TWENTY-TWO

 

 

The next morning—an overcast and blustery one—Miles, Floyd, and Bill crammed into the cab of Miles's truck and took a forested road that cut across the island to Sunset Point, on the western shore, hoping to have a word with the mysterious Akroyd.

Miles wanted Bill to bring his heavy prybar in case they had to break into Akroyd's shack. So just outside of town, they stopped at the two-room cottage Bill had shared with his father since November 1918, when his father suffered a stroke that left one side of his body paralyzed. Bill's father was napping in their shared bedroom, so Miles and Floyd waited in the small sitting room as Bill tiptoed through to the wardrobe where he kept his prybar.

The sitting room was simple and austere, with a couple of homemade maple chairs, a well-used fireplace, and nothing by way of décor except for a collection of empty liquor bottles of various shapes and colors lined up on the windowsill. Miles took a peek through the doorway to the very small kitchen and pantry. Homemade salamis hung from strings tacked to exposed joists in the unfinished ceiling. Several of them were caked with something yellow. A basket of giant, ripe tomatoes sat on the counter next to the sink. There was no other produce.

"You still haven't washed your pants," Floyd said to Miles as they waited, gesturing to the old coffee stain.

"Thanks for pointing that out. I see you're as fancy as ever, wearing a pressed city suit even though we're going bushwacking."

"My mother says dress for the job you want, not the job you have."

"You aiming to be the next Douglas Fairbanks?"

"I have to ask," Floyd said as Bill reappeared holding his huge metal prybar. "Why do you keep that thing in your bedroom?"

"For rats."

They returned to the truck and got back on the road.

"You have some beautiful tomatoes in your kitchen, Bill," Miles said.

"Thanks. Grew them myself, in the back yard. My father loves tomatoes."

"And what was that yellow stuff covering the salamis in your pantry?" Miles asked

"Polenta."

"Polenta?"

"Cornmeal. My mother was Italian."

"Why is it on the salamis?"

"Is draws out some flavor. Makes the cornmeal taste better."

Bill's explanation made Miles wonder just how bad off Bill and his father really were. Then he remembered that Bill hadn't even ordered dinner at the inn the other night. It hadn't crossed Miles's mind that Bill couldn't afford it.

"Looks like you've added some bottles to your collection," Miles said to change the subject.

"Yessir," Bill said. "Found a very old-looking rum bottle in the woods by English Camp." English Camp was an abandoned British Royal Marines base on Garrison Bay. It had been built during the so-called Pig War of 1859, when Great Britain and the United States faced off over competing claims to San Juan Island—a confrontation that nearly turned bloody when an American farmer shot a trespassing pig owned by an employee of Britain's Hudson's Bay Company.

"Rum, eh?" Miles said. "Could be a discard from the Royal Navy. That would make it very old, indeed."

"It sure looks old to me."

"A collector's item. Valuable, maybe."

"That would be nice."

"Find any Glenfiddich bottles?" Floyd asked, joking.

"No," Bill said so quickly and so loudly that Miles turned and looked at him. In truth, Miles couldn't have cared less if Bill found an intact bottle of whiskey—as long as it wasn't, by some miracle, from the Lucky Lena and still useful as evidence despite floating around in salt water and washing up on a beach. Whatever the cause of Bill's tension, Miles found it a little amusing.

"You collect old bottles?" Floyd asked.

"Yessir. It's a hobby of mine."

"Where do you find them?"

"All over. I walk the roads and trails a lot. Sometimes the beaches."

"What do you do with them?"

"If they're valuable, I sell them. Usually, I just like to look at them."

My mother would say you need a girlfriend, Miles thought. She'd say that you're lonely.

 

*****

 

Barely half a mile from town, Bill, looking thoroughly uncomfortable straddling the gearshift, asked if he could ride in the back of the truck, so Miles pulled over to accommodate him.

"You think this Akroyd fella is actually going to talk to us?" Floyd asked and they got back underway.

"He's a squatter," Miles said. "Which means we can evict him from his home."

"That would be rather un-Christian."

"For heaven's sake, Floyd. We're not really going to evict him. But he won't know that. It's just leverage to make him talk."

"Ah."

"Of course, he still may not talk. He's rarely seen anywhere, let alone in town. And when he is seen, he never speaks. I don't know that he can speak. Nobody really knows anything about him. To be honest, I forgot he was out there. I'm sure I haven't seen him since before the war."

 

*****

 

Though Akroyd's shack was in dense forest well off the road, they found it with relative ease by parking under and following the only telephone branch line in the vicinity of Sunset Point that diverted from the main roadside line into seemingly trackless woods. Their progress slowed by dense underbrush, they followed the line, from pole to pole, through thorned blackberry vines, stinging nettles, ferns, and trees of all kinds until they at last began to catch glimpses of the waters of Haro Strait thorough the gaps. At the same time, they began to smell coffee and smoked bacon.

After a few more minutes of bushwacking, a shack came into view. Constructed of raw logs and scrap lumber, the leaning, makeshift structure stood in a small clearing on a high, rocky and wind-whipped bluff protruding from a small cove. Smoke blew sideways from a short tin chimney. Behind it, just offshore, a small pod of minke whales was passing to the south.

"Akroyd," Miles shouted, stopping about twenty feet from the door. "Police. We need to talk to you."

They waited a moment. The door didn't open. Nobody answered. All they heard was the wind blowing through the trees.

"Akroyd, are you in there?"

Still nothing.

"There's an outhouse," Bill said, pointing to the far corner of a clearing on the opposite side of the shack.

"He would have heard us from there," Miles said.

"Maybe, maybe not. He's pretty old."

"If you want to check the outhouse, Bill, be my guest," Miles said as he walked up to the warped, rickety door of the shack. Trying the thoroughly corroded knob, he found it locked.

"What do we do now?" Floyd asked.

"We use the prybar."

"Wait—what?"

"What did you think we brought it along for? Actually, maybe I can just kick this thing in."

"Miles, we talked about this. We don't have a warrant."

"You and your warrants," Miles said as he raised a leg and knocked the door in with one powerful kick. "After you, sir."

Floyd gave him a dubious look, then went through the dark doorway. It was surprisingly warm and quiet inside. The close air smelled of bacon, coffee, and exceptionally sour body odor. The one-room interior was Spartan, the walls, floors, and ceiling constructed of bare, rough-hewn wood. Rudimentary shelves held a few books and trinkets. For furniture, Akroyd had a cot, a filthy, threadbare wingback chair, a scratched-up chest of drawers, and a small table with a crude wooden stool. Everything looked to have been either inexpertly homemade or salvaged from the town dump. An unlit lantern hung from an exposed rafter, and a small cast iron stove was set in a dark corner, embers glowing red from within. But the things that held Miles and Floyd's attention were a new-looking telephone mounted to the wall next to the cot, a four-foot brass telescope on a tripod, and a giant window that looked out over the water. The window had a commanding view of a wide swath of Haro Strait, including the dark shape of D'Arcy Island a few miles due west of where they now stood.

Miles wondered how a man could live such an isolated existence, largely cut off from any sort of community. A natural introvert, solitude often appealed to a part of him. But sooner or later, it always got old, and he'd find himself yearning for human contact. In any form, with damn near anyone. It made him wonder whether something had happened to Akroyd—some trauma, perhaps—to drive him to this extreme, lonely lifestyle.

"He was just here," Floyd said as he examined the stove. "This pan of bacon is still warm."

"So is this coffee, barely," Miles said, touching a half-finished mug that sat on the table.

"Think he heard us and ran for it?"

"With all the wind noise outside? I doubt it," Miles said.

"Maybe he's just down at the cove, doing his dishes or what have you."

"Or maybe he was warned."

"Warned?" Floyd asked.

"Well, it would be odd, wouldn't it, that the man—a poor man—would take the time to fry up good bacon and brew a big mug of good coffee, then up and leave it to get cold?"

"Warned how?"

Miles gestured toward the telephone.

"Oh, of course. But by whom?"

Maybe you, Miles thought, as it occurred to him that Floyd could have rung Akroyd from his hotel just before they left town.

"You sure he's poor?" Floyd asked.

"Look at this dump."

"Look at that expensive telescope. Look at that modern telephone with its dedicated private line. And, hey—look at this," Floyd said, lifting a fine gold pocket watch from a corner of the table. He opened it and looked at its face. It was running and accurate.

"Let me see that," Miles said, taking it from Floyd and studying it for a moment. "I'll be damned."

"What?"

"There was this guy who graduated from high school here a couple of classes ahead of me. He ended up moving away to Tacoma. Name of Baxter. Anyway, one day late last year, he shows up at the police station with a big smile on his face, a manner that was excessively familiar given that we'd hardly known each other. He had a pocket watch just like that one. I mean the exact same watch. He tried to give it to me as a token of appreciation for my fine work in keeping the peace in his hometown, or some such nonsense."

"A kind enough gesture."

"Sure. He also had a bolt of fine blue Chinese silk from a notoriously pricey Tacoma department store. The silk, he'd said, was a gift for my mother. A so-called 'long overdue thank-you gift' for her tutoring him in mathematics years before."

You're welcome to deliver it to her yourself, Miles had told Baxter. I'm sure she'd be delighted to have a visitor.

Oh, no. I'm sure she's busy.

She isn't.

Still, I wouldn't dream of intruding—of calling unannounced. It would be unmannerly.

Miles had stood looking at the man, perplexed. But the next thing his surprise visitor had said cleared everything right up.

Say, Miles. Since I have you, it just so happens that my employers are looking for someone of just your position and reliability for some very easy side work.

Oh?

In a nutshell, they need someone they can turn to for market research up here in the islands.

Market research?

Simple information that would take no time at all to gather. They'd pay handsomely for it. And they have all sorts of fine things, like that silk for example, that they'd be happy to pass along as frequent tokens of gratitude.

Uh—huh. And what is your employers' line of business?

Shipping.

Of course. The shipping of certain libations, I would guess. So, I imagine your employers are interested to know when revenue boats, like the USRC Arcata, are seen in the area. They're probably also hoping that I might be willing to look the other way when some of their own shipping activities are suspected or observed.

Baxter stood silent, expectant.

Look, pal, Miles had said to him. Tell your employers they can keep their pocket watch and their silk and their money. There's a line I just don't cross. That being said, you can tell them that I'm a bit of a libertarian, and that I give less than half a damn about rum running. People are going to get their booze one way or another, no matter what the law says. And if a man wants to have a glass of wine with his dinner or wants to drown himself in gin, that's his business and his responsibility. It isn't something I ever intend to go after. So they needn't worry themselves.

Back in the present, Miles gazed at the gold pocket watch and wondered what the rumrunners would have paid him. Wondered if he could have bought himself a phonograph player or a new truck, or could even have afforded to move out of his mother's house. Then he wondered whether Floyd had accepted such a watch—or whatever cash it took to afford those fancy suits.

Stop being so paranoid.

They performed a cursory search of the shack. There wasn't much to see. Bent utensils, dented cookware, candle ends, numerous pencil sketches of birds, and a few books—each of which Miles checked, to no avail, for hollowed hiding spaces like the one he found in the navigation book aboard the Lucky Lena. However, opening one of the larger books—titled Guterson's Pacific Coast Ornithology—Miles found that its content had nothing to do with birds. "What have we here?" he said, flipping through pages that appeared to be those of a standard ledger book. "A false cover. Is our friend Akroyd a hobbyist accountant?" He set the book on the table and opened it to a random page. "Jackpot."

"What is it?"

"A logbook of vessel sightings."

The entries were made in neat and exceptionally refined penmanship. They included dates, times, locations, courses, descriptions, and, in many cases, registration numbers or names. March 20, 4:22 p.m., white Keesling-made workboat, registration number M-298, two miles southeast of D'Arcy Island, headed due south until disappearing in fog near Vancouver Island, read one entry. March 21, 9:55 a.m., longline fishing boat "Wild Rose," Canadian flag, registration number V025M, mid-channel, prob. inbound course for Port of Sidney, read another. Other entries on the page were similar. There was even one for the revenue cutter USRC Arcata, reported as steaming north, near the shore of San Juan Island, no doubt patrolling for rumrunners. Another that struck Miles as particularly interesting, even a little bit funny, mentioned the notorious 250-foot, five-masted Canadian schooner Malahat—which was well known to be a major supply ship to U.S. rumrunners—mysteriously disappearing behind D'Arcy Island, only to emerge more than three hours later and sail on toward the open Pacific. It had surely dropped a load of booze on the island, or had simply rendezvoused with one or more small, fast American rumrunning boats behind the island and out of sight of American revenue agents.

"Perfect," Miles said. "This is just what we need. Looks like Akroyd marks down everything—rumrunners, supply ships, and revenue cutters alike."

"Why would he watch both revenue cutters and rumrunners?" Floyd asked.

"Maybe he's obsessed."

"Or maybe he works for both sides."

"As an informant for the rumrunners and for the revenue agents? You have a dirty mind, Floyd. But it's an interesting theory. And if he is playing for both sides, he'd better hope they don't find out."

Miles flipped through dozens of pages to find those covering the past week. "Oh, no. No, no, no—you're kidding me."

"What?" Floyd asked.

"The log entries stop a week before the Lucky Lena was spotted adrift."

"You're joking."

"See for yourself," Miles said, sliding the ledger book across the table.

Floyd took a look. Indeed, the last entries covered the week previous. After that, the ledger pages were blank.

"Hold on. Look at this," Floyd said, pointing to the innermost side of the open ledger page. Barely protruding from the stich and glue binding of the book, Miles saw the thin, clean-cut edge of a missing page. "Someone cut it out."

The men stared at each other, pondering the same troubling implications. Then Miles went back out the door and scanned the surrounding woods, hoping to catch a glimpse of Akroyd spying on them from behind a tree.

"Akroyd!" he shouted. Hearing no response, out of sheer curiosity, Miles strode to the edge of the bluff and looked over. It was a good thirty-foot drop to where short, dark blue waves broke against jagged gray rock. The water grew deep and dark just a few feet from shore. The tops of a small kelp forest floated a little further out. A loud double screech drew Miles's attention to a high snag in a knotty, rugged old fir tree that stood apart from the rest of the forest and close to the edge of the bluff. There, an adult bald eagle stared down at him with its permanently aggressive hunter's eyes. It watched him for a long moment before turning its gaze out to sea. In its talons, Miles could see a flatfish—probably a sanddab or a small rock sole—in the process of being torn up and eaten alive.

Miles did a slow turn, scrutinizing the area for anything notable. "Akroyd!" he shouted into the forest once again. "If you can hear me, you aren't in any trouble. We just want to talk about the boats you've seen. If you're around, please come out."

He waited. But no one answered. And no one came.