Blood of the Prodigal

by P. L. Gaus

  “I can’t tell you all that much about the boy,” Sutton resumed. “One day Jon said that he was going to ‘fetch his son.’ Wouldn’t be back for a few days.” Sutton shrugged. “First I’d heard of a son.”

  Branden suppressed an urge to question. Eventually Sutton continued.

  “But I can tell you plenty about Mills. Miller. Whatever.” He shook his head.

  Branden waited.

  “Jon Mills was a true-born master carpenter. Must have grown up with it. He loved wood, and he was good at it. That’s why Tarshish brought him up from Texas.”

  Sutton fought back a tightening in his throat, cleared it with an awkward cough, and continued. “And Tarshish brought me along because Mills insisted.

  “Jon was good at only two things. Carpentry like I said, and drinking. Flat wore me out. Between his drinking and his friends, Jon just flat wore me out.”

  “His friends?”

  “Jon might have been good with wood, but he didn’t know the first thing about people. Trusted everyone. Had no sense who was good people and who wasn’t. He ran with the worst there was. Almost like a compulsion. It was a wonder he got any work done at all. Seemed to burn it at both ends. Drink nights and work days, and he never missed a beat. Like he was showboatin’. You know, show up drunk or hung over, and still tie a knot in your spine.

  “Then, sometime after his son came up—that was over a month now—Jon’s work started to suffer. Sometimes he’d show up, but he was distracted. Like he was making a decision. Last week or so, it was awful. I never saw Jon do a piece of bad work before, drunk or sober, but look at this junk. I’m cleaning up after him here. Ray had to put him on roofing.”

  Sutton made an expression of mild disgust and went to work in a second corner of the kitchen, on another length of red oak trim that didn’t suit him. With the measurements committed to memory, he went to the uncut wood pile, selected another piece, cut it to length at the saw, and then double-checked the angles. Back in the kitchen, he worked the flawed trim loose from its position and tossed the reject into the front room to join the first one. With a knife from the back loop of his carpenter’s belt, he shaved off the slightest bit of wood, and, four nails later, the second repair was finished.

  As he stepped around the kitchen counter, they heard the sputter of an engine down at the pier. “That’ll be Tarshish,” he said. “I recognize his engine.”

  Branden looked through the window briefly, then turned back to Sutton and said, “Why do you think his work deteriorated? Was it having his son here?”

  Sutton thought and then said, hesitantly, “I don’t think that was it. At least, not entirely. Not at first.”

  “But?”

  “Might have been something else, I don’t know. The kid was awful troublesome at first. Someone had to watch him all the time. Jon was real worried the boy wasn’t going to take to him. Wasn’t going to adjust to having a dad, you know. Then he eventually warmed up to Jon, and they started acting more like a family. At least as much like a family as Jon Mills could ever’ve managed. They did the kinds of things you’d want to see a father and son do together. Fishing out on the lake. Amusement parks. Sometimes he’d bring the kid to work. Now that I think about it, lately Jon hasn’t been drinking. Hadn’t been drinking.” Sutton shook his head as he remembered that his friend was really gone. “I figure they got two good weeks together.”

  “Where did the boy stay?” Branden asked, fighting an urge to push.

  “Someone watched him. I’m not sure,” Sutton said, turning back to his work. “Look, I’ll think about it, OK? Maybe I’ll come up with something. But if it’s all the same to you, I need to get some work done here.”

  26

  Friday, June 26

  9:15 A.M.

  RAY Tarshish, short and rotund, bounced over the rough two-by-four planks, up toward unit two, carrying several tight rolls of building plans under his arm, springing the boards with each of his awkward steps. The planks set up a swaying motion in rhythm with his gait, causing him to wobble out of balance. He teetered awkwardly on his stocky legs, saved himself at the last only by grabbing for the door frame with his free hand, and pulled himself into the unit.

  After a curious nod acknowledging Branden’s presence, Tarshish took out a large red handkerchief and wiped perspiration from his round face, dabbed at the top of his bald head, and paced a slow circle in the front room of the condo to catch his breath.

  Eric Sutton interrupted his work to introduce Tarshish to Branden. He briefly explained about Jon Mills, leaving Branden to supply the details. Tarshish cried out at the news, dropped his blueprints in a corner, and stepped to the window, shaken.

  His breathing had regulated somewhat, but a hard pulse beat in his temples. His shirt had come undone beneath his belly, so he unfastened his belt, smoothed out the shirttail, tucked in as much as he could manage, and sucked in heavily to fasten his pants and then his belt, saying, “I knew he had changed his first name, but his last name wasn’t Mills?”

  “Miller,” Branden said. “Jonah Miller, but he evidently changed it to Jon Mills in Texas.”

  “We knew him as Jon.”

  “You first met him in Texas?” Branden asked.

  “Yes, I believe it was Texas,” Ray said distantly. After a moment with his thoughts, Tarshish said, “Funny how you forget.”

  He paused.

  “When we first met, Jon said he had changed his name because it suited Texans better. Must have meant Jon versus Jonah. Same reason I started using Ray. For the Texans. Much better than Raymonde, don’t you think?”

  Tarshish held a position at the front window and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking vacantly down to the silver-green water meeting an advancing bank of heavy gray clouds. Nearer shore, the water had taken on a dirtier khaki hue. Whitecaps dotted the lake. His mind struggled with the news of Jon Mill’s death.

  Distracted, Tarshish said, “Tarshish is a Spanish name, and Ray is short for Raymonde, and Texans like it simple. My people fled Iran after the Shah.

  “Can you imagine that,” Ray said and turned from the window. “We were Spanish Christians, living in Iran, and fled to Texas. Jon used to say we were both running from an Ayatollah. I think it would have helped if I had known his name was Jonah. Like in the Bible.”

  At the window again, standing with Branden, Tarshish watched the clouds gather over the lake, and remembered.

  Branden waited.

  Tarshish sorted through his memories sadly, taking his time, and finally spoke.

  “Texans,” Ray said, shaking his head, using a tone that pronounced them all scoundrels. “But Jon loved it down there.” Then, “I’m the one who brought him back to Ohio,” spoken as a self-indictment.

  “Jon was a fancy dresser. Fancy western clothes. The fancier the better.” He turned to Branden and asked, “Any idea why?”

  Branden said, “Jon was raised Amish,” and remembered the teacher, Miss Beachey, and her story of a rebellious Amish lad, rolling a tight cuff in his denim jeans.

  Tarshish looked puzzled.

  Branden explained. “For religious reasons, the Amish strive to be plain, both in dress and in lifestyle. They are farmers, mostly in Ohio and Pennsylvania.”

  “They drive those buggies?” Tarshish asked.

  Branden nodded.

  “Did you know he had a son?” Tarshish asked.

  “Yes,” Branden said. “He’d only recently learned that.”

  Tarshish gathered up his building plans and motioned for Branden to walk with him outside. They stood for some time at the edge of the cliffs, looking over the water as the wind built and the temperature dropped. Ray talked about Jon Mills, his recent announcement that he had a son, and the change that Mills had undergone, for the better, once he had brought the boy up to the lake. The good influence the boy had been on him at first. Before the startling decline in Jon’s work.

  He turned to face Branden and said, “Jon changed once his son h
ad been here for a while. It was a marvelous thing to see. He stopped drinking so much. Started cleaning up his language. Then one night he showed up at my house over in Port Clinton. Wanted to know if I knew any preachers.”

  “Did you?”

  “I sent him to see Father Timothy at St. Mary’s.”

  “Do you know if he went?”

  “I think he did, but he also disappeared soon after that. Now you tell me he’s dead.”

  Branden questioned Tarshish further about Jon and Jeremiah. He learned that they had lived in a trailer along the water west of Lakeside, that Jeremiah had stayed there with an older lady when Jon was at work, that Jeremiah had seemed hostile at first and then more content, eventually even happy, or so it had seemed to Tarshish, to stay with Jon for the summer.

  But, the last Ray Tarshish remembered of Jon Mills, he had changed. He had asked about a preacher, turned inward, and left town shortly after.

  As they stood together on the cliffs, Branden’s mind carried the image of a man who had walked into a general store in Fredericksburg and bought a new suit of plain Amish clothes. A man changed for the better by an Amish boy of ten, camped beside a truck in the swamps of the Killbuck Marsh.

  27

  Friday, June 26

  8:45 A.M.

  THE Marblehead Police Station occupied a corner room in a boxy building made of white quarry stone. A square patch of grass in front served as a tidy spot, close to the road, for a flag pole and a small black-and-white sign. A faded page taped to the door suggested that the station was infrequently staffed. The parking spot for a single cruiser was vacant. On the door, there was a number for the mayor’s secretary in the event the police were ever needed.

  Ricky Niell took one of his business cards from the neatly creased breast pocket on his uniform shirt, wrote a note asking that he be contacted at the Water’s Edge Motel in Port Clinton, indicated it was an urgent matter involving a missing child, and dropped it through the “Pay Fines” slot in the door. On another of his cards he copied down the phone number of the mayor’s secretary. He tried the doorknob one more time, cupped his hands around his eyes, and bent forward to take a last disapproving look through the glass. Then he climbed high into his black 4x4. There were remote-operated spotlights mounted on a silver roll bar, and a full bar of flashers on the cab. The after-market lifters put the running boards a good three feet off the pavement.

  He rolled out in low gear onto the highway, cruised slowly westward, and turned into the parking lot at the Marblehead Coast Guard Station, adjacent to a ferry landing. He backed the truck into one of the spots marked for visitors, shut down the engine, and watched the ferry from Kelleys Island make its docking. As the ferry gates came down, motorcycles roared to life and several dozen bikers in leather jackets sped away, two at a time, past the Coast Guard Station, shouting back and forth over the noise of their engines. Inside the modern brick Coast Guard structure, Niell reported to the command center and asked for the Officer of the Day.

  An officer standing behind the counter said, “I’m Chief Petty Officer Johnson,” looking at him inquiringly while keeping part of his attention on the bikers. Two Seamen lounged in chairs behind the counter. A large window behind them gave a view of the docks below, where two Coast Guard boats strained on their lines in tall, surging waves. Kelleys Island stood out on the horizon beyond. Niell presented his credentials and explained his search for the missing Jeremiah Miller, beginning with the murder of Jeremiah’s father, and ending with the ransom scheme that still hadn’t worked itself to a conclusion.

  The radio claimed CPO Johnson’s attention. He eyed one of the young men seated behind him and tilted his head toward Niell. In response, an affable young man stepped out from behind the counter and introduced himself to Niell as Seaman Munson.

  As they shook hands, Seaman Munson drew him a few paces away from the radio and said, “You said you’re on a kidnapping case?” with obvious interest. He had friendly eyes and a confident manner.

  Niell replied simply, “Yes,” and fixed his gaze on the boats docked below the window.

  Munson ran his eyes along Niell’s line of sight, turned back and asked, “You want a tour?”

  Niell glanced at CPO Johnson, still busy at the radio, shrugged and said, “Sure, maybe a quick one.” They descended a set of gray steps to the basement and walked out onto the lower level toward the dock. The last of the bikers cleared the landing. On board the first boat, Munson started in the wheel room, pointing out electronic equipment, radios, navigation electronics, sirens, and the like, all with obvious pride.

  “This is a forty-one,” Munson announced. He showed Niell belowdecks and then onto the stern, where he opened an engine compartment amidships and said, with one eyebrow cocked and a grand smile, “Twin Cummings, 903s.”

  He closed the engine-room hatch and remarked, “The forty-one will eat up eight-footers all day long,” indicating waves on the lake by rolling a curving palm in the air.

  “You call it a cruiser?” Niell asked.

  “UTB. It’s a Utility Boat. A forty-one,” Munson explained. “The number indicates length. This is a forty-one-foot UTB. Number 443. UTB 41-443.”

  The boat was spotless, painted white and deck gray, with an orange and blue Coast Guard stripe slanting along its bow. The waves came relentlessly into the small harbor, and rocked the UTB again and again. Munson stood with pride on the stern and let his legs carry the swells. Niell steadied himself against a rail as Munson locked the engine hatch. “And if I should need to call the Coast Guard?” Niell asked, thinking again of Jeremiah.

  Munson led him back into the wheelhouse and tapped the radio console. “Start out on VHF/FM Channel 16. That’s 156.80, the International Hail and Distress Frequency. Then we’ll probably switch you to 21.”

  Then Munson pointed out the boat in the second slip. “That’s a Raider 22. Hostage rescue, that kind of thing. Our antiterrorist units train up here on the lake. You can cut that boat in half and it’ll still float. Still run its guns on half a deck.”

  Back at the command center, Munson returned Niell to CPO Johnson. Johnson agreed to monitor LEERN on the scanner next to his desk for any news from the Marblehead or Port Clinton police and reassured Niell that they’d get a line on all of the law enforcement radio traffic, one way or another.

  Neill thanked CPO Johnson and Seaman Munson. He was about to head for the door, but on impulse returned to the counter and asked, “What can you tell me about the Marblehead Police?”

  Seaman Munson smiled openly. CPO Johnson chuckled and punched out a number on his telephone, got a recording, and put it on a loudspeaker. “That’s about all you’re gonna get out of Marblehead,” he commented over the recording of the voice of the mayor’s secretary.

  “Sheriff Robertson was going to phone ahead this morning,” Niell said. “To try to talk to the various departments in the area. I was expecting to find someone at the station, if Robertson got the word out, that is.”

  Johnson smiled, stopped to take a call, hung up, came around the counter and said, “There’s only one policeman at the Marblehead station. One cruiser and one parking spot. You’ve been there?”

  “Just now.”

  “Then you’ve seen the whole operation. Not a big department.”

  “Who’s the one officer, and how does he handle three shifts?” Niell asked.

  “He doesn’t try,” Munson said and chuckled. “They just keep a sign on the door when he’s not in.”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Whoever needs police is supposed to know that number,” Munson said. “Otherwise, they get cooperation from the force at Port Clinton. It’s a good relationship and Paul does a good job considering he’s the only one.”

  “Paul would be the policeman at Marblehead?” Niell asked.

  “Yes. Paul Lively,” Johnson said. “He’s got a cottage at Lakeside and a boat at a small marina on East Harbor. Sometimes he guides. Fishing.”

  Niell
got out his notebook and copied down addresses for the cottage and the boat dock.

  “If Paul’s not at home,” Munson added, “then he’s either gone fishing, in which case you’ll have to wait until dark, or he’s having breakfast at Big Boppers.”

  Niell gave him a look.

  “It’s a small family restaurant, back down 163 about two miles on the right. A favorite with the locals.”

  CPO Johnson took another call.

  Niell flipped in his notebook to the page with the address for Jon Mills and got directions from the seaman. On the way out to his truck, he watched the ferry make another landing in noticeably rougher seas. A steady line of tourist traffic had accumulated on Highway 163. Most of it lazily followed the highway to Marblehead at the end of the peninsula, turned around, and joined the line of traffic in the reverse direction.

  Niell pulled out onto the highway amid the traffic, found the Big Bopper, and checked the gravel parking lot, out front and in the back, for the Marblehead police cruiser, with negative results.

  Then he worked his way slowly along North Shore Boulevard, heading back toward Lakeside, checking the small street signs for the road where Munson had said Jonah Miller’s trailer should be parked.

  It was a single, gravel lane, little more than two tire tracks and a middle line of weeds, running toward the water on East Harbor. He waited out in front for a car to clear the lane and then turned in.

  At the end of the lane, behind a group of dilapidated summer cottages in an old orchard, he found a single-wide trailer parked at the very edge of the bay, abutting a disorderly pile of broken concrete pavement slabs that had been dumped to make a seawall. Small wooden steps gave access over the concrete slabs to the water, where there was a private dock labeled with a weather-beaten sign stating that the dock was reserved for the exclusive use of the cottage residents. The placard carried the usual warnings about trespassers, prosecution, and the full extent of the law.