Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

The light slowly began to fade, tucking shadows in around us like a comforter. Our conversation became more and more desultory, and in the end we must have fallen asleep too. I remember waking once, and automatically reaching for the body I found beside me, without even knowing who it was. I may have mentioned Rachael’s name. If so, Andrea pretended not to notice. We huddled together and fell back into the soothing solitude of our respective dreams.

It was dark outside when we were awakened by a loud roaring noise, and a lurid glare which made our shadows revolve like a carousel.

Joe Quinlan was driving a truckload of hay back to the barn when his pager sounded. The low beams of early evening light which showed up every detail of the meadows to his right had turned the woods on the other side to a jagged sheet of black. Quinlan swung into the Cooks’ drive, backed out facing the way he’d come and jammed the pedal to the metal, swooping around the curves and over the belly-wrenching undulations of the two-lane blacktop that meandered the length of the island.

The grass in the fields was burned to a deep ochre, the driest Quinlan could remember for years. Lying in the rain shadow of the Olympic mountains, the San Juans had a microclimate totally unlike the prevailing conditions along the rest of the coast. Tourists, off-island immigrants and elderly convalescents loved this “banana belt” effect, but for the islanders themselves it was a mixed blessing. After a month in which the sun had blazed down almost every day, water supplies were now dangerously low. The whole county was like a primed barbecue waiting for a flame.

It took him twelve minutes to reach the outskirts of Friday Harbor, and another five to get through the convoy of cars, trucks and RVs which had just disembarked from the ferry. When he finally pulled up outside the Fire House, the doors were closed and both engines still inside. In the office, he found Jim McTafferty and Ed Boyle sipping coffee. McTafferty was wearing jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, Boyle a pair of combat pants and a T-shirt inscribed “Accordions Don’t Play Lady of Spain -People Do.”

“What’s the idea?” he demanded.

McTafferty looked up with a pesky smile.

“Hi, Joe. We got a reported blaze at the old camp on Sleight. Thought we might take the boat over, have ourselves a look at the situation.”

Joe Quinlan stared at him incredulously.

“You drug me all the way down here for that? Sleight’s private, you know that. Those hippies don’t pay taxes. Fuck ’em if they’ve got a fire. Let it burn itself out.”

“What day’s it today, Joe?” asked Ed Boyle.

Quinlan frowned.

“Hell’s that got to do with it?”

Boyle looked at McTafferty.

“He don’t get it,” he said sadly.

Jim McTafferty shook his head.

“I guess he don’t.”

“OK, Joe,” said Boyle, “you better run along now. Wouldn’t want you to be late for charm school.”

Joe Quinlan felt a sinking sensation in his gut. He’d forgotten all about the function that evening. At seven o’clock, they were all supposed to assemble at the high school to attend a “Communication Skills and Stress Management Seminar.” Some salesman had gotten to the Chief and convinced him that the “emergency response capability” of San Juan County would be “enhanced” if all personnel participated in an “interactional growth experience providing a neutral space in which to ventilate feelings and promote team cohesion through the development of problem-solving strategies and coping mechanisms.”

“This facilitator they brought in from the mainland sounds like she really knows her stuff,” McTafferty said. “That seven-page questionnaire they sent around sure made me realize my communication skills need to be upgraded. I couldn’t understand a goddamn word.”

“I hear they’re going to have role-playing too,” Ed Boyle chimed in. “I sure hate not to get a chance to express my true feelings. I remember going to those Lamaze classes when Jean was pregnant. That was so much fun. I really miss all that touchy-feely stuff.”

He wiggled his fingers in the air.

“Hell, yes,” said McTafferty. “We’ll be thinking of you, Joe.”

“Let us know how it goes,” added Boyle.

Joe Quinlan looked at them.

“The Chief said it was mandatory.”

“Mandatory this!” said Boyle, stabbing a finger in the direction of his crotch.

“Thing is,” McTafferty explained, “we’ve had this report of a fire on Sleight, like I said, and in my capacity as deputy I consider it incumbent on me to investigate personally and if need be inform the state authorities pertaining to the risk of environmental damage.”

“Way to communicate,” murmured Ed Boyle.

“I’m taking Ed here along ’cause it’s getting dark and he knows the waters around here better than anyone, and I was also hoping to draw on your considerable experience, Joe, to assist me in any decision I might feel called upon to make. Plus I know you just love watching things burn. But it would mean missing out on this seminar, and I can see you don’t want to do that.”

Joe Quinlan broke into a broad smile.

“Hell, Jim, since you put it like that …”

They drove the two blocks to the waterfront in one of the motor pool trucks which the Fire Department shared with other county officials, then strolled down the wooden walkway past the sheriff’s spanking-new speedboat to a battered red vessel marked FIRE-RESCUE. It was almost thirty years old and could make eight knots, flat out.

“So who reported this?” Quinlan asked as they chugged out of the harbor into the San Juan channel.

Ed Boyle gave the wheel a wrench to starboard.

“You know Bert Rigby over at Eastsound on Orcas?”

McTafferty laughed.

“He and Kathy Monroe still a number, or did she wear him all out? Now there’s one spunky babe. She’s been through half the men on Orcas since she got her divorce squared away”

“Probably looking for a meal ticket,” said Quinlan. “Knowing Gregg Monroe, she’ll never see dime one.”

“Perry Fletcher told me Bert’s already got a couple by-blow kids somewheres on the mainland. Someone should buy him a pack of Trojans.”

Ed Boyle pushed the throttle up to full revs.

“Anyway, Bert was up on the Turtleback with his gun and spotted smoke on Sleight,” Boyle continued. “Called in when he got back home. ‘Thought you should know,’ he says. ‘But to be honest, them hippies burn themselves out, it’ll be the best news since we won the Pig War.’”

Quinlan smiled sardonically. Off-islanders were never more than tolerated by the locals, although most of them were pleasant enough folks: boat-butts, retired military personnel, convalescent oldsters, a reclusive millionaire or two. The only real pains were the tree-huggers, granolas in Birkenstocks who’d moved out there from the cities to have a meaningful relationship with nature. They were constantly banging on about stuff the islanders had been doing since Christ was a corporal, like burning off the stubble and dumping their sewage in the ocean. Joe couldn’t see it made a damn bit of difference, the tonnage of raw shit the Canadians pumped into their side of the straits every day.

But at least the eco-nuts lived in regular houses, paid their taxes, sent their kids to school and supported local businesses. A few of them even had jobs. The people out on Sleight were different. Always had been. There was something about that island seemed to attract weirdos. When the first-growth was logged, back in the last century, one of the crew had gone crazy and killed two others with an axe while they slept. Then some kind of religious cranks had set up there, Quinlan could never remember the name, Theo and Sophy came into it. They were there for years, and when that brand of voodoo finally went out of style a bunch of goddamn hippies moved in. It was enough to make you believe the story someone had told him, that the Indians used to avoid the island because it was inhabited by bad spirits.