it was. Was somebody in there or not? Somebody doing something in the dark?
I yelled, “Hey! Hello inside!” Still no response, except for that insistent jangling.
The feeling of unease was acute now; so was the desire to get off this boat. In my mind there was a confused thought of gasoline leakage and bilges and fumes gathering and the danger of a single spark from an electrical switch. I started to run for the rail, to vault over onto the walkway.
Muffled popping sound, then a kind of faint whooshing.
Flash of blinding light, thunderous concussion — wild terror — moment of blackness — and I was in the water, black and bright orange water full of floating things. Thrashing around in the water, gagging, choking, with it cold in my mouth and throat. A roaring in my ears, light and heat beating against me. I went under, fought back up, and then the wildness and the disorientation cleared out of my head and I could think again. I kicked my body around to face into the heat and the glare.
The Kokanee was sheeted with fire, flames reaching up like trembly hands into the black sky. People were running along the shore and the floats. Yelling, too, but it was all a long way off, like hearing something through a wall.
An awareness of pain worked its way into my mind. Burning pain, burns-my face and arms were burned. Men were out on one of the floats now, silhouetted against the glow of the fire, one of them waving his arms and shouting orders to the others; two or three more were extending a long metal gaff out into the water in my direction. I started to swim, hurting, frightened, but functioning all right-not burned too badly to swim all right.
Debris bobbed all around me. I pushed through it toward the gaff. Something struck my cheek, something pliable, and I saw what it was and gagged again and batted it away with a little of the wildness coming back.
It was somebody’s blown-off arm.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They started hammering questions at me as soon as they pulled me out of the water. What happened are you all right where’s Frank O’Daniel was it the fuel tank was there anybody else on board- a babble of words that seemed to rise and fall with the thrumming of the fire. Their faces were surreal masks of light and shadow, like participants in some sort of pagan ceremony. I shook my head at them, pushed their hands away. Stood there dripping: I wasn’t going to fall down.
“Call the sheriff.” The words came out all loose and funny, as if something had been broken or knocked out of kilter in my throat. “Somebody’s been killed.”
Buzz, buzz, thrum and buzz: Who was killed was it Frank God A’mighty I thought I saw something out there looked like an arm…
“Call the sheriff, will you? Call the sheriff!”
“Already been done, mister,” somebody said. It was the guy who had been shouting orders. “My wife’s taken care of it. They’re on the way.”
I said, “Okay,” and shoved past him, went away from all of them. I could walk all right, but my knees were wobbly and I took slow, careful steps, like a drunk trying to walk a straight line. In the firelight I could see that my clothing was scorched and waterlogged, hanging on me like strips of peeled skin. My face hurt; so did my hands, my arms. But it wasn’t that intolerable kind of fiery pain you feel when you’ve been badly burned. I touched my cheek: hot and wet and sore, but not raw, not blistered. Lucky. Jesus, I was lucky-that arm out there could have been mine…
There was a boat nearby, a small runabout, probably an outboard, with a tarp stretched over it and tied down. I sat on its gunwale and looked at the Kokanee. Not much left of it now. A floating pyre canted over to one side, lying low in the water, flames shooting through a gaping hole the explosion had ripped in its superstructure. Three guys with buckets were busy scooping water over the board floats down there, to make sure the fire didn’t spread to the rest of the boats. That was what the other guy, the one whose wife had telephoned the sheriff, had been shouting about while I was still in the lake. There wasn’t much else for anybody to do. You couldn’t even hope to put out a fire like that with a bucket brigade.
The take-charge guy came over to where I was sitting, the boozer I’d talked to earlier dogging along behind him. “You’d better come to my cabin,” he said, “get out of those wet clothes, get some salve on your burns.” He sounded pretty calm, as if boats blowing up and people getting killed were commonplace things to him. “I’ll call you a doctor.”
“Who’re you?”
“Tom Decker. I own the facilities here.”
The boozer said, “How could a thing like that happen? How the hell can a boat just blow up like that?”
“If you knew anything about boats, Les,” Decker said mildly, “you wouldn’t have to ask that question.”
“What kind of crack is that? I know plenty about boats.”
“Sure you do.” Decker shifted his gaze to me again. “If you don’t think you can make it under your own steam…”
“No, I’m okay. Not that badly hurt.”
He nodded. “But you don’t want to let burns go untreated,” he said. “Come on with me.”
I stood up again, giving the Kokanee another look. It would burn right down to the waterline in another few minutes, I thought. The sheriffs people would probably have to drag for what was left of O‘Daniel’s body. If it was O’Daniel whose arm was out there in the dark water.
I went with Decker, leaving the other guy, Les, to puzzle out the explosion by himself. Decker’s cabin was one of those in back and to one side of the cafe-and-store, and a slim, dark-haired woman was waiting in the doorway. He introduced her as his wife, Mary or Marie. Inside, they pointed me into the kitchen and Decker went and got some towels and an old bathrobe while she examined my face and arms. When he came back she disappeared, and I took the opportunity to shuck out of my wet clothing and dry off and bundle up in the robe.
Decker said, “Looks like your burns are superficial. But I’m going to call a doctor anyway.”
“Why?”
“You can never tell about burns. I’ve seen enough cases to know that they ought to be looked after right away by a competent medic.”
I studied him a little. He was about forty-five, lean, brown, with a long sad face and eyes that said he had stopped being excited about things a long time ago; eyes that had known pain. I had seen eyes like that before.
“Ex-military?” I asked him. “Vietnam?”
“Yes. I’ve got the look, right?”
“You’ve got the look.”
“You’ve got one too,” he said. “Police officer?”
“Private detective. I’m investigating the death of Frank O’Daniel’s partner, for their insurance company.”
He raised a questioning eyebrow. “Was O’Daniel on board the Kokanee when she blew?”
“Somebody was. He’s the most likely.”
“I read about the fire that killed Randall; O’Daniel talked about it some himself. Now this. Coincidence?”
I didn’t say anything. I was thinking: Two fatal “accidents” involving fire; two partners dying within a week of each other. Coincidence? Not too damned likely.
Decker’s wife came back with a tube of pinkish gunk and began to smooth the stuff over my face and the reddened surface of my arms and hands. It took most of the pain away instantly. Decker went to make another telephone call-presumably the doctor he’d mentioned. Through the cabin window I could see that the fire had died down some already: the orange stain had begun to fade out of the night.
When Decker rejoined us he said, “Doctor’ll be here in fifteen minutes or so.” I nodded, and he asked, “You want to talk about what happened out there?”
“I don’t know what happened, exactly. Maybe you can tell me.” I went on to explain how it had been: the smell of gasoline, the jangling noise, the pop and whoosh and the sudden explosion that had followed almost immediately.
He was frowning when I finished. “Doesn’t make much sense,” he said. “That ringing you heard-could it have
