The Egret

by Russell Hill

  “Leave your coat here in the front seat,” I said. “When we get out, lock the car and put the keys in your pocket.”

  I opened the passenger door, slid out and stood, leaning back in, the gun pointed at him. “If you try to run I’ll shoot you,” I said.

  “There must be something I can do,” he said. “You’ve got the wrong man.”

  “No, I’ve got the right man. And there isn’t anything you can do. You can’t give me enough money to make up for what you did. You admit to the cops what you did and you’ll get a high-priced lawyer and plead guilty to vehicular manslaughter and you’ll find a way out of it. No, there’s nothing you can do. Now get out.”

  He opened the driver’s door and I moved to the front of the car, still holding the gun on him. “Now lock it. Put the keys in your pocket.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “We’re going to take a walk on the beach.”

  I waved at the path with the gun. “Down there.”

  He moved toward the path that descended to the beach. He was wearing loafers with a silver tassel, brightly polished. My guess was that he didn’t polish them himself.

  He began to reach into his hip pocket but I said, “No. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “There’s money in my wallet,” he said “You can take the car. I can get you more money. More than you can imagine.”

  I pointed the gun above his head and squeezed the trigger. There was a sharp report, and he involuntarily ducked, and I said. “It works, doesn’t it? You say one more word about money and I’ll put a bullet in your spine. You won’t be able to move, ever again.”

  By now we were on the soft sand just below the bluff. Ahead of us was the surf, pounding up against the sharply angled beach. The waves came in, one on top of the next, rushing madly up the sand and back into themselves. As far out as I could see, the surf was in a frenzy, the wind whipping the tops into a white mist, the faces of the waves ugly and in disarray. We had reached the edge where the white foam was at our feet. The noise of the surf was constant, the kind of noise that a subway train makes when it comes out of the tunnel, echoing, pressing against your ears. There was no way that anyone could survive more than a few seconds in that bedlam of water, a pandemonium of deadly churning.

  “What you’re going to do is walk into that,” I said. “You can stand here and I can shoot you and push your body into it, or you can walk into it.”

  “I can’t survive that,” he said. “Nobody can survive that.”

  “That’s what it says on the sign up at the parking lot. The sign that says it’s a dangerous beach. The sign that says people have died here.” He stood there in his sharply creased suit trousers, his tasseled loafers, a white shirt with expensive jeweled cufflinks and a red tie, carefully knotted.

  “You took a walk out here this morning. On a whim, you drove out here to get some fresh air and clear your head. You slipped and a sneaker wave pulled you in. And you got pulled out into that.” I gestured with the pistol at the surf. “My daughter hung upside down by her seat belt and her car settled into the water and she drowned. A truck driver behind you on the road went down to try to save her. You drove off. But he couldn’t do anything. Her car was upside down and it took two tow trucks to pull her car out and there she was, hanging by her seat belt, dead. Lovely girl. She wanted to be a schoolteacher. She was a swimmer, but her seat belt was jammed and the water rose and she held her breath and then the water entered her lungs and you were half a mile down the road. I wish I could put you in that fucking big car of yours and turn it upside down in the water, but I can’t. So this is the next best thing. Now step into the next wave.”

  “You’re a fucking mad man,” he said.

  “You got that right. I’m a fucking mad man. An angry man. Angry enough to shoot you, but that wouldn’t be the way I want this to end. I want it to end with you breathing in some water. Just like she did.”

  He took a step closer to the water. I had the gun trained at his midsection.

  “No chance of me missing at this range,” I said. “You go into that water with all your faculties working, or you go into the water with a bullet in your gut. It’s your choice.”

  He turned to face the water and stepped out of his loafers. He was careful, as if he intended to later come back and slide his feet into them. He took several steps, and dove into the face of the next wave. It was the dive of a swimmer, someone who had taken a dive into the surf before. But this surf was wild and cold and he wouldn’t last. It would tumble him and he would quickly succumb to hypothermia. His body would float ashore in a matter of hours. I watched as the next wave brought him to the surface. He was trying to swim, but the wave turned, the weight of the water pushing him down. He popped up again, this time farther out, riding the crest of another wave. I watched until he disappeared. I imagined him looking up through that transparent green, trying to get to the surface and feeling the rip tide pulling him under. North Beach was famous for its currents, which was why the sign warned people that others had died here. The next wave came up a bit farther and took his loafers, sweeping them into the sea. I watched them disappear. I looked at my watch. A half hour until Davy was scheduled to show up. I went back through the soft sand that led to the path to the parking lot. I walked past the Mercedes, until I came to where the road entered the parking lot. I waited there, the gun tucked again into my jacket pocket. This was when the egret ate its catch.

  CHAPTER 12

  My car came down the road, Davy at the wheel, right on time. He pulled over, opened the door.

  “OK?” he said.

  “Perfect,” I replied. “I’ll drive back to the Lodge.”

  He got into the passenger seat. I closed my door. “The other half,” he said.

  I got out my wallet and took out three twenties. “I don’t have any change,” I said. So it’s ten extra. Which is OK.” We drove back to the Lodge in silence. There was a beat-up pickup truck parked next to where my car had been.

  “You’ll never see me again,” I said. “At least not in the Saloon. I appreciate your help.”

  “Not a problem,” he said. “Easy money. You need me again, you know where to reach me.”

  “No,” I said, “this is a one-off. Forget you ever met me.”

  He got out, climbed into his pickup and left. I opened the door to my lodge room and went in, took off my jacket and lay on the bed. I tried to imagine Winslow in the surf. This would be the last tine I would take a room at the Tomales Bay Lodge. I would no longer have to visit the spot where my daughter had died. Maybe I would even go back to carpentering. Make real houses, not birdhouses. I got up, put my jacket back on and walked out to the little marina. The tide was in and the boats floated on the shallow water. I looked out at the edge of the bay, hoping to see an egret. But there were no egrets, only seagulls and the insistent cry of crows in the trees across the road. Somewhere to the west, Winslow had drowned and now the current would take his body south until he floated onto a beach or got hung up in the rocks. Perhaps his body would sink and not surface for another week. It didn’t matter. He had struggled and eventually he had breathed in the ocean just as my daughter had done. I turned on the television and found the evening news: stories of disasters in the Middle East, a fire in the Sierra foothills, but nothing about a man tumbling in the surf at Point Reyes. Perhaps another night. I napped for a while, then got up, went to the café in the lodge. I ordered the fish and chips and it came, a big plate mounded with fried fish and French fries. I had a glass of wine and I felt good. Satiated. The water in the bay outside the window was dotted with whitecaps. A good wind. The wind that had heeled that little sailboat over when my daughter had hiked out to the high side. Wind that would keep the surf up on the western side of the peninsula. A wind that would keep the surf in turmoil. I slept well that night.

  CHAPTER 13

  I checked out early, had breakfast at the Station House Café in Point Reyes Station. Back in Fai
rfax, I stopped at the corner coffee shop and had a cup of coffee, then I stopped at the 7-11 on the way home and bought a Marin Independent Journal. When I got home I looked through the paper, hoping to see an article about a man’s body being found at Point Reyes, washed ashore, but there was no notice. Still too early. But the park rangers would get curious about that Mercedes, check the registration, and he would be reported as missing. Tomorrow morning’s San Francisco Chronicle would report: TEXAS OIL CEO MISSING AT POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE.

  I walked to San Anselmo, had another coffee in the Roastery there and then walked on to Ross, found my bike still locked to the bike rack and rode back to Fairfax. All of the loose ends were tied up. Now the only thing left was the news that there had been another fatality on a Point Reyes Beach.

  The next morning I went out to the garage, got out my carpenter’s belt and laid it on the workbench. The hammer was still in its holster and there were two chisels in the pocket. They would have to be sharpened. Razor-sharp chisels were a mark of a good carpenter. My father had taught me that. He had been a cabinetmaker, a man of great precision. When I was a kid he drove me nuts, measuring things in sixty-fourths of an inch, giving me a cuff on the back of the head when I cut something on the wrong side of the pencil line. I got out a stone, oiled it and set to work sharpening one of the chisels. Today was the anniversary of my daughter’s death.

  I didn’t hear Fuller at the door of the garage.

  “Building another birdhouse?” came his voice.

  I turned. “Just sharpening a chisel. I’m thinking of going back to work. Maybe work on a real house.”

  “What brought that on?”

  “Nothing in particular. I need to do something constructive, and the birdhouses don’t seem to be making it work.”

  “It wouldn’t have anything to do with a man in the surf at Point Reyes, would it?”

  My heart quickened. I continued to work the chisel against the stone. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Somebody we both know ended up in the surf at Point Reyes yesterday,” he said.

  “You don’t mean?” I said.

  “I do mean. Winslow.”

  “He drowned in the surf?”

  “No. He didn’t. He swam parallel to the surf and a ranger at South Beach spotted him. He called the Coast Guard helicopter at Two Rock and a swimmer dropped into the water and they hauled him out. Took him to Kaiser Hospital in Santa Rosa to treat him for hypothermia. His car was still parked at North Beach.”

  Fuller waited. He expected a response from me.

  “Holy shit. He got pulled out of the ocean? And he survived? He’s the luckiest sonofabitch still living.”

  “You expected him to die?”

  “I expect anybody who goes into that surf off one of those beaches to die. Unless they’re wearing a wet suit. And even then it’s a toss-up. Was he wearing a wet suit?”

  “No, he was wearing a white silk shirt with cuff links and a red tie. Not your usual garb for a walk on a beach. Especially a cold foggy morning.”

  “And he swam as far as South Beach?”

  “The current probably did that. He was on the swim team at Santa Clara. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Might have been something you ought to have known.”

  “You’re suggesting something, Detective Fuller?”

  “No, I’m not suggesting anything. But I warned you not to do anything foolish. His story is that he took a walk out there on a whim. Wanted to get some fresh air, clear his head. A sneaker wave caught him. You believe that? You believe that all on his own he drove all the way out to a Point Reyes beach so he could get some fresh air? An hour and a half. And he went for a walk on a cold foggy beach in his good clothes, all dressed up?”

  I tested the blade of the chisel with my thumb, turned it and picked a sliver of wood off the edge of the workbench. It was sharp enough.

  “Why wouldn’t I believe it?”

  “Because it’s improbable. He has an eleven o’clock appointment in his offices every Tuesday and Thursday. Important meeting. Never misses it. Only Tuesday he drove all the way out to North Beach, parked his car, locked it, and fell into the ocean. Wearing the trousers to a suit that cost a thousand bucks and cuff links that cost more than your little Toyota. He insists that his story is true. Stupid idea, he said.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “No. The National Park Rangers did. Only his story showed up on the morning sheriff’s log, which I look at out of curiosity, and I talked to the deputy who made our call. He talked to the ranger that spotted him. The ranger said he was checking the South Beach parking lot because they had some hippies who had built a fire there Sunday night and he wanted to make sure they had moved on and then he saw something out beyond the surf line that didn’t look like a sea lion; there seemed to be an arm waving and then it disappeared, so he got out his glasses and there was Winslow, obviously in trouble, so he called the Coast Guard and they scrambled a helicopter and twenty minutes later they had Winslow in the air. The ranger is pretty stoked about the rescue. Which he ought to be. So what do you think?”

  “I think it would have been good if the ranger had looked the other way. That’s what I think.”

  “You got any ideas about how Winslow ended up in the surf?”

  “No.”

  “But if you had anything to do with it, Winslow would know what you look like, right?”

  “Why would he know that? He’s never seen me.”

  Fuller leaned against the side of the open garage door. “Let’s see,” he said. “This is, of course, hypothetical, but if, somehow, somebody managed to force Winslow out to that beach, force him into the water, then Winslow would know what that person looks like. And Winslow doesn’t say anything because that person connected him to another crime, committed several years ago. So what Winslow wants to do is find that guy and silence him. Which means that the guy, the fictional guy, you understand, is now in danger of a rich man who can hire all the thugs he wants, looking for him. And when he finds him, who knows what he’s gonna do? Of course, that’s all hypothetical.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you’re not stupid. But you did a stupid thing. Eventually Winslow is going to connect you to his morning swim. And he’s going to want to deal with you. I don’t know what else to say. You need to watch your back. You need to learn to use that Glock that you bought. I doubt if you’ll ever get close to him again. I feel your pain. I sympathize with you. No, that’s not the right word. I empathize with you. He’s the luckiest sonofabitch in the world. He ought to be washing up on a beach about now, but he isn’t. He’s in that fucking big house of his and he’s probably making some phone calls. He’s a prick and you have every right to hate his guts, but there’s no point in you getting hurt just because he’s a world class prick. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

  “You want a scotch?”

  “Too early in the day for me.”

  “You want a bird house?” I pointed to a row of birdhouses on a shelf at the end of the garage.

  “No. I’m not big on birds.”

  He shifted his weight from the edge of the door. “You be careful,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you not to do anything stupid. You won’t pay attention to me. You didn’t the last time I said it.”

  “Thanks for stopping by.”

  “He’s alive. Which means that you’re not facing a murder investigation. You and I both know what you’ve done. I don’t know the details, but he didn’t take a walk on the beach by himself. Go back to pounding nails. Keep your nose clean. I’m not cutting you any more slack.”

  He turned toward the open garage door, then turned to look back at me.

  “I hope I’ve made myself clear.”

  “You have,” I said

  He nodded, turned and walked back up the driveway to his car.

  I went back into the house. I poured
myself a scotch and took it to the small deck in the back where I could look at the mountain. The house behind me was filled with things that brought to the surface the memory of my wife and daughter; somehow, I had been unable to clear them out. There were the little vases that my daughter had done in ceramics class in high school, delicate things that suggested she had a talent for ceramics. But when the class ended, so did the vases. There was a photograph I took of her against the posters in her room, a black and white photograph that showcased the rock concerts she had attended. It was pinned to the door of the room where she had slept There was no picture of my wife. She left without taking anything, no pictures, no silverware, nothing, She packed a bag and she was gone and it was as if she had never been there. I realized that there wasn’t much left that was hers. Everything had been ours, the dishes and the pictures on the walls and the furniture that we had bought, but there was nothing that was stamped with her name.

  But my daughter was there. She hovered over everything. She was a presence in the house, always there, a shadow at my shoulder when I cooked dinner and now on the deck, I could feel her presence. A hummingbird came to the feeder that hung at the edge and I watched it, an iridescent thing, so tiny that it beggared imagination, and its heart had to weigh less than a postage stamp, but it hovered at the feeder, taking the sugared water, its wings a blur and I thought, perhaps that’s my daughter, reincarnated as something she admired, only I knew that it wasn’t her. She was dead. Drowned in the rising water.