Bradley will stay here to conduct interviews. Saves time, and details are forgotten so quickly.”
“We already got a pretty good suspect,” Casey began, gesturing to Amanda. “This lady’s friend —”
“We don’t know anything for sure,” Amanda interjected before he could say more.
“Still, the feller’s truck is back there —” Casey pointed toward the entrance to town. “He was after buying one of our boats a couple of days ago. Now he’s gone missing, and Stink’s boat’s missing too.”
Willington hesitated. Amanda could see him eyeing the truck and then the boat, debating how to proceed. The medical examiner, a vibrant young woman with olive skin and cropped black hair, laid a hand on his arm.
“Let’s have a look at the body first, okay, Willie?”
Willington gestured to Phil’s truck. “Check that out, Bradley,” he said to his constable. “Get the man’s ID and find out what people saw. I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
After they left, the village hummed with that peculiar mixture of excitement and horror that always surrounded a major disaster. Some of the houses were vacant, their owners away at jobs in Labrador or Alberta, but a handful of children, their mothers, and grizzled old-timers were visible, the children running happily in the September sunshine and the adults doing house repairs or laying in firewood for the coming winter. They all stopped their work to watch the police drama unfold.
As Bradley questioned them, Amanda edged close in an effort to eavesdrop. Several villagers gestured down toward the back harbour and Amanda caught the words “truck” and “boy.” After a few interviews, Bradley climbed in the RCMP cruiser and drove down the road to Phil’s truck. Amanda watched as he circled the truck and rifled through its interior before pulling out his radio.
She drifted closer. “Right, sir,” she heard him say before signing off and placing another radio call. This time he turned his back on her so that she couldn’t hear, but she could clearly see him reading the numbers off Phil’s licence plate. Her heart sank. Soon the police would know there was a missing-persons report out on him, with concern expressed about his mental health.
After Bradley had signed off and was heading back toward the harbour, Amanda walked up the hill leading into the village, hoping to snag a wayward cellphone signal from somewhere. After a few minutes of searching, she climbed on top of a picnic table and got lucky.
Sheri snatched up the phone on the second ring. “Any word?” she asked.
“Not directly.” Amanda chose her words carefully, opting not to mention Old Stink or his murder, for Sheri sounded tense enough. “We found his truck in the village of Conche, but we’re still a couple of days behind and we’re not sure what direction he took. The police may contact you with questions about his …” she groped for neutral words “… his state of mind.”
Sheri didn’t seem to be listening. “Jason thinks he’s got a lead on him.”
“What?”
“He said a fisherman spotted a man and a boy in a small boat near a place called Nameless Cove. I’ve looked it up on the map. It’s near the tip, just north of Flower’s Cove.”
And Deadman’s Cove, Amanda recalled with a shudder. She’d spoken to a fisherman there a few days earlier, on her way up the western shore. If Jason was correct, she and Chris were way off track. Yet Phil’s truck was here. That made no sense!
“When was this?” she asked.
“I don’t know exactly. But he called this morning, so it was probably in the past day or so. Jason’s going to rent a boat and check out the coast. That’s good news, right? Phil and Tyler are still safe, doing what they’d planned.”
Amanda forced a cheerful agreement. “Keep me posted, and I promise to do the same. The minute you hear from Jason, call me. And leave a voice message if I don’t answer. Cell service is pretty iffy where I am.”
Sheri laughed. “Welcome to Newfoundland, my dear.”
Amanda hung up, glad that at least one of them was able to laugh. She wasn’t nearly as optimistic about this latest news from Jason. Phil’s truck was sitting in plain view at the bottom of the hill, probably 150 kilometres across the northern peninsula from Nameless Cove, and according to the locals it had not moved in several days. There were only two ways he could have shown up in Nameless Cove; either he had succeeded in piloting Stink’s dilapidated old boat all the way up and around the northern tip of the peninsula and down the western side, or he had stolen a vehicle in Roddickton, and had made his escape across the peninsula. Toward airports, ferries, and places far away.
More likely, Jason’s witness was mistaken. How could anyone clearly identify two people in a boat on the ocean, probably wearing hats and lifejackets, caught in the glare of the sun off the ocean?
She was just turning to head back down the hill when her cellphone chirped. She glanced at the text message. From Matthew Goderich, succinct and pointed.
WTF???
She sucked in her breath. She knew Matthew was back in Canada, having abandoned Nigeria at the same time she and Phil had, and she knew he was trolling for worthy stories that could rebuild his connections to the major papers. He checked in on her and Phil periodically, out of what she hoped was sympathy and concern rather than a thirst for juicy follow-up material. He’d known she was going to meet Phil in Newfoundland, but those three letters WTF??? suggested something more ominous than idle curiosity.
She stayed on the picnic table and punched in his contact number, hoping the cellphone signal remained strong enough for a proper conversation. The smallest cloud or puff of wind seemed to defeat it.
The line crackled to life almost immediately. “Amanda, thank god! What’s going on?”
Matthew’s voice sounded even more ragged than usual. Decades of smoking and bad air had left his lungs starved and his throat lacerated, but she wondered whether he was taking enough care of himself. Like herself, he was a global wanderer with no place to call home and no one to nag him. She pictured his short, fireplug body and the perpetual five-o’clock shadow that lent him a seedy air, and she felt a rush of affection. How like Matthew to forget everything, even hello, in his headlong pursuit of a story.
“Hello to you too, Matthew. What do you mean — ‘going on’?”
“Are you with Phil?”
“No, why? What’s up?”
“I just got it off the police scanner! There’s a province-wide alert out on him. What the fuck has he done?”
“I don’t think he’s done anything, Matt. What does the alert say? Wanted for questioning? Suspect?”
“Wanted in connection with a suspicious death. They say he may be armed and dangerous.”
She drew a sharp breath. “That’s ridiculous! Armed with what? A Swiss Army knife?”
“It didn’t say. You know how these things are — cop bafflespeak. The alert covers all of Newfoundland and Labrador, land and sea. What happened, Amanda?”
Amanda
