Joe sat her down on the stoop. She told us she hadn't seen her husband in three weeks. Sure, he'd been on benders before but he always came back, pale and shaking, a few days later.
"Have you gone to the police?"
She nodded, clenching the old robe up around her neck.
"Two, three times, But they know Danny. They think he just run off drunk. They say they'll look for him, that's all."
"You," she said to me, "you were here before a long time ago."
"Yes. I finally found your husband over at the Schooner Race but didn't have a chance to talk with him-"
"-too drunk?"
"No. He just didn't want to. Can you tell me the last time you saw Danny?"
"The police asked me that, too. It was on September eighth, a Thursday."
That was the same night I'd seen him, and been clobbered. We left Mrs. Murdock and walked back to the boatyard. The door was locked and Joe returned for the key. It was the same as when I'd seen it earlier through the window. Benches lined three of the walls and were strewn with ball-peen hammers, swages, pressure hoses, cutting torches, giant vises, and welding equipment. There were ratchet tools, air compressors, gas bottles (metal tanks, actually), power hacksaws, and a hundred assorted other implements. Interlaced between all of them were empty beer cans. Though he preferred Budweiser, he was obviously catholic in his tastes, for there was a representative of every brand I'd heard of and then some. The center of the building was taken up almost completely by the big metal hull of a boat that was nearing completion. Danny Murdock did build boats, and was pretty damn good at it too as far as I could see. The big hull was cradled in a massive wooden dolly mounted on railroad trucks. The trucks rolled on tracks that led down and out the big hangar doors to the harbor. The dolly and trucks were hauled up the track by a big electric winch.
We walked around past the hull and down the tracks. Where they slid out of sight underneath the metal hangar door the ground was damp with dirty water.
"What do you think?" asked Joe.
"I think Danny Murdock's dead. And I think he's probably sleeping at the bottom of the harbor. Or else they took him for a boat ride first and dumped him somewhere rather remote, like perhaps halfway between here and the Isles of Shoals."
"You don't think he skipped? Does he owe money'?"
"He's probably up to his ass in debt, but I don't think he skipped. His disappearing the same day I was bonked on the head is too coincidental. I think that Jim Schilling and Company sensed his fear, his regret at becoming involved with them. It wouldn't take a guy like Schilling long to decide what to do with him."
We climbed up inside the hull and searched it. Nothing. Next we went after the papers. This was difficult because they were scattered to hell and gone all over the workshop. But most of them were in two big drawers under the main workbench. Orders and invoices were scrawled on forms that were obviously purchased from dime stores. The writing wasn't very clear and there was no order to the many sheets and lists. We scrambled through the jungle of paper searching for a recurring name, a large job order… anything. There was only confusion and messy handwriting.
Having struck out, we returned to the hull in the center of the shop. We wondered where the owner was and when he'd show up to claim his near-finished dragger. Almost all small boatyard work is done on a custom basis, with the shipwright receiving a hefty down payment at the outset. Where was this boat's owner? We gave the place a last look around. Then I remembered Danny's wife saying she was at her sister's the night it all happened. I grabbed a big hammer and idly tapped it along the hull. Nothing. It bonged the same all along its length. Then Joe asked for the hammer and went back up the ladder. I followed and he was pointing to two squarish upright stacks that projected up on each side of the vessel just forward of her beam. They were made of folded steel plate, about two feet across and almost ten feet tall. They were braced to the sides of the hull and acted as frames to hold the cabin and bridge, which hadn't been added yet. They were about eight feet apart. Joe bumped them with the hammer: They both bonged. But I got down low just above the keel I and did the same. The port pillar didn't bong, it thumped. We examined the tops of these channels. The starboard one was capped with a plate that fitted it exactly. The port one had the proper cap, but the worst looking weld job I'd ever seen. The bead was all glumpy, and had been run two or three times in spots. I even saw the remains of two old welding rods that had frozen to the steel and had to be chipped off with a cold chisel. No master craftsman had done that.
"What do you think'?" asked Joe.
"You asked me that before. You're the cop. I'd say we'd be smart to open these."
"I'm with you-"
"OK. The owner of this place is not here, but we were admitted by his next-of-kin. So I'm going to get one of those heavy duty drills and poke through."
"I'm still with you."
He watched while I hauled a big half-inch drill up the ladder, cradling it on my hip, and set to work. I had a good carbon bit working for me, but it still took almost ten minutes to penetrate the half-inch plate at the top of the port pillar. Cautiously, I sniffed at the hole.
"Well?" asked Joe anxiously.
"Naw. I just smell kerosene, or motor oil. Maybe it's some kind of rust-proofing. Let me try the other one."
I did. It did not smell like motor oil. So much for the upper portions, now to try lower down. I got an extension cord and seated myself just over the keel, right in front of the starboard pillar. It was dark down there but it didn't matter. I finished the hole. Nothing. Then I turned and began at the port side. Even before the drill pushed through all the way dark fluid collected on the bit. When the hole was finished and I pulled the bit out, a stream of it snaked out at me. I jumped to my feet and called for a light, which Joe provided. I looked at the fluid. It looked like old motor oil. I collected some on my finger and sniffed. It smelled like old motor oil. I wasn't going to taste it.
"I think it's old motor oil," I said triumphantly.
Joe's voice boomed and echoed down to me: "'Why would anyone do that?"
"Dunno," I said as I climbed up and out of the hull and over to the nearest bench. I grabbed the longest welding rod I could lay my hands on and returned to the bowels of the boat. The electrode went into the hole about three inches and stopped. I jabbed it in. It made no noise, just stopped. I wiggled it about, pushing. Something. Not hard like metal… something. In the starboard hole it went in easily until it fell in, plunking down out of sight.
I rose to leave the hull, but just before I started back up the ladderway my nostrils caught, the faint, faint whiff of another odor. In my mind's eye I saw the bloated corpses of cattle and deer, swollen like balloons, legs up in the hot sun. I saw the clustering of filthy birds in a writhing, flapping heap with hooves and antlers sticking out the sides.
"Well?" asked Joe."
"Well maybe they didn't drop poor Danny into the drink near the Isles of Shoals after all. But I've got a way to find out. Let's turn the heat up and get out of here for a few hours."
We decided to go to lunch. Joe thought it would be nice to take Mrs. Murdock along. He had a heart of gold. We had a tough time talking her into it. I suppose in her state she felt rather ashamed of herself and her plight, and simply wanted to hang around the wreck of a house and think about her wreck of a husband and her wrecked life in general. But Joe succeeded in the end, and Mrs. Katherine Murdock got dolled up enough to join us in the car. She actually wasn't that bad looking, though a trifle lumpy and dumpy from the life she'd led over the past dozen years. She had probably been really pretty once.