The Poison Artist Read online

  “I’ll try to keep us in one spot,” Henry said. “Current’s pretty strong, and the wind’s running across it.”

  Caleb looked through the window at the shore. It sloped up steeply from the water and was forested in cypress trees and bay laurel. To the south, a finger of heavy fog was working in beneath the bridge. There would be a fortress wall of it over the Pacific, moving slowly toward the city.

  “We’re only a mile and a half from the bridge,” he said.

  Henry nodded.

  “This is a good site,” Henry said. He was matching the engine’s speed to counter the force of the tidal current, tapping back the throttle lever with two fingers to nudge it to a balance point.

  “We’ll see if the samples match up,” Caleb said. But he already had a feeling about this one. It was so close to the bridge, and Henry was right about the current. The flow of water cut a smooth trail through the surface ripples, a meandering lane marked at its edges by bits of sea foam and floating debris brought to the bay by all the recent rains.

  Caleb put on his raincoat and fresh latex gloves. He took the last vial from his backpack and went out on deck, kneeling to untie his sampling can from the rail. Because the current was so strong, he had to toss and retrieve the can three times before he got it to dig into the bottom and bring up a sample. He poured the watery sludge into the vial and tamped the stopper into it.

  When he was back inside, with his rain jacket off, he sat at the front of the cabin close to one of the space heaters. It was colder in Sausalito than it had been in other parts of the bay, either because it was closer to the open Pacific or because the daylight was almost gone. Caleb held his hands over the heater, shivering a little.

  “Since we’re here, mind if we do a little experiment?” Henry asked. “I want to let this current take us. See where we end up.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Henry steered Toe Tags into the current line and then dropped the transmission into neutral. As the engine loped at a low idle, the boat lost its forward momentum, bobbing gently in the low waves. She began to drift sideways, the bow pointed toward Sausalito and the port rail facing San Francisco. Caleb glanced at the GPS screen. They were drifting south in a two-knot current.

  “You want some more coffee?” Caleb asked.

  “Sure.”

  He went in the galley to make it, taking his time because his fingers were still cold. The cuts on his right hand were stiffening up as they healed.

  “Current’s picking up,” Henry said, still at his place behind the helm. “Another half a knot.”

  Caleb bent to the freezer and got the bag of coffee beans. He filled the grinder and turned it on, shaking the beans back and forth through the blade. After he had the machine set up, he went into the head, shut the door, and filled the sink basin with hot water. He washed his hands and his face, then took his phone from his pocket and looked at it. He’d turned off the ringer after Bridget’s call, but she hadn’t called back or sent any texts. There were no messages or other missed calls. Emmeline had promised to call again soon, and as he thought about that, his chest tightened. He wanted Emmeline to call; he also wanted to go find Bridget and make her happy again. He wanted to let everything go, to find a dim room with a painting, where he could sit and stare at the canvas until everything else was just an inconsequential blur in the background.

  “Caleb,” he said to the tiny mirror above the brass basin.

  There was a right way out. He knew that. But he saw no course that would let him have everything he wanted.

  “You’re a fucking asshole.”

  He looked at himself in the mirror and nodded. At least he could be honest when he talked to his reflection. That was something.

  Caleb poured coffee into clean mugs and then brought them up to the helm station. He handed Henry one of the mugs and then looked out the window. They were about a hundred yards from the shore, drifting along the headland between Horseshoe Bay and the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  He brought his mug up to his lips and started to take a sip.

  In another minute they would drift into the wall of fog coming under the bridge, but for now, the line of sight was clear between the bow and the rocky shore.

  Because of that, he had no trouble spotting the body.

  Twelve

  “HOLY SHIT,” CALEB said. “Henry, you see that?”

  He put his coffee mug down on a shelf and pointed through the front window. The naked body was floating face-down within twenty feet of a cliff face. The water was dark-looking, flecked with foam and floating sticks. There must have been an eddy in the tidal current there.

  Henry followed the line of Caleb’s finger. He nodded and turned to the bulkhead, taking a pair of marine binoculars from a teak bin. He put them to his eyes and adjusted the focus with his index and middle fingers. He offered the binoculars to Caleb, but put them away when Caleb shook his head.

  “Can’t get Toe Tags in there, that close to the rocks,” Henry said. “No room to maneuver. How you feel about taking the dinghy? The dinghy, and a rope.”

  “Tow him back?”

  “I’ll stay out here, hold a position in deep water. You bring him back and we’ll put him on the swim platform at the stern.”

  “I can do that.”

  “All right,” Henry said. “I’ll move us up so we drift back to this spot while I get the dinghy ready.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Go out on the bow and keep a lookout. Make sure it doesn’t go anywhere. Here—take these.”

  Caleb took the binoculars from Henry and went to put on his raincoat again. He stepped out of the cabin and then walked along the side deck up to the bow. Beneath his feet, he felt the deck vibrate as Henry throttled the engine to maneuver the boat into a position for launching the dinghy. He put the binoculars to his eyes and watched the body, but the lenses quickly beaded with rain. He wiped them on his shirt, then held the binoculars back up, this time using his palms and fingers to shield the lenses.

  It was hard to tell much, even with magnification. And it was starting to get dark. The motion of the boat slowed—Henry had dropped it back into neutral. He heard the cabin door open and shut, and he turned and saw Henry on the side deck. He was holding an orange life jacket, a plastic oar, and a long length of white rope.

  “Need a hand with the dinghy?”

  “I got it. Stay on the body.”

  The dinghy hung from a pair of davits on the stern. Caleb could hear Henry working on it, pulling the canvas rain cover off, then tinkering with the outboard motor. Finally he heard the pulleys creaking as Henry lowered the little boat into the water.

  “You ready?”

  “Coming.”

  Caleb came back to the aft deck and looked over the stern rail. The dinghy was bobbing lightly in the water, bouncing against the swim platform mounted to the transom.

  “Better put on this life jacket,” Henry said.

  Caleb took it and slipped it over his head, then ran the webbing strap behind his back and clipped the plastic buckle shut.

  “I put a paddle in there, just in case you have trouble with the motor.”

  “Should I expect to?”

  Henry looked at the outboard.

  “Been a while since I used it. But it should do okay once it starts. When you get to him, rope him around the chest. Don’t even try to get him in the dinghy. You’ll tip over. Just get the rope around him and drag him back.”

  “Okay.”

  “Here, take this.”

  Henry’s hand came out of the pocket of his khakis holding a small waterproof flashlight.

  “Thanks.”

  Henry swung open the transom door and Caleb stepped through it to the swim platform. Then he alighted onto the wooden seat of the wobbly dinghy, moving quickly to lower his center of gravity before the small boat flipped.

  From less than half a mile away, one of the foghorns at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge blew a long, low b
last.

  “Let’s try and do this quick,” Henry said. “Before it gets dark or that fog comes any closer.”

  Caleb nodded and turned around, facing the dinghy’s stern. The outboard was a little two-stroke Mercury. Caleb primed the carburetor by thumbing the red rubber bulb on the front of the motor, then adjusted the choke and yanked on the pull-cord until the engine caught. He let it run a moment in neutral, then looked up at Henry.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m good.”

  Henry tossed Caleb the painter line, and Caleb put the outboard into gear. He puttered slowly away from the swim platform, then throttled up and steered toward the shore. He was too low in the water to see the body, but there was a sea cave at the base of the cliffs, near where it had been floating. He could see the cave, so he aimed for its mouth.

  He was fifty feet from the cliff face when he saw the pale shape of the body floating on the back of one of the waves. He put the motor in neutral and took out the paddle, closing the last of the distance with awkward strokes, trying to keep the dinghy level in the waves. He concentrated on the paddle, on keeping the boat from capsizing. When he looked up, the body was gone.

  He laid the paddle across his lap and sat on the wooden seat, shivering in the cold and scanning the water. The waves were running into the sea cave, hitting the mouth and rushing inside with a rolling boom. He could feel the cold air blowing out of the cave each time a wave ran inside. The air smelled of salt and seaweed, but there was something else. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he could smell the body.

  He twisted around on the bench, looking for it, one hand on the gunwale to steady himself. Toe Tags was two or three hundred feet away, silhouetted in front of the twinkling hills of San Francisco. Whole swaths of the city were invisible where the rain was falling heavily. Henry was up in the flying bridge, standing at the steering station. As Caleb looked, Henry switched on a high-powered spotlight. Caleb squinted and turned away from the white beam. The foghorn let out a low note, and Caleb felt another wash of cold breath from the cave.

  Then he saw it. A moment later, Henry found it too, and lit it up with the spotlight. It was between Caleb and Toe Tags.

  It must have been drifting in one direction on the back side of the swells while he’d been paddling with his head down. He turned around, stopping his stroke long enough to get out the flashlight. Holding it in his teeth, he knelt on the bottom of the boat and kept going until he felt the bow bump against the dead man’s side. He ducked down and found the end of the rope Henry had given him. He tied it around the T-shaped handle of the paddle, then crawled on his knees and looked over the tip of the bow.

  The body was right there, a foot below his eyes.

  Something had taken a gigantic bite out of the man’s thigh, stripping the muscle all the way to the white femur. The light hit the water in jerky flashes. The wound was dark red, and hadn’t been blanched by the sea. He had an idea what that meant, and he worked as fast as he could.

  “You okay?”

  “Light’s in my eyes,” Caleb said. “Here, catch.”

  He tossed the painter line to Henry and killed the motor. When Henry pulled the dinghy alongside the stern, Caleb stepped to the swim platform and climbed quickly to the aft deck. Beneath him, Toe Tags felt as solid as Alcatraz.

  “Let’s get this dinghy on the davits and then we’ll put the guy on the swim platform.”

  “We should hurry. I think something’s out there.”

  Henry nodded, and they worked quickly. When the dinghy was up, Henry spread a bed sheet across the swim platform. Caleb pulled in the towline and the body came out of the darkness. Henry had turned on the boat’s underwater lights so that the water was glowing from below. Cold, absinthe green. Henry leaned over the rail and caught the man’s feet in a loop. Lifting together, one on each end, they got the body onto the swim platform atop the sheet.

  “I think that bite just happened. Couple minutes ago, over by the rocks.”

  Henry aimed his light at the man, who was still face-down. The wound looked even wider out of the water. The bone was chipped and scored where teeth had scraped along it.

  “Big one, I bet. Not a minnow, anyway,” Henry said. He put his hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “You see it?”

  “Didn’t see anything. But the body disappeared on me. Then popped back up, in a different spot,” Caleb said.

  “Close call, maybe.”

  Caleb looked at the water behind the transom. It was still lit up from below, still the same cold green. But the blood was gone now, dissipated by the action of the waves and the steady tidal current.

  “You called this in yet? To Kennon and Garcia?”

  Henry shook his head.

  “Wanted to see what we’ve got first. But it looks like I’ll need to. See that?”

  Henry moved the light in a tight circle on the man’s pale back. There were three sets of stun gun marks going up his spine. The current burns and the spacing looked the same as they had on the other victim. Caleb felt his muscles loosen up and his skin prickle with cold. He was soaked with rain.

  “You got anything stronger than coffee?”

  “Bottle of twenty-five-year-old Laphroaig. The one you gave me.”

  “Let’s pour a drink. There’s something I have to tell you. Before you call Kennon.”

  Henry looked at him a moment, then nodded.

  He stepped down to the swim platform, crouching beneath the hanging dinghy. He covered the body with the other half of the bed sheet, then secured it with ropes so it wouldn’t slip off the back when they got under way again. They were drifting toward the Golden Gate Bridge, and were getting nearer to the blind bank of fog. When the bridge’s horn sounded, it was close and loud. Caleb could feel it in his stomach.

  Thirteen

  HENRY TURNED OFF the overhead lights in the cabin. The only light came from the glow of the space heaters, from the instruments and the LCD screens around the steering station. He put Toe Tags in gear and trimmed the throttle until they were making headway toward San Francisco at two knots. He sat at the helm and watched the radar screen closely until they were clear of the fog.

  “You know where to find the scotch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll take however much you’re having,” Henry said.

  Caleb found the scotch and the tumblers and poured a finger’s worth into each glass. He brought one to Henry and then sat opposite him.

  “Kennon’s come to talk to me,” Caleb said. “Twice.”

  Henry looked at him sharply.

  “What?”

  “I was in House of Shields the night Richard Salazar was murdered. I was one of the last people to see him alive.”

  “Wait, you’re—you’re telling me, you’re a witness?”

  “I was just in the bar. I didn’t talk to him. I didn’t see anything happen.”

  Henry put his drink down on the chart table, hard. Whiskey sloshed over the rim and soaked into a paper chart of the bay.

  “You’re a witness that a homicide detective talked to twice, and you got involved in this with me? Jesus Christ, Caleb, what’re we going to do if they put you on the stand? You were on the scene the last time anyone saw Richard Salazar alive. You touched his body in the morgue. You ran tests on his tissues and came up with a cause of death. You touched another body and connected it to the case. Then you came out here and spotted a third body, and you were alone with it for fifteen minutes. The defense would go nuts with a guy like you.”

  “Henry—”

  “And what if they dig any deeper, Caleb? You ever think about that?”

  “I don’t think Kennon even has to,” he said. “Dig deeper, I mean.”

  Caleb swallowed some of the whiskey.

  “What are you saying?” Henry asked.

  “That he might’ve been there,” Caleb said. “He’s nearly sixty. He’d have been a patrol cop back then. One of the first on the scene, maybe.”

  “Been the
re which time?” Henry asked. “For your dad, or after?”

  Caleb just shook his head. He didn’t know about that.

  “I know, it’s—”

  “You know? You don’t know anything! When the fuck were you going to tell me?”

  “I just—I didn’t think it mattered. When I pitch in for you, we keep it quiet. So I didn’t think it was gonna be a problem.”

  “Until now,” Henry said. “Now it’s a big fucking problem. We’re on a boat with a dead body. We can’t very well dump it back in the water and hope someone else finds it. I’m the fucking chief medical examiner. I have to call it in. And Kennon’s gonna be standing on the dock when we get there.”

  Caleb looked at the city in the distance. For a moment, Henry faded out. Bridget was in there somewhere, in that play of light and darkness on the steep hills. And Emmeline, too. He couldn’t even remember what day of the week it was. How could things have gotten so out of control, so quickly? He’d woken up on Saturday morning feeling good about things. Happy about the holidays, to spend Christmas with Bridget.

  “I’m sorry,” Caleb said, quietly.

  “Shit.”

  “What if I’m not on the boat anymore when you dock?”

  “What?”

  “What if I’m not on the boat anymore?” Caleb said. “You call it in and tell Kennon you were out by yourself. That you’re coming in now and you’ll meet him at the marina.”

  “And where will you be?”

  “There’s the fuel dock at Gashouse Cove. We’ll pass it on the way to Pier 39. You don’t even have to stop. Just get me within jumping distance of the dock. Then go on down the shore another mile and pull into your slip.”

  Henry drummed his fingers on the helm, then picked up his tumbler and drank off half the whiskey in one swallow.

  “Jesus, Caleb,” he said.

  He was silent a while, just steering. Caleb knew better than to interrupt him. He just needed time to think it through. Finally, Henry nodded.