The Big Both Ways (13 page)

They pulled the dory up the sand and into a tangle of alder trees and berry bushes. Back in the tunnel of brush was a hollow where it looked as if a black bear had bedded down. The air smelled stale with sour urine, and bits of fur were tufted on a few of the thorns. Annabelle threw the tarp over the dory and curled up to sleep.

Slip pulled a blanket out of the boat and settled in the bear’s bower. Ellie hauled some fresh water from a nearby creek and tore
up a skirt from her wet bindle of clothes. She sat beside Slip and started cleaning his wounds. Slip winced as she scrubbed his cuts. Her hands were cold twigs against his face, and the warmth of the blood was almost a comfort. When she finished cleaning his wounds she hugged him around his waist for warmth and they lay curled into each other.

The wind blew through the brush so that the sides of their bower pumped like a human heart. Slip listened for bears or men running toward them on the beach. Ellie pulled her shivering body close in under the cover of the wool blanket and a canvas tarp and they lay there silently for a half an hour, enjoying the flickering warmth of their tired bodies. Finally they stopped shivering, and they slept the sleep of the dead.

EIGHT
 

George Hanson was sleeping downstairs on the divan. He had had a hard time getting to sleep and was groggy when the phone rang sometime before five in the morning. A young man’s voice he didn’t recognize told him that Floodwater had a problem at a railroad bridge north of Ballard. They were going to clean it up this morning. George sat up. He was wearing the same shirt from the day before and his tie was still loosely knotted around his neck.

“Where?” he said. “How am I supposed to find it?” He cradled the phone against his shoulder and started to adjust his tie. He felt as if he had been caught napping in his office.

“Ask the railroad boys. They’ll tell you,” the voice said, and the line went dead.

Even if the train driver hadn’t told him about a riot at the hobo jungle and transporting a body back to town, George could have followed the parade of Floodwater ops down to the beach. Their black cars were parked willy-nilly at the end of a sandy lane as if they were a bunch of clam diggers headed to the beach. George brought two cars of his own, one with three detectives and a station wagon from the morgue. From the tone of the caller’s voice, George was certain there would be more than one body involved.

He walked down the muddy gut where the blackberry bushes had grown head-high and formed a tunnel. As his slick-soled shoes skidded on the clay he felt as if he were falling into a hole.

A fire pit smoldered in a clearing. George could smell tarry smoke mixing with the smell of salt water. It was a fine clear day with just a few clouds streaking across the sky. Finches sang in the berry bushes and the rocks were beginning to hold some of the day’s heat. It felt like spring but George knew it wouldn’t last through to summer. This was just a short respite from winter.

Men in raincoats stood near the fire looking at their clipboards. Tom Delaney had his back to the fire. He turned and looked at George as the policeman came walking across the clearing.

“What are you doing here?” Delaney asked, trying to stifle his irritation.

George didn’t answer him but turned and waited for two detectives to catch up. One of them was dusting off his rear end where he had landed sliding down the trail.

“All right, I want you to start getting statements from these men. We’ve got a report of someone transporting a body out of here late last night. I’m going to look around by the woods.” He pointed to the group of Floodwater operatives by the fire, then turned away from Delaney and started toward the woods.

Delaney caught up with him. “Didn’t you get the message, George? We’re handling this.”

“I’ve got a railroad engineer who said he brought a group of vigilantes out here last night. He said he brought back one body. Kind of scared the trainman. Thought he might get in trouble if he didn’t talk to the authorities. Can you imagine that?” George didn’t look directly up at Delaney but kept his eyes ahead of him.

“Listen.” Delaney was puffing to keep up with George. “There are no deaths. Everyone was transported to the hospital. They’ve been there and been released. Everything’s fine.”

George scanned the ground around him, following the contour of each rock and piece of driftwood. He moved his head back and forth methodically as if he were working a grid pattern on the ground. He reached into his coat pocket for his notebook with a stubby pencil stuck through the wire binding.

“Everyone’s fine … except David Kept, Ben Avery, and now a squatty little man with a wife and three kids has gone missing.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Delaney’s voice flattened out as if he were suddenly bored with talking about murder.

George stopped his scanning and looked directly at Tom Delaney. “The body they found in the sunken car, David Kept. He was an up-and-comer on the docks.”

“That’s what I heard.” Delaney sniffed.

“Radicals hated him. He was making real progress getting the boys on the docks better pay. He was beating them at their own game and still making management happy.”

“So?” Delaney acted as if he were also looking for clues.

“So, why was he killed with Ben Avery’s gun?”

Tom Delaney stamped softly on the ground, then looked down at George Hanson and motioned him closer with his right hand. George noticed Delaney’s Masonic ring, too tight for his fleshy finger.

“Listen, there haven’t been any tests done. No one can say anything for sure.”

“You can’t do any tests because you don’t have Ben’s gun. But it sure looks like both Avery and Kept were killed with the same caliber.” George stopped scanning and stared at something ahead of him and off to the left.

“How in the hell do you know that?” Delaney hissed.

“Christ, Tom, I’m a policeman. I’ve got to do something with my time.” Then he took three quick steps forward. “You said everybody from last night’s party has been treated and released from the hospital?”

“That’s what I’ve been told.” Delaney’s voice was growing softer, backing away from his indignation.

“What’s the name of the hospital?” George asked as he knelt down next to some dark blood spatter on some jagged rocks.

“Walk out of here, George.” Delaney stepped behind him so that his shadow fell over the blood.

“I want you to go back to the fire and give your statement to one of the detectives. I want the names of everyone who was part of this last night and I want to talk with them.”

Tom Delaney stood silently. Both of his hands were balled into fists. Then he took a toothpick out of his coat pocket and put it in his mouth. He was standing there weighing his next move, when George made it easy.

“Go!” he said, and Delaney did, though not to the fire but up the trail and back to the cars. He whistled as he walked and his men ran after him like sheep dogs headed to their kennels.

The cops who had come with George started to put up a fuss and one of them got out his cuffs but George waved him off. “As long as you got their names and contacts let them go. Send the boys from the morgue down here in case there is another body tucked away somewhere.”

The Floodwater ops trailed off up through the blackberry tunnel. One of George’s detectives pulled on a pair of leather gloves and started looking through the ashes around the edge of the fire.

“What do you think we might find here, George?” he called out over his shoulder.

“I’m not sure. Look for blood first. Look for big splashes of blood and see if they lead to anything,” he called to his detective.

“Anything like what?” the man poking at the fire pit asked.

“Anything like a dead person,” George hollered back.

George followed the blood spatter under the trees. He followed the rocks with blood and fresh dirt kicked up around them. He saw some rocks with their damp sides facing up. He saw broken sticks and drag marks punctuated by blood spatter. He
walked through the woods away from the fire. Sunlight shimmered down through the trees and the smell of warm mud rose from the ground. George saw more drag marks and blood spatter leading toward the south. There was a piece of a cloth snagged on a fallen spruce lying across the path. The material was a cotton print fabric, possibly from a dress. There was a small splotch of blood on its edge. He found a partial footprint where a rock had turned in the soggy ground. It was a small pointed shoe, pressing down with way too much force: a small print deep down into the mud. Drag marks were next to the print, with blood spatter spaced every three feet or so. A woman was carrying a bleeding adult on her back.

George followed the tracks out onto the beach. The tide was up and the waves pushed lazily against the cobblestones along the shore. Two skinny spruce logs floated in the drift with a skirting of seaweed like a rubbery mat along the edge of the water.

George watched the tracks of a small, strong woman carrying a man on her back. He watched her drop him back in the woods, tripping on a slick log. He watched her struggle down the cobble beach, overturning some large rocks, blood dripping down from his dangling sleeve or his nose.

Then he watched her carry the bleeding man into the sea and disappear without a trace.

The dory sat in the bower for four nights. Slip lay in the brush and Ellie took care of him. They didn’t build a fire and they didn’t turn on a torch. They ate mildewed crackers and two of the cans of stew. The spit ran a quarter mile from the railroad tracks running along the Sound. They were somewhere north of Seattle and south of Edmonds. From the brush Slip could see the railroad bulls walking up and down the tracks. At night they took their switcher engines and traveled slowly back and forth shining their lights off to either side. A few boats passed by close to the beach and they could have been looking for them, but no one sent up a cry or came
ashore. Ellie had gone down the beach early the first morning and brushed away their tracks in the sand using her hands and a spray of beach grass. That night Slip hobbled west with a bucket to get fresh water from the creek running through a culvert under the tracks. When he got back Ellie was curled on the tarp in the darkness of the bower.

“I thought you were going to sneak off,” she said, and she rolled on her side propping her head with her elbow.

“I didn’t think I could make it back.” Slip winced as he sat down.

“You took a beating,” was all she said.

“I’ve been thinking about taking out on my own.” Slip sat beside her. “I can make it to the other side of the tracks through the culvert and then get up the bluff and into the woods. I’m sure to hit a highway if I head east.”

She rolled against him and pulled his shoulder down. The damp canvas smelled musty, like animal sweat. Their clothes and blankets had begun to dry out in the spring sun. But still they were cold as she folded the tarp over the two of them.

“Stay,” she said, and her hands reached up between the buttons of his shirt. His wounds were still exquisitely tender. Her fingertips brushed the gash in his side and he sucked in his breath.

“Ellie. I killed that detective back in Seattle. They’re looking for the three of us. It would be better if we weren’t traveling together.”

“Stay,” she said again, and she slipped off his shoes, undid his belt buckle, and pulled his pants down. Slip arched his back while she pulled them all of the way off.

“I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in. I don’t know who was in that car we dumped in the water and I don’t know who Pierce and Conner are and why they wanted to talk to you that night when all hell broke loose at the meeting hall. The truth is I don’t want to know … because I know that there’s nothing I can do to fix it.”

Slip looked up through the tangle of the beach roses and his eyes glazed with tears. Moisture clung to the thorns so they caught
the starlight like tiny knife blades. A nuthatch hopped through the thicket and Slip held Ellie’s hands as she tried to kiss his tears away. He could smell the damp fur of the animals who had bedded down here. He tasted his own blood in his mouth. He wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else.

When daylight came Slip worked on the dory, cutting new sockets for the oarlocks from timbers he found on the beach. He fit them in place and by working some old screws out of the seats he was able to strengthen them so the sloppy pivot didn’t rob the energy going to the oars. He spent an entire day working with his tools, using the chisels and the hand brace. Just hefting them, taking them out of their leather sheaths, made him feel better. Seeing the bright curl of wood lifting from the blades, feeling the grain of the wood, gave him some needed strength.

As the evening came on Slip grabbed his bindle and toolbox and he walked toward the bluff. He went through the culvert under the tracks and he crossed up into the steep woods. Ellie had given him his money back. She had taken her ledger sheet to keep. His tobacco tin was secured in his toolbox and held fast with a leather bootlace. That part of his future was secure at least.

The bluffs were made of gray clay, and it took him two hours to go the first two hundred yards up to a bench where he could look down on the bower. He wanted to make his way up the bluff and back to the roads running north. He thought that if he got the right rides he could be in Canada in a day.