The Crimes of Jordan Wise

ITHOUGHT YOU'D ASK about my emotional state in the aftermath of the Cotler crime. Did I have nightmares about what I'd done? Daymares? Did I suffer remorse, guilt, any of the other so-called murderer's torments?

The answers are all no.

My emotional state, once the initial dose of blackmailer's poison had been flushed out, was no different than it had been before Cotler showed up on the island.

I told you I'm not religious; I don't believe in mortal sin or any of the other biblical covenants, or in divine punishment. I do believe that morality, like love, is a private thing defined by and suited to each individual. I've freely admitted to my dark side, but like Bone, I also have my own code of ethics. I've always adhered to that code, and within its boundaries I was and still am a moral man.

No, I don't consider myself a murderer. How many of those who have taken a human life, for any reason, ever look at themselves in the mirror and think that they've committed a mortal sin? Damn few. No man, unless he's a homicidal psychotic, ever thinks of himself as an evildoer. If you called him one to his face, chances are he'd be shocked. So would I.

I killed Fred Cotler in a fit of blind rage, for a perfectly justifiable reason. It was an act of self-preservation, not one of murder. How can anyone be expected to feel sorry for having killed to save his own life?

Yes, of course I know the law, the churches, many individuals would consider that a rationalization. Everyone who has killed in hot or cold blood has a reason or an excuse. The human mind is capable of bending and shaping any act to fit any preconceived set of beliefs, of justifying even the most heinous crime. But in most cases, that bending and shaping is the result of the mind's inability to cope with the magnitude of the act; it can continue to function only through a process of denial and self-delusion. I knew exactly what I'd done, and why. I was not self-deluded. I have a very clear understanding of the differences between right and wrong.

I'm not a sociopath. Maybe you think so, but you're wrong. Sociopaths care about no one but themselves, have no empathy for others or capacity for love or belief in the sanctity of human life. I cared about others, good people like Bone; I'd loved Annalise with all my heart; I would never willingly harm anyone who was not a direct threat to my safety and well-being, and then only as a last resort.

Murderer? Evildoer? Sociopath? No. Just a man with a dark side, nothing more and nothing less.

I had to forget Annalise all over again. There was no other reasonable course of action.

Oh, I gave some thought to flying up to New York, tracking her down, confronting her. I could have done that without too much difficulty, I think. But to what purpose? Threats were useless unless I told her what I'd done to Cotler, and that was out of the question. If she believed that I'd killed him, it would only give her a greater hold over me.

Yes, I could have destroyed her as I'd destroyed her lover, but I told you, I couldn't harm anyone except as a last resort. Not even Annalise, as much as I hated her—from love to indifference to hate, full turn. It was a cold hate, locked away and shackled. I could no more have gone hunting her than I could have gone hunting an animal, even a loathsome animal. I'm not made that way.

As I settled back into my day-to-day life, I was able to keep from dwelling on Annalise and her duplicity. With some difficulty at first, then more easily behind a wall of passing days. Only one thing continued to bother me, a nagging worry like a splinter that had worked itself in too deep for extraction.

What if she hooked up with somebody else like Fred Cotler?

What if another blue-eyed bastard showed up someday to bleed me dry?

A complex man with simple tastes.

If I had to describe myself in a single sentence, that would be it.

I didn't realize it until I came to St. Thomas. The simple tastes, I mean. I thought the quiet life I'd led in San Francisco was a result of my job, of lack of funds and resources, of circumstances. What I wanted, I believed then, was what Annalise wanted: all the luxuries and material possessions money could buy. Not so. I didn't miss the Quartz Gade villa or the Royal Bay Club or the company of the elite white community or the parties and nightclubs and expensive restaurants or the dress-up clothes or the trips to far-flung places. The only material possession that really meant anything to me was Windrunner. If it hadn't been for Annalise and the misunderstanding of my needs, I wouldn't have had to steal $600,000 from Amthor Associates to finance a new life in the Virgin Islands; I could have done it on not much more than $100,000, and to hell with the stock portfolio and the Cayman Islands bank accounts.

As it was, except for an occasional small draw, what was left of the initial bankroll, plus all the dividends, just sat over there accumulating interest. There was nothing I cared to spend money on other than the yawl, no place I cared to go that the yawl couldn't take me.

I liked living on Windrunner. The major reason was that she was Annalise-free. The villa had had her taint in it, a faint residue of our life together trapped within its walls. I hadn't felt it so much while I was occupying the place, but once I moved out I realized how subtly oppressive it had been the past year. I was glad I hadn't given it up sooner, because of the nature of the Cotler crime, but to be rid of it finally was like the removal of a weight.

The yawl's main cabin had never seemed cramped when I was out to sea, nor did it seem cramped in port. There was room enough for everything I owned, and it was easy to keep clean and tidy. I kept the galley well stocked and I didn't mind cooking, learned to enjoy it enough so that I ate most of my evening meals on board. Simple meals. West Indian dishes like chowders and bouillabaisses, fried fish, crab sandwiches, an occasional chicken or meat course. I slept better on her, too, than I ever had in the villa. You couldn't ask for a more soothing soporific than the movement of the harbor water, the creak of rigging and old timbers, the farniliar odors of salt and creosote.

Once a week or so I took Windrunner out for a sail, sometimes on a day trip over by St. John or another nearby island, sometimes on longer cruises. Days when I was in port, I followed the same routine and enjoyed the same small pleasures as I had before the blackmailer's arrival. Evenings were the same, too—the best part of any day for me. Quiet time. Sunsets, Arundel, Calypso and Fungi rhythms, harbor sounds, the boom and cabin lights on the berthed boats like a bright jeweled chain around the marina's dark throat.

I'd gotten to know some of the other residents and now and then one of them would drop by to socialize, or invite me over for a drink or a meal. Other evenings, Bone would show up and we'd drink rum and talk some while he perfumed the darkness with his molasses-sweet pipe tobacco. Or we'd just sit quiet together, absorbing the night. They were all the company I needed or wanted.

Fred Cotler gradually faded out of my consciousness, until it was as if he'd never come to the island in the first place, never dirtied my hands with his blood. I couldn't entirely forget Annalise, but sometimes a full week would go by without a single thought of her entering my head. I felt I couldn't ask for any more than that.

In May '83, shortly after Carnival, I had my fortieth birthday. Bone and I went out to celebrate. We nibbled a few drinks in the Bar, had dinner in a Creole restaurant on the Rue de St. Barthelemy, then set off on a Frenchtown and native-quarter pub crawl.

Somewhere along the way we picked up a couple of women, or the women picked us up—I'm not sure which. They were both native West Indians. One—big, bawdy, skin the color of melted licorice—knew Bone and latched on to him. I can't remember her name. The other one, Pearl, was younger, slimmer, lighter skinned, shy until she took in enough rum to loosen her inhibitions. She was a singer, or wanted to be a singer, and in one of the clubs she joined a loud steel band and sang an old Calypso song called "Don't Stop the Carnival" in a husky Antilles patois.

At some point after midnight we all piled into the Mini, four sardines in a can, and drove down to the Sub Base harbor marina so I could show off Windrunner. We partied on board, Pearl singing another song, to radio accompaniment this time, Bone and his woman joining in—the first time I'd heard Bone sing. He didn't have much of a voice, but he made up for it with energy and a high-stepping island dance. They got me up and dancing, something I would not have done if I'd been sober. The rum went down like water, very fast, and time got lost in a heady, rollicking swirl. We were all pretty drunk by then.

I don't remember Bone and the big woman leaving. The four of us were dancing, laughing, drinking, and the next thing I knew, Pearl and I were alone on deck, snuggled together in the moonlight, and I was shaking the last bottle of Arundel and it was empty. She said, "We doan need any more," and kissed me, and murmured snatches of another song in my ear, something soft and intimate, and kissed me again, and pretty soon we were down in the cabin, naked on my bunk.

Mistake.

I wanted her, all right, and I wasn't too far gone, and she was willing and eager. She had a good body, hard and soft at the same time. And pubic hair that was sensuously abrasive, like a fine grade of steel wool. With her help I managed to get an erection, but it was only a three-quarters salute, and neither it nor I lasted very long. Thin, almost painful little spurts.

Afterward I kept telling her how sorry I was, and she held me and said, "Doan worry, doan fret," in a crooning voice. More lost time. Then we were trying again, but it was no use, I was impotent. I apologized again and I think I might have gotten a little maudlin. The last words I remember her saying before I passed out were "It's all right, honey, it's all right." But it wasn't all right, for her or for me. In the morning, when I woke up, she was gone.

I lay in the bunk with my head throbbing, berating myself for getting too drunk to do either of us any good. And not believing the Ue, even then. It wasn't the rum. It wasn't Pearl, and it wasn't me.

It was Annalise.

Windrunner was out of the water for more than two weeks that summer, for scraping and minor rudder repairs. I did some of the hull work myself to keep busy. Bone let me bunk with him for the duration, and helped out with painting and varnishing chores after the yawl was relaunched. By way of repayment, I talked him into joining me on a long cruise to the Turks and Caicos. It was an iffy time of year for that kind of sail on the Atlantic, but summer storm activity was light that season and the long-range forecast was favorable. Bone said we'd be all right. I trusted his instincts, with good cause as usual. Other than a couple of light squalls, we had fair weather and light-running seas.

As usual we stood watch and watch, four on and four off, except when there was a weather helm to be held. On clear nights, when one or the other of us wasn't tired enough to sleep, we'd hang out on deck together. Bone still used words sparingly, but at sea he was a little more voluble than on land. Some subjects opened him up more than others. One was boats and sailing, another was the destructive effects on the Virgins of tourism and overpopulation.

St. Thomas was becoming a shadow of the island it had been twenty years ago, he said, when he first came there. The changes were evident to me after just five years. More cruise ships clogging the harbor every season; big new resorts going up and more planned where once there had been quiet bays and pristine beachfront; fancy vilias springing up on the north shore and the mountainsides of the West End, to spoil undeveloped forests and fields. Crime, racial friction, environmental problems. The island was losing its appeal for Bone. One day he'd have his fill of the new St. Thomas and move away, he said. He could feel the time coming.

"Where will you go?" I asked him. "Back to the Bahamas?"

"Same things happening there."

"Entire Caribbean's changing, they say. All the islands."

"Not all yet. Some still pretty much the way they were."

"Such as?"

"St. Lucia. The Grenadines—Carriacou."

"How long since you were down there?"

"Two years," Bone said. "Going out again next summer."

"Why next summer?"

"Promised Isola a three-month cruise when her graduates from college. Just the two of us, get to know each other better."

He'd told me once that his dalighter was studying to be a marine biologist. I said, "You must be proud of her, Bone."

"Yeah, mon. Her mama be too, if she still here."

I asked him how long it had been since his first wife passed away. He hadn't volunteered the information before.

"Twenty years. Isola was a baby." He sat silent for a time. Then he said, "Dengue fever. Two days sick, that's all. Just two days."

"Must've been hard to deal with," I said.

"Real hard, Cap'n."

"Is that why you left Nassau?"

"Didn't leave then. I stayed two more years." Pain had come into his voice when he spoke of his first wife; now it was replaced by bitterness. "Seemed right for Isola to have a new mama."

"Your second wife."

"Yeah, mon. Bad mistake."

"What happened with her?"

It was a question I'd asked a couple of times without getting an answer. He took so long to respond I thought he was going to stonewall me again. But then he said quick and hard, spitting the words, "You ever see a coral snake? Pretty, mon, pretty snake. But underneath that pretty skin, full of poison."

"She must have hurt you bad."

"Never been hurt worse."

"But you survived."

"Poison don't get in deep enough, that's why."

"I guess we're both lucky that way," I said. "So when you found out the truth about her, that's when you gave Isola to your sister to raise and left Nassau."

"That's when."

"What did you do about the woman?"

"Nothing, Cap'n. What should I do?"

"I don't know. Seems like there ought to be some way to keep a woman like that from hurting somebody else."

"Snake bites you, what you gonna do? Beat on her or get away quick so you can suck out the poison?"

"You could do both."

"Too late then. You can't get all the poison out."

"I suppose you're right."

"Right enough," Bone said. "Only smart thing to do with a snake is stay out of her way, don't let her fangs get in you again."

That was all he'd say about his second wife, then or at any time afterward. I never did find out exacdy what it was she'd done to him, and he never once spoke her name.

From time to time I ran into one of the people I'd known when Annalise and I were together. On an island as small as St. Thomas, that kind of thing is unavoidable. Twice I encountered Royce Verriker, once near Emancipation Garden and once on Waterfront Drive during Carnival week. The first time, he spoke to me in his glad-handing way, making a snotty comment on my regrown beard and long hair, and I turned my back on him and walked away; the second time we made a point of ignoring each other. Maureen Verriker passed me without speaking in Market Square. I exchanged stiff hellos with Gavin Kyle in the Dronningens Gade liquor store, and with the Potters, the British rum connoisseurs, at the Yacht Club regatta.

It happened again on a morning in late September, on the dock at the Sub Base harbor marina. I'd just returned from an errand and I didn't notice the sloppily dressed woman until she came up and blocked my way. "Richard Laidlaw? Is that you under all that hair?" She laughed at my blank look. "JoEllen Hall. Remember me?"

I recognized her then. Annalise's drinking buddy, the Red Hook divorcee and not very talented artist. She seemed thinner than the last time I'd seen her, more juiceless, her sun-darkened skin as lined and cracked as old leather. She was there sketching for a new series of paintings, she said. How was I and what was I up to these days? She'd heard I was living on my boat; how come I'd given up the villa? Was I seeing anyone now that I was single again? Nosy questions in her too-loud voice that I answered in monosyllables.

After I made my escape, I didn't think any more about her. Just another chance meeting to be quickly forgotten. Only it wasn't. Hell no, it wasn't. JoEllen Hall hadn't been down there to sketch and running into her hadn't been accidental and her questions hadn't been casual. The whole thing was a put-up job—a goddamn scouting mission.

On a Saturday afternoon ten days later I came up the companionway from belowdecks, where I'd been doing some work on the generator, and Annalise was there waiting for me.

I didn't believe it at first. Eyes playing tricks. Mistaken identity. Hallucination. I stopped stone still, staring. No mistake. Annalise. She stood on the stringpiece astern, bathed in sunlight in a way that made her seem to glow, both hands clutching a straw bag, a tentative, nervous smile on her unpainted mouth that came and went like a blinking sign.

"Hello, Richard," she said.

It took me a few seconds to recover from the shock. "Jesus," I said.

"I guess you never thought you'd see me again."

I had no answer for that. I stood flatfooted, the oily rag I'd been using dangling from one hand. She wore white shorts, a white halter top, and a pale-blue-and-white beach shirt. The exposed parts of her were no longer tanned; the pale skin was sun-reddened in places. Her hair was long again, shoulder-length, worn in one of those frizzy-permanent styles. She'd put on a little weight in the past two years; it showed in a puffiness around her cheeks and mouth, a slight bulge at the waist of the shorts. Signs of dissipation in her face, too, veins showing here and there, faint crow's-feet around the eyes, a muscle twitching along her jaw. Her hands kept kneading the straw bag.

She said, "I see you've changed the name of your boat."

"Does that surprise you?"

"I'd be surprised if you hadn't. Windrunner. I like that."

I didn't say anything.

"I like the beard, too. And your hair long that way. They give you a sort of sea captain's look."

I didn't say anything.

"Is it all right if I come aboard?"

"Why?"

"To talk."

"We don't have anything to say to each other."

"Yes we do. I have so much to say to you. Is it all right?"

"No," I said.

She chewed her lower Up, head cocked a little to one side, eyes lowered. Her pleading-little-girl look. "It took a lot for me to come here like this, Richard. Please don't turn me away without listening to what I have to say."

"How long have you been on the island?"

"Two days. I've been staying with JoEllen Hall. You remember JoEllen?"

"All too damn well."

"She told me you were living on the boat now."

"Sure she did. Among other things. Good old JoEllen."

"She let me use her car to drive over from Red Hook," Annalise said.

"Why the hell did you come back?"

"To see you."

"What do you want? More money? More of my blood?"

"No. God, no."

"You must want something. You always did."

Struck a nerve. "I deserve that," she said.

"Well? I'm waiting."

"It's hot standing here in the sun. If you don't want to talk on board, can we go to one of the cafes? I'd really like to have a drink."

"I'll bet you would."

"Please, Richard. Just for a few minutes. Listen to what I have to say, then if you want me to I'll go away and never bother you again."

The urge to tell her to fuck off then and there was strong. But I couldn't do it. I had to hear her out, find out what she wanted. For my own protection.

We went to Harry's Dockside Cafe. Neither of us said anything on the walk over, or when we first sat down at an outside table under one of the brightly colored umbrellas. She couldn't hold eye contact; the few times she tried, the smile would flicker on and then flicker off again after a few seconds and she would look somewhere else.

It felt unreal to be with her again this way, all of a sudden, so close I could reach out and touch her. As if she weren't really there and what I was facing was a holographic projection of her, the image of an intimate stranger. I kept waiting for the anger and the hate to rise up in a choking wave, but it didn't happen. Undercurrents, yes, but that was all. The surface of feeling was curiously flat and empty, like shoal water under a gray-black sky.

No more rum punches for Annalise. She ordered Scotch, a double, no ice. I wanted an Arundel; I settled for beer to keep my head clear. Before the drinks came, she rummaged in her bag, came up with a little amber-colored plastic bottle. The prescription kind, except that it had no label. She shook out a white tablet, swallowed it dry.

I said, "What's that you just took?"

"Valium. For my nerves. Somebody I know got it for me. Not JoEllen—where I was living before."

Scraping bottom, all right. She'd never used drugs of any kind when we were together. "Where was that?"

"New York."

"You always did want to live in the Big Apple. How was it? Exciting?"

"I don't know," she said bitterly. "I never lived there. You were right, I couldn't afford Manhattan."

"Where did you live, then?"

"Long Island. God, what's keeping those drinks?"

They came and she gulped half of hers. The combination of Valium and Scotch worked fast to calm her, restore her poise. Color came back into her cheeks. The smile flicked on again and stayed Ut.

"Whoo, that's better," she said. "I'd almost forgotten how twitchy and woozy tropical heat can make you until you get used to it."

I sipped beer and said nothing.

"So," she said. "How have you been, Richard?"

"Fine, until a little while ago. Never better."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

"Well, I've been miserable," she said.

"Is that right? Things didn't work out with the clothing manufacturer, I take it. What was his name? Jackson? Johnson?"

She took another slug of Scotch. "Johnson. Paul Johnson."

"You don't seem surprised I know about him."

"I'm not. I . . . wasn't very discreet."

"I know about Verriker, too," I said. "Good old Royce."

"Oh, God. How did you—?"

"Does it matter?"

"I guess not. Did you . . . I mean . . ."

"Confront him? No. I'm not confrontational, you know that."

"I don't know why I went to bed with him. I honestly don't."

"Sure you do. He's handsome and glib and charismatic. A stud, too, I hear. I'll bet he was terrific in the sack."

She winced. "Please, Richard."

"How about Paul Johnson? Another stud, another good lay?"

"I don't want to talk about any of that."

"Why not? Sex was always one of your favorite topics."

"You have every right to hate me," she said.

"Don't I, though."

"Do you? Hate me?"

"What do you think?"

"I think I'm a terrible bitch. It was unforgivable, what I did to you. First Royce, then Paul Johnson, then taking everything I could get my hands on and running off like a thief in the night."

And then Fred Cotler, I thought. But I had no more intention of bringing him up than she did. I wasn't supposed to know about her and Cotler, or that she'd told him all about me, or that she'd been a willing partner in the attempted blackmail. It would be a mistake to let her know that I knew.

"What about the twenty-six thousand?" I said. "All gone now?"

"Yes. The jewelry, too. I don't have anything left."

"How long did it take you to blow it all?"

"I didn't blow it, not the way you mean. I spent it on essentials—food, rent, utilities."

"Johnson didn't keep you long, is that it?"

"He didn't keep me at all." She said it bitterly.

"How about giving you design work with his company? Or an intro into the fashion industry? That is why you ran off with him?"

"Yes, but he didn't keep any of his promises. He used me and then he dumped me."

"What did you do then? Find another sugar daddy?"

"I'm a bitch but not a whore, Richard. Though I don't blame you for thinking I'm both. I tried to find design work on my own. When I couldn't I gave up, finally admitted to myself that my designs really weren't very good and I was never going to make it in the industry."

"Big admission for you. Big letdown."

"Yes, it was."

"What did you do then?"

"Took a job selling lingerie in a department store. The money was running out and I had to pay the rent."

I said, "Sounds like a shitty job," and managed to keep the malice out of my voice.

"It was. But it's the only kind of work I had any experience with. I stuck it out for more than a year."

"What happened then?"

"They laid me off. Three weeks ago. No warning, they just decided to downsize the department. Two weeks' severance pay and out the door."

"You're being very candid about all this, Annalise—the mess you've made of your life the past two years. Why? What're you leading up to?"

"Jobs aren't that easy to come by up there," she said. "The kind that pay you a decent living wage. I just couldn't stay there any longer, I'd had enough. The airline ticket down here used up most of my severance pay."

"Answer my question. Why did you come back to St. Thomas? What do you want from me?"

"Another chance," she said.

I stared at her.

"That's all. Just another chance."

"Jesus Christ," I said, "you expect me to take you back? As if nothing ever happened?"

"No, not as if nothing ever happened. A chance to make amends, to prove how sorry I am and that I'll never do anything like that again. To be there for you the way I was before."

What gall the woman had! And how desperate she had to be to come crawling like this!

"It can be like it was for us in the beginning," she said. "Even better. A new beginning, a new commitment of trust I swear to God I'll never break."

I didn't say anything.

"If you ever feel I'm not living up to that promise, you can tell me to leave and I'll go, I won't argue, I won't even ask why."

I didn't say anything.

"You probably won't believe this," she said, "but I still care for you. I did what I did because I'm selfish, not because I stopped loving you."

"Bullshit, Annalise."

"It's true, I swear it. My feelings got lost in what I thought I wanted more than to be with you. I'm not that person anymore. What was important to me before isn't important to me now."

Sure it was. A free ride, that was what was important to her. Johnson hadn't given it to her and Cotler hadn't given it to her and however many there were after the mailman hadn't given it to her. The fashion industry and the Big Apple were shattered dreams. She'd reverted to what she was that night in Perry's: a half-alive bitch who felt as if she were running around and around like a hamster in a wheel. The difference was that then she'd had other options, and now the only one she had left was me. Her last reach for the brass ring. Her last chance to live on the edge, to feel alive again.

"You still have feelings for me, don't you?" she said. "Deep down? They can't all be gone?"

"Can't they?"

"I don't want to think so. Richard, it can be like it was for us in the beginning. It can, it will"

Earnest throb in her voice. Pleading eyes. Oh, she had all the words and all the emotional manelivers down pat.

"You don't have to give me an answer right away," she said. "We can take it slowly. Get to know each other again. I can stay with JoEllen for a while—she said she wouldn't mind. Just think about it, that's all I ask. Will you do that?"

"Suppose I say no right now? Then what?"

" . . . I don't understand."

"What will you do? Try to use threats to force me into taking you back?"

"God, no! I wouldn't do something like that."

"Wouldn't you? You've got the perfect hold."

"Not without hurting myself, I don't. I'd never hurt either of us that way."

"Never tell anyone about Jordan Wise?"

"Of course not."

"You never let anything slip to anyone while you were in New York?"

"Never." Looking me straight in the eye. "I swear it."

I finished my beer. Put some money on the table and got to my feet.

"Richard?"

"I need to get back to my boat."

I turned and walked out. I knew she'd hurry up and join me; I hadn't given her a satisfactory answer and she wouldn't go away without getting one. When we reached Windrunner, I knew she would ask again to come aboard—beg for it this time if she had to—and what she had in mind. I knew her so well. In Perry's that night, she'd said she knew me and I didn't know her at all, and now the reverse was true. In some ways I knew her better than she knew herself.

So I let her come on board. She walked around topside, exclaiming over this and that. Then, as I knew she would, she asked if she could see the cabin. I said all right to that, too. There was something I needed to find out about myself and only one way to do it.

In the main cabin she did a slow pirouette and said, "Why, it's bigger than I remember. Cozy."

"You'd hate living here."

"No, I wouldn't. The studio apartment I had on Long Island wasn't much larger. I don't need a lot of space anymore."

I didn't say anything.

"The bed . . . or is it a bunk?"

"Bunk. Or berth."

"It's almost the same size as the one in our villa, isn't it?"

I didn't say anything.

"But I wouldn't have to sleep here if you didn't want me to. I could sleep in the smaller one up in the front."

"Bow," I said.

She nodded. Then she said, glancing around, "Oh, you still have the pirate's chest we bought on Tortola."

"That I bought. One of the few things you left me when you ran off."

"I'm so sorry, Richard. You'll never know how sorry I am."

I didn't say anything.

"Well, I'm glad you kept it," she said. "The chest, I mean. I like it there on that wall shelf."

"Bulkhead shelf."

"I don't know all those nautical terms, but I'll learn. I want to learn all about your boat, about sailing—"

"Yawl," I said.

"Yawl. I want to be a part of your life again." She moved closer, gazed up into my eyes. Hers glistened with yearning and sorrow, but those emotions had nothing to do with me. "If you'll just give me the chance."

I didn't say anything.

She put her palms flat against my chest, standing so that her breasts almost touched me. "Will you think about it, Richard? Please?"

"I'll think about it," I said.

She said, "Thank you," and kissed me. Quick and hard, as if with impulsive relief. I knew she would. I knew her so goddamn well.

She looked into my eyes. Wet her lips. Kissed me again. Lingeringly this time, fitting herself against me, her arms sliding up and around my neck, her fingers combing through my hair.

I just stood there.

Tongue sliding into my mouth, breath coming faster, loins making slow, sensuous motions against mine—all just as expected. But I'm not made of wood. No man can completely resist the sexual advances of a woman like Annalise, not for long and no matter how much he might want to. I let myself return the kiss. She gave a little cry. It was supposed to be a moan of pleasure, but it came out sounding exactly like what it was—the voice of triumph.

One hand began to tug at the buttons on my shirt, the other dipped inside the waistband of my trousers. She was breathing heavily now. The wet mouth was feverish on mine a few seconds longer, then she broke the kiss and drew back. The shirt and halter and shorts came off in quick, practiced movements. Like a stripper's. Like a prepaid whore's. I knew she wouldn't be wearing anything under the shorts, and she wasn't.

Long, motionless pose, showing off her nakedness. Her body was the same and not the same. Incipient fat roll at her middle, little pouches of fat forming on her hips, cellulite starting to show in her thighs. Too much liquor, too much bad food, too many wrong men. In ten or fifteen years, she would be fat. Once she stopped caring about her appearance, and I knew she would, she'd let herself go rapidly and utterly.

I let her undress me, not helping. When we were both naked, she pulled me down onto the bunk and twined herself around me, her hand moving expertly between my legs. Into my ear she breathed, "I've missed you, oh God, I've missed you so much, I've missed being with you like this."

Hot, moist, whispered lies.

Her caresses grew more insistent. Always before, the touch of her hands and the sweetness of her mouth and the feel of her bare flesh had fired my blood. No more. I felt nothing for her. Numb below the waist. Dead soldier down there. None of the manipulations of fingers, mouth, tongue produced so much as a twitch.

I'd found out what I wanted to know about myself.

After a while she sighed and gave up. Lay with her head on my belly, still stroking me but in a different way now. Absently, as if she were offering distracted comfort to a sick pet.

"Poor Richard," she said. "Did I do this to you?"

I said, "You broke my heart and my pecker both."

She laughed.

She thought I was making a joke. She thought it was funny.

Funny!

I found out something else then.

I found out just how much I hated her.

A short time later, before she went away, she said, "You can reach me at JoEllen's. I left her address and phone number in the bathroom."

"Head," I said.

"Or I'll come see you again, if that's all right. Tomorrow or the next day, after you've had time to think it over."

I didn't say anything.

"If you let me come back, you'll never regret it. I promise I'll fix what I did to your pecker, too. It'll be just like it was before."

I didn't say anything.

"Think hard, Richard. One more chance."

She sounded so sincere. She was sincere, because she was fighting for her free ride. But the sincerity wouldn't last. She didn't love me, she didn't give a damn about me. The only thing she was sorry for was that her life hadn't worked out the way she wanted it to, the only thing she was ashamed of was that she'd had to come begging to me, the only person she cared about was herself.

If I took her back I knew exactly what would happen. For a while she would make an effort to live up to her promises. She'd be attentive, loving, deferential. She wouldn't argue or complain or make demands of any kind. She would curtail her drinking and her pill-popping. She would pretend to like living on a thirty-four-foot yawl, go out on cruises with me and pretend to enjoy herself. But in six months or so, boredom and restlessness would set in and she would regress—gradually at first, then not so gradually—into all her old habits and excesses. The bitch would take over. And the bitch was always hungry.

Oh, I knew her so well.

I knew myself so well, too. Knew that if I turned her away, gave her cause to hate me as much as I hated her, to run away again or, worse, to take up with another Fred Cotler, I would never feel safe again. I'd never be safe again. So I didn't have to think about her proposal. I knew all along what my answer would be.

I was going to give Annalise her one last chance. Not for her sake, but for mine.

I kept her squirming on the hook for nearly a week. Didn't call her or go to see her at JoEllen's; forced her to keep coming to me. The next two times she showed up, I put her off. The third time she was tearful and pathetic, ready to get down on her knees—to blow me right there in public, if that was what it took. JoEllen wasn't going to let her freeload much longer, she was almost out of money, the only jobs she could get on the island were shitty ones—clerking and waitressing—and they didn't pay much, so how was she going to live? I pretended to take pity on her. AU right, I said, she could move in with me on Windrunner on a trial basis. She threw her arms around me, kissed me. Cried a little, too—the second and last time I'd seen her cry. They might even have been real tears.

During that week I saw Bone and told him Annalise was back on the island and most of what she'd said to me. I could see the disapproval in his eyes when I said I was going to let her move in with me. He wasn't a man to butt into another's personal business, but he couldn't quite contain himself in this case. He disliked Annalise not only because of what she'd done to me, but because of her treatment of him in their few brief encounters. I think he knew she was prejudiced before I even suspected it. Blacks are much more sensitive in that regard than whites, with good cause.

"What you want to do that for, Richard?" he asked. "Take her back?"

"Everybody deserves a second chance."

"No, mon. Not everybody."

"You wouldn't give your second wife another chance if she showed up?"

He barked a humorless laugh. "Kick her ass straight into the harbor, she ever come round me again."

"Maybe she hurt you worse than Annalise hurt me," I said.

"Maybe so. But a woman treats a mon bad once, her gonna do it again."

"I have to take the risk, Bone. She's in a bad way. She knows what a mess she made of things and she's sorry and she wants to make amends."

"That what she say now."

"She seems to mean it."

"You still love her?"

"No. Not anymore, not ever again."

"Sex, mon? Plenty of women around for that."

"It's not sex, either. Call it pity. There's all the history between us, too, the good years we had. You know what I mean."

"Only history that matters is what you learn from it," Bone said.

"Meaning don't make the same mistake twice."

"You're my friend, Cap'n. I don't like to see you hurt again."

"I won't be," I said. "I'm going into this with my eyes wide open. If she pulls any of the same shit as before, she's gone for good. I told her that and she knows I'm dead serious."

He shrugged and picked up the length of 5/8-inch nylon line he'd been splicing. "Your business, mon. But from now on, don't make it Bone's."

His meaning was plain. I was welcome to stop by any time, but I'd better not bring Annalise. As long as she was living on Windrunner, he wouldn't come calling. If I wanted to go sailing with him, it would be just the two of us, and preferably on Conch Out. All of which was fine with me. I had no intention of inflicting Annalise on Bone, or on anyone other than myself.

She came on board with one suitcase and a small cosmetic case. The sum total of her worldly possessions, she said. She made herself right at home, commingling her stuff with mine as if there hadn't been a two-day, much less a two-year, gap in our relationship. Took over the shopping and the cooking, did any other chores I asked her to. Even made an effort to learn nautical terms and how Windrunner functioned. When I said I was taking the yawl out on an overnight cruise and asked her to go along, she agreed without argument. And as I'd expected, she pretended to enjoy herself—easy enough for her, since the trades were gentle and the seas calm both days.

For the first three weeks, she spent as much time with me as I would allow. Then one day she said she'd like to go to Magens Bay to work on her tan and would I mind if she took the Mini. I told her to go ahead, I didn't expect her to be my shadow. After that, she went to the beach whenever I didn't need the car. But she was always back by early evening, in time for supper, and she was always sober. The only serious drinking she did was with me in the evenings, matching me glass for glass but not exceeding my limit. During the day she kept herself lightly sedated with Valium; I saw her popping tablets a couple of times when she thought I wasn't looking. She had a fairly large supply in her cosmetic case. I knew that because I checked one day when she was out. Either she'd brought the drug with her from New York, or she'd found an island source through JoEllen Hall.

It was not easy for me to get used to being with her again. Sometimes, when I looked at her, the dark feelings would roil up and I'd have to stifle the urge to reach for her throat. Mostly I was able to ignore her. To think of her as just another piece of equipment, like the chemical toilet or the bilge pump.

Nights were the worst, sleeping next to her, having her persist in trying to cure my impotence. She kept making the effort—for her sake, not for mine; Annalise wasn't capable of going without sexual gratification for long, and I had no desire to do what was necessary to satisfy her in any other than the usual way. She wouldn't take no for an answer; my failure and my indifference presented a personal challenge to her, and frustration and determination resulted in methods straight out of the Kama Sutra. Most of the time, her touch made my skin crawl. But the flesh never totally forgets, and eventually it responded even as my mind cringed. The first time it happened, she uttered a cry that was more triumph than desire and climbed on top and moaned and thrashed around ecstatically, though the coupling couldn't have done much for her because it did nothing for me. I lasted no longer and felt no more pleasure than I had with Pearl.

How do I think she felt about living with me again? I can tell you exactly how she felt. The close quarters and the lack of sex bothered her more than she let on; so did the fact that I refused to alter my usual routine for her in any signifcant way. Now and then I took her out for a meal at Harry's Dockside Cafe, and twice I let her come along on drives up to Crown Mountain. Otherwise we did nothing together except eat, drink, sleep, and, on the one other occasion she managed to resurrect the dead soldier, have unsatisfying sex. In spite of all that, she was relieved to be back on her free ride. And she viewed the status quo as temporary. Given enough time, she thought she could manipulate me into providing another house for her to live in and more money, more possessions, more freedom. She had no real insight into the man I had become since her dual betrayals, and so she underestimated me completely. Sly and calculating but not very bright, that was Annalise.

The second time we went sailing, the weather conditions weren't quite as favorable. She had no sea legs at all, spent most of the voyage lying sick in the cabin. The next time I went out, she begged me to let her stay ashore with JoEllen. I could have punished her by insisting, but I didn't. I'm not sadistic, and cold hate doesn't need to be fed.

I saw Bone regularly. On Conch Out, at Marsten Marine, at the Bar or one of the Frenchtown watering holes. Twice I went sailing with him, once for four days among the islands off the coast of Puerto Rico. With Bone I could relax, be myself. With Annalise I was always on guard, always conscious of waiting for the bitch to appear.

The arrangement with her lasted without incident until after the holidays. She gave me a Christmas present, a small native woodcarving; I gave her nothing at all. Maybe that was what triggered her reversion to type, I don't know. Not that it happened all of a sudden. She'd been losing patience with me and the way we lived for some time before she quit trying to hide it.

It started with little complaints, little prodding suggestions. Why don't we take the ferry to St. John or over to Tortola for the day? Why don't we go to a good downtown restaurant for dinner, or to Bam-boushay or one of the other dance clubs? She liked living on the yawl, she really did, but the cabin was so confining, couldn't we maybe think about getting a small apartment? The more I said no, the more frustrated she became and the more the bitch began to show through. She stayed out later and later on her beach days, returning more or less sober but with liquor on her breath. Lay around on Windrunner other days, stoned on Valium. Began drinking more than I did in the evenings. Stopped making an effort to cook decent meals, serving cold makeshift lunches and suppers instead. Passed a snide remark about Bone when I came back from a two-day cruise with him. Came in after nine one evening, half in the bag, with the half-hearted excuse that it was JoEllen's birthday and besides, why couldn't she have a little fun once in a while?

The second time she came back late, the night before Bone and I were scheduled for another sail, she had a different excuse. She'd met a couple from Dallas, really interesting people, the man was a doctor and his wife wrote children's books, and they'd invited her to dinner at Blackbeard's Castle, and she didn't see why she shouldn't go, we never went out anywhere, she was practically a prisoner on this boat—I said, "What's that on your neck?"

". . . What?"

"On the left side of your neck there, that mark."

She clapped her hand to the spot. A flush crawled up into her cheeks. She dragged a pocket mirror out of her purse, held it up, and tilted her head so she could see her neck.

"Oh, that," she said. "That's just a scrape. The door to the stall in the ladies' room stuck, and when I jerked it open the edge of it cought me."

"Doesn't look like a scrape to me."

"Well, that's what it is."

"More like a hickey."

"For God's sake, Richard! Would you like it better if I told you I was bitten by a vampire?"

"You've got the look, too," I said.

"What look?"

"The well-screwed look."

Her gaze flicked away from mine, just for an instant. "You think I was with a man, is that it? Some other man?"

"Were you?"

"No! I wish I had been well screwed today, but I wasn't, and haven't been in so long I've forgotten what it's like. Why are you so suspicious? I told you how I got the scrape and that's the truth."

No, it wasn't.

She'd been with a man, all right.

Bone and I went on our sail, a five-day trip up through the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. When we got back, Annalise pretended to be glad to see me. But it was obvious what she'd been doing while I was gone. No more love bites—she must have read the riot act to her lover about marking her—but she still wore that look of smug sexual satisfaction that few men or women can quite hide. And she didn't come near me in bed that night.

That was the final straw.

My estimate of how long it would take for Annalise to blow her last chance had been six months. I was too generous. It took her exactly five months to reach my breaking point.

You remember what I said earlier about love? That it's an individual experience and you don't really have any idea of what it is or what its effect will be until it happens to you? Well, the same is true of hate.

Hate isn't just the flip side of love, or a crossing of that thin Une everybody keeps yapping about. It's more, much more.

Hate is dry ice held close to raw nerve ends, so that you never stop feeling its burning cold.

Hate is a succubus that whispers and moans in your sleep.

Hate is a disease that burrows through the dark side, like a slow-moving, flesh-eating bacterium.

Hate is another word for death.

I think I knew all along that Annalise would have to die.

It was never a conscious consideration, yet it must have been there in my subconscious all along. Bone was wrong. You can't run away from a poisonous viper that has bitten you twice before; sooner or later you have to kill it before it sinks its poisonous fangs into you again. If you don't, then you'll be the one to die. As simple, as elemental as that.

What I had to do is murder in the eyes of the law, yes, but not in my eyes. To me it was not even an act of aggression. It was justifiable self-defense, the same as Coder's death; the only difference is that with Annalise it was necessarily premeditated. There was no real malice involved. The decision, the final act were as cold as the hate. A cold equation, but not a cold-blooded one. The distinction is important.

I am not a murderer.

The blame for Annalise's death was entirely hers. You can see that, can't you? There was no hate in me until she put it there. If she had stayed with me from the beginning, stayed faithful to me, she would still be alive today. If she hadn't betrayed me to Cotler and helped him try to blackmail me, she'd be alive today. If she'd remained on Long Island instead of crawling back to St. Thomas, she'd be alive today. If she'd kept her promises after I gave her her one last chance, it would've amounted to the viper emptying its own poison sac and my hate would have lain dormant and I'd have gone on living with her. And she'd be alive today.

I didn't kill her, when you look at it in that perspective. I didn't kill Cotler, either. I was merely the instrument, like a gun or knife or cut-glass decanter, by which they died.

Fred Cotler killed himself.

And so did Annalise.

It's one thing to devise a boldly audacious scheme to steal a large sum of money and then carry it out with systematic precision. It's another to destroy a person in a moment of irresistible impulse and blind rage, and then to improvise a method of covering up the mess. And it's a third thing entirely, so much more than just problem-solving, to carefully plot someone's death. You can't design a method strictly by using the principles of mathematics, as an intellectual exercise; you can't approach it with emotional detachment, or hurry up and put it into action. There's a hell of a difference between executing an abstract equation and executing a human viper.

The best way to approach the problem, I decided, was as if I were one of Amthor Associates' engineers embarking on a construction project. The building of a wall, a perfect wall, from scratch. First there were the basics to be worked out, then blueprints to be drawn. That much was pure mathematics. Then the materials had to be gathered, the foundation laid, and finally the wall itself could be erected. The actual construction required skill, determination, courage, total commitment. No, not courage. Fortitude. I had plenty of that. I was nothing if not tenacious.

Simplicity was the keynote. The more elaborate you tried to make a wall, the greater the chance for a flaw that would cause it to collapse. After deliberation, I decided the first of the concepts I considered was the best. Annalise had disppeared once suddenly and without a trace, she had to disappear again the same way.

I shaped the plan and drew the blueprints off of that. Her death had to be bloodless—I couldn't bear a repeat of the kind of clean-up I'd had to do after Cotler—and it had to be tempered with a quality of mercy. I didn't want her to suffer. Cold equation, start to finish. So I couldn't do the obvious thing of taking her out to sea in Windrunner and throwing her overboard. Death by drowning was cruel; letting the sharks have her alive was barbarous. Besides, if anyone knew or suspected she'd gone out with me and then didn't return, there would be an investigation. I didn't dare report an accidental death for the same reason. I discarded several other methods before I settled on one that was bloodless, humane, and relatively easy to accomplish.

But there was a sticking point, the same one I'd had with Cotler: disposal of the remains. I liked the irony of putting her where I'd put him, but I couldn't do it that way. Too risky. I'd been fortunate to get away with a cemetery burial once; trying it twice was a fool's gambit. The safest choice? Burial at sea. That could be done easily enough, but how to manage it without risk? If she disappeared on the same day I happened to go out alone on Windrunner, somebody might conceivably put two and two together. Whatever I did, it had to be free of the remotest possibility of an investigation.

At first I rejected the only workable answer. It meant involving a third party, and that third party would have to be Bone. He wouldn't know it—he'd be an unwitting accomplice, an innocent witness—but I didn't like the idea of using him that way. There was the y factor, too; you increase the possibility of hidden dangers when you bring an outsider into an equation like this. I toyed with other solutions. None fit the fundamental plan nearly as well. So then I considered other methods of building the wall, using different types of bricks and mortar. None was as basic, as easy to work with, as certain to guarantee solidity.

Like it or not, using Bone was the only way to do it as it needed to be done.

Preparations.

The first thing I did was to see Bone and have a talk with him. I said he'd been right about Annalise, I'd been having problems with her just as he'd predicted and I felt like six kinds of fool for taking her back. It was typical of him that he didn't give me any I-told-you-so's. All he said was, "You got no exclusive on being a fool, mon."

I laid the groundwork for her disappearance by saying that she'd been acting secretive of late and I thought it was because she'd been having an affair and might be thinking about leaving me again. I said I needed a few days at sea, on Windrunner in case she had any notions of leaving while I was gone and taking more of my possessions with her, but that I didn't want to go out alone. It took some coaxing, but he finally agreed to accompany me. I'd already called the Weather Center and the forecast was good for the next several days. We set a sail date for Monday morning, three days hence.

On Friday Annalise asked to use the Mini. Beach trip, she said. I said no, I had a lot of errands to run. Well, would I drop her off downtown? I said, "Why? You have a rendezvous with the man you're screwing?" That set off a fresh rush of indignant denials. She wasn't screwing anybody, she said, why couldn't I stop making these ridiculous accusations? But if she did have an affair, who could blame her since I couldn't do anything for her anymore. Underneath her pique was the emotion I'd intended to stir up: anxiety. She didn't want to push me too hard or too far; she still needed me to pay for her ride. So she lapsed into a pout and the old "Why are you so mean to me?" bit. I dropped the subject. I had what I wanted. If whoever she'd been sleeping with was still on the island, she'd stay clear of him for the next couple of days.

To get her away from the marina, I gave her enough money for the Water Island ferry and a day at Honeymoon Beach. When she was gone, I drove over to Red Hook and picked up a new mizzen at a sailmaker's shop. On the way back, I made two more stops in Charlotte Amalie. The first was a marine hardware store, where I bought two small hasps and padlocks, two extra padlocks, two lengths of anchor chain, and several lead sinkers. The second stop was an air-conditioning and refrigeration dealer, where I bought several packs of Freon refrigerant.

On Windrunner, I stored the Freon packs in the big ice chest in the galley, under ice to keep them frozen. Then I installed one hasp-and-padlock on the door to the aft sail locker, emptied the locker of the spare sails stored there, and put the lengths of anchor chain and the extra padlocks inside. I stowed the old spare mizzen and the lead sinkers under the berth in the main cabin. The new mizzen and the other spare sheets went into the forward sail locker, the second hasp-and-padlock onto that door. Annalise wouldn't notice the new locks. I knew Bone would; if he asked me about them I'd say somebody had been seen prowling around the yawl and it had prompted me to take security measures.

In the main cabin I plundered a dozen tablets from Annalise's extra supply of Valium. She wouldn't miss them. She had a half-full bottle in her purse; I'd checked on that the night before while she was in the head. I emptied out an aspirin tin, put the dozen Valium inside and the tin into my pocket.

After lunch, I ran Windrunner over to the fuel dock and topped off the gas and water tanks. I knew the Puerto Rican who manned the pumps fairly well. I pulled a long face when I came in and grumbled enough to get him to ask what was the matter. "Problems with my wife," I said. "I think she's fixing to run out on me again." He was sympathetic.

Maybe I ought to show her who was boss, he said. "Slap her around?" I said. "HeU, no. I've never laid a hand on her and I never will."

That finished the preparations. Now I was ready to build the wall.

Saturday morning, I let Annalise have the Mini to go shopping. She was back in time for lunch, and she stayed on board Windrunner all afternoon, sunning herself and sipping rum punches on the foredeck, while I made pre-sailing checks and went over the charts. I hadn't told her I was going out, of course, and she didn't know enough about boats to understand what I was doing.

That night she tried to kindle some sexual interest in me. Her hands felt like sea slugs on my bare skin. I said, "Leave me alone, will you? I'm too tired," and rolled away from her.

Sunday, her last day, she slept late and moped around when she finally got up. She suggested we go to Harry's Dockside Cafe for lunch; I said I didn't feel like it, why didn't she just go by herself. I gave her some money—twice as much as she needed to buy a meal. As I expected, she spent the extra on liquor; she was tight when she came back, and she didn't seem to care whether I noticed or not. I didn't say anything to her about it. She stayed in the cabin for a time—more liquor, Valium, or both—and passed the rest of the afternoon sleeping in the shade on the foredeck.

I thought I might be a little apprehensive as construction time grew near, but I wasn't. My resolve was too strong, the hate as cold as the Freon packs in the chest below. That's not to say I was looking forward to finishing the wall. No one in his right mind looks forward to a job like that.

Annalise woke up about five thirty. She said she could use a drink; she was bleary-eyed from a combination of the ones she'd had at lunch and the afternoon heat. I said I was hungry, we'd eat first and then have drinks. Supper was day-old French bread, some ripe Camembert, and papaya. While she was setting the table, I poured two large glasses from a bottle of red wine. With my back to her, I slipped two tablets from the tin of Valium and stirred them into her glass. She emptied half the wine before she even looked at her food. Neither of us ate much.

When her glass was empty, she asked for a rum punch. I built it strong, stirred in two more Valium tablets with the pineapple juice and Grenadine. She said when I handed it to her, "Let's go topside. It's like an oven down here."

"It's not that bad. There's the fan and a breeze through the porthole."

"Why can't we go up on deck?"

"I feel like sitting here tonight."

"Dammit, Richard, sometimes I think you're trying to torture me. Haven't I done enough penance for my sins?"

"I have no intention of torturing you," I said. "On the contrary. I'm making it as easy for you as I can."

"Then why can't we go up on deck? This damn heat is making me woozy."

"Drink your drink. You'll be all right."

She drank it. And the refill I gave her, that one more slowly. I made the third with three full jiggers of rum and three Valium tablets.

"Whoo, that's strong," she said when she tasted it. "Trying to get me drunk, fella? Take advantage of me?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well. Well, well, well. I better slow down, then, don't want to pass out."

"We have plenty of time." I raised my glass. "Cheers."

"Up your poop chute," she said, and giggled.

She was sweating heavily by the time she finished half that drink. Her eyes had an unfocused glaze. She pushed the glass away.

"Had enough," she said. "Too much. Rum and wine . . . shouldn't mix."

I pushed it back. "Go on, drink up."

"Why?"

"Drink it, Annalise. Can't let good liquor go to waste."

She drank it, gagging on the last swallow. "No more, no more." She sat staring blankly at the empty glass. Then, slurring the words, "Jesus, I feel shitty."

I didn't say anything.

"Can't keep my eyes open. So hot in here . . ."

I didn't say anything.

"Think I'm gonna be sick . . ."

She started to get up, lurched a little and would have fallen if I hadn't cought her. I eased her down onto the double berth. She struggled in my grasp, tried to stand up again.

"No, the bathroom . . ."

"Stay right here."

" . . . spinning . . ."

"Close your eyes. Lie still."

I held her down until she stopped struggling, then turned her onto her side and knelt beside the bunk. Her eyes were slits, the lids drooping. Her breathing was already fast and ragged. Sweat plastered strands of her hair against the mottled skin of her forehead. I remember thinking that it was astonishing I could ever have loved this creature. I didn't even hate her very much in that moment. It was like looking into the face of no one I'd ever seen before.

"Annalise, listen to me."

". . .so tired . . ."

"Don't go to sleep yet. Listen. I know about Fred Cotler."

". . . What?"

"I know about Fred Cotler. I know you told him about me; I know you were part of the blackmail."

I had to say it three more times before the meaning penetrated the drug and alcohol haze. Her body twitched; her head came up. She said in a clear, vicious whisper, "You son of a bitch!" and then she sagged back and her eyes closed and she was still.

I poured a triple shot of Arundel and went topside. For a long time I sat on the foredeck and watched the harbor lights and listened to the seabirds and the night music. Two hours, three, four—I had no sense of time. When I went down to the cabin again to check on her, I thought she might have stopped breathing. I couldn't find a pulse, but I still wasn't sure. I took the pillow out from under her head, lowered it over her face. And then I was sure.

The difficult part of the wall was finished.

"Good-bye, Annalise," I said.

You keep asking how I felt. How do you think I felt? Relieved?

Happy? Sick? Sad? Remorseful?

None of the above.

I felt nothing.

I'd done what I had to do, and it had burned me out and left me empty inside.

I sat on deck again until long after midnight. The marina was quiet by then, everybody asleep on the nearby boats, the scattered nightlights the only breaks in the moonless dark. I stirred myself and went down the companionway again.

I'd draped a sheet over the mound on the berth, so I wouldn't have to look at her anymore. I double-checked the curtains over the portholes to make sure they were tight-drawn. Then I packed all of Annalise's belongings into the one suitcase and the cosmetic bag. Every single item, every last trace. When I was done, I added the heavy lead sinkers to both bags, locked them, took them to the forward sail locker, and padlocked them inside.

Before I dragged the mizzen out from under the bunk and spread it open on the deck, I put on a pair of gloves. The dead weight was much easier to handle than Coder's had been; I left the sheet in place as I lifted her down onto the Dacron. I brought the ice chest from the galley, took out half of the Freon packs, laid them down alongside her, and rolled her onto them. The others I arranged on top, then wrapped the sail around her and the refrigerants. Half a roll of duct tape sealed the bundle as airtight as I could make it.

I keyed open the aft sail locker. There was nothing in it now except for the lengths of anchor chain and the extra padlocks. The bundle was heavy, but I hoisted it over my shoulder without too much struggle and carried it to the locker and wedged it inside, in a position that would make getting it out again fairly easy. The entire business took less than five minutes.

I remade the bunk, sprawled out on it, and fell into an exhalisted sleep.

Bone was there at eight A.M., prompt as always on sail days. I was in the cockpit, going over charts and slugging coffee. In the mirror in the head earlier, my face had looked puffy, the eyes red-veined and heavily bagged. He noticed the haggard appearance right away.

"You look beat up, Cap'n," he said.

"Didn't sleep much," I said. "Annalise packed up and left yesterday. Sooner than I expected."

He nodded. "Better it happen quick."

"Yeah. I'm relieved she's gone. Reason I didn't sleep much is that I'm still kicking myself for letting her come back in the first place."

We headed out north-by-northwest, on a starboard tack through the Windward Passage. Brisk trades at about twelve knots, light cloud cover—another fine day for sailing. It was cool out there with the trades blowing strong; the Freon packs probably hadn't been necessary. Bone had little to say once we were under way. He was like that sometimes, taciturn, self-contained. His silence was all right with me. I didn't feel much like talking, either.

The course I'd set took us up past Sandy Cay, off Jost Van Dyke Island, then along the Tortola coast on a broad reach past Guana Island. Familiar territory. And tonight we'd be well away from land, in waters where we weren't likely to encounter many other vessels.

Bone went below to fix the noon meal, came back up again a couple of minutes later. "No beer, Cap'n," he said. "Ice chest's empty."

"Damn, I thought we had some. I guess I forgot to check. We can put in somewhere and load up—"

"No need. Plenty of rum, enough ice in the fridge."

The wind died in the late afternoon and we were down to about two knots, riding close-hauled, as the sun began to sink. I lashed the wheel and went below to pour us a couple of Arundels in preparation for the sunset. It was spectacular that night, the clouds a puffy mix of cirrocumulus and altocumulus, the colors vivid bronze and burnt orange, smoky grays and deep purples. The long day's sail and the sunset had leached the tiredness and most of the tension out of me. Once I was finished with the night's chore, I felt sure the emptiness would be gone—that I'd feel a measure of peace again.

My turn in the galley, and I dawdled over the meal so it would be close to eight o'clock before it was ready. We ate on deck, still without exchanging more than a few words. When we were done, I took the plates and empty glasses down to the galley. The coffee pot was on; Bone liked a mug of sugared coffee laced with rum after his evening meal. I poured another Arundel on ice for myself, fixed his coffee—a generous dollop of rum, plenty of sugar, and two of the remaining Valium tablets. I debated making it three, because Bone was a light sleeper, but I was afraid of doing him some harm. Two ought to be enough.

Six-hour watches in clear weather like this. It was my boat, so I had first option; I told him I'd take the nine-to-three watch. He was still quiet, but he hadn't tasted anything wrong with his drink: he'd drained the mug. He was yawning and rubbing his eyes by nine o'clock. I pointed out the time, said he'd better get himself some sleep. He nodded and took himself below.

I waited two hours before I lashed the wheel and tiptoed below to check on him. He was sprawled face down on the vee bunk in the fore cabin, snoring loudly. I opened the forward sail locker and got the suitcase and cosmetic case and carried them topside. Before I dumped them over the side I made another scan for running lights in the vicinity. Nothing but black, starlit sea.

Belowdecks again I opened the aft locker and dragged the bundle out and propped it against the bulkhead. I put the extra padlocks in my pocket, looped the lengths of anchor chain around my wrists and arms. It was awkward getting the bundle over my shoulder, a strain on my back and legs carrying it up the companionway. Topside, sweating in the cool night air, I lowered the bundle against the starboard rail and held it there while I wrapped the lengths of anchor chain around it, top and bottom, and snugged them tightly in place with the extra padlocks. My grasp slipped a little as I lifted the bundle up onto the rail; before I could set myself, one of the damn chain links scraped a furrow into the smooth mahogany. The bundle made a splash that seemed very loud in the night's stillness. The weight of the chains took it into the depths almost immediately.

I went below again. Bone was still out, still snoring; he hadn't moved.

Now the wall was complete.

I got the flashlight from the cockpit and checked the mark in the starboard rail. It wasn't deep, noticeable only when you were up close and looking. If Bone spotted it, he'd know it hadn't been there when he turned in. I'd think up a story to explain it if he questioned me.

I put the flash away and sat against the deckhouse wall to rest and and watch the night. I couldn't seem to enjoy the starstruck vastness, couldn't find any of the peace I'd hoped for. The burned-out emptiness remained. I shouldn't have expected it to fill up again so soon. After all that I'd been through, the healing was bound to take a little time.

Bone didn't come up at three to take his watch, so I went down to call him. He was still asleep, but thrashing restlessly now. I shook him awake, told him the time. It took him a few seconds to shake off the grogginess. His mouth worked as if it were dry and foul-tasting; the way he heeled his temples told me he had a headache.

I said lightly, "Too much rum last night, Bone?"

He didn't answer. He stood, pulled a T-shirt over his head, and headed up the companionway.

I slept well enough, but only for about four hours. At seven I got up, turned the flame on under the coffee pot, sluiced off under a cool shower before I dressed. The coffee was ready by then. I poured two mugs full, added sugar to one, and carried them topside.

As soon as I saw the position of the sun, I knew that we were heading in the opposite direction from the course I'd set the day before. Bone was standing at the helm, stiff-backed, staring straight ahead. He didn't answer when I said good morning. I extended one of the mugs; he shook his head without looking at me, so I set it down on the chart table.

"You changed our course," I said. "How come?"

"Heading back, Cap'n."

"Back to St. Thomas? Why?"

"Heading back, Cap'n."

"What's the matter? Are you sick?"

"Yeah, mon. A little sick."

I laid a hand on his arm, the way you do. He shrugged it off as if it were an annoying blowfly.

"What the hell, Bone?"

His gaze rounded on me, and there was a look in his eyes I'd never seen before. As if something had cought fire in their depths. As if he were looking at somebody he'd never seen before. He said nothing, just stared at me.

He knows, I thought.

He knows!

Moment of panic. Involuntary reflex because of it. A sudden roll as we plowed through a wave trough. All three of those things caused the mug to slip out of my hand. It tilted in Bone's direction as it fell, splattering him with hot coffee on the way down. More coffee splashed his pantlegs when the mug shattered on the deck.

I don't know, maybe he thought I did it on purpose. Or maybe something just broke loose inside him. Whatever the reason, his reaction was snake-sudden.

He spun toward me and grabbed two handfuls of my shirt. I said something, I don't remember what, and clawed at his wrists. He had a grip like an iron fllike. He crowded in close and swung me around and slammed my back up hard against the mizzenmast. Pain tore a yell out of me; I folight him but I couldn't pull free. He had me pinned tight against the spar.

At some point in the brief struggle one of us must have kicked down on a leeward spoke, causing the wheel to spin counterclockwise. Windrunner's bow fell off to port. Wind hammered into the lee side of the mains'l with a crack like a big Umb breaking off a tree. The main boom swung inward as the yawl jibed. Bone and I both saw it an instant before it swept across the cockpit. He was the one in harm's way, his body shielding mine, and there wasn't enough time for him to twist aside. The boom smacked him on the shoulder with enough force to send him staggering into the starboard rail, and the rail catapulted him overboard.

The end of the boom missed me by no more than two inches. I heard the sound of him hitting the water and instinct sent me lurching back to the helm. I spun the wheel hard to bring her up into the wind, then ran forward and ripped the life preserver off the starboard shrouds and flung it back into the wake.

Bone had surfaced a dozen feet from where it landed. He bobbed there for a few seconds, not making any move toward the doughnut. I thought he might be hurt or too dazed to see it and I yelled above the wind, "Bone! In front of you!"

No answer. But then I saw him start to swim in a strong crawl toward the preserver and I knew he was all right. I scanned the sea around him. No dorsal fins, just white-flecked blue water.

I ran aft to the wheel, steadied Windrunner up into the wind until she was right in stays. Then I hurried forward again, dropped the main and staysail, came back aft. Bone had reached the ring, was resting there with one arm looped through it, looking in my direction. I waved at him. He didn't wave back.

I went below to start the auxiliary engine. At the wheel again, I circled the yawl under power until I could see Bone and the doughnut bobbing to windward. I idled down a hundred feet from him, eased the yawl upwind until I was close enough for him to reach up with one hand and catch hold of a rail stanchion. He tossed the preserver on deck, hung there two-handed until the roll was right, and then heaved himself aboard.

He wouldn't take any help from me. Wouldn't look at me until he'd hoisted himself to his feet, streaming water, and then it was only a brief glance followed by a short, sharp nod. There was an angry-looking welt on his shoulder where the boom had clipped him.

"That was close," I said. "Too close."

He didn't say anything.

"You shouldn't have grabbed me like that," I said. "The coffee . . . it was an accident. The jibe, too. One of us must've kicked the wheel. . ."

Silently he tugged at his wet clothes.

"Bone, listen to me—"

"Don't say it, mon. Ain't nothing I want to hear."

He made eye contact for three or four seconds and then moved past me and went belowdecks. But that look stayed with me, left me feeling chilled and empty. The burn in his eyes had been extinguished; there was nothing in them for me any more, no feeling at all. Cold, blank, like the unseeing eyes of a dead man—

What? Did I think of what?

Not rescuing him? Leaving him out there to drown?

My God, no! Not for a second. The thought never entered my head. I could no more have killed Bone than I could have chopped off my right arm, to save my ass or for any other reason. He was my mentor, my friend—my only friend. I loved him like a brother.

What do you think I am, some kind of monster?

All the rest of that day Bone stood on deck with his back to me, working when necessary, the rest of the time just smoking his pipe and staring out over the water. Wouldn't talk to me. Wouldn't make any more eye contact. There was no way to guess what he was thinking; his face was like a stone mask.

How did he know about Annalise? The question kept nagging at me. It couldn't be from any mistake in my calculations. A combination of little things, probably. My telling him she'd left me. The empty ice chest. His abnormally long sleep and the hangover effects of the Valium mixed with rum. The new padlocks on the sail lockers and the fresh scrape in the starboard rail. Bone noticed every detail on a boat. He may have been sensitive to anything abnormal on one, too, in the same way he was sensitive to atmospheric conditions. He was an intelligent man; give him enough components and he could fit them together into the correct equation.

What would he do about his suspicions? Turn me in? I didn't think so. Didn't want to believe he would. His code of noninvolvement was why he hadn't confronted me; it would also keep him from going to the law. Our friendship weighed in my favor, too. And the fact that I'd saved his life had to count for something.

Still, you can't be absolutely certain how anyone will react to a given situation. You can't even be certain how you yourself will react. He could never condone the taking of a human life, no matter what the reason. He couldn't even sanction the killing of sharks. If his moral code was stronger than all the factors in my favor, there wasn't anything I could do about it. You could talk until you were blue in the face to a man like Bone, and the only voice he'd be listening to was his own.

Time would tell. All I could do was to keep as silent as he was and sweat it out.

Nothing happened after we returned to St. Thomas. Bone had his gear packed and ready before we entered the Sub Base harbor, and he walked away without a word as soon as we docked.

Two long days passed. No one came around asking about Annalise. By the end of the second day I began to relax again. I'd been right, I thought, to do nothing, keep my distance. Bone had had plenty of time to think things over; if he was going to the law, he'd have done it by then.

That night I had a bad nightmare. Awake, I didn't think about the Annalise crime; my conscience bothered me not at all. But asleep, my subconscious dredged it up. I awoke suddenly, or thought I did, and Annalise was sitting naked on the foot of the bunk, dripping wet, her body draped in seaweed and rusted chains, her hair hanging in sodden strings, part of her face eaten away by sea creatures. I screamed once and really woke up, shaking and pouring sweat. For a time afterward I worried that I'd have the nightmare again, but I never did. Just that once, as if it were a purge.

On the third day, I debated the advisability of a visit to JoEllen Hall. She hadn't contacted me when Annalise disappeared the first time, so it wasn't likely she'd be concerned enough to do it this time. But if Annalise had confided in anyone about me or her new lover or her future plans, it was JoEllen. Safer for me if I knew what she might have said.

I drove over to Red Hook and hunted up the woman at her rundown beach cottage. I asked first whether Annalise was there, then whether JoEllen had heard from her in the past several days. No, she said, why was I asking? "I might as well tell you," I said. "We had an argument over her drinking, among other things, and she packed her suitcase and walked out. Took some money with her that I had stashed away. That was three days ago, so she must have left the island."

"Well, I don't know where she went and I wouldn't tell you if I did. The shitty way you treated her, I don't blame her for leaving."

"The shitty way / treated her? Is that what she told you?"

"She never should've come back, that's what she told me. She practically crawled to you, but you never let her forget the mistake she made two years ago. Always giving her orders, forcing her to live like a dog on that damn boat of yours. Poor kid was miserable."

"That's all Ues, JoEllen."

"So you say, when she's not here to defend herself."

"Did she tell you she was planning to leave me again?"

"Not the first time and not this time. Why should she? Her business where she goes and what she does, not mine. And not yours anymore."

"You're right about that," I said. "Tell me something, will you? The answer doesn't make any difference now, but I'd like to know. Was she having an affair the past month or so?"

JoEllen had never cared for me, and Annalise's lies had cemented her dislike. Her smile had an edge of malicious satisfaction. "Damn right she was. With the same man as before—Royce Verriker. She said he was the best fuck she'd ever had."

That night, I went to talk to Bone. I had a story all worked out, a way to convince him that Annalise was still alive, an explanation for the padlocked sail lockers and the chain scrape and even for his drug hangover. But I don't remember what it was, because I didn't get to use it.

His slip at the marina was empty. He and Conch Out were gone.

He'd left the previous morning, I found out. Hadn't told anybody where he was bound. One of his periodic solo cruises, prompted by his suspicions of me—a long one, maybe. He'd be back in a week or two, three at the outside. He always came back eventually.

But not this time.

I never saw Bone again.