"Getting him up again is going to be a real headache," Michael said, looking around. "I don't suppose there's another way back."
"There's a path that goes back toward Resnick's house," I said. "But I don't think the tide's low enough."
"You're sure?" Michael said. "Where is it? Maybe we can pick a time between waves."
I pointed to the narrow path hugging the side of the cliff. As we studied it, a wave sloshed over the path, stranding a wire-mesh lobster trap. A few seconds later, a larger wave broke over the path, crushing the trap against the side of the cliff and sucking the fragments back as it retreated.
"Okay, I guess the cliff's it," Michael said. He looked up at the cliff, frowning, and then back at the body. Water sloshed over our feet.
"Hang on a second," I said, pulling the knapsack off my shoulders. "I never thought I'd give Dad the satisfaction of hearing this, but for once this damned hiking emergency kit of his will come in handy."
I dug through the contents of the pack, passing up a hefty first-aid kit, a large bottle of SP35 sunscreen, plastic bottles of water and Gatorade, several packages of freeze-dried food, and a flare gun that probably dated from the Korean War. Sure enough, there at the bottom of the pack I found a long length of slender nylon rope.
"We can tie this to him and haul him up," I said. "There should be another rope in your pack, if we need it."
"He'll get a little battered," Michael observed.
"I think he's past caring."
"Yes, but it will complicate the autopsy, won't it?"
"Good point. We can hoist him up over there," I said, pointing a little to the right, where the cliff overhung the beginning of the submerged path. "We can keep him away from the cliff until the very top."
"I'll bundle him up," Michael said, taking off his parka and spreading it out on the rocks. "You find something up there to tie the other end of the rope to."
"Right," I said. But before I started scrambling back up the slope, I paused, took a breath, and tried to look around very methodically and fix the scene in my mind.
In the sunlight, the rocky shoreline would have looked ragged and picturesque, but in the gloomy half-light, I could think only what a bleak and cheerless place it was to die all alone.
Well, not quite all alone. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the sudden bright flash as a beam of sunlight broke through the clouds and reflected off the lenses of a pair of binoculars. Somewhere, farther up the slope, birders were watching. I only hoped they had been watching long enough to see that Resnick had been dead when we found him. Awkward if they'd only seen us messing around with a dead body.
"Meg? Is something wrong?"
"No," I said. "Just looking around to see if there's anything unusual we should report to the police. I mean, you're probably right about this being a crime scene. Want me to help you pull him out?"
"It's okay," Michael said. "I can manage."
He didn't sound too happy about it, but if he wanted to play strong, protective male, I didn't plan to argue. It was one thing to talk about corpses and autopsies around the dinner table when Dad went off on one of his true-crime tangents and quite another to haul a body out of the briny deep.
Michael frowned down at the corpse.
"Michael, I'm--" I stopped myself. He looked up and raised an eyebrow. I couldn't help smiling; I loved the way he did that.
"Having promised that I wouldn't apologize for anything that went wrong," I said, "I'm trying very hard to think of anything else to say right now."
He chuckled.
"I was just thinking what great research material this is for my acting," he said. "I had a part in a TV show once where I had to discover a murder victim. Had a tough time making it authentic, given the fact I'd never even seen a dead body. But since I've met you, I've seen more stiffs than a mafioso in training."
"Is that a good thing?" I asked.
"Well, it's useful."
With that, he bent down and began pulling at Resnick's body. I coiled the rope over my shoulder, replaced the pack on my back, and headed toward the cliff.
As I reached for the first rock in my climb, I saw a piece of paper fluttering on the ground at my feet. I stooped to pick it up. Force of habit--growing up with Dad, you tended to think the eleventh and twelfth commandments were "Thou shalt not litter" and "I don't care if you didn't put it there; pick it up anyway; it won't kill you to bend over."
I found myself staring at a familiar piece of paper; the map on which Dad had scoped out the best place on the island to watch the hurricane. It was soggy and some of the ink had smeared, but I recognized Dad's printing instantly. His handwriting achieved a degree of artistic illegibility that made him the envy of less accomplished physicians, but his printing was precise, elegant, more readable than most typefaces--and absolutely distinctive. I'd figured out the real scoop on Santa Claus one year when I realized that the note thanking me for the milk and cookies was in Dad's inimitable printing.