River Run

by J. S. James

  Letting out a ragged sigh, she came back and faced the man. And her fate.

  “Who’s Jackie?”

  * * *

  Jackie wasn’t a girlfriend. Learning that had cost Delia a quick retreat to the Camaro, covering for the flush in her face, fueled by the deep-down feeling Jerzy had read her mind. Of course he’d have named his boat after Jacqueline Matusik, a mother who’d given him strength, loved boating, and died too soon.

  Delia led his Hummer and boat out of the Octane Stop and toward Riverview Park, her thoughts immersed in the sadness behind his explanation.

  The river dropped into view. Her gut roiled.

  Distraction over.

  The greenish-brown water looked heavy with silt and higher than just an hour ago. Beastlike currents swirled past the park’s launch ramp, prowling the banks for anything loose and unsuspecting.

  At the head of the ramp, Jerzy had already swung around and aligned his trailer for the back-down. He rushed around the boat, loosening and stowing straps. He seemed in a god-awful hurry.

  Why? Before she changed her mind? Her body tensed. She’d made the decision. No backing down. Except for the boat.

  She drove to a parking spot close to the bank. “It’s just a big old river,” she told herself as she strode down to the mud-caked edge of the ramp and stopped. And waited for the wave of nausea to die down. Keeping her head level helped.

  A blur passed on her left—Jerzy, backing his rig into the water, stopping when the current churned over the trailer’s wheel wells. His boat rocked as she swallowed on the acid taste in her throat, attaching her gaze to the row of far trees, the fields, the faraway hills. Anything not wet and moving. Not chewing at the mud-coated concrete.

  Now he was out, doing boat stuff right beside her.

  Stay steady, Chavez. Look straight ahead. No self-respecting cop pukes on her boat driver.

  “Hold this.”

  She felt something damp and ropelike stuffed into her hand. Her gaze riveted on the far shore, she dearly wished for blinders. He unhooked something else, shoved on Jackie’s bow, and disappeared.

  The Hummer’s door slammed. Its engine revved, and water sloshed as the empty trailer rolled up past her. Delia swallowed back more bile. She registered a free-floating boat out front at the instant a strong wrench snapped her arm out straight.

  The damp rope in her grip was a boat line, grown taut from a couple thousand pounds of riverboat tugging at the other end. Jesus. The man had left half his assets in her hands. And the Willamette wanted to steal them from her. As if it hadn’t stolen enough.

  “You slimy son-of-a-bitch.” The adrenaline of old anger flooded her system. Nerves hummed. Arm and stomach muscles tightened, smothering the queasiness. “Oh no, you don’t.”

  Delia clamped a tug-of-war grip on the line and reared back on the rope. The river surged past. Under the added strain, she gave way and almost fell. But refused to let go. Now in water to her calves, she set her feet, struggling to hold on. Pulling hard.

  Slowly, she got back inches, then more, then feet, hand over hand. Jackie’s bow nosed in past Delia’s hip, the railing within reach. She latched onto the watercraft, huffing and puffing, thanking herself for keeping up with her gym workouts. Thanking the strengthening ball regimen, too.

  She had won. A small thing, but it felt great to hear Jackie’s bow scrape dry land. Okay, soggy mud.

  Better yet, it got her past the nausea.

  She turned toward the slap of big feet on pavement. Jerzy, back from his parked vehicle.

  “Quite a tussle, isn’t she? Sorry about that; should’ve warned you.”

  She handed him the boat line. “You should have. Beezer?”

  “Better he stays in the Hummer for this trip,” he said, clambering onto Jackie’s bow deck. He produced life vests from a compartment and handed one down. “Coast Guard offshore jacket. Good as they come.”

  She took the vest and turned the puffy orange material over in her hands, a slightly altered flight attendant spiel running through her head—In the event of a water landing, strap this on, bend over, and kiss your ass good-bye. “Oka-a-ay, ri-i-ight.”

  “I know a ride up the Willamette doesn’t exactly thrill you, Detective.”

  Delia blinked, realizing she’d spoken out loud. She peered at him, then back at the vest. “Like I said, not a fan of moving water.”

  Holding up the flotation jacket by its shoulder webbing, she figured out what part of her went where, stepped into the two loops of fabric that seemed to go underneath, and slipped her arms through the appropriate holes.

  He jumped down and slid the bow farther up the launch apron. “Jackie’s very stable. Built for lumpy water. Safe as they come.”

  “Whatever.” Delia struggled with the front of the vest. “How do I get this damned thing fastened?”

  “Let’s have a look.” He stepped in close. Crouching, he bent sideways at the hips. “Thigh straps are about right.” Then he rose slowly, his hair smelling of rain forest and red cedar. “Need to loosen the chest straps a bit.” He was efficient, careful to touch the material and not her. “See? Clip-buckles in front. All set to go?”

  “Everything’s just ducky.”

  “Great.” Without waiting, he vaulted over the railing, arm-boosted her up, and motioned toward one of two seats behind the consoles at midboat. His seat, a sort of elevated captain’s chair, was bolted down behind a steering wheel and a nest of controls. Delia shuffled her way along the rocking center aisle, convinced an alien abduction would not seem half as unnerving.

  She’d barely settled into the passenger’s seat when a gear shudder and throaty engine rumble had her searching for a seat belt. Apparently, boats didn’t come so equipped. An earthy slither and dry land fell away. A backing turn and the aggravated water took them downstream. Another gear clunk, an engine grumble, and they plowed upstream at a slow churn. Helping her get used to being on the river, she guessed.

  Lotsa luck with that.

  Still gripping the chair, she swiveled sideways and canvassed the boat’s interior. Spare. Uncarpeted. Water sloshing over the floor of the boat. Gallons of it.

  “Hey. Captain. Is that rainwater, or is the river coming in?”

  He followed her point toward the back end. “Uh-oh.”

  The hair at the nape of her neck stiffened. “What do you mean, uh-oh?” Next came a rush of unspoken thoughts: We’re taking on water? We’re sinking? Get me the hell back to shore!

  He flipped a switch. “No worry. Happens now and then.” Something gurgled and a stream gushed from the side of the boat. “Forgot to put the drain plug back in. You take the wheel.” He jumped up and lurched rearward, leaving Jackie driverless.

  “Me? You’re kidding.” Dumbfounded, Delia darted glances between the empty chair on her right and the crouched man feeling for something down in the dirty influx.

  He answered without looking up. “No kidding, Detective. And shove the throttle ahead. We need to get up to planing speed. Run the rest of this water out before I reinsert the plug.”

  Delia scrambled into the captain’s chair, latching on to the steering wheel as if it were the safety bar on a roller coaster. “Where’s the throttle? What’s planing speed?”

  “Just press forward on that black-knobbed lever. Keep pushing until the bow lies down and we’re running on top of the water. Half ahead should do it. There you are, you little rascal.”

  A darting glance backward found him splayed on his stomach over Jackie’s back end, holding something not much larger than a wine bottle stopper.

  She eased the black knob ahead. The front end lifted. The boat seemed to wallow, so she shoved the lever up toward the halfway mark. The boat leveled out and Jackie shot forward, her bow carving swan wings out of the river’s surface. A counterclockwise nudge to the wheel and the boat banked leftward. A clockwise turn and Jackie skated off to the right, like a speed drift through a highway curve. Another quick look told her Jerzy was still wit
h her and seemed to know what he was up to.

  Okay, she could do this.

  Delia kept to the middle, getting the feel of the boat, not exactly disliking how the rows of cottonwoods on either bank swished past, how Jackie skimmed the river. The speedometer read thirty and felt like sixty.

  Jackie could get up and move.

  The level expanse of water was like a broad turnpike sans lanes or center line.

  A boat passed, running downstream. A following wave rolled under Jackie’s bow and slapped at her underside. Jackie didn’t seem to notice, not a bounce or even a roll. Jerzy was right about her being a stable boat.

  Running up the backbone of the beast was no less ugly, but no more scary than a high-speed chase. Driving Jackie helped. Got Delia feeling she could do her fucking job and survive the fucking river.

  Five minutes later, Jerzy plopped down into the passenger seat. “Plug’s in.” She started to get up. “No,” he said, “stay where you are. You’re doing fine.”

  She scrunched her bottom back into the seat, but kept an ankle curled around the chair post. They rode without talking, listening to the bass drone of the big Corvette.

  Knowing nothing about proper boat etiquette, she searched for something to say.

  “Good boat. Some hurry-up in that Vette?”

  Jerzy leaned across the aisle, pointed ahead, and grinned. “Fifteen, twenty minutes up to the Santiam confluence. Wanna make it eight or nine?”

  Delia chewed at her lower lip. She was out here and probably up a creek. Already survived a hole in the boat, and had gone far beyond scared spitless. River bad, speed good. Why the hell not?

  She cut him a glance, making sure he meant what he said.

  “That okay?”

  “Punch it.”

  The Willamette stretched out for a good mile or more. She settled the palm of her right hand over the throttle, hesitated for a beat, then rammed it. Jackie roared, setting Delia’s shoulders back into the chair. RPMs climbed toward six K and the speedometer needle pegged out. They were flying. Nervous as hell, but grinning all the same, she shot a look at Jerzy, who waved his ball cap in circles and yelled, “Yee-haw.”

  Cap reset, he motioned back with his thumb. “Love the rooster tail.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, impressed with the whitewater Jackie kicked out.

  Like a proud set of tail feathers.

  * * *

  Shy of a quarter mile up into the Santiam, they spotted a downed cottonwood, stretched out into the river just as Grundy had described. And wedged into the upstream fork of a limb, about six inches of moss-green rubber boot toe—possibly the waders Grundy’s pontoon boat anchor had torn a piece from. The rest of the solitary bootleg disappeared in the downstream current that dove beneath the thick tree trunk. Chugging slowly ahead, Delia couldn’t shake the sensation of a pair of eyes on them, scrutinizing their every move.

  “If you point her nose into the current, that’ll keep her steady,” Jerzy urged, heading for the back of the boat.

  She maneuvered Jackie into a position just a few feet above the downfall. She managed to hold her in place while he probed under the water with a gaff and tried to free the wading boots from the partially submerged limb. When that didn’t work, he instructed her to let Jackie drift against the upstream side of the tree. Delia did so and joined him at the back of the boat, her sixth sense still telling her they were being watched.

  “Somebody seems interested in what we’re doing.”

  Jerzy squinted at her, then glanced around, shrugging. “Hope he gets an eyeful. Ready for a little river tug-of-war?”

  Delia shrugged back, thinking she’d done that at the boat launch. Why not here?

  Shoulder to shoulder, they lay on their stomachs and stretched out over the stern. Delia took hold of the visible boot at the ankle and drew it toward her, feeling the thickness of flesh and bone inside rubber. The surging water numbed her hands, then her arms, while Jerzy continued to fish beneath the tree with the hooked pole.

  “Got something.” Teasing a second boot out from under the log, he grabbed it by the heel, let go of the boat hook, and applied a two-handed grip to the bootleg. “Now pull.”

  Together they reefed up. And got back resistance. One springy tree limb, coupled with a powerful undertow, had won back what little they’d gained. They tried again. Same result. Again. The same.

  “Wait. Keep hold of both boots,” Jerzy huffed at her, sitting up and swinging a leg over the side of the boat. From her awkward angle, she could make out only that he’d leaned low and grabbed on to the green limb. He gave it a ferocious, boat-rocking yank, breaking it off with a cracking sound that echoed across the riverbanks.

  After a struggle that, for her, entailed slippery grips, broken fingernails, and fleeting glimpses of light reflecting off something glassy on the far bluff, Delia and Jerzy had their catch in the boat—a grisly one. No tree snag could have made that kind of neck gash. Or frozen the bloated expression of horror on the dead man who filled those boots.

  21

  That night Delia pummeled the steering wheel, laughing her head off as she herded the Camaro toward home and a warm bed. The song title she’d just thought up—“Damage Control Hustle”—was so funny. A perfect little ditty for the shoddy diversion Grice had pulled off after her Santiam body-find.

  Time and distance and fatigue had burned all the aggravation away. Dropped her into the late-night zone where everything was funny. Grice was funny. Castner was funny. After a hellish long day, unfunny was funny. Especially the Los Lobos–style rock tune she’d invented to keep from falling asleep on the road:

  Don’t need no damned confession

  Don’t need no smokin’ gun

  Just collar a tweaker with no muscle

  And do the damage control hustle

  A second verse floated out there in the dark, like so many cartoon-balloon questions that refused to rhyme: Need to give the media a bone? Keep a lid on a multiple-murder case? Put a damper on a stakeout in a cop-killer manhunt? Arrest somebody. Anybody will do.

  Gravel spanked the wheel wells. Delia shook off the drowsies and corrected for drift on a country road where driveways looked alike. Reach hers and she could close her eyes, and sit there.

  Whatever the sheriff’s side game, he’d sure as hell kept the play in his court. Trouble was, five hours of interrogation sprinkled with corroborating calls to Elmer Grundy’s girlfriend, a hunting acquaintance, and a Colonel Sharps of the Oregon National Guard had convinced Delia Grundy was wrong for those murders. He alibied out on the first three homicides, and was unlikely to have reported the location of the last if he’d done the killing.

  Yet at the sheriff’s insistence, she’d left the guy in holding, scared half to death over his pending arrest and booking for criminal homicide. Left him there after a shout-down where Grice cut her off. He aimed to use that brain-fried fisherman as a tool—announce he had a suspect in custody to make Bastida drop his guard. Meanwhile, she and Jerzy were to pussyfoot around every river dock and boathouse. And if they found what they were looking for, pull back from apprehending a stone-cold killer, all because that überwarrior might have top-secret weaponry stashed away.

  That’ll work. Until body number five turns up.

  She eased off the gas, wishing for toothpicks to prop her eyelids open.

  The more her weary brain gnawed at the sheriff’s rationale for slinking around, the more dog-eared it got. Dammit all to hell, she was a full-fledged arm of the law, not a skip-tracer for some bail bondsman.

  That had been just before midnight, when Delia’s butt was dragging the floor tiles and her brain was mush. Still mush.

  Her head dipped and rose. Shaking it off, she braked and spun the wheel. The Camaro lurched right and stopped in her driveway, of all places. She knew it was hers because of the silvery-red cat eyes glowing from her front porch.

  So funny.

  Killing lights and noisy engine, she sat there aching to cl
ose her eyes for a minute. But pet duty howled. She stepped out, feeling shoulder bumps against her calves. Only the tink of chrome exhaust headers and the loose-muffler rattle of Clawed’s purr box disturbed the country quiet.

  “Hey, cat. How was your day?”

  Yeo-yeolph.

  Rolph?

  She smiled. “Thanks for asking. Mine started as a toilet swirly and ended in a shit storm.”

  She stumbled toward the house. Halfway to the front door, a motion sensor triggered an outside spotlight. For once her porch was clear of headless gifts.

  “Whatsa matter, couldn’t find one measly field mouse to draw and quarter?”

  Meowlph.

  Delia barely had the door unlatched when Clawed wedged inside and disappeared into the kitchen. Crunching sounds fractured the cold stillness as she collapsed onto her IKEA corner sofa and let her eyes go shut. Only then did she notice her body was in motion. Up and down, side to side. Boat motion, a souvenir of her water adventure. The whole house seemed adrift. She opened her eyes to the dark. The pitching and yawing didn’t stop. Not funny.

  She sat bolt upright. Would it ever stop? Was this the Willamette taking revenge? A warning that it intended to take more? And who was that watcher? She snapped on a table lamp and peered around. Relief seeped in. The room was rock-steady. No high-water mark ran across the framed jungle prints on the far wall; the Santiam didn’t gush in at her from the bedroom hallway; the big-leaf floor plant she couldn’t identify wasn’t in danger of getting carried away on river currents. Only death by neglect.

  So what in God’s good name had possessed her to tell Grice they needed to stake out the river? Her unspoken proviso was him agreeing to involve Marion and Linn County marine patrols. That was going to be her bid, but he’d nixed the idea. Maybe it was for the good. He might’ve told her and Jerzy to go ahead, but do it on her own.

  Clawed joined her, sprawling across her lap like he owned her.