The sailcloth shroud - By Charles Williams Page 0,20

I felt bottom beneath my hands and stood up. I turned and looked back.

I was a good two hundred yards from the pier and the barge now. The flashlight was coming along the shore in my direction. I eased back out until just my head was above water, and waited. I could hear them talking. When they were almost opposite me, they turned and went back. A few minutes later a car started up, near the landward end of the pier. The twin beams swung in an arc, and I watched the red taillights fade and disappear. I waded ashore in the dark. The reaction hit me all of a sudden, and I was weak and very shaky in the knees, and I had to sit down.

After a while I took off my clothes and squeezed some of the water out of them. I still had my wallet and watch and cigarette lighter. I pressed as much water as I could out of the soggy papers and the money in the wallet and threw away the mushy cigarettes. It was hard getting the wet clothes back on in the darkness. There was no wind, and mosquitoes made thin whining sounds around my ears. Far off to my right I could see the glow of Southport’s lights reflected against the sky. I stood up, located Solaris to orient myself, and started walking.

* * *

“Where is it?” Willetts asked. “Can you describe the place?”

“Yes,” I said. “It must be eight or ten miles west of town. I walked about three before I could flag a patrol car. It’s a single wooden pier with a shed on it. There’s a steel barge moored to the west side of it. The buildings ashore apparently burned down a long time ago; there’s nothing left but foundations and rubble.”

He exchanged a glance with Ramirez, and they nodded. “Sounds like the old Bowen sugar mill. It’s outside the city limits, but we can go take a look. You better come along and see if you can identify it. You sure you’re all right now?”

“Sure,” I said.

It was after ten p.m. We were in Emergency Receiving at County Hospital, where the men in the patrol car had brought me. They had radioed in as soon as I gave them the story, and received word back to hold me until it could be investigated. A bored intern checked me over, said I had a bad bruise on the back of my head but no fracture, cleaned the barnacle cuts on my arms, stuck on a few Band-Aids, and gave me a cigarette and two aspirins.

“You’ll live,” he said, with the medic’s vast non-interest in the healthy.

I wondered how long. They’d given up for the moment, but when they found out I hadn’t drowned they’d be back. What should I do? Ask for police protection for the rest of my life? That would be a laugh. A grown man asking protection from three pairs of shoes.

Who was Baxter? Why did they want him? And what in the name of God had given them the idea we had put him ashore? I was still butting my head against the same blank wall twenty minutes later when Willetts and Ramirez showed up. They’d been off duty, of course, but were called in because Keefer was their case. I repeated the story.

“All right, let’s go,” Willetts said.

We went out and got in the cruiser. Ramirez drove—quite fast, but without using the siren. My clothes were merely damp now, and the cool air was pleasant; the headache had subsided to a dull throbbing. We rode a freeway for a good part of the distance, and the trip took less than fifteen minutes. As soon as we came out to the end of the bumpy and neglected shell-surfaced road and stopped, I recognized it. Willetts and Ramirez took out flashlights and we walked down through the blackened rubble to the pier.

We found the doorway into the shed, opposite the barge. Inside it was black and empty. The floor against the opposite wall was still wet where I’d vomited and they’d thrown water on me, and nearby was the fire bucket they’d used. It had a piece of line made fast to the handle. Willetts took it along to be checked for fingerprints. There was nothing else, no trace of blood or anything to indicate Keefer had been killed there. We went out on the pier. Ramirez shot his light down into the water between the