Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (21 page)

“Your husband?”

She nodded.

“Mark Ryan doesn’t ever just ‘ask after’ anyone.”

Pamela shrugged, knowing her show of casual indifference wasn’t well feigned.

Charlie gave her a sharp look. “Just stay away from him. He’s bad news and if he ain’t tied tighter round Love Hagerty’s finger than a wedding ring then I miss my guess. Most will tell you the connection between them is just rumor, but me, I think where there’s smoke there’s a mighty big fire.”

She could have told Charlie that it was more than rumor; three nights before she had been out walking on Carson Beach in the wee hours, an occupation which would have made Casey furious with her. Admittedly, it wasn’t the safest thing to do, but she had trouble sleeping these nights and could not bear the empty bed nor apartment in those hours.

There had been a big gray Plymouth sitting in the parking lot, the only car there. She had hesitated, leery of walking up past it alone. Suddenly all the warnings her husband had peppered her with came back to her. Somehow she knew, though, that the men in the car hadn’t seen her, nor sensed her presence nearby. Still she stood frozen, instinct laying its warning down the length of her spine.

Then a hand had held out a lighter and flicked it on. The tiny flame illuminated a small circle within the car. But it had been enough to recognize the occupants. Love Hagerty’s profile was unmistakable. It wasn’t Love’s presence that she found so worrisome, though, it was the other man. For the fire had lit upon the unmistakable flame of red hair.

It was one thing to know that Love’s back was covered by the law, but to know that he was holding secret meetings with a federal agent meant something else altogether. It meant there was something other than old neighborhood ghosts and ties at work here. And that made her own dance upon the razor’s edge that much more lethal.

Love’s surprise, however, when she had mentioned seeing Blackie in the company of Agent Mark Ryan had seemed genuine. His anger even more so. The only question that seemed to remain was whether it was Love was double-crossing Blackie or Blackie double-crossing Love.

She was going to have to arrange a meeting with Agent Gus to discuss this latest turn of events.

HE WAS DREAMING OF WEE DEIRDRE. In the dream, she had grown from the tiny babe he’d held so briefly to a tot with a mop of dark chestnut curls and eyes the color of spring oceans— pure unending green. He picked her up, savoring the warm heft of her in his arms. He held her close, feeling the desperation of one who knows time is a finite thing, even in dreams. He tucked his face in the crook of her neck, and breathed in. The scents of new mown grass and strawberries crushed under bare, tender feet satiated his senses and brought a prickle of tears to his eyes. Her arms about his neck were fine-boned and unbearably soft.

Daddy’s girl. The words were silent and yet he knew both he and she heard them in the reverse laws of nature that existed in dreams. She drew back, and put chubby hands to his face and looked him directly in the eyes.

“Daddy,” she said in a voice like silver fairy bells.

And then he woke.

Olie was standing above him. “Wake up, lad!”

“What’s goin’ on?” Casey asked, sitting up on one elbow, right hand going to his face in an effort to clear his bleary vision. He could still smell strawberries and his throat was tight with the dream’s lingering.

Olie was hastily grabbing supplies and stuffing them into a canvas sack. “There’s been a bad accident north of here, sealin’ boat got stuck in the pack ice off Horse Island an’ the damn fools thought they’d blow the ice away with explosives, set the goddamn boat afire instead. Don’t know the details, but it sounds right bad.”

“Sounds terrible,” Casey agreed, trying to remember where he’d left his cigarettes last night. An awful thought seized him suddenly and he forgot his cigarettes entirely.

“What,” he asked, dreading the answer, “does the accident have to do with us?”

Olie rammed his filthy toque down to his grizzled eyebrows before answering. “We’re closest to the boat so we go an’ see what can be done.”

“But
Jeannie’s
a fishin’ boat,” Casey protested, “what can we do?”

“We’re takin’ a load of nurses an’ doctors up, medical supplies an’ some food an’ water. Besides,
Jeannie
was a salvage vessel once, afore Captain Jack turned her into a fishin’ boat. She’s the soul of a hero in her, twelve hundred horsepower in her belly, go nose first into a trough an’ come up ’thout a sputter. She knows how to get the job done, this girl, an’ does it without the dancin’ an’ fancywork of a rich man’s boat.” Olie rubbed his hand across a brass fitting, long gone green with verdigris. “If any boat can get those men out safe, ‘tis
Jeannie
. I don’t know how far into the pack we can get, so pray God you wee Catholic fiend, for the souls of those poor bastards out on the ice.” He spat into a tin cup for emphasis. “An’ maybe add a word or two on our behalf while you’re at it. Dress warm, eh?” Olie said before ducking under the doorframe of their quarters.

Wee Catholic fiend that he was, Casey muttered his way grimly through the first quarter of the rosary while putting his clothes on. Two sets of the wool socks Pamela had put in his bag last time he’d been home, long johns, undershirt, heavy wool sweater and an oilskin coat over top of it all. On his head he put the scarlet toque Olie’s girlfriend had knit for him. It was a fine balance in cold like this. Dress too warm and your range of motion was limited and you’d sweat and find yourself miserably cold despite your layers. Dress too lightly and you’d be dead within the hour.

The air on deck was breathtaking, literally. Casey could feel his lungs protest the vicious cold, trying to seal off the opening to his throat. He gulped three times and felt the icy shear of Arctic outflow along all the tender membranes that made up his respiratory system.

The doctors and nurses had already been loaded on with as many medical supplies as could be gathered in such a short space of time. The distress call had only come in an hour before. It was just luck that
Jeannie
was in port that night.

The trip to Horse Island took an hour and a half. During which time they all strained at the railing, looking out into the dark night, as though they could project themselves forward to the tragedy. This was the country of icebergs, and so the boat had to take its time amongst the great floating beasts that had calved from the mating of tides and glaciers. Ancient blue-white ice, spawned in medieval storms, compacted over centuries into frozen diamonds that floated free through cold seas to string themselves in a dazzling chain, here near the top of the earth. Ice that could crush the iron hull of the boat as though it were no more than foil.

Jeannie’s Star
slowed to a crawl three miles out from the Island. The ice pack had been driven together by strong gales over the last two months, and was as impenetrable as concrete.

“What now?” Casey asked, squinting out over the stretch of frozen water. Low cloud on the horizon had formed an ice-blink and it illuminated the burning skeleton of the sealer and smaller humps on the ice that were debris and men.

“Walk, crawl, run, whatever it takes, but
Jeannie
sure as hell is goin’ no furder,” Olie said, hands already around a dory rope. The plan, hastily sketched in by Captain Jack, was to pull the dories
Jeannie
was in possession of out onto the ice and pull them back filled with the wounded. The boat herself would be set up as a triage center, with half the doctors and nurses staying behind to prepare for the incoming wounded, and the other half coming with
Jeannie’s
crew out onto the deadly ice.

Within minutes the crew was spread out in a thin and fragile ribbon, each man hoping to God he’d make it back to the boat alive and with all his fingers and toes intact. They all knew the risk they took in this sort of climate.

Casey crawled belly down across the ice, feeling the slush in the cracks where the day’s sun had tried to melt the floes without success. There was a fine blue thread that separated the edge of the world from the sky. In between himself and that shifting line, the fire still roared without mercy.

Jesus, he didn’t see how anyone could have survived such an explosion. His mind couldn’t help but see the irony of burning to death in a frozen hell. He stopped for a second, flexing his fingers to keep the blood flowing, noting how much they’d stiffened since his last such stop. The dory rope was stiff as steel pipe and frozen to his gloved palm. He put his mouth and nose to his forearm and took a deep breath, trying to protect his lungs from the worst of the freezing air. Then he continued the relentless half-walk, half- crawl forward again, every inch of his skin fine-tuned to the shifting of the ice.

It was an agony to move so slowly, but the cracks between chunks of ice became broader, small patches of water opening up underfoot without warning. Some of them requiring him to walk around, every step a breathless prayer that he wouldn’t plunge into the killing water. The average mean temperature of the water this time of year was a heart stopping zero degrees. Even with protection the survival time was under fifteen minutes. The bits of clothing that had come in contact with the water were already frozen solid, bumping like thin planks of wood against his body.

Suddenly the ice rocked under him and the bottom dropped out of his stomach. Christ, he could feel the breath of the water beneath him, waiting to pull him in and swallow him in one steel-jawed bite. He scrambled forward and the ice went down in the other direction, the horizon tilting up sharply in opposition. He went to his stomach, not daring to breathe until the rocking subsided beneath him. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. That had been too damn close. The water had slopped up to his knees in the mad scramble and he could feel the ice moving along his skin already.

Ignoring the discomfort, Casey leaned on his elbows and pulled himself towards the edge of the patch of ice, hoping to God that it would bear his weight just a little longer. It held and he managed to bridge the gap to the next piece of ice, which was much firmer and larger than the last.

A few feet more and the smell hit him, strong enough to halt him. Though he’d never smelled burned human flesh before he knew the reek for what it was. The cold seemed to sharpen the smell to a point, so it drove directly into his senses. He gagged slightly, then clenched his teeth and continued his slow crawl toward the one thing he could see moving in the charred pile. Somebody was still alive.

As he crawled closer, he began to make out details. Limbs became distinct from torsos, blackened clothing still letting off wisps of smoke. The sound of the other men shouting back and forth was disembodied and shifting, likely a result of the brutal wind that sheared along the surface of the ice.

He almost crawled over the man, and it was only the feel of something warm and soft beneath his hand that made Casey pause. The man was face-up, as though he’d simply lain down in the hollow where Casey found him. Lay down, and given in to the creeping numbness, given way to the delicately forming arches, the needling lances and the pricking crystal spars that were death by ice.

A fine frost had formed in the man’s hair and lashes already, and was spreading out across his face. He was dead, of that there was no doubt. Beyond the stillness, he’d the look of it in his face. The spark gone, the pain over, and the curious peace that followed already at rest upon his features. Casey passed a hand over the man’s eyes, closing them against the fiery night. He braced himself on one knee, and then froze in place, the small fine hairs on his neck rising like separate entities, and he knew that whoever had been watching him on the boat, stood behind him now, and that he did not wish Casey well.

He turned carefully, so as not to startle the man.

It was Olie. He stood no more than six feet away, and in his hand a gun, glittering with reflected flame.

“Why?” Casey managed to croak out.

“Money o’ course. Money, hard-earned, mind, yer a bloody hard bastard to kill. Tried on the boat twice, but yer a bit like the cat that just kept comin’ back. Was startin’ to think ye were indestructible.”

“Paid by whom?” Casey asked, though he knew the answer only too well.

“Love Hagerty. I owed him money indirectly for a drug run gone bad off the coast of Maine. He said if’n I were to kill ye, he’d call his goons off an’ throw in some money to make certain I kept my nerve. I don’t know what ye did but the man seemed to want ye dead like a drunk wants whiskey.”

“An’ now?” Casey asked, trying to gauge the odds of making the jump across the dark water to the floe behind him, and then trying to outrun the man. He was bigger, stronger and, he’d no doubt, faster, but not as strong, nor big, nor as fast as the water would be should he misstep, and the odds of falling in were astronomically high.

“And now, I just want it done, so’s I can stop havin’ nightmares about it.”

“Aye well, I’ll apologize for any disruption plannin’ my murder may have caused to yer sleep,” Casey said dryly.

“Still maintainin’ yer humor I see. I can admire that. It’s almost a pity to kill ye.”

It wasn’t movement that attracted his eye, and later Casey could not say what had drawn him to look over Olie’s shoulder, other than maybe a sense that it simply was not his time to die, and therefore something or someone was going to have to intervene.

Beyond Olie, Hallbjorn stood, braced on a floe of ice that had broken free of the main pack and floated in a deadly open space of black water. The ice was no more than a shoulder span but the big man stood with the confidence of a natural hunter, the only movement that of the long fur of his coat waving in the breeze. In his hand he held the small harpoon sometimes used on sword fishing boats. A small and deadly length of steel, tipped to razor sharpness.

Something in his own face must have told Olie that the two of them were no longer alone, for he looked about wildly, the wind catching his sandy curls and haloing them out about his head. He’d lost his cap somewhere along the line.