Minus Tide (11 page)

“What do you think this is all about?” Ann said. “No one who lives here is rich.”

“I couldn’t imagine there’d be a ransom involved. But it wouldn’t surprise me if this was somehow Dawkins fault.”

“I know he’s weird, but why would he be behind something like this?”

“I think you know—just like the whole town has always has known for years. And it’s not because I’ve never liked him. This town has cut him too much slack and now the birds are finally coming home to roost. I saw him out here this morning with some scary Russian dudes. He looked really nervous too, like maybe he was in way over his head.”

“Did you say the sheriff was looking in the bay for something?”

“Who told you that?”

“Janet at the 101. She knows about everything that goes on.”

“Did she know I was back too?”

“I don’t think so. But I saw Chad and he said that one of his brothers might have spotted you a few days ago.”

James shook his head. “And I thought I was being so careful. It’s amazing Ann. Nothing like being in a place like San Diego where you can disappear, where your only connection to the past becomes a post office box that’s empty most of the time.”

As the boat glided across the bay the outline of the shack began to slowly take shape, the scent of wood smoke its only hint of life inside.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” James said.

“We can’t just leave them there.”

“Then I guess what we have to talk about will have to wait until later. You do remember, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. And we will… I promise.”

“That’s good,” James said, lowering his eyes to the gun back in Ann’s hand. “Have you been practicing with that thing much?”

“Enough,” Ann said.

Chapter 22

Before water struck his face, Sheriff Dawkins was thinking about when he’d bought his first car. The cold briny water only brought him back long enough to hear a strange whisper near his face, a man’s voice, with burned vocal chords that hissed out after each word. The man’s breath was foul, stung his eyes like mace. He could feel the light beam sweep across the surface of his burning retinas, watched the show of tracers with disinterest. All he wanted to do was go back to before the water had hit. Was it too much to ask?

“Wake up, Sheriff.”

It had happened so fast. Overnight he’d gone from a shy kid with an acne problem to the summer-date guy. While most boys had to work hard in the summer tarring roofs or pumping gas for the tourists, Dawkins only worked three ten hour shifts a week at the mill and then he’d have the rest of the week to play. It had helped that his uncle was higher up in the union, and Dawkins often repaid the favor by helping him with construction projects or driving to Portland to pick up supplies. It hadn’t concerned him when he’d found out his uncle was screwing his mother. Dawkin’s father had been dead for years and Aunt Polly was always running off with some guy she’d met at her AA meetings.

Now that he could finally get them to go out with him, Dawkins quickly tired of the available high school girls and their teasing ways. As soon as he saw that the chance of sex was clearly off the table he’d move on to another, until he ran low on who he could ask out and his reputation got routed through the bubblegum grapevine. After he’d tapped out Traitor Bay girls, he began driving over to Buoy City, but the girls there seemed to always be semi-involved with some guy who’d dropped out of high school to chase down big money cutting trees or catching salmon and such young men were likely to be ill-tempered and well known by the police.

By the end of July Dawkin’s fortunes changed and he’d lost his virginity and taken up smoking all in the same night. He’d been seeing an older woman from Phoenix who he’d picked up in Portland during one of his uncle’s errands. It had been late at night and she’d been running from somebody on the street and Dawkin’s had opened the door for her and told her to get in. She’d cried for awhile and Dawkins turned on the heat when he saw she was shaking. She hardly had on any clothes. What am I doing he’d thought, nervously checking the rearview mirror for any signs of police. Did I just pick up a hooker?

Keri was trouble and everyone in Traitor Bay had sensed it, but she’d managed to take up residence above the local tavern where she’d found a job cocktailing. To this day Dawkins associated her with the August heat wave which caused raging forest fires and burned homes. It was as if she’d drifted into his life on an ember from one of those glowing mountains he’d watched in the distance every night after his shift—some spirit that had chosen to inhabit the talented body of a strangely beautiful woman who wrapped herself around him in ways he could have never imagined. He couldn’t believe she’d wanted anything to do with him after the night he’d driven her home and let her sleep on the couch. His mother hadn’t said a word against it either, was mostly out with his uncle somewhere anyway. Dawkins assumed Keri would hook up with some older guy out of his league and he’d never see her again. But to his surprise she said she only wanted to be with him, that she’d never met such a sweet boy before and couldn’t imagine anyone nicer. She then went on to explain what she was up against while her hand somehow ended up pressing his thigh. There were people back in Portland who’d be looking for her, she’d said. And they won’t stop until they have proof I’m dead or they get their money. The next morning he lent her two thousand dollars from his savings account.

They’d spent as many nights as they could up in the remote cabin that Dawkin’s father and uncle had built during their elk hunting days. For the first time in his life Dawkins found himself truly giddy in love. He could think of nothing else except when he’d see Keri again, what new lessons he might receive or be tested on. Would she like the cheerleader outfit he’d bought for her at the secondhand shop? It was practically brand new. His friends had tried to warn him that she might break his heart but he just wouldn’t listen, and yet on a crisp October night it happened without warning. Keri had been last seen hitching a ride with a trucker she’d met at the 101, a parking lot heavyweight named Skunk who was well known for his golden vocal chords and big hands. She needed to get back to the desert, Keri had said in a note he’d found left in his truck. She needed to get back to the sun.

He couldn’t let her go so easily. At first he’d holed up in his room and cried himself dry. When he knew his mom wasn’t coming home for the night, he got up and dressed, took his father’s hunting rifle and headed for the highway.

It had turned out to be easier to find them than he’d thought.

He’d only had to drive seventy miles south before he’d spotted Skunk’s semi outside a sagging motel in Colton. He’d pressed his ear to their room door and listened to the mattress music until he could no longer stand it before going back into the trees and shooting out Skunk’s tires. Skunk had come running naked at him and he’d shot him in the knee and the big man just crumbled to the ground with a sharp yelp. Sing me a song now you asshole, he’d said as the man quickly triaged his skinned penis before sliding under his truck like a translucent grub. Keri emerged from the doorway shrieking and for a few seconds Dawkins put her face in the cross-hairs before lights from other units began to flicker on and he had to turn and run for the truck before he got caught.

“Sheriff. I know you can hear me.”

Another wave of water sloshed against his face and this time some got up his nose and caused him to sneeze. “Are you trying to blind me?” he asked the flashlight bearer.

“Sorry,” said the voice of the man who’d been trying to wake him. The beam moved away from his eyes and resettled somewhere on his forehead. He realized then how bad of a headache he had, that he could taste blood. His hands were still bound behind his back—at least he thought he still had hands. He couldn’t feel a damn thing.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You’re still in the shack where the others left you. You have a wound to your head—a big bump. Do you remember anything about what happened?”

“Yeah. Bitch kicked me in the head.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the man said.

Dawkins listened to the man laughing softly and he felt his anger rise. “I really need a cigarette. Unless you’re planning to free me you’ll find them in my front pocket.”

“Fair enough, Sheriff. But I think we should leave your hands as they are for now.”

Rough fingers that smelled of liver found his pack and lighter and fumbled a cigarette into his mouth. When it thumbed the lighter he saw the face of Cyclops flash before him and his heart skipped.
What the hell is happening? I know I was hard on those hippies I caught sleeping on the beach, but I never thought it would come to this. Whatever you do, don’t show this one-eyed Manson wannabe you’re afraid.

“Who are you?” the sheriff asked. He was distracted by music lifting out from somewhere deep inside his head, as if coming from a radio lying at the sticky bottom of a drying well. For a moment he dared himself to bring the sound into focus, and to his surprise he heard a scrotum-tightening chorus of all the women who’d ever told him to go to hell.

This was not the end Dawkins had repeatedly dreamed of. He’d dreamt of being ambushed by men totting AK47’s – assault rifles that the Mexican cartels fondly called their ‘goat horns’. The dream played out like an action sequence from a 1970’s grind house film, the kind his older brother would sometimes take him to see at a rundown theater in Portland instead of the latest Disney flick their parents had given them money for. A prickly keyboard and a creeping bass guitar provided the tension as the assassins moved in closer. Filmed behind a smoked lens . . . you were supposed to believe that it was night although moonlight would never ping off gunmetal that brightly. When the muzzles began to explode he’d sit up in his bed and scream, reach out to a bottle for a couple of hits.

“My name is of no matter, Sheriff.”

“Have we met?”

“Not in person, no. But I know all about you.”

“And how’s that?”

“You helped with my business. That is until you decided to steal from me.”

“I’m sorry but you’ve got the wrong person. It was some other guy that ran off with your love beads, man.”

“I don’t have all morning, Sheriff. There are a couple of men waiting outside that you’ve come to know. Please don’t make me have them come in here. I’d hate to let it come to that, I really would. I just need you to answer a few questions. Once I have what I need, we’ll leave you and your sleepy little town be.”

“What do you want to know?” the sheriff asked. It finally dawned on him that the man was another Russian. He’d thought the guy’s accent sounded off. He wished now that he were dealing with a pissed off hippie.
At least we’d still have music in common. Skynyrd. Creedence. Eddie Van Halen. And if they wanted some pot he still had some stashed in a footlocker back at the station. But these Russians—they’re from another world.
He’d smoked the cigarette down to the butt and it was burning his lips. Cyclops gently took it from his mouth and crushed it out between his fingers.

“I’m only trying to clear up a little misunderstanding, Sheriff. If it hadn’t been for Duane Campbel, we probably wouldn’t even be talking right now. But now that he’s dead you’ve mistakenly come to the conclusion that your contract with me and my people in Portland has changed. Is that right Sheriff?”

“I guess so.”

“And instead of talking to me about renegotiating our contract, you chose to steal from me? Why?”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’ve got problems.”

“Do you still have the money?”

“Every bit of it. You’ll find it stashed under the old doghouse in my backyard…”

“And the product? What happened to it?”

“It fell into the bay.”