T. Boyle - When the Killing's Done

T here is no boat because Wilson has been scared off by the Coast Guard, who motored up alongside the Paladin and by means of a bullhorn ordered him to hoist anchor and quit the premises as the island and its waters were closed indefinitely to all visitors, so that Wilson had no choice in the matter, thinking to head contritely toward Ventura and then circle back after dark, but Dave doesn’t know that. All he knows is that things have gone to shit and that he’s got a dead girl, three hypothermic would-be saboteurs and one shivering, silent and thoroughly pissed-off reporter on his hands. Beyond that, wet through and with the temperature in the forties and rain still falling intermittently, they could die out here, all of them, if they don’t find shelter and build a fire, but a fire’s risky — what they need is Wilson and the boat with the heater in the cabin turned up high and dry clothes and a hot Cup O’ Noodles or coffee, anything to take the chill off.

“Dave, Dave .” Someone’s calling him in the dark, a suspended face given definition in the thinnest illumination leaching in under the clouds from the distant coast, and he backs out of the water, the foam hissing at his ankles, and sees that it’s Josh. “Listen, Dave”—Josh can hardly get the words out he’s shivering so hard—“we need to build a fire, all of us, we’re freezing—”

“No,” he says, freezing himself. “Too risky.”

“Yeah, well, risky or not the girls are gathering driftwood and Suzanne’s got matches, the strike-anywhere kind, like in a plastic pill container so they’re dry? And we’re going to light a fire, a bonfire — it can be a signal. For Wilson.” He breaks off to sneeze, raising a vaporous hand to his face. “Because where is he anyway?”

“Just wait. Give it a few more minutes. He’ll be here.”

“And then what?”

“Then we go aboard, get dry, get warm.”

“What about Kelly?”

“We bring her.”

Josh’s voice comes back at him, hard, furious, on the verge of cracking: “She’s not going to get warm. Not ever.”

It’s all he can do to hold himself back, trying to fight down his emotions, keep control, because he’s the one who’s in deep here, he’s the one they’re going to come after, and he’s been trying to think what to do for the past hour now. They could say she fell off the boat, but then he’s seen CSI —that’d be fresh water in her lungs, not salt. Maybe they were on West Anacapa, hiking, and she slipped and fell down a hill into a rain puddle, a big puddle, deep, a pond really, and by the time they got to her. . but what about Toni Walsh? Toni Walsh isn’t going to stick her neck out. Toni Walsh has her story and the story’s going to put it to him and no doubt about that. Irresponsible behavior. Lawless. Reckless. A young girl dead, and for what? Finally, he says, “We can’t help that. It was”—and he knows how false he sounds—“just one of those things.”

“Just one of those things? We’re talking about Kelly here. Kelly’s dead, don’t you get it?” Somewhere in the darkness beyond them he can hear the others gathering driftwood, voices tuned low, feet swishing in the sand. The waves beat and recede. The air smells of rot. “We need the police,” Josh is saying, his voice pinched and uneven, as if he’s being strangled. “We have to report it to the police. They’ll come — they’ll take care of, of the body. I mean, radio from the boat.”

He doesn’t answer. And he doesn’t protest when Suzanne, with the scraps of newspaper she’s kept dry in a plastic bag, her strike-anywhere matches and a fierce gale of concentrated fanning and blowing, manages to turn a thin searching finger of flame into a blaze and then a bonfire that consumes anything they can throw into it, wet or dry. He stands there with them, as close as he can get to the fire, hugging his arms to his chest, rotating to dry himself, heat the only thing that matters. And when Wilson does come, when the soft sustained hum of the motor rides in over the plangent suck and roar of the waves and the running lights coalesce in the void, he’s not even the first to notice. It’s Cammy. Cammy shouting out, “He’s here! Wilson! He’s here!”

As one, they break away from the fire to rush the water’s edge and watch the lights maneuver into place, listening to the thin metallic screech of the anchor chain unspooling, the discreet plunk of the anchor itself, and then, a moment later, to the muted slap of the inflatable hitting the water. They’re picturing Wilson — oblivious Wilson, happy Wilson — lowering himself into the dinghy preparatory to pulling the engine cord and casting off to come and get them out of this, wrap them in blankets, take them home, when there’s a shout from down the beach. A man’s voice, brutal, roaring, the voice of authority and retribution: “Who’s there? Who is it now?” And then, four figures separating themselves from the night, dogs there too, shorts, slickers, bush hats, guns, “Don’t anybody move.”

The rest is confusion, the dogs nosing up to them, the men with the guns fanning out as if this were some sort of military maneuver, Cammy and Suzanne writhing and flapping their hands and crying out, “Help! We need help here!” like the underage victims in a slasher flick, the fire roaring, the sea pounding, the closing whine of the dinghy’s motor cutting through it all like a thin honed blade, and, staggeringly— How could she have known? — Alma Boyd Takesue emerging from the shadows to the light, the fiercest hateful unforgiving sneer of triumph sealed into her little sliver of a Gook face. It takes him a moment to sort it out. These are the hunters, the pig killers imported from New Zealand, as if there weren’t enough native-born killers to go around. And these are their dogs. And this — the black-haired undersized sneering woman in the mud-spattered gaiters and drooping sweatshirt — this is their boss, the Haupt -executioner herself, here to make sure the blood is being spilled with all due haste and efficiency. Alma. Alma Boyd Takesue.

“Just what do you people think you’re doing here?” the man in the middle, the beefy one with the cocked hat, the rifle strapped to one shoulder and his hand hovering over the pistol at his belt, the one who’d bellowed at them from fifty feet away like some sort of storm trooper — and why not extend the metaphor if it fits? — wants to know. Demands to know.

Josh looks sheepish, Cammy is fighting back tears, Suzanne holding out her palms and rushing plaintively at the jerk, as if he’s some sort of authority here, reiterating in a childish singsong what she’s just communicated—“We need help”—while Toni Walsh plants herself in the sand, slumps her shoulders and tries to light a cigarette. That leaves it to him. And what does he say? He says, “Who the fuck are you to order us around?”

The man takes a step forward till there’s no more than ten feet separating them. His eyes are a cold feral glitter in the firelight. “I’m the man with the gun,” he says. And pauses to let that sink in, the belligerence of it, the implied threat, the stone-cold arrogance, gazing slowly from face to face, taking his time, before his eyes come back to settle on Dave. “And you’re the trespassers. Worse — you’re vandals. Here to interfere with—”

“Bullshit. You’ve got no authority here.” Swinging round savagely to point a shaking finger at Alma. “And you either, Dr. Takesue. This isn’t even Park Service property.”

The inflatable is on the strand now and Wilson, blinking, running a bewildered hand through his hair, steps into the firelight. “Jesus,” he groans, as if to himself, “what the shit is going on here?” And then, to the big killer, the one with the mouth and the boar’s tusks shoved up under his hatband as if he were some sort of aborigine (and why not stick them through his nose, Dave’s thinking, wouldn’t that be more appropriate?): “Who are you people?”