Long Way Down

by Michael Sears

  “I’m still working to clear you, Haley. Let us go. We found the evidence on this computer. I can prove you’re not guilty of insider trading. Your wife set it up. With help.”

  He kept coming until he was standing just a few feet away. The searchlight was giving off heat as well as light. It was very powerful.

  “Is that right?” he said.

  “We may even be able to find who killed her. It was probably her partner, right? Whoever helped her set you up. What do you think?”

  McKenna dropped the computer and threw up. Some people handle stress less well than others.

  “Who the hell is he?” Haley said.

  “Muscle,” I said. “He knows nothing. Let him go.”

  McKenna coughed and spat again. “Sorry.”

  “Is that my computer?” Haley said.

  “Yes.”

  “Pick it up.” His voice had gone from authoritative to pure cold.

  I bent over but McKenna beat me to it.

  “I came out here tonight to get that. I’m sorry that you two are here.”

  “Let us take it. It’s your ticket to making this all go away.” I took a step toward him.

  “Don’t fucking move, Stafford. I mean it.” He briefly showed the gun in front of the light. It was an automatic of some kind. Big. It looked deadly. I stopped moving.

  “I can help you,” McKenna said.

  “Yes, you can. Let’s go. Follow the path.” He indicated the way back toward the house on the cliff—the way he had just come. “And bring that.”

  I hesitated. McKenna started walking.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Stafford. You too.”

  I followed McKenna down the path. Haley shined the light ahead of us. There was not a moment when I was not aware of the gun in his hand. We walked through the forest.

  McKenna’s terror was a cloud of toxic gas around us. He reeked of fear. I didn’t blame him. Haley was bent on destruction.

  “To the right,” he said, indicating with the light. Toward the top of the steps down to the beach. Where Selena had died.

  “This won’t work,” I said. “Let us go. Take the computer. It’ll be our word against yours. What’s that worth?”

  “Shut up.” He jammed the barrel of the gun into my back. I kept moving.

  “I’m gonna be sick,” McKenna said with a moan. He stopped and turned to Haley. “I can’t do this, dude. I’m nobody’s goddamn hero. I just want to go home. Can I go home?”

  POP! POP! POP! Three explosions sounded. I wanted to duck, to fall on the ground and whimper, but I was too afraid to move. POP! POP! KA-BLAM! A bright-red chrysanthemum lit up the eastern sky. Fireworks.

  McKenna was crying. Tears ran down his cheeks. “Oh, man. Oh, man,” he said over and over like a lifesaving mantra.

  The fireworks continued. More. Bigger. Louder.

  Haley laughed. It was a nasty laugh. He’d been as frightened as we were, but he was too afraid to admit it, so he laughed.

  BAM! BAM! BAM! The explosions continued.

  “Haley!” I shouted. “Let him go. Keep me. Keep the goddamn computer, but let him go.”

  “Shut up!” he cried in answer, his face still hidden behind the bright light.

  Each explosion made McKenna jump. He was seconds, millimeters from exploding as well.

  “Haley, let’s talk. Put a number on it, man, and we’re gone. Who do you think we are? Cops? Batman and Robin? We don’t give a shit what you’ve done. What can we do to you?”

  The fireworks were blossoming all over the bay. Christmas Eve fireworks. Who thought up that idea? New Year’s. Fourth of July. But Christmas Eve? What demographic was some idiot politician hoping to suck up to with this light show?

  I didn’t know who was going to explode first. I could see the light in Haley’s hand jerk with every explosion. McKenna whimpered each time. One or the other was going to break.

  It was McKenna.

  “Aaahhrrgh!” He threw the computer at Haley.

  We had reached the landing at the top of the stairs to the beach. The eastern sky was lit with American flags dripping red and white sparks, blue hydrangeas blooming in fast-forward, and blasts of white like glimpses into a nuclear furnace.

  The computer hit Haley in the center of the chest. The light flew up and away in an arc. I saw it spiral down over the cliff, exploding into darkness when it hit the ground. McKenna ran for the woods. He brushed by me, pushing me back and off-balance. My leg twisted behind me and my back hit the railing. I hit it hard. Too hard. The rail gave way behind me just as I heard the first explosion from Haley’s gun. I saw McKenna stagger and run on. Haley fired twice more into the darkness and there was the sound of a brief, choked-off scream—then there was silence.

  I had one arm wrapped around the rail post, feet dangling over the drop to the beach below. It was a long way down. If I pulled myself up, I would have to face Haley. If I let go, I might break a leg or two and still have to face him. Either way, the odds sucked. I got my other hand onto the top step and began pulling myself up.

  I heard footsteps, and then Haley was standing over me. “He’s dead,” he said. My fingers slipped on the sand-covered stair and I felt myself losing my grip.

  47

  I was already falling when I heard the gun go off again. The sound and the pain in my temple were one, and I fell. Time stretched into a Möbius strip of never-ending descent, allowing me to review all of my regrets before I landed, ass-first, as limp as a piece of spaghetti. In the moment before new pains overtook me, I blacked out.

  —

  The pains were all still there when I awoke, shivering and nauseated, lying facedown in a puddle of blood and seawater on a hard plastic surface. The roar of a powerful outboard engine seemed to emanate inches away from my head, echoing and attacking from all directions at once. I spluttered and coughed up a thimbleful of water, the harsh sound lost in the din around me.

  My head both throbbed and screamed, a searing line of fire seemed to be raging along my scalp. I made a full inventory of my pain. The middle of my back felt bruised and ached, but as I could also feel a cold cramp in my left leg, I determined that my spine was intact. One arm was pinned beneath me, and though it felt numb, I could wiggle my fingers.

  My face slammed into the plastic surface three or four times as the boat—my brain finally registered that I was lying in the bilge of a fiberglass boat—skipped over a set of small waves before the engines roared even louder and the angle of the floor steepened as the boat went up into a plane.

  My non-numb arm hurt, too, and seemed to have no strength, but I was still able to hold myself from sliding back farther into the puddle. I tasted gasoline and caught a faint aroma of long-dead fish bait. My stomach heaved, but I was too exhausted to puke. With a last regretful image of the Kid flickering in my mind, I surrendered and let warm unconsciousness spirit me away.

  —

  A fresh blast of pain brought me back to the land of the barely living as my wounded scalp banged against the deck. The boat had stopped and was rocking gently, the engines idling as we drifted slowly with the tide. A man—Haley—had just rolled my cold, wet, blood-soaked, unresisting body—indistinguishable from a corpse—away from the stern and he was now bending over and tying a rope around my ankle. I wanted to kick him, get up and beat him, to scream at him, but I didn’t have the energy to even lodge a polite protest.

  Deadlifting a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound barbell is a challenge, but it is also a misnomer. A barbell is rigid and balanced and totally different than a dead body. Lifting one hundred and eighty pounds of a nearly dead man is an ordeal.

  Haley tried getting both arms around me and pulling. You’ll mess up your lower back that way, I thought. You’ve got to use your legs. Get under the weight. My mental exhortations must have gotten through, or he figured it out on his own
, because the next thing he did was to squat and wriggle both forearms under me. He rose up and I came up with him.

  The boat rocked over a wave and Haley lost his footing. We both fell. I continued to roll, ending up where I had started—lying in a pool of bilgewater in the back of the boat. I could see Haley pull himself up and think twice about trying the same maneuver again immediately. He turned away, picked up a large square object, and tossed it over the side. The computer. It made a decent splash when it hit. He stood there, his back to me, his hands on the rail, looking down into the deep black water as though watching the evidence of his criminal cover-up sink to the bottom.

  That was my chance. I was on a fishing boat. I had been on a fishing boat before. I knew that fishermen had knives and other weapons. I pulled myself to my knees and looked around. Clipped to the rail was a nasty-looking, big metal hook at the end of a short telescoping pole—a fish gaff. I pulled it free and rose up just as Haley turned around.

  It was dark, but there was enough starlight for me to see the shock on his face as a dead body covered in blood rose up in front of him. He froze.

  Before he could recover, I swung the pole as hard as I was able. If it hadn’t been so sharp, it would have been a useless attempt. The hook drove through his coat and deep into the muscle of his upper right arm. I shook the pole, pulling it forward and back, while Haley strangled a scream and tried to grab it with his free hand. Suddenly, the lock on the telescoping handle freed itself and the pole extended. I stumbled at the sudden release of resistance and fell back onto the deck. The pole came with me, tearing out of Haley’s arm and taking a chunk of flesh with it. This time his scream wasn’t strangled—he let it flow. For a second, we were both stunned. Then he reached around with his left hand and began scrabbling at his right-hand pocket. I knew without seeing, that’s where the gun was. I leaped at him.

  His good arm was trapped between us, but he fought anyway. He flailed with his wounded arm, his punches harmless but distracting enough that he was able to headbutt me once. The wound across my scalp felt like someone had just dropped napalm on it. He tried again, and I ducked away—and felt his hand come out of his pocket. He had the gun.

  I swung an uncoordinated roundhouse left into his bicep and he staggered, but immediately recovered. Retreat meant death. I attacked. I moved inside his reach. He swung the gun at me, but I was too close. I grabbed his wrist and pulled him to me. The gun fired.

  The sound stunned us both and so did the bullet. It hit the deck at an angle and ricocheted off. It whistled by us, leaving huge starred cracks in the fiberglass, but no hole. The next few shots left holes.

  I held Haley’s arm down and probed with my index finger until we were both inside the trigger guard. He tried digging into my eye with the fingers on his injured hand, but there was no strength in the attack—the gaff must have cut through a tendon. I shook him off and squeezed the trigger. Over and over again, trying to empty the clip. The gun bucked in our hands sending bullets down into the deck—all over the deck. Holes appeared in four, five, six spots before the firing pin clicked down on an empty chamber.

  Then I could fight. I let go of his arm, turned to face him, and began punching wildly. He staggered, but I had misjudged him. He was still dangerous. He swung the empty gun, using it as a short club. He missed my head—if he had connected at that point, I would have been done. He swung again and missed. I jumped back and looked for another weapon. The gaff was on the deck and out of reach. I grabbed a fishing pole and swung it as hard as I could into his wounded shoulder. It must have stung, but it didn’t stop him. He came closer. I swung again and he dropped the gun, grabbed the fishing rod, and pulled it out of my grip.

  At the same moment, I saw the knife. A long thin filleting knife in a plastic sheath secured to the side of the helm, below the wheel. Haley saw where I was looking, turned, and got to it first. He pulled it free and began the turn back toward me. I grabbed him from behind by his jacket and belt and, with a whoosh of expelled air, I swung him around hard, and released.

  Haley sliced at me with the knife as he staggered backward toward the stern. He missed, and then he was too far away, too off-balance. The back of his legs hit the transom and he flew up and over and into the water.

  I hung over the stern and looked for him, gasping for a breath, my brain spinning with exhaustion, pain, and the sudden letdown of lifesaving chemicals in my bloodstream. I wanted to collapse on the deck and sleep for a long time.

  Haley surfaced five or six feet behind the boat, his face lit by the white navigation light on the stern.

  “I’ll die out here,” he called. “The water’s freezing. I won’t last.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “You have to help me,” he said.

  “No. I don’t.”

  He swam toward the boat, flailing one-handed.

  “You try to get up here and I swear I will kill you,” I said.

  “Oh god. It’s cold. How long do you think I can last in here? Minutes?” He was doing all right treading water—in no immediate danger of drowning.

  “The water can’t be much colder than the low forties. You’re in good health. You might last forty-five minutes or more.”

  He swam toward the side of the boat, avoiding the still-idling outboards, and out of the range of the light. I looked around and found another extendable pole—a boat hook. I pulled it out as far as it would go and held it out over his head.

  “I can as easily hold you off as pull you in,” I said.

  “Damn you.”

  “Yeah, and fuck you, too. You killed your wife.” I was sure of it.

  He didn’t answer.

  “And you altered the image on the file to put the blame on Penn,” he said.

  “He was trying to destroy me. They were in on it together.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “She didn’t have to,” he said, his voice already getting shaky.

  “I would have enjoyed hearing her confess to it,” I said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “So we’re back to that.”

  “Damn, it’s cold.”

  “Are you shivering yet? I understand you don’t have to lose much of your core body heat before the organs start shutting down. After that, it’s just like falling asleep.”

  He lunged for the pole. I lifted it out of reach.

  “So here’s the drill. You agree to confess to killing your wife and framing Penn, and I pull you back in the boat and save your worthless life. Deal?”

  Water sloshed around my feet. I looked down in surprise. “Damn, Haley, make up your mind. This boat is sinking.” Water was welling up from the bullet holes and was already an inch deep.

  I looked around. Far ahead, I could make out the towers of Manhattan. It took a moment for my head to clear enough to recognize that New York was to the west. The boat was facing that way. West. The tide was taking us westward, toward New York City. I was quite proud of this bit of deduction. Therefore, the shore to my right must be north. It was better lit, but the southern shore, to my left, looked closer. A lighthouse blinked up ahead. I would need to come to some resolution soon, but I could still easily make landfall somewhere.

  I lost Haley in the dark. It took a moment for my eyes to readjust after staring at the city lights. “Haley! What’s it to be?” There was a splash from astern. I looked over. Haley had climbed halfway up onto the stabilizer and had gotten hold of a long piece of heavy nylon rope that was tied to a cleat. He was trying to pull himself out of the water. I smacked him across the back with the pole and he slid down again. “What’s it going to be? You talk to the police, or you die out here?”

  He was exhausted. He wasn’t going to make another fifteen minutes, much less three-quarters of an hour. The wound in his shoulder must have been sapping his strength. A small wave lapped against the hull and splashed water o
ver his face. He coughed and tried to vomit. You can drown by inhaling an ounce of water or less. The lungs sense the intrusion and the airways seize up. Your body suffocates you. It’s called dry drowning. Haley lost his grip on the line. It fell in the water and he drifted back a few feet, still treading water, but looking a lot worse.

  “Take the offer and live,” I said.

  He nodded his head. He was beyond speaking.

  I held out the pole and he took the end with his good hand. I pulled him toward the rear of the boat until he was able to get some of his torso up onto the stabilizer fin. I reached down to offer my other hand to haul him up. That’s when he moved.

  Haley pulled down on the pole and for a split second I followed it, teetering on the rail before I let it go. I fell back into the boat. The pole splashed down into the water and Haley slipped back.

  My own strength and balance were failing and I staggered, like a drunkard, backward into the steering wheel. I fell to the deck, catching the gear shifter under my armpit and throwing the big engines into reverse. They roared and the boat lurched backward, sending up a thick spray of seawater.

  Haley didn’t make a sound. He didn’t have time to scream. The twin propellers grabbed his legs trailing in the water and pulled him under. There was a horrifying grinding noise and then the engines raced, but we stopped moving.

  I pushed the throttle back to neutral and the engines quieted down to the thrum, thrum, thrum of idle speed. There was no sign of Haley over the stern. I couldn’t see if there was blood in the water, the bright light turned everything into a stark black and white, with no colors or shades of gray.

  The boat hook was floating a few yards away, much too far to reach with anything on board, so I took the gaff hook, extended it as far as it would go, and probed the water in back of the boat. Nothing. As I stood there at the rail, gasping, exhausted and horrified, I realized that the water in the boat was now up to my ankles. My clothes were all soaked through.