The end of the boom missed me by no more than two inches. I heard the sound of him hitting the water and instinct sent me lurching back to the helm. I spun the wheel hard to bring her up into the wind, then ran forward and ripped the life preserver off the starboard shrouds and flung it back into the wake.
Bone had surfaced a dozen feet from where it landed. He bobbed there for a few seconds, not making any move toward the doughnut. I thought he might be hurt or too dazed to see it and I yelled above the wind, "Bone! In front of you!"
No answer. But then I saw him start to swim in a strong crawl toward the preserver and I knew he was all right. I scanned the sea around him. No dorsal fins, just white-flecked blue water.
I ran aft to the wheel, steadied Windrunner up into the wind until she was right in stays. Then I hurried forward again, dropped the main and staysail, came back aft. Bone had reached the ring, was resting there with one arm looped through it, looking in my direction. I waved at him. He didn't wave back.
I went below to start the auxiliary engine. At the wheel again, I circled the yawl under power until I could see Bone and the doughnut bobbing to windward. I idled down a hundred feet from him, eased the yawl upwind until I was close enough for him to reach up with one hand and catch hold of a rail stanchion. He tossed the preserver on deck, hung there two-handed until the roll was right, and then heaved himself aboard.
He wouldn't take any help from me. Wouldn't look at me until he'd hoisted himself to his feet, streaming water, and then it was only a brief glance followed by a short, sharp nod. There was an angry-looking welt on his shoulder where the boom had clipped him.
"That was close," I said. "Too close."
He didn't say anything.
"You shouldn't have grabbed me like that," I said. "The coffee . . . it was an accident. The jibe, too. One of us must've kicked the wheel. . ."
Silently he tugged at his wet clothes.
"Bone, listen to me—"
"Don't say it, mon. Ain't nothing I want to hear."
He made eye contact for three or four seconds and then moved past me and went belowdecks. But that look stayed with me, left me feeling chilled and empty. The burn in his eyes had been extinguished; there was nothing in them for me any more, no feeling at all. Cold, blank, like the unseeing eyes of a dead man—
What? Did I think of what?
Not rescuing him? Leaving him out there to drown?
My God, no! Not for a second. The thought never entered my head. I could no more have killed Bone than I could have chopped off my right arm, to save my ass or for any other reason. He was my mentor, my friend—my only friend. I loved him like a brother.
What do you think I am, some kind of monster?
All the rest of that day Bone stood on deck with his back to me, working when necessary, the rest of the time just smoking his pipe and staring out over the water. Wouldn't talk to me. Wouldn't make any more eye contact. There was no way to guess what he was thinking; his face was like a stone mask.
How did he know about Annalise? The question kept nagging at me. It couldn't be from any mistake in my calculations. A combination of little things, probably. My telling him she'd left me. The empty ice chest. His abnormally long sleep and the hangover effects of the Valium mixed with rum. The new padlocks on the sail lockers and the fresh scrape in the starboard rail. Bone noticed every detail on a boat. He may have been sensitive to anything abnormal on one, too, in the same way he was sensitive to atmospheric conditions. He was an intelligent man; give him enough components and he could fit them together into the correct equation.
What would he do about his suspicions? Turn me in? I didn't think so. Didn't want to believe he would. His code of noninvolvement was why he hadn't confronted me; it would also keep him from going to the law. Our friendship weighed in my favor, too. And the fact that I'd saved his life had to count for something.
Still, you can't be absolutely certain how anyone will react to a given situation. You can't even be certain how you yourself will react. He could never condone the taking of a human life, no matter what the reason. He couldn't even sanction the killing of sharks. If his moral code was stronger than all the factors in my favor, there wasn't anything I could do about it. You could talk until you were blue in the face to a man like Bone, and the only voice he'd be listening to was his own.
Time would tell. All I could do was to keep as silent as he was and sweat it out.
Nothing happened after we returned to St. Thomas. Bone had his gear packed and ready before we entered the Sub Base harbor, and he walked away without a word as soon as we docked.
Two long days passed. No one came around asking about Annalise. By the end of the second day I began to relax again. I'd been right, I thought, to do nothing, keep my distance. Bone had had plenty of time to think things over; if he was going to the law, he'd have done it by then.
That night I had a bad nightmare. Awake, I didn't think about the Annalise crime; my conscience bothered me not at all. But asleep, my subconscious dredged it up. I awoke suddenly, or thought I did, and Annalise was sitting naked on the foot of the bunk, dripping wet, her body draped in seaweed and rusted chains, her hair hanging in sodden strings, part of her face eaten away by sea creatures. I screamed once and really woke up, shaking and pouring sweat. For a time afterward I worried that I'd have the nightmare again, but I never did. Just that once, as if it were a purge.
On the third day, I debated the advisability of a visit to JoEllen Hall. She hadn't contacted me when Annalise disappeared the first time, so it wasn't likely she'd be concerned enough to do it this time. But if Annalise had confided in anyone about me or her new lover or her future plans, it was JoEllen. Safer for me if I knew what she might have said.
I drove over to Red Hook and hunted up the woman at her rundown beach cottage. I asked first whether Annalise was there, then whether JoEllen had heard from her in the past several days. No, she said, why was I asking? "I might as well tell you," I said. "We had an argument over her drinking, among other things, and she packed her suitcase and walked out. Took some money with her that I had stashed away. That was three days ago, so she must have left the island."
"Well, I don't know where she went and I wouldn't tell you if I did. The shitty way you treated her, I don't blame her for leaving."
"The shitty way / treated her? Is that what she told you?"
"She never should've come back, that's what she told me. She practically crawled to you, but you never let her forget the mistake she made two years ago. Always giving her orders, forcing her to live like a dog on that damn boat of yours. Poor kid was miserable."
"That's all Ues, JoEllen."
"So you say, when she's not here to defend herself."
"Did she tell you she was planning to leave me again?"
"Not the first time and not this time. Why should she? Her business where she goes and what she does, not mine. And not yours anymore."
"You're right about that," I said. "Tell me something, will you? The answer doesn't make any difference now, but I'd like to know. Was she having an affair the past month or so?"
JoEllen had never cared for me, and Annalise's lies had cemented her dislike. Her smile had an edge of malicious satisfaction. "Damn right she was. With the same man as before—Royce Verriker. She said he was the best fuck she'd ever had."