She smiled, satisfied.
'Good. That answers my question' Upon her insistence, they registered under false names at an old guest house the interior of which recalled and celebrated the glorious slaughter of the great whales. They parked the car for the night in an isolated spot near the center of town, but nowhere near their guest house 'I don't want anyone to be able to find us tonight,' Leslie explained.
Thomas didn't ask why.
Chapter 23
It all began with water, the paleontologists maintain, with life beginning in small tidal pools beside prehistoric oceans. On the next morning in Nantucket, however, as Thomas Daniels and Leslie McAdam drove toward the ferry depot, there seemed a chance that all would end in water just as easily.
Great sheets of water, ripping across the island. It wasn't a hurricane, nowhere close according to the natives, and the dauntless ferry, the Islander, planned to make its very-early-morning crossing as scheduled.
Thomas wondered whether the ferry ran through Yankee ingenuity or Yankee stubbornness, or perhaps an ingredient of both.
There were few passengers, no more than fifteen or twenty, although Thomas and Leslie weren't close enough to any to see their faces, and the ferry ran with a skeletal crew of four. Nonetheless, they were both grateful when the ship left at its appointed hour.
Having their virtual run of the ship, Thomas and Leslie sat on an upholstered bench on the port side. Both were silent, Leslie having fallen particularly un talkative since the previous evening.
'Something's bothering you,' Thomas had insisted.
'No, not actually,' she'd said.
'Something about Zenger.'
The statement was followed by silence, then a girlish shrug.
'He gave me the creeps she'd said.
Already, he thought he knew her better than that. She was a woman, not a girl, and was given not to irrational 'creeps,' but to thoughtful observation and conclusion.
'Creeps' was the girlish disguise she liked to crawl into. It was a mask for something else, something more disturbing.
But what? He didn't know.
Thomas closed his eyes for a moment, asking if she minded. No, not terribly, she said, and if he wanted to nap, she might take a walk around the boat.
'Walk? To where?'
'I like to explore,' she said. And she left it at that.
'Try to stay on board,' he kidded.
'I hear it's hell to turn these tubs around ' 'Just for you., He closed his eyes and an hour passed. He was awakened by the sound of two children whose mother thought nothing of letting them run up and down the aisle between seats. Not surprising that the kids should wake him, he thought, blinking awake. Enough noise to wake the dead. He looked next to him and she was gone.
The ship was rocking perceptibly. Torrents of water continued to pound it and lash the windows. Thomas looked around, pulling himself up in his seat. Leslie was nowhere to be seen.
All right, he thought, he'd have a walk, too. There were only so many places, indoors or out, where she could have gone.
He spent fifteen minutes looking. Indoors, outdoors. Above on the wet deck, down below near the cars. Under cover, in the rain.
She was gone. Damn her, he thought. Always games. Games?
He was beginning to be concerned. A vision of her being washed overboard flashed before his mind. But he quickly shook it. She was far too careful for that. His mind raced to a murder case his father had once been in. A man had pushed his wife overboard on an otherwise joyful Bahamian cruise. Not guilty. The body of the deceased, the court ruled, had been sodden with alcohol before being immersed in the deep. Accidental drowning. William Ward Daniels had been proud of that one.
Thomas walked through the interior sitting rooms of the ferry.
He passed the fire station, with its extinguishers and axes. With each minute that passed he became more anxious that something was wrong. He prowled the rear of the ship, finally stepping outside onto the extremity of the main deck farthest to the rear.
He looked around, bracing himself against the wind and sheets of rain by holding firmly to a deck railing. He looked around. No Leslie. He heard a noise.
He turned, leaning against the railing, and saw the door closing again, the same door he'd come through. A wide man in a city raincoat was approaching him. A hat shielded his face from the rain.
Thomas noticed the sign near him. No PASSENGERS BEYOND THIS POINT. A crew member, Thomas thought, coming to tell him to stay out of that area. It was dangerous. No one anywhere else on the ship could see that section of the rear deck. Why, someone could fall off and never be…
Thomas froze with the sudden realization. His mind was instantly off Leslie. He wanted to be out of there, preferably back inside.
Thomas started to move, but his worst fears were suddenly realized. The man grabbed him by the arm, pushing him back to the raU.
Thomas tried to push the man's grip away, but heard his voice.
'I want to talk!' the man said, shouting to be heard above the elements.
The men came eye to eye. The coldness Thomas felt beneath his clothes was not from the wind and water! This was one of the men in the elevator at Anspacher Gallery. This, in fact, was the man with the scarf.
'Where is she?' he said.
'Get your hand off me,' Thomas countered.
The gloved hand released his arm. A gesture of good faith?
'Where'd she go?' he asked.
'I don't know what you're talking about' A bold lie, which didn't betray the fact that Thomas's heart was pounding so fiercely that he could feel it throughout his chest.
The man's face, thick with vaguely Eastern European features, broadened into a wide grin.
'I'll help your memory a little,' Said the man. And as if on cue, with the end of the sentence, the inquisitor's fist smacked into the center of Thomas's stomach.
Thomas was completely unprepared for the shot to the solar plexus. He winced violently and doubled up, gasping and taking in half a mouthful of rain.
The strong hand went to his shoulder and straightened him into an upright position.
'Does that help you think?' asked the man.
'Maybe now you know.'
Thomas coughed. He tried to gasp.
'I don't know The man shook him and said,
'Answer me. Answer me!'
'I don't know!' Thomas barked again, sputtering the words through the rain. His face and head were soaked.
'Bet you don't know how to swim either Thomas was shoved hard against the rear railing. The ferry's diesel engines ground noisily below. The water swirled.
'I'm telling you,' he insisted angrily and fearfully,
'I don't know!
She disappeared! Maybe you already tossed her overboard 'Maybe,' gloated the man.
'But not yet. She came on the boat with you. I I want her!'
'So do I A moment passed as the assailant seemed to decide his next move. Thomas's throat and stomach
