“Mom thinks Dennison was scared about the patrol — what you might come up with.”
“And he’d use a cop to snuff her? What about everyone else? Ann was the least involved.”
“And the most vulnerable.”
“Doesn’t wash with me. I’ll let you know if something does.”
“Thanks again, Sergeant. See ya, Knight.”
The dog stared at him.
“Good luck,” said Blodgett.
Jim cruised the upper peninsula, looping in a wide pattern back toward Blodgett’s. The duplexes huddled close against the chilly night and the waves slapped crisply on the beach. Through the alleys, he could see the sand, paired crescents of shadow and pale light disappearing into darkness toward the water. The parked cars glistened with condensation, windshields clouded. He came toward Blodgett’s place from the opposite direction, parked five houses down, and cut his lights. Sunk down in the seat, he could see the glow of the utility light and the outline of the boat between the upper curve of his steering wheel and the dash.
An hour and a half later, Blodgett’s driveway went dark. Twenty minutes after that, the red back-up lights of the trailer glowed through the fog and the rig backed gently into the street. Blodgett cut the turn perfectly, easing the truck into a pivot that left it pointed away from Jim, heading toward Ocean Boulevard. Weir started up the engine and moved tentatively, duplicating the right turn with plenty of night between them.
Weir hoped that the Chris-Craft was big enough to cut Blodgett’s vision down to the sideview mirrors. Blodgett backtracked Pacific Coast Highway, cut across on Superior, and headed up into the industrial zone that separates Newport from Costa Mesa. Weir let a couple of cars between them. Following the sportfisher was like following a white elephant. The body and tranny shops slipped by, the custom-paint places, the machine shops and boat yards — chain link, modular buildings, trailers, security lights, watchdogs.
Blodgett turned left on Placentia, then right on Halyard. Jim drove past, then doubled back in time to see the boat disappearing through a chain-link gate topped with three strands of barbed wire. Two men slid the gate shut as the trailer wobbled past, then retreated to the dark confines. Weir parked past the entrance, across the way.
The compound was surrounded by the chain link and barbed wire. Behind it were a low one-story building with small windows, two modular “offices” that looked new, and a large lot filled with pump trucks, generators, drilling rigs, small Cats, mobile heavy-duty auxiliary pumps, and a few pickups. A plain black and white sign atop the one-story building read CHEVERTON SEWER & SEPTIC — EST. 1959. There was a new Corvette parked outside one of the offices. Weir lost sight of Blodgett’s boat as it moved past the heavy equipment and the fog closed in behind.
Ten minutes turned into twenty, then thirty. Jim listened to the radio again. Five minutes later, the two men opened the gate again and out came Blodgett’s rig. The trailer sat a little heavier on its springs, thought Weir, but it was hard to be sure. The deck of the boat was covered with a blue tarp. Tall shapes suggested themselves beneath the canvas. When Blodgett had made a ponderous left turn back onto Placentia, Jim started up and followed.
They left the industrial zone, followed Newport Boulevard west, then negotiated the loop-around bridge that left them southbound on Coast Highway. The same bridge that Blodgett’s phantom cop car used, thought Weir, the same bridge that Ann and her man had taken that night. The lights of the restaurants smeared by in the fog; the traffic signal ahead pleaded a faint and stranded yellow. There were four cars ahead of him. Blodgett has his hands full with the rig and the fog, he thought, as the boat lurched ahead, moving south still, toward the Back Bay.
Down Pacific Coast Highway now, past the yacht brokers and coffee shops, the restaurants and clubs, onto the Bay Bridge, to Jim’s right the static glitter of houselights in the fog, to his left the water of the bay widening, deepening, spreading darkly toward the eastern reaches where it doubles in salinity, seeps into the mud that never dries, stagnates around grasses for which it provides no nourishment, advances with mullet and catfish that prowl the uneasy bottom for food, moving farther east into a final exhausted eddy that leaves it flat and spent, prey to hours of unhurried sun.
At Jamboree, Blodgett’s boat turned left, then again at Back Bay Drive, continuing past the Newporter resort and golf course. Jim followed another quarter mile east, headlights off now, along the dark estuary, until the truck angled to its left, stopped while Blodgett unlocked a chain-link gate, then climbed back in and guided his rig into a wide turnaround that ended in a dock.
Weir pulled off the road, climbed the minor elevation of a hillock, and parked. Through the fog, Blodgett’s boat formed visibly, then vanished. Jim could hear doors opening and closing, scraps of voices blown to him in the breeze. So, he picked up a fishing buddy at Cheverton Sewer & Septic, he thought, ready for a night run off the twelve-mile bank? Weir got out, shut his door quietly, and moved toward an untended row of oleander that sheltered the dock entry from the road. Squatting amid the poisonous foliage, he could see the truck backing Duty Free onto the ramp, Blodgett driving and his buddy — a short man in a flannel shirt and a baseball cap — already aboard. A moment later, the ship was afloat, its propeller pulling it back into the bay. Blodgett left the truck on the ramp, climbed onto the dock, and ran out to the end. Duty Free glided in to pick him up, accelerating noisily. Within seconds, she had entered the fog, leaving for Weir only the departing growl of an overworked, poorly maintained engine.
Jim walked down to Blodgett’s truck, boot heels sliding in the sand, and climbed the fence. Blodgett is the kind of guy, he thought, who’s got a burglar alarm on everything. Jim peered through Knight’s smudges on the passenger-side window: an empty cup of coffee on the dash, a few compact discs scattered on the seat, a police radio fastened beneath the CD player. For a moment, he stood on the dock and looked toward the other side, but the fog choked off his eyesight at a hundred yards. Half a mile across, he thought, is where Ann went in. The water lapped against the pilings and a low-flying seabird hissed past invisibly above him.
Forty minutes later — it was 11:55 — Duty Free appeared mid-bay, engine clanking horribly, trailing smoke that mingled quickly in the fog. She labored into dock. Then, the reverse of what happened before: Blodgett off at dock’s end, Baseball Cap and Knight bringing the boat in close and finally running her up onto the trailer while Blodgett, knee-deep in water, helped to guide her on. Within five minutes, they were back in the truck and the stern of Duty Free was clearing the bay. Whatever was under the tarp was still there now. Jim watched the water steaming off the taillights as Blodgett followed the loop that would bring him to the gate, then back to the road. Weir let his truck roll down the hill, shifted to second, popped the clutch, and rumbled along the road well ahead of Duty Free.
He pulled off on a utility road by the golf course and waited. Two minutes later, Blodgett drove by, faster now, the boat swaying heavily upon its trailer. So, Weir thought, a sportfisher with no fishing rods, no tackle, no landing net, no game bags, no gaff. Two fishermen without a fish. A trip that took two hours to get ready for, and forty minutes to complete. If they weren’t after fish, what were they after?
He watched the trailer moving along the bayfront, heading for Jamboree Road.
Chapter 12
While Jim Weir watched the red taillights vanish in the fog, Joseph Goins was sitting in his tiny motel kitchenette, listening to the hideous rock and roll that pounded through the wall from the unit next to his. He set his mind against the noise, then went to the small gas-leaking oven and removed the journal from the upper rack. It was after midnight now: time for Ann. He looked up at her faces, presiding from the walls around him. With great pain and pleasure, he began reading, at the beginning, where he liked to start.