Still Water (44 page)

“What’s this all about Matt? “Judge Walker asked when Baxter had joined them.

Ella and Kate had done no more than offer one another guarded nods. Ella was still pale, though otherwise she appeared to be okay. Matt noticed that she avoided looking at him.

“Sorry to drag you out here Judge, but I think I know what happened the night Bryan Roderick vanished. And I think everybody here is going to be surprised when you learn the truth.”

Kate and Ella exchanged uneasy looks, but Matt thought he saw something else in Ella’s expression; he thought she looked puzzled, but not by anything he’d said.

“I should start by saying that Bryan is dead,” Matt said. “But I don’t think it was Kate or Ella who killed him.”

This time they both stared at him, and though Kate appeared the more surprised of the two, it was clear that both of them were taken aback, and it was only right then that he knew the theory he’d formed that morning as he and Ben had trawled back and forth across the cove was probably right.

“Before I say anything else,” he went on, addressing them directly, “I need to ask you both a question, and in light of what I’ve just told you, I need you to answer me truthfully. My guess is that ever since Bryan vanished the two of you have each independently assumed that the other was responsible for his death. Am I right?”

He looked from one to the other, but neither of them spoke.

“You don’t have to worry about incriminating each other anymore. Like I said, neither of you killed Bryan. Whatever you may have thought.”

It was Ella who finally broke the silence, her eyes fixed on Kate. “You’re right. I thought Kate had killed him.” And then Kate slowly nodded too, though she appeared completely bewildered.

It was the final confirmation Matt needed. He looked at Ella and he thought she had already worked some of this out, or at least suspected. “Did you know?” he asked.

She shook her head once, slowly. “Not exactly, but yesterday I felt something was wrong. Rate said something that didn’t make sense to me. But I didn’t get a chance to ask her about it.”

“Hold on here. I don’t understand this,” Baxter interrupted. Both he and the judge were totally lost. “Why would the two of you think the other one had killed Bryan?”

“I think I can answer that. They were both out on the point that night.” He looked at Ella. “My guess is you saw each other out there. Tell me if I’m getting any of this wrong.”

“You’re not wrong,”

“I think Kate left her house when she heard shots in the cove. Am I right?”

Kate looked around at them all. “Yes,” she admitted at length.

“What happened then?”

“I went down through the woods, and I saw Ella. It was dark, and a little scary out there. I got quite a fright.”

“You didn’t speak?”

“No. We just saw each other for a second.”

“And what did you do then?”

“I went home.”

He could see that she was reluctant to say too much, still uncertain if this was some kind of trick, so he speculated as to what had happened next. “For the rest of the night you lay awake wondering what Ella had been doing. You kept wondering about those shots you heard. Maybe you were worried about Ella. You knew how she and Bryan felt about each other. You knew he’d been giving her trouble over the election, and you knew the kind of person he could be, and so in the morning you went down to his house and you found him gone. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know then, or did you think you knew, that he was dead?”

“No. I didn’t know what to think, but I suppose I had a suspicion that something might have happened to him.”

“That’s when you decided to clean up the house?”

“I did that for the reason I already told you, because I didn’t want anybody to know I’d been there.”

“And when did you decide that Bryan must be dead?”

“A day or two later, after I heard that he was missing.”

“And you thought Ella had killed him?”

“Not at first. Maybe I suspected something, I’m not sure. But then I heard the talk, and I put two and two together.”

“But you didn’t say anything?”

Kate took a moment before she answered. “No. I didn’t say anything.”

“And for her part Ella kept quiet about seeing Kate that night too,” Matt said, turning to her. “You knew that Bryan had beaten Kate before, and so after you saw her and you heard Bryan was missing, you assumed she’d killed him. My guess is you thought it was some kind of accident, and you thought that if Bryan was dead then he probably had it coming. Am I close?”

Ella met his eye, and after a long pause she nodded. “You’re close.”

Matt held her gaze, waiting to see if she would say anything else. He knew there was more, but he hadn’t worked it all out yet, and even if he had he couldn’t prove it. But she stared back at him silently. She glanced at her mother, and something passed between them that he couldn’t interpret, but Helena appeared troubled.

The sound of another vehicle arriving dissolved the moment, and then a car door slammed and they heard raised voices as the officer keeping back the growing crowd tried to stop Howard Larson getting by.

“Let him come,” Matt said.

Baxter signalled the officer, and Howard came down the slope towards them. As he drew nearer he looked at the boats on the cove and then his eye ranged over the group, pausing on Ella and then fixed on Matt.

“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded.

“Nothing that’s any of your business, Howard,” Baxter said.

The hell it isn’t. I’m making it my business. This is about Bryan isn’t it? People have a right to know what’s happening. Are you finally going to arrest her?”

“You can keep your voice down Howard,” the judge cut in. “This isn’t an election speech you’re making here and whatever you may think, you really don’t have any business here.”

“I’d like Howard to stay, Judge,” Matt cut in. “As a matter of fact this does concern him in a way.”

Howard looked at Matt as if he was surprised at finding support from that quarter, and then his surprise changed to wariness.

“I was just explaining to everyone that it wasn’t Ella who killed Bryan.” Matt paused to let Howard absorb what he was saving. “Looks as if Jerrod Gant wasn’t exactly telling the truth about what he saw that night.”

“Gant?” Howard looked around, as if he expected him to appear.

“He isn’t here if that’s what you’re wondering. As a matter of fact I don’t have any idea where he is, though when he turns up I expect we’ll find out where he’s been hiding. What did you do? Put him up in some motel on the mainland? I bet he’s there right now, watching cable with a six-pack at his side, eating take-out pizza and fries. Who’s paying for it Howard? Is that on top of what you already promised him? What exactly did you promise him Howard? Did you wipe out the rent arrears he owes you and tell him he could relocate his business to one of those new units you have planned for when the marina gets built? Is that what it cost to persuade him to lie for you?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Howard protested.

“Is that so? I wonder what Gant is going to say when he does turn up? You think he’ll tell us it was all his own idea to make up the statement he gave the chief here? Maybe when he finds himself looking at some jail time he’ll think twice about that. What were you going to do, have him change his story after the election was over? Have him suddenly decide that it was dark and it could be he made a mistake about what he saw after all?”

“This is all a lie. You can’t prove a single word of any of this.”

“Maybe not yet. But I can prove that you were out at Jerrod Gant’s house the night before he made his statement. And I can prove that Gant wasn’t even on St. George the night Bryan disappeared.”

Matt noted with some satisfaction that even Howard was surprised by this last piece of information.

“I guess he forgot to tell you that.”

“Is this true?” Judge Walker asked.

“It’s true.”

Matt explained how he’d found out. He related how the previous night he’d followed Charlie Thorne back to the Gants’ place after Lucy Gant had picked him up at the ferry dock. “Ruth Thorne suspected her husband was cheating on her, and she was right. But he wasn’t staying over on the mainland the way she thought. Instead, whenever Gant was away from home working on one of the other islands, Charlie was spending time with Lucy. Lucy told me about Howard going to the house, and both she and Charlie admitted that on the night Bryan vanished, Jerrod Gant was away working for a guy on Lucia. There was no way he could’ve seen anything. He made the entire story up.”

Howard looked trapped. His anger had dissipated, replaced by uncertainty and the first flicker of fear.

“Looks like you should start thinking about a new career Howard. Somehow I think your political ambitions just went belly up. Or maybe you’ll get elected spokesman for your cell block.”

Howard paled and fixed him with a look of pure malice. “I don’t have to stay and listen to this kind of crap. You can speak to my lawyer.”

He wheeled around and went back towards his car and Matt watched him go, grinning a little and thinking at least he’d derived some satisfaction from all of this.

Before anyone could say anything else, a shout attracted their attention. On the launch out in the cove Ben Harper waved his arm.

“I think the show is about to start folks,” Matt said.

On the deck of the dragger a man operated a winch. To the east, a line of cloud hung over the horizon, its edge marked by great sooty brush strokes that extended to the sea as another front slowly advanced towards the coast of Maine.

Ella and Kate stood side by side at the end of the jetty as close by a shape broke the surface of the water and Ben Harper in scuba gear raised an arm and passed a line to the man on the dragger who hooked it with a gaff. The line was fixed to the winch reel and once Ben was out of the way the hum of the machinery started as the slack was taken up. The line snapped taut in the air, and rivulets of water dripped to the sea.

Matt explained how the realization that Bryan’s boat was missing had prompted an idea earlier that morning. He said that after witnessing what had happened when Jake had harpooned the orca the day before, it had struck him just how intelligent orcas were.

“That orca appeared to lead the Seawind into the cove, which gave the others a chance to escape. And then judging by what the crew heard and saw, maybe it turned the tables on Jake.” He pointed along the shore. “Ben thinks the dead orca he found in the cove probably belonged to the same pod. It died from pneumonia, but Ben found bullet scars on the dorsal fin which isn’t all that unusual, but there was one wound that he thought might have been recent, though the body is pretty decomposed now so he can’t say for sure. He thinks the pod probably came into the cove the same night Bryan disappeared, hunting fish they’d herded in past the reef.”

Out on the water the line was being winched slowly in. Matt watched for a moment before continuing.

“We already know that Bryan had been drinking that night, and earlier he’d had a fight with Ella on the dock, so he was probably in a lousy mood. We also know that the Rodericks had a habit of shooting orcas if they got the chance. I think that’s what happened that night. Bryan saw the orcas in the cove and he got his rifle and went out in his boat.”

“The shots Carl Johnson heard? “Judge Walker said.

“That’s my guess.”

Just then something broke the surface of the water and was slowly hoisted into the air. When it was almost clear Ben shouted for the winch to be switched off. Matt looked at Ella.

“Bryan’s boat,” he said.

It had been a fourteen foot crabber, with a large outboard motor on the back which was still attached, though it was draped with seaweed. It was this that had ensured that the boat had sunk to the bottom and stayed there when it had gone down. One side of the boat was smashed, the wood splintered and crushed where massive force had been exerted and a good two thirds of that side was missing. Part of it was what Matt had found on the beach earlier.

It took a minute or so before the eye could make sense of all it could see. As well as seaweed what was left of the boat was part-filled with mud and sand that had partially buried it when the storm had churned up the seabed the night before. But gradually as more detail made sense it became apparent that there was something inside the boat. Something shapeless, but impaled on a jagged section of planking. And then as the eye focused on this image, and filtered out what was around it, the shape of it began to make sense, and then automatically the eye sought clarification with some familiar aspect, and it seemed that what hung limp at one end, gray with mud except where a flash of white showed through, might be a head, and the white a section of skull.

Ella drew a sharp breath.

Matt looked at her. “It’s Bryan.”

What remained of Bryan’s boat was hauled aboard the dragger and both it and the body it contained were taken back to the harbour. The body would be examined to establish the cause of death, but Matt had little doubt about what had happened. He figured Bryan had seen the sick orca and had meant to finish it off, but before he could reach it another member of the pod had intervened to protect it, perhaps the bull Jake had harpooned. He imagined an eight ton animal rising out of the water with the speed and power of a locomotive, and how easily it would have flipped a small boat. Maybe when it had crashed back into the sea it had landed partially on top of the crabber, and in the resulting wreck Bryan had fell or been forced on to a section of jagged planking. He probably wouldn’t even have known what had hit him.

When the dragger headed back to the harbour, Ben offered Matt a ride on his launch, but Matt said he’d see him back in town and he joined the rest of the group on the beach as they headed back towards their vehicles.

Judge Walker shook his head incredulously, still hardly able to believe how everything had turned out. “Damndest thing I ever heard of.” He turned to Ella. Things must have been tough for you these last weeks.” His eye drifted towards Kate. “Course if you two had both told everything you knew from the start, maybe things would have been different.” There was a slight note of censure in his voice. “Anyway, I’m glad it’s settled now. You and your mother need a ride back to town?”