Home Repair Is Homicide - Crawlspace Part 12

She hadn't known the birds flew at night. Maybe they didn't, maybe it was a hallucination. Or a sign: that if he did kill her, she might sail away, too.

Her spirit, maybe. Or maybe nothing. But she didn't find out which, because as he leaned over her with the knife in one hand, his other hand patted his s.h.i.+rt pocket unthinkingly, then froze.

A puzzled look came into his eyes, replaced at once by one of consternation. He straightened, patting both s.h.i.+rt pockets and then his pants in urgent succession.

Turning away, he searched the dimly lit deck with his eyes, then began pacing, back and forth, peering into and under everything. His left foot dragged slightly, but it didn't slow his search.

Where? His whole body seemed to be saying it as he lifted the life ring from its hook, raised the lid on the wooden bench, patted himself all over again anxiously.

Carolyn cringed at the sight of three mutilated fingertips on the man's right hand, the nails gone and the tissue there all scars that hadn't healed right. That paper, she thought as he went on searching himself, the one he'd lost overboard and hadn't noticed. Maybe he'd been too distracted by the thrill of having captured her.

It gave her a brief moment of grim satisfaction to think she had spoiled part of his plan. But he had gotten ...

The money. She'd forgotten all about the money. Now, as the memory of it flooded back to her, another low groan came from the hatchway. Someone down there.

She'd forgotten that, too, but now she realized she'd been hearing the sounds all along. The man came back and stood over her.

Maybe he was thinking about whether he should just kill them both, get it over with. Carolyn, and whoever it was down there in the cabin beyond the hatchway, too.

Probably he was considering it. After what he'd already done, he couldn't very well leave them alive, could he? Because for one thing, she'd seen his face.

So if she lived, she could testify against him. And he knew it. She could see it in his eyes, that for his purposes ...

-Whatever those were, no don't think that- ... she was already dead, and so was whoever she'd heard groaning down there.

Dead and gone; the only question was when. A pair of bodies he'd need to dispose of ...

-When he was finished with them, oh dear G.o.d when he was- All he needed was the right time and place.

But not right now. Not yet.

Please. Just not quite yet.

s.h.i.+VERING IN THE CHILL OF A NOVEMBER AFTERNOON ON the water in downeast Maine, Chip Hahn blinked astonishedly at the object in his hands. It was a hand-drawn map, he could see even before he got done peeling the plastic wrap from it.

The thing had come bobbing by, very different from the half-submerged chunks of driftwood and matted clumps of seaweed that Pa.s.samaquoddy Bay was full of. Curious, he'd leaned out from the motorboat he'd stolen and grabbed it.

Stolen. Oh, he was going to be in so much trouble. What, back on land, had been explainable now seemed much less so, with the sh.o.r.e a mile distant and the streets and houses of Eastport fast diminis.h.i.+ng to toy-town miniature.

On the other hand, a little thing like a stolen boat was not going to matter if Carolyn and Sam Tiptree didn't get back okay. You couldn't find money that might be floating on the bay without going out there, either.

Could you? No, you couldn't. And anyway, the deed was done and it was too late to worry about it.

He unfolded the sheet and squinted through the mist at it, through the chill drizzle that was developing. X marks the spot, he thought. Only there was no X, just an outline of a something or other that he didn't recognize, blue ballpoint ink marks pressed in hard, as if someone who felt very urgent about something had drawn it.

In the bluish-gray light of the fast-fading autumn afternoon, Chip reopened the chart he'd found in the boat and tried comparing it to the markings on the paper. There ...

A little rock called Digby Island was the same tiny comma on the hand-drawn map as on the printed one. It was surrounded, too, by the same dangerous-looking periods and parentheses, asterisks and exclamation points.

Which if he was not mistaken meant that Digby Island, a tiny hunk of land sticking out of the northern end of Pa.s.samaquoddy Bay, was surrounded by submerged spurs, ones that would munch the bottom out of his small vessel like so many sharp teeth.

Local boaters might know how to pick their way through them, but he didn't. He didn't even know if that was really where Randy Dodd was going, or if this was even Randy's map.

Why, after all, would a guy like Randy need one? He'd been fis.h.i.+ng these waters for years, and must surely know his way around them competently. He probably knew all the places to hide in or escape through, and how to navigate by sight wherever he wanted to go.

So, why would he need this? The bit of paper could've been dropped in anywhere, by anyone, Chip realized with a bad sinking feeling.

Maybe it was some kid's science project, or a joke. Maybe it had blown out of a car window, or the back of an old pickup truck on its way to the dump.

Or it might be a trick. Huddled in the open boat, Chip considered the many unpleasant possibilities this bit of paper could offer if that were true: s.h.i.+pwreck, drowning, being marooned.

Or ... capture. Suddenly the prospect of venturing off to save Carolyn and Sam seemed worse than foolhardy. The smell of the sea, pleasantly exciting back on the breakwater, now tickled an anxiety nerve Chip hadn't even known he possessed.

Big icy droplets leaked down his neck, soaking his jacket collar. The steady collision of the boat's keel with the waves made his rump sore.

If only he could run parallel to them for a while ... but when he tried, the boat wallowed dangerously, the chop rocking it back and forth violently until the craft threatened to swamp, bucking and rolling.

So he eased away again, turning the bow so it angled at the rollers and cut though them. By now they were the only things he could see, as evening kept coming on and fog thickened around him with shocking suddenness.

The sh.o.r.e he'd left so confidently (stupidly, the mean voice in his head commented) had long ago vanished into the equivalent of dark gray cotton b.a.l.l.s, and the Canadian island of Campobello, only a mile or so off, according to the chart, might as well have been on the far side of the Atlantic.

A bell buoy clanked somewhere. He couldn't see that, either. It was getting dark so fast, and now it occurred to him that the ma.s.sive freighters he'd read about before coming to Eastport-it was, he'd learned, the deepest undredged U.S. port, second only to Valdez-must navigate through this pa.s.sage.

One of those freighters, he realized with an inward s.h.i.+ver, could cut him in half without anyone on it even noticing. All he would know of it himself was the deafening blast of the horn as the s.h.i.+p plowed through him on its way to the freighter terminal.

Whichever way that was. The open boat had been stocked with a lot of gear, including a compa.s.s. But in the fog he couldn't see it. For a moment Chip wished heartily that he was in Central Park again, running a s.h.i.+ny toy boat on the pond with a remote control, instead of sitting on a real one here.

He'd have turned back, given up, and admitted this foolish effort was doomed, taken his lumps for stealing the boat, too-at least the Evinrude was still rumbling along well, fortunately-but by now he was fairly sure he wouldn't find his way back to land at all.

Certain of it, really. Or find his way anywhere; until this fog lifted, the lights of the sh.o.r.e, no matter how nearby, might just as well not have existed.

Suddenly the fear he'd been trying to hold down got free with a vengeance, climbing from the pit of his stomach right up into his throat. He looked down at the map that he'd plucked from the water again, but he couldn't see it, or the chart, either.

Or even own his hands. Panic invaded him as he realized he should turn the running lights on. But he hadn't noted where the switch for them was back when he could see it, and now he couldn't even find that.

He was lost, and in planning this little adventure it now seemed he'd left too much to chance.

Way too much to chance.

Like, a hundred percent too much.

Yeah, he thought. You're an idiot, is what you are.

He was still thinking this when the engine quit.

CHAPTER 5.

CHIP FIGURED IT COULD ONLY BE ABOUT FIVE IN THE afternoon, five-thirty at the latest. But around him it was pitch dark. Steady drizzle kept falling. He was wet through and through, and so cold that his teeth had begun chattering uncontrollably. He got the outboard started again with some difficulty and aimed the boat toward what he thought must be the sh.o.r.e.

But the Evinrude coughed hard and died once more after only a minute or so. And this time the engine's death was permanent, the starter b.u.t.ton producing only a brief clickety-click, then silence.

So here he was. The map he'd found was in his pocket, but it wouldn't do him much good if he couldn't see. He didn't think he could get through the rocks it showed anyway, and besides, he had much bigger problems now.

He never should have come out here. Knowing how to run a boat, thinking that just because it looked the same, the water along the downeast Maine coast was as friendly and easy to be on as it had been up at the Old b.a.s.t.a.r.d's resort place ...

Idiot, he berated himself as a foghorn's low whonk! came out of the thick fog-billows from somewhere off to his right. To his left, a buoy clanked. Briefly, he wondered if he might somehow be able to orient himself from them.

But since he didn't know where they were, either, that idea soon revealed itself as hopeless. Like you, he told himself again harshly. After that, all he heard besides his own scathing self-criticism was the water lapping the boat's side as the current carried him along fast.

He had his cell phone with him, but when he'd opened it no bars came onto the display and no calls would go through. He'd read once somewhere about being able to get emergency help on a cell, even if no other numbers would connect.

But he hadn't retained the information, not thinking that he would ever need it. Still, he decided to try the phone again now. At least it had a live battery, and maybe by now he'd drifted to within reach of some sort of signal.

Hunching forward, he slid it from beneath the life jacket. The screen's faint glow was momentarily comforting, until he saw that there were still no bars. He was starting to put the phone away again when a new sound caught his attention.

It was a sort of ... rippling sound, coming from ahead and to the left somewhere, as if he were approaching some deep, fast-running stream. No such thing was possible out here; the entire bay was a stream, running in and out with the tide.

But there it was. The sound grew louder. He tipped his head, trying to imagine what could make that unusual, hissing kind of a noise. It still sounded to him like fast water rus.h.i.+ng along a- Then he saw the wave coming at him, about three feet high, white and foamy and rolling. He squinted at it, still not quite able to believe what- It was a bow wave, he realized with a shock of horror, and behind it was the bow of a big freighter, rising up at least three stories over him. Mountain-sized, from where he sat frozen in his little boat- A blast of a horn erupted out of the darkness at him, a ma.s.sive, world-cracking, elemental explosion of sound that blew him back off the boat's seat and slammed him whimpering into the transom. Reflexively he clapped his hands to his ears, but that was laughably useless. The sound was inside him, battering him like the shock wave of a bomb blast, his ribs vibrating with it.

Stunned, he lay helpless. Something up there, a huge shape forming above him, emerging endlessly from the fog ... Oh jesus.

The curving bow of the enormous vessel bore down on him out of the streaming darkness. He couldn't see the top of it through the fog, only a hazy glow from the deck lights far above.

But what he could see was coming right at him. Another heart-stopping, brain-hammering blast of the great horn exploded all around him. Not because anyone on the s.h.i.+p knew he was here, though. Or if they did, it was too late to do anything about it.

Huge, inexorable, the thing just kept coming. Desperately, Chip scrambled up, pounded the outboard's starter b.u.t.ton again and again, to no avail. The wave alone would swamp him ... .

The wind hit first, thick as a fist, a vast blowback off the s.h.i.+p's flat moving side. It lifted the spare life jacket and carried it away. Then the high white wall of rolling water struck, lifting the tiny vessel he was on like a stick of driftwood, and him an insubstantial bug clinging to it.

Wrapping his arms around the Evinrude's console, he hung on, grateful for the life jacket he was wearing but knowing it wouldn't do him any good, either; that s.h.i.+p's towering bow was going to slice him in half in another second-He stared wonderingly at it. For an instant it was so close, he could count the rivets in the glow from the lights above ... .

Hey, he thought, I'm down here, look at me. ...

But of course they didn't. And then it hit him: Row, you idiot, row! He leapt forward, seized the oars, and flung their blades into the water. Hauling on them, he felt that his heart might burst out of his chest with the effort and his terror.

Row ... The churning sea yanked his shoulders. Every stroke felt like his joints might dislocate. But nothing was happening; his tries were nothing against the ma.s.sive waves and the giant thing bearing gigantically down on him.

Oh jesus oh mother of G.o.d oh jesus ... He closed his eyes and hurled himself backward, pulling and pulling, again and- Suddenly something smacked one of the oars with the force of a train locomotive, snapping his arm back and shattering the oar itself; he had only its grip in his hand. At the same moment the opposite oarlock jumped up out of its sleeve; the wind hit the oar's blade, and then the water did.

And then it too was gone, and he was powerless. Sitting there stunned and helpless, he gazed up openmouthed at the size of the freighter, its skysc.r.a.per height looming above him and its lights hazily brilliant, like a ma.s.sive city afloat in the fog.

Its bow wave hit him. His own ridiculously small craft rose up sharply, the bow pointing heavenward as the stern spiraled around, rolling one way, pitching another ... and then everything beneath him suddenly slid down the side of the great, gleaming wave cascading off the slanted bow of the huge s.h.i.+p.

Away he went, zooming into the roiling darkness, surfing sideways, then headfirst, in a boat now so near to rolling over that small objects in it showered past him like change out of an upended purse.

And then ... then it was gone, the freighter's ma.s.sive bow s.h.i.+ning for an instant before the fog made it all into a glowing blob. As his breath came in spasms that became sobs, the blob diminished hazily, faded, got sucked into the fog ... and winked out. The s.h.i.+p's horn sounded again, the sound drifting back to him, lonesome and small. Then nothing; he was alone once more, spinning in the churning wake of the big boat.

Chip leaned over the rail, lost whatever was in his stomach, and fell back, drained. His heart still stuttered ineffectively, weakness flooding him and his breath subsiding to short, defeated huffs.

Relief washed waterily over him as he fell back against the Evinrude's solid bulk, but then came despair. If he'd had any idea that he might still survive the night out here, that notion was gone, blasted to smithereens by the departing horn of the great container s.h.i.+p.

Because maybe he'd escaped it, but what was next? Squallish gusts buffeted his boat, which had taken on water in the violence of the recent encounter and was now listing badly. He'd lost the oars, and the cell phone, if not overboard, was somewhere at his feet, drowned and ruined under several inches of icy brine.

Miserably, he calculated his chances of getting out of this alive and found them skimpy in the extreme. Probably he would never see his apartment again, his books and CDs, the collection of posters from indie music groups hanging framed in his hall.

Sadly, he wondered who would arrange his funeral. Not the Old b.a.s.t.a.r.d, now so pickled in bourbon that he would probably not even understand the bad news.

a.s.suming he thought it was bad. And not Chip's mother, now an aging, made-up, and bejeweled drama queen happily ensconced-he continued to hope-in a mountainside commune in New Mexico, where she'd gone to escape the rigors of Chip's own early childhood, and never returned.

Occasionally he'd had a card from her-one at Christmas, usually, and once in a while there'd be one on his birthday. Sometimes the card had a hundred bucks in it.

But nothing for several years now. And otherwise, no one. Surprised, he searched his mind; could it really be that he'd become so alone, so isolated, that if he died, no one would ...

Siobhan Walters might miss him. For a few minutes, anyway. Long enough to send a short, somber e-mail to the marketing and publicity people, and the handful of others in the office who'd known him distantly.

After that, though, she'd be on to the next new whoever, a new writer with new ideas who could show up with the stuff, on time and in shape. It was why Carolyn had always been so driven, he understood now, so intent on not letting anyone steal even an ounce of her thunder.

And on stealing any she could get her hands on, herself. Because once you were out there, alone in the cold and dark, you might never get in again.

Wretchedly, he leaned back against the boat's transom, trying to find a position where everything didn't hurt. He was still moving right along, the boat riding a fast current, or so it seemed from the way the wind stayed constant in his face and the water chuckled faintly against the boat's side.

Riding to disaster; he just didn't know what kind or when. Yet ...

Something hit the bow with a dull thud. He lurched up, his heart suddenly hammering again and his ears ringing loud in the silence. But nothing else happened. Driftwood, maybe.

He fell back, bones aching with fatigue and chill. The rain, at least, had stopped for the moment. But he had a bad feeling that pretty soon now it would get even colder.

A lot colder, and his jacket and the slicker, even with the life jacket under them, weren't nearly enough. He stuffed his cold hands in his coat pockets and closed his eyes.

After a while he thought of shouting. So he tried that, but the wind s.n.a.t.c.hed his voice and swirled it out into the fog, where it was swallowed up instantly. No answer came, and when his voice was only a harsh croak, he stopped.

Maybe when morning came, the fog would lift and he would at least be able to see again. Maybe then some other boat would be out here, too, and somebody would find him.

Thinking this, he fell into a sort of trance; of darkness and fog, the water moving beneath him like a great unseen beast. He couldn't tell how much time went by, nor did he care; what difference did it make? He found his iPod and put the earbuds in again; k.d. lang began asking what his heart concealed.

But for once even her lush, languorously articulate voice failed to revive his spirit. All he knew was that he was cold and frightened, that he never, ever should have tried coming out here alone, and that it was dark.

His bravado in the Eastport police station, confronting Roger Dodd, now seemed a cartoon-like bit of playacting. Big man, he mocked himself bitterly, when there's a cop to protect you in case somebody sees through you.

And all the things he'd been thinking and feeling the night before were even worse, his silly I'm-going-to-do-this and you-can't-have-that.

G.o.d, had he really ever thought he could hurt somebody? That he could harm Carolyn, that there was something important enough? Had he been that stupid?