On Fire(5)

       
           



       

"There." Riley stood on a rock ledge and pointed toward the water, which  Straker could smell but not see. But he knew this stretch of coastline,  knew the rocks, the tide pools, the currents. She turned to him. Her  skin, hair, eyes had all taken on the milky grayness of the fog.

"He's caught on the rocks. The tide must have brought him in. He might  go out again with high tide, but I don't think so. I can show you" --  "I'll find him."

Straker charged down the rocks. He'd grown up on this coast, was  comfortable jumping from rock to rock in any weather. And his physical  wounds were long healed. He was in better shape now than he'd been in  the past two or three years. But he wasn't ready to go back to work.

He trusted his instincts, his training, his experience. It wasn't that.  He just didn't have much use for people. In the past six months, he'd  grown accustomed to life alone.

Now a body had washed onto his deserted island. Maybe it was an omen.

If he didn't go back to work, work would come to him.

Of course, Riley had said nothing about murder. It was probably some poor bastard who'd taken a header off his boat.

The tide had moved out, and he made his way over barnacles and slick  seaweed. He came to the water, just a few inches deep now. A giant hunk  of granite loomed to his right. Riley would have been up there, he  reasoned, looking down at the water.

Gravelly sand shifted under him. He stepped up onto a flat brown  boulder, still wet from the receding tide. Not far ahead, waves slapped  gently against rocks and sand.

He sensed the body before he saw it. His muscles tensed as he called  upon the discipline and professionalism his work had instilled in him.

He'd seen dead bodies before. He knew what to do.

This one was still, bloated, soaked. He'd put on jeans and a red polo  shirt for his final day. He was about five feet off, facedown, as if  he'd tripped and fallen running in from the water.

The gulls had been at him.

Straker turned away.

Riley materialized a few yards behind him.

"You found him?"

"Go to my boat. Radio the police. I'll wait here."

"Why? If he's dead" -He looked at her. She was ghostlike, smaller than he remembered.

"I'll fight off the gulls."

Two -^ ^~

-Lou Dorrman tied up his boat and tossed Riley's pink kayak onto Emile's  dock. She thanked him, hoping he'd make short work of dropping her off,  then head back to the island. But he climbed out onto the dock after  her. He was the local sheriff, a paunchy, gray-haired, no-nonsense cop  who'd said for years that John Straker would come to a bad end. Someone  was bound to shoot him, run him over or beat him senseless. That a body  had turned up on the island where he was recuperating was no surprise to  Lou Dorrman.

That Riley was there, too, obviously troubled him. He glowered at her.

"What're you doing hanging around John Straker?"

Her teeth chattered. The fog had burned off, leaving behind a warm,  sunny afternoon, but she couldn't stop shivering. It was nerves and  dehydration--and the lingering, horrible image of the man she'd found on  the rocks, Straker had made her put on an over shirt after the police  had arrived. She'd had to roll up the sleeves about six times to get  them to her wrists. The heavyweight chamois smelled of sawdust and salt  water.

"I was having a picnic," she said.

Don-man nodded without understanding.

"Hell of a picnic."

"Do you have any clues about the body--who it was" "--Not yet. There was  no identification on him. The medical examiner will do an autopsy.

We should know more soon."

Riley thought she saw something in his eyes.

"What is it. Sheriff?"

"Nothing. We have to do this one step at a time." He shifted, eyeing her with a measure of sympathy.

"You going to be okay? I imagine Emile's out and about somewhere. I'll  have to round him up before too long, seeing how that's his island."

Last summer, it was Bennett Granger and four members of the Encounter  crew. This summer. a dead body on Labreque Island. Riley pushed back the  nightmare, the familiar sense of unease.

"I'll be fine on my own, thanks." She still couldn't stop shivering.

"Sheriff, you don't think Straker had anything to do with this, do you?

I know he was shot six months ago--Emile said it had to do with domestic terrorism."                       
       
           



       

"Domestic terrorism. Hell, that's FBI talk. Let's just take this one step at a time, okay? You'll be around awhile?"

"I'm supposed to head back to Boston tonight. I have to be at work  tomorrow. I was planning to visit my mother and sister in Camden on the  way. I gave your deputy numbers where you can reach me. "

"All right. Go ahead. I'll let you know if CID has any other ideas."

CID was the Criminal Investigation Division of the Maine State Police;

Straker had already explained they'd handle the investigation. Dorrman  cuffed her on the shoulder. "Rough day, kid. Put it behind you."

While he sped back across the bay, Riley half carried, half dragged her  kayak up to Emile's cottage, its dark-stained wood blending into the  surrounding spruce-fir forest. This was his home now, not just his  periodic getaway. It hadn't changed in years. She welcomed the  familiarity of the smells and sounds, even the exposed pine roots in the  path as she returned the kayak to the attached shed.

Her legs almost gave out on her, as if she were climbing Mount Katahdin  instead of a few porch steps. She collapsed onto an old Adirondack  chair. The wind had shifted. There wasn't even a hint of fog in the  clear September air. It was cool up on the porch, out of the sun, which  only made her shivering worse.

Emile's door was shut tight. She doubted he'd have heard the news yet.

She felt acid crawl up her throat at the unbidden images of bloated flesh, pesky gulls swooping down on the hapless body.

She sprang up out of the chair.

"I should have skipped that stupid picnic."

Then Straker could have found the body on his own. Or the sea could have  had it back. She stmggled with the same disconcerting feeling of  helplessness she'd experienced at her first whale and dolphin strandings  when she was a teenager volunteering on a rescue and recovery team.  Their mission was to end the suffering of animals beyond help, get the  healthy ones out to sea before they died on the beaches and treat the  injured, taking them back to the center for rehabilitation and, whenever  possible, their eventual return to the wild. Now it was her team--but  she would never get used to the death and suffering.

The man on the beach had been long past suffering.

She decided to leave Emile a note. Sympathy, commiseration, allaying her  fears, venting--such niceties wouldn't occur to him. He would expect  her to continue on to Camden and Boston. He wasn't heartless; he was  simply oblivious. The urge to share her woes with him arose more from  the shock of the moment than any rational reasoning on her part. She'd  arrived too late to do the man on the rocks any good, and now her  experience felt unfinished, as if she should do more, know more.

Would Straker dismiss the dead man and resume his isolated island life without a second thought?

She found Emile's spare key on the windowsill and let herself in. Even  less rational than wanting to cry on Emile's shoulder was trying to get  into John Straker's mind. Time to get her things and be on her way.

But when she set off, she ended up on the side street above the village  harbor, where Straker's par's ents lived in a serviceable house that was  at once home, shop and project. It had been in a constant state of flux  for as long as Riley could remember, with gardens going in and coming  out and discarded house innards piling up in the yard as various rooms  underwent renovation. The glassed-in front porch served as a catchall  for yard sale findings Straker's mother planned to fix up.

She was clever at fixing things up, even if she tended to underestimate  the time she would require. Summer people and locals alike employed her  talents in furniture restoration and upholstery--they just knew not to  expect quick results.

John Straker, Sr. " was a lobster man his pots piled up outside the  garage. It was a hard, good life, and if he regretted not having his son  around to share it, he would never let an outsider like Riley St.

Joe know about it.

She went around back, and Linda Straker called her into her cluttered  kitchen, where she was elbow deep in one of her craft projects. She had  an unlit cigarette tucked between her lips. She was a strong, stubborn,  imaginative woman with hair that frequently changed color--today it was  brunette--and a few extra pounds on her hips.

Her son had inherited her gray eyes. They settled on Riley.