Dark Moon Walking

by R. J. McMillen

  Eleven weeks after he bought her, he carefully painted her new name on both her bow and stern. Two days after that, he let go the lines and pointed Dreamspeaker north.

  A wave smacked the bow, and Dan shook off the memories that threatened to engulf him. Now was not the time for reminiscence. There was work to do. A missing girl who was being hunted by gunmen. Sunken containers to check out. A strange boat to investigate. He shook his head at the irony. He had given up police work, but here he was, doing it again—and at the request of an ex-con!

  He steered Dreamspeaker into the tiny cove using the depth sounder and GPS as well as the chart to guide him. There was not enough room to swing at anchor, so he took a stern line ashore and tied it to a tree. Even if a wind came up, he was protected by a hook of land that almost closed the entrance. In fact, if the black ship passed right outside the cove, there was a good chance its crew wouldn’t notice him. As soon as the boat settled her bow into the wind, he headed for the bridge and the radio.

  Walker answered his call immediately. “She was here. I found her trail.”

  Dan breathed a sigh of relief. So the girl had not been on her boat when it sank. She had gotten away. But if Walker could find her trail, maybe others could too.

  “How easily? You think the guys in the dinghy could find it?”

  “Probably not. It’s just scratches on the rocks and some crushed barnacles and stuff.”

  “You sure it was her?” Dan regretted the question as soon as he asked it. Of course Walker would be sure.

  “Yeah.”

  Dan shook his head as he considered the amount of knowledge wrapped up in those simple answers. “Any idea when she left? If she’s out on the water, she’ll be pretty easy to spot.”

  “She left at low tide. That was the middle of the night. Maybe two o’clock in the morning. The current would push her southeast.”

  Dan pulled the chart toward him. “Where are you now?”

  “Still here. Gotta wait for the next low.”

  “You see those guys in the dinghy?”

  “Nope. Heard it a couple of times though.”

  Dan nodded to himself. That was good. It meant they hadn’t found her yet. But they were still searching, and he didn’t like Walker being out on the water alone in daylight any more than the girl.

  “You might want to keep to the dark hours too.”

  “Yeah.” There might have been a hint of amusement in Walker’s voice.

  Dan ended the call. He knew Walker would be cautious, but there was something going on with the black ship that spoke of a level of planning and sophistication he had not seen for a long time. Something that could easily overwhelm simple survival skills.

  He reached over and lifted the satellite phone from its cradle. It was time to talk to Mike. He just hoped he had enough to convince him.

  Rosemary, Mike’s secretary, answered. She was a fixture in the department, had worked for Mike for longer than the sixteen years Dan had known him, and he had never seen her flustered, but he thought she sounded flustered now. “Dan! Good to hear from you. Where are you?”

  “I’m on the boat. Still up north. What’s up?”

  “Oh, nothing really. Same old stuff. Short of staff. Too many meetings. Too much happening. Not enough time.” She laughed. “I guess I don’t have to tell you. It’s not like it’s anything new. Are you looking for Mike?”

  “Yeah. Is he there?”

  “No. He’s over in Vancouver—in yet another meeting! Lately he’s been spending more time there than he does here in Victoria. This damn UN thing is taking up all his time, and everyone else’s too. And then there’s the concert . . . Sorry, I’m ranting. He won’t be back here until tomorrow at the earliest. Is there a problem? Can I give him a message?”

  “No. No. It’s fine. Just checking in. I’ll be back down in a couple of weeks anyway.”

  No use worrying her. Maybe by tomorrow he would have a better idea of what was happening.

  NINE

  Three days later Walker still hadn’t found her. He was following his instincts and the current, searching for the faint trail she had left. Like Claire, he was traveling mostly at night, using the soft, purple light of dusk and dawn to check shorelines and search the rocks. Several times he heard an outboard, although it never came close. Still, it was enough to tell him they had not given up. Enough to keep him cautious.

  On the evening of the third day, the sun low on the horizon and streaking the cloud bank with liquid fire, he reached an island well to the east of Darby Channel. The telltale signs started halfway up the bank, just below the high-tide line. They were partially covered, as they had been made when the water was at its highest point and a later high, lower than the first, had washed over the lower ones.

  He pushed the canoe into shallow water and struggled out. There was no place he could hide it, but it sat low in the water and the dark hull would be hard to see with the daylight fading.

  Earlier in the day he had found a handful of salmonberries the raccoons had left, and he had put them into a small deer-hide bag along with some dried salmon from his food stash. He thought about eating them now but decided against it. It would take him a while to clamber up the bank, and he would have to use the stunted trees that twisted out of the rock to pull himself up. Better to save the food till he reached the top. He didn’t think Claire was still there. The signs were a couple of days old, and it was hard to tell if the most recent led in or out of the water, but he hoped that from the highest point he would be able to get a wider view of the islands that lay still farther to the east. That was the direction she was traveling, and it would give him a better idea of where she might have gone.

  It was slow going, but finally, he reached the summit. An outcropping of rock blocked out the south, but otherwise the view was clear. A scattering of small islands lay both east and north, none of them more than half a mile wide and almost all of them low. Beyond them the rugged shore of the mainland heaved up in steep tiers to the jagged peaks of the Coast Mountains. Could Claire have made it that far? It didn’t seem likely. The nearest point was probably two days away by kayak, and the currents here would be against her at night.

  And even if she had, there was no place to land. Once past the islands, the inlet became a fjord: steep cliffs dropping straight down into a deep underwater trench. But the islands didn’t look promising either. None of them was big enough to provide decent shelter, and he doubted that any of them would have water.

  He sat down and let his mind slow. He thought that perhaps he had always had the ability to sense the presence of another person—it was probably what had made him so successful at break and enter back in the city all those years ago, but he hadn’t really been conscious of it then. It was only after he had come back to the village, had spent all those evenings talking with the elders, absorbing the culture and the lore he had previously disdained, that he had thought about and embraced it.

  The elders told him that it was as if the lines of the universe bent a little around each living thing—and that he had the gift of reading that disturbance. At first, he had scoffed at the idea: he certainly hadn’t read the cops arriving at the bank too well, had he? But deep within himself, he sensed the truth of what they were saying, and secretly he was pleased. He had had few if any gifts of a practical kind given to him in his short life, and he was honored to think that the Creator might have chosen one for him. Proud that the elders recognized it in him. He started working to develop it, finding quiet, hidden places and sitting for hours, eyes closed, reaching out with ears and nose and skin and fingertips and, finally, with his spirit. He didn’t know how long it had taken for awareness to move into his conscious mind and he couldn’t have explained how it worked. He just knew it did. Now he closed his eyes and reached out into the gloom. Claire was still out there: he could feel her. But where was she?

  Suddenly, his eyes snapped open, and he peered down at the rocks below him. They were hidden in deep shado
w, their outlines dark, blurred by a couple of twisted trees and broken by crevices, but as he let his gaze slide slowly along the contours, he saw that there was something there. Just the faintest hint of movement disturbed the stillness. A deeper shade of black. It might be a raccoon, or even an otter, but he didn’t think so. It was too big, too still, and the location was wrong. It felt human.

  He glanced down to the shore below. There was no boat there, no kayak, no dinghy, and there was no way to get up that steep cliff from the water anyway. Whoever was there—if it was someone and not something—had to have come around the island from the other side, scrambling over the rocks. Had she—or he—heard him? He had made no attempt to silence his approach, and he was very aware of how much noise he had made. Was it fear that was causing the stillness or simply a desire for concealment? Was it Claire or was it one of the men searching for her?

  He twisted himself up and moved about twenty feet to the left, hoping to get a better view from the side, maybe catch an outline against the rock face. He tried to keep quiet, but he thought that any sounds he was making would be blocked and reflected by the angles and planes of the cliff. Carefully, he lowered himself to the ground and peered over the edge. And there, silhouetted against the fading sky, he saw the girl. She was slumped against the trunk of a stunted spruce tree that twisted out of the rock, facing the ocean.

  If she had heard him, she had made no attempt to move, and she was not looking up to see who or what was above her. In fact, she was sitting absolutely still, tension written in the taut, clenched lines of her body, her gaze apparently focused on the waters that lay in front of her. He could sense fear, smell it drifting up to him on the dark breeze, and he searched for a way to get her attention without startling her. He couldn’t be certain there was not someone else there, someone she was watching, so calling to her was out of the question.

  He picked up a handful of pebbles, small and few enough to sound natural when they fell but sufficient to create a sound, and let them slide down the rocks. When she didn’t respond, he did it again. And again. Finally, it caught her attention. Her head snapped around and she slowly looked up, her face a pale oval in the deepening gloom.

  “Walker!”

  There was more feeling packed into that single word than he had heard in many years, and the depth of his response stunned him. He had expected her reaction. He had not expected his own.

  The surge of emotion brought with it a wave of memories that almost overwhelmed his senses: woodsmoke and laughter; the sour smell of eulachon grease; the sheen of dancing bodies; hot sweat mixed with cedar; the insistent beat of a drum. They were so intense, so vivid, he forgot where he was for a moment, forgot the girl, forgot the black ship. The tick of a falling twig brought him back, and the sudden transition was disorienting. Disturbed and off-balance, he fought for calm. He could revisit the memories later. He needed to focus on the present.

  A smile glimmered on Claire’s face, allowing him to read both her pleasure and relief at his arrival, but it was so brief, he thought it must be tempered with something else. Perhaps she was just cold and tired. She had made no attempt to stand, and now she turned and looked back out at the ocean, tension still written in the tightness that gripped her body. For a moment he worried that she was hurt, but he would have seen the signs if that were the case. Quickly he scanned the area again. Was there someone else there? Had his noisy scrabble alerted the men who were searching for her?

  She glanced back up at him, the smile gone, then turned back toward the ocean. Crawling forward, he let his gaze follow the dark shape of her raised arm, out past the pale hand and pointing finger. There, almost hidden in the night shadows that wrapped the maze of islets, was a tiny gleam of light. It flickered as the breeze stirred the trees, and heavy branches blocked his view, but as he stared through the fading light, he realized he could just make out the dark outline of a large boat. Almost certainly the black ship.

  His breath caught in his throat, and his voice was barely a whisper as he called down to her. “How long’s it been there?”

  Her shrug was a barely discernible movement of shadowy darkness, but he heard it in her voice. “I got here last night—well, early this morning, I guess. I noticed it just after it got light.”

  “Have you seen the dinghy?”

  She nodded. “Two of them. Two people in each one. They left together this morning, but then they split up. One came back this afternoon, but it left again.” She glanced back at him, eyes dark against pallid skin. “And I heard an outboard yesterday too. At another island. Three or four times. And the day before as well.”

  “Yeah. Me too.” He looked down at her, feeling her fear grow again. “Hungry?”

  She stared up at him for a long moment and then the outline of her body relaxed onto the rock. “Oh, God! I’m starving. Have you got anything?”

  He reached back and took the bag off his belt, holding it out over the edge so she could see it. “How does smoked salmon and fresh berries sound?” he asked. “You’ll have to come up here, though. I don’t think I can get down there.”

  “Okay, but it’ll take me a while. I have to go round to the other side to get off the ledge.”

  Walker wasn’t sure he liked the idea of her clambering around the cliff. “It’s pretty dark. You gonna be all right?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll take it slow. It’s not as bad as it looks from up there. Besides, there’ll be more light on the other side. The sun hasn’t been down that long.”

  It was almost half an hour before she appeared beside him. For a while he had listened to the small sounds she made as she moved slowly along the ledge, but soon they had stopped and he’d sat listening to the silence and watching the flicker of the light through the trees.

  “Walker!” she said again as she slid to the ground beside him. “It is so, so good to see you.”

  He smiled and opened the bag, reaching in to pull out a piece of salmon. He handed it to her, his smile widening as she snatched it and crammed it into her mouth.

  “Oh, that’s so good!” She spoke around a mouthful. “I was ready to chew the bark off the trees!”

  He looked up the oddly twisted trunk that grew beside him. It was shedding its bark, jigsaw pieces of reddish brown wood flaking off to reveal the pale green cambium layer underneath. “Nah.” He smiled. “Not a good idea. It looks pretty, but it would taste terrible.”

  He turned back to find her staring at him, her eyes huge. “How can we be joking? They want to kill me!”

  “How do you know? What happened?”

  She turned to look across to where the ship’s light danced in the darkness. When she answered, her voice was again tight with fear.

  “There has to be a reason they’re hunting her,” Dan said.

  Walker and Dan were talking on the radio, and even though Dan’s voice was distorted, Walker could hear in it an odd, distant quality, a change in cadence that he recognized. He pictured Dan staring off into space, his eyes unfocused, as he leaned across the bridge. Ten years ago, when Walker had first met him across a scratched metal table in a cold and featureless interrogation room, Walker had mistaken that distant look for arrogance, had called him an “arrogant white bastard.” He had been wrong. It was Dan’s way of relaxing his mind so he could let it run free, sorting through the details, connecting the dots, noting the gaps in the story, trying to put it all together.

  “You sure she didn’t see anything?”

  “Nope. Came back from kayaking and they were waiting for her with guns,” Walker replied.

  “Huh. Gotta be something big. Drugs, most likely. Those containers could hold a lot of coke or heroin. That kind of money would make it worth going to a lot of trouble to get rid of her.”

  The radios fell silent as the two men considered the possibilities of the events that had occurred. Walker looked across at Claire, curled up on a bed of ferns beside him, her face slack in the depth of sleep. A faint hiss of static emanated from the s
peaker as he stared up into the dark bowl of the sky and watched the stars wheel overhead. It felt strange to be talking to Dan as an equal, stranger still to feel a sense of kinship, but it also felt right and natural, and he realized that he was enjoying it.

  The radio came to life again. “Thing I can’t figure out is why the hell they would sink it all, then hang around.” Dan sounded like he was mostly talking to himself, and Walker figured he didn’t expect an answer, so he didn’t offer one.

  “Any chance you can stay where you are for the night?” Dan’s voice had become strained. “I can’t get hold of Mike till tomorrow, but I’m going to see if he can get the guys in the marine division to send one of their boats up here to take a look. I’ll have to use the satellite radio to call him, so I need to be here, and it would be good if we knew whether the black ship was still anchored over there.”

  Walker heard the rushed words and understood that Dan was talking too much in an effort to deal with the discomfort he felt at making such an outrageous request. He smiled as he listened to the awkward pause that followed, remembering his own discomfort years ago sitting across from this man in that dingy interrogation room. It wasn’t just the situation that had changed; their roles had been reversed.

  Dan spoke again. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to bring the dinghy over there now either. Sound carries really well at night, and it could be a problem if they hear us.”

  Walker looked around the rocky knoll they were sitting on and nodded to himself. He and Claire had talked about moving again, getting away from the black ship under cover of night, but it might be safer to stay where they were. He could find enough food for them both and Dan was within reach if they needed him. Plus, he knew Dan was right in thinking it would be good to have someone watching the black ship and keeping an eye on dinghy traffic.