The Corpse Without a Country (3 page)

Now I remembered Arne telling me that she and Fuller, his right hand man, had run into one another in Europe and become engaged. Arne hadn’t broken out the aquavit at the news.

She said, “Peter!” as if she might be glad to see me again. And then, “Did I hear you say Tom Harbin?”

I pointed to the cockpit. “He’s badly hurt. I found him on the beach at Boundary Island. He needs a doctor in a hurry.”

Reese Fuller still hadn’t said anything about helping. In fact, he hadn’t said anything. He didn’t like me. He didn’t like Tom. He didn’t like Tom’s father, the man Tom and I worked for.

Jodi didn’t share his feelings. She did what I expected Arne’s daughter to do. She said, “Help me get him in the cruiser, Reese. I’ll start the motors.”

“He can do well enough in that tub,” Reese said. His voice was flat and nasty.

I cocked my fist. “You take the tub, then. I’m borrowing your boat.” I bent and got Tom in my arms. “Move aside.” I stepped onto the dock and almost into Reese Fuller.

He held his position. Jodi spoke up, her voice having a whiplash in it. She reminded me of her father dressing-down a clumsy seaman—me.

“Help him, Reese!”

He helped. He said in a surly voice, “I’ll take his legs.”

I looked at his dungarees, faded to the correct shade of blue, and at the yachting jacket with the Puget City Yacht Club emblem blazoned on the breast in gold. I said, “You’ll get your clothes dirty.”

Jodi said, “Stop that, both of you!”

She had a way with her. We stopped. Fuller took Tom’s legs and I held him under the arms. We managed to get him into a bunk in the forward cabin of the cruiser without jarring him. He lay without moving, his breathing slow and a little ragged now.

Reese Fuller went into the pilot house. Jodi had started the motors, and I heard him tell her brusquely to move aside, that he would take the wheel. In a few moments she appeared in the forward cabin, carrying a basin of hot water and some clean cloths. She began to wash Tom’s cut, not taking the time to say anything to me.

I was too chilled and bushed to chat anyway. I propped myself against the door to the head and watched her work. I hadn’t seen her for three years, and except for a brief glimpse, not for years before then. When I had really known Jodi Rasmussen, she had been thirteen, a scrawny-legged brat who hung around her father’s fishboats.

But now she was twenty-five or -six and she was no brat, and certainly not scrawny-legged. She was all woman, though small and dark, taking after her mother rather than Arne. Still there was a hint of him in the set of her jaw, in her startling gray eyes, and in the fine, warm cut of her mouth.

She was wearing a yellow play suit affair with a halter that molded to her breasts, and shorts, cut very short. Over them she wore a yellow button-down-the-front skirt, open from the waist. She was something to watch, all right.

Jodi fixed a bandage carefully over the cut on Tom’s head. “That is a nasty one!” she murmured. She had a bright voice, like a clear bell. She looked at me, her head cocked slightly to one side. “But you look almost as done in, Peter.”

I said awkwardly, “I’m fine. It’s good to see you. I didn’t know you were home, but I’m glad.” I was trying to thank her for helping with Tom, but as usual I was gauche. I always felt that way around women, especially small, attractive ones. I had the idea they were fragile and that I might fall over them and break something.

She gave me a wicked glance from those large gray eyes. “Glad to see or because I can help Tom?”

I could feel myself flushing. I said, “How is his breathing?”

“Not too bad. He should be all right. We can make the Island hospital in less than an hour.”

The Island hospital was in the San Juans, due south of our present position. I never could have made the run that fast in the outboard, but from the feel of the deck beneath my feet, Reese wasn’t going to have any trouble. Unless, I thought gloomily, the twin screws sucked in a log and knocked themselves cockeyed.

I stood and shivered with chill and tried not to think about hitting a log. Jodi went to the galley. I could hear her making coffee there. I climbed to the wheelhouse and watched Fuller. Whatever I might think of him as a person, I had to admit he could handle a boat. I told him so.

He said grudgingly, “There’s a shower in the forward head, Durham, and some dry clothes in my locker.”

It galled me to accept more of his hospitality, but I was too cold to turn it down. I took the shower and got into the clothes. By the time I was dressed, Jodi had coffee well slugged with bourbon ready for me. She took her coffee and sat on the top step of the three leading to the wheelhouse. I parked on the edge of the bunk, near Tom. We sipped coffee and looked at one another.

Jodi said, “Whatever happened?”

“I wish I knew,” I said. I explained briefly about Tom coming up to investigate the fire, taking out a charter boat, and not coming back. I looked at my watch. It was past nine o’clock. I went on, “So I hustled out and found him. Then I came to you for help.”

Reese Fuller called down nastily, “Why would he go out to Boundary? Did he think the Rock set the fires?”

I ignored that. I said, “Speaking of fires, Arne wants you to do something about the
Flyer.”

“A tug’s already on its way,” he said. “And what’s Arne doing up here? This is
my
end of the business.”

I had been wondering the same thing about Arne, but I wasn’t going to give Fuller any satisfaction by agreeing with him. Instead I started asking questions.

But I didn’t get many answers. Although Corning Island is close to Boundary and Jodi’s place was on the northeast corner, neither of them had heard or seen anything unusual. They hadn’t even heard the high-powered outboard that had buzzed me. And the blonde who was driving it was news to both of them. I gave up and asked for more coffee.

When we neared the Island hospital, Fuller radioed to have an ambulance waiting. It was there at the dock when we arrived. A pair of stretcher bearers came aboard and took Tom off. I told them what I’d do if they didn’t handle him carefully. They treated him as if he might be a crate of antique china.

I rode with them to the hospital and followed as Tom was wheeled into the emergency ward. A competent-looking young doctor was on duty. He uncovered the cut, took a long look, and whistled softly.

“What does the other guy look like?” he asked.

“The other guy,” I said, “was a twenty foot boat.”

He shook his head. “Not unless it swung a pistol barrel at him it wasn’t. See that groove? It was made by a gunsight.”

I
WATCHED THE BOSS
drop the phone gently into its cradle. He looked at me and shook his head. “No change,” he said. “Tom’s still in a coma.”

I felt sorry for him. Tom Harbin was my friend, but he was this man’s son. He was all Oscar Harbin had.

I stabbed a finger at a bulky manila envelope lying on the desk. I said, “Isn’t there anything in Tom’s report to help at all?”

Harbin pushed back a lock of graying hair that had fallen over his forehead. He looked thoroughly beat. “I’ve read the damned thing backwards and forwards and I can’t find a thing. Pure routine. Nothing else.”

It was nearly twenty-four hours since I had ridden in the ambulance to the Island hospital. I had called the boss, and he flew up, and we spent the night waiting with Tom. He had arrived at the hospital in a coma, and when we left he was still in the coma. His condition tonight hadn’t changed.

I was tired. After flying home with the boss, I had gone to my apartment for some sleep, but I had lain awake more than I had slept. My eyes were grainy and my head felt heavy, yet I was probably in top condition compared to the boss.

I said, “Why don’t you give it up for a while. Let me take the report. Maybe I can find something you missed.” I shifted in my chair and fumbled for cigarettes. The boss pushed the box he reserved for clients toward me. He even held out his desk lighter. I only got this red carpet treatment when he was too upset to think clearly.

I dragged deeply on the English cigarette he had provided. “I talked to Arne and I saw the setup, so there might be something that has meaning for me.”

He handed me the envelope. I laid it in my lap. I said, “The thing that bothers me most is Tom’s not reporting in before he rented that charter boat. That isn’t like him.”

The boss said, “He did report. He called in at two-thirty in the morning and again at eight.”

I said, “Hell, when you called me in Anchorage, you said …”

The boss made a sour face and jerked his thumb toward the outer office where Emily Calvin, our secretary, was giving the electric typewriter a workout. “She told me tonight—before you got here. I can’t blame her, I guess; she’s still pretty new. But when she came in yesterday morning, the answering service called and said they were sending over a taped message. She fouled up putting it on the playback so she could type it and wiped the wire clean.”

We made use of one of those automatic answering services that records confidential messages on wire. It was a very handy device, since Tom and I often reported in at odd hours. But right now I was wishing for a little less electronics and a little more human power.

I said, “If he called at two-thirty, it was probably to tell you why he was going out. And if he called again at eight, that must have been a report on something he’d found out.”

“My guess,” the boss agreed. “The two-thirty call was from Bellingham. The eight o’clock call was from the San Juans.”

“So we know that at eight he was still going strong. He must have gone back to Boundary after that.”

The boss said hopefully, “Maybe his call was just more routine.”

I grunted at that. I said, “Emily didn’t get any of the message?”

“Not a word. I called the answering service, but the girl there swore she’d switched the call right on to the recorder and hadn’t listened in. I believe her,” he added gloomily.

When he believed anyone, they had to be telling the truth. I stood up, holding the manila envelope. “Any other news?”

He said, “The Coast Guard found the boat Tom rented. It was floating in the east bay on Boundary Island. They haven’t come up with anything on the blonde you say buzzed you.”

I said, “She was probably just some fat-headed vacationist full of beer and empty of brains. One of those stupid hotrod boaters.”

It was his turn to grunt. I agreed with him. Neither of us liked the theory. The blonde had come too close to me and been too sharp with her searchlight for the encounter to have been merely casual.

I headed for the door. The boss said, “Be careful, Peter. This case is beginning to stink like a hold full of unrefrigerated fish.”

I said, “I’m always careful. That’s why I’ve lasted so long with this outfit.” I shut the door quietly. I couldn’t bear to watch him suffer about Tom any longer.

I stopped in the doorway to look at Emily Calvin. She was folding a letter. She licked the flap of the envelope and then remembered to put in the letter. All of her movements were painfully slow and rather awkward.

She hadn’t been with us more than three months and I hadn’t really got to know her well yet. But I had seen her enough to know that tonight something about her was different. I continued to watch her, trying to figure out where the difference was.

She got to her feet and glanced at me. She looked down quickly, and I could have sworn she was blushing. Then I got the difference. She was wearing no make-up and she wasn’t dressed for the office. She was the kind of girl whom make-up helped. It hid her muddy complexion and filled out her thin lips and enlarged her rather small eyes. And she was a girl who was helped by clothes. She was tall and big, here and there. When she dressed to show off the better parts of her anatomy, her complexion and mouth and eyes lost their importance. But tonight she was in paint-stained jeans and a loose sweater. They didn’t do very much for her.

I said, “If you’re going down, Miss Calvin, I’ll go with you. And if I can take you any place …” I stopped because she was flushing again. I added, “This isn’t the best part of town for a woman alone at night.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

We walked down the dimly lit hallway to the elevator. Our offices were on the tenth floor of a building not far from the waterfront. The town had started there, as so many seaport cities had, but as it grew and prospered, the business district moved eastward until now it was almost to the Inlet, our big salt water lake. This older section had degenerated into a honky-tonk area, fringed by warehouses and small wholesalers. At night it was not very savory.

As we stepped into the creaky six-by-six box the building owners called an elevator, Emily Calvin seemed to find enough courage to speak to me. She said, “I’m awfully sorry about Tom, Mr. Durham. And I feel terrible about that taped message.”

She was just a kid, twenty-one at the outside. I had been about to question her concerning the tape, but now I decided not to. She sounded miserable enough without my making her feel worse. I said, “That kind of thing happens.”

She gave me what I took for a grateful smile. I smiled back. She flushed and a strange, soupy expression oozed onto her features. I pressed the button for the main floor and the elevator hiccoughed and began to clank slowly downward.

She said, “I was kind of irritated when Mr. Harbin called me tonight and asked me to come down and do some work. But when I heard about Tom, I was glad I could help a little.”

I examined her costume in the light from the midget bulb in the ceiling. “I hope he didn’t take you from anything important.”

She said in a mournful voice, “I was down at the Pad listening to that divine Ridley Trillian.”

I had read about Ridley Trillian. He was the darling of Puget City’s small but determinedly beat generation. A young member of the local college’s English faculty, he wrote poetry. This he took to the Pad, where the local beatniks had their headquarters, and he recited his work to his admirers, at the same time accompanying himself on the dulcimer.

I said, “I’m sorry.”