The Shore (Leisure Fiction)

He considered it a long time. 'You could say that. You could say that's why I'm here.'

'I don't understand.'

'It's the only way for us. Right now.' He tried to pay attention to what her hands were doing, but a bloody fog seemed to fill his head. 'Only way I can be of use.' His voice snagged on the final word, tearing like cloth on a nail. 'My head. Don't feel too well. Don't think I can...'

'Shut up. There's no obligation, you know.'

'Sorry...'

'Shut up, I said.' Moving away from him, she twitched aside the kitchen curtains and peered out at the night. Frost cobwebbed the glass. 'So what do you live on?'

'What?'

'While you're chasing a killer? That's what you do, isn't it? It sounds pretty nuts. You're not independently wealthy or something, are you? Is she?'

'There's someone who takes care of...hard to explain. Other people are interested.' His gaze sought hers, soft, insistent. 'My needs are met.'

A tiny crumb of paper clung to the sleeve of her sweater, and she stiffened as he picked it off. 'You mean, you've got some sort of patron or something?'

'I told you there were things I couldn't talk about.'

She turned back to the window. 'Right.'

'Quite a view.'

'Used to be the marina,' she muttered distantly.

'Could I...?'

'What?'

'See your notes?'

'They're on the desk. In the other room. The rolltop in the corner.' Not moving from the window, she stared down at the empty dock. She heard his footsteps, then the sliding rattle of the desk. The cat finished eating and jumped to the windowsill and settled. Without thinking, she reached to stroke it, and instantly, the cat flipped onto its back, wrapping both front paws around her hand. 'Oww! Oww! Stop that!' The claws just lanced her flesh without really digging in, holding her so she couldn't pull away. The tongue startled her--it felt like hot, wet sandpaper. 'All right, fine, I like you too, now let go of me, all right? Oww!' The cat flipped back around with a snakelike movement and huddled against the pane.

'It's no good.'

She followed his voice into the living room.

'No good,' he repeated, perched uncomfortably at her cluttered desk. 'You haven't done much actual investigative work, have you? Check out the dates. Your man escaped from this halfway house or whatever late in September. The first corpse turned up in a pond almost a week before that. In pieces. Never even identified. All we know for sure is her first name was Stella.'

'How do you know that? That's not in there, is it?'

'I forget. Maybe a tattoo?'

'Don't be creepy.'

'It's right here in your notes. See the date?'

'And don't patronize me.' She snatched the notebook. 'I checked with the hospital administrator, the new one. Patients in that part of the facility are monitored, not--how did he put it?--'unduly restricted.' Look. Clay Mills is approximately an hour's drive from that pond. Just suppose he got hold of a car and...'

'How far is that pond from Edgeharbor?'

She started to answer, caught herself. 'You know how far it is.'

'About twenty minutes. Straight inland. If you're on foot, takes about...' Suddenly, he pushed the rest of the file away. 'My head. Damn. You're close, but that's not it.'

'What are you talking about?'

He tapped the papers. 'This Chandler, the father, what does he have to say about his son's disappearance?'

'I haven't been able to contact him.'

He turned completely around in the chair to face her.

'There's been no answer at his office or his home,' she explained, straightening the papers. 'I'm not sure what I'd say anyhow. Why do you look so interested all of a sudden?'

'There must be court records about the killing of his wife.'

She nodded.

'Could you get them?'

'I don't think I could remove them from...'

'Could you take me to them, let me read them?'

'They're in the old courthouse.'

'But you could get in?'

'I...no, I'm not taking you there.' She held his gaze. 'There are limits.'

After a moment, his shoulders sagged. 'Could you maybe look the file over, and tell me what's in it?'

'I could do that, yes.'

'Could you do it now?'

XIII

Fog pressed up the dark beach, damply flattening the saw grass. On a bluff, the abandoned summer cottages clustered, facing the sea, one a little apart from the others. Mist enveloped it. Moisture slicked the green and white trim, and the front window shimmered faintly. Drapes hung closed at the side windows, but light pooled thinly in the small yard.

The back door wasn't closed all the way. 'It's got to stop.' Crouched on the kitchen floor, Perry whimpered. 'It's got to.' He waited for the trembling in his shoulders to abate. Clutching a scrub brush, he wiped the back of a wet rubber glove across his nose, then plunged the brush back into a bucket. Reddish water turned the gloves orange. 'Got to stop.' The boy slopped more water over the caking filth on the linoleum and scrubbed at it, making a brown swirl in which tiny bubbles hissed. Wet, it smelled like blood again. 'Not my fault.'

A dull ache circled up his knees with each sob, and his shoulders began to stiffen, but he scrubbed on, pushing the pail ahead of him, while the cold pierced through the open crack of the door, and a trace of fog ghosted into the kitchen.

The mist spun halos around her headlights, and her grip slid damply on the steering wheel. Heading down Decatur Road, she glimpsed movement at the end of the block. Must be high tide. Water glittered in sharp, vanishing segments. Then she turned onto Chandler Street.

Another halo hovered above the street lamp, a jagged nimbus that glistened and changed shape in the floating vapor. A freezing glow shivered across the front of the courthouse, bleaching the granite steps, and shadows wavered like gargoyle wings.

She parked the jeep across the street from the courthouse but didn't move. Branches clicked against the lamppost, and icons of civilization--phone booth, mailbox, hydrant--clustered in the desolate funnel of brightness. Well, I do seem to be here. Getting out of the jeep as quietly as she could, she marched straight through the light. I probably should have gone around back. Across the park, darkness buried the houses. Anyone might see.

She headed up the stairs. He's got me feeling like a crook now. The cold of the doorknob stung through her gloves. But I suppose I should have thought of that before I swiped these keys from the chief's desk. Metal ticked against metal as the key scraped the lock.

A slap of wind pushed the door, but she grabbed it before it could bang open. She looked back once. Mist winked across the street lamp. Then she eased her way in. With an icy crack of hinges, the door sucked shut behind her, snuffing the light. Nothing to be nervous about, right? Her fingers searched along the wall. I've been here hundreds of times. She located the switch but didn't turn the lights