Black River (16 page)

Saturday, October 21

1:34 a.m.

The cornstalks stood dry
and broken among the furrows, their shattered shafts pale against the
frozen brown earth. Here and there, snow had gathered along the
windward edges of the rows, like lace along the neck of a
dress.

The preacher had to ask the
operator to shut down the backhoe so he could be heard above the wind.
Then he started on about other lives in other times, as the mourners
stood hand in hand, waiting for him to speak his piece, so they could
put the box in the ground and finally be free of everything but the
memory. Or so they hoped.

As he read from the book, the sky
darkened and the air was filled with the rush of wings. A flock of
blackbirds filled the sky, soaring together, veering off at angles, and
then, as if by signal, landing in the cornfield, where they began to
pick among the stubble like refugees. And above the droning voice,
above the whine of the wind and the rustle of the birds, the hollow
metal sound began, metric and mechanical: bong
…
bong
…
bong
…

C
orso sat up in bed. The muted gong of the
alarm system beat a rhythm in his ears. He checked the digital clock by
his bedside. One thirty-five. Probably a dog, he thought. That big
ugly shepherd they take out on the Catalina thirty-six.

He lay back and waited for the dog to wander off and
the alarm to go silent. The wind had died.
Saltheart
floated lightly in the slip. The moment
he felt the boat move, his heart began to pound in his chest. Somebody
was coming up the stairs he had left in place. Nobody in the marina
would come on board without permission. It just wasn’t done. You
hailed from the dock. You hammered on the hull. You did whatever you
had to, but you didn’t come aboard without permission. He sat
back up and flipped the switch, turning off the alarm. Then the boat
rocked again as a second person climbed the ladder to the deck, and he
felt his mouth go dry.

He bumped himself down off the berth. Wearing only a
pair of Kelly-green basketball trunks, he climbed the three stairs and
poked his head up into the galley. Maybe Rogers was up and wandering
around. It took a single glance to stop the breath in his chest and
make his blood feel cold.

Shadows, two of them: one tall, one short. Short had
come on board first. He was halfway to the stern when he stuck his
fingers into the window crack and slid the window all the way open.
Then the curtains were eased back. The cops maybe?

Tall came in head first. With the grace of a gymnast,
he used his hands to cushion his roll down onto the couch, came up
lightly on his feet, then reached back out the window. When the hand
reappeared, it held a silenced automatic. Corso felt his insides
contract. So much for the cops. Tall set the automatic off to the side
on the settee and put both hands out the window. The sight of a pump
shotgun in his hands got Corso moving.

He swallowed a mouthful of air and backed down the
stairs. Once at the bottom, he quietly closed and locked the
companionway door. He knew the puny barrel bolt wouldn’t stop a
determined child; he just hoped to slow them down. A movement beneath
his feet announced the second man’s arrival in the salon. Corso
crawled down under the stairs.

His fingers trembled as he unlatched the brass dogs
holding the engine-room hatch, but his brain was starting to work
again. He knew what he had to do. They were only expecting one person
on board. If they went forward, they’d find Rogers in the bunk,
kill her, and then come looking for him. He had to draw them toward
himself and then make his way through the engine room to Rogers in the
bow, hoping like hell they didn’t know anything about boats,
didn’t immediately realize that all they had to do was go up to
the main deck and they could stroll wherever they wanted.

He pulled open the three storage drawers that were
built into the bulkhead. Open, they prevented the door from swinging
inward. He banged his hand hard on the door and ducked down under the
stairs. They came his way. He heard the door handle rattle and the wood
groan. Somebody walked back to the salon and then returned.

An instant later a deep muffled boom shattered the air,
and the companionway door was reduced to splinters. The air was filled
with floating pieces of fabric and fiber. They’d used a couch
cushion to muffle the shotgun’s roar. A second smothered blast,
and the opened drawers were history. The splintered remains were still
in the air, as Corso crawled into the engine room and snapped the four
inside dogs closed.

He reached to his right, switched on the light, and
moved as quickly and quietly as possible toward the bow. He duckwalked
his way between the twin Lehman diesels, picked his way carefully over
the exhaust manifolds and electrical lines. Through the forward storage
area to the forward watertight door, where he sat on his haunches and
took a deep breath. If they’d figured it out and were waiting, he
was dead.

The first dog took him three tries. After that, he was
cool. He pulled the door toward himself. He winced as he stuck his head
out and peered up at the bottom of the stairs. Nothing, so he crawled
out into the hall and stood up. Ran the same door-locking strategy with
the barrel bolt and the open doors and then slid open the berth
door.

Renee Rogers was sitting up in bed. She wore an
expensive-looking gray bra-and-panty set and a serious frown. He
clamped a hand over her mouth. She grabbed his wrist and tried to pull
the hand away. “Shhhhh,” Corso hissed. She began to
struggle, digging her nails into his wrist. Corso reached for her free
hand but missed. Her fingers were hooked into a claw, on their way to
remove his eyes, when the shotgun roared out in the hall and the air
was suddenly full of gunsmoke and debris. Her nails stopped an inch
from his face. When he removed his hand, her mouth hung open.

Corso got to his knees and opened the overhead hatch.
He fought his fingers as he twisted the knob on the restraining arm,
until it finally came off in his hand, allowing the hatch to flop all
the way open. The shotgun roared again. Corso could hear them kicking
out the remaining splinters of the door. He pointed up at the
hatch.

Didn’t have to tell her twice; she scrambled up
and out in an instant. Corso wiggled his shoulders through the narrow
opening and then used his arms to lever himself on deck. He took her by
the hand. To port was the dock, to starboard, Lake Union. He pulled
her toward the lake.

“Over the side,” he whispered.
“It’s our only chance.”

She nodded and put one leg over the rail.

“Stay close to me,” he said.

“I can’t swim,” she said. Her lower
lip quivered.

“I’ll take care of you,” he said.

They stepped off together. Her eyes were wide. Her
instincts pulled her knees to her chest, as they hovered for a moment
before plummeting down into the black water.

The icy water raked his skin like nails, froze the air
in his lungs, and gave him an instant headache. He surfaced, shaking
the water from his eyes. To his left, Rogers was making gasping sounds
and thrashing the water to foam, in a frenzied attempt to stay afloat.
He reached over, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her to him. Her face was
white with terror. She locked her arms and legs around him in a death
grip, sending them both below the surface. Corso held his breath and
pried her loose, spun her in the water, and threw his arm around her
chest in the classic lifeguard manner.

She came up gasping, whimpering. Her body shuddered
uncontrollably as Corso began to stroke his way toward the stern. His
“Shhhh” failed to stop her gasps. The effort made his legs
ache. A cramp tore at his right calf.

From inside the boat, two more muffled shotgun blasts.
They’d be on deck in a minute. At the stern, Corso grabbed the
swim step with one hand. With the other, he spun Renee Rogers in the
water. He slipped his knee between her legs and used it to keep her
afloat. “Listen to me.” Her lips were turning blue, but she
nodded slightly. “You and I are going down under the swim step.
There’s room under there to breathe. Ready?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, just put his arm
around her waist and pulled her underwater. He managed a pair of
scissor kicks before she struggled loose from his grasp and shot to the
surface, banging her head on the underside of the swim step.

Corso came up facing her. The space between the
underside of the swim step and the surface water was just big enough to
keep their heads out of the water. Corso brought his finger to his
lips. She was shaking so violently, he couldn’t tell if
she’d understood. Her face was the color of oatmeal. She was
gasping for air.

The swim step was a lattice of teak, designed to keep
water from collecting on its surface. She had her hands thrust up
through a couple of the spaces, holding on for dear life.
Unfortunately, anyone looking down from the stern would surely see her
fingers and then they’d both be dead.

Corso pointed to her hands and shook his head.
“Let go.”

“No,” she breathed.

Corso swam to the rear of the step, put his back
against the hull, and grabbed hold of the support bracket. He gestured
for her to come. She refused to move. “Theeey’re gonnnnna
seeee your fiiiiingers,” he stuttered out. She looked up at her
hands, over at Corso, and began to cry. He extended a hand. His legs
were going numb from the cold. He could barely keep them moving.
“Come on,” he said.

She came his way hand over hand, exchanging one grip
for another until she was locked against his side. “Hang on to
me,” he whispered. She tried to speak but couldn’t get her
jaw muscles to cooperate. She was shivering and clinging to him like a
barnacle when he began to feel movement in the hull. They were coming
toward the stern. He brought a finger to his lips, but she was too far
gone to notice.

He heard the hinged section of rail swing up and the
gate swing open. Ten seconds passed before the visitor stepped down
onto the swim step. All Corso could see were parts of the bottoms of
his shoes as he moved tentatively around the platform. Someone
whispered in Spanish and the feet disappeared. Half a minute later, a
slight roll of the hull told him at least one of them was on the
dock.

He couldn’t be sure, but above the gentle lapping
of the waves and the chattering of his own teeth he thought maybe he
heard the sounds of shoes on the dock.

He waited. What if it was a decoy? What if one of them
was still on board? She was sobbing silently now. He held her tight and
waited. Seemed like he waited for an hour. Until finally he knew that
if he waited any longer, he’d die there in the water. Drown six
feet from safety because his muscles wouldn’t carry him the
distance.

He pushed off the hull with his aching legs, propelling
them out from under the step. His left arm was wrapped around Rogers.
He threw his right arm up onto the wood and pressed her back against
the edge. “You gotta help out here,” he whispered in her
ear. “We’re almost there.” She shivered harder but
opened her eyes. “Just roll up onto the step.” In slow
motion, she loosened her left arm and grabbed a piece of the step. Her
teeth chattered like castanets. He felt her grip loosen, lowered his
body in the water, and grabbed her around the hips. “Ready?
One…two…three!” He managed to force one leg and one
hip up onto the surface. Then he got his shoulder under her and kept
pushing until the rest of her torso and the other leg followed suit.
She flopped over onto her stomach and began to vomit. Corso gathered
his strength and forced a knee over the edge but couldn’t muster
the power to pull himself aboard. Then he felt her hands, pulling at
him, and he tried again, finally flopping up next to her on his belly,
breathing like a locomotive.

He lay there for a moment and then rose to his knees.
He crawled to the port side of the step, hooked a frozen hand into one
of the indented footholds, and pulled himself upright, where he could
grab the handrails. He stood leaning against the transom. He
couldn’t feel his legs or his feet. And then the boat
rocked…twice. His heart threatened to tear his chest. They must
have been nearby…watching…waiting.

Rogers felt it too. She looked up, read the expression
of helplessness on Corso’s face, and began to sob. They were on
the stern now, just above his head. When he looked up, he was staring
down the barrel of a gun. He closed his eyes and waited to die.

“Frank Corso,” a voice boomed,
“you’re under arrest for the murders of David Rosewall and
Margaret Dougherty. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an
attorney…”

Another voice was muttering in the background.
“This is Sorenstam. Get me an Aid Car,” it was saying.
“Forty-seven-ninety Fairview. Send two if you’ve got
’em.”

Saturday, October 21

2:04 a.m.

W
asn’t till one of the uniforms came
up with Rogers’s wallet that Detectives First Class Troy Hamer
and Roger Sorenstam begin to take what Corso was telling them
seriously. They didn’t give a damn about the damage to the boat.
They were stuck on crimes of passion. All they knew was they had a
witness to Corso’s fight with the boyfriend, a nurse who said
he’d objected to Corso’s presence in Dougherty’s
room, and an LPN who saw a tall man with a black ponytail exiting the
ground-floor side door of the hospital at the time of the murders. Dead
to rights. Hold the sirens.

Corso sat on the couch wrapped in a wool blanket. The
last of the EMTs were up front with Rogers when the uniform handed the
wallet to Hamer. “She’s telling the same story he
is,” he whispered, and shot a glance at Corso.

Hamer made a sour face. “We better get a
crime-scene team down here,” he said to Sorenstam.

Corso got to his feet. “I’m leaving,”
he said.

“We’re still conducting an investigation
here,” Hamer snapped.

“I’m going to the hospital,” Corso
announced. “You need anything from me, I’ll be
there.” He felt like the Tin Man as he shuffled across the
carpet.

His exit stalled at the top of the stairs. The stairway
and the hall were littered with exploded wood. Fresh splinters poked
up like teeth. Corso used a foot to roll a pair of boat shoes out from
under his writing table and then slipped them on.

The refuse snapped and popped beneath his feet as he
made his way to his berth. His body ached as if he’d been beaten
all over, and his fingers felt thick and clumsy as he struggled into a
shirt and a pair of jeans.

The EMTs had immediately thrown them in the showers,
Rogers up in the guest head and Corso in his own. Left them sitting
under warm water until the water heater couldn’t handle it
anymore.

“There’s nothing you can do up
there,” Sorenstam said.

“I’m going anyway.”

“Don’t be such an asshole,” Hamer
said. “The more I look around, the more I’m feeling like
you don’t want to burn any bridges here.” He swept an arm
around the boat. “Whoever wanted your ass, wanted it real
bad.” He left a little silence for Corso. “Looks to me like
the kind of people who just might try, try again, if you know what
I’m sayin’.”

“Maybe you guys better get to protecting and
serving.”

“Maybe it’s time you got straight with
us,” Sorenstam said.

“How’s that?”

Hamer made an elaborate move to scratch the back of his
head. “Let me see here. We got your
girl-friend”—Corso opened his mouth to argue the point, but
the cop waved him off—“taking her little pictures, until a
pair of skels in a black Mercedes chase her down and damn near kill
her. Somehow or other they find out she’s still among the living
and hustle their bustles down to Harborview Medical Center, where they
off both her and her boyfriend and then”—he paused
again—“they come down here and make a very determined
effort to pop your scrawny ass.”

“You want to give us a hint here?”
Sorenstam asked. “Sounds like you may have rattled
somebody’s cage.”

Corso looked from one to the other. Despite his best
efforts, a sneer crept onto his lips. “You don’t have shit,
do you?”

“We’ve got you,” Hamer said.

“You’ve been on this for four days, and you
haven’t got a goddamn thing.” He tried to keep the disgust
out of his voice. Tried to say something neutral. What came out was,
“What the fuck have you been doing with your time,
anyway?”

“We’ve been looking at you and the
boyfriend,” Sorenstam snapped.

Sure. That was the protocol. Eliminate those closest to
the victim before widening the investigation. For the first time since
he’d been given the news, he could feel the loss burning like a
cold flame. Inside his head, a familiar voice said that another pair of
cops was already looking into Donald Barth. Said there was no reason
to put it together for these two bozos—except. And then the
voice changed. Except that Dougherty was dead, and the way things were
shaking out he might have inadvertently been a player. The new voice
asked him what might have happened if he’d shared what he knew
with the cops.

“It’s got something to do with the guy they
found buried in his truck,” he said.

Sorenstam pulled out a notebook and a pencil.

“His name’s Donald Barth.” It took
Corso a full five minutes to lay it out for them. “Now you know
everything I do,” he said as he finished. “I suggest you
talk to whoever caught the truck squeal and whoever they’ve got
looking for this Joe Ball character. Maybe one of them has come up with
something useful.”

Sorenstam checked his notes. “So you’re
saying the missing person, this Joe Ball guy, the dead guy in the
truck, the assault here, and the murders at the hospital are all tied
together somehow.”

“That’s what it looks like to
me.”

“Any idea about the connection?”

“None.”

“So how does any of that help us?” Hamer
asked.

“It doesn’t,” Corso said.

“Where’d he get the forty
thousand?”

“No idea.”

“You think any of these women was pissed off
enough—”

Corso was already shaking his head.
“No.”

Corso stepped around the cops and pulled a black
leather jacket from the closet. He stuck one arm into the coat.
“Find these guys,” Corso said. “Find ’em before
I do.”

“What you’re going to do”—Hamer
jabbed a finger at him—“is keep the hell out of an ongoing
investigation.” Corso settled the jacket on his shoulders and
started toward the bow. “Do you hear me?” Hamer bellowed
after him.

Hamer was angry. Corso didn’t blame him.
They’d wasted a lot of manpower going around in circles. Last
thing they wanted was to hear from some jive-ass writer about how
they’d fucked up.

The forward passage was still clogged with cops and
EMTs. Corso shouldered his way to the front. Renee Rogers sat on the
bed, wearing the outfit she’d come aboard in. She looked small
inside the clothes, as if the outfit belonged to an older sister.

“How you feeling?” Corso asked.

She had to think it over. “Like I’ll never
really be warm again.”

“I’m going up to the hospital.”

She reached out and touched his cheek.
“Oh—your friend. I’m so sorry.”

Corso nodded. “You walking okay?” he asked,
after a moment.

“My legs feel like rubber bands, but they
work.”

“Let’s get out of here. They’ve got a
forensics team on the way. The place is about to be crawling with
cops.”

She put her hand on his. “You saved my
life.”

“We got lucky,” he said.

Her eyes said she didn’t believe a word of it but
was too tired to argue.

“I’ll drop you at the hotel.”

She searched his eyes. “You sure you want to go
up there?”

“It’ll never be real to me if I
don’t,” he said.

She said she understood and got to her feet.
“Let’s go,” she said.

The walk started off shaky; she nearly fell off the
stairs. Leaning on each other, they got steadier as they made their way
up the dock to the gate. Corso’s legs would barely push him up
the steep ramp. When he looked back, Renee Rogers was having the same
problem. She stood at the bottom shaking her head. He took her hand and
pulled her to his side. Then walked to the top and repeated the
process.

They were still holding hands when the flashbulbs began
to pop and the reporters stepped from behind the cars, firing
questions from the darkness. They’d had word of a shooting.
Could he elaborate? Was he involved? If there was a shooting, did the
police have a suspect? “That’s the Rogers woman,” he
heard somebody say. “You know, the U.S. Attorney from the
Balagula case.” Her name joined his in the air as they pushed
their way through the crowd toward the car.

Ten yards from sanctuary, Rogers was jostled by the
crowd and dropped her purse, which burst open on impact, spilling some
of the contents out on the ground.

Corso straight-armed the nearest photographer, setting
off a stumbling chain reaction as she bent to retrieve her bag.
Flashbulbs rendered him nearly blind as he led her to the car, let her
in, and threw himself into the driver’s seat.

Saturday, October 21

2:40 a.m.

“I
’m sorry, sir, but you
can’t. . . .” Corso ducked under the yellow police tape and
started down the stairs. They’d fixed the elevators so they
wouldn’t go to the basement and strung enough plastic police tape
across the stairwells to circle the globe.

She couldn’t have been more than twenty.
“Please, sir,” she whined at his back as he held on to the
handrail and walked deliberately down the stairs. At the first landing,
he looked up and saw her still standing at the top. “The
police—” she began.

At the bottom, he pulled the door open, poked his head
out into the hall, looked one way and then the other. In both
directions, the corridor was full of people. To the left, it was mostly
hospital employees, people the police would want to interview before
allowing them to go home. To the right was One-oh-nine, where a pair of
medical examiners, in bright yellow jackets, sipped coffee from
plastic cups while they stood talking with a couple of county
mounties.

His eyes stopped on a pair of metal gurneys, end to end
along the wall. Resting, larvaelike, on top of each cart was a black
rubber body bag, red straps around the chests and ankles. He felt like
he always felt in the face of death, light and disconnected. Like he
was coming unglued from the earth.

His legs ached as he started down the hall. A voice
behind him called, “Hey!” He kept going. The door to
One-oh-nine popped open. Rachel Taylor stepped out into the hall. As
the door eased shut, Corso could hear the sound of angry voices coming
from inside. She caught sight of Corso and stopped. “Oh,”
she said. “Miss Dougherty—”

The door opened again. Crispin, Edward J.: red-faced,
disheveled, looking like he’d been rousted from his bed. Followed
by what had to be a couple of cops.

He went slack-jawed at the sight of Corso coming his
way.

“She’s not here,” he said. Corso
stopped. “Your friend,” Crispin tried. “She’s
not here anymore.”

Corso’s eyes moved to the body bags.

“No,” Crispin said.
“That’s…” He looked to Nurse Taylor for
help.

“Mrs. Guillen,” Taylor said. “Ruth
Guillen.”

“I found her a room,” Crispin blurted.

Rachel Taylor walked to Corso’s side and took
hold of his arm. She cast a baleful stare at Crispin. “Mr.
Crispin circumvented the normal room-scheduling procedures.”
Another stare. “Second shift saw the room was empty and put Mrs.
Guillen in it.”

“She’d been in a head on-collision,”
Crispin added, as if her condition somehow mitigated whatever the
problem was.

“Mr. Rosewall didn’t know either,”
Taylor said. “He just walked in at the wrong time.”

“I don’t understand,” Corso said,
feeling himself beginning to sway.

“Miss Dougherty is upstairs in surgery,”
Rachel Taylor said.