Deepkill

by Michael Kilian

  An altogether typical day on the bay. The sky to seaward was patchy blue, while that overhead was dulled by high cirrus clouds. Cumulus were building north over Jersey and the wind was increasing. Didn’t have the look of rain, though. Didn’t have the feel.

  He took a long pull from the bottle. Instead of spreading warmth, the alcohol, oddly, increased the chill he felt. Lighting another cigarette changed nothing, though he was glad for it. Exhaling a cloud of smoke that was caught by the wind, he looked up and down the beach, surprised at how few people were out. Closest to him, no more than fifty yards along the shore, were a mother and two children—a toddler of a boy and an older girl, perhaps five or six.

  Schilling had no children. Not that he wouldn’t have minded some. Or grandchildren. Especially now.

  The VA doctors hadn’t told him anything he hadn’t known or guessed, but the fact of their saying it had come as a hit in the gut anyhow. No more the stuff of fearful dreams and sad imaginings, but hard, irrevocable, inescapable truth—as inescapable as what happened when you lost all power in an airplane. You might auger in, you might glide, but you were going in.

  This was his last year. He wouldn’t have another summer. That’s why he had come out here to sit instead of skulking inside his screened-in porch. For all his time on these waters, for all the time he’d lived on this stretch of coastline, he’d been seldom on this beach. There were a hundred things he’d not noticed before about this shoreline, including the driftwood sculpture some unknown artist had stuck in the sand at the foot of the little dune and the sandbars that were causing waves to break far out in the Broadkill.

  There was a wreck out there—in some fifty feet of water. It was marked on all the charts, known to every mariner. But the bay bottom was littered with wrecks and pieces of junk identified simply as “obstruction.” Some weren’t marked on any chart at all.

  With a happy squeal, the little boy tottered off his mother’s blanket and headed for the water as though on bird’s legs. The mother rose and followed, but allowed him his freedom. Burt was cheered a little by the boy’s happy splashing.

  Burt had telephoned the Air Force again, just as he had done a month before, calling one more time before setting about what he had to do. As with the doctor, he’d known exactly what they would say.

  The bastards.

  Westman was sitting out on the bridge wing, making observations of the river and bayside shoreline with binoculars. In an hour he’d seen nothing of particular interest. Once again the absurdity of their mission was impressed upon him, trying to protect every inch of the thousands and thousands of miles of United States coastline.

  He leaned back, letting his mind drift from duty to pleasanter thoughts. He felt very different this day—almost as young as Dewey.

  The lieutenant stepped out on the open bridge deck. “Just got a call on the radio.”

  “I heard,” said Westman, raising the glasses again.

  “Were you listening?”

  “Not entirely. Sorry.”

  “There’s a homicide. A woman down near Ocean City. Found her washed up in the St. Martin’s River down in Maryland by some golf course. Blond in a bathing suit, with a bullet in her head.”

  “Blond?”

  “I don’t think she’s anyone you know, Erik.”

  “Where’s the St. Martin’s River?”

  “Empties into Assawoman Bay, due west of Ocean City, just north of the Highway 50 causeway.”

  Westman sighed. “Doesn’t sound anything to do with what we’re after.”

  “Probably not. I can’t go there anyway. The waters of that bay are too shallow for the Manteo’s draft. And I’ve orders not to go south of the Delaware-Maryland line.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll drive.”

  “I’ll stop off at Cape May Station. We’ll be a while, though.”

  “She’ll keep.”

  Westman’s cell phone began ringing. “She won’t,” Dewey thought, but he said nothing.

  The realization occurred to Gergen with such sudden swiftness that it shattered his concentration on the nice thing Mary Lou was doing for him as he sat on the edge of the bunk in his cabin.

  “Shit!”

  “Bear?”

  He sat up, pushing her aside, reaching for his pants. “Forgot something. Something I gotta check. Fast. Tell Leonard I’ll be back tonight.”

  “Tell Leonard?”

  Gergen left her kneeling. He hurried up the companion-way as fast as he could manage, buckling his belt. The gas tank in the inflatable was full. He had it in the river in a minute.

  Elward had said the Feds had found some marijuana with all the high-priced stuff in the bilge. Only some. A few bags. Gergen had examined the contents of just one of the bags he’d found in the main salon of the Breezee B. If he had looked in some of the other bags, what might he have found? Elward had discovered a big haul of heroin in the bilge. Why not in the main saloon too—in all those drawers? The boat had been stolen for a drug run. A big-money run, Had to be. How could he have been so incredibly stupid?

  He might have actually scored ten or twenty times worth what he thought he had in those bags in the barge. Maybe a hundred times. Coming upon that sailboat could turn out to be the opportunity he’d been looking for all the years he’d been looking for big opportunities.

  When he finally hove to abreast of the scuttled barge downriver, more than an hour later, he idled the engine a moment, watching the boat traffic out in the river channel. Nobody seemed to be paying him the slightest attention.

  He waited a while longer anyway, trying to look like a fisherman. The sun was going down when he finally turned the craft toward the rusty hulk of the barge, which was barely visible lying there by the overhanging shore weeds.

  As he climbed aboard, everything looked as it had when they’d left it. They’d stashed the bags in what had been the barge’s anchor well, and in a big bin beside it. The covers to both were secured tightly.

  But now they weren’t. There’d been big iron pins through the hasps. Both were gone. One hasp was bent back. Gergen tried the metal cover. It was loose. He lifted it and flung it back.

  He peered into the darkness of the well, unable to see any bags.

  Of course, the plastic bags were dark too. The sunlight was nearly gone. It was hard to see much of anything down there.

  He returned to the inflatable and retrieved a flashlight from the equipment box. Back on the barge, he clicked on the light, took a deep breath, and then looked into the anchor locker again.

  Nothing but rusty chain. He turned in forlorn hope to the bin.

  There was only a rat. It stared back at him.

  Chapter 15

  With the wait for the Cape May-Lewes auto ferry and the crossing itself, Westman took some three hours to reach the Ocean City police station, only to be informed he had come to the wrong place.

  As the woman’s body had been found in waters belonging to Worcester County, the county sheriff’s office had primary jurisdiction. The OC cops directed Westman across Assawoman Bay to the county authorities, who were not overjoyed to see him but permitted him to view the body, which had been taken to a local hospital.

  She had been shot with a small-caliber weapon about three inches above the bridge of her nose. The round had likely been a soft-nose bullet, for it had made quite a mess of what lay behind the point of impact. Studying her face, he tried to imagine what sort of person she had been. The ring at her left nostril and the tattoos on her arms and ankles indicated she was probably no debutante.

  Though she had been wearing a bathing suit, her body did not look as though it had recently benefited from the cleansing effects of the ocean waters—or any waters.

  “Did you check for needle marks?” Erik asked the sheriff’s deputy who’d been escorting him.

  The man shrugged. Westman went ahead and performed the unpleasant task, surprised to find none.

  “This kind of stuff interest the Coast Guard?” t
he deputy asked.

  “This week, everything interests us.”

  Another call came just as Erik was returning to his car. A young man had come into the Ocean City police station, inquiring after a missing friend and, as an afterthought, mentioning he’d found blood on the balcony of the apartment they’d shared.

  Erik got an address, and drove directly to the place, deciding not to wait for the young man to come out and identify the woman’s body. Erik had little doubt that the ID would be positive.

  Ocean City and Maryland State Police detectives were abundantly on the scene at the apartment by the time he arrived, thoroughly combing through the rooms and amassing a first-rate collection of cultural artifacts emblematic of twenty-first-century American youth: A forensics specialist had taken samples of the blood and other gore on the balcony. The misshapen, expended bullet had been found in the wooden building wall, about five and a half feet above the balcony floor.

  Erik was an interloper here, and stayed on the periphery of activity, finally going out to the alley. He walked up and down it, looking to the woman’s balcony from different points. Finally, he went to the apartment building directly opposite hers, climbing the wooden stairs to the second floor.

  This was the most logical firing position. She’d been hit by someone shooting directly at her from the same level as her apartment’s deck. The other balconies along the alley were too far away for an accurate handgun shot and would have required an oblique line of fire. Erik imagined the woman staring intently at something happening on this side of the alley, something very compelling. Her assailant must have fired reflexively and quickly—and accurately.

  Not some angry boyfriend. Not some druggie settling a business score. The word came uncomfortably to Erik’s consideration. The shooter was a professional; someone very well trained.

  The rear door to the apartment Westman was standing before was locked, but the sliding one fronting its balcony was open a crack. He thought of swinging over to it, but quickly recalled what Payne had been able to do to him for having taken a few steps too close to the burned remains at that farmhouse.

  Leaning back against the stair railing, he got out his cellular phone and called Leon Kelly. The agent answered on the second ring. Erik could hear traffic in the background.

  “It’s Westman. I’m working a homicide in Ocean City.”

  “White female, twenty-five to thirty, fatal gunshot wound to the head. We saw it on the flash. But I hope you’re not trying to lag it to us. We’ve got our hands full. Headquarters thinks the farmhouse guys were whacked by accomplices. We’re working that crime scene pretty hard.”

  “I would detail someone to come look at this, if I were you,” Erik said. “I think the victim was a bystander who saw something she shouldn’t have. The perpetrator was a pro. There’s an apartment here that looks pretty suspicious and ought to be gone over by your best forensics people.”

  “Have you gone into it?”

  “Negative. If I did that, I’m afraid your Mr. Payne would try to have me reassigned to Point Barrow, Alaska.”

  “How good is the local law enforcement there?”

  “Routine homicide, they’d be fine. The needs here are pretty sophisticated. There are some tire prints in the sand. I’ve no idea what might be in the apartment.”

  “We’re at least an hour from Ocean City.”

  “Not by helicopter.”

  “You really think this is worth it?”

  “I think everything’s worth it.”

  “I’d have to take the matter to Payne.”

  “Just leave me out of it.”

  “You don’t want to look at that apartment?”

  “Negative.”

  “We need to seal the apartment.”

  “You’ll have to go through the OC police.”

  “I’ll talk to Payne.”

  “I’ll go sit at the bottom of the stairs and pretend to be resting my weary bones.”

  “Okay. And Erik …”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks.”

  Bear Gergen spent a fruitless few hours prowling the Delaware River in his inflatable, looking for the odd twenty-pound bag of marijuana someone might have left afloat. The exercise wasn’t entirely pointless. He found a half-dozen new places he could stash bulky valuables in the future—if he should ever again be so fortunate.

  In the meantime, he had to find some other means of cash flow. The old pilot’s undersea recovery now seemed very interesting. Bear could probably con the guy out of many thousands before he was done.

  Tying up the inflatable, he mounted the ladder and went aboard his tug. Finding no one topside, he came noisily down to the main cabin, and was hit on the top of the head with something heavy enough to knock him to his knees.

  Raising his arm to fend off another blow, he blinked, trying to comprehend who would be doing this to him, and why.

  The next strike came against his ribs, below his upraised arm.

  He brought the arm down, squirming and swiveling on his knees, keeping his head tucked defensively but trying desperately to see his attacker.

  Thump. Another hit, this on his right shoulder. A wasted effort, as Bear’s muscles there were as armor on a tank.

  “You goddamn sonofabitch!”

  It was Leonard. He had never done anything like this to Bear in all his life. Groping, Gergen reached out as the weapon came again. A baseball bat. It stung his hand but he was able to snatch it away, flinging it into a corner as he got to his feet. It was one of several bats Bear kept on the tug—mostly for dealing with competing salvage outfits.

  His cousin, wide-eyed and stoned out of his mind, now seemed a very small man indeed. Without deliberating long upon the matter, Gergen decided he didn’t need this many relatives. He quickly had one huge hand around Leonard’s throat. Propelling his cousin across the cabin and against the bulkhead, he raised his right fist, preparing to transform Leonard’s James Dean good looks into something more resembling a character in one of those gooey-alien science-fiction movies.

  “Don’t kill him!”

  Mary Lou had somehow pushed herself between them. She was still as naked as she’d been the night before and had a reddish purple bruise on her cheekbone, and some scrapes on the shapely arm she thrust up before Gergen’s face.

  Bear stepped back. “Why not?”

  “He thinks you were fucking me!”

  Thinks. A stretch for Leonard, but better, in the circumstance, than “knows.”

  Gergen lifted Leonard off his feet, prompting gurgling sounds and drool.

  “Get his gun,” Gergen said.

  Mary Lou pulled up Leonard’s T-shirt and reached behind his back, as space allowed, pulling out Leonard’s short-barreled .38.

  “And his knife.”

  She knelt down and lifted Leonard’s pants leg, pulling forth a six-inch-blade buck knife from his black leather motorcycle boots.

  “Now get outa here until I get his head back on straight.”

  She fled. Still holding Leonard high above the floor, Gergen leaned close—so near that his beard was brushing Leonard’s face.

  “You shit-for-brains junkie moron!” he said. “I wasn’t fucking your wife!”

  Gergen had heard the term “intellectual dishonesty,” and supposed this was it. But it had been good enough for a U.S. senator who’d been caught getting a naked rubdown from a beauty queen, not to speak of a U.S. President and a White House intern. No penetration. No sex. No infidelity. No technical justification for getting his hair combed with a Louisville slugger.

  He stared hard into Leonard’s now-frightened eyes.

  “If she’d been a virgin,” Gergen said, marveling at that ludicrous notion, “she still would be! Understand?”

  It finally dawned on Leonard how he could get his feet back on the deck and air in his lungs again.

  “Okay,” he burbled.

  Gergen let him down slowly, pleased that Leonard kept on sliding down the wall, end
ing up in something of a crumpled heap.

  “Then how come she was naked when I came back?” Leonard said weakly—his words cut off by a fit of coughing.

  “You tell me! She prances around here like she was getting paid for it. She was lying out on the deck, bare ass to the world, when three Feds came on board!”

  Leonard raised his head, a little more sanity in his expression. “Feds?”

  “Elward from Customs and two Coast Guard guys. You know what was in the bilges of that motor-sailor? A million bucks in heroin and cocaine!”

  Now Leonard sat up—all thoughts of Mary Lou gone.

  “Heroin and coke?”

  “In a bunch of bags we didn’t know about. In the bilges.”

  “A million?”

  “Million easy. In the bilges. It’s all your fault.”

  “What’re you sayin’, Bear? The bilges were under a lot of water. That boat was fixin’ to go down.”

  “I told you to make one more check below.”

  “Fuck you.”

  The relationship was back to normal. Gergen went to Leonard, offered his hand, and pulled him to his feet. His cousin, rubbing his throat, managed to stay erect.

  “I was on deck, not down here with Mary Lou. I was talking to the Feds. When they left, I went downriver to check on the barge,” Gergen said.

  Leonard’s eyes lost their focus. “Yeah?”

  “So I’ve got bad news.”

  “Bad?”

  “The stash is missing.”

  “What’re you sayin’?”

  “It’s gone. I don’t know whether we were seen by somebody or we picked somebody else’s hidey-hole with that barge or the Feds got it staked out, or what. But the shit is gone.”

  Leonard was staring blankly. “Gone?”

  “Gone! Ripped off!”

  “But we got a customer.”

  “Yeah. Too bad.”