Dead Wood Part 6

The Spook closed his eyes, and felt the music in him while his mind raced ahead to the thought of who he would most likely kill next.

His old friend.

John Rockne.

Fourteen.

My plan was to be like a desperate prost.i.tute; loud, aggressive and unwilling to take no for an answer. How's that for a positive self-image?

Nevada Hornsby clearly wasn't interested in talking to me. After all, what kind of guy would have no interest in nude native island girls and a year's supply of Turkey Jerky?

I pulled up in front of St. Clair Salvage. A quick visual survey showed that Nevada Hornsby's business was made up of three parts: the factory, the office, and probably out back, the boat.

I got out of the Taurus and walked over to what I a.s.sumed was the factory or the main shop area. It was a relatively narrow, but long, aluminum shed. I peeked in the windows and saw power equipment inside, as well as stacked logs. There were giant fans on each side of the long room, I imagined for sucking sawdust out of the building and blowing it into the air like one long, constant sneeze.

I walked over to the office area, which looked even less impressive. It was a weather beaten structure made of old wood appropriate, at least with a cedar shake roof, dirty windows, and a beat-up door. You could pay top dollar at Pottery Barn for that distressed wood look. But here, you just wanted to slap a coat of paint on it.

The door rattled under my knock but when I listened for an answer, all I heard was the howling of the wind off the lake.

The soot on the windows smeared under my rubbing, but soon I'd cleared a s.p.a.ce small enough for a glimpse into the place. It looked pretty much vacant. A couple chairs here and there, some cardboard boxes and pieces of wood. There was a doorway that led somewhere, but I couldn't see far enough. Maybe the real office was back there.

I walked around to the rear of the building and saw a long pier that branched off into a T. At the end I saw perhaps the ugliest boat of my life. It was a rusty tub, maybe thirty or forty feet long, with an enclosed cabin and a thin stream of black smoke coming out the back.

Two men were on the pier, untying the thick ropes and preparing to cast off.

I jogged over, jumped onto the dock and hustled down to the end of the pier. Looking at the water on either side of me, I saw that it was dark brown. Not exactly snorkeling territory here.

I got the attention of one of the men, a reddish-haired guy with a red flannel s.h.i.+rt, jeans, and a wad of chewing tobacco that distended the entire right side of his face.

"Nevada Hornsby?" I asked.

He motioned with his thumb toward the cabin of the boat. It was like a little cubicle that someone had placed in the middle of the boat. It had a little door, and little windows that were black with grime.

In the back of the boat was a giant hook and pulley system, I a.s.sumed to help haul logs out of the lake. There was other equipment scattered around the deck: blocks and pulleys, hooks, big, odd-shaped pieces of steel. Most of it looked entirely unfamiliar to me. Then again, I majored in criminology, not mechanical engineering.

The man to whom I'd spoken made no move to get Hornsby for me, but merely went to a different part of the s.h.i.+p and began fiddling with some levers.

I hesitated. The water next to the dock looked cold and unforgiving. I thought briefly of my car, still warm from the heater, a stainless steel coffee mug still half full nestled in the driver's side cupholder.

Life is full of tough decisions.

I jumped on board.

I made my way across the deck and peeked inside the s.h.i.+p's cabin. Nevada Hornsby sat at the small Formica table that jutted out from the side of the cabin's wall.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a thick black sweater, blue jeans, and black boots. His thick, dark hair and beard were neat and smooth, the only sign of age and a hard life were the wrinkles around his eyes.

There was a knife in his hand, a long, crude thing that he was using to cut an apple. He looked up at me, the deep blue of his eyes seeming to leap from the weathered face and dark hair.

"Nevada Hornsby?" I asked.

He looked me up and down, and the look in his eye wasn't flattering. He seemed to contemplate the knife in hand for a moment. I got the feeling the knife had gutted a lot of fish and that it could do the job on a private investigator just fine. But his expression didn't come across as anger or violence. It seemed more like...weariness.

"My name is John Rockne," I said. "I'm a private investigator. I'd like to ask you a few questions about Jesse Barre."

He got to his feet smoothly, and I quickly saw that he was bigger than I'd imagined. At least 6'4". His shoulders seemed bigger, too. f.u.c.k, he was just plain big.

I pictured the man who had attacked me at Jesse Barre's apartment. I suddenly had doubts that it could have been Nevada Hornsby. The guy in front of me was too d.a.m.n big. If he'd wanted to saw my hand in two, he could have done it. Easily.

"Who you workin' for?" he said. He still had the knife in one hand, the apple in the other.

I sort of scrolled through my typical responses, the ones I've spouted maybe a few hundred times in my career. That's confidential. An interested party, etc. They suddenly seemed like they would sound hollow and flimsy in this man's presence. So I went with the truth.

"Clarence Barre."

His face registered nothing, but he did give a slight nod. He worked the knife through the apple and popped a chunk into his mouth.

"I'm leaving in thirty seconds," he finally said. "You can talk to me when I get back."

"How long are you staying out?"

"Eighteen hours."

"Are you sure you don't have a minute to talk?"

He shook his head no and stared at me.

"Randy called in sick," he said. "More work for me and Rollie."

"What if I came along?" I said. Thinking eighteen hours was a motherf.u.c.k of a long time, but if I had to do it, I would.

Hornsby nodded as if he'd known all along that was going to be my response. "If you stay, you work," he said.

I didn't like the sound of that. I had a feeling the lumber recovery profession was a pretty dangerous job, probably second only to road construction workers in Cairo.

Of course, Hornsby could stay out for a lot longer than eighteen hours; days, even weeks, or just motor up to some other harbor in some other town and I'd never see him again. Or at least, not for a long time.

"Ten seconds," he said. He flipped a few switches and looked back at me.

"Aren't we going to talk about my hourly rate?"

"Zero dollars an hour. Anything else?" He revved the engines for emphasis.

"Do you have a 401(k)?" I said.

His response this time was to jam the throttle down. I stumbled backwards, knocking his Styrofoam coffee cup off the low shelf next to the table.

"You better have workman's comp!" I yelled over the screaming engines.

I struggled to my feet to say something to him, but he was gone. My eyes were drawn to a picture on the wall that he had been blocking.

It was old, and hung in a cheap frame, but there was no mistaking the woman caught on film.

It was Jesse Barre.

Fifteen.

"There she is," Hornsby said, his voice a dull growl, not quite as deep as the sound of the s.h.i.+p's engines.

I looked out through the streaked winds.h.i.+eld and saw the second ugliest water vessel known to man.

This beast looked like a giant concrete block with an angled front and square back. Its surface was virtually empty save for the roughly fifteen foot crane standing in the middle. It sat on top of the dark greenish brown water, rocking gently in the three foot waves, the sky a solid sheet of gray overhead. Not exactly a Norman Rockwell scene.

Looking back, I couldn't see any signs of land. We were a long way out.

It had been nearly an hour since Hornsby's sudden burst of acceleration had thrown me off my feet. He'd said little more than to tell me we were going out to a barge he used to retrieve sunken lumber. The rest of the ride he'd ignored my questions.

Now, Hornsby and his worker, Rollie, lashed the boat up against the barge. A few minutes later, Rollie emerged in a wet suit. I watched him spit out his giant ball of chewing tobacco. It landed in a little metal pail. He set it against the side of the cabin. Ooh, leftovers.

Rollie then went over the side into the water while Hornsby jumped between the two vessels and immediately began hauling a chain and rigging harness to the side of the barge. When Rollie reemerged from the water, Hornsby fed him the chain.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" I said. After all, he'd given me the big lecture about working.

"Yeah, keep out of the way," Hornsby said.

Right. I could do that.

So I watched, waiting for the right moment to begin questioning Hornsby about his relations.h.i.+p with Jesse Barre. I was here to get some G.o.dd.a.m.n answers. I would be pretty p.i.s.sed if I spent all day on the S.S. Piece of s.h.i.+t with nothing to show for it but the vague smell of dead carp.

After a few minutes of feeding the chains into the dark water, Hornsby stopped. He stood there, looking down for several minutes. Finally, after Rollie disappeared back into the olive green depths, I took my opportunity.

"So you know, Clarence thinks you killed her." I figured what the h.e.l.l, he wasn't answering my questions, maybe I could goad him into talking.

The wind ruffled his dark brown hair and he smirked. Well, there went that plan. p.i.s.sing him off wasn't going to be easy.

A flock of gulls screamed overhead and Hornsby stepped closer to the edge of the boat.

"He loved his daughter, I'll give you that," he said. "But he never understood her."

"What didn't he understand?"

He waved me away like it was a question not worth answering. After a few minutes of staring into the water, though, he did give me an answer.

"He thinks she wanted to leave me, right?"

I waited, not wanting to divulge anything he didn't already know.

"You don't have to answer. I know I'm right." He walked along the deck of the barge to the base of the tower, with me right on his heels. He put his hands on some of the crane's levers and made a few adjustments. Overhead, I heard the creak of old machinery beginning to awaken.

"So maybe you're right," I said. "Do you want to deny it?"

"I want to tell you and Clarence to go f.u.c.k yourselves, but I can't," he said. "Well, you I can. But not Clarence. She was crazy about him. I wouldn't want to do anything that would upset him. If Jesse were here, that's what she'd be saying."

I took a closer look at him, at his eyes, and for some reason I believed him. Maybe it was the way he said it. Maybe he was just a h.e.l.luva good actor. Or maybe it was the dark circles under his eyes, the tired, beaten look in his face. It rang true. It looked like the face of a man who'd just lost the woman he loved.

"So why does he think she was leaving you?" I said.

"Who says she wasn't?"

Okay, he had me there.

"Can we stop playing games?" I asked. "Was she leaving you?"

"She was and she wasn't."

I sighed and looked out toward the lake. The wind s.h.i.+fted a bit and a giant wave crashed over the side of the barge. I looked down and the front of my Dockers were wet, like I'd p.i.s.sed my pants. I glanced at Hornsby. He was dry.

"She was and she wasn't?" I said. "What's that supposed to mean?" I walked to Hornsby's left, trying to get a glimpse of what he was doing. I heard a noise overhead and then Hornsby grabbed me. I thought he was going to throw me in the water. But he pushed me forward just as a large pool of heavy chain dropped onto the deck from the crane overhead. It landed right where I'd been standing.

"Shouldn't I be wearing a hard hat?" I said. "I'm a bleeder."

Hornsby appeared not to have heard what I said, nor did he seem to notice the fact that he'd just saved me from grave injury.

"She was taking a sabbatical," he said. "From the shop. From Grosse Pointe. And from me. But she was coming back. She said so. I think she told the old man, too." He laughed. "I just don't think he believed her."

"What was she going to do on this...sabbatical?"

"I'll tell you when we're done," he said, gesturing toward the water. I looked down, and the first log was ascending to the surface, like an ancient submarine finally coming to port.

"Stay out of the way," he told me. No problem, Ahab.

The chain around the log was hooked to a winch, and Hornsby crossed the deck, released the chain from the winch and Rollie, in the water, backed away from the log, then disappeared.