by Janet Dawson
“The mutilations began in June. You know about eight birds so far. Marsha Landers said one bird was found August eighteenth, the same day Ariel saw the sea lions. The day after the Marvella B supposedly went back to Santa Cruz, sailed by Lacy and Frank. We know Frank was suspected of mutilating pelicans a few years back. As for Lacy, I wouldn’t turn my back on the woman. What if the two of them have been hurting the birds to divert attention from their dumping scheme? Remember, Marsha said she hadn’t focused on Ariel’s report about the sea lions because she was occupied with the pelicans.”
Donna swore under her breath. “How would we prove something like that?”
“Check the dates the pelicans were found. Then go back through the records at Beckman Boat Works, and see if Lacy sailed boats to different ports on or around those days. Better to catch them in the act, though. Just as I’d rather catch them with those paint cans still aboard that sailboat.”
“Otherwise you can’t prove it,” Donna said.
I nodded over the rim of the coffee mug. “Maybe not. Norm Gerrity and I spent a lot of time on the phone yesterday, pretending that we had a few barrels to get rid of. We smoked out a guy in Sunnyvale who said he could ‘deep-six the stuff in Davy Jones’s locker.’ That phrase has ocean disposal written all over it. When we leaned on him we got some details. He trucks it over the mountains to Santa Cruz, reportedly looking for people with boats who are interested in making some ready cash. When Ryan Trent looked into Lacy’s finances, he discovered she’d bought a place in Santa Cruz. My guess is she’s using it as a holding facility. I’d really like to catch her red-handed. That would make it so much easier.”
Donna was silent for a moment. “You think Lacy killed Ariel, don’t you?”
Before I could answer, the boat rolled and the coffee mug went flying from my hand. Cleaning up the spill was the least of my worries. I made a dash for the head and retched over the toilet, tears of misery springing to my eyes as the contents of my stomach came up. When I finally flushed the toilet and hauled myself into an unsteady upright position, Donna stood there with a dishcloth that was as wet and wrung out as I felt. I took it from her, mopped my face, and tried to smile.
“It’s just as well I got that over with.”
Donna laughed. Then Bobby called down from the wheelhouse, a note of excitement in his voice.
“Jeri, Donna, get up here.”
We scrambled for the ladder.
Forty-two
WE’D ONLY BEEN BELOW FIFTEEN OR TWENTY MINUTES but in that time the edge of the sun had dipped into the fog layer. Now the orb was a golden half circle suspended in the gray haze, staining the sky above with yellow as the sea below turned dark. I looked in the opposite direction, for a glimpse of land. There I saw twinkling lights too low to be stars, layered here and there in different concentrations and intensities. Except for that link to solid ground, I saw nothing but water and, above that, a sky that was already dark with night. I shivered. Now that the sun was gone it had cooled considerably.
“Did someone spot the Windrunner?” I asked, turning to Bobby. The diminishing daylight had raised my anxiety to a sharp pitch. We were running out of time.
“Maybe,” Bobby said. “A research ship out of Moss Landing. They radioed the Coast Guard. Saw a sailboat, northwest of where the party boat saw one. We’re closer than the cutter.” He grinned. “And we’ve got plenty of help.”
“What kind of help?” Donna asked.
“Uncle Dom’s been on the horn. Sal says it was all they could do to keep the old man from coming with them. So Uncle Dom and one of the other old fishermen have been calling skippers in Monterey, Moss Landing, Santa Cruz, and Half Moon Bay.” Bobby slapped the wheel “We’ve got this coastline covered.”
I smiled at the picture of Uncle Dom, ready to climb aboard the Bellissima. “That gives us a better chance of catching up with the Windrunner. Good thing everyone’s willing to help.”
“Hell, these are our fishing grounds.” Bobby’s face turned grim as he looked out at the waves surrounding the boat. “It’s hard enough to make a living at this business without some damn fool poisoning the ocean, killing the fish.”
“I just hope they don’t spook Lacy,” Donna said with a frown, her eyes on the sun’s downward progress. The glowing edge still visible in the fog was even narrower now. Soon it would disappear entirely.
Bobby nodded toward the radio, now crackling with transmissions, in English, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and the language of the newest immigrants to fish these waters, Vietnamese. Bobby identified the boats. A purse seiner from Moss Landing, a lampara from Santa Cruz, a salmon boat from Half Moon Bay, a trawler in the waters south of Año Nuevo, all hunting for the Windrunner, instead of anchovies, salmon, or squid.
“We’re setting the purse,” Bobby said, tossing his head back toward the stern where the Nicky II’s nets lay furled on the deck. “Soon we’ll draw it tight, and we’ll have our fish.”
“Unlike squid, this fish will fight back,” I warned him. “Better get your rifle.”
Bobby looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Here, take the wheel. Just hold it steady.”
He might as well have asked me to dance naked on the flying bridge. Gingerly I stepped up to the helm of the Nicky II and grasped the wheel, conscious of the powerful engines whining below my feet. It wasn’t as though I were going to run into anything. As far as I could see there was nothing around me but sky and water. The thin gold line on the western horizon was all that remained of daylight. Everything else was dark blue water, waves constantly moving and shifting and rolling.
I tightened my grip on the purse seiner’s wheel. I remembered those sea stories I’d heard Uncle Dom tell about killer waves that could leap high, suddenly obliterating puny vessels on the ocean’s surface. Old salts like Uncle Dom and Bobby no doubt thought it was calm tonight. But I was a fervent and confirmed landlubber. Even the slightest swell alarmed me.
I glanced back, anxiously looking for Bobby. He came out of the captain’s stateroom, which sounded far grander than the cubicle with a bunk that it was. In his right hand he carried a rifle, a box of shells in his left. He sat down at the chart table and loaded the weapon. When he finished, he handed the rifle to Donna and moved back to the wheel. I eagerly relinquished it to him.
“See, that wasn’t so hard,” he said, poking me in the ribs with an elbow. “How you feeling, cuz? Still seasick?”
“No.” I shook my head, surprised. “Not anymore.” Not since my hasty dash for the head. “Don’t talk about it. You’ll jinx me.”
“You sound as superstitious as Uncle Dom.” The radio came alive again, with a burst of Italian. I understood a few words, enough to know that the speaker was probably one of the Ravellas aboard the Bellissima. Bobby listened, then picked up the mike, responding in the same language as he consulted the charts. He looked up and frowned, scanning the water all around us. Another voice came on the radio, this one in English. The lampara from Santa Cruz, Bobby reported. Both vessels were heading for the area where the research ship had seen a sailboat.
“We should be getting close,” Bobby said, his hands moving over the chart. “We should intercept them right about here.”
“Where are we?” I asked.
Bobby pointed at the chart. We were roughly in the middle of Monterey Bay, northwest of the harbor we’d left and almost due west of Moss Landing. The boat rolled on the swells but to my amazement I felt no nausea.
“We’re close to where I thought the sailboat might be,” Bobby said. “But I’m not picking up anything on the sonar.”
“If it’s the right boat.” Donna leaned over and looked at the charts. “Maybe they’re running without lights.”
Lights. The only ones I could see were right here on the Nicky II, which meant we were visible to the sailboat we were trying to locate. Outside the wheelhouse it was so black I couldn’t tell the difference between the water and the sky. The last thin edge of sunlight slipped
from view. To the east, where land curved around Monterey Bay like a reversed C, I saw lights sprinkled here and there along the coast. There were no other boats nearby, at least no mast lights visible to my eyes. How could anyone find anything on all this water?
Too late, I thought. Now that it was dark Lacy Beckman would dump her cargo. I shook my head, staring out at the void. “I don’t see any lights.”
“Time to provide some,” Bobby said.
He told me to take the wheel again and hold it steady. Donna propped the rifle in the corner near the hatch leading to the captain’s stateroom. Then she and Bobby left me alone in the wheelhouse, heading out the port hatch and down to the lower deck at the stern. I gripped the wheel of the Nicky II and felt the throb of the engines below. Then the boat hit a trough. My nerves screamed like a high-pitched violin and my gut danced to the discordant music. I hoped Bobby was coming back soon. Very soon.
Suddenly the ocean around me turned unnaturally bright. The halogen lights Bobby and his crew used to attract squid were rigged all around the Nicky II’s deck. Now they shone out on those dark rocking waves. A long way in front of me and to port I saw light reflect from something. The hull of a boat? The waves shifted and it disappeared, then glinted again.
“We got something.” Bobby appeared suddenly at my side, his words more confident than my thoughts. He looked out at the object that kept appearing and disappearing in the swells, then pointed to the sonar. Now the object was showing at the edge of the range.
He turned the wheel. The bow of the Nicky II sliced the water between us and the object, eating up the distance. I reached for a nearby set of binoculars and joined Donna where she stood, at the hatch on the port side. I squinted through the glasses as we drew closer to the object. It resolved itself into a shape, a sailboat tossing on the waves, sails furled, its bow pointed toward us. There were no lights showing. I couldn’t see any identifying marks on the hull. Nor did I see any sign of people aboard.
Donna took the glasses from me and looked at the sailboat. “Can’t tell if it’s got a center cabin,” she called to Bobby. “Not at this angle.”
“Did you figure out what we’re gonna do, cuz?” Bobby asked as we bore down on the sailboat, its bow on our port side. “Or am I supposed to ram it?”
“We need to board it,” I told him.
“Shit, you don’t ask for much, do you?” Bobby shook his head. “That’ll take some doing.”
“I have faith in you.”
Donna handed me the binoculars and I slung the cord around my neck, peering through the glass again as the other vessel loomed closer. I still didn’t see any movement or light. Was it the Windrunner? Was it adrift? A sudden awful thought occurred to me. What if Lacy and Frank had dumped the cargo, then transferred to another boat to make their getaway? What if I was altogether wrong and they’d used another vessel?
I let the binoculars drop, so they hung heavy at my chest. It was the wrong boat. I was sure of it.
Bobby cut the throttle as we approached the smaller craft, easing the purse seiner closer. He closed the distance between the two boats, keeping the sailboat’s sleek white hull off our port bow. I guessed the distance between us to be fifty or sixty feet. Finally we passed the sailboat and I could see that it did have a center cabin and there were two figures hunched low over the wheel. Suddenly over the shriek of the Nicky II’s engines I heard the unmistakable crack of gunfire.
Belay my last. I thought as Donna and I ducked into the wheelhouse. It’s the right boat.
“Call for reinforcements, damn it,” Donna yelled, scooping up the rifle from its corner resting place.
Bobby reached for the radio. He raised the Coast Guard cutter first, then called Sal Ravella on the Bellissima. The other purse seiner was a few miles east, Bobby reported. The lampara was to the north, on the other side of the Windrunner, with the trawler behind it. And the Coast Guard vessels, cutter and patrol boats, were south. It would take time for any of them to reach us. So we’d have to keep the sailboat here.
I heard gunfire again and something peppered the bow and the port side. I recalled what Mrs. Bainbridge had said about Lacy’s upbringing, riding, sailing, and shooting with her father. She still knew how to handle a gun.
“Jesus,” Bobby swore. “What have they got over there? Sounds like it’s got more firepower than my Winchester. Still want to board her, Jeri?”
“I just want to get my hands on Lacy Beckman.” At the moment the gulf between that desire and the reality loomed larger than the gap between the two boats.
I saw one figure leave the center cabin and move quickly toward the sailboat’s stern. Then it ducked back into the sailboat’s cabin as the smaller boat surged with sudden power, heading in the direction of our stern.
Bobby swore again. “They’re gonna make a run for it.” He turned the wheel to port and we began to circle. But the Windrunner had left something behind.
“They’ve set a raft adrift,” I called, training the binoculars in the sailboat’s wake. The orange rubber oval floated precariously on the waves. “It’s full of paint cans. And water. They’ve scuttled it. It’s sinking fast.”
“Donna and I can get it with the nets,” Bobby said. He slowed the engines as we approached the raft. “But I can’t steer the boat at the same time.” He took my hands and placed them on the wheel. “You got to hold it right there, Jeri. No matter what.”
“Do it. Hurry.”
Bobby and Donna vanished through the hatch, heading back toward the stern. Under my nervous hands the Nicky II circled the raft, floating on the port side. When I dared to glance at the raft I counted eight large paint cans like those I’d seen at Beckman Boat Works. Lacy and Frank must have slashed the rubber of the raft in several places. The normally buoyant sides were limp and flat. The bottom was rapidly filling with water. Soon the weight of those cans would swamp the raft. The cans and the solvent they contained would sink to the ocean floor.
Now I couldn’t see the raft. It was off the port side of the purse seiner. I thought I heard Bobby’s voice shouting at Donna, borne by the wind that now tossed the waves. I gripped the wheel tighter, determined not to deviate from the circle Bobby had set for me. What if Bobby and Donna didn’t get the raft on the first pass? It would sink. We’d never catch up with the Windrunner.
Bobby suddenly appeared, racing up the outside ladder from the lower deck. He took the wheel and turned it hard to port. “Get down below and help Donna,” he ordered.
I flew down the ladder to the deck where Donna stood. She and Bobby had set one of the squid nets and now Bobby moved the boat in a tighter circle around the sinking raft, setting the purse. When we’d encircled our prey, we pulled the purse strings tight with Bobby suddenly everywhere at once.
My heart sank with the raft, seeing the orange rubber disappear beneath the waves. “Don’t worry, we’ve got it,” my cousin said. Sure enough, the raft rose again as the winch hauled the net from the water. Bobby, Donna, and I guided it gently into the hold of the Nicky II.
We had it, but I’d lost track of the time it took to catch this particular fish. Once again, the Windrunner had a lead on us.
“Now let’s see how fast this old bucket will go,” Bobby said as we hurried back to the wheelhouse. “Donna, get on that radio.”
The Nicky II left its circle and straightened its heading, power surging beneath our feet as the steel-hulled fishing boat once again became a pursuit vessel. As Donna broadcast a terse report to anyone who was listening, repeating the coordinates Bobby gave her, we headed in the direction the Windrunner had taken, running flat out as fast as Bobby could coax the engines.
I looked out at the black night sea. Where would Lacy go? We had three-hundred-sixty degrees of choices to make. And if she were monitoring the radio, she knew that everyone from the Coast Guard to the Monterey fishing fleet was out looking for her.
The radio crackled and spoke, a veritable party line of conversation. The Coast Guard, as Bobby p
redicted, was quite irked with us for being out here. But the rest of the fishing fleet was caught up in the hunt. No matter which way the Windrunner turned, there would be boats in Lacy Beckman’s way.
“Lacy’s got to have a contingency plan,” I said. “She doesn’t have enough fuel to run forever.” I looked at the nautical charts as though they were tarot cards, revealing the future if I just knew how to interpret them. “She must have a car waiting at some port, just in case they need to escape on land. She has a house in Santa Cruz. That’s my best guess.”
“Has to be,” Bobby said. He tapped his finger on the chart that showed the port on the northern rim of Monterey Bay. “She can’t go back to Monterey. Moss Landing’s farther east and too close to Monterey. If she heads south she’ll run into the Coast Guard. Davenport and Half Moon Bay are farther north and there’s nothing west but open ocean.”
He turned the Nicky II onto a new heading and reached for the mike, communicating with the Bellissima in short bursts of Italian. We were running full bore now. With the binoculars to my eyes I swept the waves in front of the boat. Minutes crawled by. We were approaching land.
Something appeared at the edge of my vision, enhanced by the binoculars and blurred by the edge of the lens. A boat, without running lights, illuminated by the halogens on the Nicky II. I called out a report to Bobby and he poured it on, cutting the distance between the vessels. It looked like the boat we’d seen earlier but I couldn’t be sure. It was moving fast, though, without lights. Bobby brought the Nicky II closer still. The stern of the smaller boat grew as we raced toward it, now visible without the binoculars, ahead and to starboard. Still I peered into the glasses, looking for some identification. The lettering on the sailboat’s hull was obscured by the boat’s wake. Then the water shifted and I glimpsed the name I sought.
“It’s the Windrunner,” I reported.
“I can overtake her,” Bobby said, “but she’s got me on maneuverability. That’ll work to her advantage in the harbor. That also means she can shoot at us from that cabin.”
