After giving a final scan towards land, she stepped carefully onto the deck. The boards creaked slightly, but a wave washed through the drain holes in the gunwales. While she had been oblivious, the wind was rising and it was getting rough, even in the harbour. Little white butterflies in the water were turning to angry scallops of foam. No wonder there wasn’t one boat out there. What had the man said? As high as sixty knots? The tide was cresting on the beach at least a foot higher than normal. A recipe for disaster. Search and rescue might have a busy night. Anyone going into the water at this time of year had hypothermia to worry about, even with a life jacket.
A floating kelp bed bumped the boat, its bulbous stems buoying it like an island, holdfasts having surrendered with the sea’s movement. Grey clouds tinged with black scudded across the sky, and more drops began to fall. Seagulls screamed and a blue heron winged to land, delivering a bomb on the dock that might have blinded her. She knew better than to look up.
If only she’d had her vest and duty belt. The stun gun she didn’t carry normally, but the pepper spray and gun were at her disposal. An arsenal, and now nothing but her wits and a few half-hearted self-defence classes. Why hadn’t she paid more attention when the instructor had shown them how to take down a two-hundred-pound man with a simple pinkie-finger grip? Because it looked easier than it was. Truth to tell, she probably knew just enough to hurt herself. Holly made a vow to take a weekly upgrading class.
The cockpit looked utilitarian, empty of everything but two captain’s chairs and the instrumentation. Clipped to the wall was a fire extinguisher. A couple of empty beer cans rolled across the floor with the ship’s motion. Maritime charts stood upright in a small bin.
She stepped slowly down into the hold. It was amazing how much designers could stow in a small space. This was the galley and dining area. Beyond the curtain would be a bedroom. On a table sat a fused glass plate with a silver charm bracelet with a trumpet, a gold brooch, a black pearl earring. Maddie’s gift from her gran. Lindsay’s earring. Conspicuously there was no pink coral necklace like the one Ellen claimed to have lost. It probably didn’t even exist. Who owned the brooch? Did it come from the Manitoba cold cases or did some other girl sleep at the bottom of the strait?
Her heart began to race. There were disadvantages of falling into a pot of jam, delicious though it was. Her watch read only five minutes since the old man had left. Stick with the plan, but ramp up the timing. What if Rudy recognized her though the old man? A woman looking for a boat to buy was suspicious, even though she’d mentioned her father. Maybe he was planning to leave the country anyway. But not in this storm.
A flush crossed her brow, and she felt herself sweating, even in the cold wind. Get out now, she told herself, but she seemed to be moving in slow motion. Now that she knew how this crime had been committed, she was halfway to an arrest. Ellen’s testimony would be central. The girl looked weak, easy to turn once away from Rudy’s hypnotic influence. Another wave lashed the boat, and she reached for a table bolted to the floor. “Wheew. Get your sea legs,” she whispered, turning for the stairs to the deck where the open air awaited.
“Fuck you” were the last words she heard before she dropped.
Holly had no idea
how much a headache could hurt. A pneumatic jackhammer was breaking cement in her skull. Was the pounding her own heartbeat? Opening her eyes seemed like a bad idea. She’d rather not move at all. When she tried to get up, she couldn’t move her arms and legs. Where the hell was she? In the trunk of a car? The room was rising and falling, punctuated by the sound of crashing below.
The
Alice May
. Now she remembered where she had heard that name. It was the boat in Robert W. Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” the one “on the marge of Lake Lebarge.” Her fate was looking like Sam’s, but instead of burning,
she would drown.
From lying on her stomach, she squirmed to her side, then let her eyes confirm the nightmare. Her hands were tied tightly in front of her with polypropylene rope. She was on a double bed. The bed behind the curtain. Where someone had been. The throb of the motors vibrated through the floorboards. She had assumed that she was alone. That might be the last assumption she ever made. How many second chances did anyone expect?
Voices came to her. Rudy. Ellen. She’d walked right into their little web. What were they saying? “No problem, babe.” Then “But what if” and then “Not a chance in hell that they’ll …”
Out the small porthole, bright orange crab pots bobbed past. Tourists rented them at the Corner Store in Sooke. This time, the crabs would be doing the eating. The next time a foot floated onto a beach in the Salish Sea that encompassed Puget Sound, Victoria, and Vancouver, it might be hers. Running shoes were notorious floaters. In the last ten years, the total was ten. Only a few had ever matched. Some were faked by teenagers with a morbid sense of humour and access to animal bones.
The waves tugged at the boat as they headed out into the strait, buoyed by the monster king tide. The farther the better, and certainly out of sight of land. She’d be weighed down, perhaps with a fishing net and anchors until her body was bones, bleached like the skeleton of a dead seal.
She heard a noise on the stairs and a door opened. With only two small portholes, it was dim during the storm. The feeble light backlit a blond head.
“I had a feeling I’d find you here. Whatever you’re doing in civvies, good choice. You haven’t got a little surprise for me under your pantleg, do you?” Rudy said as he hauled her to her feet and gave her a rough patdown. “Good girl. I thought better of you. This is going to make things way too easy. I prefer challenges.”
An officer’s worst nightmare. Not merely losing his weapons, but not even bringing them to the party. She had made the kind of rookie mistakes that Ben had warned her about. First, setting out without backup. Second, thinking that Rudy was the only one around. Third, believing that she could get in and out before he returned. Three strikes. Game over. With a sociopath, she doubted that she’d get another chance.
Rudy had the biceps of a bodybuilder and the neck and shoulders of an Angus bull. He wore jeans and a cable knit sweater. On his head was a white captain’s hat with gold braid and a long bill. He yanked her up the stairs and shoved her onto a bench. Water was sluicing over the decks as the boat charged ahead. The Canadian shore was a grey mass behind them. He nodded at Ellen, in a yellow slicker with her hair stuck to her face. In typical west-coast fashion, the rain was horizontal, a SWOW: solid wall of water.
“We can’t stay on auto-pilot more than a few minutes, Ellen. Make yourself useful for once and go up there and steer. I want to get around the point and out of sight. Now hustle!” With not a word, the girl went up the stairs to the pilothouse, holding on to the railings and pitching from side to side. Her face was contorted from the blistering rain, but she looked determined.
The boat lurched, then headed straight west, bouncing in the roughening chop. A tarnished pewter filled the sky, lit at the edges in the false hope of sun. If it weren’t late October, Holly would have sworn those were snow clouds. How long could the boat take weather like this? As far as the middle of the strait? It was about seventeen kilometres to Washington, which was fogged in. Over she’d go, and Rudy would head back to shore. The only man who had seen her on the docks was en route to Tucson and might never hear about her disappearance. She’d become one more in those cold cases Chipper had been reading. Worse yet, it would be a final blow for her father. Both of his loves gone without a trace. She swallowed a lump in her throat as her eyes burned from the salt spume lashing the deck.
“I was seen on the docks,” she yelled, holding her aching head high. Things were blurry, or was it the rain running down her cheeks? You couldn’t bluff a bluffer. Did she expect him to beg forgiveness and turn himself in through a sudden change of heart? That would imply that he had a conscience. Her hands were tied in front of her, one tiny advantage, she realized as her thoughts stared to focus in the cold spray.
“Hell, old Jack has a memory like a sieve these days, and he’ll be on his way out of the country tomorrow. Don’t think anyone’s going to connect us. You weren’t dressed like a cop. Probably had your hood up in this pathetic little undercover affair. No biggie.” Rudy lit a cigarette and puffed. His fingers were nicotine stained. As the cigarette sizzled in the wet, he held a hand over it and took another drag, watching the smoke disappear in the wind.
“My car’s still at the marina. I had lunch in Rennie. They’re going to remember me.” She saw a flicker cross his face. Handsome though he had seemed, he was stone cold gruesome now.
“So friggin’ what? Do you know how fast I could make a car disappear on this end of the island?”
She tried another bluff. “We’ve suspected you for some time. One of our officers had serious doubts about your story. We knew about the dinghy.”
“Who, that twit who picked up Ellen? Officer Ditz? Piss off. Don’t expect me to believe that. No one’s been sniffing around after Ellie Bear or after me. You’re just trying to cover up the fact that you’re a total fool.”
Ellie Bear. She nearly laughed. The girl was about as harmless as a scorpion. Yet was there the slightest self-doubt in his tone? “We’ve been talking about it at the detachment. I sent in trace material from the yurt at French Beach. The cat’s saliva was on a piece of cigarette paper. I’d say that it stuck to your pants when you came in with the dinghy. Little things come back to haunt you.”
He roared even louder than the tempest. “Do I look freakin’ stupid? That is the most dumbass thing I ever heard. Did you go to clown school to learn to make up that shit?” A curl of total contempt came over his lip. They rose and fell, shuffling their feet as the boat bounced over the waves. Holly had the strangest feeling that her mother was in the same watery grave. She wasn’t traditionally religious, but wasn’t there a part in the Bible about the sea giving up its dead?
“You know what, little miss lawman? I’m just going to take me a big old west-coast chance on that.”
What did she have to lose now? Keeping him talking was her only weapon. “Like in Winnipeg. My constable’s on those cases, too. It’s all coming together, Rudy. You need another M.O. That trimmer line is very telling.”
“Figured that out, did you? Two points for you, then.” He stroked his soul patch thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s about time that I took a little vacation. Aunt Beth is going to assisted living. I was talking to a social worker about her last week.”
Something sour rose in Holly’s throat. She was close to vomiting in her anxiety. Strange that he had feelings for someone. But there were all varieties of sociopaths. Hitler had loved his German shepherd, Blondi. “Make it easy on yourself and Ellen. There’s no death penalty in Canada.”
At their feet was a coil of rope fastened to a cleat. A wooden-handled boning knife was stuck next to it in a cork buoy. He could have been operating all over the island, picking up strays. Young women were suckers for a nice boat. Having a partner gave him an advantage of an extra pair of hands and an alibi.
Time had slowed to a slug’s pace as the boat fought the rising wind. On any given day, from her house she could see three cruise ships or freighters in the shipping lanes. Not now, when she might need one.
Rudy bent his face to check his watch. Quickly she searched around the deck, weighing her deteriorating odds, then flexing her hands. The wet rope had given a half inch. Ellen was occupied at the wheel in very tricky seas. Another wave pounded them, and the old boat’s timbers creaked. At least she wasn’t facing a handgun. Rudy probably didn’t even own a firearm.
As the boat crashed down, making little headway in the gusts, Rudy jostled to one side, scrabbling to his feet and bracing against a handrail. He wore slippery moccasins, a bad choice. A wave broke over the side and soaked his jeans. “Ellie, what the hell’s happening up there? Do you want to swamp us? Do like I showed you once and keep her into the wind. Grab a brain. The troughs are going to bury us. Once it’s calm again, we’ll head up to Tofino for a few days. You always wanted to stay at the Wickaninnish Inn.”
Over the roar of the motors and the howl of the wind, it was hard to hear anything else, but Holly cocked her head at what she thought was the stutter of a helicopter motor. They couldn’t see back into the harbour anymore, but from around the point, flying low, came an angel of mercy. The red, white, and blue colours of a search-and-rescue helicopter.
Rudy looked up, and at that moment Holly shoved him towards the rail, throwing her shoulders into the effort, then dropping to the deck. Flailing, he hit his head as his foot tangled in the rope pile. Over the side he went, roiling in the waves as his hat floated off. As the boat moved on, he dangled like a fish, barely able to keep his head above the dark water. He’d have been left behind had one end of the rope not been secured. A bullhorn sounded over the chaos as the helicopter blades kicked up chop in all directions. “Hello, the boat. Officer Martin. Are you all right down there?”
Holly crawled on her elbows to the knife, held it with her feet, and sawed her bonds, taking a nasty cut on her forearm without even feeling it. When her legs were free, she stood shakily and braced herself, still holding onto the knife.
Holly waved acknowledgement and an okay sign to the hovering craft. Ellen lurched down the stairs, off balance with the boat’s heaving. “Jesus, where’s Rudy?” She ran to the side, looked back and screamed.
From above, a voice boomed. “There’s a police boat coming out. I’m sending a man down. Hang tight. We don’t want you in the water now. If anyone has a weapon down there, drop it now. You have been warned. Our sights are on you. Someone will be down to bring the boat in.”
With undisguised satisfaction, Holly looked toward the wake, where Rudy was churning in the whitecaps as he coughed and yelled. She would have preferred letting him drown, but that was outside the letter and spirit of the law. With no capital punishment, he’d still rot in jail. He could apply for parole every five years until the next millennium. Being labelled a dangerous offender was the fail-safe answer in Canada.
“It’s all over for you both. Follow my directions, Ellen,” she said. “Keep the engines running at low speed and turn back to land, or we’ll be swamped on the rocks.” They were still hundreds of yards from shore, but the marker buoys bobbed out a warning about tricky rock shelves in the channel. The last thing they needed was to open up a hole in the hull and take on more water.
Her hands sore and aching, Holly pulled at the rope until she had him close to the boat. Rudy was spluttering, and the image of a drowned rat came to her mind. But rats were far more moral. Now he was as helpless as the women he had attacked or killed. No way was she hauling him in. He wouldn’t die in five minutes, even thirty, though the water was cold. But even now, she didn’t trust him.
“Get me out of here, you bitch!” he yelled.
“That will be your official name before long,” she said. “Killers like you have a special place among the inmates, even in civilized Canadian prisons.”
She couldn’t resist a smirk. If he’d had his way, she’d have been on the wrong end of the food chain. As for Ellen, if her lawyer was smart, he’d get her to cop a plea and assure a conviction against Rudy, especially given the disappearances of the girls in Manitoba. Closure for the families would be hastened if their bodies were recovered. A bizarre sense of place for their crimes left many killers with an amazing mental map. Where else might Rudy have plied his trade?
With a smart defence lawyer in this high-profile case, Ellen would probably become the “used and abused” girlfriend, threatened so that she would help him in his ugly work. Forming a passion for her assailant. Sadly, perhaps like the infamous Karla Homolka, complicit wife of the killer Paul Bernardo, she’d be walking the streets again with a new identity in ten years … even less. It wasn’t beyond possibility that Ellen might find another man with a similar dangerous hobby. Some girls couldn’t resist bad boys.
With the precision of a SWAT team, an officer was lowered toward the deck. Like a black angel, he descended, slowly twisting on his line, then dropping in front of her and detaching the harness so that another officer could follow. The boat was close to stalling and a huge seventh wave nearly swept Rudy back out to sea. Then they turned slowly and headed toward the shore. Ellen had gotten the message. She didn’t want to die either.
“Al Skidmore,” the officer said in a loud voice over the din, extending a meaty hand and flashing the widest grin she’d seen in years. His trim red moustache added a British touch. “That’s a strange fish you’ve hooked. What did you use for bait?”
“Myself. I’d prefer throwing him back, but I think too much of the strait,” she said as another man landed. His name was Dale. It was getting crowded on deck, just the way she liked it.
Al helped her haul Rudy on board, cuffing him hand and foot and setting him against the side of the boat. Ellen sat on the stairs, crying to herself. The boat started to wallow, and Holly didn’t like the way successive waves were beginning to pound the deck. “I’d better get up there and zigzag back to shore. That’s why they sent me,” Dale said.