9.

Ever present, truest Friend,

Ever near Thine aid to lend,

Leave us not to doubt and fear,

Groping on in darkness drear,

When the storms are raging sore,

Hearts grow faint, and hopes give o'er,

Whisper softly, "Wanderer, come!

Follow Me, I'll guide thee home."

-Marcus M. Wells "This is absolutely, positively the last time," I told Kidd Chapin as I reached for a second slice of the best pizza I'd eaten in six months. Not only did it have olives and peppers and sausage, two slices even had anchovies, an irresistible combination. "If you don't catch somebody shooting loons tomorrow morning, you'll have to go back under the porch or go lie out in the bushes."

"And get my tailfeathers shot off?" he grinned. "Not!"

"Well, it won't be here," I warned, "because I'll finish up tomorrow evening and drive on back to Dobbs."

We were seated at the Formica kitchen table, shades drawn, splitting the last three beers in the refrigerator, and telling war stories.

At least Kidd Chapin was. He reminded me of Terry Wilson, my SBI buddy. I'd already heard his oystering story about the poachers he'd caught only that day-two old-timers who swore on their mothers' graves that they'd harvested that bushel of succulent bivalves before the thirty-first of March, the day oyster season officially closed. "They said they were just bringing those two-week-old sackfuls out in their boat to wet 'em down again."

Next had come his bear story, two loon stories, and now we were onto spotlighting deer.

"-so we're trying to sneak up on this abandoned house out at the edge of a soybean field where we've heard there's been lights flashing around at night and the sound of gunshots. Well, just about the time we get in range, the door flings open and this powerful flashlight beam sweeps across the field and then pow-pow-pow! We dive for cover and land in a briar-covered ditch with about six inches of water. A minute later, we hear the little skinny one yell, 'I b'lieve I got him, Cletus!'

"Ray and me, we raise up real easy like and see this man mountain come to the door-bushy red beard, carrying this humongous bowie knife and wearing a tee shirt that says 'Kill 'Em All And Let G.o.d Sort It Out.' He's one mean-looking mother. 'Where?' he says.

"'Over yonder,' says the skinny one, and he's laughing and whooping like he's killed a bear, and here comes that flashlight beam again."

He savored an olive and took a deep swallow of beer.

"Now Ray and me, we've got these riot shotguns, so I shout, 'State Wildlife Officer! Throw down your gun!' The big guy runs back inside, but the little guy's not quite sure what to do. 'Bout that time, Ray pumps a sh.e.l.l into the chamber and soon as he hears that, the little guy throws down his gun and hits the dirt, yelling, 'I ain't done nothing.'

"I run around to the back of the house about the time the door opens and I think for sure I'm gonna see the snout of an M-16 or something. Instead, here comes Man Mountain's nose, real cautious-like, and this little teeny voice says, 'Who's there?' like he's expecting the Avon lady.

"I tell him to come on out with his hands up and it's 'Yessir! Yessir! Don't shoot.'

"So we get 'em handcuffed, under arrest, down on their knees and all the time they're swearing they ain't done a thing. 'Course Ray and me, we know they have, so we start gathering up the evidence and the first thing we find is this shotgun sh.e.l.l. Only it's birdshot, nothing that'd bring down a deer. About twenty yards out, we finally find what the little guy was shooting at. Not a deer. A G.o.dd.a.m.ned house cat!

"I mean, here we are: two officers with riot guns, two guys handcuffed and under arrest, and one mangy dead Felis domesticus, which, you being a judge, you know is not against the law to shoot."

"So what'd you do?" I asked, licking tomato sauce from my fingers.

"Only thing I can do." He grinned and reached for the last piece of pizza. "I pick up that dead cat and I shake it in their faces and yell, 'You sorry piece of garbage, you see this?'

"And the little one starts whining, 'Yessir, please sir, I didn't mean to do it.'

"'You know this is against the law, don't you?'

"And the big one's moaning, 'Yessir, We're sorry. We won't never do it again. I promise you, sir!'

"'Okay,' I say, 'We'll let you off this time, but we catch you shooting cats again, you're gonna be in a heap of trouble.' "

Laughing, I topped his gla.s.s from the last bottle of beer and poured the rest into my own. "And cat lovers everywhere salute you, sir!"

"'Course, we actually did see some guys spotlighting deer a couple of nights later. We eased my state-issue Bronco down into this driveway on a country road and parked facing out. No lights on in the house, people had gone to bed. And we sit there about an hour till sure 'nuff, here comes a pickup with two jokers sitting out there on the front fenders. One's working the spotlight and the other has the gun. Well, we scrunch way down in the seat till after they pa.s.s, then I switch on the ignition and try to follow them and all of a sudden the whole right side of my Bronco sags down. We got out and find two of our tires melted slam down on the rims. Seems that old farmer was in the habit of dumping his hot coals and ashes in the driveway before he made up the fire and went to bed at night."

"Bet you had fun explaining that to your boss," I said as he cleared away the box and paper plates and put the beer bottles in a recycling bag.

"Well, tell you the truth, I could never exactly find the right time to break it to him so I just stole the spares off'n a couple of other officers' Broncos."

While I washed our gla.s.ses and wiped down the surfaces, he swept the floor.

"You're right handy around the house," I commented, spreading the dish towel to dry over the drainer.

"Never been too hung up about the difference between women's work and men's," he said with an easy smile. "Not since I learned about oysters."

"What about oysters?" I asked suspiciously.

"They flip-flop back and forth on their gender, depending on who's on top. Grow the lady on top of the gentleman, and a few months later, he'll be female, she'll be male and they'll still get baby oysters."

"You're making that up," I told him.

"There's a field guide to seash.e.l.ls in the living room," he said. "If you don't believe me, go check it out."

I went and found the book and looked up oysters. After a paragraph or two detailing how oysters grow in the marshes and mud flats of intertidal zones where water movement is gentle, the entry finally got down to their s.e.x life. Guess what?

"You sure you don't want to stay on down over the weekend?" he asked.

"Positive. Not that it hasn't been fun."

He gave me a considering look.

"Forget it," I told him. "We're not oysters."

I went to bed.

Alone.

a a a Along about two A.M., I woke up thirsty from the anchovies and tiptoed out to the kitchen for a drink of water.

And realized that thirst wasn't what had waked me.

Kidd Chapin was a dark shape at the back window and I saw him motion for silence through the faint reflected light from up at the store. Outside, a light rain was still falling. The wet live oaks swayed in a strong southwest wind and made moving shadows everywhere. I could hear low waves breaking upon the sand; and every fifteen seconds, a faint gleam from the lighthouse swept through the window over on the east side.

I stood on tiptoe to peer over Kidd's shoulder, past the bushes, to the road, and whispered in his ear, "What are we looking at?"

"I'm not sure. I went to the bathroom about ten minutes ago and happened to look out and see somebody coming up from the water."

"Fishermen use the path all times of the night and day," I told him, "depending on what's running and how the wind's blowing or-"

"I know about the wind and spring tides, Ms. Judge," he reminded me.

"Sorry."

"Besides, he didn't walk straight on up the path and down the road like a waterman. He kept so far in the shadows I never did get a clear look. In fact if it weren't that you never see any blacks on the island, I couldn't know if he was black or white. He slipped through those bushes and on across the road and now I don't see him anymore."

"What'd he have on?"

"I don't know. It was all dark. Probably a jacket with a hood on it."

"Maybe you ought to call Marvin Willitt," I said.

"What for?"

"You just said-"

"Yeah, and I tell Marvin Willitt where I am and half of Harkers Island'll know it by daybreak. And what if it's somebody only just out cheating on his wife, trying not to be seen by her husband?

"'Only just out cheating on his wife?'" I couldn't help the snide acid.

"Hey, I'm not condoning it, just recognizing the facts, ma'am."

He stepped back from the window as I opened the refrigerator and squinted against the sudden bright light. "You want a gla.s.s of tomato juice?"

"Okay."

We took our gla.s.ses back toward the unlit living room. A stiff April wind was pouring through the south windows straight off the water, thick with rain and salt and funky seaside odors. I shivered in my thin gown.

"Aw, don't go back to bed yet," said Kidd. "Is it too cold for you? I'll put the windows down."

"No, I like it, but I have to put on something warmer."

"My sleeping bag zips open to a double comforter," he offered and I saw white teeth flash in the near darkness.

"I'd hate for you to disfurnish yourself," I said dryly and went into my room to slip on a fleecy sweatshirt and slippers and to lay hands on a comforter of my own.

As I pulled the shirt over my head, I noticed through the window a flicker of light over at Andy's house. I quickly stuffed my gown inside a pair of warm-up pants, kicked off the slippers and pulled on sneakers, then hurried out to Kidd.

"It's Andy Bynum's house," I said. "The man that was killed Sunday? Somebody's sneaking around his house."

"Hey, wait a minute!" he rasped as I slid open the door. "Where do you think you're-"

"It's okay," I a.s.sure him, jingling my car keys. "I've got a gun in my trunk, remember?"

He grabbed my arm before I stepped off the porch into the rain and held me while he crammed his feet in his own shoes. "Now listen up, Ms. Judge-no guns. You stay here and I'll go-"

I yanked my arm free with a low snarl. "I've got a better idea, Officer Chapin. You stay here and call Marvin Willitt and I'll go."

"Or," he amended, "we can go together, only no gun, okay?"

I nodded and we set off through the bushes. Between the security light near Mark's house and the lights up at the store, we didn't need a flashlight to see where we were going, but we were keeping to the shadows as much as possible ourselves and there was a certain amount of stumbling so that we wound up running across the rain-slick road hand in hand, then melted into the bushes beneath the front windows of Andy Bynum's house.

Unlike Sue and Carl's little yellow clapboard vacation cottage, this was a year-round brick home, solid and comfortable, with blinds and drapes at all the windows. Yet the window of the front door was uncurtained and we could see the glow of a moving flashlight inside.