Still no sounds, except the tie line of the boat, grinding against the wooden railing.
Worms began to nibble at my stomach.
“Hey, O?Brian, are you in there?” I yelled. I startled an old pelican setting on a corner of the deck and
he lumbered away, squawking as he went. There was no answer.
I tried the screen door and it was open. The cabin was empty; nobody was under the bed or stuffed in
the shower, But the radio was on with the volume turned all the way down, and the beginnings of a
fishing lure dangled from a vise on the porch table.
The worms stopped nibbling and started gnawing at my insides.
I went back outside and started around the deck. The boat was empty.
I might have missed the two bullet holes except for the blood. It was splattered around two small
nicks in the rear wall of the cabin; crimson, baked almost brown in the hot sunlight, yet still sticky to
the touch.
The worms in my stomach grew to coiled snakes.
“Oh, shit!” I heard myself whisper.
I knelt down on the deck and peered cautiously under the cabin. The first thing I saw was a foot in a
red sweat sock jammed in the juncture of two support posts. The foot belonged to Jigs O?Brian. The
rest of him was floating face down, hands straight out at his sides, as if he were trying to embrace the
bay.
Fish were nibbling at the thin red strands that leaked from his head like the tentacles of a jellyfish.
I didn?t need a medical degree to tell he was DOA.
40
SKEELER’S JOINT
Dutch almost swallowed the phone when I got him on the line. He was on his way before I hung up.
The coroner reacted in much the same way.
Dutch arrived fifteen minutes later with Salvatore at the wheel, followed by an ambulance with the
coroner and his forensics team close behind.
The big German lumbered out to the cabin with his hands in his pants pockets, an unlit Camel
dangling from the corner of his mouth, and stared ruefully down at me through his thick glasses.
Salvatore was behind him, glowering like a man looking for a fight.
“I take the full rap for this one,” I said. “If you hadn?t called Salvatore off, O?Brian might be alive
now.”
“1 should have left Salvatore on his tail,” Dutch said. “That was my mistake.”
“You just did what I asked,” I said. “I told O?Brian I?d be alone. Where are your pals from
