Back in my room, I looked at my watch. It glowed three-thirty, the black, ugly time of night when demons roam for the alcoholic and psychotic, and sometimes for me.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bright sun pierced the small window in a late morning slant. There were no sounds coming from inside the house. It had been sometime after daylight when I finally dozed off. My watch now read nine-thirty a.m. Where was everyone?
Taking a quick shower, I let the stinging spray awaken tired, sore muscles. Voices echoed through the hallway outside my room as I slipped into clean clothes.
Walking out to the north side porch, I spotted George and Guy coming up the path from the dock carrying some of the gear from Picaroon.
Guy saw me and hollered, "Lend a hand, Jay. These air tanks are heavy."
Walking down the path to meet them, I took two of the tanks. "How long have you people been up?"
"Not long. We all must have been beat. Anna said she tried to wake you, but you were so deep down she let you alone.
"Anna and Vickey are right behind us," George spoke with a wide yawn. "I think one more trip will do it."
"Let's get some coffee, then I'll help you."
"I could use a cup," Guy said.
"Picaroon okay?"
Guy glanced at George, then back at me. "I swear someone went aboard last night, but nothing was bothered."
George laughed. "You couldn't tell from the tracks, but I think a couple of pelicans used it for a temporary roost early this morning."
Guy shook his head and walked on up the path to the house.
Anna and Vickey appeared carrying armloads of wet suits and canvas bags. We helped them unload it on the porch. Anna sat down, panting. Vickey didn't seem winded, though she had the heaviest load.
"Boy, you were out this morning when I tried to wake you," Anna said, catching her breath. "I stood there awhile just to be sure you were alive."
"Yeah," I said, thinking about doing the same thing to her a few hours earlier. "Sleep wouldn't come. Chased those old demons around 'till daylight."
George, with his saint's face, lean with stubble of blond beard, made a fresh pot of coffee. We all poured our own and went out on the eastside porch. The light green of freshly leafed oak, mixed with the darker hue of scrub pines, shimmered against a blue sky dotted with puffs of white clouds. The surf, hidden from view, was muted in the cool, southeast breeze.
We were a silent group. The events of yesterday still on our minds. Above the tree line, a flock of brown pelicans wavered up and down like notes on sheet music. Maybe they were the ones that visited Picaroon during the night?
Glancing at Anna, I saw that tears were streaming down the scarred face. Her lips quivered ever so slightly in one corner of her mouth. She made no effort to wipe away the tears. Guy noticed her, looked at me. I shrugged.
"You okay, Anna?"
"Yes, I'm fine. I was thinking of Susan. She loved the sea. She saw it with the eyes of a painter, the mind of a trained scientist, and the heart of a child brought up on its beaches. She loved the summer waves, the blue of both sky and water. She loved the winter swells and lonely beaches where lonesome gulls sit facing into a cold wind. But most of all, she loved all creatures below the surface, down in the deep, cold, quiet depths where life is hard and dark. Now Susan has gotten through with that thing we all have to do. Her dying was a great injustice, but I know she has come back to the sea she loved and will be a part of it forever."
Guy and I looked at each other. Vickey and George sat with their heads down, silent. Anna's speech sounded a little eulogistic. Maybe it was meant to be. There was nothing to say.
* * *
George guided the little Mako skillfully alongside Picaroon. Guy grabbed a stanchion, climbed aboard, and made fast the painter to a cleat. I followed him. The sun had dried the dew on deck. With the unloading of the gear this morning, all traces of the tracks they had seen were obliterated. Too bad, I would have liked to have seen them.
It took only a half an hour to finish unloading the rest of the gear. Guy took me aside and said he was going to go back to the mainland.
"I have a law practice to run. Unless you conceive another of these seafaring adventures you want me to accompany you on?"
He was being facetious, but it hit me wrong. Suddenly it was like this was all my fault. Maybe Detective Anderson had been right all along. Two people were dead, and I was involved in both, maybe even responsible for one of them.
My expression must have showed my thoughts. Guy said, "Ease up, Jay. It will probably get worse before we're through with this."
"Yeah. Check with W.W.; see if he's turned up anything more, especially about Vickey. There has to be something we're not seeing."
"Will do." He put Picaroon in gear and, with a wave of his hand, motored away.
Back at the house, we ate a quiet lunch. Vickey kept glancing at me, picking at her salad. Suddenly, taking her wineglass, she left the table without saying anything. I heard her climbing the steps leading to the rooftop balcony.
"She's hurting," Anna said. "Go talk to her, Jay. "She thinks you believe she's involved in trying to harm me."
George looked up. "That's crazy. Vickey wouldn't hurt a hair on your head. Sabado was just a nut. I can't believe she was going with him."
Pushing my plate to the side, I said, "I'm not convinced she's innocent."
"That's crap." George stood up and left the table in disgust.
"Jay, I saw what happened to Sabado. Vickey could not have been a part of that." Anna ran a hand through frayed wiry hair.
Leaning back in my chair and lacing my fingers behind my head, I said, "Maybe she's involved, maybe not. She and Sabado had been together for four years; she had access to your data, and she knew the value of the repellent if it were finished."
"Will you please go and talk with her?"
"Yes. But if she's involved in this, she's going down."
Climbing slowly up the stairs, I thought that if Vickey was not responsible for trying to murder Anna, then it narrowed the field to a very few. Guy Robbins, George Lenoir, or Anna, herself. The only other possibility was some outsider who read about the attractant and figured developing a repellent would be the next step for the lab. However, all visiting scientists had been accounted for. Then there was Susan's death. No one reading articles on the attractant would have had anyway of knowing I existed, or that she would be on board Picaroon. It just wouldn't reach. It had to be Vickey Fourche and Bob Sabado.
* * *
Opening the small door to the rooftop balcony, the sun hit me with the intensity of a lightening flash, quick and bright. It was a flyers day. A sky lonely for clouds and with an easy breeze. It was noon and there were no shadows. Every image stood stark, finely etched, clear and naked.
Vickey lay half-stretched across a bench facing the ocean to the east. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed, her body relaxed and still. Tension pulled the shape of her mouth on her motionless face, a sensual shape drawn in lines of agony. She turned, looked at me, then turned away. She wanted to talk, but she didn't.
Pulling one of the heavy, oak chairs up beside her, it made a scraping noise, like a big rusty nail being pulled from a wooden plank. She flinched at the sound, turned and glanced at me with mocking eyes. The expression didn't match her disheveled hair, loose khaki shorts, or dirty, bare feet. She sat up, scrubbed callused soles along the rough boards, casting another hard glance at me, waiting for me to say whatever it was that I came to say.
"This does not have to be a confrontation. If you have anything you want to tell me, I'll listen."
The look on her face astonished me. It was a look of defeat and yet of an odd, sly, cynical cunning, as if, for a moment, she held some uncanny wisdom that mocked the world.
"Will you really listen? Or do you already have your mind made up that Vickey Fourche, the whore to Bob Sabado, is guilty of trying to kill Anna Yillah?"
Her gaze went far out to sea.
The tone of her voice was calm, almost impenitent. I knew that was a lie. She was scared to death.
"I do not suspect what I do not understand, Vickey. Or hate what I suspect. I'll listen with an open mind to whatever you want to tell me."
She looked desiccated, ragged. Standing, she walked all the way around the railing of the little square balcony like some caged animal. Again, I was amazed at how small a person she was, not much taller than the railing. She seemed to disappear inside the khaki shirt.
Sitting back down on the bench, she looked at me. I saw both serenity and suffering in the calm of her face, an expression like a smile of pain, though she was not smiling.
"Bob and I were together for four years. He was always nice to me. I needed someone like him. He was rough and crude. The academic world is full of wimps. I needed a real man, one who didn't care about what this Professor or that Dean thought about him or who he was with."
"Nobody's going to judge you for being with Sabado."
She ignored me. "I knew Bob did things outside the law, but he was never violent, at least not around me. He was his own man. If he wanted to eat, he did. If he wanted to get drunk, he drank. When he wanted sex, he had sex. God, he was good at it. He was everything my life wasn't. I was in love with him, and he loved me." Muscles on her face formed a fake smile.
Stretches of beach glimmered to the south, the ocean blue and calm. Heat waves shimmered like arms waving in an appeal for help over the scrub pines.
"You will never make me believe Bob had anything to do with killing Susan Weems," Vickey said standing. "Or harming Anna. He did some stupid thing at the sub thinking he was in someway helping me. That's all it was, Jay. We have nothing to do with any of this."
Suddenly the air was dead, and smelled dead. Everything seemed alien, and I felt alien. A savant I wasn't, but I believed this sun-burnished tiny doll of a woman, and I thought that now I knew who killed Susan Weems. Going through the rooftop door and sliding down the stairs, I realized that I'd left Vickey on the balcony without a word, but I had to get to Biloxi.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Rushing into the small kitchen, I startled Anna causing her to drop the dish she was holding.
"Something wrong? Is it Vickey?"
"Biloxi. I've got to get to Biloxi. Stay close to Vickey. Don't let her out of your sight. George is going with me. We'll try and be back before dark. I'll explain then."
"Can't you tell me, now?" A concerned frown crossed her scarred face.
"When I get back. Where's George?"
"On the eastside porch," she said, holding out both arms in a question. "But what…?"
I was already headed for the porch.
"George," I said, slamming open the screen door.
"What's up?" he asked from the end of the porch, a surprised look on his face.
"Let's go. We need to run to Biloxi." Bounding down the steps, I headed for the dock.
George put down whatever he was doing and followed me.
"You drive." I let go the two lines. "Fast as you can."
He nodded and, much to his credit, sped out of the narrow channel and took up a heading for the mainland without asking why.
Crossing the Gulfport ship channel, George asked, "The Broadwater?"
"No, the Biloxi small craft harbor."
He looked at me strangely, but said nothing, and adjusted his course.
George eased the Mako into the harbor and found an empty slip next to an old wooden sailboat with the name, MEMOIRS, carved on the stern. She had an eloquent, curved, hand-carved tiller that reminded me of an outrigger on a Polynesian canoe.
"Stay with the Mako, George. Give me a couple of hours. If the Harbor Master comes around, find out who owns this sailboat."
He nodded, waved me away, and busied himself with the lines.
I was headed for W.W.'s office. I wanted him to bring Hebrone Opshinsky in for questioning, and to contact Guy Robbins and see if he could be there when we started. Maybe we could get some answers today.
Walking down to the end of the pier, I spotted a pay phone outside the harbor restaurant. W.W. agreed to see me, and offered to send a car to pick me up.
The patrol car circled the marina. Flagging it down, I climbed in beside the young officer. We met George walking to the restaurant as we drove out of the parking lot. His mouth dropped open when he spotted me in the blue and white squad car.
The policeman introduced himself as Aubert Porter. "Born and bred right here in Biloxi, Mr. Leicester. Yes sir-ree, born and bred."
"Did you know the Sabado man who was killed yesterday out by Chandeleur Island?"
"Sure did. Went to high school with him. He dropped out in the tenth or eleventh grade, though. His whole family is a mean bunch. His old man went to the pen."
"Yes."
The young officer looked hard at me. "Heard the sharks got Sabado. Rough way to die."
"Yeah, rough way to die."
Thanking Officer Porter for the ride, I headed for W.W.'s office.
He was waiting and offered me a chair. "What's up?"
"You found Opshinsky?"
"We're looking. It's only been half an hour. Robbins is on the way." He shuffled some papers on the desk, looking uneasy.
"What's the matter with you?"
He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, his chest and stomach forming a washboard outline under his starched shirt. "I've had some run-ins with Opshinsky. We don't see eye to eye on a lot of things. He may not be cooperative around me."
"Leave Hebrone to me. We understand each other."
"Well, it ain't from his drug habit you and him 'understand' each other." W.W. sat up straight in his chair, splayed huge hands on the desktop. "What do you and him 'understand' about one another?"
"Killing."
Guy Robbins walked through the door, followed by Hebrone Opshinsky.
"Who's killing who?" Guy asked. Then motioning toward Hebrone, he said, "Stopped by the marina on the way, brought him along."
W.W. picked up the phone, spoke with the dispatcher, and called off the hunt for Hebrone.
"Hello, W.W.," Opshinsky said, taking a chair beside me. "Leicester."
W.W. nodded, then through clinched teeth as if the single thought battered his brain and turned it into sound against his will, said, "How you doing, Hebrone?"
"Taking it day by day."
"How long has it been since you've been in my jail?"
"Not long enough."
W.W.'s face went white, so that even his lips became a sculptured feature, indistinguishable against his bald head.
Before things could get worse, I said, "Hebrone, the reason we asked you here is that a few days ago the word was out around the docks that someone wanted me out of the way. We need to know where you got that information. Maybe we can find out who and how many are involved."
Hebrone suddenly had a suggestion of a smile on his face that hinted at sadness, but the face had no imprint of tragedy, only a grave look of firmness and a quiet serenity. "Why you want to get me mixed up in this, Leicester? The Chief, and me here, we don't see things the same way. You know I've got to live among these boat people along this coast."
"You offered to help. Remember?" I did not mention the fact that the offer involved taking out Sabado.
His eyes shot swiftly at me, an odd, bright glance of alertness that seemed startled, but not frightened. "Heard that problem solved itself."
W.W. interrupted. His mouth was a tight crescent and, with anger, he said, "Are you going to cooperate or not, Opshinsky?"
Hebrone ignored W.W., and kept his look toward me. He had ideas; I could see them flickering darkly at the back of his black eyes, like fish in water too deep to be identified. "Tomorrow night around eight, contact me then." He stood, turned to Guy. "Will you drive me back to the Broadwater?"
Guy looked at me. I nodded. They left the office.
W.W. propped his feet up on his desk, smirked a cocky grin.
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"You didn't have to be so hard on him."
He looked at me, silent, working me over gently with his eyes. "He went down for dealing pot, twice. You know I do not tolerate dope dealers."
"I'm not defending what he did. I do know he was only dealing to support his own habit. A habit our own government caused by training him to be a killer, then urging him to use that talent. When they were through with him, they put him back into society without any psychological indoctrination in how to deal with his past or how to exist in the moral fiber of a peaceful nation."
W.W. leaned back in his chair, rubbed both eyes with one meaty hand. "I know who Hebrone Opshinsky is, Jay. I've read his service record. The only reason he's not in the state penitentiary is that I know he's worked hard to stay straight. We, as Americans, owe him something, but I can't cut him any slack. It wouldn't do him or me any good."
Behind W.W.'s head, through the high double window, I could see a red-tailed hawk swinging back and forth like a child's kite. A weighty depression descended around me like a shroud. W.W. needed to be told what I suspected.
His willingness to accept the facts as I presented them was satisfying. He agreed to dig as deep as he could, call in all owed favors. We shook hands and I left.
The same officer drove me back to the small craft harbor. We stopped at a red light across the highway from the marina. The naked masted sailboats lay in their slips like white geese with their wings folded.
Patrolman Porter said, "I saw that Opshinsky fellow come and go with Mr. Robbins. He in trouble again?"
"No. He's helping us with an investigation."
"Rumor has it that he personally killed over two hundred gooks?"
"Gooks?"
"Yeah, you know, gooks, V.C. Viet Cong."
"You know Hebrone Opshinsky then, do you?"
"Nah, just talk around the station house. It's hard to believe one man could kill that many people."
"How long you been on the force?"
"Three years next month," he answered proudly.
"Plan on making it a career?"
"Yes, sir. Plan to be Chief of Police one day."
We pulled up and stopped at the entrance to the dock. Opening the door, I put one foot on the pavement, turned to the young man and, in as serious a voice as I could muster, said, "Go to the Broadwater Marina, spend one night with Opshinsky. Get to know him, learn what he thinks, how he feels, where he's been. It'll do more for your education as a law enforcement officer than any other training you'll get. You may even make a friend."