by Lou Allin
“How sweet of you, dear. And yes, they are very reliable.”
“And how’s Rudy? Still getting in some fishing?” she asked with a catch in her throat. Something deep inside called her dishonest. This wasn’t the old lady’s fault. So what? A girl was dead.
“I should say so. He brought me a lovely spring the other day. Must have been ten pounds. He even portioned it out for me for the freezer. Salmon’s so easy. All you need to do is pop it into the oven with a little mustard. The grainy kind.”
“I like it that way, too. Where does he keep his boat? My neighbour’s is at Jock’s Dock.”
A merry trill of laughter. “The old Alice May is at a marina in Port Renfrew. The charges are less than in Sooke, he says. Rudy is careful with his money. That’s a good trait for a young man, don’t you agree? He’ll be married soon enough. Ellen is so perfect for him. Am I going to spoil those babies. Never had any of my own.”
Holly rang off with myriad feelings. Means, maybe; opportunity, surely. What motivates evil? Lack of that little empathy gene, for one thing. So Rudy’s boat was here. If that scrap of paper had been clinging to his clothes at French Beach, he wasn’t swimming to shore. He would need a dinghy. But how did he see at night? Granted that there were some campfires and other lights at more civilized French Beach, but not in the heavy bush at Sombrio. That one factor bothered her. Using a flashlight would have given him away. None of those present had ever mentioned one except for Lindsay’s.
Oblivious to the kitchen clatter and the roars of a soccer game from the television in the bar, Holly tried to sort out her whirling thoughts. Was she stretching the possibilities so far beyond reason that they were going to snap back in her face? She needed a close look at that boat. Why hadn’t she asked Beth where Rudy was now? Something like, “I suppose Rudy has to work today.” It was a weekday. He had a job, but perhaps as a manager he set his own hours. If he were at the docks, that car wouldn’t be hard to spot.
She made the short trip to the marina and parked in the lot. Only a dozen boats remained. Charter businesses sometimes made a buck in the winter from the occasional stubborn tourist from Chicago willing to brave the cold winds of the strait. But like her neighbours, most people had already hauled in their smaller crafts for the season. Perhaps Rudy spent weekends or holidays living on the Alice May. Of the dozen remaining vessels, only one looked large enough.
She moved closer, ambling down the dock to get a glimpse of the names. There was the Alice May itself, an old wooden dame but spiffy with a fresh dark blue paint job, rocking gently at the last space. The open door to its cockpit and a shirt hung up to dry warned her that someone must be around. In a heap on the deck was a collapsed plastic dinghy with two short oars. Presumably he could inflate it with a foot pump. Boat, strike one. Dinghy, strike two. One problem: no search warrant and little reason to try to get one. No stolen goods or illegal substances were in sight. Nor did she have reason to think anyone was in danger, so she couldn’t hop aboard and toss the cabin. Where was a good fire when you needed one? As if to mirror her feelings, the sky was clouding over fast. A few drops of rain fell onto the boards.
A rake-thin man with a white Santa beard and a pair of shorts revealing spindly calves and varicose veins was cleaning his small outboard two berths away, scrubbing its side with a wooden brush and whistling. His T-shirt read “Tap Out.”
“Hello,” she said, tipping back her ball cap. “Looks like a bit of chop coming up.”
“Sure is. I was going to go out one last time, but the marine forecast says sixty knot winds are coming. And we got ourselves a king tide, too. So she’s headed for my garage and I’m taking the RV to Tucson tomorrow. Hate that winter rain.”
“I would if I could,” she said, smiling. Tide times were printed in the daily papers. A king tide happened only a few times each year. Some connected it with global warming as an indication of the hazards of high seas. “Have you seen the owner of the Alice May?”
The man scratched his chin with some suspicion, eying her up and down, and she realized the powers of a uniform. But as a woman she had the advantage of seeming innocent and sincere. “No problems, are there? Rudy’s a nice young man. Gives me a fish when I come back empty, which is more often than not.”
She folded her arms and leaned against a post in casual fashion. “I heard he might want to sell his boat. My dad’s looking for one just like this. This time of year prices are lower.”
The man checked his watch. “His car’s acting up, and he left it with a friend in Rennie. Kind of amateur mechanic. I took him into town about fifteen minutes ago to get some groceries and a two-four at the liquor outlet. I’ll be going for him now. Should be on board in half an hour tops if he’s done.”
“I’m due back in the city myself. Just playing hooky today. I’ll leave him a note, telling him where to call.” With that along with a reassuring smile, she pulled a notebook from her hoodie pouch, sat on a spar and pretended to write.
When he had taken his bow legs down the dock and out of sight, she walked closer to the boat. Leaning a certain way, she could see up into the pilot house and down into the cabin. What she noticed at the entrance to the lower stairs shocked her. Dark green goggles. Huge mothers, army style. But not for underwater use. Night-vision, unless she was mistaken. Stores that catered to civilian wannabe spymasters were carrying all kinds of hi-tech gear.
A chill started in her breastbone and exploded in all directions like fireworks. What might give someone the ability to sneak around dark campsites all the way down the coast? Silently. Drifting away later, far from any notice. A boat with a dinghy. The monster in the night with those huge eyes. At the time she’d thought it was a kid’s imagination. Now it was all coming together. Even the approximate time. But who would have believed her?
Rudy botched the attack at French. That must have been frustrating. A bruised ego out for revenge. That accounted for the risks at Sombrio. But he had succeeded there. And with the storm of media attention, why not stage a bogus attack to divert the attention? Two crazy people are greater than the sum of their parts. Half the force was out now looking for a non-existent man. Either Ellen was the most browbeaten woman alive or she deserved an Academy Award. Did Rudy meet her recently or did her complicity date back to Manitoba? Where else had he left bodies in his wake? A trucker in the States had preyed on women across the country and dumped them like trash. Rudy was not going to add one more prize to his collection. Not on her turf.
She had a slender reason to check the boat now. With its size at about thirty-five feet, in minutes she could give it a onceover. If she was caught, could she talk her way out? The RCMP motto was maintiens le droit. Uphold the law. How often the rules shackled the officer at a price to the victim. Again she calculated. So many feet to the cabin. Down. A quick visual. Back and out before those ample minutes were up. Then she could reconnoitre with Ann and her superiors to arrange the logistics. Best of all, the boat’s bulk blocked anyone coming down the dock from seeing her.
After giving a final scan towards land, she stepped carefully onto the deck. The boards creaked slightly, but a wave washed through the drain holes in the gunwales. While she had been oblivious, the wind was rising and it was getting rough, even in the harbour. Little white butterflies in the water were turning to angry scallops of foam. No wonder there wasn’t one boat out there. What had the man said? As high as sixty knots? The tide was cresting on the beach at least a foot higher than normal. A recipe for disaster. Search and rescue might have a busy night. Anyone going into the water at this time of year had hypothermia to worry about, even with a life jacket.
A floating kelp bed bumped the boat, its bulbous stems buoying it like an island, holdfasts having surrendered with the sea’s movement. Grey clouds tinged with black scudded across the sky, and more drops began to fall. Seagulls screamed and a blue heron winged to land, delivering a bomb on the dock that might have blinded her. She knew better than to look up.
If only she’d had her vest and duty belt. The stun gun she didn’t carry normally, but the pepper spray and gun were at her disposal. An arsenal, and now nothing but her wits and a few half-hearted self-defence classes. Why hadn’t she paid more attention when the instructor had shown them how to take down a two-hundred-pound man with a simple pinkie-finger grip? Because it looked easier than it was. Truth to tell, she probably knew just enough to hurt herself. Holly made a vow to take a weekly upgrading class.
The cockpit looked utilitarian, empty of everything but two captain’s chairs and the instrumentation. Clipped to the wall was a fire extinguisher. A couple of empty beer cans rolled across the floor with the ship’s motion. Maritime charts stood upright in a small bin.
She stepped slowly down into the hold. It was amazing how much designers could stow in a small space. This was the galley and dining area. Beyond the curtain would be a bedroom. On a table sat a fused glass plate with a silver charm bracelet with a trumpet, a gold brooch, a black pearl earring. Maddie’s gift from her gran. Lindsay’s earring. Conspicuously there was no pink coral necklace like the one Ellen claimed to have lost. It probably didn’t even exist. Who owned the brooch? Did it come from the Manitoba cold cases or did some other girl sleep at the bottom of the strait?
Her heart began to race. There were disadvantages of falling into a pot of jam, delicious though it was. Her watch read only five minutes since the old man had left. Stick with the plan, but ramp up the timing. What if Rudy recognized her though the old man? A woman looking for a boat to buy was suspicious, even though she’d mentioned her father. Maybe he was planning to leave the country anyway. But not in this storm.
A flush crossed her brow, and she felt herself sweating, even in the cold wind. Get out now, she told herself, but she seemed to be moving in slow motion. Now that she knew how this crime had been committed, she was halfway to an arrest. Ellen’s testimony would be central. The girl looked weak, easy to turn once away from Rudy’s hypnotic influence. Another wave lashed the boat, and she reached for a table bolted to the floor. “Wheew. Get your sea legs,” she whispered, turning for the stairs to the deck where the open air awaited.
“Fuck you” were the last words she heard before she dropped.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Holly had no idea how much a headache could hurt. A pneumatic jackhammer was breaking cement in her skull. Was the pounding her own heartbeat? Opening her eyes seemed like a bad idea. She’d rather not move at all. When she tried to get up, she couldn’t move her arms and legs. Where the hell was she? In the trunk of a car? The room was rising and falling, punctuated by the sound of crashing below.
The Alice May. Now she remembered where she had heard that name. It was the boat in Robert W. Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” the one “on the marge of Lake Lebarge.” Her fate was looking like Sam’s, but instead of burning, she would drown.
From lying on her stomach, she squirmed to her side, then let her eyes confirm the nightmare. Her hands were tied tightly in front of her with polypropylene rope. She was on a double bed. The bed behind the curtain. Where someone had been. The throb of the motors vibrated through the floorboards. She had assumed that she was alone. That might be the last assumption she ever made. How many second chances did anyone expect?
Voices came to her. Rudy. Ellen. She’d walked right into their little web. What were they saying? “No problem, babe.” Then “But what if” and then “Not a chance in hell that they’ll …”
Out the small porthole, bright orange crab pots bobbed past. Tourists rented them at the Corner Store in Sooke. This time, the crabs would be doing the eating. The next time a foot floated onto a beach in the Salish Sea that encompassed Puget Sound, Victoria, and Vancouver, it might be hers. Running shoes were notorious floaters. In the last ten years, the total was ten. Only a few had ever matched. Some were faked by teenagers with a morbid sense of humour and access to animal bones.
The waves tugged at the boat as they headed out into the strait, buoyed by the monster king tide. The farther the better, and certainly out of sight of land. She’d be weighed down, perhaps with a fishing net and anchors until her body was bones, bleached like the skeleton of a dead seal.
She heard a noise on the stairs and a door opened. With only two small portholes, it was dim during the storm. The feeble light backlit a blond head.
“I had a feeling I’d find you here. Whatever you’re doing in civvies, good choice. You haven’t got a little surprise for me under your pantleg, do you?” Rudy said as he hauled her to her feet and gave her a rough patdown. “Good girl. I thought better of you. This is going to make things way too easy. I prefer challenges.”
An officer’s worst nightmare. Not merely losing his weapons, but not even bringing them to the party. She had made the kind of rookie mistakes that Ben had warned her about. First, setting out without backup. Second, thinking that Rudy was the only one around. Third, believing that she could get in and out before he returned. Three strikes. Game over. With a sociopath, she doubted that she’d get another chance.
Rudy had the biceps of a bodybuilder and the neck and shoulders of an Angus bull. He wore jeans and a cable knit sweater. On his head was a white captain’s hat with gold braid and a long bill. He yanked her up the stairs and shoved her onto a bench. Water was sluicing over the decks as the boat charged ahead. The Canadian shore was a grey mass behind them. He nodded at Ellen, in a yellow slicker with her hair stuck to her face. In typical west-coast fashion, the rain was horizontal, a SWOW: solid wall of water.
“We can’t stay on auto-pilot more than a few minutes, Ellen. Make yourself useful for once and go up there and steer. I want to get around the point and out of sight. Now hustle!” With not a word, the girl went up the stairs to the pilothouse, holding on to the railings and pitching from side to side. Her face was contorted from the blistering rain, but she looked determined.
The boat lurched, then headed straight west, bouncing in the roughening chop. A tarnished pewter filled the sky, lit at the edges in the false hope of sun. If it weren’t late October, Holly would have sworn those were snow clouds. How long could the boat take weather like this? As far as the middle of the strait? It was about seventeen kilometres to Washington, which was fogged in. Over she’d go, and Rudy would head back to shore. The only man who had seen her on the docks was en route to Tucson and might never hear about her disappearance. She’d become one more in those cold cases Chipper had been reading. Worse yet, it would be a final blow for her father. Both of his loves gone without a trace. She swallowed a lump in her throat as her eyes burned from the salt spume lashing the deck.
“I was seen on the docks,” she yelled, holding her aching head high. Things were blurry, or was it the rain running down her cheeks? You couldn’t bluff a bluffer. Did she expect him to beg forgiveness and turn himself in through a sudden change of heart? That would imply that he had a conscience. Her hands were tied in front of her, one tiny advantage, she realized as her thoughts stared to focus in the cold spray.
“Hell, old Jack has a memory like a sieve these days, and he’ll be on his way out of the country tomorrow. Don’t think anyone’s going to connect us. You weren’t dressed like a cop. Probably had your hood up in this pathetic little undercover affair. No biggie.” Rudy lit a cigarette and puffed. His fingers were nicotine stained. As the cigarette sizzled in the wet, he held a hand over it and took another drag, watching the smoke disappear in the wind.
“My car’s still at the marina. I had lunch in Rennie. They’re going to remember me.” She saw a flicker cross his face. Handsome though he had seemed, he was stone cold gruesome now.
“So friggin’ what? Do you know how fast I could make a car disappear on this end of the island?”
She tried another bluff. “We’ve suspected you for some time. One of our officers had serious doubts about your story. We knew about the dinghy.”
“Who, that twit who picked up Ellen? Officer Ditz? Piss off. Don’t expect me
to believe that. No one’s been sniffing around after Ellie Bear or after me. You’re just trying to cover up the fact that you’re a total fool.”
Ellie Bear. She nearly laughed. The girl was about as harmless as a scorpion. Yet was there the slightest self-doubt in his tone? “We’ve been talking about it at the detachment. I sent in trace material from the yurt at French Beach. The cat’s saliva was on a piece of cigarette paper. I’d say that it stuck to your pants when you came in with the dinghy. Little things come back to haunt you.”
He roared even louder than the tempest. “Do I look freakin’ stupid? That is the most dumbass thing I ever heard. Did you go to clown school to learn to make up that shit?” A curl of total contempt came over his lip. They rose and fell, shuffling their feet as the boat bounced over the waves. Holly had the strangest feeling that her mother was in the same watery grave. She wasn’t traditionally religious, but wasn’t there a part in the Bible about the sea giving up its dead?
“You know what, little miss lawman? I’m just going to take me a big old west-coast chance on that.”
What did she have to lose now? Keeping him talking was her only weapon. “Like in Winnipeg. My constable’s on those cases, too. It’s all coming together, Rudy. You need another M.O. That trimmer line is very telling.”
“Figured that out, did you? Two points for you, then.” He stroked his soul patch thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s about time that I took a little vacation. Aunt Beth is going to assisted living. I was talking to a social worker about her last week.”
Something sour rose in Holly’s throat. She was close to vomiting in her anxiety. Strange that he had feelings for someone. But there were all varieties of sociopaths. Hitler had loved his German shepherd, Blondi. “Make it easy on yourself and Ellen. There’s no death penalty in Canada.”
