Biting the Moon (31 page)

Andi was frantic. “
He's gone under!
”

Floyd was gone.

Harry hit the water with a paddle and spun the boat halfway around. “He's okay! He's got his jacket on. He's okay!”

No, he isn't,
thought Mary, feeling herself freeze.
No, he isn't.
“There's his helmet! Over there!” Mary pointed at the yellow plastic bobbing in the foam.

Floyd didn't surface, not his head, not an arm raised for rescue. They started yelling for him and Harry said, “Christ! It's the undercut rock. He's been sucked under.” Harry shipped the oars, told them to paddle backward against the current. He went over the side.

Mary and Andi paddled hard, keeping the boat from being swept into the third pour-over, but they could see nothing in the roiling water. Harry came up, gulped air, went down again. Mary knew undercut rock was horribly dangerous because if you got swept beneath it the current could keep you from swimming out.

“I can't hold on to the paddle,” yelled Andi. “Goddammit!”

Mary made a grab for it and caught the paddle just as it was slipping off and into the current. “Got it! Do you see them? Either of them?”

Harry's head came up in a rush of foam. Gulping air again, he straddled the raft with his arms. “I can't get to him. If I go under the rock I won't get out either.” He heaved himself half into the raft, with his legs still in the water.

Mary continued paddling as she looked up toward the top of the rocks but could see no sign of the others. Andi sat clutching her paddle, her skin as pale as the rocks. It was hard for them to keep the boat in place in this water.

“There's nothing—” Harry sputtered, water spitting from his mouth. “Nothing I can . . . we can do. We can't stop here like this—” His breathing was ragged as he hauled himself into the raft.

Above the roar of water, Andi yelled, “But we can't just
leave
him! We can't do that!”

“Girl, tell me what choice we have. To stay out here in this rough water? Christ, just look at it!” he shouted.

“But—”

“He's dead, he's drowned by now or dead from hypothermia. Either way, he's gone!” He sat in the bow, head down and eyes closed, and for a moment Mary thought the cold water might have knocked him out. She kept wiping her hair off her face as the raft whipped around. Harry snatched up the oars and slammed them into the water. “We're all going to flip if we don't get the hell out of here. There are two camps up here. We can put in at one of them, get in touch with a Forest Service patrol boat.”

Mary nodded. Andi said nothing. It was true—however it had happened, whatever had happened, there was nothing they could do now. The “how” and the “what” would have to wait. Any rescue of Floyd Atkins was clearly hopeless; Mary knew that. As the raft spun dementedly, Mary thought about the river. You made it through or you didn't. Peggy, and now her dad. It was almost too much to bear. She hung her head and wiped water away, half foam, half tears.

•   •   •

Harry had managed to contact Ron on the cellular and told him what had happened, where they were, and how to get hold of a patrol boat. “Try Indian Creek or Little Creek.”

Two patrol boats had found them at the camp on Camas Creek, and rangers had come with their diving equipment. They had gone down now three times in what appeared to be a fruitless search for Floyd Atkins. Harry Wine had gone with them to show them exactly where it
had happened. He was here, now, the divers still back there on their unlucky mission.

Their own group was solemn, even Bill Mixx deprived of his usual loud and bellicose manner. Honey and Lorraine were in tears, ministering to each other.

Around them, rangers and state police, who had been brought to a nearby landing strip by helicopter, questioned all of them, especially the three who had been in the first boat. They concentrated in particular on Harry Wine. People had gathered, too. Near the Indian Creek Guard Station there were several camps, and news like this traveled like brush fire. Plenty of overturned boats, plenty of boats wrapped, rafters having to swim for it—lots of incidents, but deaths? No.

Except, it seemed, for Harry Wine's outfit.

It wasn't good for business.

“I've got to tell them,” said Mary. They were sitting by the truck that Randy had shuttled from Stanley.

Andi shook her head. “I wouldn't.”

“But it shows he had motive.” Mary looked across the site where Harry Wine was standing talking to two rangers.

“I don't think so, necessarily.”

“Why? Floyd threatened him! I heard him.”

“Any parent might say what Floyd said; any dad might hold the man who was with her responsible. I don't think the police would take what he said as a serious threat.”

“Well, but wouldn't they think it was just too much of a coincidence that first the daughter has this boating accident and then the father does too?”

“Maybe. But we didn't actually see Harry do anything.”

Mary insisted. “But Floyd's kept going on these trips with Harry . . . this is his fourth one.”

“I know. But that might mean just the opposite: it might say how much Floyd trusted him, or liked him, or some such.”

“Then why was he using a false name? It doesn't make sense.”

“No, it doesn't. But what
was
Floyd trying to do? It still doesn't prove anything. Anything they said is your word against Harry's. And if Floyd knew something, why did he wait for three years?”

Mary said, “But it wouldn't hurt, telling the police.”

“They'll find out who he really is, anyway. If he has a driver's license and so forth, they must be under the name
Atkins
.”

“But they won't find out what I heard.”

“Look. Do you want to tip Harry off we suspect him? Do you want him to know you overheard them? If he finds that out he'll just get very, very careful.” She got up from the truck's running board. “Besides, we really were witnesses to the fact Harry didn't crack Floyd over the head with an oar.”

Mary made a dismissive gesture at the same time that she went on watching Harry, thirty feet away. “He didn't do
that,
no.”

“And he didn't push him out.”

Mary was silent.

“And we have to tell them what we did see was Harry trying to rescue Floyd.”

Mary turned her head quickly to deny this. “Pretended to, you mean. He
appeared
to want to rescue him. That's different.”

“Maybe not to the police. What we actually saw happening was Harry jumping in and going under.”

“Harry could have killed him or just left him to drown under that rock ledge.”

“He probably did. But we didn't see him.”

Mary had seldom felt so frustrated. She watched Andi watching Harry Wine. Her face looked carved out of ivory, or like one of those masks the Greek playwrights used for the chorus: implacable, emotionless. Mary remembered Mel telling Andi how she'd make a good poker player. It was true. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to guess at her hand.

Mary said, “You're doing it again, Andi.”

Andi was puzzled. “Doing what again?”

“You won't go to the police. You don't want to tell them what we know. Or don't want me to tell them, same thing. Just like you wouldn't report what happened at Patsy Orr's to them. It's almost like—” Mary stopped. “Like you want to track him down yourself.”

“Well, I don't. I'm just afraid that whatever we tell the cops, they'll take it with a grain of salt, they won't do anything. And Harry Wine would know.”

He was over there, talking to the rangers, and it was as if Harry Wine heard their words, felt their stares. He looked around, and when his eyes stopped on Andi, he smiled.

“He gives me the creeps,” said Mary softly.

•   •   •

They made the long trip back to Wine's Outfitters in the van with the others, Ron driving. Harry and Randy were still talking to the police.

Honey seemed to be the most upset of all of them. Her tears were genuine; Honey really did grieve for Floyd, though she'd known him for only two days. Bill kept patting her arm. Lorraine and Graham were silent. Not surprisingly, a pall had spread over the party.

When they were finally going down the dirt road to Harry's store, Mary said, “We should tell Reuel.”

“By now, he's probably heard.”

They would find him at the landfill, and that's where they were heading. Mary was driving; she had wanted to drive because she thought just doing something physical might take her mind off the raft and the river. She said, “It's like . . . something that couldn't happen happened.” She gripped the steering wheel as if she needed something
solid to hold on to. “The police won't know it was anything but an accident. No one will know. Ever.”

Mary was still arguing, more to convince herself than Andi, who remained certain of her own stand. Mary had really accepted the fact that telling the state troopers wouldn't do any good.

“Couldn't the police reach their own conclusions?” Andi had said.

“Maybe they'll suspect it's too much of a coincidence they both drowned floating that river in Harry Wine's company,” said Mary.

“Even so, there'd be no way of proving it.”

They had reached a section of torn-up road where workers were laying pipe. A road worker waved them through, and several others stopped to look and leer. Whistles, catcalls, raised hard hats, arms held out, invitations to nothing.

Andi turned to look back.

“What are you looking at?”

“That one.” Andi inclined her head toward one of the workers. “He reminds me of Andrew.”

It was a few moments before Mary could recall who Andrew was. “The sandwich guy?”

Andi nodded, looking off at the mountains, blue in the distance. “Sandwich Heaven.”

Mary said, after a moment, “How about Sandwich Sanctuary?”

“That's wonderful. If I ever see him again, I'll tell him.”

“You'll see him again.”

Andi shrugged. “Maybe.”

They drove in silence for a while before they got to the road leading to the landfill. “You know what we
should
be doing: going back to Santa Fe. It'll take us two days to get there.”

“If Rosella gets back before we do, can't we just say we drove into the city?”

“Not if it's midnight, we can't.” Mary took her eyes off the washboard road to look at Andi. “I guess I really don't want to make her anxious. She'd be afraid to leave me alone. She'd be afraid to go back to her pueblo. Rosella's so conscientious.”

“You know, I kind of miss the cabin. Isn't that strange? You'd almost think it was home.”

Maybe it is,
thought Mary.

“Don't you think it's kind of funny my name is buried in the word ‘Sandia'? Or not funny, but . . . I'm trying to find the right word for it.”

They had come to the big gate across the road. “There's probably a right word for everything, if you could find it.”

“Prophetic, that's the word. ‘Andi' being buried in ‘Sandia.' It's prophetic.”

“Of what?” asked Mary, looking at the row of Reuel's junk sculptures lining the dirt rise above the Dumpsters. “Prophetic of what?”

•   •   •

Reuel was bent over his scrap metal: a hubcap, andirons, a piece of a wrought-iron gate, and a section of galvanized aluminum pipe he'd pushed down into the ground. “Jack Kite told me. He was here less'n an hour ago.” He stopped trying to do something with the hubcap and pipe. “I was going to look for you, but I figured it'd be better just to sit tight and let you find me.” He stood up and took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his forearm. “How are you girls, anyway? You holding up all right?”

Andi said, “Okay, I guess. But I feel awful inside.”

“That don't surprise me.” He picked up an old leather-covered steering wheel and started cutting off the leather with a heavy hunting knife with a beautiful bone handle.

“We don't think it was an accident,” said Mary. “Just like his daughter wasn't an accident either.”

Reuel looked at them, contemplating this. “Never thought it was. I was pretty surprised when Jack said who he was.”

“Tell him, Mary,” said Andi.

Mary told him what she'd overheard.

Reuel thought this over. “Well, well.” He cleared his throat, was silent.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Andi said.

“Oh, I doubt that. I could never match anything you come up with.”

“Yes, you could. She could have been pregnant, maybe thought he'd marry her, and told her parents. Something like that. It would sure be a motive. That's what we think.”

We?
Mary sighed.

“Anyway, the chances the Atkins girl would flip over and not be able to recover were practically zero. She was too experienced and the Salmon's not that wild a river most of the time.”

“Treated you-all pretty wild. Big Mallard can be rough, too. Just don't go makin' things up out of whole cloth, that's all.”

To Mary, it seemed whole cloth was about all Andi had of the world.

Reuel leaned the steering wheel against the thick pipe and wiped his forehead again. He chewed his tobacco slowly, thinking. Then he said, “It's true, you can't prove nothing. But when they bring up Atkins's body, I'd lay money on something being wrong with his life jacket, his ‘personal flotation device,' as they say. I'd bet the police are going to find a tear, a rip in it. And jumping in to save Atkins—hell, that's such an old trick it's a cliché. Yeah, they bring that body up, I bet they find that life jacket's tore up. But that'll get explained away because of the undercut rocks that could've tore up a horse, much less a life jacket.”