Black Tide Rising

by R. J. McMillen

  —

  His eyes scanned the scattering of dots on the chart while he called Gold River and listened as they told him the boat they had found on Bligh Island had been identified. It was the one that had disappeared from the Gold River marina, and the forensic guys had lifted some fingerprints from both the dashboard and one of the oars. None of them belonged to Darrel, whose prints were on file from his previous escapades, but at least some of them belonged to Jerry Coffman. Dan nodded as he heard the news. It was the confirmation he had been hoping for. A corner was starting to come loose.

  The call to Markleson was next and took only a couple of minutes, as did the one to the hospital in Campbell River. Markleson would ask the logging companies to watch out for and report anyone they saw on the logging roads, and the hospital said that Nielson was still unconscious. It was time for Dan to get out on the water and look for Nielson’s boat.

  He pointed the inflatable just west of north and headed straight up to Catala Island Marine Park, north of Nuchatlitz and well past the cove where he had found Nielson. He planned to start his search to the east of Yellow Bluff and follow the shoreline in to Port Eliza. If he found nothing there, he would continue on to Espinosa Inlet and the area around Graveyard Bay. If he still hadn’t located the boat, he would keep going as far as Zeballos Inlet. After that, it was unlikely that any abandoned boat was going to be found anywhere, and his search would change to trying to locate two suspects in a stolen vessel. He had just reached the entrance to Zeballos Inlet when his VHF came to life. It was Walker. He was back aboard Dreamspeaker.

  “You find anything?” Dan asked.

  “Not me, but Jared says it’s a guy.”

  “He sure?” Dan shook his head even as he spoke the words. It was a stupid question. Of course Jared would be sure.

  In any case, Walker didn’t bother to answer, and Dan hurried to fill the silence.

  “Did he see him? Was there a description?” he asked.

  “Nope, and nope. But he says the guy knows where he’s going—and he might be Indian.”

  “What? How the hell can he know that if he hasn’t seen him?”

  There was a pause, and Dan could picture the trademark grin and shrug.

  “Jared heap smart Indian.” The taunting words were softened by the teasing tone of voice.

  “Very funny,” Dan said. “I’m serious here, Walker. If it’s the guy I think it might be, we need to pick him up.”

  Walker’s voice turned as serious as Dan’s. “Whoever he is, he’s still in the bush, but Jared says this guy knows the trails, and he’s following them. Knows what to eat too. Jared says it looks like he might be heading for one of the logging roads. If he does that, he’ll end up at Plumper Harbour in Kendrick Arm. All those roads end up at the same place. That’s where the logging companies are based.”

  Kendrick Arm. It was the name Dan had seen on the chart when he was checking for places someone might take a stolen boat. One of the very few places there was access to the interior of Nootka Island. Maybe he should change his plans and look there first.

  “You planning on heading out again?” Dan asked.

  “Yeah. Guess I’ll go back and see if Jared turns up anything else.”

  “How about you come with me down to Kendrick Arm? I need to see if Nielson’s boat is there.”

  “That’s the guy from Kyuquot, right? The one who found Darrel?”

  “Yeah. I found him on the rocks. He’s still unconscious over in the hospital at Campbell River.”

  “I thought he fell off his boat?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he was pushed.”

  “Jesus! This gets weirder by the minute,” Walker said. “Why do you want me along?”

  Dan grinned. “I miss the pleasure of your company?”

  Walker’s snort of derision was loud and clear. “Yeah, right.”

  “Okay, the truth is, I need a second pair of eyes, and yours are good. These guys might have tried to hide the boat. Besides, two men in an inflatable might seem less out of place than just one guy.”

  “Especially if one of them is Indian,” Walker drawled.

  “Yeah. That too.”

  —

  It was almost three by the time Dan had retraced his journey back to Dreamspeaker, collected Walker, and made the run down to Plumper Harbour, at the south end of Kendrick Arm. The sun was starting to dip behind the trees lining the summit of the island, casting the shore into shadow.

  “You know what color the hull is?” Walker asked.

  “It’s blue. Why?”

  “Be easier to see if it was white. It’s pretty dark under those trees. We’re going to have to go in close.”

  “Not a problem. This thing only needs a few inches of water.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of the draft. We’re going to look pretty obvious poking along and checking everywhere.”

  Dan shrugged. “Can’t be helped. If that boat’s here, we need to find it. Maybe we could pretend we’re looking for oysters or something.”

  Walker raised his eyebrows. “I’m impressed. You know oysters live in the ocean.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Just keep your eyes open.”

  They moved in close to the shore and crept northward, toward the log-sort operations that crowded the water at the upper end of the arm. Every now and then there was a gap between the trees and they could glimpse the rough surface of a logging road, but there was no sign of a boat.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” Dan said after they had worked their way through the floating rafts of logs. “Either that or they’ve already left. Guess we should head back and I’ll try again tomorrow.”

  “Might want to keep going a bit farther,” Walker said.

  “We can’t go any farther,” Dan answered. “This is the end of the arm.”

  Walker looked at him and shook his head. “Not for a small boat,” he said. “Just keep going straight ahead.”

  “There’s nothing there. You can see where it ends up ahead.”

  Walker smiled and said nothing.

  Dan sighed and shook his head. “Fine, but if we’re late getting back, you can cook dinner.”

  The inflatable moved slowly up the narrowing channel and closer and closer to the northern shore. Dan was about to cut the engine when a gap barely wide enough to fit through opened up on his starboard side. He glanced at Walker as he nosed his way through it.

  “This didn’t show on the chart,” he said as the channel widened a little. “Where the hell are we?”

  “Still in Kendrick. There’s another opening to the inlet up ahead about a mile. It’s also too small to show on that fancy chart you got.”

  “Huh. Well, if no one knows about it, they’re not going to be here—and the roads all lead from the logging camp, and that’s back there at the …”

  He fell silent as Walker raised his hand and pointed ahead to a clump of hemlock whose branches overhung the low bank and drooped down to the water. Through the dark needles, a patch of blue paint glimmered.

  • TWENTY-TWO •

  It was taking too long. He should have found the fucking road by now—although it wouldn’t really be a road anymore, just a trail. The logging companies hadn’t used it for years and it would be mostly overgrown. So what else was new? Everything on this goddamn island grew like a weed: salal, ferns, cedars, hemlocks. All of it. And it was all the same: wet and useless. Even if the logging road had been new, it would have been rough. Those logging assholes didn’t build fancy roads just to haul trees out. They sent in bulldozers and hacked out a passage barely wide enough for the trucks to follow. Hell, they didn’t even put gravel on most of it, so when it rained—which was most of the time—it turned into mud. It had been six or so years since he had been here, so by now the road would have almost disappeared, covered up by encroaching vegetation.

  Back when he was a kid, and his grandmother had dragged him out here to pick berries and dig roots and shit, he had hated the rain. He’d hated everything about the fo
rest: the damp green smell of the undergrowth, the fetid brown odor of the swamps, the incessant drone of insects, even the endless chirping of birds as they moved through the trees. He still hated it, but now it served his purpose. In fact, it was just perfect for his needs. There would still be a bit of a path under the young trees, where the topsoil had been scraped away by the bulldozers and the trees’ roots found less nourishment to sustain them. Once he found it, he could follow it all the way down to Kendrick Arm. The trees would make him invisible to anyone in a helicopter, like the one that had flown over him a couple of times that second day, and they would hide him from the logging trucks he knew were still working on other roads: he had heard them grinding their gears as they maneuvered their heavy loads down the mountain. He would be able to move unseen by anyone or anything, like a ghost.

  The thought of a ghost made him think of the woman, and he caught himself glancing nervously into the forest. Jesus! What the hell was the matter with him? There were no ghosts. That was all some fairy-tale shit from when he was a kid. The woman sure hadn’t been any fucking ghost, even if she had looked like one. The goddamn ugly bitch would be dead by now, and good riddance. Dead and rotting deep in the salal where they’d never find her. She must have been some freak of nature with that weird white skin and that long white hair. He shuddered as he thought of the wet strands clinging to the sunken cheeks, straggling down over the pale forehead. And those eyes. They had been sort of like ice. Or beach pebbles. Kinda shiny and gray. Yeah, that was it. Like those shiny gray stones on the beach that the mask carvers had sometimes used. She had looked like a fucking mask. That was what had freaked him out back at the cove. She had looked like the Dzunukwa mask his grandmother had on her wall, except in white. A ghost of a ghost. Shit, no wonder he had been spooked.

  He shook his head to clear the memory. He had to make up some time, and the only way he could do that was to find the goddamn road. He knew he was behind schedule. Pat and Carl had said the buyer had “a limited window of opportunity.” Yeah, that was it: “a limited window of opportunity to make the purchase.” Phony assholes. What they really meant was that they had to move fast before the cops figured out what was going on. They had set up a meeting for Thursday, just before noon, which gave them a few days after hiding the stuff to make sure the cops weren’t on their tail. At first Jerry had figured that was an odd time to meet, but then he realized it was late enough in the day that Pat and Carl could make sure they got there first. That way they could watch to see if the buyer came alone. Of course, this had been back when Jerry thought he was part of the team, before they had tried to set him up with the cops. Well, he was going to show them what “set up” really meant, so he had to be there for that meeting, and if he had kept track of the passing days correctly, that meeting was going to happen tomorrow.

  He paused to check the position of the sun. It was filtering through the trees just behind his right shoulder, dappling the ground around him with light, and it told him that he was headed in the right direction. So where the hell was the road? Maybe he needed to move east for a while. As he recalled, the road swerved north before turning back west and then turning again at an outcropping of rock just before it hit the coast. If he could find it before it made that northward curve, he could save a bunch of time.

  He looked for an opening in the forest that would allow him to move in an easterly direction, and as soon as he saw one, he pressed his way into it, pushing aside the sword ferns and dodging the occasional low branch. It was slow going, but he thought the trees were thinner up ahead, and maybe there was a flicker of pale green in the gaps, caused by the early leaves on the wild rose and salmonberry shrubs that were growing up in the space created by the old road. If he was right, he might be able to make Kendrick Arm by dark, certainly by the morning, and if he was really lucky, the buyer would have the same idea those assholes Pat and Carl had and would arrive even earlier than they did. That’s sure what he would do anyway, so if the buyer was as smart as he was, then he, Jerry William Coffman, could beat out Pat and Carl altogether. He could show the guy his sample—the ring he had taken from the bag before he slid it under that old sewing machine—and then take him to the cove for the rest of the stuff. Hell, Pat and Carl would never even have a clue as to what had happened. He patted the ring, sitting deep in his pocket, letting his fingers run over the raised shapes on its surface. He could just picture their faces when they realized the buyer wasn’t going to show. Too bad he wouldn’t be there to see it, but he and the buyer would be long gone, the deal already completed. He grinned at the thought but then forced his mind back on track. He couldn’t count on that. Maybe the buyer wasn’t that smart. Maybe he would arrive right on time, and Pat and Carl would already be there. Whatever. It still didn’t matter, because Pat and Carl would have to take the guy back to Yuquot with them to get the stuff—and it wouldn’t be there. Jerry giggled in delight as he thought of it. So who was the stupid one now?

  —

  Pat watched through the trees as an inflatable moved up the channel with two men aboard, following it until it passed out of sight and the sound of the motor faded. Nothing to worry about. Looked like a couple of local guys—he thought one of them might be Native. Probably out crabbing, or maybe they had some business with the logging outfits. Either way, they weren’t going to affect him.

  He moved back up through the trees to where he had left Carl.

  “You stay here and watch that road. I’m going to go down to the office at the log dump. See if they’ve had any visitors.”

  “You figure Jerry’s just gonna walk here along that road?” Carl asked. “That’s a long way, man. How’s he gonna get here all the way from Friendly Cove? That’s all the way on the other side.”

  Pat looked at him. “He’ll walk, that’s how. It’s not that far if you know the trails and stuff. He told us that himself.”

  “Yeah, but you said he’s got that woman with him. Bet she couldn’t walk that far. She would sure slow him down anyway.”

  “I said he had that woman with him. He wouldn’t have had her for long,” Pat said.

  Carl stared at him. “Why not? She was still missing when we were there yesterday. That guy told us, remember? Jerry must have taken her with him.”

  Pat sighed and shook his head. “Because he would have killed her, that’s why. Hell, I don’t know why he didn’t kill her right there. Maybe he fancied her. Decided he’d get himself a piece of ass to celebrate getting the stuff for himself. Maybe he dragged her into the bush, screwed her, and threw her over a cliff. Maybe he stabbed her the same way he stabbed the kid and left her there. How the hell do I know? But one thing I do know for damn sure is that he hasn’t kept her with him all this time. That’s not Jerry’s style. He’s like a kid with a new toy; fancies something for ten minutes, then he’s not interested anymore—unless it’s got a big payday attached. Dollar signs can hold his attention.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Carl nodded his head slowly, then turned to stare out at the road. The two men were on a rocky outcrop about thirty feet above the water, surrounded by the thin trunks of young trees whose crowns provided a dappled shade. Above them, screened only by a fringe of dusty leaves, a rough logging road snaked around the mountainside before it turned and descended in a straight line almost to where they stood. The steep grade meant that any vehicle would have to slow almost to a stop in order to make the sharp corner immediately in front of them and continue along to the log dump a quarter of a mile south along the shore.

  “Truck coming,” Carl said, pointing to a cloud of dust up near the top of the mountain.

  “Okay. Keep your eyes open. He may have hitched a ride. Check every truck. It should be easy to see if there’s a passenger in it. I should be back in half an hour.”

  “What do you want me to do if I see him?” Carl called as Pat moved away.

  “Nothing. Just watch where he goes. If he’s in a truck, follow it to the dump, but don’t let him see you. Stay in
the trees. We don’t want to spook him.”

  —

  The logging camp was a loose collection of trailers set at the edge of a cleared patch of land. The ground was littered with wood debris, and the air held the pungent aroma of cut cedar mingled with the acrid smell of oil and diesel. Two big Caterpillar loaders, their yellow paint faded and worn, were parked above a wide log skid, their operators leaning over a big flat-deck truck, apparently inspecting a grapple crane. The only other person in sight had his head buried inside the engine of the logging truck he was working on.

  Pat worked his way through the trees until he reached the edge of the camp. It would be good if he could get into the office before anyone noticed him: the fewer people who saw him, the better. If the cops caught wind of his presence on the island, they would figure he was somehow involved with whatever had gone down in Friendly Cove, and no way was he going to take the fall for that. That was Jerry’s shit, not his.

  Keeping an eye on the mechanic and the loader operators, he drifted across the open space to a metal shed and stepped inside. It appeared to be doing double duty as both storage area and office. Shelves, some sagging under the weight of bins and boxes overflowing with jumbled metal parts, lined two of the walls, while a third was hung with chains and belts of every size and shape imaginable. Crowded against the remaining wall, under the only window, was a scarred metal desk almost buried under piles of paper. A tiny square in the center was the only place cleared for doing work, but no one was working there. Now what?