The Crimes of Jordan Wise

relax again. I'd been right, I thought, to do nothing, keep my distance. Bone had had plenty of time to think things over; if he was going to the law, he'd have done it by then.

That night I had a bad nightmare. Awake, I didn't think about the Annalise crime; my conscience bothered me not at all. But asleep, my subconscious dredged it up. I awoke suddenly, or thought I did, and Annalise was sitting naked on the foot of the bunk, dripping wet, her body draped in seaweed and rusted chains, her hair hanging in sodden strings, part of her face eaten away by sea creatures. I screamed once and really woke up, shaking and pouring sweat. For a time afterward I worried that I'd have the nightmare again, but I never did. Just that once, as if it were a purge.

On the third day, I debated the advisability of a visit to JoEllen Hall. She hadn't contacted me when Annalise disappeared the first time, so it wasn't likely she'd be concerned enough to do it this time. But if Annalise had confided in anyone about me or her new lover or her future plans, it was JoEllen. Safer for me if I knew what she might have said.

I drove over to Red Hook and hunted up the woman at her rundown beach cottage. I asked first whether Annalise was there, then whether JoEllen had heard from her in the past several days. No, she said, why was I asking? 'I might as well tell you,' I said. 'We had an argument over her drinking, among other things, and she packed her suitcase and walked out. Took some money with her that I had stashed away. That was three days ago, so she must have left the island.'

'Well, I don't know where she went and I wouldn't tell you if I did. The shitty way you treated her, I don't blame her for leaving.'

'The shitty way / treated her? Is that what she told you?'

'She never should've come back, that's what she told me. She practically crawled to you, but you never let her forget the mistake she made two years ago. Always giving her orders, forcing her to live like a dog on that damn boat of yours. Poor kid was miserable.'

'That's all Ues, JoEllen.'

'So you say, when she's not here to defend herself.'

'Did she tell you she was planning to leave me again?'

'Not the first time and not this time. Why should she? Her business where she goes and what she does, not mine. And not yours anymore.'

'You're right about that,' I said. 'Tell me something, will you? The answer doesn't make any difference now, but I'd like to know. Was she having an affair the past month or so?'

JoEllen had never cared for me, and Annalise's lies had cemented her dislike. Her smile had an edge of malicious satisfaction. 'Damn right she was. With the same man as before—Royce Verriker. She said he was the best fuck she'd ever had.'

That night, I went to talk to Bone. I had a story all worked out, a way to convince him that Annalise was still alive, an explanation for the padlocked sail lockers and the chain scrape and even for his drug hangover. But I don't remember what it was, because I didn't get to use it.

His slip at the marina was empty. He and Conch Out were gone.

He'd left the previous morning, I found out. Hadn't told anybody where he was bound. One of his periodic solo cruises, prompted by his suspicions of me—a long one, maybe. He'd be back in a week or two, three at the outside. He always came back eventually.

But not this time.

I never saw Bone again.

THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

1984-2005

THERE ISN'T MUCH MORE to tell.

Oh, sure, I know—twenty-one years is a long time, a lifetime. But they were mostly uneventful years. Only a handful of high spots—and low spots—worth mentioning.

I got away with the Annalise crime. It was as perfect as the Amthor crime and the Cotler crime. Perfect.

That is what's important.

Life goes on.

How many times have you heard that, and all its variations? Life is for the living. Take each day as it comes. Live for the moment and don't look back. It's the state of mind people slip into when they've suffered irreparable losses. A refuge for the grief-stricken, the depressed, the unhappy, the emotionally wasted. And the unrefiliably empty.

My refuge, after a while.

I should have been content again. Annalise and the threat of exposure were gone for good. I was safe. The tight, structured little world I'd established for myself on St. Thomas was secure. I could continue to indulge my simple tastes for the rest of my life. I could be at peace.

Only I wasn't. The barrenness remained, like a seared landscape on which nothing that had been there before could be rebuilt and nothing new would grow. The reason for it, most of the reason anyway, was a deep sense of loss and privation that I couldn't shake. It had nothing to do with Annalise. It was Bone, of course, the wrenching away of his friendship, his companionship, his knowledge, his wisdom. And it was something else I'd lost that I cherished as much as Bone.

Windrunner, and all the yawl meant to me.

I don't mean physical loss; I continued to live on her, to take her out now and then. Psychic loss. Spiritual, maybe. The symbiotic connection of boat and man to the sea had been severed somehow and I could not seem to splice it back together. It was as if I'd tainted both Windrunner and my love of sailing beyond repair or redemption, as I'd tainted my relationship with Bone, by using them as instruments in Annalise's destruction.

Over and over I berated myself for not devising a different equation that didn't involve either Bone or the yawl, for rushing ahead with a deficient plan. I could have designed a better one, if I'd invested more time. Instead I'd opted for the quick and easy answer, and for that miscalculation I paid a damn high price.

Nothing was ever the same for me again.

The magic of singlehanding was gone. I still derived some pleasure from the wind, the sea, the night sky, the fast-running tacks and the dead-calm afternoons, but it was never again as intense or as lasting. Even the magic of Laidlaw Cay was gone—something else I lost. The first time I went back there, the terns and frigate birds had abandoned their nesting ground; without them the cay was just another barren sandspit. The second and last time, I discovered that heavy storm seas had diminished it to less than half its original size and all that remained were the reefs and a slender hump of sand strewn with sea wreckage. A dead place.

After a few months, I was sailing infrequently. Not working on Windrunner as much, either; the day-to-day tasks required to maintain upkeep on a yawl her size seemed to have grown tedious. Snorkeling also seemed to require too much effort, so I gave it up. Gave up driving around the island, too, except for shopping trips and an occasional visit to Marsten Marine. The closest I had to a friend now was Dick Marsten, but he was a workaholic and had a family and I saw him only for short periods at the boatyard.

I took up walking. Long walks in the morning and sometimes in the evening, along the winding streets of Frenchtown and the edge of Crown Bay, once all the way down Veterans Drive to Emancipation Garden and back. It was good exercise, it passed the time, and I learned to occupy my mind by concentrating on details of the surroundings.

I lost interest in sitting alone and communing with the night; I craved companionship, the kind I'd had with Bone. So I took to frequenting Harry's Dockside Cafe and some of the other local hangouts. But there was no substitute for Bone, not at the marina or in French-town or anywhere else on the island. I had to settle for the brief,