Still Water (11 page)

“It was dark. He was, I don’t know, a hundred and fifty yards away. Maybe a little more.”

“But you could see his boat clearly?”

“I could see it.”

Matt took a second to make another notation, and while he did he asked his next question without looking at her. “So you were out there fishing that night. Carl Johnson said he thought you had some kind of big bundle rigged to your davit when he saw you, and to him it looked like you were dumping it over the side. What was in that bundle Ella?” He tried to ask the question in the same tone he’d used for all the others but he wasn’t sure if he’d pulled it off.

“There was no bundle,” Ella said. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. Maybe he saw a trap or seaweed or something. I think I remember bringing something like that up that night on one haul.”

Matt had heard a thousand witnesses on the stand, and he knew the sound of the truth when he heard it, and he knew right now that Ella was lying. It affected him. He was saddened to think she would hold out on him, that she felt she had something to hide, and partly for that reason he experienced a flash of anger. He looked up at her and locked his gaze with her own.

“I want to help you Ella, but I can only do that if you tell me the truth.” He paused to allow his words to sink in. “Because you know how this looks don’t you? You have a fight with a man everybody knows you don’t get along with. A man who has a lot at stake over this marina, which you oppose, and you threaten him with a gun in front of witnesses. Next thing is he disappears and it turns out you just happened to be seen that same night near where he lives, dumping something over the side of your boat. And then there was the shot Johnson talked about. Did you hear any shots that night Ella?”

She glared at him. “No, dammit, I didn’t hear any shots. Why don’t you just say it?”

“Say what?”

“Just come out and say you don’t believe me. It’s what you think isn’t it? It’s written all over your face.”

“You’re surprised if I’m a little doubtful?” he said incredulously. “Come on Ella. You pointed a goddamn rifle at a man.” He couldn’t erase that image of her from his mind. It was Matt’s experience that people who pointed guns at other people were usually about a hair’s breadth away from pulling the trigger.

Ella’s voice was controlled but brit de when she answered. “I told you the kind of trouble I’ve been having with Bryan and Jake. You think that’s nothing? Maybe it doesn’t sound like very much, but that’s only a part of it. I grew up on the docks, around the boats and the men who work on them and in case you haven’t noticed I’m the only woman down there. And in case you haven’t noticed this either, I’m around people every day who aren’t always the most liberal minded people in the world. Since I was fourteen I’ve had to put up with guys who put me down every chance they get, guys who don’t think a woman ought to be doing what I do for a living. Some of them resent me because I’m good at what I do. Better than a lot of them. How do you think it feels when somebody watches me walk by when they’re cleaning their nets and thinks it’s hilarious to sniff their fingers and leer at me? Like they’re even original! That kind of thing isn’t just poor taste, it’s vicious, Matt. That’s the kind of thing that would amuse the Rodericks. Bryan especially. You don’t know all the remarks and innuendo, all the dirty tricks I’ve had to put up with from them. But you know what? I never let those sonsofbitches get to me, and if they did I never let them know it. I always stood up to them, and so when Bryan thought he could come on to my boat without being asked I let him know he couldn’t. And you know what else? It damn well worked. So if you think I over reacted when I threatened him, or that I shouldn’t have hit Jake yesterday after he tried to steal my living away from me, then you don’t know anything about what it’s like to be in my shoes and maybe you don’t know anything about me!”

For a while neither of them said anything. Matt admitted to himself that perhaps, as she said, he didn’t know much about the things she’d endured in her life. Perhaps he was judging her by standards that didn’t apply here the same way they did where he came from, though he wasn’t sure he believed that. What he did know was that for the moment their arguing about it wasn’t going to help any.

“The thing is Ella, it doesn’t matter what I think,” he said. “Chief Baxter is going to ask you the same questions I have. He’s going to look at you and see somebody who threatened a man, for whatever reason, and then he’s going to put that together with what Carl Johnson told him and he’s going to want to know what you were doing out there by the cove that night. So tell me again what were you doing?”

“I already told you, I was fishing.”

Looking in her eyes as they blazed green and grey was disconcerting, like seeing two separate people. He wondered if he was wrong to doubt her. She said she was fishing, and why wouldn’t she be?

“And now I have a question for you,” she said.

“What is it?”

“You want the truth? You want to know if I killed Bryan? Here it is. I did not shoot Bryan Roderick. I did not kill him. I never saw him again after he left the dock.” She enunciated every word clearly, her eyes never swaying from his. “So now you tell me this. Do you believe me?”

His answer was in the time it took for him to reply. He wanted to believe her, that much was true, but the sense he had that she wasn’t telling him everything still lingered.

“If you say that you didn’t, then I believe you,” he said, but he knew he hadn’t been able to completely disguise his lack of conviction. Her reaction surprised him. He expected anger, but instead she simply looked at him, and both her eyes appeared closer in colour, a smoky grey. She nodded once, a subtle confirmation of something she’d expected, and that affected him far more than her anger could have done.

Baxter questioned Ella for forty minutes. He went over everything Johnson had seen, or thought he’d seen, and he went back to Ella’s fight with Bryan, and though there were a couple of times when he paused and looked thoughtful as he wrote down her answers, and he went over some things a couple of times, in the end it was apparent that there was nothing to link Ella with whatever had become of Bryan. One thing he asked her when she said she’d been fishing that night, was if she’d caught much. Matt picked up a subtle note in his tone that made him instinctively wary, but he didn’t know what to make of it. Ella repeated what she’d said earlier, that she’d done okay. “I might want to see your rifle, Ella,” Baxter said when it appeared he was about finished. “Maybe Russ could come down to the Santorini with you now and fetch it.”

“My rifle?”

“It’s just a routine thing.”

“I don’t have it anymore. I lost it a couple of days ago.” Baxter glanced at Matt, who maintained a neutral expression.

“How’d that happen, Ella?” Baxter asked sounding frankly disbelieving.

“I had to shoot a shark and somehow I dropped it over the side.”

He frowned, but because he had no choice, Baxter let it go, though he looked unhappy about it. “One other thing Ella. You ever been to Bryan’s house?”

“No. Why would I?”

He shrugged. “No reason.”

Eventually Matt asked if he had any more questions, and Baxter shook his head.

“I guess not. You’re free to go Ella.”

As they left, Baxter signalled that he wanted to talk to Matt alone. He waited until Ella was out of earshot.

“I thought you might like to know that I talked to Ella’s dealer this morning. He told me she didn’t sell him any lobsters on Tuesday morning, and she didn’t have many when she came back in again that afternoon.”

“Meaning?”

“Ella says she was fishing. So what did she do with her catch?”

“Don’t fishermen keep what they catch in a tank sometimes?” Matt ventured.

“Yeah,” Baxter said, as if he’d already thought of that too. He unwrapped a piece of gum, and Matt had the feeling he had something else on his mind.

“What is it, Chief?”

“I wanted to ask you if Ella would agree to us taking her prints while she’s here.”

“What for?”

“Elimination. We dusted Bryan’s house. Actually we didn’t find much. We’ve matched Bryan’s to some we took off the Seawind, but other than his we only found one other on a faucet in the kitchen.”

“That’s all?” Matt asked.

“Yeah. It’s kind of like somebody did a pretty good job cleaning up in there.” He didn’t say anything else but the look he fixed Matt with made it clear what he was thinking. Why would anyone clean up unless to hide something?

“I don’t want you to take Ella’s prints. Even if you got a match it wouldn’t prove anything except that she’d been in the house some time recently.”

Baxter shrugged. “Ella said she’s never been there. I could still charge her over that fight she had with Jake, and get her prints anyway, but I’d rather she agreed voluntarily. Can’t hurt if she doesn’t have anything to hide.”

Matt didn’t like Baxter’s request much, but he didn’t see that Ella had a lot of choice.

“Let me talk to her.” He went over to her and explained what Baxter wanted. “You don’t have to agree, but if you don’t he can charge you with an offence over the run-in you had with Jake and take them anyway.”

“Would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” Matt answered honestly.

“He can take them,” she said.

Matt felt a quick rush of relief which he tried not to let show. The fact that she was willing, questions of principle aside, indicated she had nothing to hide. Baxter called over Officer Minelli, and he took her over to a table where he produced a kit. It just took a few minutes.

“Okay, Ella, you’re all set,” Baxter told her when Minelli was finished, and he showed them to the door.

“You’ll let me know if anything else comes up and you need to talk to Ella?” Matt asked.

Baxter nodded. “I’ll let you know.”

After they left the police department Matt and Ella walked towards where she had left her truck. They were silent, the gulf between them now felt like it was a mile wide, Matt thought. He wasn’t sure exactly how he felt any more, and he wanted time to think. They reached Ella’s truck and paused on the sidewalk.

“Is that it?” Ella asked.

“Unless they find more evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“A body,” Matt said. “That’s why he wanted your rifle. If they found a body and it had a gunshot wound, they would have looked for a bullet to see whether or not it came from your weapon.”

Ella looked away, and smoothed the hair back from her face. As she did, Matt caught sight of the bruise at her hairline which he’d noticed on the night of the meeting. The swelling had gone down, but it was still visible. He recalled her telling him that she’d slipped. The way she’d reacted, averting her eyes and changing the subject when he’d mentioned it came back to him, and jarred. Ella seemed to sense what he was thinking and she started to raise her hand to the spot, a reflex action, but then she stopped herself.

“Well, thank you. You’ll let me know what I owe you?”

They shook hands and the formality of the gesture emphasized how far apart they were. “Forget it. Anyway you didn’t actually retain me. Let’s just see if anything else develops,” he said.

She looked at him steadily, her expression unreadable.

“While you were talking to Chief Baxter, I was thinking that maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Perhaps we ought to just leave it at this.”

It took Matt a moment to absorb what she was saying. “You don’t want my help?”

“I just think it’s better this way.” She paused. “I want to thank you for what you did, though.”

Then before he knew what else he could say, Ella opened the door of her truck and climbed in. He closed the door and stood back, and as she pulled away from the kerb without looking at him he could only watch as she drove away.

When he got home later, Matt saw that Henry had finished the framing on the cider shed and had started on the walls. He went over and they stood on Henry’s porch and drank a beer together. The air was close and still. Matt’s gaze drifted down across the trees to the southern side of town. In the half light the place looked about as tranquil and pretty as it was possible to be. The ocean glinted with flashes of gold from the setting sun, white frame houses emerged from the emerald foliage of high summer, and the spire of a church added a symbol of wholesomeness. There was no sound of traffic, no steady throb of trucks rumbling by, not a glass skyscraper to be seen.

“What’s on your mind Matt?” Henry asked.

“Just thinking.”

“About Ella?”

“Yeah.” He explained what had happened that day.

“You don’t think she killed that fella, do you Matt? From what you said she told you flat that she didn’t.”

“No, I don’t think that,” Matt said at last, though he recalled his conviction that she’d lied to him when he’d asked her what she was doing that night.

“Did you tell her that?”

“I don’t know if she believed me.” Even as he spoke, he admitted that the revelations of the past couple of days had thrown him. He didn’t feel as if Ella was the person he’d thought her to be.

“I don’t know, Henry. Ella won’t say what she was doing out there by the cove, but I don’t think it was fishing. When you do what I did for a living for long enough, you get a sense for when somebody’s not telling the truth about something.”

“Well, maybe she has her reasons,”

Matt thought about Paulie, dead because some crack head had pointed a gun at him. He knew Ella had a temper, and she had shown she could resort to violence. He guessed she did have her reasons. He just wondered what they were.

Part Two

The orcas had swum southwest through the gulf in their search for food. They were following a flow of colder water, encountering mackerel, hake and other fish on which they fed opportunistic ally As they swam, two of the immature males were chasing each other in play, working back and forth across the path the pod were taking. One erupted from the waves and as he came down he almost landed on top of the other young male, startling him. Once again the two of them rushed off, continuing their game.