by J. A. Kerley
“It’s outside our frame of reference,” I finished. For a moment we looked into one another’s eyes. She swallowed and looked away.
“Have you told your ex-girlfriend to watch out for the Kincannons?”
“Not yet. I want to study them first. Closely.”
“Don’t take long. They’re like quicksand. She could get sucked into something she doesn’t understand.”
“Ms Danbury looks for things she doesn’t understand and throws herself into them. It’s what made her a good investigative reporter. If I’m going to tell her to stay away from her new boyfriend, I’m going to have to explain why.”
Clair spun the cocktail glass in her fingers for a few seconds, stared at the action, mulling over a thought.
“I always wondered why you never introduced Ms Danbury to me.”
“I always meant to, Clair. I don’t know why I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
She studied the glass again. Set it on the railing. “It bothered me that you didn’t introduce us. A lot, to tell the truth.”
“Why?”
Something shimmered in her eyes. The breeze slipped through her hair as she stared toward the horizon.
“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “Nonsensical.”
“Tell me, Clair.”
She turned to me. I realized her eyes weren’t blue. They were beyond anything that simple.
“I felt left out,” she said.
“Left out?”
“I said it was stupid. It’s just that …we’ve been through some strange events together, Carson. Two years ago, when my life was falling apart, you were there. If we hadn’t talked in my garden on that terrible day, I would never have faced my vanity and insecurities, the forces that had moved me for years. I might still be trapped in that life.”
“It had nothing to do with me, Clair. It was you that stood up to –”
She put her finger against my lips. “I could have retreated into the known and the safe, or jumped across the divide to a new world. I only jumped because you expected me to, Carson. I jumped because you believed I had the strength. I’m here now, safe on another shore, because of you. There was a reason you were in the garden that day.”
“There’s a reason we both were.”
She started to respond, but I saw her mouth falter, not finding the language, the point of reference. Her lips were exotic petals drifting in water. My hands started to rise to her form.
And like Clair’s lips, my arms faltered, drifted back to my sides. I turned my eyes from her face, mumbled, “Can I get you another drink?”
“No thank you,” she said, rubbing her eyes, like they were worn. “I didn’t realize I was so bushed by the week. I think I’d better go.”
“Of course,” I said. “We’ve both had some long days.”
“We can finish our talk later. Maybe get together for dinner next week. A nice seafood place.”
“That’d be good.”
I followed her inside. She picked up her purse, slung it over her shoulder, went to the door. I remained in the center of the room, hearing a roaring, like the waves had advanced fifty yards and were breaking against the pilings of my home.
Clair turned. Her eyes took a moment to rise to mine.
“Goodbye, Carson,” she said. “Take care.”
“Later,” I said.
The rains gathered in the west on Sunday, what one forecaster called “the last blast of spring”, set to roll through. I saw the system on the weather radar, lines of storm cells rolling in from south Texas and Mexico like ragged green ghosts. I lay in bed most of the day, half-heartedly poring over Rudolnick’s pages. Harry called at six; he’d been doing the same.
“I finished my look-see on Rudolnick’s case histories. No more pages tucked into magazines. Nothing more on the guy that scared him. Nothing on Harwood.”
“I got about a quarter of a box of Rudolnick’s files left over here, Harry. You’re free to read through them, you want.”
Harry grunted.
“How about you finish them up and I’ll drop by later to grab them. Get ’em back into safekeeping. If I never read another psychiatric case history it’ll be too soon.”
I glanced out the window: chop in the waves from the wind, but little more than scudding cumulus above. Larger pleasure boats were out; the big white Bertram rolling slowly a quarter-mile out. I wondered if it was a charter. Tourists loved dolphin cruises. My body felt the need for a tour across the water, but via kayak.
First though, there was my homework. I sighed, unboxed the last of Rudolnick’s files, set them on my table. Pressed my palms against my temples and read.
Harry arrived close to eight, brushing mist from his hair. I’d finished my Rudolnick files and found nothing else exciting. I had just changed into swim trunks. The rough weather was predicted to last several days and I wanted to get a last run in before the storm arrived.
Harry looked at my swim gear.
“You just got in, I hope.”
“Heading out. I need it.”
“Carson …”
The local cutaway popped on the tube and I made a final check of the Doppler, studying the direction of the clouds on the time-lapse replay.
“I’ve got to get out there for a bit, Harry, clear my head.”
“Look at the damn clouds, Carson. They’re a wall.”
I looked through the deck doors to the horizon. It looked like war being waged between earth and sky, vertical mountains of indigo smoke lit by jitters of internal lightning. I’d be cutting it close, but I needed the water and the exertion. I’d awakened at three a.m., thinking of my conversation with Clair, and had almost gone to the kayak, sense finally prevailing.
“They’re moving almost parallel to the shore right now, Harry; trouble for Florida, not for me, at least not for another hour. I’ll be back and on my second beer by then.”
Harry shook his head. He would have made a good Daniel Boone, a lousy Thor Heyerdahl.
“I’ll have a scotch here; keep an eye out. When you get back, I’ll take the files to storage.”
“I’ll be fine, bro,” I assured him. “Go home and play some tunes, blow out the jets.”
A murmur of thunder blew in with the wind. Harry grunted, headed for the door, flicking a goodbye wave over his shoulder.
I fought hard past the breakers, putting burn in my shoulders, a rasp in my breathing. Salt stung my eyes. Flying fish jumped my boat. A half-mile out, I stopped paddling and stretched my back.
The breeze shifted direction, carrying the scent of rain and ozone, and I knew it was time for that beer. Twilight had almost deepened into night, and I spun to the pinpoint light of my deck. After a dozen strokes I became aware of a light at my back, behind it the burr of a wide-open motor.
I saw a bow bouncing. Bearing down on me.
I cut at a right angle, but seeming to sense my evasion, the craft angled my way. I waved the paddle above my head like a pennant, idiotically yelling, “Stop!”
I dove overboard and pulled hard toward bottom. The thud of the boat hitting my kayak reverberated through the water. The screw slowed as the craft spun in a tight circle. I surfaced, stroked to the side of a thirty-foot Bertram.
Light struck me, a circle of white. I looked into its brilliance and turned away. A rope ladder tumbled over the side. I pulled myself up the ladder, light blazing in my eyes, the boat rocking in the waves.
“Easy with that light,” I said, climbing into the craft. “It’s blinding me.”
“I was afraid we were going to miss you,” said a voice from the helm.
“Miss finding me in the water?”
“Miss hitting you just right. I haven’t driven a boat in a while.”
I froze and looked into the face of the man at the helm. A videotape honed into resolution: Crandell. He was grinning.
“Howdy, Carson,” said a voice beside me, strangely familiar. I turned.
Tyree Shuttles.
I spun to dive from the boat
, but an arm encircled my neck and threw me to the deck. Something burned hot in my bicep and my mind turned to water and washed me down a hole in the deck.
Crandell’s grin followed, like the Cheshire Cat tumbling through the dark.
CHAPTER 38
“I’m not going to believe it,” Clair Peltier said. “You people are simply mistaken.”
Her hand shook as she let the curtain fall back into place. She walked to Ryder’s bedroom, closed the door. Outside was a Coast Guard truck, a battered and bent red kayak roped in the bed. It was ten a.m., the succeeding bands of storm now in their thirteenth hour.
“Where was the kayak again?” Harry Nautilus asked.
“Washed up on Fort Morgan beach, just south of the point.” Lieutenant Robert Sanchez was twenty-seven and wrote left-handed on a clipboard. “It was a strong storm, Detective.”
“He was an expert in the things. Kayaks.”
“Did he wear flotation, sir?” Sanchez asked. “On a regular basis?”
“No,” Harry Nautilus admitted.
“We have a team scouring the area, walking the beach. We had boats out, but weather made us pull them. The choppers were grounded as well.”
“Are you looking for a swimmer? Or a body?” Nautilus’s voice was matter-of-fact, a professional talking to a professional.
“The wind might have blown him across the mouth of the Bay, toward Fort Morgan. Into the ship channel. There were several freighters in and out of the bay last night. Currents at the point are powerful. I once heard a diver describe them as freight trains under the water. There’s debris down there, wrecks, things to get hung up on.”
“I see,” Nautilus said, his voice a whisper.
Sanchez cleared his throat. “Pardon me, Detective, but why would your friend go out in a kayak knowing a storm was blowing in?”
“He made it through his childhood. Sometimes it made him think he could make it through anything.”
Sanchez nodded politely, like he understood. A blast of wind shook the house, screamed across the windows. The lights muted to brown, flickered, returned.
“As soon as the storm lets up, we’ll go back out, Detective. There’s another heavy storm fifty miles out, but we might get a chopper up for a half-hour.”
“Thank you,” Nautilus said, wondering if the search was little more than a formality.
“Would you like for me to leave your friend’s kayak, sir?” Sanchez asked. “Or I can haul it away, if you want.”
“Leave it,” Clair Peltier said from behind the bedroom door, her voice breaking. “And get that goddamn helicopter in the air.”
CHAPTER 39
I had been swimming underwater for days, through green-black water so mossy it abraded my skin. Occasionally I’d see wobbles of light on the surface and swim that direction. Once there, the surface bent from my outstretched hand as I tried to thrust myself into the world of light and air. Yet I found I could float just beneath the luminous gel, hearing snatches of conversation from the air world…
How long will he be here?
He’ll be gone soon.
What do we tell the others?
Who gives a shit?
After the voices had floated away in the current, I again reached to the glimmer. My hand sunk in to the wrist, then elbow. Inch by inch, like climbing from a wet shroud, I wriggled from the sea, then lay for what seemed hours trying to catch my breath.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a pink balloon floating above my head. It bobbed back and forth. The balloon had a balloon face and the face was smiling. It was a happy balloon.
“Where am I?” I asked the balloon.
“You’re in heaven, mister,” the balloon answered.
Harry Nautilus stood at the threshold of Carson Ryder’s home, hand on the knob. He heard rain on the other side of the door. He turned to Clair Peltier, a question mark in his eyes.
She shook her head. “I’m not leaving. I’m going to wait right here.” She walked to the window yet again.
I missed something, Nautilus thought, studying the distraught woman from the corner of his eye. Or maybe it was so recent…There was always something between them. A subcurrent.
He said, “It’s a good idea, Doc. Waiting.”
“I read about people who’ve floated for days, hanging on to something. Remember last year, the guy whose boat went down? He got picked up by a freighter. But the freighter was heading to Galveston. It was two days before the guy got back to land.”
Nautilus saw Clair Peltier realize Carson’s rescue would trigger an immediate radio call advising of his safety.
“Shit,” she whispered.
“All sorts of things can happen,” Nautilus said. “Good things.”
Clair walked to the deck doors. The next line of storms gathered at the horizon, purple clouds dragging tendrils of lightning. Wind blew in hot bursts, the waves gray and ridged with foam.
Clair’s eyes went wide. “Someone’s at the door, Harry.”
She ran to the front door and yanked it open. Nothing but rain in rippling sheets.
“I know I heard it. Knocking.”
Nautilus said, “It’s the rain on the roof.”
Then Nautilus heard it. Faint, at the edge of hearing. Coming from outside. He followed the sound into the rain, down the steps, under the stilted house. Nothing. Then the wind gusted and Nautilus saw the red kayak, curved, scarred, rocking in its rack with the wind.
“Harry,” Clair yelled from the stoop.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “The wind.” He stared at the kayak.
A minute later he was standing in the rain, trying to push the boat as far into his old Volvo wagon as he could manage, binding it to the passenger seat with a rope. It protruded six feet from the rear gate, but was secure.
“Harry!” Clair called from the door. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not sure.”
He climbed into the car and drove into the whistling gray.
I had closed my eyes against the vision of the balloon and tumbled beneath the surface of the green water, deliriously happy. Down here, below the surface, was where I knew Clair. A world where everything would make sense had our minds the language to comprehend its logic and order.
Choonk…choonk…choonk
A rhythmic sound caught my attention. I kicked and spun in the depths, trying to localize the sound. No…not a sound. A sensation. Something tapping on my knuckles. I opened my eyes carefully, half-expecting them to flood with seawater. But they opened into air, dry and cool.
The tapping on my knuckles again.
My head seemed to rotate on an axis, and a round pink face floated into view. The eyes were blue and interested. There was a smile that seemed slightly off-kilter. It was the face of a child. My vision sharpened, saw a beard line; not a child, a grown man.
“Who are you?” I asked. My words seemed to come from somewhere beside me. From the edge of a pillow, its case white and crisp.
“Freddy. What’s your name?”
“Carson.” It was the only thing I could say with certainty.
“Want to meet my friend, Carson?”
“Give me a minute, Freddy. I’m just waking up.”
“Miss Holtkamp said a minute is sixty seconds. One…two…three…”
I took several deep breaths, noting my chest wouldn’t expand completely. With each breath my awareness seemed to rise, as if air drove out the dark. What is happening? Where am I? Think. Analyze. Survey.
“Fifteen…sixteen…”
A room. Blue walls and ceiling. Fifteen by fifteen or so. Wide door leading out to a hall. Green tile floor. A window to the side. Are those bars? Daylight. A smell of disinfectant…
“Thirty-one…thirty-two…”
Chest restrained somehow. Belt? Rope? Hands, feet, no motion. Sense of pain at the wrists, compression at the ankles. Mouth dry. Oh God, there’s an IV shunt in my hand! Fight the fear…study, measure, analyze…Music in the air, low volume. Electric piano,
sax. Heavy bass line. Then a blare of horns. Funk music, Bootsy Collins maybe.
“Fifty-nine and sixty! Want to meet my friend, Carson?”
Friend? I shot a puzzled eye toward the door; no one there.
“Uh, sure, Freddy.”
The guy pulled his arm from around his back. There was a cloth puppet on his hand, worn almost bare, a nondescript and cartoonish dog with floppy brown ears, plastic eyes with floating, black-button pupils, and a lolling felt tongue. Freddy made wet sounds, opening and closing his hand on my arm, like the puppet was gnawing or licking.
“Puppy likes you.”
“That’s great. Can you help me, Freddy? My arms are tied or something. Can you untie them?”
The puppet stopped licking and disappeared behind Freddy’s back. He frowned. “That’s not green. It’s red.”
“What?”
“When your arms are like that it’s because you did something red. They don’t come loose until you’re green again.”
Red equals bad; green, good?
“Is it, uh, red to have a drink of water, Freddy? I’m very thirsty.”
He shook his head and giggled, like I’d just told a great joke.
“There’s no color in drinking, Carson; it’s just drinking.” He padded away, leaving me alone with the music, just at the edge of hearing. Freddy returned seconds later with a plastic cup held in the puppet’s mouth.
“Puppy brought you Kool-Aid. Purpleberry.”
I found I could wriggle a little bit higher, and the head of the bed was elevated several inches as well. I opened my mouth.
“It’s raining purpleberry,” Freddy said, dribbling sugared water into my mouth.
“Thanks, Freddy.”
“You’re welcome, Carson.”
“Freddy? Could you tell me where I am?”
He told me. It was the second time I’d heard that answer today.
CHAPTER 40
I drifted off again. My dreams were dark and inchoate, whether the result of my situation or drugs, or both, I could not tell. I dreamed of two balloons bobbing in an indigo sky, one light, one dark. They floated above and around me. I knew I was an object of interest.
