Bloody Point (23 page)

He sat across from Cassie, devouring a tall stack of pancakes
drowning in syrup. “I know’d there was something afoot when I heard about them
fires.” Billy took a large gulp of coffee, which he drank black.

“So what do you think happened?” Cass asked. On her plate was
an elegant breakfast of crepes and fruit. Billy had laughed when she chose
that. “But then, you is a girl,” he had said, his eyes crinkling in amusement.

“My guess is,” Billy said, “a boy mad at the company done it.
Either that or,” he leaned close to Cass, “somebody was looking for insurance
money.”

She nodded and cut a slice of Eastern Shore melon with her
fork. It was tender and sweet. “I’m coming over to do a story on the Heritage
Festival. It would add a lot if I could include some first person information
on crabbing. Your sisters said maybe you’d let me go out with you.”

Billy laughed uproariously, a big belly laugh that made
everyone in the B&B turn around to look. “Lord, my wife would kill me!
She’d cut me up and use me for chum, yes she would!” He shook his head, still
laughing. Then he noticed she was staring at him intently. “You’s serious ‘bout
this, ain’t ya?” Billy sat back, hooked a thumb in his belt, and studied her.

“Yes, sir. And I’ll speak to your wife if you’d like. I just
think it would make a great story.”

“Aw, she don’t care if I take ye,” he said, laughing. “Tell
you what. You get Miss Catherine to make us up some of them ham ‘n’ onion
sandwiches I like, and I’ll take ya along. I’ll show ya them crabs.”

“Deal,” said Cassie.

“Meet me at the marina in half an hour. Slip 42.” Billy
winked at her. “An’ don’t forget them sandwiches.”

†

Bloody Point

Chapter 22

E
VERYBODY at the marina
knew Billy Thompson, that was clear. Cassie could hear Billy’s boisterous laugh
as she walked down to the slip. As she drew closer, she could hear the friendly
calls and shouts of others. “Yessiree, you all are my witnesses,” he said. He raised
his hand like a preacher blessing a crowd. “This here young lady wants to go
out with me and I could not resist, so help me God. So, here I go. And if my
wife asks, tell her I’ve gone to church, okay?”

The other folks at the marina laughed. She waved as she
approached and dropped her backpack and the small cooler Catherine and Emily
had given her into the boat. Billy started the engine, cast off the lines, and
then they were off, edging out of Town Creek and into the Tred Avon River, the
wind in their faces, leaving a trail of white wake behind them.

By the time the sun was high and hot, Cassie and Billy had
pulled fifty-two crab pots, dumping their contents into the hold of the low,
beamy boat, and then returning them to the water. Billy had shown her the place
he once bagged six canvasback ducks, the location of a wrecked airplane, the
place he liked to bring kids crabbing, and the marsh where once he found a dead
turtle whose shell was five feet in diameter.

He was a wealth of knowledge. “D’ya know why they call it
Bloody Point?” he asked her, wiping his brow.

“Because of the slaves?”

“Nah. That’s just a story. Back in the day when skipjacks was
the way to get oysters it was hard findin’ crew. Ya had to go out in October
and November. It gets mighty cold out on the water then. Them skipjack cap’ns,
they’d sail up to Bal’mer, and go in the bars and get some of them fellas
drunk. Then they’d Shanghai ‘em, and put ‘em on their boats. Weren’t nothin’
for them boys to do then but work ‘til the oysters were in.

“The rule was the catch got divided up between the cap’n and
crew. Now, it don’t take much figurin’ to realize the fewer the divide, the
better, so when the hold was full and they’s on their way back to Annapolis or
Bal’mer, often as not them boats would take a bad gust o’ wind ‘round Bloody
Point. They’d jibe, and that big sail and the low boom would come across the
deck, and sure ‘nough, some o’ them fellas would get swept right into the Bay.”

Cassie’s eyes were wide. “You have got to be kidding. They’d
just knock them into the water?”

“You bet they would. Them skipjacks got them ‘deck-sweeping
booms.’” Cap’n Billy grinned at her. “But don’t you worry, little lady. You’s
too pretty to toss overboard.”

She laughed. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

After the last crab pot had been emptied and reset, Cassie
finally asked him about Scrub. Billy wiped his brow and squinted off into the
distance, and for a minute, she wasn’t sure he was going to answer. But then he
set the boat’s engine on idle and pulled out a ham and onion sandwich, sat down
on an upturned bucket and began to talk.

“Scrub’s daddy,” he began, “was a friend of mine. We played
football in high school, and joined the Navy at the same time. We fished
together, crabbed together, chased women together, and got drunk together.

“Then we settled down, got married. And it took with me … for
all my jokin’ my wife is the best thing about my life. But Scrub’s daddy,
Frank, he, I don’t know, he just never could make the switch.

“He started cheatin’ on his wife before the weddin’ cake was
et up. One woman after another. It near to drove his wife, Betty, crazy. Then
the baby come along. They called him Myron, but everyone called him Scrub. He
was a little guy from the beginnin’, only half the size of his daddy.”

Billy took another bite of his sandwich. “Frank laid off the
women for a time, but then, when the boy was thirteen or fourteen, he started
in again. The boy, he’d see him with these other women around town, in the
boathouse, goin’ into bars. And he’d see his momma crying and cryin’. Then one
night, when Scrub was sixteen and he’d just gotten his driver’s license, his
momma got sick, and Scrub had to take her to the hospital in Salisbury ‘cause
nobody knew where his daddy was. Scrub came home, then, and he found his daddy
drunk with some floozy right in the house, right in the very bed his parents
slept in, with his momma’s nightgown on the bedpost. And Scrub jus’ lost it. He
started swingin’ a baseball bat, breakin’ everythin’ in sight. He was headed
right for the bed, right for his daddy. Ol’ Frank, he managed to get up and
run, and the woman did, too, but Scrub, he took a swing at his daddy and missed
… hittin’ an oil lamp they had lit on the night table. That started a fire and
the next thing you know, the whole house burned down.”

Cassie listened, transfixed. “What happened then?”

Billy shook his head. “The woman, she took off. By the time
the sheriff and the fire trucks got there, it was just Frank yellin’ that his
crazy, stupid son had done set the house afire on purpose. Next thing you know,
poor Scrub, he was locked up in juvenile detention. Charged him with arson.

So that was why Scrub had said Schneider deserved to die:
because he was having an affair, like Scrub’s own, no-good father. That was it!

“There Scrub sat, in juvie, with his momma in the hospital
dyin’ of a burst appendix. They let him out for the funeral. Took him in
shackles to the church.” Billy wiped the corner of his eye and Cass realized it
was a tear he was wiping away.

“And what happened to Frank?” she asked.

“He took off, to Bal’mer’s what I heard. Got a job delivering
stuff to grocery stores. I don’t know. We just kind of gave up on him. Scrub,
he left, too. But every once in a while, he calls me, and we talk, and I think
the boy’s doin’ okay. From what I can tell, anyway.”

The two sat in silence for a while.

Cassie cleared her throat. “I know Scrub.”

Billy raised his eyebrows. “You do?”

She nodded and told him her relationship with him.

“Well, I’ll be,” Billy said, delighted. “You know, he was
like the son I never had. He helped me crab from the time he was eight, ten
years old. He got so good, I thought I had me a partner.”

“He knows everything about boats, everything,” Cassie said.

Billy beamed. “You tell that boy to get hisself back over
here to see me. You tell him we love him, you hear?”

Cassie nodded, grinning. Billy stood up and started the
engine, and in silence the two made their way back to Oxford.

“Don’t forget my message,” Billy said as Cassie stepped off
the boat. She noted the suspicious moisture in his eyes and assured him she
wouldn’t.

All the way back across the Bay in the lightning fast
Grady-White, Cassie kept thinking about Scrub and his childhood. And she just
knew, somehow, he wasn’t to blame for the marina fire. He’d put the Bay between
his past and his present, and he wasn’t going back there.

She was convinced. Scrub didn’t do it. But who did?

By the time she got back to her apartment it was dark. A
sliver of moon hung in the sky and stars glittered in the blackness. As she
walked up the stairs to her apartment she thought again about how much she
loved the water, and how peaceful it was living near it. She inserted her key
in the lock and stepped inside her dark apartment.

Immediately she sensed something different, a heavy odor hung
in the air. She sniffed again; she recognized the smell. It was Polo cologne.

Cassie froze and listened intently. She flipped on a light.
The place looked empty. Without closing the door, she walked through quickly,
peering into closets and under the bed. There was no one there. Puzzled, she
shut the door. Why would her apartment smell like Polo?

†

Bloody Point

Chapter 23

S
WEAT ran off Jake’s
brow and down his cheek and into his mouth. It tasted salty and good, like hard
work or a great run. He swung the axe high and brought it down on the oak,
watching with satisfaction as the log split in two pieces. He propped one of
the pieces on end, split it again, and then repeated the process.

Jazz lay nearby, chewing on a stick. He had to admit, he felt
better since he’d started picking up on her warnings about his seizures. Just
getting thirty seconds advance notice was a huge help. It gave him a little
more control.

But being dependent on a dog wasn’t exactly the lifestyle he
was looking for. He was hoping to have a slightly more significant job than
cutting up wood. And driving! He missed the independence of being able to
drive.

At least he had remembered about the boat shoes. He’d passed
that information on to Craig. A lot of people wore boat shoes, but Craig was
going to start calling shoemakers around Annapolis to see if anyone had brought
a pair in to have the eyelet fixed recently. It was something.

The tree lay nearly cut up at the back of Trudy’s yard. He
was about to begin taking the limbs off the top. She had told him where to make
a stack of the small wood that would be useful for kindling. The rest would go
in a pile to be burned.

Shirtless, he could feel the sun burning his back. He hoped
the heat and the physical activity would take his mind off the future. He had
two weeks before the surgery. His goal was to finish the tree.

“Jake, are you sure you’ll be okay?” Trudy asked, emerging
from the house a short time later. She had promised to help a friend. She’d
only be gone two or three hours at the church, but she hated leaving Jake
alone. He’d been having many seizures, and even though he was getting good at
reading Jazz’s warnings, he still was at risk.

“Go,” Jake said. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’d feel better if you put that axe away.”

“I’m just about to quit.”

She looked at him apprehensively, but then handed him a slip
of paper. “Here’s the church number, and my cell phone number, and my friend’s
cell phone number.”

Her excessive concern cracked Jake’s shell. He stared at the
paper and then grinned at her. “Yes, ma’am. Aren’t you going to give me the
number for 911?”

She laughed.

“You take your time,” Jake said, and he gave her a quick hug
and a peck on the cheek. “I’ll be fine.”

Trudy backed her car out of the driveway and took off. Jake
turned back to the tree. He had been thinking about quitting for the day, but
what would he do in the house? Sit around and think? That wasn’t a good idea.
He’d limb the tree, he decided, and create the burn pile, and then that would
be it.

† † †

 “I’m telling you, you will love Oxford,” Cassie said. She
was sitting in the passenger seat of a company car on Saturday morning. Brett
was driving. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. They were
headed for Oxford Heritage Days.

“Small towns, small minds, I say,” Brett said, switching
lanes to get around a slow pickup truck. “Give me Baltimore any day.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Cassie said, and she
settled back in her seat, and began going over her plan for the day.

The
Rebecca T. Ruark
was the centerpiece of the
festival. Maryland’s oldest skipjack, it had been used for dredging oysters
under sail. Just a few years before, the boat had been caught in an unexpected,
freak November storm at the mouth of the Choptank. Winds climbing to sixty
knots had torn her sails, sheared off her boom, and then she began to take on
water. With waves cresting over her bow, the skipjack finally went under, and
didn’t come up.

As the boat was foundering, the captain had called his wife
on his cell phone. She, in turn, alerted other watermen, who managed to rescue
the captain and the three crewmen. But the old boat lay submerged in twenty
feet of water.

She was not finished, however. A group of people got together
to try to save the historic vessel. Three days after she went down, the state
of Maryland committed funds to bring her up. A couple of days after that, the
Rebecca
T. Ruark
was once again afloat, and was towed into port for repairs.

As Cassie stepped onto the broad deck of the old skipjack she
felt a sense of kinship and nostalgia. Hard work had restored the
Rebecca T.
Ruark
. She was now, again, a functional, beautiful boat, fitted for
oystering and educational trips, cruises and crabbing. The broad white deck
seemed to stretch forever and the huge wooden rings that held the sail to the
mast were glossy. The small yawl boat on the davit at the rear of the skipjack
had a fresh coat of paint.

“She’s just like my boat,” Cassie muttered under her breath.

“What?” Brett asked.

“Nothing. I was just thinking, you can’t keep a good woman
down.”

The gleam in his eye revealed a sharp comeback, but before he
could say it, the captain of the
Rebecca T. Ruark
yelled, “All hands
cast off!” They left the dock for her thirty-minute cruise and the captain
started talking about the Bay, and oysters, and the way things used to be. Both
Cassie and Brett turned their attention to him.

† † †

Jake had created a good-sized pile of kindling and a mound of
twigs ready to burn. Most importantly, he’d almost managed to avoid thinking
for a while. And he hadn’t had a seizure. In fact, he felt pretty good.

Satisfied with his work, he put the axe back in the shed and
went inside. He poured himself a glass of lemonade from the refrigerator. As he
stood in the kitchen drinking it, his eyes fell on a box of large kitchen
matches on the back of the stove. It was supposed to rain later this afternoon.
Why not just burn the branches now?

But what would Jazz do around the fire? Would she be safe? He
didn’t know enough about dogs to know. “You’d better stay here,” he said to
her, and he left her in the kitchen while he went back outside.

Jake found a gas can in the shed, sprinkled some gas on the
pile, and threw a match on it. It ignited with a “whoosh” and he stood watching
as the flames attacked the wood voraciously. Smoke curled upward and the smell
of burning wood made Jake think of Boy Scout camp.

He’d been allowed to go one summer, just one, and then only
because his mother begged his father to let him. He’d earned the money himself,
cutting grass and washing cars. He was twelve years old and desperate to see
some place beyond the blue-collar neighborhood in Detroit where he lived.

He had been equally desperate to get out of his house. By
then, his father had become a full-blown alcoholic, a drunk who picked fights
with the neighbors and dominated Jake’s mother. He had already decked Jake
twice when he’d tried to intervene. The one thing Jake couldn’t stand was
seeing the fear in his mother’s face when his father was bellowing at her, and
he honestly wondered if he’d kill his dad before he was old enough to leave
home.

A sappy piece of wood popped loudly, snapping Jake out of his
reminiscing. He walked to the shed and retrieved a rake so he could keep the
fire well-contained. As he raked the fire together, he began to think again.
Jake guessed he’d gone into law enforcement because he wanted justice: he
wanted his dad locked up and his mother happy. In reality, it hadn’t quite
worked out that way. His dad had died of a heart attack and his mom had a few
years of peace before she died of breast cancer. And while Jake had worked
quite a few successful cases in his career as an FBI agent, he had quickly
learned that injustice was impossible to eradicate.

Losing his good friend was an example. Mike’s death had hit
Jake hard. Why did he have to die? And to think he was murdered made it even
tougher to swallow. Who killed him, and why?

And then there was his divorce. Jake knew he could make it okay
without a wife, but the kids, oh, how he missed the kids. How he wanted to
there for them every day, to be the kind of dad that he’d never had. And now …

Stop
, he told himself.
That trail is too painful to
go down. Think about something else.

And he tried concentrating on the Orioles and the upcoming
NFL season, and then a movie he’d seen once, and then Cassie and what she was
doing with her life. He was working so hard to keep from thinking about his
kids that he didn’t notice the metallic taste in his mouth, or the fact that
his hand was curling around the rake, nor did he hear the sound of Jazz,
barking furiously inside the kitchen door.

But then the darkness came, descending on him like a closing
curtain, and once he realized it was coming, he fought it, but he couldn’t
prevail. His knees buckled. He dropped the rake and fell to the ground with a
thud. And as he did, his left arm came to rest against a burning piece of wood.

• • •

It was the incessant barking that roused him. It was so loud!
And the pain! There was unspeakable pain, but in the blackness, he couldn’t see
which way to move to get away from it. It was like being in a dark theater with
all of the exit lights burned out. Which way should he go?

What hurt so much? When he could finally move, he pulled
himself forward and rolled to the right. Then his vision began to clear and he
was able to pull himself to his knees and then he realized it was his left arm
that hurt so much. It felt like it was on fire! He looked. A long, deep, raw
burn had branded his forearm. He curled his body over it, cursing, tears
streaming down his face, his heart pounding. He had to get away from the pain.
He lurched to his feet. He stumbled inside. What should he do? He couldn’t
remember first aid for a burn but he wanted relief and wanted it now, and he
flipped on the cold water at the kitchen sink and stood there, his arm under
the flow, Jazz dancing around his feet.

When Trudy came home she saw thin wisps of smoke rising from
a pile of ashes in the back yard, and she was surprised Jake had decided to
burn the pile. She thought he’d intended to wait. She parked the car and as she
went up the back steps she saw the screen was pushed out, like Jazz had broken
out. That was so unlike her! Trudy went inside. Jake was leaning over the
kitchen sink, Jazz at his feet, and when he turned and she saw his face, she
ran to him.

† † †

At the end of the day, sunburned and somewhat tired, Brett
and Cassie left Oxford. Cassie had pages and pages of notes, and she leafed
through them talking enthusiastically about the day while Brett drove. He
suggested they stop for dinner and so they did, at a waterside seafood
restaurant on Kent Island. Over a dinner of grilled tuna and Caesar salad, hot
rolls and white wine, Cassie and Brett talked comfortably while the evening
slipped away.

“We really need to get home,” Cassie said, and Brett agreed.
Leaving Kent Island, they drove over the Bay Bridge. The water beneath them was
black, dotted here and there with the tiny running lights of an occasional
boat. Cassie settled into her seat and leaned her head back. Soon her eyes were
drifting shut as sleep overcame her. She never heard her cell phone ringing,
and Brett didn’t bother waking her up.

† † †

Jake refused to allow Trudy to take him to the hospital, but
she got stubborn as well, insisting he at least go see her doctor. He finally
consented, and the doctor told him he ought to go to the hospital because he
probably needed a skin graft. But Jake’s heels were dug in, so the doctor had
settled for giving him a painkiller and an antibiotic to ward off infection.
Jake was so angry he could barely speak to the man, and he had to stifle the
impulse to run, run, run away from this pain and this life, and oh, man, it
hurt so much.

It was almost eight by the time they got home. Trudy stayed
up well into the night, saying she wanted to read for a while, but Jake knew it
was to keep an eye on him.

Anger possessed him, a fierce anger and helplessness and the
sort of despair that is both lightning hot and intensely black at the same
time. He got up and walked quickly toward the back yard with Jazz at his heels,
and as he did, he bumped his arm against the open door. A searing pain shot
through his body and he cursed over and over, his fury barely contained.

Standing on the back step, cradling his arm against his body,
and trying to settle his breathing back down to normal, he heard a noise. Trudy
was right behind him.

“Jake?” she said softly. “Are you all right?”

How was he supposed to respond to that? No, he was not all
right. He was angry and frustrated and lonely and scared to death that he was going
to lose the use of the only hand he had left. Not only that, he was furious,
absolutely furious, that … that he couldn’t do the simplest thing, not even
burn a pile of wood. His life had been taken away from him!

But he could not lay all those burdens on Trudy. He just
couldn’t. “I’m fine,” he said, clearing his throat. “Just looking at the
stars.”

It was clear she didn’t believe him. He felt so guilty for
bringing all this into her life.

“I should never have left you,” she said.

“You have a life!” he retorted. Jake looked up at her, and in
the moonlight he saw tears were running down her face. She dabbed at them with
a tissue. She looked so sad. And he made a decision then and there. He needed
to leave. He just wasn’t being fair to her.

It took another hour to convince Trudy to go to bed. Jake
told her he was fine, his arm didn’t hurt that much, it just looked bad, and he
was getting tired. He smiled, swallowing the pain, and told her she could stay
up all night if she wanted to but he was going to go to sleep. Then he went up
to his room, where he sat on the bed, clenching and re-clenching his fist,
until he heard Trudy go into her bedroom. Finally he heard the click as she
snapped out her light.