The old man sat in the middle of a bench under a big oak, his shoulders hunched and back curved, reminding Piper of a turtle. Hard to make out more details from where she stood under the streetlight.
The light didn’t quite reach his perch, and she suspected he’d picked the spot for that reason; there were closer benches. The clouds hindered, a dense gray dome that coupled with the hour had turned the stretch along the bluff into a mass of twisting shadows. Lights in the houses at the edge of the park were flickering dots, will-o-the-wisps, she mused, more fitting for Halloween than spring.
She started toward him as threads of lightning flashed. Maybe the rain would hold off for a little while. Despite the frequent storms of the past several days, Piper hadn’t brought an umbrella. The ground felt spongy, comfortable to walk on. She quickened her step.
Maybe this wouldn’t take long and she could go home and crawl into bed with the latest Harry Bosch book.
He scooted over, making room for her. She guessed him to be in his early eighties. Twin canes were hooked over the top slat, and he wore a bulky jacket. The dispatcher had mentioned he was a geezer—“a whack-job paranoid geezer likely visited by aliens” were the exact words—and said that he claimed it was urgent and he would only speak to the sheriff… and only at this time and place.
“Evening, Mr. Thresher,” Piper said as she sat, keeping a good foot between them. He was redolent of old-man smells—warring liniments and too much aftershave. She swiveled to face him, took off her hat and rested it on her knees.
“Mark, Sheriff Blackwell.”
“Evening, Mark,” she said.
“Mark the Shark.”
“Interesting nickname,” Piper said.
“Had it a long time. Had it since the war.”
His voice was gritty like sheets of sandpaper rubbing together, a smoker’s voice, though she didn’t detect a hint of nicotine. She tipped her head and found the scent of the nearby river and the headiness of the sodden ground. More lightning speared the clouds, looking like metallic threads embroidered on a garment.
“You were in a war of sorts yourself,” Mark the Shark continued. “Read it in the newspaper last fall. That was a few weeks before the election. Read all about you.”
“Two tours in Iran. Downrange assignments mostly.”
“That’s why I voted for you. I like folks with military experience, serving the country and all. Patriotic. Didn’t matter to me that you were what—”
“Twenty-three.” She still was. Her birthday was five months away.
“Yeah, didn’t matter that you were a pup. The article said you were Military Police. I figured that’d make you an excellent sheriff… just like your dad. Good man, Paul Blackwell. Good sheriff.” A pause. “Despite his politics.”
The wind gusted and the branches above gently clacked. Piper grabbed her hat to keep it from blowing away, and with her free hand pushed the annoying curls out of her eyes, a reminder of the haircut appointment tomorrow. She watched Mark the Shark fold in on himself and wrap his jacket tighter. The temperature in the mid-fifties, her windbreaker sufficed. But she knew some elderly people chilled easily. He’d mentioned the war. Korea probably.
“I helped liberate the Philippines,” he said. Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he looked around, nervous, and then focused on the streetlight.
She corrected herself. WWII. He had to be ninety-something.
“Signed up in forty, saw a recruiting poster ‘Man the Guns, Join the Navy.’ Got my pop to sign permission ‘cause I was seventeen. Way at the end, Luzon in forty-five, that’s when I got my nickname.” He rubbed at his chin and coughed, his shoulders bouncing. “Before we left the islands, one very early morning, me and some mates went fishing. We jury-rigged poles and tackle, used shiny fish we’d scooped out of the surf with a bucket. Went out on a sandbar and cast into the shallows. Figured we might catch something ‘cause we saw lots o’ life in the shoals. I still remember how good the water felt, and how salty the air tasted.”
She forced down her impatience. Whatever matter he’d called the department about obviously wasn’t urgent after all.
“Out in them shoals, I hooked something with size to it and it broke. The sky was lightening, all pale and pretty like a Kinkade painting, and so we saw it clear the surface. ‘Bout shit my pants, I did. Excuse the language, ma’am. Easy a dozen feet long, maybe longer, probably longer, half of it tail. It snapped the line and we got the hell out of there. It was a goddamned big shark. My mate Gerald, he’d been studying to be a marine biologist before the war. He said it was my namesake, a thresher shark. We looked it up in a book when we got back to the ship. Threshers are a mackerel shark, you know, nocturnal with big eyes to help them see in the dark. Like deep water they do, but they come into the shallows early in the morning to feed, use their tails to sweep the little fish together so they can eat ‘em easier. There’s not as many of ‘em anymore, them threshers. Sharks declining all over, hunted for their fins and meat. Pity, don’t you think?”
Piper nodded as if she was interested. More lightning flashed, a broad stroke that illuminated his face. Horsey, fitted with a long nose, white whiskers peppering his jawline, skin wrinkled and ruddy like a farmer’s or someone who spent a lot of hours outdoors. Couldn’t tell the color of his eyes behind the thick lenses of his boxy-framed glasses, and a hood covered his head, adding to the turtle image. His clothes were a mix of dark blue and gray, everything rumpled and worn. Old man attire. He nervously scanned the park again and cocked his head, listening. After a moment, he lowered his voice.
“I’m being hunted, too.”
Piper sat straight. Now he had her interest. “Hunted, Mr. Thresher?”
“Mark,” he countered.
“Mark,” she said.
“Mark the Shark. Guys on the ship… that fishing story I just told you spread. They started calling me Mark the Shark. Thresher for a Thresher. Mark the Shark stayed with me all through my Navy days, and I kept it afterward, liking the sound of it. Put in thirty years in the Navy before I retired, bought a big piece of property along the north line of the county with the military pay I’d saved up. Started farming that year. I was forty-seven then. A second career.”
“Hunted?”
“I’m getting to it. Don’t you go hurrying an old man. Never ever should you hurry an old man.”
Piper did the math. Mark the Shark was probably ninety-four. Who would hunt a nonagenarian in a sleepy little county?
“You told my dispatcher it was urgent,” Piper pressed. “What did you—”
He interrupted with a tsk-tsking sound. “You don’t know where Malapascua is, do you? Being Army and all. Airborne. You were with the Screaming Eagles, right? I remember that from the news article, the 101st out of Fort Campbell.”
“I don’t know where Malapascua is,” Piper admitted. She was going to repeat her question, but he cut her off with a wag of his long-fingered hand.
“Don’t you hurry me.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s a sunken island in the Philippines. I went there years and years ago, right after I bought my farm. A tropical vacation with the girl I’d just married—a late start at that for both of us, eh? Way the hell too late for kids. Wanted to show her where the war had been… part of the war. A history teacher, she was interested in where I’d been stationed. She’s been dead three years now.” He shook his head. “Anyway, we did some diving. I used to dive, you know. I was certified for open ocean. The Monad Shoal is near Malapascua, and the sides of that island, they drop off to the real inky depths. Thresher sharks hunt there, and though we weren’t looking for them, we saw a couple on our early dive. Beautiful creatures. Cleaning wrasse, those are small fish that live on the dead skin from the shark—its gills, inside its mouth—the wrasse were hanging on them threshers. A symbiotic relationship, and—”
Thunder boomed, and Piper felt the tremor ripple through the ground beneath her three-day-old Nikes. Ozone mingled with the river scent and Mark the Shark’s old man smells.
“Gonna rain,” Mark said.
“Yeah.”
“I like the rain. Good for the ground. Good for the early beans and peas the farmers put in. I’d have had carrots and cukes in by now, too. It’s supposed to be sunny tomorrow and the rest of the week. I heard the forecast. But it looks like April’s wanting to go out with a nice drenching.”
“Yeah, looks like it,” she said. “Listen, I—”
“Do you got a dog?”
“My father does, an old pug.”
“Everyone should have a dog.”
“Someday, when I’m not living in an apartment above a garage. When I have my own place with a yard.” Why was she continuing a pointless conversation? “Listen, I—”
“My dog doesn’t like the rain. But I do. April showers bring May flowers. May Day tomorrow. Maybe you’ll get a bouquet from your feller. You probably got a feller, right?”
She let out a long breath. “You said this was urgent.”
“It is. I suppose you want me to get to the point of this. Regretful to bring you out here so late, Sheriff, weather threatening and all.”
Piper put her hat on when she felt the first big drop find its way through the branches. “I can handle rain.” She couldn’t handle an old man rambling about long-tailed sharks far removed from Spencer County, Indiana.
“I ‘spect you can handle a lot of things, Sheriff. Medals and such… I read that in the article. About your medals, saving all the soldiers you were with.” He glanced nervously around the park again, then leaned back against the bench, squared his shoulders, pulled his hood down farther over his forehead so all of his features disappeared. “I’ve been robbed, Sheriff Blackwell. Money taken from me, some of what I got from selling the last parcels of my farm to that real estate company. I got a stash at my house, hidden real good. That hidden money’s safe. It’s what I got in the bank… some of that is gone. Good money gone. Hunted for my money just like sharks are hunted for their meat.”
“Mr. Thresher—”
“Mark.”
“Mark—”
“Mark the Shark.”
Piper stood. “Listen, Mark, you should come to the office, first thing in the morning and we’ll fill out a report. Detail how much you think has been taken.”
“A lot. A lot was taken.”
“We’ll call the bank, maybe go over there—”
“Not coming to your office. Too many eyes there. Eyes downtown. I done called the bank about it. Didn’t get nowhere.”
“We’ll call the bank,” she pressed, “see if there really has been a theft. See if it’s just a records problem instead. Maybe you—”
He made fist and bumped it against his knee just as thunder boomed again. “I’m not some daft codger that can’t remember shit, what he’s done with his money! It’s a conspiracy, Sheriff Blackwell, and that’s why we’re out here, away from any eavesdroppers, away from any gawkers… away from the government and—”
“Mark—”
“It’s a good bit of money and you need to fix it. Get back for me what they took and keep them from taking the rest of it. A symbiotic relationship we can have, working together to catch the thieves. We’ll be the hunters now.”
Piper adjusted her belt and shifted from one foot to the other, turned, and directly faced the old man. “This isn’t the place to—”
“It’s the best place to talk about this. No one comes to the park this late.”
“That’s because the park is closed this late.”
“My point,” he cut back. “No one can see us, hear us. Somebody’s spying on me, Sheriff Blackwell. And if you’re caught with me, maybe they’ll start spying on you.”
“Who do you think is—”
“It’s the Democrats. Probably. Spencer County’s thick with Democrats. You know that. You ran as a Republican. So I know you understand. Your father ran as a Democrat, and he was good despite that. But a Republican, you’d understand.”
Piper ran as a Republican solely to be unopposed in the primary. She personally didn’t claim allegiance to any particular party.
“You do understand, don’t you?” he pushed. “Don’t you?”
She wanted to be angry at Mark the Shark, instead she was sad. Some form of dementia had no doubt hobbled his mind; her grandfather on her mother’s side had died of Alzheimer’s six years ago. She’d visited him, but he didn’t know who she was. He just smiled at her and talked about the midnight bowling alley in the nursing home parking lot and the circus horses that paraded by his door in the middle of the afternoon. Her grandfather had been eighty; Mark had more than a decade on that.
“Can I give you a ride home, Mark?”
He shook his head and grumbled as the lighting and thunder stepped it up and the rain started to fall steady.
“I’ve got my old Chevy, parked it on the side street down that way. Under a broken streetlight so’s no one will notice it.” He pointed to his right. This was a small park; Piper figured he probably had only a block or so walk to get to his car. “I’ll be fine. And you need to wait a bit before you leave. Stick around, watch, just to make sure nobody’s following, spying. Despite all my precautions, someone might have tailed me. I been looking, but I ain’t seen anybody else in this park except me and you. Still, they might be clever and—”
“I’m sure we’re the only ones—”
“But just in case, you stick around a bit.”
“Mark—”
“Can’t be too careful. Can’t ever be too careful.” He levered himself up and reached for his canes. “I gotta go now. So are you going to fix it, Sheriff Blackwell? Get my money back? All on the Q T?”
“How much money was stolen?” Piper should have asked that right away. “How much?” She played along… just like she’d told her grandfather the horses that paraded past his room were pretty, how fine their hooves sounded clacking against the hallway tile floor.
“One hundred and sixty thousand, more or less.”
She whistled. “That’s a good amount of money, Mark.”
“I told you it was. Yeah. Well, it is and it isn’t,” he said. “If I have to go in one of them damn nursing homes it’ll stretch about a year and a half. But they didn’t take everything out of the bank, them robbers—not yet, and they didn’t get the secret stash at my place. I got enough to pay for six or seven years, maybe eight, in one of them damn nursing homes if I have to before I would need to go on the county dole. And I don’t want to do that. Damn Democrats.” He coughed. “Maybe I won’t live long enough to worry about that. Maybe nobody should live to be that old.”
The rain came harder as he ambled a dozen feet away, paused, and called over his shoulder. “I voted for you. Are you going to fix it, Sheriff Blackwell? And keep it all hush-hush? No Democrats? No spies? Just you. Only you doing the looking. I got no family. I don’t trust nobody else.”
“Yeah, I’m going to fix it, Mark.” She raised her voice so she was certain he could hear her. “I’ll fix it. I promise.” Why the hell had she said that? “I’ll stop by to see you sometime tomorrow morning. I’ll call and let you know when I’m coming. You have a good evening, Mark.” What was left of it.
“Mark the Shark,” he corrected. Then the night and the now-driving rain swallowed him.