Ken Douglas - Ragged Man

“ Well, if there was a knife, then one of you took it.”

“ No, sheriff, there were two others here. A man reading the magazines, who is now gone and a private detective. They are not here now.”

“ That’s right,” Ann said.

“ Private detective?” The sheriff turned to Singh. “What did he want?”

“ He was asking if I saw a certain person in town,” Jaspinder Singh said.

“ What person? Who?”

“ I am not remembering.”

“ How could you forget?” the sheriff asked with the edge of anger creeping into his voice.

“ I would remember if it was somebody I was knowing, but a name I have never heard is a thing easy to forget, especially after what has happened this morning.”

The sheriff turned toward Rick.

“ You know I’m going to have to hold you for this.”

“ No, I don’t know that. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“ Two men are dead because of you.”

“ That’s absolutely not true. That bum on the beach was going to kill Judy, and that bum there,” he pointed to Gundry’s body, “came at me with a knife. There’s a world of witnesses to both events.”

“ You used deadly force.”

“ Come on, Sheriff. I hit a man who was trying to kill me with a bottle of wine. It’s not like I used a gun.”

“ Sheriff, it is without a doubt that the dead Mr. Gundry was going mad. He was going to kill Mr. Gordon,” Jaspinder Singh said.

“ Without doubt,” Rick added.

“ Even if I agree, I’m going to need you to come in and make a statement.”

“ And I’ll be glad to do it,” Rick said.

“ J.P., get away from there,” Judy scolded. Her son was bent over the corpse, the second dead body he’d seen that morning.

“ There’s blood,” the boy said.

“ He was hit hard, J.P.” Rick pulled the boy away from the body. “Why don’t you wait outside.”

“ Blood on the back of the neck,” J.P. whispered under his breath, “like the man on the beach.” But nobody was listening.

Ann clenched her fists, then fumbled in her purse for her keys. The day hadn’t even started yet and already she was fighting the pain. She found the keys, then took J.P. by the hand, looked both ways, threw a quick glance behind and caught Rick looking, as she knew she would.

“ He always watches when you walk, doesn’t he?” J.P. tugged on her hand.

“ Yeah, he does,” she said. The group had decided she would take J.P. home, while Rick and his mother answered more of the sheriff’s questions.

“ Why?” J.P. pulled her into the street, toward the Jeep parked on the other side.

“ He likes the way I walk.” She opened her door, but J.P. climbed over.

She heard the distant blast of a fog horn.

“ Can we go?” he asked. “You’ve never been, Mom and Rick take me all the time and they like it. I bet you would too.”

The single blast of the foghorn told the town that it was 9:00 and that the Seawolf was docking at the pier, like she did every morning, rain or snow. Holiday anglers didn’t like going out too early and they didn’t like coming in too late.

J.P. loved the Seawolf and Captain Wolfe Stewart. He’d been out so many times that the bearded captain thought of J.P. as his lucky charm. Lately the boy had been having breakfast three or four times a week in the ship’s galley. If his mother didn’t want to go, Rick did.

The ship’s cook, under captain’s orders, had bacon sizzling every morning when they docked, just in case J.P. showed up for breakfast. He had become the ship’s unofficial mascot, and both crew and boy enjoyed the arrangement.

Ann waved to Rick, bit back the pain, let out the clutch and sped away. Soon she wouldn’t be able to conceal it anymore, but every minute of happiness she could give him, before the awful truth surfaced, was a minute worth fighting for, and she was a fighter.

“ Of course, the Seawolf,” she said. “I should have known.” She knew he loved the bacon and egg burgers and told herself she probably would, too. A few weeks ago she would have shuddered at the thought of so much grease and fat. She always ate healthy. Low fat, high fiber for her, exercise for her, aerobics for her, vitamins for her, she wasn’t going to get the big C, no sirree. Well she did, so this morning she was going to have a bacon and egg burger, maybe two, grease, fat, cholesterol and all.

She sat back in the seat and ran her hands over the leather steering wheel cover. Thank God she was still fairly fit, but soon she would start to lose her strength and she wouldn’t be able to hide it from Rick any longer.

“ Are you thinking?” J.P. broke her train of thought.

“ Yes, I was thinking, remembering actually.”

“ About what?”

“ I was remembering the time I gave Rick this old steering wheel cover.”

“ Why?”

“ Because sometimes it’s the little things that are the most important.”

“ And it’s important that you gave that to Rick?”

“ No, it’s important that he kept it.”

“ I don’t understand?”

“ It’s a symbol, it means he loves me. He says he only keeps it for luck, but I know better. Every time we get a new car-or in the case of this Jeep, an older one-he takes this old leather cover off the old one and puts it on the new one. This cover is important to him.”

“ Why?”

“ Because I gave it to him and he loves me.”

“ Oh.” Then a few seconds later he asked, “Did he keep everything you gave him?”

“ Every lickin’ stickin’ thing.”

“ He must love you a lot.”

“ He loves me very much. So much that it’s sad.”

“ How could that be sad?”

“ It’s sad because if something happens to me, Rick will be all alone, and I think he loves me too much to be alone.”

“ That’s a lot of love,” J.P. said.

“ Yeah, Rick and I couldn’t have any children, so we only have each other.”

“ That’s Susan Spencer’s car. She goes out on the boat. You can park behind it,” J.P. said, changing the subject.

Ann parked behind a yellow Ford Courier and smiled when she read the bumper sticker on its tailgate. Fishermen do it deeper. She knew Susan, she owned the Tampico Diner, but Ann hadn’t known she was into deep sea fishing. She shut off the ignition, leaving the car in gear, and put on the parking brake. “Short drive,” she said.

“ We could’ve walked.”

“ We could have, but I felt like driving.”

“ Just a few blocks?”

“ I don’t get to drive the Jeep very much. Rick likes to have all the fun.”

“ Really?”

“ He thinks he’s a rally driver. He turns into a little kid when he gets behind the wheel of anything that has four wheel drive.” Judy opened her door and J.P. jumped out of the back. They were both too preoccupied with their own thoughts to notice the aging brown Ford Granada that pulled up and parked behind them. “Come on,” J.P. said, “we don’t have much time.”

“ I’m coming.” Ann followed J.P. across the parking lot. By the time she reached the pier, he was halfway toward the end and the waiting fishing boat. He looked so small compared to the big men fishing along the wooden pier, who all seemed to know him. This was a part of his life she knew little about.

J.P. turned when he reached the ramp and waved. “Hurry, Ann,” he hollered. Ann quickened her pace. She was almost to the ramp when she slipped on the wet wood and started to fall. Strong hands saved her from an embarrassing spill.

“ Thank you,” Ann said, looking up to see her savior.

“ Don’t mention it.” The man had a rugged outdoor tan and he had a Bowie knife in a scabbard strapped to his right leg.