“I’ll take a second guess.” Ekert glanced around the study, as if the answer might be hidden somewhere in its appointments and furnishings.
“I’ll give you two minutes.”
Tillman took his watch from his vest pocket. “Ready, Mr. Ekert?”
“Ready.”
The sweat glazed Ekert now. And the shaking and the twitching—spasms, real spasms now. Except for a man who was about to hang, Tillman had rarely seen anybody look so forlorn.
Ekert licked dry lips. Smiled anxiously up at Tillman. “I’m real nervous.”
“You’re wasting your time and mine, Mr. Ekert.”
Once again, Ekert blurted his answer. “It’s because I didn’t kill Fargo.”
“You’re sure of that, Mr. Ekert? You’re sure that’s the answer I’m looking for?”
But Ekert didn’t look sure at all. And he didn’t need to tell this to Tillman, either.
Noah Tillman smiled. “You managed to give me the right answer, Mr. Ekert.”
“I did?” He sounded shocked.
“Yes, now go clean yourself up, Mr. Ekert.”
From the stain on the front of his pants, it was clear that Ekert had wet himself.
“And now that you know what I want you to do, I want it done right away.”
“I understand that, Mr. Tillman. I’m sorry I didn’t kill him this morning.”
He walked bow-legged from the study. Tillman went over and opened a window. Some fresh air, even if the day was hot, torpid. Fresh air was what he needed.
10
Fargo had spent time on waters of various kinds. On wide creeks with Indian friends, on rivers working as a hand, even on the Pacific Ocean, though never far from the coast.
Cap’n Billy’s tugboat brought back a lot of memories. It was a flat craft with the sheer—the top of the tug’s sides—running only a foot high. The bow was open for loading and off-loading whatever Cap’n Billy was hiding. On a hot night like this, a myriad of acrid odors—the remnants of various things the Cap’n had hauled—kept the air sour. The sentimental sound of the squeezebox playing an old forlorn Irish sea ballad brought back Fargo’s time on the water.
Fargo ground-hitched his stallion and walked down the hill leading to the riverside where a heavy rope lashed the tug to a large steel spike driven deep into an oak tree.
No cargo onboard tonight. Just an old man sitting on the empty deck with a dog lying next to his chair and a cat on his lap.
Cap’n Billy didn’t stop playing but he did look up and say, “Sara Jane told me I was gonna have a visitor tonight.”
Fargo boarded the craft and walked its length to where Cap’n Billy sat.
“Sara Jane is your daughter?”
“Nope. She’s a witch.”
“I see.”
“I can tell by your tone you’re not a believer.”
“Not a believer, not an unbeliever. I could be convinced either way.”
“Have a seat, stranger.”
Fargo smiled. “I guess she didn’t tell you my name, huh?”
The Captain quit playing. “See, there’s that skeptic tone again. She ain’t that advanced in her witchery yet.”
“I see.”
“She’s my niece and she ain’t but ten years old.”
“Oh.” Fargo knew that this wasn’t going to be fun or fast. Here was an old man who loved to talk and ramble while he talked. And getting him to focus would take some work.
“Most witches don’t get good ’til they get their menses.”
“I guess I hadn’t heard that one.”
“That’s ’cause you’re like most people. You don’t want to hear it. It scares ya to think about, that there’s a whole world all around us—this invisible world—that really controls everything we do. But you’d rather not know about it because then you’d have to do somethin’ about it. You’d have to start wearin’ garlic to keep the vampires away, and keep a silver bullet to fend off the werewolves, and wear special amulets and crystals at special times of the year so the demons don’t get you.”
It crossed Fargo’s mind that sitting out here with this old fart could get downright spooky if he let it. Just the river and the wild woods on both banks and a span of sky that seemed eerily alive with glowing stars. He half expected to see some lizard-like monster come up from the water.
“I actually came here to ask you about Skeleton Key.”
“You stay away from Skeleton Key.”
“How come?”
He was dressed in a soiled captain’s hat and a ragged red shirt that had once had longer sleeves. Apparently he’d torn them off when the weather had turned hot. He had one glass eye, an earring dangling from his left lobe, and several holes where teeth had once resided. He set his squeezebox down and picked up a violently hairy gray cat and began to stroke her.
“The screams.”
“The screams?” Fargo said.
“I’ve heard ’em.”
“On Skeleton Key?”
“You bet on Skeleton Key.”
“Anybody else hear these screams?”
“You don’t take my word for it?”
“It’s always better when you have two or three other witnesses.”
“Well, for one, Queenie here heard ’em.”
“The cat?”
“You damn betcha the cat. You got somethin’ against cats?”
“No, nothing at all. It’s just that Queenie might have a hard time telling me about the screams. If you see what I mean.”
“Well, I can hear her just fine and dandy. She talks to me all the time. Don’t you, Queenie?” At which point the cat looked up and lapped his chin with a long pink tongue. Hell, maybe they did communicate with each other.
“And she wasn’t the only one who heard them screams.” He nodded down to the sad-eyed beagle lying beside him. “Pirate Jack heard ’em, too. You said you wanted two or three witnesses. Well, you’re lookin’ at ’em, son. Me, Queenie, and Pirate Jack.”
Fargo hesitated, taking in the soft aromas of weeping willows. Life on this tug boat—at least at night—could be comfortable and relaxing. As long as Cap’n Billy and his talking pets were far, far away.
“What I need to know, Cap’n Billy, is how I can get on that island.”
“Ain’t no way. Not with the dogs.”
“What dogs?”
“I ain’t actually seen ’em but I sure as hell have heard ’em. Man killers, for sure. Plus there’s the timber itself. I played there when I was a young’un. Really easy to get lost. Thickest timber I ever seen. Like one of them African jungles you read about.”
“I couldn’t get past the dogs?”
“Not them dogs. The Key’s good sized but not that good sized. Them dogs would find you right away. You’d be dead in two minutes.”
Fargo set to rolling himself a smoke. He offered Cap’n Billy the makings but Billy shook his head. “What else is on the Key? You got any idea?”
“I got no idea. Not for sure. But I got suspicions.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I was goin’ by there one morning when it was real foggy. Could barely see your own hand. If I didn’t know this part of the river so well, I’d never have chanced it. Anyway, I got a little lost and got closer to the key than I normally would. They’ve got NO TRESPASSING signs everywhere and who knows if they wouldn’t just start shootin’ at somebody who got too close to them? Now I can’t swear this because I could only see in little bits and pieces through the fog. But I’m pretty sure I saw what they was off-loadin’ that day. And this was two days before the Fourth of July a couple of years ago.”
“You didn’t say what they were off-loading.”