Chapter 6 - A Dead Man's Last Repair
Marisol chased the deputy into the parking lot, but he was gone before she reached the curb. In the trash beside his booth, she found a crumpled receipt from a marina supply store. The date was the day Robert died.
"People don't usually save receipts for three years," she said. "Unless they've been told to make a point."
The store's owner remembered Robert immediately. "Quiet guy. Asked a hundred questions about engine cutoffs," he told us. "He thought somebody had messed with his fishing boat."
Robert's official report said he'd lost his balance while checking his motor. I'd never seen the boat after the accident; Calder said it had been damaged and sent away for disposal.
"Where is it?" I asked.
The owner glanced toward the windows. "Old impound yard by the highway. If it's still there."
We found the boat under a blue tarp behind rusted snowplows. The steering cable had been sliced almost clean through. The bilge pump wires had been cut. A long scrape ran along the side, just above the waterline.
Eli touched the scrape. "Not a rock. Metal hull against metal hull. Somebody hit him."
I stared at the empty place where Robert used to sit, telling terrible jokes and peeling oranges with his pocketknife. My husband had died alone, and somebody had spent three years making sure I never asked why.
Marisol photographed everything. Then she knelt by the transom and found a faded sticker: C-17.
"That's not a repair mark," she said. "It's a dock allocation. County service craft use those numbers."
A chain scraped on the other side of the fence. Eli looked up just as the gate slammed shut. A pickup blocked our only exit.
A man climbed out carrying a flare gun. "You people are hard to discourage," he said.
He fired into the dry weeds beside the boat.
Flames ran toward us faster than anything I'd ever seen.
"Get the evidence!" Marisol yelled.
May you like
And through the smoke, I saw the pickup's license plate.
It belonged to my son.
