The crafty bugger must have been pulling my leg, Chris decided, as payback for me borrowing his boat.
Canada Bay sliced a deep gash through spectacular rounded mountains on either side. To the southwest a hulking mountain range formed silhouettes of barren, inhospitable rock, like giants asleep in the sky. They would be impossible to traverse except where creeks tumbled through. On the north side, however, trees and grasslands blanketed the hills, offering some camouflage. He piloted the boat slowly so that he could peer into the crevices and shadowy shelter of the forest.
Nothing.
Closer to town, scattered houses and wharves began to crop up along the shore. As the settlement increased, he found what looked like the main wharf and pulled up. Unlike most communities on the Northern Peninsula, Roddickton did not make its living from fishing, and the absence of fishing boats, nets, and crab pots on the pier was striking. Chris knew it was founded as a lumber town and he assumed the sawmills and lumber wharves were farther up the channel.
The afternoon sun broke through as he climbed onto the wharf. He was hot, hungry, and sore. Every bone was rattled by the pounding of the boat and the throbbing of the engine. Peeling off his jacket, he put in a call to Willington.
“No sign of anyone, sad to say,” Willington said, sounding more disappointed than sad. “But I do have a bit of intel. You’re just in time for an afternoon beer. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Beer’s an inspired idea, Chris thought, stretching his cramped legs. “Can you check with the guys in Conche first, to see if Amanda’s shown up back there? And then can we do a pass around town here?”
“Sure thing. That will take us five minutes.”
While he waited, Chris studied his map and took stock of the town. Willington was right; there weren’t many places to hide. The population of roughly a thousand people was concentrated on half a dozen little streets and strung out along the main highway that continued on to Englee. A strange woman landing in town with her dog would have been noticed within seconds.
He crossed the street and knocked on the first house on the block. The elderly woman who answered said she’d seen no one — not a woman and her dog, nor a man and his son. The answer was the same at the next three houses.
“No strange boats moored up either,” said a big, beefy man who was mowing his lawn.
Chris cursed in frustration. Had he wasted a whole day? It looked as if Amanda had not come up to Roddickton, and unless Phil had snuck in and out in the middle of the night, neither had he. For all Chris knew, Amanda was now safely back in Conche, wondering where the hell he was.
That hope was quickly dashed when Willington picked him up. There was still no word on Amanda. After a brief, unproductive search through the streets, Willington took him to his bachelor bungalow on the outskirts of town. He settled Chris on the deck out back, propped his feet on the deck rail, and popped two QVs before sitting back with a sigh.
“I’ve been thinking,” he began. “I wouldn’t be so quick to assume this fella Cousins didn’t come through here. He’s on the run so he’s hardly going to pilot his boat into the middle of town in broad daylight. He knows a thousand pairs of eyes would pick him up in a second. Likely he ditched the boat past the town under cover of darkness and walked up to the highway. Moose-hunting season starts tomorrow and this is the heart of moose country, so there’s lots of strangers coming and going. Guys are heading out to their hunting lodges and others coming in from Corner Brook or Deer Lake. Some even from the mainland. It’d be easy to hitch a ride or even stow away in the back for a bit.”
“Moose-hunting season.” Chris pondered the implications. “That means lots more trucks on the road, lots more eyes in the bush.”
Willington downed the last of his beer. “ATVs too, driving all over the backcountry. We’ve got more moose around here than pretty near anywhere else in Canada.”
“That means the danger of stray bullets and civilians getting in the way.”
Willington laughed. “And an even greater danger of meeting an enraged bull. It’s rutting season and they don’t take kindly to outsiders getting too close. Seven, eight hundred pounds of charging moose is not a pretty sight.”
“Did Amis set up roadblocks?”
“Not him, but the incident commander did, yeah. Both ends of the highway through town here, and at the turnoffs to Conche and Croque. All the major points of entry to the island, as well. But if Cousins hitched a ride out of here two days ago, it’s a case of the horse and the barn door. But —” Willington sat forward with a flourish. His eyes danced. “— I do have a few pieces of news. Want another beer?”
“Willie! Spill it!”
Willington roared with delight as he fished two more beers from the cooler at his feet. Holding one out to Chris, he laid his finger alongside his nose. “This is on the QT. Back door report. Amis and the incident commander aren’t telling me shit, but I have my sources. First off, a fisherman spotted Stink’s boat a couple of days ago, going like a bat out of hell. He was too far away to see who was in it, but it’s a good bet it was Phil.”
“Where?”
“Along the coast north of Stink’s place. Unfortunately the guy wasn’t paying much attention, because it was before the murder was discovered, but he thinks it was going north. They’re sending a party out at first light tomorrow to check on that boat you reported up near Windy Point.”
Chris tried to think through the increasing fog of alcohol. “But if it was him, why would he go ashore in the middle of nowhere? Why not keep going all the way to St. Anthony?”
Willington shrugged. “Well, the one thing the fisherman did notice was that the boat was going pretty fast. Faster than Stink’s boat likes, he said. Anyway, at least it’s a lead. Right now they’ll take any lead they can get. They have no idea what direction Cousins has gone or where he might be heading. It’s hard to even know where to initiate the search. And it’s a hell of a lot of territory to search, all rugged, mountainous terrain. You could hide in a cove and not be seen by a boat passing fifty feet offshore. Hell, you could hide in the tuckamore and not be seen from twenty feet!” He leaned forward, his expression sobering. “If he doesn’t want to be found, we may never find him.”
Chris’s thoughts drifted to Amanda. She too was groping in the dark, without the communications and manpower of the RCMP, and nothing but her own stubborn grit to drive her on. How long would it take before she gave up and came back?
“Which brings me to my second piece of intel,” Willington was saying, his round face creasing in a grin. “What are the chances? You tie an anchor around a guy and you dump him overboard 250 kilometres from shore. What are the chances of that body ever being found?”
“Pure luck,” Chris agreed.
“Shit luck for the guy who threw him overboard. That body the shrimpers towed ashore? Preliminary post-mortem results show he likely died of hypothermia, but he was also near starvation. Six feet tall, but weighed little more than a hundred pounds when he died.”
Chris cast his mind back to that night on the wharf in St. Anthony. Had it really been only four days ago? The poor man had been dressed in a thin jacket and even thinner shoes, providing poor protection against the chilly winds of the North Atlantic. And now it appeared that not only had he been inadequately clothed on the ship, but also inadequately fed. A stranger far from home, frozen and starving.
“Okay, but someone tied an anchor to the man’s body, so it’s more than just natural death. What is the medical examiner thinking? Just a cover-up?”
Willington shrugged. “I don’t think they’re ruling out criminal negligence causing death.”
“But someone’s hiding something! They went to some lengths to prevent the body from being found, and at the very least, the victim wasn’t provided the bare necessities of life by the captain of the ship.” Sensing his patience and his temper fraying, Chris