After an evening spent staring at the television with no recollection of what he’d seen, Greg took himself off to bed. He read until his eyelids drooped. He read on until he found himself dozing, the book sagging in his hands. Quickly he put out the light and lay down.
As soon as he’d snugged the covers over his shoulders, his eyes flew open. He stared into the darkness with a weary sigh. His mind hadn’t gotten the message that he wanted the oblivion of sleep. Instead it played and replayed the day on a full-color loop—the accident, Carrie, Home Depot, Carrie, Ginny, Carrie’s sad expression—over and over and over.
Trying to break the cycle, he counted backward from a hundred. Not so much as a yawn. He counted forward to a thousand. He prayed for everyone in his family. He sat up and read some more. He thought for a moment around two o’clock that he was drifting off, but the thought seemed to kick-start the loop to double speed, making Carrie race around as if running for her life.
He gave up just before dawn. He untangled his legs from the disheveled bedding and got to his feet. He pulled on an old pair of jeans and a Seaside sweatshirt, and grabbed his fleece pullover and Phillies cap.
Dawn was just lighting the sky when he stepped into his Starcraft. The peace he found on the water was just what he needed to get his mind back in neutral. One night thinking about a woman and he was as jumpy as Oreo when Carrie sprayed the Bactine.
Bad example. Bad! He was here not to think about Carrie. He turned his eyes toward the bay, which lay like a smooth sheet of silver in the gray morning mist. He guided his boat from its slip and turned east into the rising sun. A few fishermen and charter fishing boats kept him company as they headed for open water.
When they reached the channel where the bay and the ocean met, he turned back, lining the buoys up for red right returning. He didn’t want the excitement of the colliding currents. He wanted tranquility, ease, disconnection.
He still knew peace on the water because Ginny never went fishing. She didn’t mind cooking what he caught, but she wasn’t interested in the catching. The bay held no memories of her to blindside him, only pleasure and serenity.
After he went under the Ninth Street Causeway and was halfway to the Thirty-Fourth Street Bridge, he killed the engine and pulled out his pole. He dropped his line over the side without anchoring. This early in the day he felt safe letting the boat drift with the tide as it receded. He crossed his ankles on the seat facing him and laid his head back. The gentle movement of the boat was soothing, and he thought he fell asleep for a few moments. After the night he’d had, he wasn’t surprised.
But he needed to be alert. All it took was one cowboy in a cigarette boat going full throttle to create catastrophe. He sat up and took a pull on the hot coffee he’d grabbed at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through. The pair of chocolate iced doughnuts were good, though Lindsay’s sticky buns, grilled and spread with butter and reserved for him, would be better.
A gentle breeze ruffled his hair, and he smiled. In spite of the new complications I haven’t sorted out yet, Lord, life’s good. Not great exactly, but good.
And good was a vast improvement from the terrible it used to be. He must not wish for more and disturb this pleasant lassitude. Good was good enough.
He took a deep breath of the tangy air and watched sea gulls wheeling overhead. A blue heron stood immobile in the shallows at the edge of the marshy area to his left, and buffleheads and scaups glided over the wind-ruffled water. A cormorant sat on a piling, black wings spread as he dried them in the sun, now fully risen.
All he needed for perfection was a bite.
The Starcraft’s bow nudged up against a small island covered in sea grasses and got stuck in the mud. Greg reeled in his empty line and set his pole aside. He reached into the storage pocket in the boat’s side and pulled out a collapsible oar. With a twist he extended it.
He knelt on the seat in the bow and leaned out to push the boat free of the islet.
He almost fell overboard when he saw the hand tangled in the grass, open palm flung skyward. The body to which the hand was attached lay submerged, bumping gently against the mud and grass with the movement of the water.
Greg recognized death but still reached out and felt for a pulse. With sorrow he also recognized the victim in spite of the damage done by the water and the nibbling sea creatures. His memory flashed on Joe and Margaret Peoples, their sorrow-filled faces, and their premonition of disaster. He knew the devastation about to suck hope and happiness from them. The only positive about this scenario was that he wouldn’t be required to be the one to inform them of their son’s death.
Scratch that. Their son’s murder. The coroner would need to make a final determination, but the marks about Jase’s neck told their own tale.
But he’d have to tell Carrie and the others at the café. It’d be best coming from him, and it’d save someone on the force from that difficult duty.
Some days life hurt.
He grabbed his phone and called 911.
The SPD Marine Unit arrived first, and Greg moved his boat out of the way as he watched the officers assess the situation. Soon crime scene techs were doing what they could while the Coast Guard, Fish and Game guys, and the SPD talked jurisdiction and the coroner declared Jase dead, not that there was any doubt, but the law had to be satisfied.
Activity swirled around Greg, but he was no more than the one who found the body. Sure, several of the professionals going about their various chores acknowledged him by name, asked how he was. A couple of them even said they missed him. But he was outside the loop, merely the one who reported a tragedy, the one to be questioned about how he made his discovery.
He was amazed at how much the exclusion hurt.