TWENTY

In the days I’d been at Petawawa Lodge. I’d only taken advantage of the swimming facilities a couple of times. First thing on Monday morning, first thing for me anyway—others had been up and about for hours—I rolled out of bed, played games with the china ewer and basin, the nearest thing to running water in my cabin, and changed from pajamas directly into my swimming trunks. The day was going to be another seamless day of blue cloudless skies and heat that hits you between the shoulder blades. I folded a towel on the end of the dock and dove into Big Crummock Lake. I came up half-way to the wooden raft tingling. From the raft, I inspected the mushy, mollusk-strewn bottom a few times then returned to the dock, where I spread out the towel and stretched out along the sun-warmed planks. I could feel the itch of water evaporating before I had fairly caught my breath. From where I was lying, I could see past the second island well up to the far end of the lake. The Rimmers’ point was glinting above the waterline, with the cruiser, looking smaller than a fingernail, anchored at the end of its dock. The Woodward place was invisible behind a near headland.

Nearer at hand were the things the lodge guests had left behind them. In the nearby deckchair, a pair of sunglasses and a paperback book lying face down waiting for Aline Barbour. Lloyd’s grey-blue fishing-tackle box was resting under the shade of a chair, with bright narrow stripes of light crossing it six times. Chris Kipp’s waterlogged camera sat at the corner of the arm of one chair, another kid’s sand-pail and shovel not far away.

From where I was lying, sizzling, drinking up the sun, and to hell with Ray Thornton, I could see an ant’s-eye view of the scene of Wayne Trask's sudden departure from this life. I could reach out and drip water on the very corner of the board that had stunned him. The water darkened the wood and spread down and out along the wood grain, much like blood. The sun quickly dried up the evidence, so I dripped again, spreading out the stain with my fingers, moving pools of water to cover as wide an area as possible, and watching the sun working closely behind me, drying up any pool left too shallow. I was quickly dozing off. I hadn’t felt so relaxed in days.

Under my chin, an ant, a real one, not the ant I was imagining a moment before, walked along the board in front of me. It tried to find a way to continue its progress by walking over the gap between boards, but each time was turned back because the gap was too great. Soon it discovered that the dock was built by resting and nailing these boards across heavy wooden rails. I couldn’t see the beams, but I could see where the nails went into them. The ant, once he found the rail to my left, made his way out to the end of the dock, walking from board to beam, then up to the next board again, and so on. Near my chin, the boards were nailed in with two nails into each beam. The work of the economical Dalt Rimmer, according to Lloyd Pearcy. Out at the end of the dock, far beyond where the ant had progressed so far, the nailing was erratic with some nails bent over and mangled, four or five nails being used in each spot. I turned the other cheek. On the right side, the same pattern was there—neat nailing by Rimmer, and beginning at the end of the dock, drunken nailing. Then I noticed something new. Between these two types, or styles, of carpentry was a third. Lloyd hadn’t mentioned that the dock had had three builders, only two. I got up on my hands and knees to look closer. Yes, between Trask’s work and Rimmer’s, three boards had been nailed to the beams with four neat nails at each point of contact. There were no crescent-shaped dints in the wood, such as those you could still see left over from Trask’s hammering.

It wasn’t a trick of the sun. It wasn’t some dream enjoyed after I’d dozed off on the warm boards. I checked the details. Trask and the second carpenter used the same nails. Dalt Rimmer used another sort. Rimmer and the second carpenter appeared to have gone about their tasks cold sober. Trask’s work looked like a textbook example of how not to build a dock. For a long time I felt like I was playing a game of observation, a game in no way attached to reality. Then it hit me: if the board with the cleat attached was the one that killed Trask, as Lloyd had pointed out to me, then at the time it hit him, it had not yet been nailed to the dock. It was the first of the boards put in place by the second carpenter. In fact, the second carpenter could have been Trask’s murderer, hitting him from behind with the board, dumping the unconscious body into the water, then calmly nailing it in place so that it testified to the fact that Trask hit the board, and not the other way around. For insurance, two more boards were nailed into place before the second carpenter took his leave of the scene of the crime.

We were dealing with a very cool customer here. Not a hit-and-miss act of violence, but a well-thought-out crime that could up to now be described as perfect. But the ant and I were now on the trail, and with luck one of us would run him to ground.

Aline Barbour came up behind me wearing that pinkbikini with black edging. “Beat you to the raft,” she said, and running to the edge of the dock, plunged, a tan blur, into the water. I knew that I’d run a poor second, but I jumped in and followed her. By the time I got there, she was holding onto the raft with one hand, having already caught her breath. It took me a minute to corral mine, and then I hoisted myself aboard the float.

“I’ve been hearing about your adventures,” she said, pulling herself half out of the water and resting her arms on the canvas matting so that her bust rested on the edge of the raft.

“Who’s been talking out of school?”

“I heard about how you nearly got killed going back of beyond somewhere.”

“Oh, that, well, the serious fisherman has to be ready for anything. Have you been taking midnight canoe rides lately?”

“Every night. I love the lake when it’s quiet.” She pulled the rest of her body out of the water and lay alongside me on the canvas top of the raft. She took her white bathing cap off, and let her hair loose, like it was alive and demanding its freedom. Again, I found it hard not to concentrate on the tanned body. I watched the water drip from her forehead and off the tip of her nose and disappear in the crevice of the pink bikini top. Her toes were painted the colour of dried blood, her shoulders were smooth and luminous, with depth to them, like velvet.

“I hear that you were rescued by the man at the Woodward place. He’s quite a man of mystery. What’s he like?”

“We both know the answer to that Miss Barbour.”

“What can you mean by that?”

“Only that you have been watching that spot as often as you can. I think that we might get farther if we begin to trust one another.”

“You aren’t very tactful, are you?”

“It’s a waste of time when he’s getting ready to move out.”

“When? How do you know?” She was on her elbows, looking over me with sudden interest. She saw the trap she’d fallen into and relaxed. “Well, it doesn’t hurt to share information,” she said at length. We were now lying side by side with our knees up under the sun: hers, smooth and brown; mine white with curly black hair. We looked like examples of two species, not just different sexes of the same species.

“He bought a couple of boxes of groceries yesterday. I’m not guessing he’ll move before the middle of the week.”

“That’s not based just on groceries?”

“No. He’s waiting for something, and he won’t leave until he gets his hands on it.”

“On what?” she asked, and I said nothing. She lifted herself on one elbow and looked down at me. “You’re a funny man,” she said.

“Why am I a funny man?”

“Because you keep everything so tightly controlled it’s like you’d taken an oath or something. Are you always so serious?” She gave me the full extent of her smile. It was hard to remember that I was working.

“Where do you know Patten from?” I asked when I could get my mind back on the case.

“I’m just one of the people he swindled. Just one of the millions he’s trying to run out on.” Her cheeks began to glow with this, and her eyes were dark and serious. “We were all so young and impressionable. He seemed to offer us a new beginning, a new hope.” The blush had moved to her neck and beyond the frontier where it is normally possible to follow these rosy index fingers of feeling.

“Are you one of the group taking him, or trying to take him, to court?”

“You’re thinking of Elmo Nash, T.C. Sagarin, and the others. All they’re trying to get is money. I want more than money. I want to see him crawl.”

“That sounds like more than your wounded youth talking. His church is on the brink. You don’t talk like any of the little people he hurt.”

“People like David Kipp, you mean?” I tried to take that gift without showing any surprise.

“Sure, people like him. You want those fingernails pressed into him deeper than you’ve got them into your palm right now.” She looked down at her hand and released the pressure. “What’s your plot?”

“What’s yours? I know who you’re working for, and why you’re doing it. I could have you pulled off the case like that if I wanted to.” Suntan oil prevented an audible snap.

“But you don’t want to?”

“Not yet, anyway. In the meantime, we can both wait for him to make his move.”

“I see,” I said, wheels running in circles inside my head. She shifted so that I was getting, not only the curve of her torso, but now also the curve of her hips. She was physically persuasive, and I was only human. We didn’t change for about a minute, and then Chris and Roger Kipp shouted and climbed up on the raft, splashing cold water on both of us. That killed it. Or I thought it had. We rolled off into the water and swam back to shore. I grabbed my stuff on the dock and took my gooseflesh back towards my cabin to change.

David Kipp was just coming out of the screen door of my place when I got there. “Did you find what you were looking for?” He gave me that quivering lip again and leaned back against the wood of the cabin for moral support. I stood in his path and tried to look as though I might hit him if I had to. I was sucking in my gut to look less like a ninety-seven-pound weakling.

“Get out of my way, Cooperman. You’re not the law up here.”

“That’s right. But there’s lots of law around now that I need it.”

“Now wait a minute. Don’t get sore. Your door was open …”

“… and you just stopped by to prevent my belongings from blowing into the lake. Listen Kipp, I could bounce one off you and then get down on my knees and apologize for the blunder.” I thought of Cissy’s description of his long ape-like arms and hairy knuckles. I had to avoid a bear-hug or wrestling around in the remains of Joan’s petunias. “Did you uncover my black belt under my shirts? Kipp, you bother me. You’re bugging Mrs. Harbison and that bothers me. Stay away, she doesn’t like it. And as for the business up at the other end of the lake …”

“What are you talking about? I haven’t been over the sandbar in the whole week I’ve been here.”

“You were up the river leading from Little Crummock. Don’t play games with me. You were seen, Kipp.” The lip told me that he didn’t guess I was bluffing. “Besides, you gave it away yourself when you boasted about seeing the heron and dead deer. We both know where you saw them, don’t we?” Kipp was leaning away from me and making me feel like a bully in the schoolyard. I tried not to look at either of his big hands. If he made fists of them, I’d had it. I thought I’d better keep the banter sassy. “You saw more than wildlife up there, didn’t you, Kipp? You know that George McCord didn’t die of old age yesterday morning. I think we’d better find Corporal Glover and first you tell him what you know, and then I’ll tell him what I know. We can flip a coin if you don’t think that’s fair. I’ll talk first if you want.”

“Look, I’m not saying anything to Glover I don’t have to. I hope you don’t misunderstand my being here. I’m not sore at you. I just want to know what’s going on, that’s all. And as for what I did to Patten’s boat, let him take me to court. I just lost my head when I recognized him under those whiskers. That bastard owes me, and I’ve probably had more satisfaction than most people are going to get.” Another gift landing in my lap.

“Where were you when Patten went by?”

“Back in the marsh getting pictures. I caught him in my telephoto lens. I was sure he didn’t see me. Or did you mean somebody else?”

“Keep talking. How long did you give him before you followed?”

“Ten minutes. No more. He left the boat at the clearing by the portage. I’m glad I did it to him, Cooperman. You can’t take that away from me.” I looked at Kipp and relaxed a notch. What the hell, I thought, let him keep that much.

“Kipp, what put Patten on your hit list? Aren’t you one of the gang taking him to court? What did he do to you that makes you chop holes in boats among other things?”

“What do you care? You’re here protecting him. I know that. I’ve seen you fishing together and playing chess on his dock. What do you care about the people he’s hurt?”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No, not me. It’s the boys’ mother. She’s all used up since she joined the Ultimate Church. Those TV evangelists are all a bunch of crooks, but Patten’s the worst of the lot. She can’t keep an idea in her head for two seconds any more. She won’t settle. She sits and watches TV all the time without seeing anything. Patten destroyed her belief in God, in religion, and in her family. There’s nobody at home inside my wife, Cooperman, and she used to be the dearest, most—”

“Okay, I get the idea. I’m sorry for your trouble, but remember there are laws in this country just like you have at home. I want you to stay out of my way from now on, Kipp. You hear?”

“I hear. Now you listen: somehow I’m going to get even with Patten.”

“Kipp,” I said with my face close to his, “you know in seven days time you could be dead a week.” His lip started quaking again and those hairy hands with the hairy knuckles and service-club rings came up to guard his mid-section. “Now beat it,” I said and he did that. As he ran off in the direction of his cabin, I heard the line I’d just used on him again in my head. Only this time I heard it in the voice of the TV actor who’d said it originally. He may have had it first, but my reading got results.