T. Boyle - When the Killing's Done

The release is short-lived. As soon as they shove off they’re in trouble all over again. The seas are up because of the storm, the dinghy lifted and pounded in the breakers and a furious keening wind rising up out of nowhere to rake them down the length of the beach and away from the receding lights of the boat. The shoreline is black, the water blacker still. There are rocks out there, shoals, channels where the current can suck you in and flip you end over end in a heartbeat. Dave knows it and Wilson knows it too. Wilson’s fighting the tiller, the engine straining in a high continuous whine, and it’s as if they’re dead in the water. Minutes stretch out and snap, one after the other, until at long last they’re heading into the wind and the lights of the Paladin stabilize on the horizon and then begin to rush up on them. No one says a word, though Dave is seething, half a beat from shoving Wilson aside and taking the tiller himself, and when they get there, when finally they’re alongside the boat, the dinghy keeps lurching away from the stern while the Paladin rises and pitches at exactly the wrong moment till his nerves are stripped raw, and it’s all they can do to haul Kelly up on deck and stow the dinghy without killing themselves.

It’s all bad. He’s in a panic to get under way before the Coast Guard shows up, and how he’s going to avoid them out in the channel — or worse, back at the marina, where they’ll be sure to be waiting — he doesn’t know. . but then, he keeps telling himself, he hasn’t done anything wrong. A girl dies tragically out in the middle of nowhere and you bring her back, isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? You don’t stand around with your hands in your pockets listening to Alma Boyd Takesue, you drag her out of the water and rush her to the hospital so they can pronounce her dead and take it from there. Maybe he does want the Coast Guard, after all. Definitely, once they’re at sea, he’s going to have to put out a distress call. Make it official. Do things by the book. Show that they’re not trying to hide anything whether they were trespassing or not because the only thing that matters here is getting medical attention for this girl. . right? But why is he making speeches to himself? And why isn’t the anchor up? Why isn’t he at the helm? Why, for shit’s sake, aren’t they under way?

All three of them are dripping wet, that’s why, shivering, banging into each other like zombies as they fling themselves around the cabin, stripping off their wet clothes and tearing through the locker for anything dry — a blanket, a sweatshirt, shorts, socks, a windbreaker so stained with oil it’s translucent. Their faces are drawn. They won’t look each other in the eye. The cabin has never seemed so cramped and inadequate. “We need to get out of here,” he keeps saying but he can’t seem to stop shivering. The electric heater’s up full. Wilson’s already at the stove, boiling water for tea. “Or hot cocoa, man, what do you want? Josh? Dave?”

Then, finally — it can’t have been more than ten minutes, fifteen at the outside — he’s at the helm, the anchor’s up and he’s nosing the bow out to sea. Everything lurches, the waves hitting them broadside, then they’re stern to the wind and cruising east along the atramental flank of the island, nothing before them and nothing behind, not even the glow of the bonfire. Warmth trickles up from below. He’s in dry clothes now, wearing a sweater over a flannel shirt buttoned right up to the collar, but his hair, wet still, chills the back of his neck like a cold dead hand laid there, like Kelly’s hand. After a while the scent of hot chocolate begins to waft up the stairs and he swallows involuntarily, suddenly aware of how hungry he is. In the next moment Wilson and Josh are in the cockpit with him and he’s got a mug of hot chocolate cradled between his thighs and a handful of saltines smeared with peanut butter vibrating on the seat beside him.

“Shit,” Wilson offers, “what a day, huh?”

“Worst day of my life,” Josh says in a hollow monotone. “I still can’t believe it.”

“Me either.” Wilson’s leaning forward over his knees, adulterating his cocoa with a splash of no-name scotch out of a pint bottle. “Josh?” He hoists the bottle, gives it a wag.

“Sure,” Josh murmurs, holding out his cup even as the boat bucks and half the liquid rides up out of it to slosh over the deck. And carpet.

“Dave?”

“No, not for me. I’ve got to keep my head clear here, because we’re in the shit now — in so many ways I can’t begin to tell you. Soon as we’re in cell phone range I’m calling Sterling.”

“What, the lawyer?’

He’s picturing Sterling sitting down to dinner with his dried-up stick of a wife, droning on in his dead-and-buried court voice about whatever case he’s on — or maybe he’s telling jokes, mixing a shaker of martinis, getting down in some dance club with a woman in a low-cut top with her boobs hanging out who definitely isn’t his wife, who can say? He doesn’t know a thing about the man, except that he bills like an extortionist.

“Yeah,” he says, “I need to find out where we stand. I mean, I don’t really feature the Coast Guard boarding us, you know what I mean? We’ve got to put out a Mayday at some point, but I’m thinking that’s when we see the lights of the harbor in about”—he checks his watch—“two and a quarter hours maybe. And then they can do whatever they want, take our statements, unload the body, bring in the detectives and the coroner and whoever else. In fact, I want Sterling there. On the fucking dock.”

“But we’re not in trouble”—Josh’s voice is so reduced it’s barely audible over the thrash of the waves and the steady throb of the engine—“are we?”

Wilson shakes his head. “No way. They’re going to want a statement — we’re witnesses, right? Or you are. You saw her die, right? So it’s like a car accident or something, where you witnessed it and the cops want to know who, where, when and why, that sort of thing.”

There’s a sudden punch at the bow, a rogue wave moving out of sync with the prevailing seas, and they’re weightless a moment before slamming down into the trough and rising back up again, the boat shivering along its length. And then once more, the slap, the rise, the plunge, only this time, on the way down something slams at the cabin door and it takes them all a moment to realize what it is.

“We got to bring her in,” Josh says, staggering to his feet.

“Leave her,” Dave says, thinking of the mess, of the sand and the wet and whatever fluids might be leaking out of her at this point. Aren’t you supposed to loose your bowels when you die? Didn’t he read that someplace?

“Leave her? This is a human being we’re talking about.”

“A former human being.”

“You son of a bitch. Fuck you. Cammy’s right. If it wasn’t for you—”

He’s on the cusp of getting up out of the chair and laying into this baby-faced whining kid who might as well be in diapers he’s so pathetic because who does he think he is — who the fuck does he think he is — to talk to him like that, when Wilson, the voice of reason, intercedes. “What if she goes overboard?”

“She’s not going anywhere.”

“But if she does—”

They’re right. Of course they’re right. Lose the body and it looks as if they’re covering up, as if there’s been foul play, murder even. Suddenly he’s ashamed of himself for even thinking this way. Until today he’s never seen a dead person in his life, and here he is, plotting like a criminal, like one of the killers themselves. “Yeah, okay,” he says finally. “Bring her in. But don’t lay her on any of the bunks or the couch either. Just on the deck, okay?”