So what the hell could he deduce from all this? Spray cans and cooking oil? Was the girl wrong? Maybe she hadn’t seen a rifle that night when she returned to the bay. But then why were White Hair and his buddy searching for her? Walker believed her, that was for sure. And what about Walker? Was he wrong when he said her boat had been deliberately sunk? Didn’t seem likely. Walker was a cautious man who would say nothing rather than go out on a limb. And he knew boats. And the weather. And the ocean.
Dan shook his head to try and clear the fog that was swirling around in his brain. It didn’t help. He lifted his gaze to the windshield and tried to peer out into the night, but it was so dark he couldn’t even make out the trees on the shore just sixty feet away. Hell, Walker could be ten feet away and he wouldn’t be able to see him. And where was Walker? Had he left Shoal Bay? Was he going to come here? Did he need help?
“Shit!” Dan pushed himself away from the console, inhaled as deeply as he could, and breathed it out in a long sigh. “I need a coffee.”
He felt his way back to the galley, hearing Claire’s soft breathing as he passed the stateroom. At least she was getting some sleep. He knew he wouldn’t be getting any more this night, and it seemed like Walker hadn’t had any.
He pulled the kettle onto the stove and made himself a cup of coffee. Somehow he had to make sense of all this. He leaned back against the settee cushions and stretched his legs out under the table. The ocean was calm, but it was never still, and the faint rocking relaxed him. Allowed him to let his mind roam free. Let all the facts float and settle. Let his subconscious take over.
TWELVE
It all revolved around the black ship.
Dan had moved out onto the deck and was leaning on the rail, watching the trees slowly take shape against a lightening sky. He felt renewed by the freshness and promise that early mornings held. Reveled in hearing the dawn chorus fill the air with birdsong. Loved breathing in the morning breeze that wafted the clean scent of fir and bracken across the water. Three hours of contemplation had not added any new facts, but it had given him a clearer perspective.
Claire had not been mistaken. He had seen and spoken with the men who were looking for her. They had lied to him. And that lie meant Walker had not been mistaken either. Claire’s boat had been deliberately sunk. So the black ship was the main player. And the crew boat was part of it. But what the hell were the spray bottles all about? And the cooking oil?
He had been thinking this was drugs. Now he wasn’t so sure. It was beginning to take on the shape of something much worse. He remembered the slick, slimy feel of some of the cases he had worked on. They had coiled their way into his gut, taken on a foul smell and taste that seeped into his skin and permeated his dreams. This felt the same.
He needed an edge, a corner, a loose flap that he could use to pry something open. Hargreaves wouldn’t make a move unless he had something concrete to go on. He had pretty well said as much last night. And speaking of Hargreaves . . .
Dan pulled his gaze from a pair of gulls, pale against the still-dark shore, and headed back to the radio.
“The guys out already?”
“No, why? Something happening?” There was an odd note in Hargreaves’s voice that Dan couldn’t quite place.
“Not that I know of. Just wanted to let you know Walker’s out there somewhere. Maybe have them keep their eyes open for him.”
“That’s the Indian, right?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s in Shoal Bay?”
“Probably not now, but he was there a few hours back.”
“Doing what? It was so damn dark last night you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Hell, it’s barely light now. He wouldn’t have been able to see his paddle, let alone see where he was.”
“He seemed pretty sure about it. Said the crew boat was gone and there were some canisters and a box on the float.” Dan figured he should keep quiet about Walker opening the canister. Hargreaves didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would be understanding about something like that.
“Yeah. Well, no law against that.”
“Depending on what’s in ’em.”
A vision of Hargreaves and his team opening a box of cooking oil drifted past his mind’s eye, and he bit back a grimace.
“Yeah. Well, we’ll check them out when we get back.”
That was it—the note he had heard in Hargreaves’s voice. It was the slight tremolo caused by the vibration of big engines thundering just below the deck.
“Get back? You going somewhere?”
“They’ve got a freighter changed course south of Rupert. Looks like it could be heading to a rendezvous with a trawler over by Porcher Island. We’re headed there now. We’ll check it out and be back maybe late tonight or tomorrow sometime.”
“Might be too late.”
Hargreaves’s voice was fading as he moved farther away. “We can keep an eye on them on satellite. Pick them up later if we need to.”
Dan bit off his reply and turned off the radio. He couldn’t blame Hargreaves for not feeling the same sense of urgency he did. On the other hand, he didn’t want to say something he might regret later. He had a feeling he would be needing Hargreaves and his crew again.
A salmon leaped high out of the water, silver body lit by the first rays of the sun. Dan thought about throwing out a line—it would make a nice lunch—but quickly dismissed the idea. The fish would probably sense the mood he was in from five hundred feet away and head straight for the bottom.
There were a lot of things he could handle pretty well, but frustration was not one of them. He hated feeling useless, and that’s what he was right now. The girl—he had to start calling her Claire—was still sleeping, and waking her up would be a lousy thing to do. Besides, awake or asleep, he couldn’t leave her alone on Dreamspeaker. And he had no idea where to look for Walker. He had called him five or six times, but the man always had his radio turned off. So what other options did he have?
He couldn’t leave. Not only was it impossible for him to walk away from whatever was developing in Shoal Bay, but he could never bring himself to abandon Walker.
He couldn’t move closer to the action. He didn’t know if White Hair was out prowling or if the crew boat was back in Shoal Bay, and he couldn’t expose Claire to more danger.
He couldn’t take the dinghy over to see the canisters for himself. That would almost certainly scare them off, and he might get himself shot in the process.
He couldn’t do any damn thing except wait . . . and he hated waiting.
His foot brushed against a stanchion and he aimed a vicious kick in its direction. It connected much harder than he had planned and his reward was a stabbing pain in his toe. “Damn, damn, damn, damn . . .” He held on to the railing and hobbled toward the door, his face twisted into a grimace.
“Are you okay?”
Claire was standing in the doorway, watching him, a wary look on her face. She was wearing the T-shirt he had given her last night; her hair was disheveled from sleep, but the color had come back to her face.
He fought to change the grimace to a smile. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Okay. If you say so.” She didn’t look convinced.
He followed her inside, bracing himself against the wall to keep the weight off his foot. “My foot slipped. Guess I need to be more careful.”
“Either that or get softer stanchions,” she said, moving past the table so that he could slide onto the bench. The wariness had been replaced with the hint of a smile. “My turn to make coffee. You’ll have to point me to the supplies.”
The pain in his foot gradually faded as the coffee brewed and he eased his toe around inside his shoe. Nothing broken. It had been a stupid thing to do. He had been lucky.
Claire slid onto the bench across from him. “Have you heard from Walker?”
He looked at her. “He called last night.”
“And?”
“He was in Shoal Bay.”
“Shoal Bay?” Her voice echoed the confusion on her face. “But why? He knew I was coming here with you.”
Dan looked out the porthole. A gull was skimming the water, its wings spread in an effortless glide. He realized she had naturally assumed that Walker had gone to Shoal Bay to check on her, which meant she didn’t know about her boat. If she had known, she would not have mentioned Shoal Bay without some acknowledgment of its being sunk. That meant he would have to tell her. Shit.
“Did Walker tell you about your boat?”
“My boat? Do you mean Island Girl or the kayak?”
“Not the kayak. The boat you had in Shoal Bay. Island Girl.”
Her chin lifted in acknowledgment, and then, as his words registered, her gaze narrowed. “Had? She’s still there. I was going back to her when I saw those men.”
It was Dan’s turn to nod. “I know. But she’s not there anymore.” He took the plunge. “We think those same men you saw towed her out and sank her.”
“What? Sank her? What are you talking about? Who towed her out? What . . .”
He watched her struggle as she tried to take it in. This had been the part of the job that he had hated: the pain and discomfort of being the bearer of bad news. He had hated seeing the sudden look of vulnerability that turned bright eyes dull and made taut muscles slack. It drove a knife into his gut in a way few other things could. On the job, he had used it to fuel his anger and drive his determination to solve the case. Out here, he could only fight a sudden urge to wrap his arms around the girl across from him and comfort her.
The urge jarred him. He had not thought about touching any other woman since losing Susan. In fact, he had spent most of his days and nights for the past many months thinking about little else but Susan. Now he suddenly realized that he had barely thought about her once since this thing started. The knowledge made him feel oddly guilty and he reached for her memory, teasing it like a sore tooth, running his mind across its rough surface, tasting its texture. It was there, as vivid as ever, but he could sense a subtle change. Not in the memory itself, perhaps, but in him. He felt alive again. Complete. A little older and a little wounded, but the wound was healing, scabbing over. There would always be a scar, but for the first time since he had lost her, he could see past her death to the happier times they had shared.
He brought himself back to the present and to Claire, slumped in shock across from him. While the urge to comfort her was strong, it was not sexual. It was simply a reflex, more paternal than hormonal. Still, he needed to take care that sympathy did not become sex. He knew from his years on the force how easily that could happen when the victim was an attractive woman. He had witnessed it time and time again. He also knew that now was neither the time nor the place to restart his love life. He was grateful for the whistle of the boiling kettle, and he used it to distract himself.
Claire sat silent, her head down and her eyes closed, as Dan pushed a cup of hot coffee into her hands. He knew from experience that there was nothing she could say. Image after image was flashing into her brain only to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. The idea that her boat had been sunk was incomprehensible to her. The concept was impossible for her to grasp. She could not believe it. She was in shock. Her brain simply would not accept it.
Dan sat quietly across the table from her, coffee in hand, watching her, waiting for her to give him a cue, and after a time she looked up at him, her face once again pale and her eyes once again dark.
“When?”
He knew exactly what she meant. “The day after you saw the men at Shoal Bay. Walker found her in Half Moon Cove.”
Talking seemed to help her mind start functioning again, and he could see her searching her memory, trying to recall the details she must have seen so often on her charts.
“Half Moon Cove? That’s way east of Shoal Bay, right? Over by Turner Island?”
“Sounds right. I haven’t been there, but I talked about it with Walker.”
“Is he sure it’s her? Maybe . . .”
Dan saw her bite off the rest of the words before the thought could be completed. He was familiar with the pattern, and her actions were so clear, he could almost read her mind. She knew Walker and knew he was familiar with Island Girl. Knew he would not make a mistake like that. Tears suddenly flooded her eyes and he watched her shake them away angrily. She was telling herself that crying wouldn’t help her make sense of this. Now would come the guilt—maybe it was her fault.
“Maybe I didn’t tie her up well enough. Maybe . . .”
Dan reached a big hand across the table and caught one of hers. “Claire. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t anything you did or didn’t do, and it wasn’t your fault. Somebody towed your boat out and sunk it deliberately. We don’t know why. Not yet. We do know they were looking for you. You saw two of them that night when you were going back to your boat. Walker told me about it. Walker and I saw them again over at Annie’s. That means they don’t want any witnesses to whatever it is they are up to. You and your boat were a threat to them.”
She stared at him. “But why? I didn’t see anybody doing anything!”
“I know that. You know that. But they don’t, and whatever it is they’re up to, they don’t want to risk a witness. The black ship unloaded a bunch of canisters and sank them near the shore there in Shoal Bay. There’s another boat there now, that crew boat you and Walker saw, hauling them up again. We had the marine police up here yesterday, watching them, but they had to leave before they could figure it all out.”
Claire closed her eyes again and Dan could see it was all too much for her. It had to be overwhelming and probably nothing made sense. Shaking her head, she shoved herself up from the table and went out into the salon. The door to the aft deck was open and behind her he could see a lone gull perched on the railing. It watched with bright, black eyes as she approached, then spread its wings and lifted off effortlessly, its protest hurled plaintively into the morning breeze. Dan followed her, not speaking, not crowding her but close enough to let her know she was not alone.
“She was my father’s boat.”
Her voice was so quiet he had to strain to hear it. She had been leaning on the rail for over twenty minutes, staring blindly out toward the shore, oblivious to the chill of the morning air.
“Your father was a boater?”
“No. He was a fisherman. He spent most of his life on the sea.” She looked over at him. “That’s where I grew up. We followed the fish. I went to school wherever we were fishing, did correspondence when there wasn’t a school to go to, helped where I could.” She shook her head. “I loved it.”
Dan turned and smiled at her. “So we’re both fishermen’s brats.”
Claire stared at him. “Your dad was a fisherman too?”
“Yep. His boat was the Betty Jean. She was a gillnetter. I can still remember every inch of her. My dad sold her just before I finished high school.”
She gave him a pale smile. It wasn’t much, but at least it was something. It was a start.
THIRTEEN
More than two hundred miles to the south, a float plane banked hard over Lulu Island, and Mike Bryant looked down as the city of Richmond and the great sprawl of Vancouver slid beneath the wings, glass-fronted towers and condos glittering in the sun. He caught a brief glimpse of joggers and bicyclists on the dyke below him and then the pontoons kissed the surface and skimmed across the choppy water of the Fraser River toward the Riverport Seaplane Terminal.
He stepped out into bright sunshine and was greeted by a uniformed RCMP officer, who led the way to a black SUV sitting in the parking lot.
“Thought you might not make it.” The uniform had driven him to a previous meeting, but Mike couldn’t remember his name.
“Yeah. I was starting to get a little worried myself. It was like pea soup in downtown Victoria. They were just about to cancel when the fog lifted.” He peered out the window at the sparkling river. “You’ve got a nice one going over here.”
> The drive from the seaplane terminal to Vancouver International Airport took less than ten minutes, and as they drove along the Sea Island dyke, Mike watched the traffic on the river. The intricate ballet of watercraft plying the silty waters never failed to fascinate him. Everything from freighters to ferries to kayaks used the river to access the heart of the city, and, like the city, it never slept. One boat, an old seiner that had seen better days, made him think of Dan, maybe three hundred miles north. They hadn’t spoken since Dan called with that wild story about a black ship and an Indian guy and some girl who was being hunted. If it had been anyone but Dan, Mike would have dismissed it all as the crazy ramblings of some dope-smoking hippie, but Dan was one of the sanest and most logical people he knew. If he thought there was something going on, there probably was. Mike had phoned a friend over in the West Coast Marine Division and pulled in every marker he could think of, plus a few he had made up but that sounded good, and as a result had received a promise that Dan would be contacted by one of the big patrol boats. Dan owed him big for that, and Mike was going to enjoy making him pay up. Maybe he could even use it to get him back on the force. He made a mental note to contact him to follow up on the story once he was back at the office.
The car turned onto Russ Baker Way and the river gave way to the warehouses and hangers that skirted the edge of the airport. Mike looked for the increased security he knew was in place. It would be much more obvious in a few days, but even now he could see unmarked police cars in many of the designated police parking spaces, relegating the marked cars to curbside, and there were more security vehicles driving the perimeter. There were even a couple of RCMP cars parked beside the bridge leading over the river from Richmond, although without their lights on they looked more like traffic detail than security.
Dark Moon Walking Page 9
