“Hi,” I said, easing down across from Charlie. “Any news?”
“Mr. Calderon here made a call, but nobody back home had heard from his brother, so I contacted the Coast Guard. We’ll start an air search of the lake tomorrow. How much area do you figure we should cover?”
“That’s hard to say,” I said, hesitant to speak openly with Calderon there.
“It’s all right,” Ray said as though he’d read my mind. “I know the drill. How far could a body drift in ten days?”
“The river current’s thrust is still palpable a good two miles from the mouth,” I explained. “Might be farther with all the rain we’ve had. Deep water’s temperature is roughly forty degrees and bodies rise fairly quickly, say twenty-four to forty-eight hours. The prevailing wind’s been from the northeast the past week, so the floater — excuse me, the body, would drift south once it surfaced. I doubt it could be more than five miles out, so an air search in an eight-mile arc from the river mouth should do it. Plus a ground search of the South Point shoreline.”
“You’re assuming the torso’s intact,” Calderon said quietly. “If it’s been punctured, the body may already have sunk. What about scavengers, gulls, or fish?”
“The Great Lakes don’t have any scavenger fish that work on the surface, at least no large ones. Gulls might attack a fl—”
“Go ahead and call it a floater,” Calderon snapped. “I’m familiar with the term.”
“Sorry, I’m just trying... In any case, your brother was wearing a leather jacket when I saw him. It wasn’t in the car, so if he was wearing it when he went in, it would protect his upper body from gulls. I think there’s a good chance the body’s still afloat, possibly already ashore.”
“Wouldn’t somebody have found it if it had washed up?”
“Maybe not. Tourist season’s over, and a lot of the houses along South Point are summer homes.”
“I see. And if the body’s already sunk?”
I glanced at Charlie, not wanting to say it.
“If that’s the case, the chances of a recovery drop off pretty sharply,” Charlie said calmly. “In the spring, when the ice breaks up, it might be carried ashore. But to be absolutely frank with you, Mr. Calderon, if we don’t recover the body in the next few days, it’s quite possible we may never find it. Of course, it’s also possible it isn’t in the lake at all.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, so far we’ve assumed the worst. We find the car in the river, suitcases in the trunk. Granted, it looks bad. But suppose your brother made it out of the car okay? He’d been drinking, he’d just had a big disappointment, in effect he’d lost his father for the second time. Maybe he just decided the hell with it all and took off. Young guys do that sometimes.”
“No,” Calderon said softly. “He didn’t run off. I think Jimmy’s dead. I’m almost certain of it.”
“Why do you say that?” Charlie asked.
“I know it here,” Calderon said, tapping his heart. “I’ve felt it for days. We were very close as kids. My mom remarried a few years after Jimmy was born. A sailor. So we grew up as navy brats, always on the move. All we had was each other. Then I went in the service and Jimmy... I think I need to take a walk,” he said abruptly, rising, his eyes misty. “Is there a motel around here?”
“A couple,” Charlie said. “Harbor Inn’s the best, half mile or so down the shore. I’ll be glad to drop you.”
“No, I’ll find it. You finish your dinner. There is one thing, though. The air search? I’d like to go along. I’m not an amateur. I won’t get in the way.”
“I can ask,” Charlie said. “Can’t guarantee anything. It’ll be up to the Coast Guard pilot.”
“Thanks,” Calderon said. “For everything. You too, ma’am. And I’m sorry if I’ve seemed rude.”
“No problem,” I said.
“Right. I’ll be at that motel if anything... Well, you know.” He turned and walked out without a backward glance. And I’m human. I couldn’t help noticing how well he carried himself, and the way his shoulders moved... Charlie was watching me.
“So,” I said, meeting his gaze. “Do you think he’s right? The feeling he’s got about his brother, I mean?”
“Hard to say,” Charlie said. “I’ve never experienced it myself, but I’ve run into it a few times over the years. People call the station, ask us to check on somebody, usually a parent, because they’ve had a dream or a bad feeling something’s happened to them.”
“And?” I prodded. “How does it turn out?”
Charlie shrugged. “It’s only happened a few times. It’s not like I’ve done a big scientific study or anything.”
“And you’re ducking the question. Are they ever right?”
“They’re always right,” he said sourly, pushing his plate aside. “Every damned time.”
Calderon went up with the Coast Guard chopper the next day. For nearly ten hours they crisscrossed an imaginary grid over roughly eighty square miles of open water. The weather was ideal for a search, a brassy, beautiful October day, light wind, waves less than a foot, visibility almost perfect. Charlie buzzed me at four to tell me they’d struck out completely, both in the air and the ground search along the shore, but when Calderon wandered into the Nest a little after seven that night, there was no disappointment in his face. Or much of anything else. He was a closed book, but one that might be interesting to read.
He was dressed semiformally for this part of the country, jeans with a jacket and tie. He took the same comer table he and Charlie had shared the night before, and I wandered over.
“Hi,” I said. “Charlie told me how the search went. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Maybe no news is good news. Can I buy you a drink?”
“No, thanks,” I said, sitting down across the table from him. “But I’m a good listener.”
“I don’t need a shoulder to cry on,” he said. “At least, not yet. I could use a little consultation though, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“Not at all. How can I help?”
“The Coast Guard pilot told me that this time of year, with the weather and water temperature so cold, a floater will stay on the surface for quite a while. Sometimes weeks.”
I nodded. “Sometimes.”
“Well, you couldn’t ask for a better look than we had up there today, so I’ve got to assume that either the body’s gone down, or... that maybe it’s somewhere else.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, we don’t know for a fact that my brother was in the car when it went in. The sheriff said there was no blood or interior damage to indicate he was injured. Maybe there’s some other explanation.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Are you a gambler, Miss Mitchell?”
“Call me Mitch,” I said. “And I’ve been known to drop a few bucks at poker, why?”
“Then you know about probabilities. The odds. My little brother comes to a town he’s never been in before, doesn’t know a soul. He makes some inquiries about a guy who supposedly died umpteen years ago. And then, poof, he’s gone,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Disappears, just like that. What do you figure the odds are that it’s a coincidence?”
“I couldn’t say,” I said carefully. “But that might be exactly what it is.”
“An accident?” he said. “That’s what you think? Okay, where’s the body?”
“Mr. Calderon, people do disappear in the big lake. Someone... very close to me went through the ice last year. We never found him.”
“But they usually turn up, right? More often than not?”
“More often than not, yes.”
“Then all I’m saying is, for Jimmy to die accidentally only a few hours after he arrived, and for his body to disappear too, strikes me as one heckuva long shot.”