Pacific Beat

Chapter 32

Becky sped through the alley, out to the boulevard, then down the peninsula toward Cantrell’s beach house. The sky was changing black to indigo, with an orange tint to the east, and Jim Weir was a man unraveling. He stared out the windshield at the old neighborhood. Nothing looked the same. He was aware of moving southbound on the boulevard in Becky’s car, hunting something he did not want to find. The feeling was of being borne to sea by an undertow, away from what he knew, from what he had relied upon and held to be true. He could almost see these things, diminishing on a retreating shore.

“What if they’re not there?” she asked.

“Cantrell told me he’d be there. Raymond’s going to try for him. I know him enough to know that.”

“God, Jim. There’s got to be something wrong. Ray couldn’t have done it. Something is wrong.”

Raymond’s station wagon was parked behind Cantrell’s beach house. The windshield was clear where the wipers had gone; the rest of the glass was heavy with dew. The house was dark except for soft lamplight in the master suite upstairs. One window panel of the side door was broken out and the door stood ajar.

“He’s inside, and the alarm is banging away at PacifiCo Security,” said Jim. “Stay here.”

“Don’t be an ass, Jim. Call the police — this is what they get paid for. You don’t know anything for sure. And if he killed Ann, what’s to keep him from killing you?”

He brought the .45 from his holster, aware for a moment of its terrible heft.

“And what in hell am I supposed to do?” she asked.

“Stay here.”

“You’re a fool.”

He let himself in, gave his eyes a moment to adjust, then moved quietly through the living room to the stairway. The house was silent. He took the stairs slowly, calling for Raymond in a calm voice. His pulse throbbed in his ears with a bright, metallic clang. The bed was unmade, the bath was empty, and the air around him had the feeling of air that wasn’t going to answer back.

“Ray?”

Jim slid out the desk drawer: Cantrell’s revolver was still in place and the ammunition box was unmoved. Raymond surprised him, he thought, dragged him out of bed.

Jim looked out the open front window to the beach below. Nobody there but one surf fisherman and his dog.

From the back window, Jim could see the bayfront homes, the masts of the yachts at anchor, and between the homes a stretch of beach. A cloud of white exhaust rolled from the stern of C. David Cantrell’s Lady of the Bay, the biggest vessel Weir could see. She eased away from the dock with a high-horsepower grumble that rattled the window-pane in front of Jim’s face.

He flew down the stairs, out the door, and back into Becky’s car. “Sea Urchin,” he said. “As fast as you can go.”

“Raymond’s taking the boat, isn’t he?”

“It’s already out of dock. Flog it, Beck.”

Three PacifiCo security cars quietly rolled up just as Becky turned for the boulevard.

Five minutes later, they were speeding down the center of the bay, Weir on the bridge, guiding the little craft around the yachts and buoys and moorings, throwing up a rooster tail of water as he carved into a stretch of open harbor and shoved the throttle all the way forward. He could see the settling wake of Lady of the Bay ahead of them, disappearing into the glassy calm of the early-morning harbor. Becky stood beside him, still in her black velvet dress, hugging herself against the chill. Jim yelled over the roar of the engine. “Go get the anchor line clear and cut it off at the cleat — there’s a knife in the tool chest!”

Becky vanished into the cabin, then reappeared on the fore deck. “How are you going to get aboard?”

“Get the anchor line clear!”

“It’s clear!”

“Cut it off!”

“It’s off, damn it!”

Jim could see the stern of Cantrell’s yacht now, squarely between the jetties forming the harbor mouth. The big boat was picking up speed as she approached the open sea. Outside the jetties, the ocean rocked deeply with the swell and its color deepened to near black and spray blew off the whitecaps, to dart windward in the breeze. Weir heard the engines of Lady of the Bay groan louder and lower, saw the settling of her stern as the prop blades dug in.

“Becky! Get back up here!”

She nearly tipped over in the chopping motion of the little boat as she reached his hand and rode his yank all the way back to the bridge. He already was yelling out the only directions he could think of to make this thing work. “Cut close, stay with her, then fall back. Don’t press it — the swell is wicked.”

He jumped to the deck and crouched for balance against the fore hull, took the anchor in his right hand and payed out line with his left. Ahead, he could see Lady of the Bay hit the full chop of the sea, plowing through with a majestic nonchalance, losing not a bit of speed at all. Becky swung the Sea Urchin wide to port, aiming her with the swell, and with a surge of velocity bore down on a collision course for the yacht. The engine screamed when they hit the open-water swell; the bow left the water and the stern popped out and the prop cut nothing but air. They landed with a bone-crushing jolt that nearly sent Weir overboard. When he glanced up at Becky, she was hunkered down like a racer, hair streaking, a wholly fearless being. She brought Sea Urchin astern, then cut the throttle to nothing. The little boat pitched in the swell. She rose, swaying precariously as her momentum died and the wake of the yacht swept her up again. It was like being pushed skyward by some huge hand. Weir felt his knees bunch and tighten. At the apex of this rise, he threw the anchor aboard Lady of the Bay, yanked down to set the flukes, then, feeling Sea Urchin beginning her deep drop and praying the anchor had bitten into something solid, he jumped into the sky and started scrambling up the rope. It was like holding the tail of a sea monster. He felt the rock and surge of the ship above him, felt the wracking tug as she lifted over the swell and almost pulled his arms out at the shoulders. He banged hard against the stern, sucking in the billowing clouds of exhaust. Fist over fist he climbed, his body reeling, his boots sliding on the wet hull. Then he was high enough to see the polished teak gunwales. He whapped hard against the stern again, rolling with the yaw, but finally got his hands around the railing. He waited for a nudge from the ocean, and just as the yacht pitched down into a trough, Weir pulled up and rode the momentum up over the gunwale and onto the gleaming deck of Lady of the Bay.

He hit hard, rolled, righted himself, and stood. Ray was waiting for him, ten feet away. The bore of his .357 looked big enough to crawl into. There was a spray of blood on his white tuxedo shirt.

Ray lowered the gun. “Hell, it’s good to see you,” he said. He looked past Jim toward Sea Urchin, waved to Becky, and gave her a thumbs-up. Jim turned, to see Becky falling back, rocking deeply in the swell. She looked up at them from the bridge.

Raymond slipped the gun into his waistband and regarded Jim with clear dark eyes. “Don’t worry — the prints on the rose weren’t mine. That’s what Robbins tried to tell you, isn’t it?”

“That’s what he said.”

Raymond sighed and shook his head. His shoulders slumped as he looked past Jim again, toward the shore. “I never thought Robbins would throw in with them. I wonder how they got to him. I thought he was tougher than that.”

“Throw in with whom?”

“Dennison. Cantrell. Paris. They’ve been manipulating all this from the start. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”

Jim felt as if he’d jumped off a diving board, only to hang midair: Hope wouldn’t let him fall; dread wouldn’t let him rise. “Your prints, Ray. Your prints — nobody else’s.”

Raymond came across the deck to him, took both of Jim’s arms in his hands, and shook him urgently. “Be careful, Jim. You’ve got to understand, that’s exactly what they want you to believe.”

The gun in Raymond’s waistband was exposed, just a foot from Jim’s unresisting hands.

“Go ahead and take that piece if you want it,” Raymond said. “But think, Jim. Think first. Look what a perfect setup they’ve got now. Cantrell killed Annie, Dennison covered it up, they got their prime suspect to confess — then they offed him. It’s perfect, except for two things — you and me. They knew no matter how tight a case they made against Goins, we’d never go for it. You told Brian as much, back in Robbins’s office. So what do they do? They try to pit us, like fighting dogs. Go ahead, pull that gun out of your jacket and waste me. Or here, use mine. That’s exactly what they want.”

Jim couldn’t speak. The rushing sound in his ears suddenly quieted. In the silence that followed, he felt a deep, spacious calm settling over him. Everything was becoming clear.

“Don’t believe me, Jim — I might not if I were you. Come ask Cantrell. Get it straight from the source.”

Ray turned and climbed the ladder up to the bridge.

Inside the cabin, Jim took it all in: the carpeted floor, the richly paneled walls, the instruments recessed in wood, the captain’s and navigator’s chairs, the compass showing a southerly course, the wheel self-correcting on autopilot, and C. David Cantrell sprawled against the fore wall still in his bathrobe, a widening patch of red on his right shoulder. His eyes locked on Jim’s, wild and clear as a wounded animal’s. His jaw was clenched in a silent grimace.

Raymond walked over and prodded him with his toe. “Tell Jim what you told me five minutes ago, Davey. Don’t leave out the part about the fingerprints and the rose.”

Cantrell’s eyes darted from Jim to Raymond, then back to Jim again. “I never... I never hurt her. Never.”

Raymond, hands on his hips, looked down at Cantrell. “Never hurt her? Twenty-seven times with your kitchen knife didn’t hurt her? Oh, man.”

Ray stepped away and turned, and before Jim could read the movement, Ray pulled out his revolver and blew away the top of Cantrell’s good shoulder. A slab of muscle and flesh slapped against the bulkhead. Cantrell shrieked, dug his feet into the carpet, and pushed, as if trying to press himself into the crack between floor and wall.

Raymond watched him, then turned to Jim. “He’s playing to the new audience. Still thinks he can set one friend against another. Arrogance. Pure arrogance.”

Ray looked again at Cantrell, who raised a hand for protection and whispered, “No.” Raymond blasted a hole through the beseeching palm. For an instant, Jim could see one of Cantrell’s terrified eyes through the gaping wound.

“You ought to get in on this,” said Ray. “He’ll fold up and die soon. Come on — get some of that revenge we’ve been waiting for.”

“I’m ready,” said Jim.

“I’d think so.”

Jim, with surprising clarity of eye and heart, pulled the gun from his shoulder holster, stepped forward, gripped the handle tight, and swung it in a quick, vicious arc straight into the side of Raymond Cruz’s head. In the paralyzing moment that followed, Jim kicked away Ray’s gun, then slammed him against the bulkhead once, twice, three times before pinning him against the wall. He jammed the .45 into Ray’s neck. “It’s over, friend. You killed her and framed Cantrell. They were your prints, Ray — nobody else’s.”

Raymond’s head lolled and his eyes wouldn’t focus. Weir slammed a left hook into his ribs, dragged him back up, and pinned him to the bulkhead. “Robbins wouldn’t lie if you paid him ten million dollars — you know it and I know it. Cantrell won’t even lie to save his own life, and he knows it’s the only chance he’s got.”

Jim could see Raymond’s focus blurring again. A terrible energy spread through him. He slammed Ray up against the bulkhead again, and drove the gun up under his jaw. “Look at me, Ray. Look at me! Every time I played that scene in my mind — Annie down at the Back Bay — I knew there was something missing. Now I know what it was. She didn’t fight, did she? You know why? Because it was you who took her down there. You were the one who walked her along that path. Annie could believe a lot of things, but the one thing she couldn’t believe was that you’d hurt her. She’d have fought a kid like Goins, with that baby inside her. She’d have taken a piece of Cantrell with her. But she wouldn’t fight you. You were the only one she could trust that much.”

Raymond’s gaze swam toward focus now. “I’d never betray that trust. No.”

Weir jammed Raymond hard against the wall again. “You did more than betray it. You employed it. You took the batteries out of the controller so she couldn’t use his garage that night. You changed into street clothes right in your car, met her with the flowers you knew Cantrell had sent her. You were wearing a pair of Cantrell’s shoes. You’d already filled out your logs — making sure the times would cover midnight to one. So you begged her to get in the car — ‘Just for a minute, Ann, I have to talk to you.’ And she trusted you enough to get in.”

“No.”

“Yes. But she’d just been caught in someone else’s bed, hadn’t she? So she was scared. Too scared to realize you were giving Dispatch bogus fixes. Between the peninsula and the Back Bay, you had her trust back again. You had her right next to you on the path. No struggle at all. You had your arm around her. What did you tell her, Ray? How’d you make everything seem okay?”

Raymond tried to break away, but Weir’s grip was strong and the gun barrel was too hard against his jaw.

“How?”

“No.”

“How!”

Raymond’s knee shot up toward Weir’s groin, but Jim caught it on his own and threw a punch into Ray’s sternum. He slumped and Weir let him go. Ray settled on his hands and knees and looked up at Weir with a ferocity that Jim had never seen in him. He didn’t even look like himself. “I just told her I’d known about Cantrell all along. And that I... forgave her. She was always a sucker for that word.”

The last leaf of doubt broke away and blew from Jim’s mind, leaving nothing but a naked black branch. He felt like his heart was impaled on it. “Aw, shit, Ray. Oh Hell. No. No.”

Raymond looked toward his gun. Jim kicked it to a corner. A hopeless low groan came from Cantrell’s throat. Jim moved to the instrument panel, killed the autopilot, and pulled the throttle back to idle. Raymond slumped back against the wall and watched him the whole while, his face white and his mouth clenched. His eyes moved from Jim to the window to the floor as if looking for somewhere to hide.

“How long did you know about them, Ray?”

“I knew everything about her. She was my damned wife. For better or for worse — all that crap.”

“You broke into Cantrell’s house twice — once to take the tie tack and a pair of his shoes, and write the letter to yourself on his equipment. Once later, to plant Ann’s things.”

Raymond looked to Cantrell, then back to Jim. “Three times, really. The first time, I just wanted to see the bed she’d been in.”

It took Weir a long while to ask his next question. In the quiet, all he could hear was Cantrell’s shallow breathing, and the slosh of water on the big yacht’s hull. “You practiced, didn’t you? You practiced using a knife with your right hand.”

Raymond looked away. “That’s right. I practiced a lot. There was a heavy bag in my garage. I took it to the dump when it got too many holes.”

Jim followed Raymond’s stare out the window to the somber spring clouds. “She believed in you, Ray. And you fucking snuffed her out like a dog. I’d blow your sorry brains out if it would do any good.”

Raymond looked at him with a vacant expression. “Go ahead. I’m ready.”

But Weir couldn’t do it; he couldn’t even come close. This was too vast a thing to end now. There was so much of it he couldn’t understand. “Why, Ray? It was Annie. Why?”

“I explained it all in that letter to myself. I wrote it to ID Cantrell’s printer, but I also wrote to try to... clarify.”

The twisted sentiments of Mr. Night came back to Jim, this time in Raymond’s voice. Then I saw it on her face, finally, the surrender, the helplessness, and absolute dependence on me she never had before. If only for a moment!

“Surrender? Dependence? What shit is that? She was your woman. You had a life.”

An expression of genuine bewilderment came to Raymond’s face. “It’s like something laid an egg in my head, and it grew, Jim. I wanted to tell you so bad. I wanted you to take me out, once and for all. I wanted to keep on going when we were underwater — just never come back. You knew I wanted to end it, but you didn’t know why.”

Raymond turned Cantrell’s chin with a finger. “Still ticking, isn’t he?”

“Take off your shirt and plug him up.”

“Let him die.”

“Do it, Ray.”

Raymond worked off his bloody shirt, tore off some pieces, and jammed them into Cantrell’s wounds. Cantrell bellowed, arched, then fainted.

“This guy ruined my life,” said Ray. “Now I’m trying to save his. I knew from the beginning about them. Ann’s looks. Later, the clothes coming back from the cleaners that she hadn’t worn for me. The little come-ons when she tried to make me look like the father I knew I wasn’t. That stupid little boat and journal of hers. I tapped my own phone to get their pattern down, then took off the bug and chucked it in the bay the day I killed her. I kept wondering if a dead fish would wash up with it wrapped around its head.” Raymond looked straight at Jim for a second, then away. “Ann always thought just because she hid things from herself that she hid them from me, too. For all her cheating and sneaking, she really wasn’t careful. That first night — it was March twenty-third — I could smell him on her when I got home. She’d showered but it didn’t matter. I could always tell because she’d be showered and still have that smell. The baby was the last straw, Jim. It wasn’t mine — it was his. You know how bad that made me feel?”

“Made you feel?”

Ray beheld him for a long moment. There was a dullness coming into his eyes now, as if clarity and purpose were draining out as fast as Cantrell’s blood. “Yes. Me. I just couldn’t believe she’d do that to me.”

“So you killed her. Damn Ray — it was Ann!”

Raymond shook his head slowly. He looked out the window, then toward Jim, but Weir could see that his gaze traveled far past himself, all the way to some destination that Jim could neither identify nor imagine.

“There are certain things a man can’t put up with in this life,” Ray said. “You can’t borrow his wife, use her, then hand her back with your kid inside. I tried to take it, but I couldn’t. The more it ate at me, the more I needed to see some justice done. You won’t understand this, but to me, Ann was proof that I was good. When I had her, I believed that. She was my badge, my... validation. When she betrayed me, I fell apart.”

Jim could hardly keep a rein on his charging thoughts. “You were always good enough, Ray. You were the only one who didn’t think so.”

“I don’t know. It’s something you either have inside or you don’t.”

“I stood up for you when you married my only sister. I stuck up for you anytime you needed it. You never had to prove anything to me. You’re right — I don’t understand.”

Raymond looked again at Cantrell, then he worked himself up to his hands and knees. He stood slowly, eyes fastened on Jim. “You don’t understand because you’ve never let yourself go. You always wash around in the middle. Ask Becky. We’ve had enough talks about the way you drift. You’re a good, strong, decent guy — but you’re afraid to go all the way. I was never like that. One thing you can say about me, Jim, is I’ve always been willing to go all the way. Want to hear something strange? When I found out she was carrying this asshole’s child, was going to try to fool me, I felt like everything I’d believed in was a lie. I sat there with her journal in my hands, crying like a baby. And Hell, I was furious. I didn’t believe in Ann anymore; I didn’t believe in the God I’d been praying to for thirty years. I didn’t believe in me or my job, or the law, or anything at all. I realized I was still living my life according to all the things that had failed me. I felt like a fool. Then, after I killed her, they all came rushing back. That’s why I stabbed her so many times — I could feel the old beliefs coming back. So I just flailed away, trying to make them disappear again. But it didn’t do any good. After she was dead, everything was back in place. Just like before. I missed her and I hated myself. I believed in God again and knew he was going to waste me. It took killing Ann to get my faith back — not that I really care about my soul anymore. I came that close to telling you, Jim, that night we went down the wall. I’m sorry. But I’m not sentimental enough to think I can change anything by saying so. I’m prepared to carry this through. I always have been.”

Ray looked down at Cantrell once again. “Pull that trigger if you want, but I’m going out on deck so I can breathe.”

He walked past Jim and out to the bridge deck. Jim followed him three steps back, the gun still in his hand. They were five or six miles offshore, ten miles south of Newport, Jim guessed. The swell was still high. Sea Urchin bobbed a quarter mile out. He could see the speck of Becky on the bridge.

Raymond looked back toward shore, then turned to Jim. “Ann got knocked up by Cantrell when she was fifteen. I didn’t know that until I read her journal. That trip to France? She never went to France. She went to upstate New York and had a dead baby. Told me later the scar was an appendectomy, and I believed her. Here we are twenty-four years later and she gets pregnant by him again. You wouldn’t believe how bad we wanted that for ourselves. What am I supposed to think? I’ll tell you what I came up with. I think God is a sour old bastard who plays tricks on us for his own entertainment.”

“How did you get to Goins?”

“No. I think Cantrell set that all up. Don’t ask me how he found Goins when a whole police department couldn’t. Don’t ask me how he got him to write that note, then jump in a pool of boiling silver. Maybe someone convinced Goins he really did do it. Guy’s a nut.”

Raymond looked down for a long while, then back toward shore. Past his head, Jim could see the pale bluffs of Dana Point, the brooding spring sky. Two sea gulls hovered overhead, treading air without effort. To the north, Newport was nothing but an approximation, a gray idea somewhere at the edge of the land.

Ray dabbed at the drying blood on his head. “We had some good times, didn’t we?”

Jim didn’t answer.

“I wish it could have ended better. What are you going to do?”

“What kind of choice do you leave me, Ray? I either use this gun in my hand to blow away my best friend, or I drag you back to rot in jail.”

Raymond ran his hand over the polished railing. “I got to thinking lately about Francisco. I think his wife had a thing for Joaquin. That’s why his men turned around at the last minute. They were on her side.”

“Maybe.”

Raymond ran his hand over his bare arms and shivered. “Cold out here with no shirt on. What do you guess for water temp?”

“Low sixties.”

“How long would I last?”

“Two hours maybe. Half the time it would take you to make shore.”

“No chance at all?”

“None at all.”

“Let me take it?”

Weir looked at him. There was an odd little smile on Ray’s face, the same expression he’d get when he brought a suspect out in handcuffs.

“We still friends, Jim?”

The idea hit Jim that the constants in life were the things you made for yourself. Everything else was just degrees of uncertainty. Faith bridges the gaps, but the gaps remain.

Raymond was smiling again now, a broader, less fettered smile.

A long minute passed as neither man spoke. Jim looked out at Sea Urchin, up to the gray moving clouds, back along the miniature coast to Newport. The big yacht swayed gently in the swell, and the minor sunlight brought warmth to her wood and decking. He was profoundly tired.

For a moment, he saw on Raymond’s face an expression of absolute, unalloyed grief. In some strange way, it was what Jim had been wanting to see. Ray took a deep breath, and swallowed hard. “Thanks.”

With that, he climbed onto the gunwale and jumped over.

Jim waited a moment, then went to the railing and looked down. Ray, true to Jim’s prediction, had set off west, away from shore. His strokes were fast and short and the chop slapped hard against him. It was hard to tell how rough the sea was until a man was in it, trying to survive. It was an awful sight.

Jim watched for a long while. The swell kept Raymond pretty much in place, pulling him north a little and east a little, in spite of his determination to go the other way. Weir went back in and checked Cantrell. Shock had slowed his bleeding and his breath. Jim tore some fresh strips from Ray’s shirt, did what he could with them, then wrapped two blankets around the man. He swung Lady of the Bay to starboard and brought her up along Raymond, then went back out on the bridge deck. Ray was on his back now, trying to conserve energy, his strokes already slowing. The sea was too rough to last in, too cold, too big. Becky had moved Sea Urchin on the other side of Raymond, and she looked to Jim with an uncomprehending expression. Jim signaled for her to stay in place.

Looking down at Raymond’s struggle, Jim saw him instead at the age of sixteen, waiting for Ann to come downstairs for the prom. Oh, what a light in that boy’s face.

Jim could see him standing beside Ann, facing the priest before them, saying “I do.” Such conviction there, such belief.

Jim could see his skinny brown body riding the waves at Fifteenth Street; scurrying around the Eight Peso looking for dropped change; climbing into a fighting chair on one of Poon’s charter boats, begging to go along for the day. What hunger, what life and promise.

When he couldn’t take it any longer, he got out a life preserver and tossed it over. Ray took it and hung on, breathing hard. Becky pulled Sea Urchin up close, but Raymond just lay there, back heaving, looking up at Jim. Weir pulled the rope ladder from a deck well, hooked one end over the railing, and threw the rest down. It unfurled in the breeze and splashed down next to the ship.

Raymond was still looking up. “Next time,” he said. Weir could hardly hear the words.

Then Raymond took a deep breath and dove under, vanishing immediately in the gray water. Five minutes later — minutes during which Jim understood not a single thing on earth except the passage of time itself — Raymond rose, back first, escorted by a scintillant halo of bubbles that broke on the surface and then disappeared, as if their duty had been completed.

Weir eased the ship closer, lowered a lifeboat, climbed down the ladder, and got Raymond into it.

Becky watched from the near-distance. Then she tied up to Lady of the Bay and spent the trip back trying to talk Dave Cantrell into not dying.

The Coast Guard cutter Point Divide, summoned by Becky, found them two miles from the harbor. They got Cantrell onto a stretcher and took him aboard. Nobody seemed sure what to do about Raymond except for Jim, who said he’d take Ray back to port.