Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

The boat shoved its ungainly way through the water shimmering in the last faint rays of the vanished sun. Ed Boyle consulted his watch.

“Well, the seminar should be under way by now Wonder if they’re in the hot tub yet.”

At last they cleared the cluster of islets at the southwestern tip of Orcas, and Sleight Island finally came into view, a dark mass hunkered down on the shifting waters. There was no sign of any fire.

“Shee-it!” breathed McTafferty.

“Looks like we might have to start something ourselves,” said Ed Boyle.

Joe Quinlan sighed.

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you boys talk me into this. It looks like we ditched out on purpose, the Chief’ll go ballistic.”

“Bert wouldn’t kid us about something like this,” said Boyle. “Maybe she just burned herself out.”

He switched on the searchlight mounted on the cabin roof, illuminating the coastline and the wooden pier.

“No sign of their boat,” McTafferty remarked.

Ed Boyle throttled back to bring the launch alongside, while Quinlan and McTafferty went out on deck to get the mooring ropes ready. Then there was a jarring crunch, and the launch stopped dead, hurling Quinlan painfully against a winch.

“What the fuck?”

McTafferty got up from the deck, rubbing his thigh. He looked overboard.

“Something down there.”

They backed off and angled the searchlight down into the water. All three men gathered at the bow.

“Jesus!” said Quinlan.

In the depths alongside the pier lay a submerged boat. Taut mooring ropes secured it to the pier, which was leaning over at an angle under the weight. On the blue hull of the wreck, white lettering spelled the word POLICE.

“Where the hell’s that from?” asked McTafferty.

Ed Boyle brought the launch in on the other side of the pier, and they all went ashore. The bulk of the island rose massive and black behind them. There was no sound, no light, no trace of human presence.

“Guess we should go see what’s cooking,” said McTafferty.

“Guess so,” said Boyle.

Neither man moved.

“You guys get on the radio,” said Joe Quinlan. “Find out if the cops have been here. I’ll go check it out.”

McTafferty walked a ways along the pier with him.

“If you’re not back here in ten minutes, Joe, we’ll …”

He broke off, catching sight of the body. It was lying on its back in the dirt at the landward end of the pier, the arms and legs stretched wide.

“Christ almighty.”

“Give us some light here!” Quinlan yelled to Boyle.

The searchlight moved jerkily up and across. Quinlan approached the body, processing information as he drew nearer. A man. In his thirties. Blond hair. Beard. Work boots. Jeans. Blue flannel shirt with a large red stain. No pulse. Skin cold. Been dead some time.

He glanced up instinctively at the screen of trees all around, the tips barely etched in against the night sky.

“Kill the light!” he shouted.

The searchlight went out, leaving him blind for a moment. He groped his way back to McTafferty.

“Well, we don’t have to worry about skipping that seminar,” he said.

“Is he …?”

“Yeah. Get the sheriff out here.”

Darrell Griffiths was a massive man with flinty eyes, a bushy mustache, an impressive gut and a permanently morose expression. He had owned the islands’ only drugstore for years, but when his oldest daughter graduated from pharmacy school at the university he turned it over to her and ran for sheriff. Since then, Darrell had supervised whatever law enforcement the county needed-not a whole heck of a lot, to be honest-as well as raising the four younger children his wife had dumped on him when she ran off to Spokane with some guy from the mainland. It had been the talk of the town for months, but Darrell had never said one solitary word about the whole business, and he wasn’t the kind of guy you could ask.

The fire launch was lying at anchor about half a mile off Sleight. It was the first time they’d had the hook down as long as anyone could remember, but the damn thing worked perfectly, showed the maintenance program must be OK. The sheriff’s boat came alongside, and Griffiths and his two deputies went aboard the launch to confer with the firemen. After a brief conference, the two vessels continued to the pier, where they tied up side by side.

The six men walked down the pier and surrounded the body.

“Anyone recognize him?” asked Griffiths.

Pete Green, one of the deputies, spat mellifluously into the undergrowth.

“One of the guys that lives out here,” he said. “Time I came over last year he met me right here, we talked. Not that bad a guy …”

“… for a hippy,” the others all concluded silently.

Griffiths recalled the occasion. The police had been called by a group of rich yuppies from Boston who were spending a couple of weeks in the islands, cruising around in a fancy yacht they’d chartered. They’d dropped anchor off Sleight and gone ashore in a dinghy to have a picnic. Next thing they know, these guys are standing around them with guns, telling them the island’s private property and they got sixty seconds to get their butts off it. The hippies were within their rights, of course, and the sheriff didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of sympathy for easterners anyway, but he’d sent Pete over to have a word with them, suggest maybe next time they could tone down the attitude some.

Joe Quinlan knelt down and inspected the massive entry wound in the chest.

“Looks like a high-velocity rifle,” he announced to no one in particular.

Quinlan had been in the war, and was the only one of them to have much experience with gunshot wounds. Lorne Fowler, the other deputy, voiced the question that was on all their minds.

“Think whoever done it is still up there someplace?”

The sheriff sniffed loudly.

“Bring me the bullhorn, Pete.”

Pete Green brought the megaphone from the boat. Griffiths switched it on.

“This is the sheriff speaking. If any of you are armed, lay down your weapons and come out with your hands on your heads. I’ve got five men with me and we’re coming in now.”

He drew his revolver and started up the trail. The others followed. The dusk was gathering rapidly now. The woods on either side were already in darkness. The six men walked quietly, at an even pace, without speaking. A startled bird flew off into the woods with a rapid squawking. Something scuttled away in the shrubbery. The moon had risen, a perfect white crescent cut as though with a razor out of the blackboard of the sky.

As they turned the final bend of the trail and came in view of the clearing, they all stopped. The camphouse, the only building of any size on the island, had completely disappeared. In its place lay a heap of charred timber and ashes from which a flaccid plume of smoke rose into the evening air. Some of the undergrowth on the far side of the clearing was smoldering quietly, but a more serious conflagration had been avoided, thanks to the absence of wind. There was no one in sight, and no sound other than a creaking and settling from the burned-out timbers.

“Jesus,” said Griffiths quietly.

He led the way across the open ground between the trail and the ruins of the hall. The silvery veil of moonlight made everything look unreal. Then they all heard the noise, and stopped again. It seemed to be coming from the piled ashes and debris, a kind of moaning sound. It had a human edge, like the wail of a baby you can’t ignore. The men looked at each other, none of them wanting to be the first to admit what they were all thinking.

At first they were almost relieved when the other noise cut loose, loud and insistent, mechanical, masculine. Its clamor chopped up the silence into orderly segments, and proved its reality by chipping timber off the trees with vicious slashes. By the time they realized what it was and had thrown themselves to the ground, it was over. They lay panting, retrospectively terrified.