Soundkeeper (23 page)

“The barge is gone,” Hall said when the building came into view. There were no vehicles parked anywhere they could see.

He parked far enough away from the old building so no one could look out of the window and see them, and they got out of the truck. Both men eased their doors closed. When they got to the end of the building there were no cars parked on the other side. They walked up to the door, which was standing open. Hall looked at the dock where he’d gotten into the fight and felt the muscles in his jaw flex.

“Sheriff’s Office,” Varnum called out. His voice echoed through the empty building. They each held a flashlight in their hands when they walked inside. They swept the building with the beams of light and Varnum nodded toward a small closet. He grabbed the edge of the door and nodded at Hall, who had his hand on his gun and his flashlight ready. Varnum flung the door open. The closet was empty.

“It looks like they moved out.” Varnum was walking around the building, playing the beam of his flashlight over the floor.

“Is that blood?” Hall asked. Varnum looked at the spots on the floor and nodded. Then he saw a small plastic baggie on the floor.

“Drugs?” Hall asked. He’d had some basic narcotic identification classes, but had never seen the real thing other than some cocaine on a bathroom counter at a party while he was in college.

Detective Varnum pulled a pair of latex gloves out of the inside pocket of his sport coat and stretched them over his hands. With one hand he picked up the corner of a plastic baggie and with the other he fished a pair of glasses out and perched them on the tip of his nose.

“Crack, most likely. Hard to be certain without sending it to the lab. There would usually be more residue from the crystals if it was meth,” Varnum answered. “If you ever suspect drugs are present, make sure you wear gloves. One of our deputies arrested a guy not long ago on a warrant for worthless checks. He had some plastic baggies and pills in his pocket, and the deputy confiscated them and packaged them to send to the lab. An hour later he was in the emergency room at Beaufort Memorial, smelling colors and seeing sounds. It was LSD. If he would have worn gloves when he searched his prisoner like he was supposed to, it never would have happened.”

Hall was glad he always carried a pair of surgical gloves in a pocket on his bullet proof vest.

“We can’t put it on anybody,” Varnum said of the baggie, “So it’s not worth sending to the lab. This place has been vacant for a long time. There’s no telling who’s been in here.”

Hall went out to his truck and came back with his digital camera. He took pictures of the inside and outside of the warehouse and of the dock. At the end of the pier there were several clods of dirt and he collected a sample and put it in a plastic bottle similar to the one Varnum had given him.

Varnum noticed something on one of the dock pilings and showed Hall.

“It’s mostly rust, but there is a little paint on this post.”

Hall photographed the scrape of rust and paint and then scraped some of it off with his pocketknife and put it an evidence envelope.

“I wonder where they went,” Hall said.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Gale’s scream triggered the “fight or flight” response in Arnold and he tried to back peddle out the door of the mobile home to escape but ended up tripping over the chain which was still attached to Gale’s leg. He bounced down the wooden steps and into the front yard. Blondie pushed past Gale, and was on top of Arnold before he could get up. He slapped him across his face. Then he looked at Gale.

“You look pretty good for a dead woman.”

Blondie got off Arnold and grabbed the chain that was attached to her ankle. He gave it a quick jerk and she tumbled down onto the floor. Her eyes were level with his while he stood on the ground.

“Maybe we can finish what I started when we first met.”

Gale was trying to cry, to scream out in some way, but she felt like she’d had the wind knocked out of her and couldn’t catch her breath. Blondie got close to her face and she smelled the liquor he’d been drinking. His left eye was swollen and he had a jagged cut on the end of his chin. She noticed his pupils were dilated and she wondered what he was on.

“You kids are getting pretty kinky, what with chains and all. Maybe we can get you and my friend to give us a show in a little while,” Blondie said.

Gale looked at the stripper who was holding the flame from a cigarette lighter at the end of a clear glass tube and inhaling. Blondie leaned in closer and whispered in Gale’s ear.

“You’re already dead, but if you try to get away or tell her anything, I’ll have to kill her too. You don’t want to take guilt like that to your grave, do you?” Blondie asked Gale. Then he gripped the back of Gale’s head, pulled her toward him, and forced his tongue inside her mouth. Gale gagged and spit when he finally released her.

After Blondie let go of Gale, he stepped over to Arnold, who hadn’t moved since he’d been smacked around. He was breathing so hard Gale could hear him from several feet away. Blondie slapped Arnold again with his open palm just like Gale had watched him do at the warehouse. Arnold made no effort to defend himself, and Gale noticed his nose was bleeding again. Gale looked at the woman to see if she paid any attention to the violence. She was focused on her task and oblivious to what was going on around her.

“I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me like this, partner. What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine, right partner? I’ll let you two have the master suite and my friend and I will have our little party here in the den. Then we can swap,” Blondie said.

Arnold stood up and wiped the blood off of his face with the back of his hand. As he walked by, Blondie grabbed the keys for the truck out of his hand and pushed him down the narrow hallway of the trailer. Gale got up off the floor and followed him down the hall. The chain made a hollow sound as it dragged along the cheap tile floor behind her.

Inside the bedroom there was a bare, stained mattress on the floor and a small dresser. There were no lights in the room, and the only window was fogged with age. The bottom pane was broken out. Gale backed into a corner of the room and slid down the walls until she was sitting on the floor.

“You’re already dead,” she heard Blondie say over and over again in her mind. Ever since she’d been kidnapped, Gale had been able to convince herself that it would be over soon. She had believed Arnold was close to letting her go until this had happened. She wondered how Blondie had known where they were going or if he just got lucky.

Arnold was lying on his back on the filthy mattress, so still Gale thought he was asleep. Gale couldn’t sleep. She wondered when Blondie was going to come back and what he was going to do to her when he did. From the noises spilling through the thin walls it sounded like the other girl was keeping him busy, and Gale hoped he stayed that way for a long time.

“How many other people in the world are getting ready for their death?” she wondered. Death row inmates, hospice patients. She couldn’t think of any others and decided the number was very low. Death came as a surprise to most people. When she was on the hospital ship she had known people who were close to death. Some believed they were going to survive right up to their last breath, and others died in small increments, letting depression and fear rob them of their last moments of mortality. Gradually the fear left her and Gale began to feel at peace with her soul. Ever since she was a little girl in Sunday school she had known what was going to happen to her when she died and she had no reason to begin to doubt now. Knowing brought peace. Gale wanted to spend her last hours on earth remembering all of the things that made her happy, and she did.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The next morning the telephone rang when Hall was in the shower and since the only phone in the house was on the wall in the kitchen, he had to stand in the kitchen and drip water everywhere while he talked. It was the dispatcher from the sheriff’s department. They had received another anonymous tip about illegal netting. Hall wrote down the information and hung up the phone. The evidence he and Varnum had collected was on the kitchen table, and he put it all in his safe and spun the dial before he left his cottage.

“I’ve got to check out a tip, partner,” he told Belker when he put him in the back yard. Maybe one day Belker could go out on patrol with him. That would help with the loneliness he sometimes felt when he was by himself for hours and hours on end. The pup barked once and then watched his master leave without further protests. Hall idled the patrol boat out of the narrow channel and looked around for the dolphin, but it wasn’t there. He drove slowly around in a large circle when he reached deeper water, but still there was no sign of the dolphin. Maybe they got to sleep in every once in a while, he thought.

He turned toward the Broad River, and a boat along the far shoreline caught his eye. Someone was standing in the bow working a thin fly rod back and forth, and Hall could see the wispy line move in graceful loops back and forth until the fisherman leaned forward and with one last powerful thrust shot the line far out in front of the boat. Hall realized it was Silas, fishing by himself, and decided to watch for a few minutes.

The area Silas was fishing in was a mud flat that was completely dry for the last hour of the low tide. Hall avoided the area entirely for fear of becoming stranded and admired Silas for knowing how long he could stay there before the moon tugged the water away. While Hall watched, Silas stood motionless and leaned out over his feet, studying the water in front of him. He didn’t move at all with the exception of his left hand which pulled in the line with short, quick jerks.

Suddenly he stood erect, held his fishing rod high in the air, and pulled the line tight. A few yards in front of the boat the calm water exploded, and Hall saw the sunlight reflect off the pink gills of a small fish. The fish jumped into the air once, twice, and on the third jump finally managed to free itself from the force that had seized it.

Across the water Hall heard Silas yell, a noise like a young boy might make when he rode his bicycle for the first time without training wheels. Silas saw Hall and waved. Hall waved back and gunned his boat up onto plane.

On the Broad River, just before he reached the highway bridge, he saw a small boat in the middle of the river. Hall changed his course to avoid rocking the smaller boat with his wake, but the lone occupant stood up and crossed his arms back and forth over his head.

Hall slowed and approached the boat. The man inside busied himself untangling a length of rope, and Hall noticed the motor cover was off the brand new outboard engine. Apparently he needed a tow. When the man looked up toward Hall again he dropped the rope he had been working with and sat down suddenly. As Hall got closer to the boat he saw the man fidgeting with something on the deck of the boat.

“Motor trouble?” Hall asked. He had drifted within a few feet of the stranded boater and was getting a line ready to throw to him.

“Yeah. It’s brand new, too.”

Hall nodded with sympathy and threw the man one of his lines from the patrol boat. Jimmy had taught him not to trust the condition of other people’s equipment. The man showed some knowledge by securing the line to the bow eye of his boat instead of one of the cleats that might have torn free under the stress of towing.

“Where to?” Hall asked.

“Broad River Landing.”

Hall was thankful that he would have to tow the boat less than two miles to the boat ramp. Maybe the illegal netters would still be in the area by the time he finished. Hall looked back to check on the boat in tow and thought the man seemed very nervous. Embarrassed. Hall understood. No one liked to get stranded on the water.

When they arrived at the boat ramp someone was launching his power ski, and Hall remembered the dead girl from two nights ago. He realized he would remember her every time he heard the distinctive sound of the motorized water toys.

Five minutes later Hall pulled up to the floating dock, and the boat he was towing followed right behind. After he tied his patrol boat to the dock the man untied the tow rope and handed the line back to Hall.

“Thanks,” he said. Then he turned and walked towards the parking lot, glancing back once at Hall. Hall put the tow line back where it belonged, cast off from the dock, and headed back to his original mission.

A half mile later Hall realized something he’d seen didn’t make any sense. There were two large coolers in the boat he had towed in. Coolers that could hold a lot of fish, but he hadn’t seen a single fishing rod. He wheeled his boat around so sharply that the engine over-revved when the propeller came out of the water and his boat slammed hard against its own wake.

Hall drove back to the boat ramp as fast as his boat would travel. The wind made his eyes tear, and anger burned in his throat. The guy in the boat was the same poacher that had outrun him in Hazzard Creek and had slogged through the mud to get away the day of the accident on the bridge. Hall was sure of it. The boat was different, but now he understood why the man was so nervous: he was afraid Hall would recognize him.

Hall ignored the no-wake buoy near the dock and headed toward the dock at full speed, slamming the engine into full throttle reverse at the last moment. The boat shuddered and strained but came to rest against the dock with a gentle thump. Hall jumped out of the boat and grabbed the bow line, tying it to the dock with a sloppy knot which would have earned a sharp rebuke from Jimmy Barnwell. When Hall saw the man he was facing away from him. The two coolers were on the ground next to his truck, and when Hall approached the man he grunted as he picked one up and set it on the tailgate. When he reached for the second cooler Hall slapped a handcuff on his wrist and jerked the man around so he was facing him.