It lay empty, abandoned to the whim of the surf, with no tie rope or anchor to hold it in place. She wondered whether the incoming tide had washed it in. It looked as if it had seen better days, held together by little more than rust and crusted grime. An inch of water sloshed around in the bottom and its wooden seats were cracked and warped with age. The tiny black engine was antique, and there was a jagged hole in the hull through which the seawater swirled with each wave.
Had the hull been ripped open by the surf after the boat was pulled ashore? Or had the boat hit a rock and swamped, dumping its crew into the icy sea? Alarmed, she peered up and down the coast. There was no sign of anyone. The coastal land was barren, but inland she could see a wall of tuckamore, stunted, spiky, and impenetrable. If this was Phil’s boat and he had wanted to set up camp, he would not choose this frigid, wind-scoured shore. Could there be protection and shelter farther inland beyond the trees?
She glanced at her watch. She really ought to be heading back in order to avoid being caught out on the ocean after dark. She hadn’t packed any gear for camping in the wilderness, and had only an emergency supply of food and water. She could make do, of course, with the berries along the shore to supplement her food, but the wise course would be to return in the morning with the equipment for a proper ground search. But any delay would put Phil farther out of reach than he already was.
She pulled out her cellphone in the slim hope that she could alert Casey and perhaps Chris Tymko to her discovery, but wasn’t surprised to see no signal. She was miles from anywhere, surrounded by mountains and empty ocean.
I can spare ten minutes, she told herself. Time to reach the tuckamore to see whether there is any path leading inside. She clambered up the rocks and headed through the shore grasses toward the twisted wall of trees. Kaylee had her nose to the ground and snuffled excitedly as she trotted ahead. Following her, Amanda detected some subtle signs of trampled grass and broken stems, and her hopes surged. Something large had passed this way. The gnarled spruce seemed to huddle together, entwining their canopies to shelter one another from the brutal sea, but as she drew close, she spotted a small hole in the branches.
By now Kaylee was far ahead, invisible in the underbrush. Amanda crawled through the hole into an alien world of grey trunks and twisted limbs, where the sunlight was muted and the thick mat of needles muffled all sound.
Barely twenty feet inside the forest, she caught a glimpse of orange. As vivid and out of place in the web of grey as a shout in a graveyard. In a rush of hope, she plunged forward, ignoring the sharp branches that scratched her arms and legs. The lifejackets lay at the base of a tree, discarded as a snake sheds its skin. No longer needed and a burden to the travellers. Amanda picked them up and searched them for clues. They were sodden, whether from rain, dew, or a dunk in the ocean, she couldn’t tell. Both were adult male sizes, but one was a large and the other a small.
Her mind made the instant leap to Tyler and Phil. She supposed she could be wrong, but she was sure she wasn’t. She checked the jackets and found a whistle, a flare, a metal canteen, a pack of waterproof matches, and a compass that was stuck on south. The compass was useless, but why had Phil left the other items? As an experienced orienteerer with emergency training, surely he would never have abandoned them.
Holding the larger jacket while she puzzled over the contradiction, she noticed the tear in its back. She pushed her finger through the hole and peered at the darker stain around it. Her breath grew short and her heart began to pound. She turned the jacket over to examine the inside, where the dark wine stain spread across the whole fabric.
She dropped the jacket in horror. She raised her head, and terror propelled her voice above the roaring of the sea.
“Phil! Phil!”
It was nearly dark by the time Chris and Corporal Willington finally finished with the murder scene. The medical examiner had done her examination, ruled the death suspicious, and ordered the body removed to St. John’s for autopsy.
“There’s going to be a lineup at the morgue,” Chris had remarked. Dr. Iannucci’s opinion had confirmed the obvious: Stink had died from massive blunt force trauma to the head, but she had also suspected, after studying his filthy clothing and his living quarters, that he was in the early stages of dementia.
“Yes, but he was still bashed on the back of the head,” Willie had said. “Homicide, no matter what else is going on.”
“Agreed,” the doctor said. “But if Stink was charging at him with a gun, the killer may have had little choice.”
Chris forced himself to lean close to the body to sniff the man’s hands, but the overpowering stench of decay and urine blocked out all other scents. “We’ll ask St. John’s to run a GSR test for gunshot residue.”
Dr. Iannucci nodded. As she was loading her gear back into Casey’s boat for the trip back to Conche, she paused. “While you’re waiting for the extraction team and the investigation team to arrive, you might want to search the house and grounds for other signs of peculiar habits. I noticed he put his dirty socks in the fridge, for example.”
Chris nodded. His grandmother had Alzheimer’s, and although the family cared for her on the farm, her bizarre behaviour was often a strain. He had already conducted a thorough search of the cabin and grounds, but looking for evidence related to Old Stink’s death rather than his state of mind. Now he and Willie divided the task between them and began a second search.
“Document, mark, and photograph,” said Willie, who was nominally in charge. “Let’s solve this case before that fancy cop from Ontario even sets foot on the cape. You know more about Alzheimer’s, so you take the cabin and shed. I’ll take the grounds and wharf.”
After watching Willie head back down the path toward the bay, Chris steeled himself to re-enter Stink’s home. He looked at the nearly empty shelves through new eyes. Stink had three bags of salt and four jars of pickles, but no staples like flour and sugar. The propane tank that powered his fridge was empty, but there were two full tanks in the woodshed. Inside the privy, Chris found a box of partially burned cash — about two hundred dollars — and an unopened can of baked beans with the label burned off.
This second search also failed to turn up Stink’s rifle, but this time Chris found two shell casings on the floor by his mattress. There were no visible bullet holes, but Chris did wonder whether the broken window had been caused by a bullet. A forensic expert might be able to determine more conclusively, but Chris felt a flutter of relief. If Phil had come looking for Stink with the hope of procuring a boat, and Stink in his dementia had mistaken him for a threat and shot at him, Phil might have been forced to use the axe in self-defence.
Chris revised his earlier conclusion that the killer had brought the axe into the house as part of a premeditated attack. In his paranoid state, Stink might have kept the axe by his bed all along.
The rumble of a boat drew him outside and down to the shore just in time to see the Coast Guard vessel pulling in. The captain conferred with Willie briefly before unloading a stretcher and body bag onto the wharf. Within fifteen minutes, Stink was gone, on the first leg of his journey to the morgue in St. John’s.
By then, darkness was descending and the chance to find further evidence was fading fast. Willie grinned at Chris with relief and nodded to the spare boat Casey had towed over for them.
“I’m ready for a shower and a pint. You, b’y?”
Chris nodded. “More than ready! It’ll take more than a shower to wash the smell of that cabin out of my clothes.”
He cast off while Willie started the engine. Once they were out on the open water heading for the mouth of the bay, Willie gave him another grin and shouted over the noise of the boat. “Did you solve our murder for us?”
“No, but I have a theory. Not about who, but how.” Chris told Willie about the shell casings and the possibility of self-defence.
Willie