Ghost Point

by James A. Hetley

  Carlsson watched the helicopters, shaking his head. “Didn’t he have one of those new radio beacon thingies on board? The kind that floats and starts transmitting if the boat sinks?”

  “Nah. Those things trigger too easy—Coast Guard and Civil Air Patrol are always chasing after false alarms. This was a tactical craft, full-bore stealth mode, not even running lights or a radar reflector. Good commando ain’t gonna take no chance on giving his position away to the Canadian Coast Guard when he’s just scored a few cases of Molson over on the far side of the line.”

  Okay, something had disturbed the heap of rockweed here. Disturbed it and then straightened it out—not a seal, then, or gulls, straightened it out just a dite too straight. What other clues had that something left behind? He shuffled forward again, leaned low on his hands, and sighted across the snow and ice.

  Ripples? Wind left ripples in the snow, ’specially down here below the cliffs where the gusts swirled in every storm. But those ripples shouldn’t show a faint trough, maybe an inch or two in depth and three, four feet wide, as if somebody, something, had walked between tide-line and rocks and swept the tracks smooth behind him. Behind it. Something either smart or cunning. Now, which way was it going, to the cliffs or from them?

  Rick squinted against the glare. Yes, a trough, leading in a straight line to that pile of rocks. One day, two days old, not three, judging by the way the snow had dusted over the surface, the changes in that snow once it had fallen.

  He glanced across at Carlsson again. He liked working with Carlsson. The man was patient. Following a track might wind up the old adrenaline rush, but watching a tracker probably ranked right neck-and-neck with watching paint dry on the shed.

  “What’s up there in the rocks?”

  Carlsson squinted. “Old pirate fort. Place we played when we were kids.”

  “How many men would fit inside?”

  That earned a snort. “Men? One, if he had any size to him. Two, if they were small and real close friends. It was tight for three kids.” He paused. “Forgot to tell you, got so pissed off at Ms. Doctor Tranh. Saw some blood in the snow near there, animal tracks like a seal, back the morning after that big storm. The morning I saw Bear.”

  Rick tapped the lump of his holstered .38 under the warden’s jacket, freed the hem around it, unsnapped the leather strap across the butt, just in case. The service pistol was part of his uniform, unconscious like his shirt and pants. Except, sometimes he wanted to be damned sure it was there.

  There, and loose in its holster. That itchy sense grew, like the feel of gun sights centered on his shoulder blades. They stood out in the open here, no cover or concealment within reach, perfect targets against the bright snow.

  And it’d be real nice if the good ol’ State ’O Maine decreed something a bit more potent than a .38 Special for its designated law-enforcement agents. Something that would stop a bear or perp, rather than just pissing him off. Something that might have a chance against body armor.

  Or against Spetsnaz hiding out and waiting for their sub to make pickup. He still couldn’t rule that angle out.

  “You won’t need that.”

  Rick blinked and shook himself. Carlsson limped closer across the loose granite cobbles, probably should have a stick or ski pole for this kind of thing. Rick wouldn’t want to have to carry him back to the boathouse for help. Not a man that big.

  “She isn’t there.”

  “What the hell . . . .”

  Carlsson looked pale, the pupils of his eyes much too wide for the blazing sunlight off the snow. But it wasn’t drugs. It couldn’t be drugs. He’d looked normal just a few minutes earlier.

  “It’s Bear. It’s the thing that told me where to find those Cong, the thing that had me shooting the instant those women in the paddy went for their weapons. She was there. She’s gone.”

  “She?” Rick stared at Carlsson. A shiver ran down his spine, neck to butt, that had nothing to do with the biting gust off the water. This was getting excessively weird. Even Aunt Jean hadn’t come up with a sex for the beast they tracked.

  “She. You tasted the blood.”

  Rick remembered that taste. He hadn’t known, no real difference between the blood of male and female critters. Urine, now, that often told the sex life of the animal, both gender and breeding status. He remembered Aunt Jean poking at a spot of the infamous yellow snow on that trail back to the water, sniffing, just never thought about it, never really filed the information away for future use. Not important. Not until . . . .

  “Oh, shit!”

  That look Aunt Jean had thrown him. She did know. She assumed he knew, thought she didn’t have to spell it out in front of Carlsson. Need-to-know intel. Jumping three steps ahead instead of walking along at a pace a normal man could follow. Damn her. Damn her, and the broomstick she rode in on.

  Carlsson just stood there, looking big and blond and dumb. Which was a lie, camouflage, that man wasn’t dumb on his worst day. Just ignorant of certain things.

  Need-to-know. Well, he just got added to the list. “That thing Aunt Jean told me. She told me to remember the purpose of the Haskell House.”

  “You’re losing me.”

  “Nothing you’d have heard—a bit of tribal history, Stonefort history, Carlssons never would have run up against it. The Haskell House is a shelter for abused women and children. What Aunt Jean does, what every Haskell Witch does, she protects women and children. The House runs Maine’s oldest domestic violence program. Dates back three hundred years or so, back to whenever the sexist pig English showed up and started treating women and children as property. Entrenched matriarchy’s answer to an invading patriarchy, if you want the big words.”

  “So what’s that got to do with me?”

  “That Hunter we’re tracking. I thought Aunt Jean was just talking about Doctor Tranh, saying that Doctor Tranh was getting the protection of the House. Some poachers looking at a world of hurt, maybe, but that ain’t all she meant. Old witch never uses more words than she has to. Hoards them like a Yankee clamdigger holds onto dimes.”

  Carlsson shook his head. “I’m still not making the connection. You know, ‘Numb as a hake, but good with his hands.’ That’s the Carlsson family motto.”

  “Bullshit. Carlssons wouldn’t be rich if your great-grandpappy hadn’t had the brains to move from making buggy whips to making parts for cars. And then your grandpappy doubled the take by selling out to Henry Ford. And you still have money, so your father and you and your brother ain’t dumb neither. Just ignorant in certain subjects. Like tribal lore.” Rick paused and pulled his thoughts together.

  “These tracks we’re following. Stories say the Swimmers talked. Could use tools. Had families and homes. Bartered with our ancestors. Stories called them a People, just like Naskeags. And this one is female, and hurt. She. You said it, Aunt Jean knows it.

  “She. Aunt Jean was reminding me that we’re tracking a person, a woman. Not an animal. A person under the protection of the Haskell Witch.”

  And then words ran through his head again, pulling another shiver up and down his spine. He turned and stared at Carlsson. “Blood. Here. The morning after the big storm. The morning Bear danced for you. Are you sure?”

  Carlsson’s eyes were back to normal now, and his face showed raw pink from the icy breeze rather than the pale white of somebody about to faint. He squinted. “Sure about the blood? Or sure about the day?”

  “Both.”

  “Yes to both. I’m sure. I tracked Bear, to the place he vanished, and then headed out along the driveway to meet you at the Coffee Pot. Saw blood on the snow down here. Can’t see that pile of rock from safe ground up above, not with ice all over everything, not without ropes and someone belaying me. But the blood led this way, and didn’t show up beyond the next point.”

  Connections fell into place like the pins of a lock, a big lock, a vault door echoing in his head. “Oh, shit. You trying to make life complicated, or is this just God’s own i
dea of a joke?”

  Carlsson just stared at him, that big placid honest look that Carlssons had patented to sucker people into business deals. He’d be a con-man’s nightmare—I’ll just play dumb until you really put your foot in it. Go ahead. I’m waiting.

  Okay. Need-to-know stuff again. “Just, there were shots fired the night before, when that guard was killed and his partner disappeared. Over at the base. And blood on the ice here. The way this situation is fucking with us, I’m about ready to bet your missing Marine is tied in. Too many things going wrong at the same time. Too many for coincidence.”

  He remembered the claw marks in those footprints in the snow, long claws, like a cat digging in for traction, remembered checking that guard’s body for clues. Throat wound. That cut—ugly, ragged, not clean like from a sharp knife. He knew what a cut throat looked like. He’d seen several. Whatever else might be wrong inside the Commie Menace, the Spetsnaz knew how to sharpen knives.

  Rick shook his head. “I’m about ready to bet Ms. Swimmer-of-Dark-Waters has killed three men who threatened her. And now we’re hunting her, with Aunt Jean peering over my shoulder and warning us to be kind to little old ladies. And you, dammit, you’re getting coded messages from Bear. Shit, shit, shit!”

  His heart thudded, chemicals zinging through his bloodstream, that old fight-or-flight reflex winding him up. He stared at the faint trail leading to the rocks, the “pirate’s fort” of Carlsson’s childhood. Leading to, or leading from? If he believed Carlsson, believed Bear, that trail led from. He could slog over and check for clues without getting his throat torn out. Torn out like that corpse left lying in the snow, over to the navy base.

  He checked his pistol again, purely nervous habit. He wasn’t going to trust Bear on that. God helps those who help themselves, or some such proverb. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

  One step, two steps, checking his footing each time as he crunched down through the ice crusting the snow, if something jumped him he wanted to stand firm on his feet for shooting. Even Jeanne Alouette Haskell wouldn’t deny a man the right of self-defense.

  Three steps, four, five, the rocks closer, dark and mysterious shadows, nothing stirred. He stood, sniffing the breeze, currents swirling here close in under the granite cliffs. Animal. Dung and urine and sickness, sweat, fish-oil tang, connection with the fishy taste of the blood. Yes, the urine smelled like a female. Chalk one up for Bear, for Aunt Jean.

  The smell seemed stale. Cold. He could tell, most times, if a den was empty. Bear, fox, fisher, porcupine, the smelly animals, he could often smell them before he saw them. Same with the coyote and bobcat pens up above, Rick could smell his way to the boathouse if the wind was right.

  Two more steps, three, nothing shot him from the black shadows, nothing charged out snarling his death. Close, crouching down with hand on the butt of his pistol, peering into the shadows between the rocks, marks there in the dusting of snow, dusted over by later snow, nothing fresh.

  He pulled his flashlight from his belt, just another part of the uniform put on with the shirt, the pants, the cop gun-belt with crossing Sam Browne strap to take the load. There when you needed it, gun and speed-loaders and cuffs and Mace and Mag-Lite. When you got dressed in the morning, you never knew where you’d end up that night.

  Light poked into the shadows, bare granite, piles of scat, dried blood, frozen blood. And damn little room, just like Carlsson had said, room for kids playing but not much more. Cracks and passages between rocks, too tight for an animal big enough to leave the tracks he’d seen.

  No Spetsnaz. No Swimmer-of-Dark-Waters. Rick felt the tension leak out of his shoulders, his thighs, his butt. No need to die today.

  He rose out of his crouch and turned back toward Carlsson. “Empty. You were right, Bear was right. She was here, but left.”

  He crunched across the snow to tide-line again, thinking. “Okay, mister Bear Clan shaman, are your spirits talking to you? Offering any further guidance?”

  Carlsson turned, for all the world like a radar dish scanning, but slow. Rick saw that his eyes were shut. He turned around twice, full circle, then turned a quarter of the way back as if he’d caught a signal. Rick shivered again, not at the breeze off the water, not at the Canadian high-pressure cell straight down from polar-bear country.

  “I think she’s out near the end of the point. There’s a wind-throw spruce out there, roots and all down on the beach, just above high tide. Like a bear’s den.”

  Was that the spirits talking, or just Carlsson’s map of his home turf? Rick felt his muscles tightening up again, his pulse throbbing, chemical alarms blaring.

  Carlsson had used the present tense, she is.

  XII

  Susan’s Dart rolled downhill into a Christmas-card village, the car running quiet except for the whine of studded snow tires on the asphalt. She turned at the head of the village green, “town commons” Jean Haskell had called it, a name tied back to common grazing for a villager’s horse or cow back in Colonial times.

  The place oozed quaint New England atmosphere, snow heavy in the evergreens, snow still white rather than brown or yellow on the ground, Stonefort. She’d never paid much attention to the place when passing through. Old show-off-the-wealth sea-captain’s houses faced on the green, draped with icicles and pillows of white on their roofs, bare ancient maples and elms framed smooth drifted snow over the grass, a white clapboard church had scaffolding along one side for a repair or repainting job in limbo for the winter. A line of shops stood between the foot of the grassy slope and the harbor. Just to complete the scene, a carved granite Union soldier with snow epaulets and cap stood sentinel at the base of the green, guarding the names of the honored dead from the Civil War. She’d learned that as War Between the States in Virginia schools, where the stone sentinels had looked damn near identical except for the CSA insignia of the Confederates.

  She turned again on a patch of wind-driven snow across the pavement, ready for a skid but the Dart held firm. Snow tires, she remembered. New studded snow tires, no more futzing around with chains if she needed to drive on snow, bristling studs always right there ready to bite if she found a patch of black ice on a curve on otherwise dry pavement.

  And another set of new all-weather tires in the trunk, without studs, for the months when the state declared studded tires anathema. Wherever “Aunt Jean” stood in the cosmic scheme of things, she definitely swung a big club. The mechanic had also tuned up the engine, replaced the filters, adjusted the clutch, and freed up the automatic choke. The car hadn’t run this well in years.

  Now for that lesson on how to shoot a pistol.

  The whole scene looked more than a little surreal, if you stopped and stood back and added things up. Here she was headed into Stonefort, no clue as to where, “Just ask anyone.” For a lesson in the care and feeding of lethal weapons, from a kid. That tiny Alice Haskell must be, what, thirteen, fourteen? Or less? And Susan had just collected eight new tires, nine counting the spare, total worth more than the car they carried. At that, the mechanic had apologized because they weren’t the radials Aunt Jean had specified. The Dart’s suspension wasn’t designed for radial tires.

  She’d checked with her boss in Fish and Game—there were rules about state employees accepting gifts. “No problem,” quoth he. It wasn’t a bribe. Officially. Restitution for damage to personal property sustained on government business.

  A damned big club.

  Naskeags weren’t a government, as such. Stonefort was a government, a town and township. Sunrise County was a government. The state was a government. Any one or all of them could compensate her for losses, could have government business. Where the private Naskeag Corporation or the Tribal Council sat in all that, damned if Susan could tell.

  But she’d told her boss, mentioned “Aunt Jean,” and he’d put his name on paper approving the tires. No problem. Worst-case she could see on that, some distant day an auditor would make her pay or return the tires.

&n
bsp; A few boats swung at moorings out there in the harbor, in spite of the weather. Some battered gray dinghies waited, tied up at the float off the end of the stone wharf. Men went out lobstering in winter, ice and storms and all. Hell of a nasty job, if you asked Susan. Said a lot about Sunrise County economics, that men would risk their lives for a few pounds of boiled insect on someone else’s table.

  Lobsters aren’t insects, her inner scientist muttered. Arthropods, yes, but crustaceans. The lobstermen call them “bugs” anyway. Must have taken some nerve, the first man who boiled one up and ate it. Nerve, or hunger.

  Pain in the butt to eat, even with the right equipment. She preferred her lobster in dismembered form, preferably in a thick bisque with the tang of sherry. That probably ranked as heresy in the Church of the Holy Downeast Lobster.

  She pulled up to the curb in front of the short row of stores, flipping a mental coin. She needed directions. Pizza shop crew probably knew where everyone lived within ten miles, if they delivered. But the place looked closed. The bar next to it might be open, neon Bud and Miller signs glowing, but it wouldn’t be her first choice for reliable directions. Post Office stood a few shops further down, and they sometimes had funny ideas about privacy. That depended on the local Postmaster. Grocery store, small-town Mom and Pop style, closer. She’d try that first.

  She climbed out and slammed the Dart’s door, didn’t mean to slam it but the hinges worked a lot smoother with lube and adjustment. Front and back and sideways, Aunt Jean had said. And the mechanic had taken that to mean “fix” as well as “check.” Susan glanced down at the front bumper and wrinkled her nose.