A Garden of Vipers

CHAPTER 38

“I’m not going to believe it,” Clair Peltier said. “You people are simply mistaken.”

Her hand shook as she let the curtain fall back into place. She walked to Ryder’s bedroom, closed the door. Outside in the drive was a Coast Guard truck, a battered and bent red kayak roped in the bed. It was ten a.m., the succeeding bands of storm now in their thirteenth hour.

“Where was the kayak again?” Harry Nautilus asked.

“Washed up on Fort Morgan beach, just east of the point.” Lieutenant Robert Sanchez was twenty-seven and wrote left-handed on a clipboard. “It was a strong storm, Detective.”

“He was an expert in the things. Kayaks.”

“Did he wear flotation, sir?” Sanchez asked. “On a regular basis?”

“No,” Harry Nautilus admitted.

“We have a team scouring the area, walking the beach. We had boats out but weather made us pull them. The choppers were grounded as well.”

“Are you looking for a swimmer? Or a body?” Nautilus’s voice was matter-of-fact, a professional talking to a professional.

“The wind might have blown him across the mouth of the Bay, toward Fort Morgan. Into the ship channel. There were several freighters in and out of the bay last night. Currents at the point are powerful. I once heard a diver describe them as freight trains under the water. There’s debris down there, wrecks, things to get hung up on.”

“I see,” Nautilus said, his voice a whisper.

Sanchez cleared his throat. “Pardon me, Detective, but why would your friend go out in a kayak knowing a storm was blowing in?”

“He made it through his childhood. Sometimes it made him think he could make it through anything.”

Sanchez nodded politely, like he understood. A blast of wind shook the house, screamed across the windows. The lights muted to brown, flickered, returned.

“As soon as the storm lets up, we’ll go back out, Detective. There’s another heavy storm fifty miles out, but we might get a chopper up for a half hour.”

“Thank you,” Nautilus said, wondering if the search was little more than a formality.

“Would you like for me to leave your friend’s kayak, sir?” Sanchez asked. “Or I can haul it away, if you want.”

“Leave it,” Clair Peltier said from behind the bedroom door, her voice breaking. “And get that goddamn helicopter in the air.”