Dead in the Water (20 page)

I watched for his gun. If he was clever, it would be pointed at the girl's head. It wasn't. He was too primitive for such cunning. It was out to one side, pointing vaguely at me. Unless the guy was the Lone Ranger, I was safe.

Now it all depended on the girl.

I started talking, to him but
at
the girl. "Okay. So you're out on deck and I don't have a gun. What're you waiting for? Why don't you
jump
?"

The girl beat me to it by a half second. She slid neatly down from under his arm and sprang forward over the rail.

In the same instant the big man snapped off a shot at me, and I fired.

The bullet hit him high in the chest on the right side. His arm with my police gun in it flew back over his head in a lazy arc that flung the gun into the water. And he flopped and rolled backward into the deck well, slithering down the steps with a dead uselessness. I came up on him at a run. It was unnecessary. He was smashed up. The hydrostatic shock had probably killed him outright. The girl was sitting on the dock, leaning back against the boat, sobbing.

I stood for a moment, looking down on her blond head and thin white shoulders, naked except for the frivolity of her brassiere. The world was coming back to its proper pace. The killing had ended and the paperwork was about to begin. I gave myself a moment to step over the bleeding man and go down into the cabin of the cruiser. There was a nylon shell hanging on a hook inside the door. I took it and went back out, climbing down wearily from the boat to the dock.

"Here. Put this on," I told her.

She was still sobbing. I crouched to comfort her. "Don't cry anymore. You're all right now. It's all over." It should have been. People should have been scrambling out of their beds in the boats tied up farther back down the dock or in the rented rooms at the lakeshore tavern. But if they were, it wasn't quick enough to help me.

Cold metal jolted against the nape of my neck, nudging me and pulling back. And a voice behind me said, "Oh no, it isn't over."

I turned my head, very slowly, knowing the cold metal was the barrel of a gun.

It was a shotgun, held by a tall figure that I stared at for a long moment before I spoke.

"Okay, Murph. What's the game?"

Murphy said, "No game, Reid. Just drop your gun."

I didn't move fast enough for him and he jabbed me with the shotgun. I laid the big pistol on the dock. He scuffed it over the side with his toe. It plopped quietly into the water.

"Now what?" I asked him.

He waved the gun barrel in a tiny circle. He was a yard from me, too far for me to make a grab for the barrel, too close to miss if he pulled the trigger. He told me, "I haven't killed anybody since the war, but I haven't forgot how."

I said nothing and he sniffed impatiently. "Where's the envelope?" I tapped my shirt front.

"Right here where it would get holes in it if you pull that trigger."

He rocked on his metal leg and laughed. "I'll just have to blow your goddamn feet off then, won't I? That'll make you do like I say."

The girl was putting the shell on, sobbing intermittently like a child who is better now but doesn't want you to think so. She said, "What's happening? Why are you pointing the gun?"

Murphy ignored her. "Gimme the envelope, that's what I want," he told me.

Slowly I pulled it out of my shirt front and dropped it in front of him on the deck. He kept me covered tight as he crouched and picked it up.

I didn't speak or move as he tore it open at the corner with his teeth. He felt inside it with the tip of his finger. I saw him smile, a slow creasing of his face in the thickening dawn light. "How much good do you think that's gonna do you? All it will get you is two bits' worth of lead from these bastards," I said.

He said, "Shut up. We're takin' a boat ride."

The girl whimpered. "Where to? What's happening?"

He backed away up the dock. I glanced at the cruisers. Nobody was moving. Maybe they would talk about us later in the day. When our bodies were found and our pictures were put in the paper. For now, we were alone.

"Do as he says," I told the girl.

She came with me, following as Murphy backed up the dock until he came to a small cedar strip, like the police boat.

"Get in by the motor," he told me. I did. "You in the middle," he told the girl. She looked at me, her face clear now as dawn came up on us, gray and treacherous but with enough light to see by. I nodded at her. She stepped in and sat down. Murphy stooped and pulled the bowline clear. He had it tied with a highwayman's hitch, so it pulled clear one-handed. "Start the motor," he said, stepping down into the bow seat. I fiddled with the choke, but he snapped at me, "Don't play games. Half an inch of choke and pull hard, out of gear."

I did as he said. The motor burbled and started. I pushed the choke back in and turned to face him. He waved me to back out, away from the dock. I let go the stern line and put the boat into reverse. Then I turned it and headed out into the channel. "Up the main channel," he commanded. Then he patted the gun with his claw of a bad hand. "And don't forget what's pointing at you." I moved out into mid-channel and opened the motor up. It was no good arguing with him. A shotgun from five feet away will take you in half. The girl kept looking at me. I ignored her. It was cold on the water and I began to shiver, envying Murphy his old plaid jacket. Somehow the cold was more immediate than the danger.

By the time we had gone through the narrows I knew where we were headed. It was the reference point I had seen on Winslow's map. I kept in mid-channel, remembering the spot from the description I had drawn myself when I saw the cross in pencil, yesterday. We were just about there when Murphy gestured with the gun. "Stop here."

I stopped, slamming the throttle shut in case it might throw Murphy off balance. It didn't. He rocked and stabilized, like a gyroscope. It was thudding silent with the motor stopped. Dawn was all around us now. Birds were calling. Mist was drifting over the surface of the water. It was all very goddamn romantic, except for Murphy and his gun. "What's going on?" I made it sound bored, but I wanted to know. I had to know if we were going to survive.

"I'm waiting for a pickup," Murphy said with a dry halfchuckle. "Very modern, Reid. Just like Viet Nam. I've got air support."

"Somebody's coming to get that envelope?"

"By float plane," he said. "Smart, eh? No need to file a flight plan. Those guys skip over the border and back with no problems at all. Just set down on a lake and take what they want."

"And they want this envelope. Why?"

"I don't know why. I just know this is big." He was like a kid at the movies. He was just waiting for the nice men to buy him a box of popcorn because he'd been a good boy.

"Did Winslow get you into this?" I was talking past the girl, who was swinging her head from one of us to the other, too frightened to talk. A lot had happened to her over the last twenty-four hours, probably including rape. She was saturated with horrors. All she wanted was for it to be over.

Murphy jutted his good leg up and rested the barrel of the shotgun on top of it. I recognized the gun now in the light. It was the pump gun from the office.

"Yeah," he said. "Ross asked me for some help. I helped him before a time or two. Once they sent me a case of rye." Chickenshit payola. My mind was screaming but I needed more facts, more help before I could act.

"So what was the scam this time?"

"This time it was that a couple of guys was coming up to see somebody. They would need a boat to get there. And they would be carrying an envelope that Ross's friends wanted."

"So he stationed himself at the marina and acted dumb till they got there?"

"Right."

"And then he pulled that antique pistol of his on them, only Murray went for his gun and Ross slugged him."

"I guess that's how it was," Murphy said. "I never got a chance to talk to him after."

"Did you stop to think why not?" I yelled it. If I could break him down here and now it would save us from more risks.

"Because he goofed up." Murphy spat it out. "His first ever chance at the big time and he messed it up."

Suddenly Angela Masters spoke. She was angry and proud. "Yes, he was beaten by a better mind," she said.

"Pardoe?" I prodded.

"Yes." Her face puckered up into something like triumph. "He found out they weren't taking him where he wanted to go, so he cut the lines with his pocketknife. And then he jumped overboard and swam for shore and came back to the hotel."

It all made sense now. The empty boat had been abandoned when Winslow had followed Pardoe over the side in a desperate bid to keep him. Only Pardoe must have swum farther, faster and Winslow had gone ashore to the closest land, the island, where he had stolen my boat. It all made sense, all of it, except the motive.

We heard the sound of an aircraft. Low and close, coming over the trees in a shallow run, just about on a straight line for us.

"Start the motor and keep it in neutral," Murphy told me.

"Why? So you can hand over the disk?" I laughed. "What do you think I'm gonna do when we get ashore?"

"You're not getting ashore," he said evenly. "I'm going on the plane. You and her are going to have a little suicide pact." The plane was in sight. It would be with us in another minute.

"It won't wash," I told him. "Your fingerprints are all over the gun."

"And so are yours," he said. "This is the office gun. You loaded it yourself yesterday morning."

I thought the girl was going to faint. But I turned away and started the motor. We had a good chance to win. We were going to win, unless all my luck had gone.

I put the boat in reverse and backed gently out of the line in which the plane was approaching. Murphy watched me carefully, saying nothing. He was counting the money he would have in a few moments. He was going to be rich, to make up for all the years of being nobody in the town named for his family. He thought. The plane came down, a high-wing monoplane on floats. A Cessna 119, I thought. It landed where we had been sitting.

The door opened. A face peeped out.

"Take it over there, nice and slow," Murphy said.

"No chance," I told him. I slammed the engine into forward and sprang ahead with all the force the boat could muster. The pilot would have no chance. All I had to worry about was Murphy. He shouted for me to stop, and then I saw the end of the gun as he lifted and aimed it at my head. My flesh clenched hopelessly on my bones as he pulled the trigger. And nothing happened. He pumped the action and fired again. Nothing. And nothing again. And then we hit the plane, crunching one of the floats so the wingtip dipped into the drink.

The impact flung Murphy back almost over the side of the boat. I pulled him in and slapped him hard across the mouth. Then I backed up, keeping dead astern of the plane where the shouting of the crew was filling the air with a fury that was going to turn into bullets in a second or two more.

I turned and pulled away. Behind us the pistols banged and flapped like Chinese firecrackers. I found myself hooting with laughter, unable to contain myself. I had won. I had won, single bloody handed.

I was still laughing when we got back to the dock and I handed Murphy over to the OPP.

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I
t took a month for the news to get out of the papers. First I was a hero. Then Sam was a hero. Then we were rotten killers. I had the same dizzy sense of déjà vu that had taken over when it happened before in the city.

Only this little town didn't let me down.

I guess they're rednecked enough to appreciate the use of necessary force; in fact they tried to get me a decoration for valor. The police commission wouldn't go along with it, but I kept my job. And Sam lived. He lay on the floor at my feet one late afternoon in Indian summer while I caught up on the everyday stuff.

I was thinking about closing up and trying for pickerel down at the lock, using a new horsehair jig that George had made for me, when the door opened and Fullwell came in. He looked spry. New suit, even a new hat. He was celebrating the raise they gave him for his part in sorting out the case, and writing up Murray as a hero. Security companies like that kind of publicity. It gets them customers, sometimes even lets them put their rates up.

Fullwell took off his new hat and shook hands with me. We did all the buddy-buddy things of asking one another how it's going. Then I cracked out the office bottle and we sat and sipped rye out of coffee mugs.

"You know, there's one question nobody asked you," he admitted after a while, "and I'm still wondering how it came off." He sipped his booze and lowered the cup. "How come the shotgun wasn't loaded?"

I stood up and went over to the rack and patted the butt of the gun. "I unloaded it myself."

He frowned, scrunching his face up. "Why? Did you know ahead of time that Murphy was in on the deal, that you couldn't trust him?"

"Yeah." I sat down again and took another sip of my own drink. "Yeah. I knew as soon as the office had been raided. When I rang him, he didn't seem surprised. All he asked was, 'Did they get it?'" Fullwell cranked up his frown an inch tighter. "Hell. He had no way of knowing whether it was some kids trashing the place or what. But he acted like it was the guys looking for the envelope. So I figured he was in on the deal. And I knew he didn't have a gun of his own, so I thought he might use one of the office guns if it came to a showdown."

"And you unloaded them." Fullwell grinned. He sipped his rye, shaking his head in disbelief at my smartness. "Another thing," I added. "I got my confirmation when I found that slip in the pocket of the guy in my house. It was their alibi. Murphy must have given it to them some time after the killing. It made it look as if they'd been out of the lake when the killing happened."

Fullwell sipped, talking around his coffee cup. "Not just a pretty face, are you?"

I laughed and he went on, lowering his cup. "Hey, something else that's been bothering me, what happened to that diskette? It wasn't even mentioned at the trial."