Still Water (10 page)

Baxter waited patiently, guessing there was more and wondering if Carl was going to volunteer it.

“Like I said, I can’t swear to nothin’, but maybe she was dropping whatever it was she had over the side,” Carl said at length.

“You saw her do that?”

Carl shook his head. “It was dark, and she was too far away by then. I’m just saying maybe that’s what she was doing.”

For a long time nobody said anything. Baxter rubbed his temples, feeling the start of a headache coming on. He wondered how much of what Carl had described was what he’d decided had happened since he’d returned and heard all the talk on the docks, and how much he’d actually seen. He leaned forward resting his arms on the desk and fixing Carl with a serious look.

“Carl, I want you to think carefully about this before you answer. Are you saying you didn’t actually see Ella put anything over the side, is that what you’re saying?”

Carl took a moment. “No, I didn’t actually see it. That’s just what it looked like.”

Baxter thought some more, then stood up. “Thanks for telling us this, Carl. We’re going to need to get all this down in a statement, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Oh yeah, and we’re going to need to talk to Billy too. Tell him to come by in the morning will you?” As Russ showed him to the door a thought occurred to Baxter. “By the way, Carl, who are you planning to vote for in the election?”

Carl shrugged, but looked a little puzzled. “Howard Larson I guess. The way he talks about that marina bringing people here, jobs and such, I’m all for it. Fishing is shot to hell these days. Why? What’s that got to do with this?”

Baxter waved a hand. “Nothing probably. One other thing. Have you told anyone else about this?”

“I might have mentioned it to a couple of people.”

“That’s what I figured. Thanks again Carl,” he said, only this time he didn’t sound as if he meant it.

The sound of hammering and sawing next door woke Matt early. He dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and went outside. The sun was up, starting to heat the moist August air over the gulf. It had been sticky during the night, and Matt had slept naked with the single sheet on his bed crumpled to one side, a film of sweat against his skin.

A pile of lumber had been delivered outside Henry’s house, and he was in the process of building the shed that would house the cider press. Matt went around to help, and for a couple of hours he worked in the relative cool of the early morning, though he was soon stripped to the waist as he and Henry put up the framing. Henry worked without talking much. He was wiry and strong, the cords on his arms standing out from skin as brown and weathered as a nut.

Matt was thinking about Ella, as he had all night, questions without answers parading across his mind. After leaving the police department the day before he’d driven her home, and during the ride they hadn’t talked much. Outside her house he’d told her that she should call him if she needed anything.

Thanks, I will,” she’d said.

There had been a brief moment of awkwardness before she’d got out of his car. He sensed that the subtle change he’d detected in her mood the night he’d been to her house for supper had become a tangible distance between them. It bothered him when he’d thought they were getting on so well. Either he’d been fooling himself, or they had both been on the verge of something more than just a mutual attraction. He didn’t think he’d been wrong to sense that Ella shared his feelings, though maybe she’d been approaching the issue more cautiously than he had. That was understandable, and in truth he wasn’t against the idea of slowing things down a little. They had both suffered ruinous relationships in the past, and he’d wanted to take the time to get this one right. He knew that he could easily allow himself to fall in love with Ella, but he’d made a promise to himself once that next time it would be for ever. Now as he worked, holding up a cross beam while Henry nailed it, Matt wondered what had changed to make Ella back off. He thought again about how she’d threatened Bryan with a rifle, and he felt uneasy about it. How did that old saying go? Don’t point a gun at a person unless you intend to use it. He couldn’t avoid the suspicion that Ella’s attitude towards him, and Bryan’s disappearance were somehow linked.

A little after eight the phone rang in the house and Matt went inside to answer it. He picked up the receiver and Ella was on the line. She sounded strained. She told him she was at the police department.

“Chief Baxter wanted me to come in and answer some questions. I told him I wanted to call you first.”

Matt was confused. “Has Jake changed his mind about bringing charges?”

“I don’t think this is about Jake.” Ella sounded cautious. “Matt, I wouldn’t ask for your help, but you said if there was anything, that I should call.”

He felt the hand of trepidation on his shoulder, but when he spoke he tried to keep it from his voice. “You did the right thing. I’m glad you called.”

“Thanks,” she said, her relief obvious.

“What has the chief said to you?”

“Nothing much, but I think it has something to do with Bryan.”

Matt tried to sound confident and put her at ease. He could hear the worry in her voice. “Whatever it is, we’ll get it sorted out,” he assured her, but his disquiet was growing by the second. Tut Chief Baxter on.”

He waited while the phone changed hands and Baxter came on the line. “What’s this all about, Chief?”

Baxter hesitated, and Matt guessed that Ella was standing right next to him. “I think you might want to come down here and hear this in person.”

Matt said he was on his way and asked Baxter to put Ella back on the phone. “Don’t say anything until I get there, okay?”

“All right.”

“And don’t worry,” he added before he hung up the phone.

He went outside and told Henry he had to go into town, then quickly changed into a shirt and pants. On the way to the police department he made a hurried stop at his office. From his window he looked down on the street below. There were a few people about even though it was early. Across the street, Catherine Lunt who ran the little fruit store was coming out of the door to the apartment she lived in over her store. Most mornings he went in there to buy peaches or maybe a melon. He used the coffee shop along the street where he had begun to chat with the regulars, and people had started to stop and pass the time of day in the street. He knew that to a lot of them he’d always be a pointer, somebody from away, but he hoped in time the islanders’ reserve would break down to some degree. His life here had already taken on a whole different rhythm from his previous existence. Just sitting on the porch at night playing chess with Henry and watching the sun go down while the lights came on in the harbour gave him a good feeling. He’d come to believe that moving to the island had been the right thing for him to do. In Boston his life had been empty. Since Kirstin had left him and taken Alex with her, he’d gone through a slow awakening, questioning the way he’d been devoured by some need to avenge Paulie. His life had been an empty shell, devoid of any true meaning. He’d begun to think he’d turned a corner since moving to St. George. In his daydreams Alex came to stay, and he got to know his son again, and had a chance to make up for the time that they had already lost. He admitted that Ella had figured in fantasies he’d entertained where the three of them got on like a house on fire, and for once the future had seemed welcoming.

But now he felt the irresistible pull of forces about to wrench his dreams apart.

When Matt arrived at the police department, Baxter was sitting on the edge of a desk in the outer office. He looked as if he hadn’t slept much.

“Ella’s in my office,” he said. “We gave her a cup of coffee. I offered to get her a doughnut or something but she said she wasn’t hungry.”

“That’s a nice gesture, Chief. Let me have a word with her, then you and I can talk and you can tell me what this is all about, how’s that sound?”

“Fine by me.”

As Matt headed for the office Baxter called out and Matt turned back to him. “And Matt? It wasn’t a gesture. I’ve known Ella just about all her life.”

Matt nodded, chastened by the mild rebuke. There were good cops and then there were cops like Baxter, who lived and worked in small towns where they had grown up and lived all their lives, and who cared about the people it was their job to serve. “Understood. No offence meant, Chief.”

“None taken.”

He went through to the office. Ella looked up from her untouched coffee, and she appeared ill at ease. She met his gaze, then her eyes slid away, but a stubborn set to her mouth remained.

You okay?” He drew up a chair in front of her. “This is getting to be a habit. So what’s this all about, any idea?”

“Not really. All I know is it’s something to do with Monday night. Chief Baxter wanted to ask me what I did after Bryan left the dock. That’s when I told him I wanted you here.” She paused and looked uncertain. “Does this mean you’re my lawyer now? You being here I mean.”

The same question had occurred to Matt. It seemed as if their relationship was about to shift again, and he wasn’t entirely comfortable about the change, but for now he let it go. “We can worry about that later. Right now I’m going to talk to the chief, then I’ll come back in here and you and I can talk and we’ll take it from there.”

“Okay.”

“Good.” He got up and went to the door, and turned, about to ask her if there was anything she thought he should know about, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to ask the question. He guessed if there was she would have told him. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

Outside, Baxter related everything that Carl Johnson had told him. As Matt listened he could guess at the questions that were turning over in Baxter’s mind, probably the same ones that were occurring to him, but which he thrust aside, reminding himself that he had to think of Ella as his client.

“So, you have any ideas about this, Chief?”

“Well, I’d like to hear what Ella has to say before I think too much about it.”

“But you’re making something of this, right? I mean I guess there’s no law against Ella being out on her boat as far as I know?”

“There’s no law against it,” Baxter agreed. “Listen, I don’t like this any more than you do. But you know as well as I do that I have to ask Ella what she was doing out there. Just about the last time anybody saw him alive, Bryan and Ella were arguing and she was pointing a rifle in his face. Everybody knows they’ve been banging heads over one thing and another lately. So when somebody comes in here with a story about hearing gunshots in the cove where Bryan happens to live, and seeing Ella out in the middle of the night acting a little strangely, and maybe dumping something over the side of her boat, you have to admit it looks a little suspicious.”

“Doesn’t matter how it looks,” Matt said. “Bryan was alive and well when he left the dock that night and there’s nothing to tie him with Ella after that. You said yourself Carl Johnson didn’t know what he saw exactly. There’s nothing in any of this that would hold up in court. It’s all circumstantial.”

Baxter appeared a little taken aback. “Nobody’s talking about any court here. I just want to hear from Ella what she was doing, that’s all.”

Matt had the impression that Baxter, whatever suspicions he had, was telling the truth about not liking any of this, and that so far at least he hadn’t drawn any firm conclusions from what Johnson had told him.

“Okay, but give me a minute with her first.”

“Take as long as you need. You have to wonder though,” Baxter added, ‘if Ella doesn’t have anything to hide, how come she called you?”

Matt had been asking himself the same question. Before he went in the office he composed his features, trying to disguise the fact that what he had just heard had unsettled him deeply, but the second Ella saw him he felt as if she’d read the uncertainty in his expression as if it were an open book.

“What is it?”

He sat down, and briefly went through what he’d learned. “Carl Johnson reported hearing gunshots,” he concluded. “And you’ve already admitted threatening Bryan with a rifle earlier that same night.”

“I had no reason to deny it.”

“What exactly happened? Can you remember what was said?”

“He tried to get on board the Santorini. I told him if he put a foot on my boat it’d be the last thing he did.”

Inwardly Matt winced. He pictured her, holding the rifle as she warned Bryan off and he found he could envisage it quite easily, and then he saw her wielding a length of wood as it split open a man’s skull. He put the incident with Bryan to one side for the time being to concentrate on what Carl Johnson had seen and heard, and opened the page of notes he’d made when he’d spoken to Baxter.

“So, you were out there near the cove? It was your boat Johnson saw?” She nodded. “And he spoke to you on the radio?” She nodded again. “What time was it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe around three if that’s what Carl said.”

He made a note. “So what were you doing out there?”

He watched her carefully and she hesitated just a fraction before answering.

“I was fishing.”

“And what time did you go out?”

“About nine, maybe nine-thirty.”

“Which was how long after your fight with Bryan?”

“Half an hour, thereabouts.”

Matt made another note. “Were you alone?”

“Alone?”

“Were you fishing alone? Was there anybody with you?”

“No. I mean yes, I was alone.”

“You fish a lot at night by yourself?”

“Sometimes. Not often.”

“You catch much that night?”

“A little.”

“Johnson said you had your lights off. Is that true?”

“Yes. I had a faulty battery connection.”

“Right, that’s what he said you told him. You remember talking to him?”

“Of course.”

He made another note, he now had a series of ticks on his page. So far Ella hadn’t denied anything Johnson had said.

“Was there a moon that night? I mean how was the visibility?”

“There was a moon, but it was partly cloudy.”

“Could you see Johnson’s boat clearly, I mean how far away was he?”