Epitaph Road (14 page)

Ahead of us the pickup slowed. One broken brake light flashed on. The truck turned right, just as a forest of masts appeared through a clump of evergreens and above a shallow layer of morning fog.

I scanned the marina entrance as we got nearer. “I don't see any cops there yet.”

“Could be at his boat already,” Sunday said.

We arrived at the gate. It was permanently open, lying twisted on the ground; no one was around. Beyond the opening was a short weedy gravel road that forked in the directions of the main dock and a launch ramp where the familiar pickup truck and trailer were backed up to the water's edge. The old guy was already making his way down the dock.

The marina was big, a crossword puzzle of docks and boats with a rock breakwater in the distance. A storage shed stood just inside the gate. It was open and apparently empty. “Wait in there with the bikes,” I said. “I'll go the rest of the way on foot and see what I can see.”

“Forget it,” Sunday said. “We can be as sneaky as you.”

“Why should all of us get caught?” I said.

“We're in this together,” Tia said. She laid her hand on my arm, my left forearm, right on my skin, and let her fingers rest there for a moment, raising my temperature and pulse and anxiety level. Her big eyes were serious, all business. “They won't do much to us, anyway, even if we get caught. They'll put us in handcuffs, maybe, and take us back to Seattle in the back of one of their cars. It's you who has to worry. You and your dad.”

“Okay,” I said. “But let's hurry.”

We ditched the bikes in the shed and hustled onto the main dock, following the route our friend the fisherman had taken. There was no sign of PAC cops yet, but we kept checking ahead of us and behind, scooting stealthily from piling to piling, hull to hull, shadow to shadow. Far ahead of us, the fisherman took a left and headed down a side dock. We hurried on; no one was between him and us.

We stopped. A half dozen slips away from us the fisherman was untying his bowline. He tossed it on his deck and disappeared between boats. A moment later his ancient tub backed out of its slip. The rumble of its engine changed pitch, and the boat headed out as we continued on, passing number C-39. Peering anxiously ahead, I got a bad feeling. I didn't glimpse anything that looked like Dad's boat.

A few seconds later, we were there — C-44.

It was vacant. I looked around, hoping we were at the wrong space or he was nearby, on his way in or out.

But there was no
Mr. Lucky
, there were no boats moving, nothing familiar anywhere.

“What do you want to do, Kellen?” Tia said.

“Maybe he's coming right back,” I said.

“Maybe,” Sunday said. She left the alternative unsaid:
Maybe not.

“We should wait awhile for him,” Tia said. “We have some time before the quarantine.” She left the reason for the quarantine unsaid:
Elisha's Bear.

“We can't wait here,” Sunday said, and I agreed. It was after eight o'clock now. Mom expected me downstairs by eight thirty. So far we'd been blessed, but we probably had only a few more minutes before the cops came calling.

“But somewhere nearby,” I said. “A place where we can keep an eye on the marina.”

We started back, jogging. “The shed?” Tia said.

“Too obvious,” Sunday said as I looked around for other options. “It's right on the way in. They'd look there first.”

We reached the main dock and a space between boats. For an instant, I saw the shoreline, old buildings, the road, and a quarter mile away, maybe, a candy-striped tower. “The lighthouse,” I said. “Maybe we can get up in the lighthouse.”

“You think it's open?” Sunday said.

“We can try,” Tia said, and we continued running, eyes mostly on the road, ears tuned to the approach of cars. But as we dashed toward another boat, this one an antique wood cruiser that someone had converted into a commercial trawler, I noticed something behind its dirty windshield.

“Just a minute,” I gasped as I hurried down the finger pier. I gazed inside. Everything was dusty and cobwebby. No one had been here for a while. I scrambled over the side and landed on the deck. It was slippery with morning dew, and I half skidded to the cabin entrance.

The door was unlocked. I swung it open and stepped down into the cool staleness of the cabin and spotted what I was looking for. Just above the steering wheel a battered pair of binoculars gathered dust and salt. I snatched them up and headed back out to rejoin the girls.

We took off again. I half expected a lecture about thievery, one of the curses of man. But Tia just smiled. Sunday flashed me an appreciative grin. They both knew what we needed to do. The binoculars could help.

At the shed we collected our bikes and checked the neighborhood and approaches for cops once more. Still nothing.

We pedaled through the gate and out onto the road. An old car headed our way, then a couple of guys on bikes. Nothing that looked like cops. We got curious stares from everyone we passed. We were an oddity, I knew, especially Sunday and Tia — girls in man-country. I'd seen kids since we'd arrived, but they seemed to be even less common than the adult females who were here for a variety of reasons — adventure, escape, independence, rebellion, loyalty, love, lust.

I wondered how nervous Sunday and Tia were about being here in this man-world. So far no one had bothered them, but the possibility had to be on their minds, especially when they looked at my skinny self. What could
I
do to protect them?

The lighthouse loomed on our left, far off by itself, perched in the middle of a mound of greens and yellows long in need of cropping. A chain-link fence had once enclosed the grounds, cutting them off from the road, but the fence was now shredded and leaning. Its gate was open and hanging by one hinge. A mottled gray seagull, its feathers fluffed up and unruly like a bad case of bedhead, stood on a metal gatepost and scolded us as we rolled through the opening.

It felt good to get off the road, out of the spotlight. We left what remained of an asphalt driveway and angled off through the unkempt grass and up the hill toward the lighthouse, then around it, to the water side, where we couldn't be seen from the road. Here a red door stood brightly shedding its paint, framed by the candy-cane stripes of the lighthouse itself.

We went to the door. A rusted latch and padlock held it in place. I rattled the door in frustration. It moved half an inch back and forth but no farther.

When I turned back to Sunday and Tia, they were already hurrying toward a downed section of fence. Girls of action. I decided just to watch, breathe in, breathe out, waiting for the rubbery feeling to leave my legs, as the girls worked a half-fallen bare metal pole out of the ground. They lugged it back, one on each end. The base of the pole — Sunday's end — was buried in a ball of concrete.

“I've seen this in old movies,” Tia said. “SWAT teams used battering rams to get into locked places.” I didn't know what SWAT teams were, but I'd take Tia at her word.

With me facing the girls, we cradled the pole close to the cement blob at hip height — the height of the lock — and from six feet away made a run at it.

We smash-bashed into the door. I felt the thud all the way into my bones. The noise was loud, sending seagulls screeching into the air, warning one another of earthquakes and tsunamis and toppling lighthouses, no doubt.

The impact had been a bit high. But we'd put a nice dent in the metal door, a good sign of things to come. So we backed up and gave it another go and this time we were on target. We hit the lock and latch. Neither of them broke, but the collision pulled one set of bolts halfway out of the building.

We adjusted the height of the battering ram once more and retreated and charged forward and hit the latch square. And this time the bolts wrenched all the way out and dropped to the ground. Rust shavings fell like bloodstained snowflakes. The latch dangled freely, fastened only to the door.

Using the knob of concrete, we gave the door a nudge. It swung in, creaking piercingly although not nearly as piercingly as everything else we'd done. But after we finally dropped the pole I moved to my left a few feet, anyway, nervous, and peered toward the road.

“Success,” Sunday said just as Tia gave me a quick half-hug, but instead of enjoying it I looked past a wisp of her dark hair and spotted a state police car racing down the road toward the marina. No sirens, but its lights were flashing. An instant later another car followed, moving just as fast. Plain gray sedan, insignia on the side.

Big woman, little man.

“Cops,” I said. The girls joined me in shrinking back into the shadow of the lighthouse. A moment later, poking our heads around cautiously, we were in time to see a second PAC car race past.

“Inside,” Sunday said, but we were already pulling our bikes through the door. We pushed it shut behind us. The only light filtered down from way overhead somewhere and from a few small dirt-stained windows that followed the upward spiral of a long circular staircase.

I grabbed the binoculars. With Sunday leading the way, we began climbing. The sound of our footsteps on metal echoed all around us.

The staircase disappeared through a round opening in the ceiling and into the sunlit chamber above us. We hurried up the last few stairs and stepped onto the lantern deck. But the lantern or whatever electronic gadget might have taken its place was gone. The room was empty, except for four unexpected items. Near the center of the enclosure stood a grand piano, its horizontal surfaces covered with a clean white sheet. Leaning against its bench were two violin cases and a cello case.

Perplexed, I looked around the space, unsuccessfully searching for a bigger entrance, an elevator. A freight elevator.

“How did this get up here?” Tia said, laying her hand on the sheet.

She got no answer. I was sure she didn't expect one. She opened one of the violin cases and studied its contents while Sunday did the same with the cello case. The instruments were beautiful — richly polished patterned wood.

Nestled into each case, snug against its instrument, was a bow, waiting for the touch of a hand. Neither Tia nor Sunday touched anything, though, and I wondered for just a moment if they knew how to play, but the way they gazed at the instruments made me believe it wasn't love at first sight, that it was a long relationship renewed. I'd dabbled with the violin and cello before I moved to music that wasn't imposed by my mother. Someone else's music, booming through my headphones.

Tia and Sunday closed the cases and joined me in looking around at the rest of the room.

Most of the windowpanes that formed a circle around us were fractured and filthy. But the view, even through the cracks and grime, was wondrous. We stood shoulder to shoulder and stared out at the blue waters of the strait, the islands, boats spewing out white wakes. To the west, the Olympic Mountains were capped with the milky remains of winter snow. I scanned the water to see if any boats were returning to port.

None, at least that I could make out.

The best part about the view was what we could see of the marina:
everything
. From this bird's-eye vantage point, the docks looked like a cornfield maze. Every finger pier, boat, empty space, was visible.

And so were the government cars that had just arrived at the marina entrance.

I lifted the binoculars to my eyes and adjusted the focus. I could read the names on the boats. I could see the frowns on the faces of the PAC cops as they strutted toward the dock, confident they'd find a bad guy, maybe two.

I was confident they wouldn't. Not right now anyway.

I didn't recognize two of them; the other two I did: Pelleur and Milne. The state cops stood near their car, talking but vigilant.

I handed the binoculars to Tia. Dozens of boats continued to cross the strait, but not one approached the marina. Now I was praying Dad stayed away, at least until the cops gave up.

“They're talking to the
fisherman
,” Tia said. She handed the binoculars to Sunday.

“I can practically hear that old loner singing from here,” Sunday said, peering through the lenses. “Now they'll never leave.”

She gave the glasses back to me. Pelleur and Milne had stopped the fisherman's truck on his way out from the launch ramp. He stood outside his pickup door. I could see his head nodding, his lips moving. I knew he was spilling his guts to the cops. And why not? We were just outsiders, trespassers on Afterlight's land and ideals.

The old guy got back in his truck and closed the door, but the cops kept jawing at him through his open window. Finally, they stepped back and he drove off. Pelleur took out her phone and touched some numbers, and out on the dock, heading toward Dad's slip, one of the other two PAC cops lifted her phone to her ear. But she and her partner continued on.

Why had they just kept going? Wouldn't the fisherman have told Pelleur and Milne Dad's boat was gone? Wouldn't they have passed that along to their buddies?

Maybe none of them trusted him.