Rough Justice

Then she fell off the fence. The flashlight slipped out of one pocket and the pritchel slipped out of the other.

Marta replaced both without comment and lay for a minute in a snowdrift beside the fence. The pile of snow wasn't as soft as advertised, and Marta's body ached. She wiggled her arms and legs, taking inventory. Her head hurt but she couldn't remember when it hadn't. So far she had survived a car accident, a killer, a fall, and psychotherapy. Marta was beginning to think she was invincible, if not entirely professional.

She got up and brushed herself off. The dock was slippery, covered with snow, as were the empty boat slips. They looked like five capital I's facing her. Marta grabbed the handrail because she wasn't sure where the dock ended and the water began. She tramped over to the large boatyard in the snow, flicked on her flashlight, and began reading the names of the boats on the racks.

Free 'n' Easy, Skipperdee, Weekend Folly. The names were legible in the blowing snow because the letters were so big. The wind whistled off the bay as she read. My Girl, Showboat, Slip and Fall. The boats were all out of New Jersey, but none of them was Steere's. Marta hurried to the next rack.

Our Keough. Molly's Deal. Semicolon, but no Piratical. She bit her lip. Steere's boat had to be here; Marta had seen the docking bills. There'd been no other bill that showed Steere paid anybody to move his boat, or that he'd put in a claim for its loss. It was here and she would find it and whatever was hidden on it. Papers, a clue, whatever.

Rate's Bait. Huggybear. Amazing Paul. Some of the boats were registered in Maryland and a couple were from points north: Camden, Maine, and Marblehead, Massachusetts. Marta squatted on her haunches and read the last line of names. It was dark on the far side of the marina, less protected from the sea. Saltwater lashed the fiberglass hulls, and Marta turned her face to avoid a drenching. Mandessa, Ebony, and Go Below. She reached the end of the row of boats and stood up. Where was the Piratical? How could Steere hide a boat?

Marta looked around. Next to the marina's office, close to the water's edge, was a cinderblock building large enough to house boats. Maybe Piratical was inside. She hurried to the building. She reached it and shone the flashlight through its garage doors, pressing her nose against the cold glass like a kid at an aquarium.

It was dark in the building and there were no security lights. Marta squinted, her nose a refrigerated pancake. She could make out vague outlines of more boats on racks, but there was no way she could read the names from here. She had to get inside. She eyeballed the panes of glass. They were large enough. Marta drew back her rubber boot and with a technique only a lawyer could envy, drove her toe through the brittle glass. It cracked with a tinkling sound and she kicked until she had broken the pane completely, then squeezed through the jagged frame and scrambled onto the floor inside.

The floor was paved cement, dry except where pools of water had leaked under the door. Marta grabbed the flashlight and stood up among the glass shards. She dusted off quickly, leaving a tiny pile of snow behind Pigpen. It was quiet inside and it felt good to be out of the snowstorm, sheltered and protected. Just her and Jail Bait, Bet Thrice, and Ain't Nobody's Business. Where was Piratical?

Marta cast the flashlight around the warehouse. Its roof was of a corrugated metal and its steel reinforcing showed. The air smelled musty, and the building had the windless, still cold of a large, unheated space. It was full of boats, maybe owned by those with the money for indoor storage. She headed for the boat racks.

Marta hustled up the aisle, shining the flashlight on the boat names. First Edition, No Nonsense, SSCP. She rose on tiptoe, craning her neck to see the highest racks. Philly Boy, Compuboat, Hi-De-Ho. They sounded like a racing form, with name after stupid name. A grisly Sucker Punch. A boozy Mai Tai Time. The intellectual Einstein's Dream and its dinghy Feinstein's Dream.

Marta sloshed with dripping boots down row after row and read twenty more boat names, none worth repeating. She went down the aisles with the flashlight as fast as she could, left to right, bottom to top. The garage was silent except for the squeak of her boots as she turned. Finally the jumpy circle of light fell on Piratical. Marta almost dropped the flashlight.

* * *

The Piratical was a sleek motorboat and looked larger than its twenty-four feet because it was up on a rack. It was painted a bright white and made a huge wedge in the row, like a generous slice of birthday cake. It sat on the bottom rack, probably because it was the heaviest. There was a shiny gray outboard motor mounted next to the boat's stairs. Marta climbed aboard excitedly.

The boat's upper deck had a large sitting area shaped like a horseshoe, and elevated from the general seating was a padded driver's seat behind a steering wheel; the helm, Marta guessed it would be called, though she knew nothing about boats. She stood by the helm, taking it all in as it fell under the flashlight beam. She was learning fast.

In front of the helm was a compass with a clear plastic bubble over it. Marta could see through it to a floating red needle. Every surface on the Piratical was neat and clean everywhere she looked. There was something strange about it, though; Marta couldn't quite put her finger on it. She stood, puzzling, then checked her watch. Almost three o'clock in the morning. In a few hours the jury would reconvene. Marta had to hurry. She flicked the flashlight around the helm, but there was no place to hide anything.

Wait. There. On the left near the floor was a storage compartment. Marta squatted and opened the recessed cabinet. Papers! She pulled them out so she could see them better. A blue pamphlet that said THIS IS YOUR BOATING HANDBOOK and a packet of waterproof maps of New Jersey and the Chesapeake. A black Boating Almanac. Fuck! Maybe there was something stuck in its pages?

Marta flipped through the almanac, accidentally cracking its spine. Ouch. She loved books and never cracked their spines. But this time, it told her something. No one had read this book. She looked again at the maps. They were neat and unwrinkled in the flashlight's beam. None of these references had been consulted. The boat was clean. Marta wondered if the Piratical had ever been used.

She straightened up and scrutinized the boat next to Piratical for comparison, Atta Boy. Its cup holders were lined with dirt and its driver's seat was worn, with a worn pillow at the helm. The coiled yellow wire in Atta Boy's storage was dirty, but in Piratical it was spotless.

Piratical had never been used. Sailed, driven, whatever. Had Steere bought the boat and never used it? Why? Did it mean anything?