But Boggert softened then, and a small, friendly smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out more. Meantime, you go home. Get some sleep. Rearrange your furniture or tinker in your garden. But stay outa mine. Okay?”
Rube stayed silent. He felt grim and patronized.
“Sure, sheriff,” he said, stepping out after Boggert stopped the Jeep.
Rube walked away without looking back.
The trouble was... Rube couldn’t sleep.
At first he thought it was his new place, the strange way the night wind blew the tree against the railing on the back deck. The rustling was like a yearning, a soft silky sound, like cloth against flesh. Green dress, tattered dress, rent with the hate of someone’s child. The thoughts were night thoughts, and they chased the real night sounds across the pictures in his mind with a frightening clarity.
He remembered the wound so clearly because it had shocked his middle-class values. Rube had never been to war or done battle in a squared off circle as some men had, and his lifetime of toil had come not in a sweatshop or a factory but a modem day laboratory where he played with chemical combinations that sometimes healed and sometimes — he feared — killed. But that had been his life and he’d cherished those values, and when his boss had shown him the array of harpoons, each designed a bit differently, each with a more vicious type of head to gouge or bite into the flesh of the fish, Rube felt a bit squeamish. He should have shaken it off, would have, eventually, would have accepted the killing as part of everyday living, except the fish wasn’t a fish but a mammal — an intelligent creature. The dolphin had been off the starboard bow, playing, teasing the waves and the sun when his boss blasted him from the water like so much detritus — so much cheap trash.
Rube rolled over. Emotional old man, he chided. In the night his voice sounded cold and lonely and a little creaky.
Someone had tom a hole through that young girl.
Emotional old man?
Rube had no children. And his wife was long dead. And now he had no work. At sixty-two he could see it all stretch out before him, too many good years left and not enough to do. “Good an excuse as any,” he mumbled. He sat up and rubbed his face and strained through the darkness with eyes accustomed to more light. He couldn’t see the tree that sounded so much like cloth against flesh, but he could smell the night, the salty core of it blowing from the ocean. All that life below the waves. Struggling to survive. One big mouth closing over a smaller tail. Eat and thrash and survive because the world made you that way?
But who made a world that harpooned young girls?
“Jesus Jehoshaphat, next I’ll be crying in my beer and going to revival meetings and...” But he couldn’t shake off the image of her body lying in the surf with that big hole through her chest, as though someone had performed an Aztec ritual and ripped her heart loose the hard way.
“Do something else,” Boggert had warned. “Rearrange your furniture or tinker in your garden, but stay out of mine.”
But he couldn’t. He stood by the bed and wobbled for a moment as the feeling returned to his legs, then he reached for his clothes draped over the chair back.
Except for the Salty Dog, the village looked deserted. As Rube walked toward it, the breeze washed his face with a tangy fog as heavy as cigarette smoke. Rube could hear the twang of a steel guitar and the high tinkle of glasses followed by garish laughter. Light, soft and gold and warm looking, seeped through the open door. Rube padded down the sidewalk in his brown chinos and black nylon jacket, rubbing at his stubbled face. He should have shaved, but he’d been too restless and shaky not to cut himself.
Inside, the bar looked like mahogany, running full length from rear to front. Bright red leather sparkled with chrome trim, though only half the seats were full. Rube took a stool near the end and winced as the bartender stuck his big ugly face across the distance between them. His breath was bad — onions and bourbon and cigarettes, with a touch of garlic.
“What’ll it be?”
“Just a draft beer.”
Rube sipped and glanced around. The tiny dance floor was empty except for a pair of young people in cowboy hats. They nuzzled each other’s necks as they danced close, their bodies wiggling like upright snakes in some intricate mating dance. Beyond them, in the back, old men sat hunched together in one of the booths. Their clothes were rough-hewn, and their faces were bearded. They talked in low tones, like conspirators, but their whispers carried.
“It’s that po-lution, from the big chemical plants — you know there’s a power plant right next to the Morro Bay Fishery?”
“Well, whatever, the fish ain’t running. It’s take tourists out or starve. On bad days I begin to think I’d rather starve...”
Their accents were flat and hard, no accents at all.
Rube sipped his beer. The music played again. The same couples danced.
Maybe coming out had been a mistake. What was he doing? Looking for clues? Maybe the sheriff was right. Tend your own garden and stay out of his.
Something big and furry and yellow caught his eye.
Rube turned on the bar stool. In the golden light from the bar, the dog’s eyes looked feral and ancient and judging. He sat like a huge, fur-covered lump just outside the door — sat way back on his haunches — but his eyes seemed to search the smoky room.
Rube remembered the way the big dog had worried the girl’s hand. As though he could bring her back to life if he could just pull her from the clump of seaweed.
The boogie brass rumbled through the bar’s stereo system, a sound so loud Rube thought he saw the smoke quiver with the vibrations.
The dog whimpered.
“You wanna ’nother brew?” Smell of garlic laced with rum.
“No, thanks,” Rube said, turning to the barkeep. “You know that dog?”
“Personally?”
Rube wasn’t in the mood. It was nearly midnight and he was suddenly more keyed up than ever. He needed to do something that would at least allow him to go home and sleep. Just one little fact would do it. Such as — why the dog sat there.
The bartender started to turn away, then changed his mind. Almost wistfully, Rube thought, the big man with the garlic breath looked at the yellow dog. “That’s... that used to be Betty and Jesse’s mutt.”
As though that was enough in the way of explanation.
“I don’t understand ‘used to be,’ ” Rube said softly.
The barkeep played with his bar rag, mopping at a damp spot. When he looked up, his eyes were redder than before, as though something painful had kicked him from the inside of his skull.
“That girl you found this morning... her name was Betty Sturgis. She was engaged to a guy named Jesse, a local fisherman. Buddy was their dog.” His eyes had gone deeper now, seeking out whatever hurt inside. “The dog used to wait for them out there — just like he is now.”
Rube stared stupidly at what was left of his brew. Then he asked what seemed the logical question. “Why doesn’t Jesse take him home?”
The bartender gulped at something invisible in his throat. “You don’t know why?”
Rube shook his head. “I wouldn’t ask if I did.”
The dog whimpered.
The bartender seemed to make a decision, and his face turned angry and red. “Damned tourist. Drink your beer and go on back to L.A. or wherever you came from.”
“I’m not a tourist,” Rube said softly.
But the bartender was beyond reasoning. “Then you should know, dammit.”
Rube sat stiffly.
“Jesse’s dead,” he said. “Been dead a week now.”
Rube felt like someone had clubbed him. “I’m sorry,” he finally managed, but the bartender had already turned and gone.