Rogue Wave (23 page)

His legs gave. He slumped farther. The water splashed on his face.

He was going to drown.

Skip Olsen was glad.

K
IERNAN BEGAN SEARCHING THROUGH
the bars, dark taverns with neon Schlitz signs filling the small high windows. It was in the fourth one, the Half-Mast, that she found Zack, the deckhand. Unlike the wharf, the Half-Mast was mobbed. Every stool was taken, several with men and women sitting back to back, knees braced against those of their next-stool buddies or lovers. There was no music, only the murmur of talk ebbing and flowing in the smoky air.

Zack stood near the door, empty beer glass in hand. He hadn’t looked good at dawn yesterday and a day and a half had not improved him. The salt-stained windbreaker that had seemed too thin for the morning chill hung damply over one shoulder. Despite the thick miasma of smoke filling the bar, Kiernan smelled grime and wet wool as she slid in next to him. “Seen an ex-cop with a limp on the dock today?”

He did a double take. “The breakfast lady. You come to buy me the kind of breakfast I like?”

“Depends on what you know.”

“Buy me a beer.”

She could have bargained. She handed him a five.

“You
really
want to know,” he said, fingering the bill.

“Come on, Zack, yes or no. I’m looking for Olsen, the ex-cop. He’s disappeared.”

“As in kidnapped?”

“Maybe. Now either you have an idea where he might be, or you don’t.”

He stood unmoving, then held out the five. “No idea.”

A terrible liar. And a frightened one. “Zack, how about a ride home? You could drown waiting for a bus.”

Warily, he glanced out the door at the rain, then around the crowded room. No one reacted. Slipping on his thin jacket, he murmured, “You gotta stop for beer on the way.”

By the time they got to the Jeep, Zack’s windbreaker clung to his soaked shirt. Water rolled off the edges of his wool cap. He climbed into the Jeep and sat shivering but made no move to wrap his arms around his chest or clutch them to his sides. He seemed resigned to rain and cold. And likely, Kiernan thought, to an early death. While the engine was warming, she said, “Zack, you saw Olsen, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Look, Zack, I need your help. You know the docks, and you know the people there. You were the one who spotted Delaney as different. You were right. He wasn’t a deckhand at all. Probably doesn’t surprise you,” she said, watching his reaction from the corner of her eye. How long had he been drinking? Long enough for his eyes to be cloudy. Now he was smiling and nodding, dripping water from his drenched cap.

“I’m going to tell you an amazing thing I discovered, Zack. Maybe it won’t amaze
you.”
Even for bedside manner, this was overdoing it. She chanced a peek at him, but if the deckhand found her ingratiating manner suspicious, he gave no sign. “Carlos Delaney was a private investigator, checking up on Robin!”

Zack nodded vigorously.

She was about to add that Olsen was following in his tracks. But that would only scare Zack off. Instead, she asked, “Did Delaney ever talk about a place where a man could be held prisoner, maybe tied up and gagged, or even knocked out?” Ignoring Zack’s slowly shaking head, she went on. “Someplace a guy could be stashed? Maybe in the warehouse?”

Zack shook his head more slowly, but Kiernan couldn’t decide whether that movement came from lack of resolve or a lack of knowledge.

“Is there a man-sized box in there? Maybe a locker big enough to hold him?”

“Nope. The place is like a hangar; one big open space.”

She was too suspicious to believe him. “What about around the dock?”

“Nope,” he said, but the word seemed automatic.

“That empty restaurant? Any reason why someone couldn’t be held in there?”

“The Crab Cage? No chance. Guard comes through every day.” He leaned back against his seat. Beery, stubble-faced, in dank, shabby clothes the man still looked smug, as if he were playing twenty questions with a dim-witted friend.

She clenched her hands into fists. “Dammit, Zack, you know something went on at the dock. What happened yesterday?”

“Nothing but what goes on any Tuesday.” Same told-you-so voice.

She yanked at his jacket and turned him to face her. “What … happened?”

“Hey, let go. I told you nothing happened
yesterday.”

“Okay, dammit, then when? Today?”

“Ah, today. Well, if you want to know about tonight, I’ll tell you about the big blow-up. Lights went off all over the wharf. About eight o’clock. Off for half an hour. Chefs were flapping around like peacocks.”

Releasing his jacket, she said, “Even without lights you couldn’t carry a man who’s tied up across the wharf and expect no one to notice.” She glanced over at the wharf. The docks now were lit a blotchy yellow. Weak light streamed from all the shop and restaurant windows,—all except for the dark, closed Crab Cage Café with its ridiculous plywood “cage” on the roof.

“Zack, where else could you hide a man here?”

“Boats,” he whispered.

“No. Not if your power outage plays a part in this. You don’t need to knock out the lights on the entire wharf to haul a body into a boat. You just move the boat. Now, to haul a body
out
of a boat and move it to somewhere else on the wharf … But where?”

“Restaurants are too busy,” Zack whispered impatiently. “He’s not here. Let’s go.”

“Dumpsters?”

“Here? They’re full by noon. Come on, you promised me a ride home.”

“Roofs?”

“No!”

She could tell by the tension in his voice that she was on to something.

“Which roof, Zack?”

He edged away. “That’s crazy—”

Crabbing his wrist, she said, “Find me a ladder.”

“Fifty bucks.”

“Ladder first. Lead me to it.” Rain slapped her face and ran cold down her neck. “Come on, Zack, move!”

“Okay, okay,” he said. Hurrying to the warehouse, he opened the door. An aluminum ladder stood right inside. “You take the end,” she said. She picked up the front half and led the way. Icy rain streaked down her face as she moved out of the lee of the building. She turned back into it, watching till Zack cleared the doorway, then turned forward again, adjusted the ladder and veered toward the restaurants.

The back end of the ladder clanked to the ground. She spun around in time to see Zack dash inside the warehouse and slam the door.

She dropped the ladder and ran for the door. Locked. There was no use going after him. Why had he run? And without his money? Was the person who’d attacked Olsen still here? She turned slowly, surveying the dock. Behind the curtain of rain the pole lights were blurs of ivory, illuminating nothing beyond themselves. Boats swayed against the slips, masts creaked.

She dragged the ladder nearer the buildings. It scraped and clanked; she stopped, listened for rushing feet, but the boats thumping against the slips and the MUNI bus changing gears were all she heard. If she’d alerted Olsen’s captors, they’d be on her before she knew it.

She had almost reached the dark windows of the Crab Cage Café when she spotted the alleyway beside it. Dark, secluded, the perfect spot to shift an unwilling climber or carry an awkward package to the roof unquestioned. Easy, especially in a convenient power failure arranged by someone who knew the docks. And this roof had the plus of a plywood box, the “crab cage.” She pulled the ladder into the alley, propped it against the building and climbed up.

There was no place to hide anything. The only things on the roof were the silent exhaust fans from the restaurant and the thin metal pole that supported the fake cage.

She looked up at the four-foot-square box. It was a good ten feet above the roof. Even in the dark and the rain she could see how weatherworn and frail it was. Close up, the “cage” was a plywood crate with “bars” painted on it. The front side once had had a crab painted between the bars, but the design was barely visible now. She circled the box, hoping for an open side, finding none.

“Skip?”

No answer.

She ran back to the edge of the roof and slowly tugged up the heavy ladder. Then she dragged it across the roof and propped it against the crab cage.

The ladder reached to the bottom of the box with inches to spare.

The pounding rain shook the “cage.” The ladder clattered against it. Her shoes were soaked through and her feet slipped with each step. Her hands were stiff with cold. She rammed the ladder hard into the wet tar and climbed slowly up, barely able to feel the rungs. Feet on the fourth rung from the top, hands on the shaky top of the ladder, her head was level with the bottom of the box. She tapped on the wood. “Skip?” No response. “Olsen, are you in there?”

There was a noise that could have been caused by the wind, and could have been a foot weakly kicking against wood. Pressing her hands against the rough side of the cage, she climbed onto the next step. The ladder shimmied. She felt for the next step, and grabbed for the top edge of the box.

It was open to the sky.

At first she didn’t see Olsen huddled in the near corner. He was out of the path of the rain, lying on his side in a puddle. His hands were behind his back, his feet together. She leaned closer and made out the tape. Water filled the box inches deep. Olsen’s lank hair fell over closed eyes. “Skip!”

He groaned.

Well, at least he was conscious. He was lucky to be alive. Had the box been less decrepit, Kiernan thought, he might have drowned.

Careful not to jostle the ladder, she hoisted herself over the edge and into the box. “Skip, can you sit up?”

He gave a groan she took as yes.

Gently, she pulled him up. His face was gray, his eyes blank, his mouth covered with electrical tape. She ripped it off; he groaned again and spit out a wad of cloth. He coughed, gagged, coughed again, and held his mouth open to the rain. She pulled the tape from his wrists, then his ankles. At best his legs would be numb.

“Kiernan.” His voice was so hoarse she could barely understand him.

“Good,” she said, more relieved than she would have admitted. “I’m going down to get help.”

“Kiernan!” His hand fluttered toward her, reaching.

“What?”

“No!”

“No? No what?”

“No help,” he whispered.

The rain battered her face and shoulders. The whole box shook. She didn’t want to think about how long the ancient wood flooring would survive, or how long the thin metal pole would support them. “Skip, you’re too weak to stand and you’re in a box ten feet above a restaurant roof! Are you planning to fly down?”

He coughed and swallowed hard. “No! You’re going to call 911, aren’t you?”

“Right.”

“They’ll laugh … in every stationhouse … in the city. No! … I’d rather turn … to bones … up here.” He pulled a leg toward him, grimacing.

“What is this, the
Guinness Book of Records
Macho Idiot Award?”

“Call it pride,” he said in a stronger voice. “No, call it business sense.”

“Call it crazy.”

He grabbed for the edge of the box and struggled to hoist himself up. Leaning against the corner, panting, he tried to say something else, but the words were too guttural to decipher.

Kiernan hesitated. He was in no condition to walk, much less climb over the edge of this flimsy box, find the ladder, navigate the rungs and climb down. Still, she knew in his position she would have done the same. As an investigator in a hostile city, he would never be able to survive the embarrassment of being dumped in a box above the tackiest restaurant on the wharf. A gust of wind shook the box. The whole contraption leaned ominously to the right. On the street below she could hear the groans of a bus braking. A million miles away.

Olsen pushed himself clumsily away from the support of the edge. “I may need help.”

“May, indeed. Pigs may fly. Stay where you are.” She kicked the side of the box. The boards gave easily. The ladder banged to the roof. “Damn!”

Olsen groaned.

“It’s okay. I’ve done harder dismounts than this.” She lowered herself over the edge and dropped to the roof.

Light blinded her. “Police!” a voice yelled. “Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off!”

K
IERNAN PULLED UP
by Dixie Alley

“Six
A.M.,”
Olsen muttered. “Eight hours in goddamn Central District station. I thought I’d seen every let-’em-stew tactic in the cop shop. But these guys—”

“You’d still be there if anyone but Bill Quist were the captain. And if I hadn’t done him a favor big enough to be remembered ten years later.”

“What kind of favor?”

“Staying on the horn to every lab for every protocol in a case that wasn’t important to anyone but him.” She got out of the car, and opened his door, holding out an arm. “Take it!” she insisted when he tried to barge shakily past. He coughed. The coughs had progressed over the hours to long whooping gasps that left him gagging. “Either you do as I say, or I drop you at the emergency room!”

“No hospitals!” Grudgingly, he took her arm and hobbled to the stairs.

“You’re sure you have no clue who deposited you in the crab box?”

“Jesus! You act like the idea never crossed my mind.” He coughed. “I’ll tell you one more time, probably a guy. Someone strong enough to poke me with a piece and conk me good.” He grabbed the railing for support.

She waited till he was down the stairs and inside his apartment, seated on a dining-room chair, with a glass of orange juice in his hand, before giving in to her own urge and saying, “And so, Mr. Macho, you went off to the place you’d been warned away from and ended up just like any sensible person could have told you you would—” She sounded, she realized with a start, exactly like her own mother. Worry personified. Worry justified. Worry basking in its own existence. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I just wish you hadn’t come up empty.”

A grin crept across Olsen’s ashen face. “I didn’t say that.”

“What did you get?”

“If I weren’t so weak and dehydrated, I’d make you grovel.” He took a long, slow swig at his juice.

“Skip!”

“Well, m’dear”—he coughed and swallowed hard against the orange juice. Tears squeezed from his eyes. His face reddened. “Delaney had a locker in the warehouse. That wasn’t standard. Nothing is so organized as to be standard in that building.” He coughed again. “So no one checked it out.
Until
yesterday. Yesterday, someone came and carted off the contents.”