‘I’ve been doing a lot of that. It’s okay,’ he assured her. ‘Sam’s in here a couple times a day.’ He was already uncomfortable. The hardest part was facing friends, Kelly told himself.
‘Well, we’ve been busy in the lab.’ Sarah spoke rapidly. ‘John, I needed to tell you how sorry I am that I asked you to come into town. I could have sent you somewhere else. She didn’t need to see Madge. There’s a guy I know in Annapolis, perfectly good practitioner …’ Her voice stumbled on. .
So much guilt, Kelly thought. ‘None of this was your fault, Sarah,’ he said when she stopped talking. ‘You were a good friend to Pam. If her mom had been like you, maybe – ‘
It was almost as though she hadn’t heard him. ‘I should have given you a later date. If the timing had been a little different-‘
She was right on that part, Kelly thought. The variables. What if? What if he’d selected a different block to be parked on? What if Billy had never spotted him? What if I hadn’t moved at all and let the bastard just go on his way? A different day, a different week? What if a lot of things. The past happened because a hundred little random things had to fall exactly into place in exactly the right way, in exactly the proper sequence, and while it was easy to accept the good results, one could only rage at the bad ones. What if he’d taken a different route from the food warehouse? What if he’d not spotted Pam at the side of the road and never picked her up? What if he’d never spotted the pills? What if he hadn’t cared, or what if he’d been so outraged that he had abandoned her? Would she be alive now? If her father had been a little more understanding, and she’d never run away, they would never have met. Was that good or bad?
And if all that were true, then what did matter? Was everything a random accident? The problem was that you couldn’t tell. Maybe if he were God looking down on everything from above, maybe then it would fit some pattern, but from the inside it merely was, Kelly thought, and you did the best you could, and tried to learn from your mistakes for when the next random event happened to you. But did that make sense? Hell, did anything really make sense? That was far too complex a question for a former Navy chief lying in a hospital bed.
‘Sarah, none of this is your fault. You helped her in the best way you could. How could you change that?’
‘Damn it, Kelly, we had her saved!’
‘I know. And I brought her here, and I got careless, not you. Sarah, everyone tells me it’s not my fault, and then you come in here and tell me it’s yours.’ The grimace was almost a smile. ‘This can be very confusing, except for one thing.’
‘It wasn’t an accident, was it?’ Sarah noted.
‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘There he is,’ Oreza said quietly; keeping his binoculars on the distant speck. ‘Just like you said.’
‘Come to papa,’ the policeman breathed in the darkness.
It was just a happy coincidence, the officer told himself. The people in question owned a corn farm in Dorchester County, but between the corn-rows were marijuana plants. Simple, as the saying went, but effective. With a farm came barns and outbuildings, and privacy. Being clever people, they didn’t want to drive their product across the Bay Bridge in their pickup truck, where the summer traffic was unpredictably interrupted, and besides, a sharp-eyed toll taker had helped the State Police make a bust only a month before. They were careful enough to become a potential threat to his friend. That had to be stopped.
So they used a boat. This heaven-sent coincidence gave the Coast Guard the chance to participate in a bust and thus to raise his stature in their eyes. It couldn’t hurt, after he’d used them as the stalking horse to help get Angelo Vorano killed, Lieutenant Charon thought, smiling in the wheelhouse.
‘Take ’em now?’ Oreza asked.
‘Yes. The people they’re delivering to are under our control. Don’t tell anybody that,’ he added. ‘We don’t want to compromise them.’
‘You got it.’ The quartermaster advanced his throttles and turned the wheel to starboard. ‘Let’s wake up, people,’ he told his crew.
The forty-one-boat squatted at the stem with the increased power. The rumble of the diesels was intoxicating to the boat’s commander. The small steel wheel vibrated in his hands as he steadied up on his new course. The funny part was that it would come as a surprise to them. Although the Coast Guard was the principal law-enforcement agency on the water, their main activity had always been search and rescue, and the word hadn’t quite gotten out yet. Which, Oreza told himself, was just too goddamned bad. He’d found a few coastguardsmen smoking pot in the past couple of years, and his wrath was something still talked about by those who’d seen it.
The target was easily seen now, a thirty-foot Bay-built fishing boat of the sort that dotted the Chesapeake, probably with an old Chevy engine, and that meant she couldn’t possibly outrun his cutter. It was a perfectly good thing to have a good disguise, Oreza thought with a smile, but not so clever to bet your life and your freedom on one card, however good it might be.
‘Just let everything look normal,’ the policeman said quietly.
‘Look around, sir,’ the quartermaster replied. The boat crew was alert but not obviously so, and their weapons were holstered. The boat’s course was almost a direct one toward their Thomas Point station, and if the other boat even took note of them – and nobody was looking aft at the moment – they could easily assume that the forty-one-footer was just heading back to the barn. Five hundred yards now. Oreza jammed the throttles to the stops to get the extra knot or two of overtake speed.
‘There’s Mr English,’ another crewman said. The other forty-one-boat from Thomas Point was on a reciprocal course, outbound from the station, holding steady in a straight line, roughly towards the lighthouse that the station also supported.
‘Not real smart, are they?’ Oreza asked.
‘Well, if they were smart, why break the law?’
‘Roger that, sir.’ Three hundred yards now, and a head turned aft to see the gleaming white shape of the small cutter. Three people aboard the target craft, and the one who had looked at them leaned forward to say something to the guy at the wheel. It was almost comical to watch. Oreza could imagine every word they were saying. There’s a Coast Guard boat back there. So just play it cool, maybe they’re just changing the duty boat or something, see the one there … Uh-oh, I don’t like this… Just be cool, damn it! I really don’t like this. Settle down, their lights aren’t on and their station is right down there, for Christ’s sake.
Just about time, Oreza smiled to himself, just about time for: oh, shit!
He grinned when it happened. The guy at the wheel turned, and his mouth opened and shut, having said just that. One of the younger crewmen read the man’s lips and laughed.
‘I think they just figured it out, skipper.’
‘Hit the lights!’ the quartermaster ordered, and the cop lights atop the wheelhouse started blinking, somewhat to Oreza’s displeasure.
‘Aye aye!’
The Bay boat turned rapidly south, but the outbound cutter turned to cover the maneuver, and it was instantly clear that neither could outrun the twin-screw forty-one-boats.
‘Should have used the money to buy something sportier, boys,’ Oreza said to himself, knowing that criminals learned from their mistakes, too, and buying something to outrun a forty-one-foot patrol boat was not exactly a taxing problem. This one was easy. Chasing another little sailboat would be easy, if this damned fool of a cop would let them do it right, but the easy ones wouldn’t last forever.
The Bay boat cut power, trapped between two cutters. Warrant Officer English kept station a few hundred yards out while Oreza drove in close.
‘Howdy,’ the quartermaster said over his loud-hailer. ‘This is the US Coast Guard, and we are exercising our right to board and conduct a safety inspection. Let’s everybody stay where we can see you, please.’
It was remarkably like watching people who’d just lost a pro-football game. They knew they couldn’t change anything no matter what they did. They knew that resistance was futile, and so they just stood there in dejection and acceptance of their fate. Oreza wondered how long that would last. How long before somebody would be dumb enough to fight it out?
Two of his sailors jumped aboard, covered by two more on the forty-one’s fantail. Mr English brought his boat in closer. A good boat-handler, Oreza saw, like a warrant was supposed to be, and he had his people out to offer cover, too, just in case the bad guys got a crazy idea. While the three men stood in plain view, mostly looking down at the deck and hoping that it might really be a safety inspection, Oreza’s two men went into the forward cabin. Both came out in less than a minute. One tipped the bill of his cap, signaling all-clear, then patted his belly. Yes, there were drugs aboard. Five pats – a lot of drugs aboard.