River Run

by J. S. James

  The man’s six-foot-plus frame rose abruptly, tipping a glass of water and splashing it across the front of his chinos at the most strategic location. He followed with reflexive swipes that only spread the wetness.

  “Shit. Sorry. Yeah, I’m him. He.”

  So much for suave. She grabbed for napkins and helped dam the water at the edge of the table, choking back a laugh. Once they’d pushed the map aside and sopped up most of the wetness, she shook his moist hand and sat opposite him.

  “That your chauffeur in the yellow Hummer?”

  “Chauffeur?” Looking into his deep water-blue eyes, she had a fleeting sensation of being adrift and beyond sight of land. “Oh, Beezer. Jumped in the front seat, huh?”

  She nodded in recovery. “Retriever?”

  “Well, his mama was a purebred Lab and his daddy was … clever.”

  She covered her mouth and stifled a guffaw. Whatever was hidden in his past, Matusik seemed to have a certain comic charm.

  “Why Beezer?”

  “You must’ve seen that polar-bear nose on your walk-by. What else fits?” He smiled crookedly, shifting around in his seat. Inside, she commiserated. Clammy underwear was the pits.

  Enough small talk. She decided to take a side route, see if Matusik might volunteer something about the service record blanks. “Besides tanks and fins, I noticed a pile of wet suits in your vehicle. Ever dive in strong undertows? River current?”

  “Yeah. Coast Guard and some volunteer rescue assistance on the Snohomish River. But I wear a dry suit as a matter of course on winter boat runs. Best insulation going when the wind blows past you at forty or more.”

  She frowned to herself. Maybe it explained that hunter’s getup at the Octane Stop. She tried to question a man named Bates but he’d driven off in a hurry. No boat or trailer, just rows of five-gallon jerricans rack-mounted behind his old Jeep. Said he hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.

  Delia was set to bring up the Adriatic when a well-rounded waitress with a teased mullet stopped beside their table. She balanced a large serving tray as if it were an extension of her arm. “Jerzy Matusik, you heart-stopper, you. Where you been, cher?”

  He grinned, color spots showing over his cheekbones. “Here and there. Back in the Valley now. You look good as ever, Pixie.”

  “Aw, you’re sweet, hon. Be right back.” The waitress hustled off, stopping at another table.

  Matusik ticked his head toward the woman. “Pixie’s a transplanted Cajun. Bought into the place and added some real zingers to the menu. Couscous, bread pudding pancakes. Sometimes even smoked frog legs. Used to feed up Dad and me after our duck-hunting trips.”

  Frog legs. Delia held off from wrinkling her nose. Leaning forward, she set her forearms on the table and said the first thing that came to mind.

  “Matusik. Polish, right?” She winced inside. No take-backs on stupid.

  He just smiled. “Dad immigrated here and set up his medical practice in Silverton. I grew up hearing every ‘dumb Polack’ joke in the book. Learning they weren’t worth fighting over. You’re Latina, right? I imagine you’ve had similar experiences.”

  “Many.” He was and wasn’t hard to read, she thought. Fairly forthright but holding back. All business? She couldn’t be sure. Interested? Stop that.

  Glancing outside, he rubbed the back of his wrist under the cleft in his chin. “Saw you give my boat the once-over. What say we put it in the water after we’re done here?”

  Delia stiffened. Sat back, shaking her head. “Look, I don’t know boats from beehives. Yours has a front and a back and no holes in the bottom that I could see.” Time had not muted her memory or the nausea of just walking onto a docked ferry. “To be honest, I have never ridden in a boat and don’t intend to.” His smile disappeared when she tapped a subject-changing finger on the table. “I am here to decide whether you will be a help or hindrance to my homicide investigation, and then—”

  “Homicide?” His eyes got wider. And bluer. “Hey, I contracted with Sheriff Grice to scout the Willamette, help your department get a fix on some whacked-out military fugitive. Well, not him, per se—where he operates from. You mean he’s killed somebody?”

  “There’ve been two murders. No solid suspects, but I’ll get to that.” She brushed her napkin-wrapped tableware aside. “Back up a second. You said fugitive.”

  Matusik nodded. “If I heard right, Bastida’s on the U.S. Marshals wanted list.”

  Delia leaned toward him. “Grice named this ‘fugitive’?”

  “Robert Bastida.” He followed with a dismissive hand flip. “The Navy confirmed it was a trumped-up identity. They don’t know who he is for sure.”

  “The Navy.” Heat rimmed the tips of Delia’s ears as she flashed back on the sheriff pontificating from behind his desk. Taking her in with his powers of deduction.

  “Did Grice say who in the Navy?”

  “No, but when we got to trading stories about the Service, I gathered he used to be in close contact with Central American antidrug operations.”

  Trading stories. She wouldn’t mind hearing a straight story for a change, including Matusik’s abbreviated tour in Iraq. But it was Grice holding back on her, snowing her with “hunches” about an ex–special ops killer, pushing the military angle, that set her teeth grinding. She and Annie had wondered if he had some kind of side game going. It felt right, down deep. Then Matusik was part of it. Well, maybe only a pawn. Or here just to distract.

  And doing a good job of it. Already she’d missed part of what he’d said, rattling the map open and thrusting it in front of her. Something like, “Still need to find the guy, right? Well, I’m ready and available. Anytime except Wednesday evenings.”

  The satellite map featured a greenish ribbon of water snaking down toward her chest. It gave a vulture’s-eye view of the river sliding past somewhere outside their window. She liked paper maps, too. No batteries to run out. A yellow Ticonderoga number-four in his grip, Matusik bent over the map, underlining notations he must have made earlier. “So, here’s my take on this action. The search plan I ran past the sheriff includes locations I’ve pinpointed where I think—”

  “O-o-okay, I’m stopping this right here.” She aimed a gimme gesture at the pencil.

  A quizzical look passed over Matusik’s face, but he handed it over. She set the pencil aside, rolled up the map, and stuffed it into its pouch. With the deck cleared, she clasped her hands on the table and let a long silence reverse the cart with the horse.

  “Now, I need to get a few things straight.” She made it a point to speak in low, even tones. “Let me clue you in. First, this is a criminal investigation, not a search operation. Second, I don’t know why you left the Coast Guard or Navy or whatever, but you are now a civilian with zero law enforcement training.” A burgundy undercoating darkened the tan in his face. She didn’t let it slow her down. “And third, as acting senior detective, I run this investigation.”

  Pixie dropped by and rested the palm of her hand on the table. “I know what Jerzy wants. Hon, what can I fetch you?”

  Delia glanced up, her mouth tight with irritation. “Coffee’s fine.”

  “Oh chèr, you don’t need to be on no diet. How ’bout I tempt you with our lite special, café au lait and a plate of sugar-powdered beignets?”

  Lite? Bathed in Pixie’s infectious don’t-worry-be-happy warmth, Delia felt compelled to smile back.

  “Sounds very Louisiana, but no, just the coffee. Black.” She waited in silence until Pixie disappeared around the pony wall before fixing her attention back on Matusik. “Have I made myself clear?”

  “As a rock and a hard place.” His gaze was locked onto something outside the window.

  “What do you mean by that?” Those ocean-blues tracked back on her. She saw no annoyance or impatience in them. No deceit. His distress seemed genuine. He leaned closer, patting the table with the flat of his palms, fingers inches short of hers.

  “See, I’m fine with you
running things. Problem is, the sheriff was specific about what I need to get done. Mainly, carry out river recon runs until I find out where this guy goes home to roost, and without him tumbling to it. Also, I’m to keep Grice constantly in the loop.” Those broad, fabric-stretching shoulders rose and fell in a whatcha-gonna-do sort of shrug. “In short, he was clear about me answering to him.”

  She sat back and folded her arms, chewing pensively at her lower lip. Was this the same old crap? Was Grice just setting up a male buffer zone between them? Or was his side game somehow yoked to his black-ops-killer theory? Probably both. Matusik appeared truthful about his situation, and that was a good sign.

  “Sounds like what you and I have here is an old fashioned standoff.”

  He laughed. “Sure looks like we do. Rapiers? Pistolas at thirty paces?”

  Delia started to chortle, then clamped her mouth shut. What did she have to laugh about? Between the sheriff’s side-gaming and Matusik’s charm offensive, she hadn’t learned a damned thing about those inked-over paragraphs in his service record.

  * * *

  Not gonna happen in this heavy fog. Not on this river. Zack’s patience needle sank into the doubt zone. He shook the blood rush from his ears and nudged his hunting partner. “Hey, Charlie, we been standin’ behind this boat blind, staring at nothin’ but gray, for most of the morning. Whaddaya think?”

  His brother had flown in for Thanksgiving, and Zack had sunk his hopes into a decent hunt on the Willamette. One that might tip the scale on Charlie moving back, if he was reading him right. But would the local wildlife cooperate? A single flight? A pair of mallards? A lone teal, maybe? No such luck.

  Narrow by nature, Charlie’s dark eyes tightened to impish slits. “All right, I’ll give it a shot.” He spread the sides of his mouth, using his pinkie and pointing finger. His chest swelled.

  “No, I didn’t mean do your lame-ass—”

  “Fweet-fweet-fweet. Here, ducky, ducky!” Charlie’s booming clown call bounced around the socked-in backwater as he took in more air.

  Grinning, Zack pawed the Desert Storm boonie off Charlie’s head and mashed it into his puss, muffling a repeat performance. “Ah, shut the fuck up. We’ll hang around for another thirty. See if anything drops in on us.”

  Charlie swatted the hat against his thigh and settled the boonie back onto his shiny dome. “Man, here I am, takin’ red-eyes both ways just to spend time with my little bro. Does he respect my hunting acumen? My calling skills? Hel-l-l no.”

  Zack let that one go. They both knew who the real caller was in this family. If ever they had ducks to call.

  Charlie seemed to lapse back into his own thoughts. So did Zack.

  A dead quiet pressed down on them, slowing time and motion. Only leaves and sticks floated downstream into the little slough. Anchored decoys, barely twenty yards away, fuzzed in and out of sight. Those and the hazy, come-and-go shapes farther out that Zack formed with his mind’s eye and lost in a blink.

  Standing in a boat for hours tied up against a willow bank in chowder-thick fog, a guy started to imagine things. The crazy shit he’d seen and heard on the river these past weeks didn’t help matters. Torn-up boats. Antihunting nuts out burning blinds and cutting decoys loose.

  And then there was that goofball Grundy, yammering about a scuba-diving bogyman when Charlie and Zack had stopped to pick up doughnuts at the Octane Stop. What was up with that?

  His flat-bottom Weld-Craft lurched—Charlie shifting weight. Zack steadied the collapsible blind he’d mounted around the boat’s topside and waited for aftershocks. When his brother moved, everything moved.

  “Fifteen going on twenty, Zack. Still no bird action.”

  “Not so much as a stray widgeon.”

  The boat shuddered again. Charlie, scratching. “Seems like we’re the only ones out here, haired or feathered.”

  “Looking that way.” Nine times out of ten, a thick mist meant great hunting. All this fog had done for Zack was clam his skin like wet leather. “What say we give it five more and—”

  “Mark.”

  His brother’s whispered signal pumped a charge of adrenaline through Zack. Both of them automatically lowered into a crouch behind the blind. Fast wings beat high promise overhead. Zack hated getting skunked, almost as much as Charlie.

  Keeping his face down, Zack fumbled for one of the duck calls hanging from his neck. It was great seeing Charlie fired up and grabbing for his Browning over-and-under.

  “Give ’em a highball. So they know their buddies are down here.”

  Zack put the mallard tone to his lips and filled his cheeks with air. Starting at frantic hen, he followed the high note with a series of quacks that dropped in pitch and loudness, ending with fat-bellied feeder. Unseen wings whistled close overhead in the gray.

  They faded to nothing.

  Charlie straightened, still craning his head. “Try your come-back call.”

  Zack took another breath, blew a long, forlorn note—his version of a lovesick hen mallard. He waited, listening. The stillness dropped back in. He drew breath for another try, then held off, not knowing why but relieved that the flight had moved on. That Charlie might now be good and ready to collect their decoys and get off the river.

  The quiet whoosh of landing splashes filtered back through the heavy mist. The eight or so ducks had set down a good two hundred yards away. Maybe along the gravel bar out by the Santiam River.

  Charlie leaned his gun against a seat and shoved an arm inside his waders, scratching at his backside. “Shee-it. We get one flight and they land on the Santiam. Now they’ll drift down into the Willamette. What’d you do, blow your stay-the-fuck-away call?”

  Zack squinted sideways at his brother’s narrow eyes and tight smile, knowing the taunt was bogus. He lifted the lanyard from around his neck and held out the calls.

  “Here, bend over and blow ’em an ass-quack.”

  His brother snickered. “So long as you put it back in your mouth and blow the next call.”

  “Okay, if the reed ain’t burned out by then.”

  Zack and Charlie shared the stifled, wheezy laugh of duck hunters trying hard not to scare game away.

  The day fog closed in tighter than before, framing a world no more than a decoy’s toss in any direction. Zack thought about the thing that ate at him. “Ain’t heard no Lena and Ole jokes since you showed up on Mom’s doorstep.”

  His brother glanced down at his boot tops. Not a peep.

  “Know that other detective? Chavez?” Zack asked, breaking the silence. “She asked me to help her out. I even found that dead hunter’s pickup she was looking for.”

  “That’s great, Zack. Stick with it. You never know.”

  “You gonna stay in Minnesota?”

  Charlie sighed, adding to the mist. “Ah, hell. I dunno, Zack. Job’s not working out like I thought. I miss Oregon, a lot. Steelhead fishing … river hunting … all that.” He nudged Zack’s elbow. “Besides, Minnesota’s got some damn cold nights. Soon as I hit the sack, Ginny’s got her bare feet glued to my butt. She might as well strap on a pair of TV dinners.”

  Zack snorted, breathed in a little hope, and waited. He missed Charlie something fierce. And he sure didn’t want any more fucked-up hunting trips with his Joe College cousin.

  Charlie toed an empty decoy bag. “Sheriff’s still too pissed to talk with me, so I met with Harvey Schenkel. You know, my former supervisor? He’s recuperating from a truck mishap but thinks he’ll run for sheriff. Says I need to bide my time, that Grice is on his way out. If Harvey wins, I could be back by late spring.”

  Zack punched his brother in the shoulder. “Damn, Charlie. That’s fuckin’ great. I’ll come help you and Ginny with the move. Get you situated here, and we’ll go fish the hell out of those high-lake brookies. Later on, there’s sea-run cutts on the Siletz, or we—”

  “Whoa, whoa. Roll up your fish-and-game calendar there, little bro.” Charlie rubbed at his upper arms. “Nothing�
�s for sure, and I don’t want to jinx it.”

  “Won’t say another word, Charlie. So long as I know—”

  “Shh. Listen.” Charlie cupped a bare hand behind his ear. “Hear those quacks?”

  Turning down-slough, Zack heard only silence, the same roaring hush he’d been trying to shut out all morning. “Don’t hear much of anything. What say we bag it?”

  Charlie hiked up his waders and retrieved a pair of near-scorched gloves from in front of their propane boat heater. “Betcha that bunch paddled up this way.” Pulling on the gloves, he straddled the shore side of the boat and lowered one booted foot, testing the shallows for bottom. “Think I’ll stretch my legs. See if I can jump-shoot a greenhead or two.”

  Unsure why, Zack felt his skin prickle watching his brother lift the other foot over, snatch up the Browning, and ease down into the water. He couldn’t shake the notion that river hunting had gotten too risky. “When you move back out here, maybe we should look into one a those duck pond leases over by Baskett Slough. Flyway’s shifting, anyway.”

  Charlie looked up at Zack for a few beats, reading the silent language between brothers. “Tell you what. You collect the dekes, pick me up out on the point of this gravel bar, and we’ll jaw about it on the way to Mom’s.” He gave Zack a two-fingered poke in the knee, his voice climbing an octave. “Load up on summa dat stuffed toikey and gravy, eh, Moe?”

  Zack grinned, watching him break through thin shore ice and wade off into the willows. The old Charlie and his stooged-up Curly impressions were back—a damn sight better than that Scandihoovian claptrap he’d been spouting all fall.

  Charlie’s bulk faded into the fog. Zack called out using his best Three Stooges Moe voice. “Watch yourself. Don’t step in any postholes, ya big palooka.”

  Seconds later, Curly’s muffled answer drifted back.

  “Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.”

  17

  On that same morning nine miles downriver, Delia Chavez lingered in the Flapjack Corral, watching Jerzy Matusik struggle to keep his cool. It seemed her last-second preface—“Don’t know why you left the Coast Guard or Navy or whatever”—had struck a nerve. From his furtive glances, that glistening forehead in the morning coolness, she inferred he was braced for something.