Page 10

The next morning—a Monday, meaning my store was closed—Newt and I arrived at the boat launch a few minutes before the agreed-upon time.

Marty was already there, his boat in the water, and he welcomed us aboard with a come-on wave of his hand.

I noted a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there the day before and thought he was standing a little taller.

His clothes and hair looked freshly washed and I realized that the miasmic odor that had clung to him yesterday was barely discernible.

At first, I thought the smell was being dissipated by the morning breeze, but when I saw that Marty’s beard had been trimmed and his hair washed, I realized he’d cleaned himself up for today.

For some reason, that touched me.

“I like people who are timely,”

he said.

He shifted his attention to Newt.

“How are you doing this morning, big fella?”

Newt wagged his tail effusively, his butt wiggling in a happy dance.

He leaned against Marty’s leg and closed his eyes, a look of ecstasy on his face as the old man gave the top of his head a thorough scratch.

“There’s a thermos of coffee and a couple of cups in the stern,”

Marty said, still smiling down at Newt even though I knew the comment was directed at me.

I’m a bit of a coffee addict and, if I’m honest with myself, also a bit of a coffee snob.

I’d already downed a half cup that morning, but because I wasn’t sure what kind of toilet facilities might be on the boat, I’d stopped there.

More coffee did sound good, but then I remembered what Marty’s mobile home had looked—and smelled—like.

And what the coffee on the patrol boat yesterday had tasted like.

Even if Marty’s coffee was decent and there was a toilet on the boat, did I really want to go there?

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass,” I said.

Marty’s expression shifted ever so subtly, and I could tell my rejection of his offer bothered him on some level.

“It’s just that coffee makes me have to pee all the time,”

I added, feeling a need to mitigate the situation.

“Speaking of which, are there facilities on your boat?”

Marty gestured toward a small door to the left of his seat, which led into the bow of the boat.

When I opened it, I discovered a cuddy cabin with a sleep area and a small chemical porta-potty.

There were some pillows and blankets neatly folded at the far end of the bed, making me think the space got some use, yet it was surprisingly neat and odor free.

Even the porta-potty looked clean, and while I’d have to hunch over to get my pants down since the cuddy cabin space wouldn’t allow me to stand upright, just knowing there was a toilet I could use with some degree of privacy came as a huge source of relief to me.

I’d find out later how difficult it could be to get one’s pants down and pee while hunched over in the cuddy cabin of a boat that’s motoring full out over waves several feet high, but at that moment, my ignorance was bliss.

“I keep a tidy ship,”

Marty said, blushing and not looking at me.

“To be honest, I don’t use the toilet much.

I usually just pee over the side of the boat.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a bit difficult for me to do,”

I said, envisioning myself clinging to the rail while my bare ass hung out over the water.

That, Dr.

Freud, is the true reason for penis envy.

“But this should work fine.”

I closed the door to the cuddy cabin and then added, “Newt should be good for eight to ten hours.

If we’re out any longer than that . . .”

I shrugged.

“Heck, he can lift a leg here if he needs to,”

Marty said dismissively.

He patted the side rail.

“This old gal has seen worse.

I can just hose ’er down.

And we might get a storm rolling in.

Conditions are right. That will cut our time short.”

I wondered what “worse”

things the boat might have seen and then decided that some things are better left unknown and unimagined.

With my toileting worries handily taken care of, I said, “Know what? I think I’ll have a cup of that joe after all.”

The pleased smile I saw on Marty’s face made me glad I’d changed my mind, and the cups he provided were clean.

What was more, the coffee was surprisingly good.

I didn’t own a boat, but I’d spent a great deal of time on them and knew my way around the basics, so I helped get us underway by releasing the mooring lines.

Then I settled in on the bench seat at the rear of the boat, with Newt at my feet and my hands wrapped around my mug of steaming coffee as Marty puttered us out of the marina.

“Looks like a great day,”

I said, gazing at the fluffy white clouds overhead as Marty steered us into the deeper bay waters.

“No such thing,”

he grumbled.

“You should never get too comfortable in and around Death’s Door.

Things here change on a dime.”

“Of course,”

I said, feeling a little insulted.

I was only trying to set a mood and thought about saying so, but decided to let the matter go.

Marty kept us at a slow pace while he consulted a device that looked much like the one I’d seen in the patrol boat yesterday.

It gave a readout of the water depth and speed, and a visual display of the bay bottom.

“Is that what you used for charting and studying the currents?”

I asked, pointing to the device.

“Partially.

I use sonar to identify underwater structures, geography, and aquatic life, but for the currents I used additional things, like a high-definition camera that tracked the flow and dispersal of dyes in the water, and a device that measured temperature variances and mapped out the thermoclines.

I also had a device that could measure wind speed and direction, and oxygen concentrations in the water at different depths.

For our purposes, I think the sonar is all we need.”

“And what, exactly, are our purposes?”

I asked, curious to see if he would mention the idea of a lake monster.

He gave me a sly look and said, “To see if we can find anything unusual.

I want to examine the underwater terrain along those shorelines where the bodies were found.

I also want to do some exploring north of Washington and Rock Islands where both these men supposedly met their demise.”

He eyed the backpack I’d brought along, which was next to me on the bench seat.

“Hope you came prepared for a full day.”

“I brought along water and snacks for both of us,”

I said, nodding toward Newt.

We headed out of the bay and toward more open waters, circling around the west side of Washington Island.

Half an hour later we reached the beach where Oliver Sykes’s body had been found.

I pointed out the remnants of police tape fluttering like the tattered remains of a yellow-and-black flag in the brisk morning breeze.

Marty spent nearly an hour doing a back-and-forth grid pattern, watching his sonar display, while Newt and I relaxed in the morning sun, gently rocked by the waves.

When we moved on to the second site, which was on the other side of the bluff, Marty offered up a brief geography lesson.

“Boyer Bluff is part of the Niagara Escarpment,”

he said.

“The entire escarpment is more than six hundred fifty miles long and it’s home to some of the best fruit-growing land in the country.

It runs clear down into Illinois, up into Canada, and east to Niagara Falls.

The falls, the mainland areas, and the islands and bluffs you see around these parts are the parts of the escarpment that sit above water, but it also runs below the water level, dipping and rising its way across lakes Michigan, Huron, and Ontario.

The underwater geography of the escarpment is just one of the things that influences the currents.

It’s also the cause of many a shipwreck, thanks to the sudden cliff rises and shoals in the water. The wreck of the Louisiana, which went down more than one hundred years ago during the Great Storm of 1913, is right here in Washington Harbor, by Schoolhouse Beach. I’ll show it to you.”

As we moved deeper into Washington Harbor, I pointed out the location where Will Stokstad’s body had been found.

Marty motored up close to shore, looking concerned, one eye on his sonar screen.

“What position were these bodies in?”

he asked me.

I described how both men had been found, toes to the water, heads to the cliff, Will on his back, Oliver on his stomach.

“Makes no sense,”

Marty grumbled.

“None of it makes sense.

The primary flow of the waters here is easterly.

They can change if the prevailing winds do or if some weird weather hits, but for their bodies and their boats to have drifted west makes no sense at all.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning either they didn’t go where they said they were going or someone put those bodies there.”

“Someone or something,” I said.

Marty shot me a look but said nothing more.

He did another crisscross, watching the sonar screen, but this survey was briefer.

Then he motored toward Schoolhouse Beach, stopping several hundred feet from the swimming area near a spot marked off by buoys and a dive flag.

“Come look at this,”

he said, pointing to his sonar screen.

I moved to the front and stood next to him, watching the screen.

Seconds later, the outline of some boards came into view.

“That’s part of the Louisiana,”

he said.

“Her captain sought safe harbor from the storm of 1913 here, but the boat’s anchor wouldn’t take hold because of the high waves and seventy-mile-an-hour winds.

She was eventually pushed aground.

The men on board tried to ride out the storm on the ship, but come morning, the storm was still raging, and the hold was on fire.

Forced to try to make land in their lifeboat amid gale winds, treacherous waves, and rock-strewn shores, the men’s chances of getting to shore alive were slim to none.”

Marty pointed toward a pile of wood vaguely shaped like a hull up on the shore.

“That’s another part of her over there,”

he said.

“And the water’s clear enough today, I think you can see her over the side.”

I went to the railing and looked down into the water.

After a moment I was able to make out planking and even some spots where rivets had been.

Newt gazed down at the water with me, though I doubted he could see what I did.

“Wow, that’s amazing,”

I said to Marty.

“Thank you.”

He beamed with the praise.

Then he said, “I want to spend the rest of our time exploring the northern coast of the island and Rock Island Passage, if that’s okay.

It seems both men might have been in those waters when they suffered whatever calamitous event killed them.”

“I’m fine.

We’re fine,”

I said, stroking Newt’s big head.

I was impressed with Marty’s use of the word “calamitous.”

All the books he had read over the years had likely given him an impressive vocabulary.

“Calamitous”

sounded like the kind of word Rita might have tossed at me.

Marty motored us out of the harbor and into the open waters of the passage between Washington Island and St.

Martin Island, which was visible off in the distance to the north.

He watched where we were going—one eye on that sonar screen most of the time—while I watched where we’d been or occasionally stared down into the watery depths, wondering if a giant lake creature lurked below.

The warm sun and the motion of the boat eventually lulled Newt to sleep at my feet and I started to feel drowsy, too, so I helped myself to another cup of coffee from Marty’s thermos to stay awake.

As we cruised along, Marty periodically pointed out rises and falls on the lake floor, and plenty of lake dwellers, though none of them were Nessie sized.

At one point, he gestured toward St.

Martin Island and said, “Much of St.

Martin is surrounded by rocky shoals that are nearly a mile wide in some spots.”

He pointed to an area up ahead.

“Over there, those shoals extend down almost to Rock Island, creating a hazardous passage if you don’t know where you’re going.

The water depth changes dramatically in one spot, rising from one hundred fifty feet to only seven over a very short distance.”

“Have you been to St. Martin?”

I asked, knowing that the island was uninhabited these days.

“I spent some time there back when I was charting these waters.

I used to camp at the base of the old lighthouse.”

“I’m surprised the federal government was willing to pay someone to do what you did for all those years,”

I said.

“I guess Death’s Door is more important than I realized.”

Marty eyed me with a funny look, like he was measuring me for something.

“I don’t think it was part of the original plan for it to go on as long as it did,”

he said.

He took in a deep breath and let it out in a long, slow sigh.

“But thanks to your father, the project kept on long enough to keep me working on it for my entire career.”

After a beat, I turned and stared at him, wondering if I’d misheard him.

“Thanks to my father?”

I echoed, expecting him to correct me by repeating what he’d really said, but he simply nodded.

“I don’t understand.

What did my father have to do with it?”

“My job was funded by grants, lots of them,”

Marty said, staring at the sonar screen as he spoke.

“The reason the work went on much longer than anyone originally planned was because the grants kept coming.

Your daddy was the source of those grants.”

“My father paid for someone to study the currents in Death’s Door?”

I said, a healthy dose of skepticism in my voice.

Marty glanced at me, then went back to staring at the sonar screen.

“You never knew your paternal grandaddy, did you?”

“No.

He and my grandmother both died before I was born, before my father met my mother, in fact.

My grandmother had ovarian cancer and died in her early forties when my father was fourteen.

And my grandfather died when my father was eighteen.”

Marty nodded as if this was old news to him.

“Do you know how your grandfather died?”

“I do,”

I said, though even as I uttered this, I realized that all I knew was what my father had told me, a one-sentence summary that I now regurgitated for Marty.

“He drowned when one of his ships went down in a storm.”

“True enough,”

Marty said.

“Your father was devastated by your grandfather’s death, though his grief may have been mitigated some by the fact that he inherited enough money from the family shipping business to do whatever he wanted with his life.”

If Marty resented my father for that, I didn’t hear it in his tone.

He said it matter-of-factly, as if reading it from a book.

And what he had said was true.

My father had become a very wealthy man at the age of eighteen, something he learned to stop apologizing for many years later.

I hadn’t yet reached that level of comfort with my wealth, and in general, I tried to hide it.

I’d learned the hard way how money can twist and turn people.

“Do you know that the ship your grandfather was on went down in Death’s Door?”

Marty asked me.

“Of course,”

I said irritably, feeling churlish at the implication that he knew things about my family that I didn’t.

Marty glanced back at me, eyeing me with amusement.

Then he challenged my knowledge.

“Can you tell me how it happened?”

I couldn’t because my father had never discussed the details with me.

I’d always assumed it was a subject too painful and I’d never been sufficiently motivated to dig into it on my own.

Not wanting to admit my lack of knowledge to Marty, I simply didn’t answer, and after a period of silence, he filled in the blanks.

“An unexpected storm developed, and it drove the ship onto one of the many shoals in Death’s Door, damaging the hull.

It was early December, and the ship went down fast, not giving many of the men aboard time to escape.

The water temperature at that time of the year is often in the high thirties or low forties and your grandfather, along with many of the other men on the ship, died of hypothermia.

Only three men survived by crawling onto an ice floe.

According to their reports, your grandfather could have put himself ahead of them.

After all, he owned the ship and was the boss of all the men on board. But instead, he helped the others to climb onto the ice first and then disappeared beneath the waves. Your grandfather died a hero.”

I’d never heard any of that before and the fact that Marty knew it shamed and embarrassed me.

Newt sensed my unease, and he got up and rested his big old head in my lap, looking up at me with those soulful, nearly blind dark eyes of his.

Marty continued, either oblivious to my discomfort or indifferent to it.

“Your father discovered that your grandfather had funded the grants for the initial hydrological studies in Death’s Door that the federal government was conducting back then, and he decided to continue funding it even though it was due to end a year after your grandfather’s death.

It benefited the family shipping business, of course, but I think it was your father’s way of honoring your grandfather’s memory.

As it happened, it also funded my career, because he continued with the grants until I retired.”

Much as I hated to admit it, that information surprised me.

I’d always thought of my parents as open, honest, and forthcoming people who had shared things with me that other parents might not have shared with their kids.

Our relationship had been a close one and they’d always treated me like an adult, never hiding harsh truths or showing a reluctance to tackle difficult topics.

Or so I’d thought.

They had taken me with them on their cryptid hunts—trips that took us into the jungles of South America, the highlands of Scotland, the deserts of Africa, and the forests of Transylvania.

I was one of the most world-traveled kids out there, though many of the places we visited weren’t your typical vacation spots.

Yet despite all that, it seemed my father had never shared that particular piece of his life with me.

It not only surprised me; it hurt a little.

“We all have our secrets,”

Marty said, seeming to sense my consternation.

“We humans need to keep some things for ourselves.”

Something in the way he said that and the brief look of pain that flitted across his face told me that Marty had his own stash of secrets.

“What are yours, Marty?” I asked.

It was an impertinent question, one I’d had no business asking, and I regretted my words as soon as they left my lips.

The utterance had been born from a petty need to strike back after Marty’s revelations regarding my father.

Newt raised his head and stared at Marty when I asked my question, cocking his head to one side.

Marty looked annoyed at first, but when he saw Newt, his expression softened.

He turned back to stare at the sonar screen, and I thought he was simply going to ignore me, but after a few seconds, he spoke.

“I was married for a year, right after I finished college,”

he said, his voice so soft, I had to strain to hear him over the lapping of the waves and the idling of the engine.

“My wife died during childbirth from a hemorrhage and our infant daughter was stillborn.”

Good grief.

As if I didn’t feel bad enough for asking such a rude question in the first place.

Hadn’t Rita told me that Marty never married? She must not have known.

“Oh, Marty, that’s just awful,”

I said.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

No wonder he was a hoarder.

Fate had robbed him of the most precious things in his life, making him cling desperately to everything else.

He glanced back at me, as if surprised by my empathy.

Then his gaze shifted to something behind me, and a look of fear came over his face so fast, it made a shiver race down my spine.

Newt picked up on it, too, even though he likely couldn’t see Marty’s face or what it was Marty was looking at.

Yet he sat up and looked around, suddenly alert, a small ridge of fur raised along his spine.

I turned to see what was behind us, fully expecting to spot the long neck of a lake monster rising out of the water.

But it was a monster of a different kind.

Off to the northwest, on the not-too-distant horizon, was a bank of thick gray fog being pushed ahead of a wall of dark, angry clouds that churned menacingly.

“Thought a squall might blow in today,”

Marty said, nodding knowingly.

“It’s moving fast.

We best head in.”

He steered the boat around to head back the way we had come but continued cruising at only a slightly faster pace, watching the sonar screen and occasionally glancing toward the approaching clouds.

I peered over the edge of the boat, searching for rising cliffs of rock, suddenly afraid of becoming one of the storied shipwrecks in the area.

The water was too deep to see anything, and when I next glanced up toward the horizon, I was startled to see how close the clouds and fog had come.

They were moving at a frightening speed, and since they were coming in from the northwest, we were headed straight for them.

I knew storms in the area had a reputation for blowing in hard and fast, but I’d never seen one roll in while out on the water like this.

It was terrifying.

Marty gave the clouds a wary glance and said, “That’s it.

Hang on.

We’re going back full speed.”

He was about to push the throttle lever forward when I saw him freeze, gaping at the sonar screen.

“What the hell?”

he muttered.

I tried to see what he was seeing but the sun was behind us now, and it was hitting the screen in such a way that it obscured the display.

A cold gust of wind blew over us, rustling my hair and making a new ridge of fur rise along Newt’s back.

“What is it, Marty? Did you see something?”

He didn’t answer me, so I stood and peered over the side of the boat, staring down into churning water.

I saw two greenish yellow eyes looking up at me from the depths and felt the hair on my head and arms rise.

The water around us began to roil wildly, making the boat buck, and I lost my balance, legs backpedaling and arms pinwheeling.

I hit the seat on the opposite side and fell onto it.

The combined effects of the coffee I’d had, the sight of those eyes in the water, and the fierce bobbing motion of the boat had nearly scared the piss out of me .

. . literally.

I made a mad dash for the cuddy cabin and had just managed to get my pants down when Marty throttled up, sending me ass over teakettle toward the door of the cabin.

Make that bare ass over teakettle.

I hit my head on something hard enough that I saw stars as the door to the cabin flew open, leaving me stretched out on the threshold with my pants down around my ankles.

I scrambled up as best I could and managed to get seated on the toilet before my bladder gave way.

When I was done and had my pants back up, I emerged from the cabin too mortified to look at Marty, and still struggling to keep my balance as the boat surged through the churning waters, bouncing over the waves, soaking me in the spray.

Even Newt turned his head away, as if he was embarrassed to be seen with me.

Rain started to fall, and within seconds, it was pelting us.

I felt the hairs on my arms and neck rise just as there was a big flash of light.

A fogbank closed in around us as a deafening rumble of thunder rolled overhead.

“There’s a vest in the seat beneath you,”

Marty hollered at me, his voice nearly carried away by the wind that had blown up.

“And there’s a flotation ring with a rope tied to it in there, too.

You might want to attach it to Newt’s collar, just in case.”

He looked at me then with a funny expression.

“Your head is bleeding.”

No sooner had he said this than I saw that the rainwater dripping from my curls had a distinct red tinge to it.

Remembering the bang I’d taken to my head in the cabin, I reached up and probed around until I felt swollen tissue and the sting of an open, though thankfully small wound along my hairline.

“Here,”

Marty said, handing me a rag.

I took it and pressed it against my head with one hand to stanch the blood flow while I opened the seat to find the flotation devices Marty had mentioned, realizing in hindsight that we probably should have had them out, if not on, already.

I hadn’t anticipated any swimming today, but I should have at least brought Newt’s flotation vest along, even if he didn’t wear it the whole time.

I found a vest for myself and pulled it out, dropping it on the floor.

Under the vest there was a large self-inflating dinghy that I had to shove aside in order to get to the flotation ring beneath it.

It took some maneuvering to free the ring, but eventually I got it out and attached one end of the nylon rope to Newt’s collar.

Then I put on my vest and slipped an arm through the ring.

The wind and rain mixed into a flurry of stinging, blinding drops that, when combined with the spray kicking up from our rapid flight across the water, left us soaking wet by the time we returned to the boat launch.

Since we were already drenched, I offered to help Marty get his boat out of the water and back onto his trailer.

He considered my offer for several seconds and then shook his head.

“Go home,” he said.

He turned away but I stopped him.

“What did you see out there?”

I asked, hoping that my naked ass wasn’t part of his answer.

He looked at me with a troubled expression and said, “I need to check on some things and then we’ll talk.

Go home, Morgan.”

I considered pushing him but sensed it would do no good, so Newt and I trotted to my car, though why I felt the need to hurry was beyond me.

We were already soaked to the bone.

The rain was coming down so hard, I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me.

I had to sit in the parking lot for several minutes waiting for the condensation on the windshield to clear, even with the defrost blowing full blast.

I used the time to examine my head wound in the rearview mirror, but the cut was buried beneath the heavy weight of my wet curls, and since it was no longer bleeding, I decided it was no big deal.

My windshield wipers struggled to keep up with the hard, driving downpour and I crawled along at a sedate pace, rarely making it above fifteen miles an hour.

Fortunately, there was little other traffic on the roads—a lucky thing because a few minutes into our ride, I heard a loud pop, and the car began a rhythmic thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

I cursed aloud, making Newt whine.

“Damn it! Of all the times to get a flat tire.”

I limped the car onto a sand-covered bit of road that split in two, going to some newer homes in one direction and dead-ending in some trees in the other.

Odds were no one would be coming up behind me, but just to be safe, I turned on my emergency flashers.

I could have gotten out then and changed the tire.

I knew how because not only had my father taught me; he’d made me change several of them over the years.

But despite being wet through already, I had no desire to get out of the car and try to change a tire in a downpour.

I looked over at Newt in the passenger seat.

“Nothing to do but wait it out, buddy,” I said.

He rested his chin on my shoulder for a few seconds.

Then he curled himself into a ball on the front seat next to me, resting his head in my lap, his body draped awkwardly over the middle console.

It was an ungainly fit for him, but somehow, he managed, though one hind leg hung down over the front of his seat and onto the floor.

He let out a contented sigh, and taking my cue from him, I closed my eyes, reclined my seat, and let my exhaustion take hold.

I don’t know if the storm raged on for the entire two hours that we slept there or if it stopped at some point and I simply continued to sleep.

But by the time I woke up, there wasn’t a drop of rain anywhere, just a gorgeous sunset off to the west over the bay.