A Plunder by Pilgrims (9 page)

Most of the pine shelving was filled with books—a mix of dog-eared paperbacks and hardbacks in Mylar covers—but there were also the usual tourist trinkets to be found in all the coastal stores:  Oregon magnates, ocean scene postcards, shiny agates, and even a few Barnacle Bluffs t-shirts.

"I'm looking for some Nancy Drew," Gage said.  "Got any?"

Without fully turning away from the open cash register, Alex glanced at him over the tops of his reading glasses, silver-rimmed ones attached to a red cord.  His thick gray mustache completely dwarfed his upper lip.  "I suppose you've got some moldy Reader's Digest Condensed Books you'd like to offer in trade?" he said.

"Oh, much better.  I've got a set of Encyclopedia Britannica's from 1968."

His friend grunted.  Short as a stump, bald except for a ring of silver hair, and dressed in wrinkled tan slacks and a plaid button-up shirt loaded with a half dozen ballpoint pens, Alex Cortez had the frumpy, tired appearance more appropriate to the bookseller he'd become than the FBI agent he once was.  Already on the heavy side, his paunch had gotten considerably bigger in the three years he'd lived in Barnacle Bluffs. 

His dark complexion, the deep bags under his eyes, and his heavy jowls gave him an austere look. 

"Been a while," he said.

"Yeah," Gage said.  "Sorry about that."

"Uh huh.  Don't see hide nor hair of you for three weeks.  Then I get a call asking for whatever dirt I can dig up about our police chief."

"Which I really appreciate," Gage said.

"I bet.  So what have you found out so far about the girl?"

Gage filled his friend in on what little he'd discovered.  While Alex listened, he finished closing out the till, then took a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a white rag and cleaned a stack of paperbacks resting on the glass counter.

Watching the way he meticulously cleaned the sticker residue off a paperback picturing a particularly bosomy female on the front, Gage had to smile.  After all, this was a guy who'd been in gunfights with teenage crack heads, testified against Russian mobsters, and pulled all-night stakeouts in subzero weather.  Still, it didn't surprise Gage at all when Alex opened the store.  He'd said for years that he'd open a bookstore when he retired.  No, the only thing that surprised Gage was that Alex had opened the store in Oregon rather than his native Arizona.  Alex had claimed that they'd moved to Barnacle Bluffs because Eve adored the town, but Gage suspected Alex was trying to keep a close eye on him. 

When Gage finished relating his encounter in Kooby, Alex said, "Well, it's a start, I guess."

"How about the FBI?" Gage said.  "They got any ideas?"

"Wow, you're expecting some serious results, my friend.  It's been less than two days.  You know, I
am
mostly retired, Garrison.  It's not like I have the FBI on my Twitter account or something."

"You have a Twitter account?"

Alex loaded his stack of books onto a cart and pushed it around the counter, the wheels squeaking.  "Nah," he said.  "I don't even know what a Twitter account is.  Be right back.  Got to shelve these before closing up."

"You want the lights on in the stacks?"

Alex chuckled.  "Nah.  I'd be able to shelve these even if it was pitch black.  Know the store that well."  He disappeared around a corner.  "So," he said, his voice floating over the stacks, "is your knee up for a lot of ambling about?"

"Why, am I going to have to do a lot of ambling?"

"Well, if you're investigating the girl's death, you are."

"I'm not investigating anything.  Not officially anyway."

There was the sound of a book sliding onto a woodened shelf, and then Alex answered.  "Right."

"Seriously.  I'm not."

"You take lying to yourself to profound lengths, my friend.  I don't suppose you've ever gotten around to seeing a therapist like I told you, have you?"

"Why would I need one?" Gage said.  "I thought that's why you moved to Barnacle Bluffs—to lead my therapy sessions."

"Hardly," Alex said.  "I moved to Barnacle Bluffs because Eve wanted to live here, and I figured screwing up three marriages was more than enough."

"You've done all right," Gage said.  "At least none of them died."

It was a blunt thing to say, and it surprised Gage.  Where had that come from?  There were the sounds of books sliding into place and the squeaking of the cart's wheels.  It was a few minutes before Alex finished the shelving, and when he wheeled around the corner, he looked at Gage with concern. 

Gage felt the old familiar anger creep up on him.  It was always there, lurking around the corner, his old friend. 

"Don't do that," he said.

"What?" Alex said.

"The pity thing.  I've told you before, I don't need it."

"I've also told
you
to stop blaming yourself."

"If I don't, who will?"

"Jesus," Alex said, "it's been five years."

"To you, maybe.  To me it might as well have been yesterday."

Alex shook his head.  "Yeah, that's the problem."

Gage, saying nothing, watched his friend push the cart around the front counter.  The tightness in the chest, the heat on his face, the clenched fists—these were the signs, and Gage knew that if he
did
say something, it was liable to get out of hand in a hurry.  What did anybody else know about his pain?  Five, ten, twenty years, what did it matter?  When an Iranian circus strongman takes a baseball bat to your knee, busting it up so bad most of the doctors tell you you'll be lucky if you walk again, and then drowns the love of your life in your own bathtub while you're lying on the floor in agonizing pain, unable to stop him, it does a pretty good job at stymieing your progress through the five fucking stages of grief.  Even blasting the asshole's brains out with his Beretta hadn't been cathartic; if anything, it took away the one thing other than himself where he could focus his blame.

Alex took some glass cleaner from below and squirted the countertop next to the cash register, then used some paper towels to wipe the area clean.  It left the scent of ammonia in the air.

"Look," he said, "I just want to say one last thing."

"Maybe you've said too much already," Gage said.

"Hear me out before you blow a gasket, all right?  You may not think you're investigating this girl, but I think you already are and just haven't figured it out yet.  And I think Janet would want you to."

Gage shook his head.  "Janet hated what I did for a living."

"No, she hated that you might get killed while doing it.  That's not the same thing.  And I still think she'd want you to do this."

"Bullshit."

"Did she ever ask you to quit?"

"What?"

"In all the years you were together, did Janet once ever ask you to quit?"

Gage thought about it.  Janet had been a elegant creature, a woman of refined tastes who'd spent her life shuffling around museums, but she'd hated his chosen line of work with a passion.  If he came home late, if he came home bloodied or bruised, it was enough to send her into a rage.  She'd broken a few vases—a couple quite rare—while aiming for his head.  There was no doubt she would have preferred he was an investment banker, a college professor, or some other career that didn't involve ducking bullets and fists.  But ask him to quit? 

"No," he admitted.

"Yeah, I thought so," Alex said.  "You know why?"

"I'm sure you're going to tell me."

"Because she knew you loved it, that's why.  She knew it was what you were.  She couldn't ask you to stop being what you were.  The last five years, you haven't been yourself.  You stop fooling yourself and be honest about what you're doing with this dead girl, you'll be yourself again."

"Thank you for those peals of metaphysical wisdom, Deepak Chopra."

Alex shook his head.  "Laugh all you want.  Both of us know it's true."

"You know, I really did just stop by to say hello."

"No, I think you stopped by because you wanted someone to give you permission to do this." 

"Uh huh.  And what about you, Special Agent Alex Cortez?  Aren't you avoiding doing what you are?"

Alex looked around his cramped little shop.  Through his thick lenses, his eyes glinted with amusement.  "Nope," he said. "I spent thirty years doing what I
wasn't
supposed to be doing.  This is actually me.  I just do some consulting for the FBI on the side to help make ends meet.  Health insurance is a bitch."

Gage would have come back with a witty rejoinder, but then the bells over the front door rang.  Turning, he saw a white-haired old lady with severe curvature of the spine struggling to carry a box full of what looked like old Regency romance paperbacks into the store.  Gage took the box from her and, to her effusive thanks, lifted it onto the counter.  The box stank of mildew and cigarette smoke.  Smiling, Gage looked at his friend, but Alex was holding up a finger in warning.

"Not a word," he said.

* * * * *

While he'd been inside the store, the sky had melted to black.  On the drive to his place, fog blanketed the highway, moisture beading the windshield.   His brain felt foggy too.  Seeing Alex had lifted his spirits, but now that he was on his own the brooding melancholy returned.  Inertia had carried him through the day, but now that energy was spent and he was like a rock rolling to a standstill.  Why was he doing this again?  She was just some girl.  Nobody had come looking for her.  If he stopped this ridiculous foray back into his old ways, who would care? 

There was something lurking in the gray world of his past, a terrible turmoil awaiting around the next corner or the next bend.  He knew that if he continued on this road, he risked plunging himself back into all that madness.  After Janet was killed, there were whole weeks that passed that he had no memory of—he'd been a walking coma, living in a world of fog and shadows.  He didn't want to go there again.  He didn't know if he
could
go there again, if anything could trigger that kind of strange delusion, but he didn't want to find out.

She was just a dead girl on a beach.  It was an awful thing, but it wasn't his responsibility.  He was a stubborn man once he'd set himself on a path, but he could talk himself out of it.  Maybe, for once, he should.

This was what he was thinking when he parked his van and walked across the gravel to his front door.  The air was cold and wet.  The porch light was dark, but there was enough light from street lamp on the corner that he saw them right away—pieces of gravel arranged on the smooth gray concrete in front of his door. 

His pulse quickened.  Up close, he finally saw that the little stones had been arranged into letters, and the letters into words:

THER AR OTHR GRLS

(...continued...)

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The Gray and Guilty Sea
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