He slowed to a walk, blowing hard.
The marine layer found Rube before he found the turnoff to the harbor. First the slice of moon disappeared, as though a hungry gray sky had devoured it. Then the street lights started to blink out, nothing left but a fuzz of light through the heavy mist.
Rube shivered as he walked, fingering the bloody patch of cloth. The fog was too thick; he couldn’t see. He turned to go home.
Buddy howled — only this time there was anger in the howl, the sound of a predator.
Rube moved through the fog toward the sound.
A hull creaked against a dock, water slapped — but he couldn’t see a foot in front of him. Stumble around like a foolish tourist and fall in the water and get washed out to sea and drown yourself. My God, Rubekowski, what would old Sheriff Boggert and the bartender say to that? Think of the laugh they’d have at your funeral, you old—
And then he heard something he’d hear again and again, many nights, in his worst dreams. A thwock of wood on bone, a heartrending, terrible sound. Only to be surpassed by a worse sound, an awful whiny little dog sound, like a puppy lost and alone.
Rube tried to part the fog as Moses must have the Red Sea. If sheer will had been enough, the night would have cleared. But as it was, Rube just stumbled forward, his hands waving helplessly in front of his body, like a man batting at a smokescreen. His foot stumbled on something, something that was solid and rose at an angle from the ground. He walked up the gangplank, realizing as he did so that he was almost blind. The thought hadn’t cleared his mind when he stumbled over the edge of something and went flailing forward to land on all fours. Pain shot from a knee up through his hip, but he clenched his teeth and kept the whimper to himself. He’d just caught his balance when the boat lurched and he lost it again. What fool would move a boat in this fog, he wondered, grabbing for the deck. He hugged the deck and tried to breathe deep while listening once again for the dog’s whimper. Instead he heard a bell. A buoy marker, he realized. He’d heard them earlier when he was wading. Beneath his body there was a thrumming now, a deep engine sound as the boat moved toward the marker.
This is crazy. He can’t see. He’ll crash and—
As they moved, someone shuffled through the fog. Rube could see a disturbance in the misty textures, like a ghost passing.
Buddy whimpered. A soft, hurt kind of sound. But then it grew and he started to howl.
“I’ll shut ya up.” That awful thwock again.
Silence.
Rube stood. His balance was bad, but he was determined to stay up. He moved toward the last sounds he heard.
The late September onshore breeze picked up and plucked at the fog, thinning it, and light streamed from an open cabin. Rube could see a figure hunched over something. The man’s hand was raised.
A belaying pin, Rube realized, as thick as a man’s forearm and shorter than a Louisville Slugger. The man was waving it above Buddy’s head. Buddy lay on his side, one paw up, as if to defend himself.
“Ya had to have a chunk of me, huh? Again? You’re worse than the little bitch that owned ye. She had to have it all, too. Killing my boy wasn’t enough. She wanted the captain’s boat. My home. My home since Maria died.”
The voice was a slow rave.
“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t, you see? I had to—”
Rube stepped on something loose on the deck, a corner of a tarp. The sound wasn’t much, but the old man spun.
Rube thought of at least three things to say but couldn’t get them out his mouth.
“What are you doing on my boat?”
“I heard the dog whimper,” Rube said. It sounded lame, and he knew it. Then again, it was the truth. Or most of it.
Rube stared at Buddy. The dog’s head leaked blood.
“He’s a bad dog,” the captain said.
“I don’t understand,” Rube said.
“He attacked me at my son’s grave,” the captain continued. The way the old man went on, Rube almost felt he was talking to himself. “The dog’s old, and he’s gone quite mad, I’m afraid.”
The boat still moved toward the buoy marker, out to sea, and Rube wondered how he steered. An automatic pilot setting, maybe? The mist was just that now, no longer heavy enough to call fog, and Rube could clearly see the old captain’s face, the potato nose and the reddened, wrinkled skin. The chin was hidden in a thatch of heavy beard. But the blue eyes held Rube’s, and they accused.
“Look,” Rube said, “he’s an old dog. I’m an old man, too. I understand the madness of retirement. Let me take the dog.”
The captain glared at him — the way they all did at tourists.
“I’ve got room at my place, and a yard.” And a garden I haven’t started, he almost added, thinking he’d start one, thinking of the sheriff and how much he wished Boggert were here. Wish you were here, to protect the tourist? Like a joke message on a bad postcard. But Rube meant it. There was something lethal in the captain’s eyes and stance. The man wouldn’t let him go, and Rube knew it.
The captain moved from his position over the half-conscious dog. “You followed me, didn’t you?”
Rube backed up clumsily. “No. I followed the dog.”
“You’re clever, no?”
“No,” Rube said.
The captain’s eyes changed for just a second. He seemed unsteadier than the deck should make him. Fatigue or drink or grief?
“She thought she was clever, too,” the captain said.
Rube tried to look stupid. Hell, he felt stupid enough, swaying on the deck of a fishing boat next to a sad old dog half unconscious on the deck. Trouble was, he knew what the captain was talking about. Kind of. She had to be the girl Rube had found in the seaweed. And it must have shown on his face.
“It’s too bad,” the old captain said.
The light from the pilot’s house seemed to surround him as he thwocked the club heavily into one hand. “She thought she could steal Jesse from the sea, from me and his rightful heritage. She thought she could steal an old man’s life.”
Rube backpedaled clumsily toward the center of the deck. But sea legs must take time or special practice because he stumbled and fell backwards over a row of crates. His head banged hard, and the night darkened for a second. When his head cleared, the captain stood above him.
“She had no right to any of it,” the captain said.
“Of course not,” Rube agreed.
Rube felt like he was floating on the deck; he was dizzy even lying down, and he reached out for something to grab, something solid. His hand wrapped around a pole as round as a broomstick, in a rack. He grabbed the stick and pulled himself up, at least halfway, before the stick pulled loose and Rube clattered back to the deck. He still held the stick, though. The end gleamed in the light from the cabin, like a spear.
Later, there would be thought. Too much thought. But for now, as the captain stepped forward, drawing back the big club for the kill, Rube didn’t think. He sat up and launched the big harpoon like a man born to it. He’d once played softball, once thrown a javelin, and this was not much different. Except this dug its way into the captain’s stomach, right below the ribcage. The big steel end made a deep sound, like an animal sucking at meat. The shank quivered from the captain like an exclamation point as Rube scrambled to his feet. He stood there watching the captain grab at the wooden shank. The captain’s face beaded with sweat. Muscles spasmed, and then blood spurted form the captain’s mouth.
“She wanted it all. By damn, no!” and he crumpled onto the deck.
“Jesus Jehoshaphat.”
And Rube still didn’t really know what the captain had done. But he knelt beside him, shaking him with horror and revulsion.