Dead Low Tide

by Bret Lott

  He paused, looked over at Unc. “Beat about all the info I could out of this bull shark here,” he said, and reached out, gave a soft punch at Unc’s shoulder. Unc smiled, nodded sharp. “But tell you the truth,” Tyler went on, and now he was looking at Mom again, “I’m not even sure how much the DNR’ll be involved in the end.”

  He stopped, looked down again, slowly shook his head, but this time in some other way. No rueful sort of pondering the loss of a comrade in a bust, but a puzzled kind of regard. He said, “Seems somehow the Navy’s gotten involved, too, for whatever reason.” He looked at me now. “Unc tells me you both never even come close to the tract, but here two seamen were, acting all kinds of put out, like they—”

  “Jamison Prendergast was over here,” Mom said flat-out right then, and both Unc and Tyler looked at her.

  “When?” Unc said, cold and hard.

  “Not fifteen minutes after Quillie Grimball called me,” Mom said. She sat up even straighter now, crossed her arms again. “His boys dropped him off here and went on over to where you were.” She paused, bit her lip. “Then he stayed here. To keep me company. He said.”

  “And you let that son of a bitch in here?” Unc shot out, his hands on the table already in fists, and I wondered for a moment why he’d be so pissed. He played poker with the man.

  “What was I supposed to do?” Mom said, and though I’d expected on her voice some fire, some pissed off Mom-ness about whatever even deeper shit we were heading into here, she was quiet, her voice just like it’d been when she’d laid that gun on the table. “A black Suburban rolls up at three in the morning,” she nearly whispered, “and out pops a man in uniform and a second later I see it’s him and I don’t even know what—”

  “Eugenie,” Unc whispered hard, shook his head.

  “She’s right,” Tyler said, and looked at Unc. He laced his fingers together on the tabletop: all business. “She did the right thing, Leland. Nothing to worry about, either. Prendergast gets a report you two are wandering around on the tract—”

  “But we—” Unc started in, but Tyler said “Leland,” sharp and low.

  Unc stopped, his teeth clenched. He let out a short breath through his nose, and Tyler went on.

  “Somebody’s been spotted out on U.S. Navy land, and he has the job of making sure it’s secure. He knows you, Leland, which is a fact no one can say isn’t true, and so his first stop with his support is to come to your house in case you and Huger are in transit via the jon boat, then dispatch his men to the scene itself.” He stopped, looked at me, at Mom. Then he looked at his hands. “It’s a man doing his job. Doesn’t matter what history somebody brings up a set of stairs,” he said.

  From where I sat it seemed suddenly like his eyes weren’t looking at his hands at all, but straight through the glass tabletop, and to the book bag still here at my feet. Both my feet were touching it now, though I hadn’t known I’d done this, hadn’t realized I’d pushed my toes right up against it.

  And I wondered: Had Unc told him about what we’d seen with the goggles? Had he told him about the goggles at all?

  Was he looking right now at the book bag beneath us, his words about what somebody brought to the table a signal he knew everything?

  And for the ten thousandth time in my life, here was Unc, looking at me now, a blind man reading me better than anyone on the planet, though I hadn’t said word one since I’d asked about this Mitch Claussen.

  Unc said, “You’re right. Better we don’t bring any of that old history to what’s going on here tonight.” He nodded. “Because what matters is a woman’s been killed, and everybody’s just trying to find out how to get the piece of trash did it.”

  And I got it: shut up about the goggles.

  “It’s all right, Eugenie,” Tyler said, and I glanced at him, saw his head tilted, his eyebrows drawn together. His eyes were on Mom now, and I turned, looked at her.

  She was crying without a sound out of her, her chin on her chest, her shoulders heaving up and down, arms crossed in front of her. Already I was up and out of my chair, and I touched her shoulder, said, “Mom, it’s okay, we’re here. It’s okay,” even though I still had no idea what I was comforting her for. Prendergast was a bad person, and everyone here at the table knew why except me. But right now that didn’t matter at all, and now I was crouched beside her chair, ran my hand across her shoulder and arm. She leaned into me, and I put my arm around my mom.

  No one said anything for a minute or so. Unc only sat with his cup, looked inside it like it could tell him something. Tyler looked up at us now and again, then down to his hands, still laced together in front of him. Then Unc finally said, “Another cup of this coffee sounds good to me,” and stood from his chair, turned straight for the kitchen counter two paces away, and touched its edge, traced it to right where the maker sat.

  He reached in, pulled out the pot, and like always held the handle of the cup so’s his index finger was hooked over the rim, his way to tell how full the cup was, and he poured.

  “Alton?” Unc said, and turned to him, still in his seat. “You want a refill?”

  Mom took in a couple deep breaths, touched my arm with a hand, patted it. She nodded, a signal to me all its own: I’ll be okay. I’ll be fine.

  Suddenly she was standing from her chair, and here she was wiping an eye again. She gave out a crumpled smile while Tyler and I both stood. She said, “I’m sorry, Alton, for this fit I’m pitching. I just can’t seem to—”

  “No apologies necessary.” He squared himself up at this, hooked his thumbs into his duty belt, that creak of leather again. He nodded, and it seemed he was trying now to be an agent of the Department of Natural Resources, this talk about a boat dumped on a ramp and sharks’ teeth a mile behind us.

  At least he was trying to make it feel like that. Because now I could see in his eyes, and in the stiff nod he gave, and the posed thumbs-in-the-belt, just a boy, a kid standing here.

  He liked my mom.

  “I have to go,” Mom said, and she turned, started away from the table and through the sitting room for the front of the house, and the stairs. “Anybody needs me I’ll be upstairs,” she called out, and I could hear her trying to make herself sound all right, make us believe she’d be fine. “In case anyone has to ask me any questions. I’m okay.” Then she was gone.

  Unc stood in the kitchen looking toward us, the pot in one hand, the cup still on the counter with his finger hooked inside. Tyler stood with his thumbs in that belt, his eyebrows a little up for the surprise of how quick she was gone.

  I said nothing, only looked out past Tyler to the sky out the window, a dull and dark purple gearing up for daylight.

  “Now we get to the questions,” Tyler said, and turned to me, nodded. He reached behind him, pulled from his back pocket a thin black notebook.

  I couldn’t sleep much at all the rest of the day.

  Morning wormed in through the blinds in my room, for starters. Every time I took Unc out to golf it was like this, me trying once we were home to sleep and failing at it. Whatever time I’d get up, the rest of the day always had this fuzzy hot edge to it, like I was watching myself from inside a low-grade fever as I did whatever that day called for.

  There was poker night tonight to think about, and my job of having to make certain Unc brought to the house in Mount Pleasant the goggles to hand over to Prendergast. And there was Prendergast himself to think about, and whatever it was made Mom into the mess she’d become for his showing up to the house.

  There was that gun she carried with her, and how long she’d been carrying it without me knowing anything at all.

  And buried at the bottom of it or heaped at the top was a woman pulled up from pluff mud by me, and by Unc.

  So I lay there in my room, pretended I was sleeping, rolled back and forth under the covers in my pajamas—a pair of basketball shorts and one of my old Bass Pro T-shirts—and did nothing but think, and think.

  Tyler’s questions had b
een only routine, his demeanor suddenly nowhere near a kid with a crush sitting at a table and drinking coffee in the predawn dark. But he wasn’t any kind of menace, either, once we were left sitting alone there at the table, Unc with his coffee heading to the library and his recliner in there.

  They were only questions, a good couple dozen of them, among the standouts Why were you there? What were the circumstances involved with finding the body? How long had you been out there? Was it Unc or you to wedge it up? Did you know anyone at the Dupont house?

  Anything else you care to tell me?

  Of course it was that last one that made me into a liar. I could answer every question he’d thrown at me and not have to mention anything about the goggles, or those IR illuminators shining at us from across the marsh, and know I was giving him the truth. But when it came to that last question, all I knew to do was to shake my head, look Tyler right in the eye, and hand him a good solid flat-out no. The question made me into a liar, because there was plenty more I wanted to tell him about.

  The interview had taken about a half hour altogether, and then he smiled, nodded, put the black notebook he’d been scribbling in back in his pocket. He stood, the light behind him out through the window gone now a heavy blue, and he took in a deep breath, looked past me toward the hallway to the front of the house.

  “Leland,” he called out, “how’d I do?”

  “Couldn’t hear a word y’all said,” Unc shot right back from where he’d been sitting and listening the whole time.

  Tyler let out a small laugh, looked back at me, and now I was standing, put my hands on my hips. “You think of anything else you want to tell me,” Tyler started, “you just—”

  “Tyler, ten-eighteen, Tyler, ten-eighteen,” cut in from the radio on his belt just then, sharp static yelps of sound. He quick reached down and pulled the thing off his belt, held it up to his mouth.

  “Tyler,” he said, and turned from me to the window, looking, I figured, for some private way to talk.

  “Nine seventy-seven,” came the voice. “All the way up here to Wambaw Creek at Echaw Bridge Landing. You still working with recovery?”

  I could hear Unc move in the recliner, his steps on the hardwood floor back toward us now. But I didn’t turn to him, only stood watching Tyler, and listening.

  “Negative,” he said into the radio. “Interviewing witness, but we’re done.” He paused. “Nine seventy-seven?” he said.

  “It rains, it pours,” the voice crackled out. “Charleston County recovery already on the way. Sure could use a hand up here. Vehicle in the water, body in the trunk.”

  “Campbell,” Tyler barked, then said a little easier, “Quiet.” He paused a moment, put the radio back to his mouth. “ETA one hour. Over.”

  A couple seconds later came this Campbell and his single word, “Over.”

  Unc said from behind me, “He got that right about when it rains it pours,” and Tyler turned to us, already had the radio clipped back on, a hand pulling his windbreaker off the back of the chair.

  He put it on, said, “Two in one night. All I’d planned was putting in at Bushy Park Landing and motoring up Flag Creek, see if I can’t park somewheres and hide out until a couple duck hunters who’ve baited the place back in there show up, start banging away.” He shook his head, let out a low whistle. “Planned on having a nice quiet morning, just enjoying the sunrise and writing tickets. But no.”

  He stepped to the door off the kitchen, pulled it open, but turned to me, looked me in the eyes. “I’m sorry for what you saw today. Everyone involved’s going to do their best to get who did it.” He nodded, glanced at the floor a second. He drew in a breath, and looked at Unc. “Leland,” he said, “you make sure and give Eugenie my best. And tell her I hope we can all get together over better circumstances sometime soon.”

  “Will do,” Unc said, and smiled, nodded. I could see his coffee cup was empty, and then came three sharp knocks at the front door.

  Tyler nodded at us both, and he was gone.

  It’d been South Carolina Law Enforcement Division at the door, two crew-cut thick-necked boys with windbreakers all their own, SLED in bright yellow letters a foot high across their backs. Same questions as Tyler’d asked, but neither Unc nor I sitting down to answer them. We only went into two separate rooms, Unc staying there in his library with one of them, the other following me back into the kitchen. A half hour and we were done, and when we opened the front door to let them out, two sheriff’s deputies stood at the bottom of the stairs up to the porch, waiting in the gray light out there, Smokey Bear hats on.

  A half hour after that it was the Hanahan police at the bottom of the stairs, though not Poston and Danford, the two who’d arrived on scene at the Dupont house. These were two slightly older dudes in jeans and sweatshirts, detectives who’d obviously been asleep not that long ago, their hair still wild, the two unshaved. Unc knew them both, had fished with one of them’s father when they were kids, had dated the other’s mom when they were in high school.

  And when we opened up the door to let them out, the sun just touching the tops of live oaks across the drive, of course I thought I’d find the ones I’d been expecting all along: somebody from the United States Navy, here to interrogate. I figured it wouldn’t be Prendergast—he’d made it clear he wouldn’t be seeing me or Unc until tonight at poker—and didn’t think, either, it would be Stanhope or Harmon. But somebody. Somebody.

  But this time there was nobody. Only the black Charger the detectives’d parked in the drive.

  We said goodbye to the Hanahan detectives, we’ll call you anything comes to mind, thank you, thank you, and closed the door.

  Unc put a hand to my shoulder then, turned to me, said, “You did fine. We told them everything we know on how we come about finding this body. We just left off a couple details is all. Things we’ll wrap up tonight at poker.” He paused, took in a breath. “As for this woman,” he said, and slowly shook his head, looked down. “The body.” He paused again. “All these boys are doing their jobs. They’ll find whoever did it.” He looked back up at me. “Go on up and get some sleep now.” He let go my shoulder, turned from the foyer, and started back toward the kitchen.

  And I’d done what he told me, climbed the stairs, turned to the left at the top and went to the second door on the right, opened it to find things exactly the way I’d left them at two o’clock this morning: bed unmade, dirty clothes in a pile in the right corner of the room, bookcases jammed with books and DVDs and games, Xbox booted up, the forty-two-inch plasma TV waiting to engage.

  Though it didn’t seem enough to me, what was happening about the body, and Unc’s words on it. It didn’t seem enough for Unc to just say somebody’d figure out who did it.

  No doubt Unc’d poked around in the kitchen after I’d gone up to try and sleep, him looking for my book bag, just to make sure all was well. I imagined he pulled out of there the thermos and my travel mug, gave them a rinse and set them in the strainer beside the kitchen sink, good citizen that he is, and I wondered where his own travel mug was right then, if it was in the jon boat out at the dock, or maybe sitting on the wrought-iron table out back of the Dupont place. I saw him sipping at it again, right before I’d made my big escape with not one but two parties in tow, Harmon and Jessup both. My Covert Op.

  Once he knew where the goggles were, he’d take a second to touch at that stick leaned in the corner of the breakfast area once more, just to make sure. Then he’d be on his way to try and catch a nap in his own room down off the library, where he kept his bed made from the moment he rolled out of it—usually 5:00 A.M.—and where he had his own plasma TV mounted on the wall, the thing always on the History Channel. He claims the sound is why he bought the thing, though I know it’s the fact he’d been able to afford it after all his years of living in the trailer out to Hungry Neck.

  I imagined, too, my mom—we hadn’t heard a word from her since she left us there in the kitchen—trying to sleep in her room at
the opposite end of the second floor from mine, her there in the master suite with its Jacuzzi spa tub and stone-tiled shower with four showerheads and steam jets too. A bed the size of her whole bedroom on Marie. A walk-in closet the size of our old garage.

  And with a Beretta subcompact, and a concealed weapons permit. Something called a pancake holster. I’d never heard of that before, a pancake holster. But it made sense: you had a gun on you, you wanted that thing flat as one so nobody’d see.

  Eventually I’d found a piece of crappy sleep, and came out of it into late afternoon light. I stood from the bed and stretched, then leaned into the blinds, fingered them open for a second to find just another day going on out there, but with the added bonus of that fuzzy hot edge to everything for having stayed up all night: flower beds with their tabby paths through them still lay out there, and an empty driveway, past it all the gravel drive I’d walked in on, Spanish moss in live oaks like the same old dead men’s beards.

  The weird thing was the way the world just kept moving on. At some point this evening we’d be turning on the television, seeing about the body the same shit everyone sees every time something like this happens: somebody finds a body, and there’s video on the five, six, and seven o’clock news from a camera in someone’s yard across the street or down the road. Yellow crime scene tape snaps or doesn’t snap in whatever breeze or still air was out there when the cameraman set up. Vehicles jammed in a driveway. Men in uniforms and not in uniforms busy about the house or woods or marsh or wherever, talking to each other or with hands on hips or moving in and out of said house or woods. Somebody in the studio drones on about who what where.