Murder and Mayhem (34 page)

“And the name of the town?” Nicola asked.

Danny shrugged. “And the name of the town was lost on
the wind.”

“What a strange story. Was anything else there?”

Danny pushed his plate to one side and took a sip of
wine. “No. Nothing. It was so deathly quiet all you could hear was the chirping
of birds, and the wind in the trees. It was so eerie.” He shook his head as he
recalled the feeling. “I stood there for I don’t know how long looking at those
crosses. It was the strangest thing. I remember thinking this must be what’s
it’s like to be dead.” He shrugged in a kind of a shiver.

“So what did you do?”

“What could I do? I climbed back into the SUV and kept
on going until I came to the town of Omeo. But, you know what? For as long as I
live I’ll never forget the image of those crosses–or the strange eerie feeling
I had when I was there.

“It just goes to show how mortal we are. In the sands
of time we will all be forgotten,” he whispered prophetically.

* * *

Before she could scream a hand closed around her
throat, and a strong arm circled her body, pinning her arms to her side. The
more she struggled, the tighter he gripped.

He lifted her bodily off the ground and smashed her
head against a brick wall that was coated in grime and soot, and tattooed with
faded graffiti.

Lack of oxygen and the blow to the head caused her to
lose consciousness. She sagged limply against him. The man released his grip
and watched as the body peeled off him and slid to the ground.

As she lay amongst the discarded needles and human
garbage, her assailant bent down and slit her throat from ear to ear.  He spat
out his venom in words only he could hear as he watched the blood pool around
the body, and seep into the cracks and crevices of the broken concrete. Then he
walked down the alley and disappeared into the anonymity of darkness.

Death pollutes the air like rotting garbage.

*****

“Well, that was pretty gruesome,” Rosie said.

I shot her an amused look.

“We’re dealing with a depraved individual. Someone
sick and twisted who cares nothing for another life. I’m not going to soft-soap
it just because it may offend people’s sensibilities.”

*****

“It’s so beautiful here. Let’s sit for a while,”
Nicola said as she pulled Danny down onto the grassy bank and curled her legs
up under her.

Warmed by the midday sun, they watched the changing
colors of the ocean as foam-capped waves crashed against the rocky coastline. A
speedboat raced past scattering noisy seagulls from slate green waves. The
gulls rose in the air, circled overhead, then dipped their wings into the wind
and settled back on the waves, the water too turbulent to mirror the brilliant
blue sky.

“Have you ever been sailing?” Nicola asked as she
gazed at a flotilla of yachts skimming the waves with the wind tugging at their
sails.

“I’ve been sailing−but not on a boat.”

Nicola gave him a curious look and tucked a fly-away strand
of hair behind her ear. “Is there any other kind?”

“Actually, there is. Some years ago I was in
Kalgoorlie, an old gold mining town in Western Australian, having lunch with a
couple of guys I was doing business with when one of them mentioned he’d been
sailing on a salt lake and suggested I give it a try while I was in the area.”

“Sailing–on a salt lake? Don’t you mean saltwater
lake?”

“No. A salt lake. Like the one up in Utah. You know,
the Bonneville Salt Flats.”

“I know the one you mean. But, how could you sail a
boat on a dry lake?”

“You can’t.”

Nicola looked at him curiously. “I think you lost me
somewhere between Good morning, Sunshine and, boats that aren’t boats, that don’t
sail on water, that isn’t water,” she offered.

Danny laughed. “You can’t sail a boat on a salt lake.
You ride across it in a windsurfer.”

“Now you’ve really lost me.”

“You know what a windsurfers looks like?”

Nicola nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, these are the same but instead of a curved hull
that sits in the water they have a flat bottom with three wheels attached; one
at the front, two at the back. The windsurfer skims over hard-packed salt,
sometimes doing speeds up to one hundred and fifty klicks an hour.”

“But, how would you control it?”

“You sort of lie down and move the sails by way of a
rope pulley. Much like you would in a normal sailboat. Lake Lefroy, where they
have these specially designed windsurfers, is a huge lake. So there’s not much
risk of you colliding with anyone.”

“It sounds like fun.”

“It was. I had a great time. Those things can really
fly across the salt, often with one of the back wheels in the air, and you have
to hold tight to stop it from flipping over.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Not really. But you need to wear a safety helmet and
goggles because you could get hurt if you flip over at high speed. But, mainly
you just get salt burns.”

* * *

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on I-95, not far from the
Maine border, is known for its abundance of bridges and seagulls. Filled with
elegant architecture, the city has a strong sense of heritage.

They checked into the Comfort Inn on Lafayette Road
and spent a lazy afternoon wandering the cobblestone streets of the Strawbery
Banke district, site of the original town.

Mid afternoon they crossed the road to Prescott Park,
bought lemonade from an elderly vendor and found a bench beneath the spreading
limbs of a large tree overlooking the river. In the distance they could hear
the urban symphony of rubber tires on bridges that spanned the river and narrow
estuaries, and the high-pitched sound of children’s voice. A soft breeze came
off the water and sent leaves tumbling along the path and across the newly mown
grass.

Nicola’s gaze wandered down to a small jetty where a
man and young boy of six or seven were fishing. She could see the smile on the
man’s face, his head bobbing up and down as he listened in earnest to what the
boy was saying. She turned to Danny and said, “Do you like to fish?”

“Not particularly. Don’t have the patience. What about
you?”

“When I was a kid, Daddy used to take me fishing off
the Santa Monica Pier.  Mom would pack a picnic lunch and we’d sit on the edge
of the dock with our jeans rolled up and our legs dangling over the side so the
salty spray would tickle the bottoms of our bare feet while we ate peanut
butter and jelly sandwiches and homemade cupcakes covered in sprinkles, and
drank half frozen soda pop Daddy had put in the freezer the night before.”

“Did you catch anything?”

“Not really. But we had fun,” Nicola told him as she
recalled the salty smell of the ocean, the sweet buttery taste of the
sandwiches, and the sharp tang of the icy bubbles when they hit her tongue and
the back of her throat. She missed her father’s laughter and her mother’s smile
so much it hurt.

*****

I looked at my sister, and smiled.

“Do you remember when Dad used to take us fishing?”

Rosie shook her head and chewed on her bottom lip.
“No, not really, I think I must have been really young.”

“Yeah, come to think of it–you probably were.”

“Where was it?”

“What?”

“Where Dad used to take us fishing?”

“Oh, it was out on the old pier at Kurnell. Don’t you
remember our grandparents used to have a place near there.”

“No, I don’t remember that. What kind of place was
it?”

“It was a permanent tent where we used to spend summer
holidays. It had bunk beds and an annex where Mum used to cook.”

“What about showers and toilets?”

“There were communal showers and toilets near the
kiosk. But I doubt us kids would have bathed all that often. We used to spend
all our time at the beach or playing in the occy pool, so we probably figured
we didn’t get dirty.”

“Occy pool, what’s an occy pool?”

“It was a natural rock pool where a baby octopus had
been stranded after high tide. We caught it with a stick and killed it and
chased everyone with it for days until it started to stink then Mum made us
take it down to the pier and toss it into the water.”

“Sounds like you guys had fun.”

“We did.”

“How come I don’t remember that place?”

“By the time you would have been old enough to
remember all the tents in the camp had been pulled down to make way for a
national park.”

*****

A tall young black man with the good looks of a future
heartbreaker strolled leisurely down the path coming towards them. A backpack
hung casually off broad shoulders, an iPod dangled from his ears, his mouth
moved silently to the words of a song only he could hear, his fingers snapping
in time with the beat. As he passed the bench where they sat, his face broke
into a wide grin showing a row of perfectly formed white teeth that accentuated
his chocolate-brown eyes. They smiled and mouthed a greeting they knew he
couldn’t hear, and watched him continue down the path, his lithe body moving in
time with the music.

Suddenly the young man propelled himself high in the
air, like a basketball player rising for a slam-dunk, pumping his fists up and
down in a victory dance.

“Oh Yeah!” he yelled at the top of his voice, causing
birds from a nearby tree to take fright and scatter across the river in search
of a quieter roost.

Nicola laughed. “Somebody sure is having a good time.”

“Oh, yeah, mothers of Portsmouth better lock up your
daughters ’cause the next Denzel Washington is on his way.” Danny chuckled.

 On the other side of the park, a man sheltered
beneath the spreading limbs of a large fig tree with mottled gray serpentine
roots spread like dorsal fins half-submerged beneath the hard-packed earth.
Dressed in blue jeans and black Grateful Dead T-shirt, he wore a baseball cap pulled
low on his head that created shadows along the contours of his unshaven face.
Dark mirrored sunglasses hid hard eyes filled with hatred and portent. The
man’s gaze cut sideways as the young black man danced past, his head bobbing up
and down as his feet tapped out a rhythm on the concrete path.

“Right on brother,” he said to no one in particular as
he shifted his weight and settled comfortably on the hard unyielding wooden
bench, crossed his legs and laced his fingers behind his head.  The stranger’s cold
eyes shifted and focused on something on the other side of the park, his thin,
cruel mouth twisted in a vicious sneer as the fiery orange sun hanging low on
the western horizon, bounced off his mirrored lenses and sent out a silvery
flash. High on a branch a pair of black crows, with eyes like hard pieces of
coal, looked down in silence.

Suddenly something flashed in the periphery of Danny’s
vision. He looked up, his eyes scanning the park, skirting over patches of lawn
and under trees. For a brief moment his eyes came to rest on the tall, young
black man in the distance whose graceful limbs undulated in time with the music
only he could hear. Danny shook his head and laughed.

 Nicola stirred out of her reverie, and smiled.
“What’s so funny?”

“Just our young friend, Mr. Washington boogieing on
down the boards.”

Danny stretched and looked around, then reluctantly
dragged himself to his feet and took hold of Nicola’s hand. “Come of
lazy-bones, it’s time we made a move.”

*****

“Who was that?” Rosie asked.

“Like Danny said…, he’s just a young man boogieing on
down the boards. Someone to keep the readers amused.”

“I didn’t mean him. I meant the man sitting under the
fig tree watching Danny and Nic.”

“What about him?”

“Is he just another one of those strange men that keep
popping up or does he have something to do with the story?”

“He might be.” I could hear the sigh in her breathing
while she waited for me to elaborate. I didn’t.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Are you going to tell me who he is–or not?”

I raised my eyebrows and tugged at my mouth in an
evasion.