days ago. Ran her down with a boat. So, let’s see – the four of you knew each other. You all had dinner at Eastman’s place a number of times. Four fast friends, it seems, all apparently tied in somehow with the patio boat race. And now two of these four friends are dead, and attempts have been made on the lives of the other two. What do you think Nigel? Maybe you need to start talking to us.”

  No response from Nigel.

  “OK Nigel, let me try some other names out on you.”

  Doug took out his notebook, flipped through it quickly, and found the page he wanted.

  “How about Adrian Capler? Does that ring a bell, Nigel? Or maybe Edward Unger or Andrew Conan?” Surely you remember those – you used them often enough. Does ESPN know about your storied - or maybe checkered is a better term, past?”

  Tom was impressed by Nigel’s continued façade of interest in the infomercial that was now on the TV. So far he had shown no visible reaction to Tom’s questions. That was about to change.

  “What happened to the money, Nigel? You know, the millions Robertson had stashed in overseas accounts? Where did it come from?”

  Nigel continued to keep his gaze fixed on the TV, but his hands were now clenched on top of the bedcovers, and Tom could see a vein pulsing in his neck.

  “OK, you won’t say where the funds might have come from. What were they for, and who has them now? I’m betting that right now, Nigel, the oligarchs want their money back if you can’t launder it.”

  Leaning over Nigel now, Tom continued.

  “The way I see it, if you don’t know where the money is, you’re in a bit of a pickle. And if you do know where it is, you better clean it quick, or you’re still in a pickle. I hear the Ruskies have lots of inventive ways to get rid of people who cross them.”

  Dropping his voice to a whisper now, Tom leaned in close to Nigel’s ear.

  “OK Nigel, that’s enough for now. I’ll let you rest. One last question – What’s 321A?”

  Nigel turned his head to the side, away from Tom, and closed his eyes.

  16.

  It was one of those perfect mornings on Sebec Lake. While such days were more frequent after Labor Day, when boat traffic dropped way off and the summer people started closing up their camps, they could also surprise you earlier in the year.

  Anne was up early, eager to get out on the lake to enjoy what was shaping up to be a beautiful day. Leaving Doug and his dog Jack snoring away contentedly, she quietly crept out of the bedroom, and after pulling on her kayaking clothes and fixing a quick cup of coffee, slipped out of the cabin. The air was crisp and a slight fog drifted along the water’s surface in shadows near the shore. The lake was perfectly still. Anne heard a raucous loon call from a nearby cove and the laughter of small children playing on a dock some way down the shore. Otherwise it was silent.

  Grabbing her life vest and carbon fiber paddle from a hook on the porch she tucked her water bottle under her arm and walked down to a small sand beach. Picking up her kayak with her free hand, she lifted it free of the canoe rack. The kayak, a surprise gift from Doug on her last birthday, was light enough to be carried in one hand. Its distinctive orange and yellow hull was bright enough to be seen by other watercraft from a considerable distance. Manufactured in Portugal, Anne’s Nelo Viper was extremely light and fast, and also easily tipped over. Doug had tried paddling it once. He had only gone about twenty feet before suddenly flipping over and sliding right out of the kayak. Anne, on the other hand, immediately took to the Viper, and after several years had yet to match what they referred to as Doug’s “almost Eskimo roll.”

  Stepping over to the water’s edge, she slid her kayak into the shallows. She was careful to avoid disturbing the dozen or so sunfish nests– shallow bowl-like depressions in the sandy bottom, each with a male aggressively watching over it. Pushing off, Anne could feel the sun on her back as she headed west toward Pine Island. On most mornings, if the wind was not too strong, she would paddle west down the middle of the lake until Borestone Mountain came into view over the tree line to the northwest. Then she would turn around and paddle back, usually doing the round trip in about an hour.

  Anne was about twenty minutes into her paddle and had settled into a smooth, powerful rhythm that moved her kayak through the water at a deceptively fast pace. She always watched for flotsam as she paddled – and would later add whatever she picked up to the large collection of stuff that had floated ashore at Doug’s camp and was exhibited on the side of his woodshed. Seeing something small and pale green floating on the surface of the lake off to her right, she slowed and turned toward it.

  It was a moth wing. Just one. Floating alone in the middle of the lake, a good two hundred meters from shore. Slipping the blade of the paddle under the wing, Anne lifted it out of the water and lay it on the flat surface of the kayak’s deck, just in front of the cockpit. She recognized it as being from a Luna moth, although she had only seen them illustrated in books. Luna moths, also called giant silk moths or moon moths, have vibrant lime green wings, each with distinctive eye spots or “moons” that are thought to confuse predators. Their long feathery hindwing tails also serve as a defensive mechanism, confusing the echolocation efforts of bats - their prime predators.

  Excited about showing this delicate, beautiful moth wing to Doug, Anne started paddling again, confident that the still wet wing would stay stuck to the kayak’s surface. She was surprised a few moments later to notice another lime green moon moth wing floating on the lake surface. Pausing, Anne added it to the one she had already recovered. Then she saw several more wings and a complete intact moth just ahead. Over the next ten minutes or so, Anne collected more than a dozen additional partial and complete specimens of Luna moth.

  “What the hell are all these moths doing in the middle of the lake?” she wondered.

  The sound of a small outboard motor had been steadily growing louder as Anne circled to collect her prizes, and just as she lifted the last of the wings from the water a beat-up ten-foot aluminum boat painted flat black drifted to a stop a little way off. A girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen, killed the motor and reaching up, pulled her hoodie farther forward, mostly shielding her face from view. Anne was looking into the sun and couldn’t see the girl’s features very well, or tell her hair color, but the purple edging on her hoodie and her light green nail polish on the fingers of both hands drew her attention. Pointing at the impressive collection of moth wings, which were a similar shade of green as her nail polish, the girl asked Anne what she was doing.

  “Why are you collecting the Lunas? Did the Moon Mother give you her blessing?”

  “Who’s the Moon Mother?” Anne replied.

  Ignoring her question, the girl continued in a scolding voice.

  “You shouldn’t be picking those up. You’re disturbing things. Who are you?”

  “I’m Anne Quinn. Who are you?”

  Laughing now, the girl answered.

  “We all know who you are. You’re the deputy with the silver pinkie. But if you’re collecting moth wings you must have a lake name. What is it?”

  “Lake name?” Anne wondered. At a momentary loss for words, she asked the girl a question in reply

  “What’s yours?”

  Looking at Anne from the shadow of her hoodie, the girl responded.

  “Oh, I don’t have a real lake name yet, I’m still a fledgling.”

 
Anne suddenly realized that this must be one of the Water Rats she had heard about.

  Quickly running through a list of possible lake names that might satisfy the girl, Anne settled on what she often thought of as her spirit animal.

  “I don’t have a lake name yet. But if I can ever get one, I want to be called Kingfisher.”

  “Oh, that’s beautiful. When I get my imprint and take my name, I’m going to ask to be called Phoebe. Like me, phoebes are up before dawn, guarding their territory and waiting for the sunrise.”

  “When will you get your name, fledgling?”

  “I’m not exactly sure – it depends on the dark of the moon and how well I do with my tasks.”

  “How are your tasks coming along?”

  “Good actually. So far this morning I found five more boats to tag.”

  Sneaking a quick glance into the fledgling’s boat, Anne saw a box of rectangular reflective stickers and a computer printout of what looked to be a long column of numbers.

  “What’s tagging mean?”

  Realizing she might have said too much, given Anne’s lack of a lake name, the fledgling stayed quiet, and Anne rushed to fill the silence. She was pretty sure what the fledgling was referring to with her use of the term “imprint,” and decided to see if she was right.

  “When you get your imprint, where will it go – on your forearm?”

  “Naw. That’s too hardcore for me. I’m gonna get a small Luna moth on my inner upper arm. That way it’s easy to conceal, but I can flash it when I want to.”

  Anne had been asking a lot of personal questions and could tell the girl was getting skittish. She quickly backtracked.

  “I shouldn’t have picked up the Lunas, fledgling. Can you help? What do you think we should do to restore the balance? Should we take them to the Moon Mother?”

  Suddenly suspicious, the girl replied. Her tone now decidedly less friendly.

  “Nobody approaches the Luna. Even fledglings know that. You want to restore balance? Return the eye wings to mother Sebec.”

  Anne cradled her paddle in her lap, and as the fledgling watched approvingly, she delicately peeled the Luna moth wings and body parts from the deck of her kayak, one by one, and returned them carefully to the surface of the lake.

  As soon as the last wing had been returned to the water the fledgling girl abruptly started her outboard and pulled away from Anne’s kayak. Without a backward glance she headed off toward the narrows. Too late, Anne realized, she had not managed to take note of the registration number on the fledgling’s boat. She knew she would have a hard time making an identification of either the girl or her boat. All she had to go on, really, was Luna green nail polish.

  After the strange interaction with the mystery girl in the middle of the lake, Anne had a hard time getting back into the smooth unconscious rhythm of paddling.

  “Who was that girl?” she wondered. “What was she tagging and why? What was all that about lake names and the Moon Mother?”

  It took her another quarter of an hour to reach her turnaround point, and Anne was still thinking about the moth wings and the girl with the unusual nail polish as she turned her Viper back east into the morning sun and started home. A slight breeze had picked up and the lake was now a zigzag display of diamonds as the sunlight bounced off the water’s surface. She had just passed Pine Island when the silence of the morning was broken by the roar of a powerful and poorly muffled outboard. Looking to her right, Anne saw a bizarre-looking patio boat veer around the south side of Pine Island at a high rate of speed. She stopped paddling and watched as the boat slowed and pulled up to a dock on the north shore. Curious now, Anne turned her kayak around and after a short paddle, pulled up next to the patio boat.

  A lean man in his fifties wearing shorts, sunglasses, flip-flops and a t-shirt was tightening a bolt on what looked to be a large wing that had been mounted on the bow of his boat. Clearing her throat to announce her presence, Anne asked the obvious question.

  “What’s that thing?”

  The man looked around, and seeing Anne, turned back to his task.

  “It’s an airfoil. An upside-down airplane wing. Theoretically it keeps the boat from going airborne when I hit a wave at high speed. But I’m not sure how well it’s going to work. It doesn’t seem to make much difference.”

  “Getting ready for the big race?”

  “Ayup. I still have lots to do and not a lot of time. And it’s getting difficult to keep all my modifications under wraps. I saw someone just this morning, right at dawn, in a little black boat, checking out my airfoil.”

  Anne could guess who the early morning visitor had been, and glancing over at the patio boat’s hull, recognized one of the fledgling’s reflective stickers attached to its stern.The airfoil wasn’t the only unusual addition to the patio boat. In the bow she noticed a bright red Weber kettle grill.

  “How come you have a charcoal grill if you’re modifying the boat for racing?”

  “Oh, that’s just to distract and confuse people. I welded it to the deck and wired on the top so it doesn’t fly off at high speed. Might fool some people into thinking I’m just playing around.”

  “You’re not in this for fun?”

  “Sure it’s fun. But it’s still serious fun. I’ve been working on the boat in my garage all winter. See those brackets welded to the deck right by your kayak? They’re for the two outriggers I’m having built. They’ll fold up out of the water when not needed, and I can lock them down when I need one or the other for going through tight turns.”

  Anne was warming to the man. His enthusiasm for his project was contagious.

  “What changes have you made below the waterline?”

  The man stopped working on the airfoil and looked directly at Anne. Bending down to shake her hand, he introduced himself.

  “Hi. I’m Dave Oliver. We’ve never met, but I know who you are – Anne something… Doug Bateman’s partner. You’re with the sheriff’s department. I see you go by in that fancy kayak some mornings. How’s Doug doing these days? Haven’t seen him in quite a while. When are you two getting married?”

  Suddenly flustered, Anne had no quick response to the marriage question – which she herself had been mulling over for the past several months. She was saved from having to come up with a response as the man continued talking.

  “Below the waterline? I can’t do any changes underwater – it’s not allowed. I had thought about trying to hide some hydrofoils in the pontoons, but they could easily be detected once the boat rose out of the water on the foils – not exactly stealth technology.”

  The man paused, looked around in a dramatic fashion, and then whispered conspiratorially to Anne.

  “I’ll let you in on what is stealthy though, if you promise not to tell anyone.”

  Anne nodded her assent, and the man continued, clearly eager to brag about his hidden modifications.

  “I’m in the twenty-two foot and under category. That’s a Yamaha LF150XB outboard I got mounted on the boat. It has a manufacturer’s stated one hundred and fifty horse power rating, which is the max allowed in the twenty-two and under class. But that little baby you’re lookin at right there is far from a stock one hundred and fifty horsepower. It’s bored and stroked. You wouldn’t notice any difference unless you took it apart, but it puts out a bunch more horsepower. It’s gonna be shock and awe time when this baby gets going.”

  After a few more minutes of back and forth Anne could tell that Dave Oliver was eager to get back to working on his boat so she said she would be sure to say hi to Doug for him and turned to head for home. The wind started to pick up out of the west, as it often does mid-morning, making t
he last part of her paddle almost effortless. Doug was up and had walked Jack by the time she returned, and over their standard breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, greens, bacon and blueberries, Anne filled him in on the two boaters she had encountered during her morning paddle.

  Doug at first suspected that Anne was pulling his leg - making up the part about finding the Luna moth wings and the subsequent encounter with the fledgling girl. It had to be a joke, he figured – a whopper she was throwing out there to see if he would swallow it. Maybe she was trying to balance things up a bit. Early in their relationship, when Anne was still new in town, Doug had on occasion trotted out some plausible sounding tales about Dover-Foxcroft that were completely made up, and Anne would invariably believe them, only to learn later that they were fictitious. Doug came to realize pretty quickly, however, that entertaining himself with made-up stories at her expense was not a good idea. Anne’s older brothers had teased her constantly when she was a girl, and she found little humor in Doug’s fabrications.

  Once he realized she was serious, Doug asked Anne to recount her conversation with the fledgling girl several more times, focusing on the Moth Mother, aka the Luna, and the reference to “mother Sebec.” It almost sounded like a cult of personality with magical overtones. It also reminded Doug of the elusive command and control structure often employed by right wing domestic militias. A leader would voice general opinions and statements of purpose, often by encrypted social media messages, and individuals and small isolated bands of followers would then act on the wishes of the leader without the need of any direct face-to-face orders or instructions.

  “This girl you met – the fledgling. From what she told you it sounds like the Water Rats have been become much more cohesive and likely more radicalized. When I was a teenager, not all that long ago, the name “Water Rats” was mostly just a blanket term, shorthand for kids pulling pranks – randomly messing with people they didn’t approve of. Now it seems they’re more organized, and apparently have a leader of some sort, as well as a more focused and aggressive plan of action – one which appears to target patio boats with the goal of disrupting the upcoming race.”