Chris was up in St. Anthony, where the shrimp boat carrying the body was docked. The vast North Atlantic opened up to the north and east of the town. The dead man could have been aboard a fishing trawler, or any other boat for that matter, and met his fate anywhere in the open sea before drifting into the shrimp boat’s path.
As the motel owner said, the northern tip was dotted with settlements and tourist sites, but farther down the eastern side, the villages became separated by vast swaths of empty coastline, with a smattering of remote islands designated as ecological reserves. A third of the way down the peninsula, the road petered out all together.
As wild and untouched as it was possible to find.
Chapter Nine
“I’m on my way up there,” Amanda texted Chris once she was packed and astride her motorcycle, ready to hit the road. “I may have a lead on Phil.”
That was a considerable exaggeration, for it was more a theory than a lead, a theory held together mostly by spit and hope. But since it took her toward a reunion with Chris, it didn’t really matter. She’d flesh out the theory as she rode.
On paper, the trip to St. Anthony looked like a simple ninety-minute ride, but she had forgotten the many little fishing villages she had to check out along the way. As she took the occasional stop to shake out her muscles and give Kaylee a break, she asked the local villagers whether they had seen Phil and Tyler pass through.
Only one person remembered seeing them. Amanda was detouring through a little village with the typically quirky Newfoundland name of Nameless Cove, when she spotted a fisherman painting the trim of his old lobster boat bright red. He seemed grateful for the chance to lay down his brush.
“Yes, I remember them. The boy was after having a trip on my boat. I can do that, I said, if you don’t mind sinking to the bottom. She’s a few holes in her yet.”
“Did they have another man with them?”
“Not that I saw, but the truck windows were dark. I offered to take them in my brother’s boat, but the father now, he were more interested in mine. How far out to sea could I take her and how many crew did she carry? She could go all the way to Labrador, I told him, and up north too, but her fishing days are over. I’m getting her ready to sell. She’s too small to compete with the bigger shrimp boats, and since gas prices have gone up and the government cut back our shrimp quotas, I can’t make enough to pay a loan on a sixty-five-footer.” He picked up his brush again. “So some millionaire from New York will probably buy her and sail her around the Caribbean Islands. Not a bad life for the old girl, that.”
“And what will you do?”
He shrugged. “Try to get hired on somewheres. Maybe a bigger boat, maybe even a trawler. Like your friend said, the bigger fish always eats the little ones. Way of the world, he said. He was some disgusted.”
She’d wished the fisherman luck and continued on up the coast, mulling over the man’s words. Phil’s mood did not appear to have improved since that night in the bar, but at least he seemed to be continuing his quest to give his son an ocean adventure.
It was past one o’clock by the time she cruised down the hill into St. Anthony. All the fame and hype aside, it was still a modest town of boxy wooden buildings sprinkled higgledy-piggledy Newfoundland-style along the shores of the narrow harbour. A large, modern-looking pier and fish facility dominated the eastern waterfront and even from a distance one massive ship dwarfed the others at the wharf. She found the RCMP station on the main road without difficulty and walked in to find the room crowded with men, all peering intently at a computer screen. Chris’s tall, lanky form towered above the rest. His brow was furrowed in intense concentration that broke at the sight of her. An easy smile lit up his face. He introduced her to the ring of curious men — a coast guard officer, the harbourmaster, and three RCMP officers, including a major crimes investigator from Corner Brook.
“Any idea who the dead man is?” she asked.
“No, but he looks —” Chris managed before the investigator cut him off.
“The investigation is ongoing.”
Canned cop-speak, she thought, trying to steal a peek at the computer screen. It appeared to be an ocean chart, and an official-looking logbook lay open on the desk. The investigator moved to block her view.
“Corporal Tymko,” he said, “your assistance has been invaluable, and thank you for responding to the emergency call-up. My team has the investigation well in hand now, so you may go back to your holiday.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he leered at Amanda.
Chris flushed. “Not a holiday, sir. We’re looking for our missing friend.”
The investigator tipped his head in a small acknowledgement that revealed not the slightest interest or concern. “Then carry on, Corporal. We’ll take it from here.”
Only once Chris was outside the door and safely out of earshot did he call the man a poker-assed idiot.
Amanda laughed. “So why all the secrecy? Or is that just the way you guys operate.”
“Yeah, we can all be poker-assed idiots when we have to be. But in this case I told them I thought the guy might be from the Middle East, so now the whole national security paranoia has kicked in. A few days ago, a boatload of unknown occupants was spotted off the coast not far south of here —”
Kaylee gave an outraged bark from the prison of her trailer, breaking Chris’s mood. He headed over to say hello. “Come on, I’m starving. Let’s spring this young lady from her prison and find a nice seaside patio.”
The sun was shining but a chilly wind raced down the harbour, slicing through her jacket and whipping red into her cheeks. When she cast him an incredulous look, she saw the twinkle in his eye. Within fifteen minutes, after giving Kaylee a quick walk, they had settled into the Lightkeeper’s Restaurant at the tip of Fishing Point. They took a table by the window overlooking the ocean cliffs that formed the mouth of the harbour. Not quite a seaside patio, but spectacular nonetheless.
After they’d both ordered a large bowl of seafood chowder, Chris spread a map out on the table. In the soft afternoon light, he traced a finger over the coast and tapped a little village farther down the eastern shore of the peninsula. “Four or five men were spotted in a lifeboat by a local man here. They looked to be in distress, but when he went out to help, they sped away. The locals didn’t recognize the boat or the men, and thought they might have been fugitives. Possibly foreign. Now we have a deceased individual picked up approximately here …” He moved his finger way out into the open sea northeast of the peninsula tip. “Prime fishing grounds, inside Canadian waters. But the dead man wasn’t dressed like a fisherman, and odds are he’s foreign.”
“So you’re thinking there may be a connection. He fell out of the lifeboat or something?”
Chris hesitated. He studied her soberly. “The man had an anchor tied around his waist.”
Amanda’s eyes widened. “They threw him overboard?”
“Possibly after he was already dead. We might know more after the autopsy. That is, Sergeant Poker-Ass might. I won’t learn a thing. But they’re thinking foreign national, possibly illegal, possibly murdered, so they’re dragging in all the big guns — Coast Guard, Border Services, Fisheries and Oceans Canada. When you arrived, they were looking at all the foreign vessels passing through
