The Bronco pulled up in front of the barn and Victoria got to her feet.
Matt said quickly, “I’ll watch him when I can, Victoria. Can’t promise to do a real stakeout, but if I happen to notice something fishy, I’ll call you.”
CHAPTER 21
It was after nine that night when Matt called. Victoria had been dozing in the wing chair with McCavity in her lap and a book she thought she ought to read.
“You wanted me to call if Colley left the house. He just did.”
“Now?” Victoria wiped the sleep out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “Where are you calling from?”
“I’m following him in my truck. He’s heading south out of town on Katama Road toward South Beach.”
“At this time of night?”
“It’s a beautiful night. Full moon and heavy surf. He might be going fishing.”
“Not Colley,” said Victoria. “I know where he’s going. Call Tom Dwyer, would you please? Tell him to meet us at the parking lot.”
“Want me to come to West Tisbury to pick you up?”
“There’s not time. I’ll get Casey to take me in the police car. Give me your cell phone number in case I need to reach you.”
She wrote down the number, then called the police station. When she got the answering machine, she left a message telling Casey she was going to Chappaquiddick along the beach and then called William Botts.
Victoria could hear voices in the background. “I’m watching the game on television,” Botts grumbled.
“What game?” asked Victoria.
“Jeopardy.”
“I need you here right away,” said Victoria. “I’ll explain when you get here.”
When Botts’s pickup truck rattled into the South Beach parking lot twenty minutes later, Tom Dwyer was talking to Matt, pipe between his teeth. The tires on his SUV were almost flat.
Tom saluted Victoria. “Okay, boss. Give us our orders.”
“Where’s Colley?” Victoria asked.
“He took off down the beach toward Chappy,” Matt said. “Stupid thing to do.”
“What is he driving?”
“The newspaper’s Jeep.”
Victoria turned to Tom. “Can you catch up with him?”
“I got a speeding ticket last summer for going more than five miles an hour along that stretch of beach. You willing to pay the ticket if I get caught?”
“We’ve got to hurry,” Victoria said.
Botts hesitated. “Are we all expected to go on this trek?”
“Hurry,” said Victoria. “Get in, all of you.”
Tom put the car into four-wheel drive and eased onto the beach. “This is a lousy night to be driving along that barrier bar, you know that, don’t you, Victoria?”
“With the moon, we can see things,” Victoria said.
“A full moon means higher than normal tides and the surf is heavy. The bay is going to break through the bar any time now. The ocean was already washing over in places the other day.”
“The Trustees have posted ‘Danger’ signs telling people not to drive on the beach,” Matt said.
“We have to reach Colley before he gets to that narrow place, then,” said Victoria. “The killer has laid a trap for him at Dike Bridge.”
Botts was sitting next to Matt in the back. “I thought Dike Bridge connected Chappaquiddick with the Vineyard.”
Matt shook his head. “Nope. It crosses a creek on the far east side of Chappy. Saves a long drive, if you’re trying to get to the beach.”
“And avoids piping plover nests,” said Tom, with a grin Victoria could see in the moonlight.
“Hurry,” said Victoria.
The moon was high above the ocean ahead of them. A path of dazzling moonlight led from the horizon across the confused sea. Moonlight highlighted the crests of breakers, and flooded the beach with white light. Every small shrub, every bunch of tall beach grass, every footprint left over from the day, showed up clearly, dense black against the moonlit sand.
Tom switched off his headlights. The SUV wallowed in the soft sand, swaying in a way that made Victoria queasy. She took a deep breath to settle her stomach. “Can you see the Jeep yet?”
“I’m following his tracks,” said Tom. “And I’m driving a hell of a lot faster than I like.” He glanced at Matt in the rear view mirror. “How much head start did he have?”
Matt, behind Victoria, leaned forward, swaying with the motion of the careening vehicle. “Twenty-five minutes.”
“To think I could still be watching Jeopardy,” Botts muttered thickly.
“Hurry,” said Victoria.
Tom glanced at the speedometer. “Fasten your seat belt, Victoria.”
“I’m feeling a bit of mal de mer,” Botts mumbled.
“Open the window,” said Tom.
Matt peered ahead between Tom’s seat and Victoria’s. “I think I see him.”
“Hurry,” said Victoria.
“If we capsize,” said Tom, “we’ll never catch him.”
The gap between Tom’s SUV and the Jeep closed slowly.
“Has he spotted us?” Victoria asked.
“I doubt it.” Tom held the steering wheel tightly in both hands and the muscles in his forearm stood out. “He’s not expecting you to follow him, is he?”
In the back seat, Botts groaned. “How much farther?”
“Katama Bay is on our left now. Norton Point is up ahead. The bar narrows from here on. The break is likely to occur just ahead of Colley, beyond Norton Point.”
Victoria could see the Jeep clearly now, a few hundred feet ahead of them.
Tom took a hand off the wheel long enough to remove his pipe from his mouth. “Colley may not realize there’s quicksand ahead of him, right about where he is now.”
“Quicksand?” said Botts.
“The sand gets saturated with water just before the bar breaks through.”
“Maybe the quicksand will suck him down, and then we can go home,” said Botts.
“The quicksand probably is only a couple of feet deep,” said Tom. “Enough to stop a vehicle dead, though.”
Matt was still peering ahead. “Uh, oh!” he said. “The Jeep’s stuck.”
Tom was studying the sand ahead of him. He stopped the vehicle, pulled on the hand brake, and left the engine running. The SUV was well back from the Jeep, which was axle-deep in sand and tilted to one side. Colley was standing on the front seat, holding the roll bar and waving to them.
“About time!” Colley shouted above the roar of surf. “You got a rope?”
A large breaker sent a thin sheet of water racing up the beach toward the Jeep. The water stopped before it got to the Jeep and receded. Some sank into the already soupy sand.
“Some timing Colley’s got,” Tom muttered. “According to him, Nature will hold back earthquakes and volcanoes just for his convenience.” He flung his pipe onto the dashboard, and the three men scrambled out of the SUV. Tom hauled an enormous coil of rope out of the back, fastened one end around his front bumper with a quick hitch, and hurled the free end across the stretch of quicksand to Colley.
The end of the rope went over the top of the Jeep, and Colley grabbed for it. And missed.
Colley screamed, “You’ve got to do better than that!”
Another breaker sent another sheet of water toward the stuck Jeep and again, the water stopped before it reached Colley. The Jeep settled several inches more.
Tom hauled in the line and flung it again.
“Don’t let it tangle,” he shouted to Botts, who was standing next to the rope coil on the beach.
Botts fed the line through his hands. “I’m getting blisters.”
Again, the line went over Colley, and again Colley failed to catch it.
“Gloves in the car, Matt,” Tom called over his shoulder.
Matt ran to the SUV. Victoria, still sitting in her seat, handed the gloves to him, and Matt took them to Botts, who put them on.
Victoria had j
ust opened the door on the passenger side when Matt shouted, “The ocean’s breaking through!”
A sheet of water had pooled briefly around the Jeep and then washed all the way across the bar.
Tom dashed back to the SUV. “Shut the door, Victoria. I’ve got to get the car out of here. All hell is going to break loose in seconds.”
He looked over his shoulder, his arm thrown over the back of Victoria’s seat, and backed away a hundred feet or so. The rope he had attached to his front bumper uncoiled from the bottom of the heap on the beach. Botts was feeding line to Matt, who had thrown a third time to Colley, who missed a third time.
Victoria leaned forward. “Is the rope long enough?”
“Let’s hope so. I don’t want to back up much farther because of the rope.”
“Shit! Shit!” Colley screamed. He was holding the roll bar so tightly, Victoria could see his white knuckles in the pale light. The Jeep tilted still more into the soft sand.
Tom pulled on the hand brake again. “Rising tide,” he mumbled to Victoria, who understood what that meant. As the tide rose, more and more ocean water would pour across the bar, finally cutting a channel through the bar. When that happened, water from the bay, which had a two-foot head, would tear into the beach, washing sand and cobbles and driftwood and anything else in its path out to sea. Colley’s Jeep would be tumbled like driftwood along with tons of sand.
“Colley! You gotta grab it!” Matt shouted, and he hurled the line once again. “Grab it!”
Victoria watched with horror. Sheets of water were washing across the bar continuously now. The foaming edges glistened in the moonlight.
Colley stretched out his hand for the line. Just then the Jeep lurched and sank another foot into the sand and Colley missed a fourth time.
“The Jeep’s in too deep to pull out,” Tom shouted. “Gotta save Colley.”
Back at the SUV, Victoria opened the passenger door and stood carefully on the frame, holding the top of the open door with one hand. She reached with the other hand for one of Tom’s surf-casting rods on the roof and when she felt it, let go of the door so she could use both hands to unhook the shock cord that held the rod in place. Her hands shook so badly, it took several attempts. Finally she worked the rod off the roof. She stepped carefully from the car down onto the sand, holding the rod like a tightrope walker’s balance pole. She slogged through the sand as quickly as she could to where Tom, Matt, and Botts were trying to reach Colley with the rope.
She jammed the butt end of the rod into the sand and leaned on it, catching her breath.
“Colley, jump!” shouted Tom. “Get out of the Jeep! Jump! Now!”
Colley shook his head and hung on. The Jeep was now tipped at almost a forty-five-degree angle, and looked as though it might roll over any second. The rising tide poured water across the bar.
“It’s broken through!” Matt shouted.
Victoria, holding the fishing rod for support, saw the channel form, first snaking slowly, then, in an instant, deepening. Ocean water swept into the bay. A tongue of bay water licked against the incoming ocean water, forcing the ocean water back. And then, abruptly, with the sound of a waterfall, bay water began to pour out to sea, cutting and tearing through the sand, swirling, frothing, foaming. Victoria could see clearly. Fish and seaweed and rocks tumbled over and over through the rush of water. The channel grew wider and deeper in seconds, making a vertical cut through the beach. Victoria could see strata of black-and-white sand in the cut. Within seconds the cut had become almost six feet deep. Rushing water carved under the steep banks. Sand slumped into the channel with a hiss and swirled out to sea.
She could hear Colley scream, but she could no longer hear his words above the noise. As the channel widened and deepened, water undercut the soft sand around the Jeep. The Jeep lurched, slowly turned over, and slipped sideways into the channel, where it tumbled end over end out through the channel into the surf.
“Colley?” Victoria gasped.
“He got out in time, but he’s in trouble.” Tom pointed. Victoria could see Colley’s head emerge from the curl of a breaker. He was moving rapidly out to sea.
Victoria pulled the surf rod out of the sand and handed it to Tom. “Can you use this?”
“Good girl!”
Tom checked the end of the line, raced to the edge of the channel and leaned back to cast.
Matt pointed. “There he is!”
Victoria looked toward where they’d last seen Colley’s head in the line of breakers. A wave broke and Colley’s dark head surfaced. She could see him gasp for breath before another breaker engulfed him.
Tom cast. The weight on the end of his line went over Colley’s shoulder and dropped into the water immediately beyond him.
“Nice cast,” said Matt. “Right across his shoulder.”
“Colley can’t hear. Hope he feels the line. It’s his only chance.”
Colley’s head surfaced again. He reached over his shoulder.
“Don’t pull too hard, Colley,” Matt murmured. “What weight line, Tom?”
“Twenty-pound test,” said Tom. “Gently, Colley.” He played the line as if Colley were a large fish on a much too light line.
Matt had retrieved the end of the rope Colley had failed to grab. “Sould I attach the rope to the line?”
“You know knots?” said Tom.
“Yup.”
“Quick, then. Hope to hell Colley has some sense of self-preservation.”
They could see Colley struggle to keep his head above water.
“He’s weakening,” said Botts.
Colley had been pitched out of the Jeep, tossed about in the channel, and tumbled in the surf. The current had carried him off to one side, but he was moving away from shore.
“Pull, Colley, pull!” Tom shouted.
The rope attached to the light line spun out with Colley as he was carried out. He seemed to understand what he had to do because he pulled, hand over hand, on the filament line that now had the rope attached. The surf dunked him again and again. He emerged each time, gasping and tugging on the light line.
“Atta boy!” shouted Tom, as though Colley could hear. “Pull, Colley! Pull!”
Hand over hand as his head dipped under a breaker and emerged again, Colley pulled the rope toward him. Victoria saw him reach the rope, then struggle to wrap it around himself. Tom dropped the rod onto the sand, and he, Matt, and Botts, hauled in.
“Smooth rhythm,” Tom shouted. “Don’t jerk it, or we’ll lose him.”
Colley had been swept to the far side of the channel. The three maneuvered him back through the rip at the mouth of the cut. When Colley was close to shore, seaward of the line of breakers, Tom tossed off his hat, kicked off his shoes, and waded into the surf. The breakers lifted Colley high on their crests, then rolled him down and under and slammed him onto the sand and pebble floor. Botts and Matt still held the rope that was wrapped around Colley. Tom was waist deep in water, but each breaking wave lifted him off his feet and dropped him again. He landed on his feet, but Colley was as limp as the half-body Tom and Simon Newkirk had fished out of the surf, was it three weeks ago?
Colley rose to the crest of a breaking wave and Tom seized the front of his windbreaker, now torn and ragged, and struggled to the beach. Botts and Matt kept tension on the rope until they, too, waded into the surf and brought Colley onto the beach and dropped him onto the sand.
Victoria was waiting just above the swash line. “Is he alive?”
Tom shook his head. “I can’t tell.”
“He must have swallowed a great deal of seawater,” Victoria said. “We’ve got to get it out of him, quickly.” She knelt by his head. “Can you hear me, Colley?”
He lay on his stomach, arms over his head. The rope was still wrapped around his shoulders and waist. Coils and snarls of rope lay in a tangled heap on the sand where it had been dropped.
Colley’s eyelids fluttered and his mouth moved.
“He’s a
live.” Victoria looked up with relief. “He’s going to throw up. Can you elevate his feet?”
All three men were soaking wet. Tom was barefoot and shivering. Botts breathed gently on his hands. Matt untangled the coils of rope that Colley had wrapped around himself. They hauled him away from the water by his feet, and Colley vomited up what seemed like gallons of seawater.
“Thank God,” said Tom. “I was afraid I was pulling another body out of the surf.”
“We’ve got to get him back to civilization,” Victoria said.
“I’ve got beach towels in the car,” Tom said, teeth chattering. “Bundle him up.”
They stood Colley up, and, one man on either side, dragged him, on legs that didn’t work, to the SUV. Victoria toweled him as dry as she could, then wrapped the towels around him. They lifted him into the backseat, where he slumped with Botts on one side. Matt gathered up the tangle of rope, dumped it into the back, then sat on the other side of Colley.
Tom started up the SUV, turned on the heater full blast, and retraced the route along the beach back to Katama.
“There’s a vehicle coming this way,” Matt said.
“Who in hell … ?” said Tom.
“It’s the police Bronco,” said Victoria. “Casey got my message.”
Casey and Junior Norton pulled alongside. Casey ignored Tom and glared at Victoria. “What do you think you’re doing, Victoria? Are you out of your mind? The cops have signs all over the place telling idiots like you guys to keep off the beach.” She waved her arm behind her. “Can’t you ever do what you’re supposed to do? The bar’s going to break through, like tonight.”
“It did,” said Victoria.
Casey took a deep breath. “Lord, Victoria. Who’s with you. Are you okay?”
“We need to take Colley to the hospital,” Victoria said softly.
“What happened?” Casey asked, anger gone.
Tom looked in the rear-view mirror at the men in the back seat. “Colley would be dead, Chief, if it weren’t for your deputy here. Drowned.”
“How can I help? Escort you to the hospital?”
Tom said, “He may be better off in his own bed with some hot chocolate.”
Colley murmured something.
The Paperwhite Narcissus Page 18
