Sarah Porter - The Twice Lost

Andrew stumbled out into the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee, stepping over the blotch of crusted blood on the linoleum. He’d been knocking through the cupboards for a few minutes before he noticed the dark silhouette floating on the door’s sunlit curtain. Somebody was standing there, dead still, watching him through the gap. Andrew swung around and saw a sliver of a tan-skinned, thickset man, his neat silver hair like a glaze in the pale daylight.

Once the man saw Andrew looking he knocked as if he’d just arrived. But Andrew was sure the guy had been standing there for a while.

“Yeah? Help you with something?” Andrew didn’t try to keep the annoyance out of his voice as he opened the door.

“Peter Korchak?” The man on the step had warm, sympathetic brown eyes, but his mouth was tense.

“That would be my brother, actually. Want me to tell him you were looking for him?”

“Your brother. ” The tan-skinned man stared for a moment as if he weren’t sure whether or not to believe it. “And your name is?”

“You’re the one on the outside of the door. That means you might want to think about introducing yourself before you go asking me anything.”

In reply the man folded back his coat. His badge gleamed in the pallid day. “Ben Ellison. FBI.”

“All right.” That didn’t make too much sense unless Peter had gone and turned criminal. But there it was. “And I’m Andrew.”

Ben Ellison made a conspicuous effort to stay calm. “Do you have any identification?”

“No.” Andrew stared for a second. “Peter can vouch for me, I guess, if you’ve got some reason you need to know. What’s your business here?”

“My understanding is that Andrew Korchak was lost at sea. More than two years ago. But if that’s really who you are . . .”

“That’s who I am. I didn’t stay lost, is all.” He felt tired, and even though he’d washed his hand the night before, he suddenly noticed lines of dried blood still clinging in the grooves of his knuckles. “What’s your business?”

“Then I expect you would know who this is?”

A photo. Zoomed in until it was very close and grainy so that it only showed her face glancing back over her shoulder. The background was bright and blurry, but it looked like shining water. Her cheek was marred, and Andrew’s breath caught as he noticed the notch torn from her ear. “Where did you get this?”

“So you do recognize her?”

Andrew couldn’t stand it. He pivoted on his heel and walked to the counter, leaning with his head hanging down, his shoulders heaving. He’d failed to protect Luce again. And for some reason this FBI bastard was asking questions about her, and that might mean . . .

“Mr. Korchak?”

That might mean he knew . . .

“This photo was taken just a few days ago. I’d like to discuss the situation with you, Mr. Korchak, if that would be all right.” Ben Ellison stepped over the threshold and approached. The kettle was whistling out a piercing, horrible note.

“What do you want with her? Look, whatever you’re thinking . . . Luce is still a little girl . . .” His arms were crossed on the counter, leaning heavily, but he was painfully aware that Ben Ellison must have noticed how he was shaking.

“You know, you don’t seem at all surprised. To find out that Luce is still alive.”

Oh. Right. He was supposed to think that Luce had killed herself. It was too late to pretend, though. “I knew she wasn’t dead, is why.”

There was a pause. Andrew looked up to watch Ben Ellison’s face, to observe the thoughts churning just behind his eyes. The guy seemed pretty smart, actually. “And would knowing Luce is alive be somehow connected? To the fact that you didn’t stay lost?”

It was a strange line of reasoning, unless this Ben Ellison knew a lot more than he ought to. “Knowing she’s alive? It’s connected to the fact that I saw her a few weeks back. She wasn’t banged up like that then, though.”

“But I imagine there were other changes in her that you might have noticed,” Ben Ellison said. His tone was sardonic, but there was another suggestion in his voice at the same time, a definite hungry sharpness. Was it envy?

“What do you want with her?” Andrew’s heart was racing and his knees wavered, but even so he was starting to feel some humor in the situation. Whether your kid got caught swilling vodka in a cemetery or shoplifting or turning into a mermaid, it was all the same. You still had to talk to the cops.

Ben Ellison hesitated. “I’d like to help her. I’m afraid it might not be possible, but—”

“Help her how?” Andrew found himself feeling defensive suddenly. “Far as I can see my girl is doing pretty good, considering.”

“She’s wanted for murder.”

“She’s what? ”

“Arguably it was self-defense.”

“This is garbage. She’s only . . . she’s a kid. A good kid.”

“Given her current situation, it’s unlikely that constitutional protections apply, and I doubt anyone will go out of their way to interpret the law in her favor. After all, she technically isn’t even . . .”

“Isn’t even what?” Andrew snapped.

“Human. She isn’t human. Not at the present time.” They were staring fiercely at each other, the kettle still shrieking behind them. “Of course you aren’t surprised to hear this, either.”

“Who cares? Whatever kind of . . . whatever she looks like now, she’s still my daughter, and she’s still a . . . barely more than a child, really . A juvenile, anyhow. Look. If somebody was trying to hurt her—”

“Can you contact her? Do you know where she’s going? That photo was taken off the coast of Washington, and at the time she was heading south. She was seen the next day not far from the Oregon border.”

“And if I did know that, you think I would tell you?”

“There are quite a number of people who are determined to catch her, and they’ll shoot her on sight.” Ben Ellison paused to let that sink in. “If you have some way to communicate with her, you’d be well advised to urge her to surrender before that happens. And if I’m involved in the process, I promise I’ll do whatever I can to ensure her safety.”

“Was it your people who tore up her ear like that? If you did . . .”

“That wasn’t us.” Ben Ellison was looking toward the window now, then abruptly he walked to the stove and snapped the kettle off. His expression was morose. “Mr. Korchak, the fact is that I think Luce has been . . . unfairly singled out. But she’s also been behaving in a way that is guaranteed to attract negative attention when she should be doing whatever she can to keep a low profile. That video, for example.”

“What video?”

“Check the Internet. Search for ‘mermaid.’ You might be the last person in America who hasn’t seen it.”

Andrew considered that. Things were starting to make a bit more sense. “So she’s in some video. But then how did you know it was her? You see a mermaid, you don’t go and spontaneously say, ‘Oh, I bet it’s that Lucette Korchak girl who everybody thought jumped off a cliff up in Pittley.’”

Ben Ellison wasn’t looking at him. He kept his eyes pointed at the sea.

“Somebody rat her out, Ben? Who’ve you got?”

No reply.

No reply in a way that told Andrew Korchak exactly what the situation was: not only was there an informer, but it was someone this FBI guy didn’t trust. Someone who was lying up a storm, talking all kinds of smack. Firing off ridiculous accusations, like . . .

“Who you all think Luce murdered, anyhow?”