Out of the Cold Dark Sea

  OUT OF THE

  COLD DARK SEA

  OUT OF THE

  COLD DARK SEA

  A Seattle Waterfront Mystery

  Jeffrey D. Briggs

  Water’s End Press

  Shoreline, Washington

  Published 2019 by Water’s End Press

  First Edition

  Out of the Cold Dark Sea © 2019 by Jeffrey D. Briggs. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally.

  Cover design by Kari March. www.karimarch.com

  Inquiries should be addressed to:

  Water’s End Press

  2329 NW 198th Street

  Shoreline, Washington 98177

  206.619.9139

  www.watersendpress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-7337316-1-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Mary Jo

  For love and support beyond compare

  ONE

  If he showed up now, everything would be all right. If he arrived in the next few minutes, his cane tapping steadily against the wooden planks, she could dismiss her worries as an overreaction to standing alone on the end of a pier in the dark. The wind tugged at her umbrella. She clutched it tighter and stamped her cold feet.

  Still, if he showed up now, everything would be all right.

  Knowing Hewitt had never been on time for anything in his life did little to ease her growing fears. At any second, she expected to see him hobbling down the pier, calling to her in that deep baritone voice, brushing aside his tardiness without a word, as if a predawn meeting on the end of a pier on Puget Sound was the most natural thing in the world. But she couldn’t dislodge the growing suspicion that he wasn’t coming, that this was no longer just the wait for an endearing but perpetually late old man.

  What could have happened? Another heart attack? A car accident? Another stroke? In the silent gray dawn, one thing was clear—this meeting was too odd even for her eccentric old friend. Why would he choose this location and time? Something had spooked him. He was scared. But why hadn’t he shown up?

  Beyond the flashing red light at the end of the breakwater, the starless night sky had graduated to pewter, revealing a lid of low, thick clouds. Water continued to sluice down in sheets. The wooden planks of the pier shone black and slick—and empty. Five more minutes, then she would . . . what? The only thing she could think of was to drive to his houseboat. He refused to use a cell phone, and his home phone kept going straight to voicemail. She envisioned him sprawled on the floor of his houseboat, too weak to summon help. It had to be her next stop.

  A text to Crystal, her admin assistant, said she’d be late to the office. Crystal texted back instantly saying she had cleared her calendar until ten a.m. Did she need anything? “No,” she replied and dropped her phone in her pocket. Her fingers, restlessly plucking at an old fishing line tied to the wooden rail, felt the heft of its weight. Someone’s illegal crab pot on the other end. Not wanting the distraction, she dropped it and thrust her hand into her coat. Five more minutes.

  Once again, she replayed his cryptic phone message, letting it reel through her mind, searching for a hint of anxiety, a clue to hidden meanings. “My dear Martha, this is Hewitt. I’m afraid I’ve gotten into a spot of trouble with work and I need your help. I know you’re busy protecting the corporate world from the insidious attacks of the little guy, but if you’d be so kind as to meet me at the same place where we took that photo for my seventy-fifth birthday party, I’d be forever in your debt. As I already am, of course. Let’s say tomorrow at seven o’clock. That is, unfortunately, in the morning, by the way, an hour when no civilized person other than you would be up and about. I’m unavailable this evening so you won’t be able to reach me. Till tomorrow at seven, then, my dear, ta ta.”

  Hewitt was being Hewitt—a little playful, a little sarcastic, anything but normal—and how he hated the notion that he might be normal. That’s what she’d thought at first. And the jaunty tone of it—like he’d just bounced a check or offended some fellow rare book collector. But seven o’clock in the morning? Hewitt hated mornings. And why the secret meeting place, far from other ears and eyes? No, this was more than “a spot of trouble.” She had assumed he needed her as a friend; now she wondered if he needed his attorney.

  And why so vague about the meeting place, a reference only a handful of people would understand? Was he afraid of being overheard? Did he think his phone was tapped? Someone must have been with him, someone he was trying to keep in the dark. But who?

  None of it made any sense.

  She paced back and forth across the end of the pier, the same pier where she and a small group of friends had celebrated Hewitt Wilcox’s birthday over a dozen years ago. She had flown back from Michigan for the party, the last of many classes she had taken with him just months behind her, her first law class just weeks away. It was a time of tension between them. He argued for a career in cultural anthropology, but she had already decided on law school. She loved how he had instilled in her an appreciation for the esoteric realm of rare primary source documents and how they shine a light on our history—if a person knew where to look. He was an expert on nineteenth-century American documents, devoted to uncovering the paper trail that illuminated a nation in flux as it fractured in the east while still doggedly pushing west until the whole country had been settled.

  But she’d had enough of meager paychecks and constant travel while growing up, thank you. That was his life, his profession. The party on the pier had been after his heart attack and a battle with prostate cancer, and before his first stroke, any one of which could have killed him. None of which did. He kept bouncing back, his wit and humor and intellect as sharp as ever, even as his body grew frail and stooped. He’d begged her to follow in his footsteps. She’d refused and was glad of it. But it had damaged things.

  It was only after Hewitt’s stroke that they had reconciled. On countless trips up and down the halls of the rehab center she had held his arm, steadied him, commiserated with him over his latest lover who had packed his bags and moved out the night the ambulance raced Hewitt to the hospital. She had felt like a daughter comforting a grieving father whose physical state only emphasized his emotional pain. His already thin frame was little more than blotchy skin stretched over old bones; he swung his left leg in a stiff arc until, exhausted, he let it drag like a dead tree limb. She wanted to pick him up and carry him back to bed. She begged him to rest.

  But no. His skinny chest swelled. Using the professorial voice honed over decades in the classroom, he said, “My dear Martha, rest will only hasten the inevitable, and I am yet unprepared to go to my grave. I have too much unfinished business here to bother with questions of eternity.” Tears leaked out of his rheumy eyes. He started to say something but stopped, his words slurred. He struggled for control. “It was vanity to think George would stay with an old man. Still, I hoped. You, however, have shown your true character. I have loved you, Martha Whitaker, as Dante loved Beatrice, from the moment you appeared in my class, balm delivered by angels to a soulless man.” Even then, he couldn’t resist a poke. “You’re wasting your time and talents with your continued defense of the indefensible.”

  “And making a hell of a lot more money in the pro
cess,” she snapped. It had come out harsher than Martha intended, but she let the words linger, tired of the long-standing argument.

  “Even the fallen may find redemption,” he replied, shrugging free of her support.

  She watched him struggle on without her. His hair, freed from the ever-present ponytail, fell in an avalanche of dirty snow down the back of his blue bathrobe. Following him, she said, “Making a decent living is not evil, Hewitt.”

  Both hands on the walker, he stopped. The gaunt face, mostly hidden behind a white beard, turned back. “No, my dear, it’s not, unless it requires the sacrifice of your soul. Then it is the ultimate evil. That I shall fight to my dying breath.” Then his voice softened, as if he too wasn’t up to the battle. “Be a dear, and help an old man with his exercises.”

  And now the old man was late, even by the standards of one with a habitual disregard for time.

  A flock of gulls huddled against the rain in the far corner of the empty parking lot. She turned back to the Sound, counting the seconds between flashes of the distant harbor light. Rain drummed against her umbrella. Suddenly, she heard footsteps behind her on the wooden pier. Too fast for Hewitt and without the accompanying tap tap tap of his cane. She whipped around and stepped back, shifting her weight to her back leg, bringing her body into balance. Her shoulders squared, her breathing slowed. She looked out from under the umbrella.

  A jogger with a dark goatee and deep-set eyes came to an abrupt halt. He wore a yellow foul weather jacket over black leggings. He had her six-foot frame by an inch or two, and was lean and sinewy. Like a gladiator in the arena, Martha calculated how she might disable him and immediately dismissed him as a threat. She tilted the umbrella back, raised her head, and smiled the smile that men had died for.

  Disarmed, he nodded, mumbled a quick apology, made a sharp turn, and in a couple of easy strides, was trotting back down the dock.

  Nice calves, she noted absently. Maybe it was her nerves, maybe it was his dark, brooding eyes, but Martha wondered why Jogging Man had run out to the end of a pier only to stop short when she turned around. He reached the shore and veered away toward the boat ramp and Little Coney’s. He hadn’t found what he was looking for. Who were you expecting, Jogging Man?

  Hard pounding rain was the only answer she received.

  No other answers would be provided here, waiting for a rendezvous that wasn’t going to happen. Martha started to follow the jogger down the pier. His yellow rain jacket disappeared on the far side of the empty parking lot. A mallard rested in the water of the boat ramp; then stood up to flap rain from its wings—stood up where it should have been swimming in five, six feet of water.

  There, in the growing light of morning, Martha saw the faint outline of a submerged van roof. She dropped her umbrella, fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone, and sprinted down the slick pier as she dialed 911. The shock of the icy cold water brought her to an abrupt halt. The duck swam away. Knee-deep in Puget Sound, she informed the emergency dispatcher of her location, of the back windows and flat roof of a van—Hewitt’s van, she was sure—barely visible but there, a splotch of blackness in a dark sea. It had been there the entire time.

  Within minutes, sirens wailed in the distance. She retreated backwards up the incline, her eyes locked on the submerged vehicle, rain cascading down her face like tears.

  The first police officer arrived in an unmarked car. Hatless, his thin gray hair was instantly plastered against his head. He fumbled for his wallet under a trench coat, finally producing a badge that identified him as Lieutenant Peter Lolich, Harbor Patrol. He had a face like bread dough. Rain-speckled glasses magnified fade blue eyes.

  “I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “Are you the one who called?”

  “It’s been there since at least seven o’clock,” Martha responded in a rush. “That’s when I . . . we were supposed to meet. It’s why I didn’t go in. It wouldn’t’ve mattered.”

  “Of course, of course,” the officer said. “Who were you supposed to meet?”

  “Hewitt Wilcox,” she said. “An old friend. But he didn’t show up. Or I thought he didn’t.”

  A squad car screeched to a stop on the loading ramp, lights flashing. The shrill whoop whoop whoop of its siren blasted away the dull silence of the morning. A police officer hurried out.

  Martha felt pressure on her arm. Lolich had taken her by the elbow. “I need you to step aside,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I’d like you to remain here until we find out what we have. Would you like to sit in my car? Get out of the rain?”

  She shrugged herself free. “I’m fine.”

  Martha watched from the shore as more police appeared in a flurry of sirens and lights. Two squad cars blocked off the approach to the boat ramp. A boat from Harbor Patrol came around the breakwater and held a position off the end of the ramp. A tow truck was waved into the parking lot, its driver not bothering to get out of the cab. It became clear the unassuming Lolich was in charge. People moved with purpose after talking with him. He had an officer bring her coffee and sent a second out to retrieve her umbrella. She accepted coffee gratefully, holding the thermos lid in both hands before taking her first sip. A blue police van arrived. Two divers stepped out, already dressed in dry suits. They fastened on weight belts while talking with Lolich. One strapped a knife to his forearm. They donned masks, flicked on headlamps, and waded out toward the submerged vehicle. Their black bodies slipped silently under the water.

  Martha paced the pier waiting for their return. It had to be Hewitt’s van. The dread of waiting, the dread of what they might discover, matched her every step.

  The sirens and lights had drawn a straggly line of bystanders who pressed against the rail that extended from Little Coney’s out to a small boat-launching crane perched over the water. Martha caught sight of a yellow rain jacket. Jogging Man was back. He wasn’t watching the police activity. He was staring straight at her. She stared back hard until finally he turned away.

  The first diver surfaced. His fins slapped the pavement as he waddled up to Lolich. Martha tried to hear their conversation, but she couldn’t make anything out until Lolich yelled at a uniformed officer to get on the horn and find out what the tides were doing early this morning.

  They waved the second diver in, and the two men proceeded to gear up, adding tanks and regulators and additional weight. Each checked the other’s gear, and this time when they descended under the water their trail was visible as a line of bubbles breaking the surface. The bubbles continued out past the submerged vehicle.

  When Martha glanced back at the line of bystanders, Jogging Man had disappeared. Lolich stood beside a squad car, leaning into the window. He nodded and slowly made his way toward her. At some point he had donned a blue baseball cap with “Police” written across it. It was now as soaked as the rest of him, as if he had just come out of the water himself. He paused for a moment and wiped rain spots off his glasses with a handkerchief, and then said, “It’s a red or burgundy van, with a handicap license plate. DOL just confirmed it’s registered to a Hewitt Wilcox. I believe that was the name you mentioned. Keys are still in the ignition. There’s a cane wedged beside the passenger’s seat. The front driver’s door is open. There’s no one inside.”

  The lieutenant kept his voice respectful, deliberately low. They sat in a booth at Little Coney’s, sipping weak coffee. The restaurant was still closed, but the owner, seeing the storefront flash by on the morning’s news, had hurried down to the waterfront and opened the doors for the police.

  “Would he have done this deliberately?” Lolich finally asked. Large, soft hands engulfed the mug.

  It was a logical, if misguided, question. There was no way Hewitt had driven his van down the ramp and into the water. At least not intentionally. Not the man who had struggled so hard to regain control over his life. Not the man who had pushed his body to the brink just so he could get medical clearance for a driver’s license. The man who had hired a personal speech t
herapist so he could again stand in front of a class and deliver a lecture. The man who had driven his mind with word games and puzzles and memory tests. No. He wouldn’t have given up now.

  When Martha, lost in her memories of his unending efforts to come back, didn’t answer, the lieutenant continued, “You say he’s been in poor health. Maybe he just decided it was time. Old people reach that point sometimes. When it’s no longer worth the struggle. Can’t really blame him, of course, can’t blame him at all.”

  Martha glanced at him and then out the window. A few hardy souls still lingered along the railing. Little remained to gawk at except the flashing lights of the patrol cars and an occasional police officer in a rain-slick poncho. She expected the Harbor Patrol divers to appear at any time with Hewitt’s old and broken body in tow. Lolich let the silence linger between them like a gift.

  “No, it wasn’t deliberate,” Martha said, finally. “It’s not like him. He may've been old and frail, but he was a fighter. Besides, he’s on enough drugs, he could've killed himself any time without driving into the water. If he was behind the wheel when his van went down that ramp, it’s because he was in trouble. Another stroke. A heart attack. But then he wouldn’t have had enough strength to open the window or the door underwater.” Lolich nodded his head, before she added, “Besides, he was scared.”

  “You said that before,” Lolich said. “What was he afraid of?”

  “Lieutenant, if I knew that, I’d have already told you,” Martha snapped. “It had something to do with his work. That’s why he called yesterday and wanted to meet. I don’t know if he needed an attorney or a friend.”

  “Seems like an odd time and place to meet. Middle of winter at the end of a pier. In the dark. Seems odd indeed.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you: It is odd. Even for Hewitt, who is as odd and eccentric as they come. That’s why I know he was scared and why I know he didn’t drive his van down that ramp.”