Shooting at Loons Read Online Free PDF Page A

waded over from the rescue boat. It was too big to come in all the way and was anchored out from the sandbar.
    I shook my head. “His skin was cold and it felt like rigor was already beginning when we turned him,” I explained.
    They gave me an odd look.
    “She’s a judge,” said Jay Hadley.
    That got me another odd look and I could sense an
us versus her
line being drawn in the water; but the detective splashed back to the boat and got a Polaroid camera. While another uniformed officer helped Willitt pull a tape measure from Bynum’s body to the fixed pilings, the detective measured the temperature of the water and then started sketching a rough diagram of the things he’d just photographed. He drew the position of the heavy rake, the empty bucket, the smooth clams and razor-rough oysters, the position of the anchor, and, of course, Andy’s body.
    By this time, Jay Hadley’s boat had been shoved over beside the rescue boat, the two of us still in it, and a second detective, Quig Smith, hitched her line to one of his cleats so he could question us easily.
    Guthrie had not returned, but he’d evidently given the broad outlines to Willitt when he phoned from the local quick stop. Mostly I just confirmed what Guthrie had already told them: no, I hadn’t noticed Bynum’s skiff till we were nearly on it; no, I hadn’t seen another boat leaving that area; no, I wouldn’t say that the body was rigid with rigor, merely beginning to stiffen.
    Thank you, Judge, and now for Miz Hadley.
    Yes, they kept a pair of glasses by the kitchen window, said Jay Hadley. “Ever since that trouble last month, we’re sort of in the habit that whoever’s passing’ll take a quick look.”
    Detective Quig Smith nodded as if “that trouble last month” was old news. “You see Andy get here?”
    “He was just stepping out of his skiff when we got back from church about twelve-thirty,” she said. “Once I knew it was him, I didn’t have to keep looking. I figured he’d be a couple of hours and things’d be fine long as he was here.”
    Her faint island accent turned
fine
to
foine
.
    “Next time I remembered to look, there worn’t a sign of Andy, just his boat. I thought maybe he hitched a ride outside with one of his boys or something. Then the next time, it was her and one of the Davises. I saw them get out and mess around and then he took off back to the island by hisself, and that’s when I decided I’d come out and see what was going on.”
    “How come your husband or son didn’t come out?”
    “Hes had to go to Raleigh and Josh—”
    A call on the police radio interrupted her and Smith had to go forward into the cabin to pick up. Whoever was calling had such a thick accent I could only catch scattered phrases and Andy Bynum’s name.
    “Durn!” said Jay Hadley when Smith came back down to the stern with a grimace on his face.
    “What?” I asked.
    “Some fool put it on the air,” he said in disgust.
    “It’s Andy’s boys,” Jay Hadley told me. “They’re both outside, probably halfway to the Gulf Stream, can’t get back for hours. They didn’t ought to have to hear about their daddy over a shortwave. Who was the blabbermouth?”
    “Probably Guthrie,” Smith guessed. He sighed. “Might as well let you ladies get back to shore for now.”
    I pointed out that I no longer had transportation.
    Smith and Miz Hadley locked eyes a moment, then she nodded. “She can ride with me.”
•      •      •
    The trip back was more leisurely than I’d expected from her breakneck speed out. She leaned back in the blue vinyl seat with one hand on the wheel. The wind barely ruffled our hair. We might have been riding around Dobbs in a convertible.
    More to make conversation than anything else, I asked, “When did they start renting out parcels of the sound?”
    “You mean when did the great state of North Carolina realize fishermen need to earn a living off the water even though sportsmen and developers