Gray Ghost (22 page)

Dr. Surry clicked her tongue. “It’s bleeding a lot. Up to a point, that’s good. Clean it out. Looks like the bullet glanced off your ribs and kept going. Also good.” She laughed quickly. “This is ironic. I never go anywhere without my black bag, but looking at dead bodies all the time, I’ve never needed it. Now I need it and it’s back in my car. I hope you have a first aid kit on this boat.”

“Under the stern seat,” Calhoun mumbled.

She turned, lifted the seat, and took out the big tin box. She used a wad of gauze to wipe the blood away, and then Calhoun saw how the bullet had hit him just under his left nipple and had ripped a gouge along the side of his rib cage, angling upward toward his armpit. He guessed another inch to the middle and it could have slipped between his ribs and drilled his heart.

Dr. Surry soaked another hunk of gauze with iodine. When she swabbed his wound, he didn’t feel anything for a couple of seconds. Then it hurt worse than the bullet had.

She looked up at him. “Doin’ okay?”

He nodded and tried to smile. He didn’t dare speak.

She bandaged him up and helped him button his shirt and zip up his windbreaker. “Don’t flail around too much or you’ll start it bleeding again,” she said.

“Not sure I’m capable of much flailing,” he said. The dizziness and nausea had passed. He felt a little weak, that was all. “I got that cell phone in my pocket. See if you can fish it out for me.”

She leaned close to him and patted the sides of his legs. She found the phone and slid her hand into his pocket. She gripped the phone, then paused with her hand still in his pocket. “I apologize for the, um, intimacy,” she said.

He looked at her. She was grinning.

“Good thing Kate ain’t here,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes, then smiled and nodded and pulled out the phone. She held it up, squinted at it, and said, “Oh, this is a big help.”

“What’s the matter ?”

“Your battery’s dead.”

So much for his tricky telephone call and voice mail message. The sheriff had given him a recharger for the phone. Calhoun had used it once, then stopped thinking about it.

“You’re going to have to show me how to drive us back,” she said.

“It ain’t rocket surgery,” he said. “It’s just a damn boat.”

“Rocket surgery.” She smiled.

“You want to take a look at that man’s shoulder, Doc ?”

She raised a finger and pointed at him. “Will you please not call me Doc. Makes me think I’m some old geezer with a limp and a drinking problem. Everybody calls me Sam except you.”

“Sorry,” said Calhoun.

She looked past Calhoun to where Otis Maxner was slumped in the bow of the boat. “That man’s shoulder isn’t going to kill him,” she said. “I don’t have much interest in getting any closer to him than this.”

“Fine by me. Why don’t you sit back there and drive us home, then. I’m about ready to turn this man over to the sheriff.”

“And get that bullet wound of yours looked at,” said Sam Surry.

Calhoun turned and looked at Maxner, who was curled fetally on the bottom of the boat. He was cradling his destroyed right arm against his body and whimpering softly. “You sit tight,” Calhoun said to him. “We’re heading back now. In case you might think of moving around, I can tell you that Ralph here has now got a taste for your balls, like one of them man-eating tigers, and he’d love nothing more than to chew on them some more. All I got to do is tell him okay. Understand?”

Maxner opened his eyes, gave a tiny nod, then closed them again.

Ralph continued to sit there glowering.

Calhoun gave directions, and Sam Surry managed to back them away from the underwater boulders and get them headed back to the boat landing. Once he saw that she was handling it like a veteran, he allowed himself to slump on his seat and close his eyes.

He felt himself drifting, and from a long distance away came the voices of the Quarantine Island nuns, the old gray ghosts with their habits billowing in the wind, moaning and keening and wailing, and he wondered if it was his death they were mourning. He opened his eyes. The sun had set, and darkness was spreading over the bay, and the fog seemed to be thickening again.

Sam Surry was concentrating on where she was steering, and Ralph was still glaring at Otis Maxner’s groin area. They apparently hadn’t heard the nuns. Calhoun supposed he was a little wacky from getting shot.

When he closed his eyes again, he didn’t hear the gray ghosts anymore.

After a while, Sam Surry beached the boat at the landing. When Calhoun felt the bump of the boat, he opened his eyes and sat up. Sheriff Dickman was holding the bow steady, and Lieutenant Gilsum and three or four uniformed cops were standing there.

Ralph leaped out immediately and proceeded to go exploring.

The sheriff held on to the boat while Lieutenant Gilsum helped Sam Surry get off.

“He’s hurt,” she said, pointing at Calhoun.

Two of the cops helped Calhoun get out of the boat. With one on each side, they steered him over to some big rocks and helped him sit down. Ralph came over and put his chin on Calhoun’s knee. Calhoun patted him with his good hand.

He watched as they wrestled Otis Maxner out of the boat, half-carried him up the landing, and stuffed him into the back of a cruiser. Then the cruiser pulled out of the lot.

The sheriff and Gilsum came over and stood in front of Calhoun. “I got two messages from you on my cell phone,” said the sheriff. “First one, mentioning Albert Wolinski, I checked, and sure enough, Otis Maxner handled his real estate transaction. That’s when things started to make sense. Couldn’t understand your second message at all, to tell you the truth. It was all muffled and faraway, and after a minute it died completely. Saw that it was from your phone again, so I called Kate, and she said you’d gone fishing. Figured I better see what was up, and giving it a second thought, I gave the lieutenant a call. Not that you needed any help that I can see. You doin’ okay?”

Calhoun nodded. “Bullet grazed my ribs is all. Just a little .22.1 think I might’ve bled quite a bit, but I’m good.”

“We can talk about it later,” said the sheriff, “but just so I understand, it was Otis Maxner did all the killing?”

“It was him.”

“And you had that all figured out?”

Calhoun shook his head. “Nope.” He tried to smile. “Not all of it. But I would’ve.” He lowered his head between his knees. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t feel so hot.”

Everything was fuzzy. Images whirled in his brain, and he couldn’t mobilize the energy to pin them down. He was aware of people moving around him. Somebody said, “Shock,” and somebody else said, “Hospital,” and then people were gripping his arms and hauling him into a vehicle.

He faded in and out. There were blurry faces—Kate and Sam Surry and the sheriff, doctors with green masks over their mouths and black solemn eyes, other faces that seemed to come from some other time in his life, children and old people speaking languages he didn’t understand, all whirling around in his head. There were bright lights and antiseptic odors and murmuring voices and humming machinery.

After a while, he slept.

He woke up in gray light looking at the ceiling in his own bedroom. He couldn’t swallow. It felt as if a wad of steel wool were stuck in his throat.

He tried to lift his head off the pillow, and somebody commenced hammering a tenpenny spike into his forehead.

Kate’s face appeared. “Can I get you something?” she said.

He tried to smile. It hurt. “Water,” he croaked.

A glass appeared in her hand. She held it to his lips with one hand, and with the other she cupped the back of his head and helped him lift up. “Just sip,” she said.

He took a sip. It slid gloriously down his throat, then hit his stomach like a rock. He swallowed back the urge to vomit.

Kate lowered his head back to the pillow.

“You’re here,” said Calhoun.

“Don’t go reading too much into it,” she said. “Sam and I flipped a coin. I got tonight. She’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Sam,” said Calhoun.

“Dr. Surry.”

He nodded. Sam.

“Go to sleep, Stoney. Everything’s under control.”

He closed his eyes. There were thoughts he couldn’t quite pin down. “Honey?” he said.

She stroked the side of his face with her soft hand. “I’m here, Stoney.”

“You gonna leave me again?”

She touched his eyelids with the tips of her fingers. “Go to sleep now.”

“Where’s Ralph?”

“He’s right here, snorin’ and twitchin’ on his rug.”

“Did you feed him?”

“I told you. Everything’s under control.” She bent to him and kissed his forehead. “Relax, baby. Just relax.”

Then he slept.

Calhoun insisted on getting out of bed the next morning. Kate tried to get him to swallow a pill. “For the pain,” she said.

He shook his head. “The pain ain’t so bad.”

She didn’t argue. She helped him out onto the deck. His left side throbbed from armpit to hip. Every heartbeat shot a dart of pain into his head. It felt as if he’d been run over by a bus.

It was tolerable, though, and he intended to tolerate it.

A warm sun filtered down through the big maple that arched over the house. Kate brought him a slice of dry toast. He took an experimental bite, and when he didn’t vomit, he ate it all.

He dozed out there most of the day with Kate sitting across from him reading a book and Ralph sprawled on the deck beside him. She roused him a couple of times so he could swallow some antibiotic capsules.

Sometime in the afternoon Sam Surry drove her little Honda SUV into the yard. Kate went down, gave her a hug, and talked with her. Then both women came up onto the deck.

Sam gave Calhoun a smile and went into the house.

Kate sat across from Calhoun. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said, “and I’ll keep coming back until you’re better. But I don’t want you to think any thing’s changed.”

He nodded. She was thinking about Walter.

“One of these days things will be different,” she said.

He nodded. “I know.”

“Meantime,” she said, “please try not to let anybody else shoot you.”

“Don’t worry about me, honey,” he said. “I ain’t going anywhere.”

Kate looked at him for a long moment. Then she came around the table, knelt beside him, and laid her cheek on his leg.

He reached out with his good hand and touched her hair.

When she looked up at him, he saw the glitter of tears in her eyes.

“You’re a good man, Stoney Calhoun,” she whispered. “I’m gonna love you forever and ever, and don’t you dare forget it.”

Then Calhoun felt tears burning in his eyes, too.

The sheriff came the next afternoon. Calhoun and Sam Surry were sitting on the deck sipping Cokes and watching the chickadees and finches in the feeders. The sheriff climbed up onto the deck and sat down with them.

Sam asked if he wanted a Coke, and he said he wouldn’t mind. She got up, brought him Coke, then went back inside.

The sheriff asked Calhoun how he was doing. Calhoun said he wasn’t complaining, and that was the end of that topic.

The sheriff told him that Otis Maxner had confessed to everything. He’d been required to defend sex offenders in court, and that led him to believe that his sacred calling was to rid the world of them. He’d aimed to work his way through the entire registry for the city of Portland, and then he’d branch out into the surrounding areas, and who knew where or when he’d stop? His long-term goal was to deposit a body on each of Casco Bay’s Calendar Islands, all 365 of them, plus or minus. He’d cut off each man’s evil dick and

shove it in his mouth. Then he’d slice his throat and set him ablaze. Poetic justice. Maxner considered himself a hero.

He’d hired Albie Wolinski to help. He paid Albie a lot of money. But Albie had gotten greedy, or maybe he had a twinge of conscience. He looked up Paul Vecchio, who promised him money for his story. They met at the Keelhaul Cafe. Albie drew a map of the bay, showing Vecchio where the bodies were. Then Vecchio hired Calhoun to take him fishing—mainly so he could explore one of the islands on Albie’s map and see if he was telling the truth.

Maxner got wind of Albie’s treachery. He tortured him, then killed him, then followed Vecchio to Calhoun’s place and killed him, too.

“That’s it, then,” said Calhoun.

The sheriff nodded.

“Good.” Calhoun reached into his pants pocket and took out his deputy badge and cell phone. He put them on the table.

“Keep ‘em,” said the sheriff.

Calhoun shoved the badge and the phone at the sheriff. “I’m a fishing guide.”

“And a damn good one.” The sheriff pushed the badge and the phone back at Calhoun. “I’d appreciate it if you’d hang on to these, Stoney. I might want to consult with you sometime, and it would be your civic duty to comply.”

Calhoun shrugged. “I’ll keep the badge if you want, but you take the damn phone.”

The sheriff held out his hand. “That’s a deal.”

They shook hands on it.

Sam Surry took out Calhoun’s stitches on Saturday morning, a week and a day after he’d been sewn up. She told him he was in good shape for a man who’d been shot in the side, and in her professional opinion, he didn’t need private nurses anymore.

“It’s about time,” said Calhoun.

“We figured you felt that way,” she said.