The villagers had seen no trace of barefoot men possibly speaking a foreign language, but Phil and his son had been through a couple of days earlier, wanting a boat. This time he had wanted to buy one outright, but he hadn’t enough cash.
“Boats are our life out here,” one man said to Chris. He was a burly, weatherbeaten man with a florid face and hands the size of hams, who introduced himself as Casey. “I offered him my wife instead, but it was no go.”
Laughter ensued among the other men in the store.
“I might have liked my chances with him,” one of the women shot back.
“The boy really wanted to go out on the sea, so Thaddeus took them out for a spin around the peninsula to the back harbour,” said Casey, pointing out the window to a man unloading wood from his truck. “It was a short run, didn’t even get to show them one whale before your friend wanted to go back in. Then he took off without even a thank-you.”
“Your friend needs a good slap upside the head,” added the wife with the caustic tongue.
“Where did he go?” Chris asked. “Back up the highway toward Roddickton?”
“No, he was after a hike along the shore —”
At that moment Amanda spotted what had escaped her notice in the sea of old pickups parked helter-skelter by the wharf. A rusty black Chevy like the one Phil owned was parked near the entrance to town. She broke away and jogged down the steps of the store and along the street for a closer look. Phil’s licence plate! Her heart leaped. She shouted to Chris. As he made his way over, she cupped her hands to the glass to peer inside. Maps and chocolate-bar wrappers littered the floor. She peered into the truck bed, which was piled high with camping gear and clothes, along with several two-fours of empty beer cans and a pile of empty vodka bottles.
“Looks like Phil was doing some serious drinking,” Chris muttered.
Casey came puffing up behind them, his face now nearly purple. “Yeah, I was getting to that. We never touched the beer. He already had a snootful when he arrived. Like I was telling your boyfriend here, he and the boy took off on foot across to the back harbour. Never came back. The kids went looking yesterday but didn’t see hide nor hair.”
“What’s in the back harbour?” Amanda asked, visualizing the map. Nothing but cliffs and woods, she recalled. She didn’t like the sound of this. Phil’s behaviour sounded erratic and desperate — driving drunk on rough mountain roads with his son by his side and no clear idea where he was going. As if he were in full flight mode.
Casey shrugged. “Just Old Stink. Keeps to himself. Your friend won’t get much help out of him. He hasn’t hardly said a word in sixty years.”
“Except to himself,” the wife added. For all their apparent discord, they were clearly in sync, Amanda thought.
“Is he dangerous?” Chris cut in.
“Old Stink?” Casey snorted. “Might have been at one time if you got in his face, but he must be getting up toward ninety by now. Harmless as a fly.”
“Well —” the wife began, but Chris was thinking like a cop.
“Does he have a gun?”
“For hunting, yeah,” Casey said. “An old Winchester 94. Shoots mostly ptarmigan and rabbits these days, and last time I saw him, his eyesight wasn’t so good.”
“How far away is he?”
“Oh, a couple of miles up the back harbour, on the cape across the way. You have to reach it by boat, but my brother’s got mine out. Maybe in the morning —”
Amanda jumped in impatiently. “But if it’s across the bay, our friend won’t be able to reach it on foot, either. He’ll still be on this side.”
“There’s an old boat,” the wife said. She was getting in the spirit of the drama. “Part way up the harbour. You can walk to it, and there’s a footpath that we use for berry-picking.”
Amanda glanced at her watch. The sun had already slipped behind the mountains to the west, and within a couple of hours, darkness would settle in. Another day lost, another day farther behind. She called Kaylee, but before she could set out, Chris shook his head at her.
“We might make it there before dark,” he said, “but we can’t make it safely back. And Old Stink’s doesn’t sound like the ideal spot to spend the night.”
“But every night is a night wasted! We have flashlights. Kaylee will keep us on the path.”
Chris’s eyes narrowed as he studied the distant cliffs and the steep forested mountains along the shore. “One wrong step, and we could be in serious trouble.”
“Please, Chris. I don’t like the sound of things. Phil sounds desperate!”
She knew he wasn’t happy, that as a cop he should be the voice of caution. But damn it, you don’t trek through the gun-toting jihadi hordes of northern Nigeria without learning how to survive.
She threw some power bars and emergency supplies into her day pack, tossed it over her shoulder, and set off. A short reconnaissance trip, that was all.
Either he’d follow, or he wouldn’t.
He followed, as did Casey and an entourage of villagers, who picked their way single-file along the shore path. The tide was coming in, and tongues of foam licked over the rocks toward their feet. As the harbour widened, Amanda scrutinized the distant cape ahead. Had Phil been fool enough to try to swim across? Even if he could manage the distance, the waves and tides, not to mention the cold, would kill anyone who ventured out.
As she was crossing a small patch of stony beach, Casey suddenly called out from behind. She turned to him inquiringly. He was scanning the rocky hollows and scrubby bushes along the side. Finally he shook his head.
“Boat’s gone.”
“Whose boat?”
He shrugged. “Everybody’s. We leaves it here for those that wants to get across the harbour. Good berry-picking up on Cape Rouge over the other side. Old Stink chases the kids off when he catches them.”
She studied the pebbled sand. It was still damp and washed smooth by the last high tide, and all traces of the boat and footprints had been erased. The distance to the other shore looked nearly a mile, and the waves packed a punch as they rushed in. Phil was an inexperienced Prairie boy and Tyler was eleven years old. Moreover, they had left almost all their gear in the truck.
“What kind of boat is it? Big?”
The man laughed. “Little go-ashore, gets you from here to there. Someone put a 9 hp on ’er a while back that works sometimes.”
Chris was studying the opposite shore through binoculars. “I don’t see a boat over there.”
“Well, nobody be fool enough to try to land on them rocks, not even your friend. You go up the cape half a mile or so, dere’s a small beach. But Old Stink keeps his boat and stage dere, and his house is just up the hill, so your friend might have got a bit of an argument.”
“We have to get over there,” Amanda said.
Casey shook his head. “Not tonight you don’t. I can take you over in the morning.”
“But —”
“We have to go back to get my boat. Too late today.”
Amanda chafed. She knew he was right, but she was staring out at the surly sea one last time, almost willing Phil and Tyler to appear, when a small piece of debris caught her eye. Bobbing up and down in the waves farther down the bay. She squinted. The area was now in deep shadow from the mountains to the west. Was the light playing tricks with her eyes? She took Chris’s binoculars and focused them on the water. At first she saw nothing, but eventually a dark shape flashed briefly into view before being swallowed by the waves.