He spit blood at me. I felt its spray, all over my face. Whether it was intentional or just a last gasp of air, that’s something I’d never be able to find out for sure. Two seconds later, the lights in his eyes went out for good.
“Alex,” Lou said, pulling me to my feet and looking me over. “Are you shot? Are you all right?”
“How did you find me?”
Lou bent over, trying to catch his breath. After a minute of wheezing, he straightened up and took a folding knife out of his pocket and cut the zip tie. I stood there rubbing my wrists.
“I went to the post office and asked the lady at the counter,” he said. “She told me you had already been there, looking for the same house. She said there must be quite a party going on.”
“Yeah, we had a party, all right.”
I wiped the blood from my face. From the chest down, I was still covered in the thick muck.
“Just as I got there,” he said, “I saw the vehicle leaving. So I followed you.”
“Well, I’ll thank you for saving my life later,” I said. “Right now we have to find Vinnie and Buck. They’re out in a boat somewhere.”
“What? Are you serious?”
I had to bend over myself for a moment. Not so much to breathe but to fight down the bile rising in my throat. All the stress and adrenaline pulsing through my body.
“I’ll explain on the way,” I said. “Come on, we’ve got to find a boat of our own. We might not have much time.”
“Alex, what are you talking about? Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we have to find them before Corvo does.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Come on, help me,” Lou said. He took hold of Sugarpie by the arms and started dragging him toward the swamp.
“What are you doing?”
“We can’t leave them here. Somebody will find them. Maybe today.”
“Lou, we don’t have time for this.”
“It’ll go a lot faster if you help me, God damn it! I’m not leaving dead bodies on the ground and walking away!”
The day was already turned inside out. I had come two inches from being in the swamp myself, so what the hell. I grabbed Sugarpie’s legs and helped Lou heave him into the swamp. Then we went back and gave ourselves hernias doing the same for Dumpling. The green slime on the water parted for both bodies, then closed back up as if it had been undisturbed for the past hundred years.
“Someone will find their vehicle,” I said. “It’s stuck, so we can’t move it.”
“Let them find it. By the time they figure out these boys are in the swamp, we’ll be long gone.”
Lou’s face was flushed and he looked like he was going to pass out, but it was all I could do to keep up with him as we ran back up the trail to the rental car. We got in and I promptly destroyed the front seat with all of the mud I was wearing. I had to move a bottle of wine to sit down.
“Throw that out the window,” Lou said. “It was just a prop.”
“Let me guess, you took it with you to the post office and told the lady you were looking for the party at Harry and Jo’s house.”
“Of course I did.” He kept talking while he put the car in gear and hit the road. “Who else is gonna know where everybody lives? Even the renters?”
“So it took you two minutes, is what you’re saying. It took me almost two hours.”
“Whatever,” he said, gritting his teeth as he made a hard turn. “I’m just a better con man, I guess.”
“You think that ferry’s left yet?” I said, wiping mud off my watch. I wanted to go straight to the dock and grab Harry and Jo, or hell, maybe even try Jo’s own little trick. Stick the gun in her ribs and tell her to start talking. Make them tell us exactly where Vinnie and Buck were so we could go out and get them. Maybe even take Harry and Jo out there and leave them in their place. I couldn’t remember ever wishing harm on a woman, but today Jo was begging to be an exception.
“I’m sure it’s gone by now,” Lou said.
“I can’t get over how sick it is, the way Jo got those guys to do anything she wanted. She even made sure she and Harry were off the island when they took me out here. They were obviously just giving themselves alibis, and yet…”
I ran out of words. I just shook my head.
“Who were those guys, anyway?” Lou said.
“A couple of losers? No family life? That’s my guess. She had them wrapped around her little finger.”
“Yeah, it sounds kinda sick to me, too.”
I looked over at him as he drove. He’d just killed two men. No matter how justified it may have been, he’d done it and now he was back on the trail. His jaw was clenched tight but otherwise he looked perfectly composed.
We made our way back out to the shore, then north until he pulled into the empty driveway. I got out and went up the steps to the back porch. The breeze had swept away the last trace of marijuana smoke. Down on the water, I saw the jet ski Harry had been riding. Drifting with the current, it was pulling the anchor rope tight.
“What’s the plan?” Lou said as he came up behind me. “Where are they?”
“They’re out there.” I pointed toward the water.
“Out there where?”
“I don’t know exactly. I’m trying to remember everything Harry said. He came in on the jet ski and he said it was a rough trip. I think he said it was ten miles. Whether that’s true or not…”
“He may have been exaggerating, you mean.”
“We need a map.” I slid open the glass door and stepped inside, something I hadn’t had the chance to do on my first visit. It was a beautiful house inside, I suppose, simple and elegant, but I didn’t have the time to appreciate it. I went over to the far wall where there were stacks of paper on the shelves. I was looking for a map.
“Right here,” Lou said. He was standing by the coffee table I had walked by on my way in. There was an ashtray on the table, along with a lighter and some magazines, but then as I got closer I saw what he was talking about. I swept everything onto the floor and there, under the glass surface of the table, was a detailed nautical map of Beaver Island and the surrounding islands, complete with water depths.
“Okay, so we’re about here,” I said, pointing to the shoreline on the northwest corner of the island. There were seven smaller islands arranged to the north and the west.
“The scale’s down there in the corner. How far is ten miles?”
It looked like the length of my hand corresponded to around ten miles, so I put my hand on the map, with the base of my palm at our starting point, then turned it in a half-circle to approximate the ten-mile arc.
“Which way did he come in?” Lou said.
“I couldn’t see him at that point. But I don’t think it would have mattered. You’d be coming in pretty straight no matter what, just to avoid the rocks out there. That water goes out pretty shallow for a while.”
He stood there watching me, waiting for me to think it through. The seconds ticked by.
“I’m trying to remember,” I said, playing it all back through my head. “He’s standing there and he’s telling Jo what a rough trip it was, and yeah, he’s pointing right out that way. To that big island right there.”
We could see it through the window, dominating the horizon. I looked back at the map.
“High Island,” I said. “It’s five miles away.”
“As big as it is, I still don’t see any roads on the map. I bet the far side of that thing is totally deserted.”
I stood up and went out onto the deck.
“Yes, it’s right there,” I said. “That’s the direction he was pointing in. It’s right there.”
I spotted my cell phone on the table. I picked it up and opened it. The signal was weak.
“Alex, they’re right out there. Right there. Right now. We have to go get them.”
“We don’t have a boat, Lou.”
Then I stopped. One more detail, coming back to me. Harry stripping off his wet suit, then tossing the plastic lanyard from his wrist. The wet clothing was still there, piled in a heap. I went over and picked up the lanyard. I was expecting a key, but instead it was a little black U-shaped tab.