As Scarnum’s boat approached the shore, he saw the tail lights of the SUV take off down Walker’s Road.
Scarnum tied the canoe onto the stern of the aluminum boat and motored back to the dock, where Charlie sat waiting, sipping a can of Keith’s. Another one sat on the wharf next to him. The shotgun was cradled across his knees.
“Holy Jesus, b’y,” he said as Scarnum tied up the aluminum boat. “Two salvages in three days.”
Scarnum laughed and sat next to the other man. He opened the beer and drank half of it one long swallow. His hands, he noticed, where shaking.
“Holy fuck,” he said. “That was fucking weird.”
They sat in silence for a minute.
“Fellow wanted to get aboard the Kelly Lynn, did he?” said Charlie.
“Yuh,” said Scarnum. “He come up the bay in his canoe, paddling along very quietly. I was up having a piss and a drink of water when I spied him. So I snuck up and watched him from behind the wheelhouse of the Martha Kate.”
He turned to look at Charlie. “I owe you a new battery.”
Charlie cackled. “Don’t tell me you threw my hundred-dollar deep cycle marine battery at the cocksucker in the canoe, did you?”
Scarnum grinned. “Time you got a new one, anyways. When I get my cheque for the Kelly Lynn, I’ll buy you ten batteries.”
“So, did you hit the fucker?” said Charlie.
“No, but I hit the canoe and scared the fucker off,” said Scarnum. “And I did hit him with a five-inch nut from that bucket, right in the middle of the back. I’d a caught him, too, if that old Evinrude woulda started. That’s what I’ll buy you, a new Honda for your runabout.”
Charlie, who loved old American motors, scowled. “I don’t want no fucking Honda,” he said. “That Evinrude always starts for me. It’s just you fucking Newfies who don’t know how to run them.”
Scarnum told him how the man in the canoe had gotten away in an SUV but had left the canoe floating in the water.
They walked over to look at it, Charlie shining the flashlight on it. “Nice canoe to leave floating in the bay,” he said.
It was a seventeen-foot Old Town Kevlar back country canoe — worth thousands of dollars.
Charlie shone the light inside the canoe. “Lookee here,” he said and bent at the waist. Inside, under the bow seat, there was a stack of vinyl bags. Charlie pulled them out and dropped them on the dock. On the floor of the canoe, under the bags, there was a silver half-pint flask in a leather case.
Charlie passed it to Scarnum, who unscrewed the lid and sniffed at it. He took a sip and passed it to Charlie, who also took a slug and grimaced.
“Well, it’s not Canadian Club, I’ll tell you that,” said Charlie.
It was whisky, though, Scotch whisky, thought Scarnum. It tasted of seaweed and peat. He took another drink and swished it around in his mouth. “Scotch,” he said. “Expensive Scotch, I’d say.”
Charlie waved the flask away. “You tuck that away, my son.”
He shone the light down on the vinyl bags.
They were dry bags — the kind of heavy, watertight bags canoe campers used to keep their gear dry on camping trips — with heavy rubberized seals at the top.
There were ten of them.
“Well, that’s a queer thing, isn’t it?” said Charlie. “I wonder what a fellow would want ten dry bags for?”
Scarnum said nothing.
“How carefully did you look around the Kelly Lynn?” Charlie asked.
“Not carefully enough,” said Scarnum. “I’ll go out and have another look now.”
“Might be a good idea,” said Charlie.
They stood looking at each other for a moment.
Well,” said Charlie, “I s’pose I’ll get back into bed. I doubt that fellow in the canoe will be back tonight.”
Scarnum put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Thanks, Charlie.”
Scarnum got a flashlight and some gloves from his boat and paddled the canoe out to the Kelly Lynn.
He started in the wheelhouse. He found the battery switch, which was off, and switched it on.
Everything on the boat lit up: the running lights, the cabin lights, the big thousand-watt deck light behind the wheelhouse. All the instrument panels started to hum and come to life.
“Christ,” said Scarnum, and switched the battery switch off.
He found the electrical panel and switched everything off except the cabin lights. He turned the battery switch on again and the cabin lit up. When he turned to look around, he swore again.
There was a big pool of dried blood on the floor in front of the throttle. There was blood on the wheel, blood on the inside of the wheelhouse door, and blood all over the throttle handle, which was smeared, he saw now, with his own handprint from the night before.
“Son of a whore,” said Scarnum, and he stood looking at the mess for a long time. There was a trail of blood — dried pools of blood — from the wheelhouse door to the wheel. The biggest pool was beneath the wheel. But there were spots by the electrical panel, and there was blood, Scarnum saw now, on the battery switch.
The trail did not continue down to the crew quarters. Scarnum switched off the wheelhouse light and went below, sloshing through the flooded cabin. He started at the bottom, searching the bilge and the engine room, and then he methodically searched the sleeping area, the galley, and the head, leaving the duffle bag for last.
In the bag there was a copy of Barely Legal, socks, underwear, T-shirts, heavy long underwear, one pair of Guess jeans, size 34, and one black long-sleeved shirt with silver stripes, a nightclub shirt, it looked like.
In the shaving kit there was a razor, shaving cream, a toothbrush, Tylenol, some condoms, and an unlabelled pillbox with a few grams of white powder in it. Scarnum put some on his fingernail and snorted it: cocaine.
He laid out two thin lines on the cover of the Barely Legal magazine and snorted them through a twenty-dollar bill. The head rush was immediate and overwhelming. It was powerful pure cocaine. He shook his head, honked on his nose, and inhaled deeply.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
At the bottom of the shaving kit was a cardboard box full of Viagra. On the side there was a prescription label from the Chester Pharmasave. JAMES ZINCK, it said.
Scarnum sat down heavily on the bunk. “Jimmy Zinck,” he said out loud. “Jimmy Zinck.”
Scarnum packed everything
