Cry for the Strangers Read online

  Shelling sank once more below the surface. The net was all around him now and he no longer had room to kick. He thrashed his arms, but with his legs bound and useless in the grip of the heavy mesh, his struggles did no good.

  Pete Shelling knew he was going to die.

  Fear rose up in his gorge. He forced it back. Slowly, methodically, he began letting air out of his bursting lungs. He felt himself losing his buoyancy, and for an instant his fear left him. As soon as he breathed air in, the buoyancy would return. Then he remembered that there was no air to breathe. Only water.

  He steeled himself to suck the sea into his lungs, and was mildly surprised to find that he couldn’t do it. His muscles steadfastly refused to obey the messages he sent them. His throat closed. He began to feel himself dying.

  When at last he relaxed and the sea found its way in, Pete Shelling changed his mind. He wouldn’t die. He would fight back. The sea would not defeat him.

  He thrashed again, thrashed wildly against the entangling nets, his weakening arms struggling against the bonds.

  Then suddenly, almost miraculously, he broke the surface. But it was too late. His eyes searched wildly for help, but there was no one. He tried to scream, but was too choked with salt water for any sound to emerge. He sank back below the surface.

  As Pete Shelling died, he tried to analyze the strange vision that was his last glimpse of the world. A boat. There seemed to be a boat. Not his own Sea Spray, but a smaller one. And a face. A dark face, almost like an Indian. But it couldn’t have been, of course. He was alone on the sea, alone in a storm that had blown up from nowhere. He was dying alone. There was nothing—only the last desperate hope of a drowning man.

  The sea drowned the hope, and the man.

  When sunrise came, hours later, Sea Spray floated peacefully on a calm sea, her nets spread around her like the tired skirts of an exhausted woman who has stayed too late and danced too long.

  Pete Shelling had long since disappeared. The Sea Spray, alone in the ocean, seemed to mourn him.

  2

  Brad Randall glanced at his watch and saw that his stomach and the instrument on his wrist were, as usual, perfectly synchronized.

  “Lunchtime?” his wife asked, reading his mind.

  “I can go another half hour, but then I’ll get grouchy,” Brad said. “Any place around here look promising?”

  Elaine reached for the map that lay neatly folded on the dashboard. “Unfortunately, they don’t put anything on road maps except the names of the towns,” she said dryly. “No evaluations.” She glanced at the map briefly, then looked out the window. “God, Brad, it’s so beautiful out here.”

  They were driving south on Route 101 along the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula. For the last hour, ever since they had passed Crescent Lake, the road had wound through lush green forests, choked with underbrush so dense that Elaine had several times wondered aloud how anyone could have cut through it to build the highway. Then the forest had given way to beach, and just as they had arrived at the coast the cloud cover had broken. To their right the Pacific Ocean lay sparkling in the late morning sun, a stiff breeze frosting it with whitecaps. To the left the dense forest rose steeply to the towering heights of the Olympic Range, standing as a proud barrier between the ocean to the west and Puget Sound to the east.

  “Let’s stop,” Elaine said suddenly. “Please? Just for a few minutes?”

  Brad paused, considering, then looked once more at his watch. “Okay, but remember: just a few minutes. And remember that there is no more room in the trunk for driftwood.”

  He veered the car off the road and came to a stop, then turned his full attention to the beach. It was, indeed, beautiful. Between the road and the sand the ever-present tangle of driftwood formed a silvery barrier that promised hidden treasures for the persistent beachcomber. And Elaine Randall was persistent. Before Brad had even made his way around the car she was clambering over the driftwood, poking here and there, picking up pieces of flotsam, evaluating them against the memory of things she had already collected, then discarding them in the hope of finding something better in the next nook. Brad watched with amusement; During their two weeks on the peninsula Elaine had filled and emptied the trunk of their car at least three times—throwing away yesterday’s “perfect” piece of driftwood in favor of today’s, which would in turn be discarded tomorrow.

  He began making his way toward her, knowing from experience that his help would be required to haul her finds back to the car. He was only a few yards from her when Elaine gave a whoop of victory.

  “I found one!” she cried. “I finally found one!” She held a sparkling blue object aloft and Brad knew immediately that it was one of the Japanese fishing floats she had sworn to find before going home.

  “Great,” he called. “Now can we have lunch?”

  If she heard him she gave no sign—she was totally engrossed in examining the float, as if looking for the flaw that ought to be there; to find a perfect one was almost too much good luck. But it was perfect. Elaine looked happily up at her husband as he settled next to her on the log.

  “It’s not even chipped,” she said softly. She held it up to the light and watched the dancing refraction of the sun through the blue glass. “It’s an omen,” she declared.

  “An omen?”

  She grinned impishly. “Of course. It means we’re going to find the right place today.”

  “We’d better,” Brad said gloomily. “If we don’t, we’re in trouble. There aren’t many more places left to look.”

  Elaine stood up decisively. “Come on,” she said. “Back to the car with you. I’m going to look at the map, and I’ll bet the first place I pick will be exactly what we’ve been looking for.”

  In the car Elaine carefully packed the sparkling blue globe in her purse, then picked up the map.

  “Clark’s Harbor,” she announced.

  “Clark’s Harbor?” Brad repeated. “Where is it?”

  “About twenty miles south.”

  Brad shrugged. “It’ll do for lunch.” He started the engine, put the car in gear, then pressed the accelerator. Beside him, Elaine settled confidently in her seat.

  “You seem awfully sure,” Brad said. “And you’re thinking about more than a place for lunch.”

  “I am.”

  “Mind telling me why?”

  “I told you—the float is an omen. Besides, it sounds right. ‘I’m in Clark’s Harbor writing a book.’ It sounds very professional. And of course you’re going to write a very professional book.”

  “I wonder,” Brad mused with a sudden sense of misgiving. “Am I making a big mistake? I mean, taking a whole year off just to write a book that might not even sell—”

  “Of course it will sell,” Elaine declared. “Millions of people will gobble it up.”

  “A book on bio-rhythms?”

  “All right,” she said, unconcerned. “So it’ll only be hundreds of thousands.”

  “Tens of tens, more likely,” Brad said darkly.

  Elaine laughed and patted his knee. “Even if it doesn’t sell at all, who cares? We can afford the year off, and I can’t imagine a better place to spend the time than out here. So even if the book is only an excuse to spend a few months at the beach—which it isn’t, of course—” she added quickly, “it’s still worth it.”

  “And what about my patients?”

  “What about them?” Elaine said airily. “Their neuroses will keep, with Bill Carpenter looking out for them. He may not be the psychiatrist you are, but he’s not going to kill your patients.”

  Brad lapsed into silence. Elaine was right. It was a comfortable silence, the kind of silence that comes only between people who love and understand each other, a silence born, not from lack of anything to say, but rather from a lack of necessity to say anything at all.

  They had been combing the peninsula for two weeks, looking for the right town in which to spend the year Brad estimated it would take him to comp
lete his book. But there had been something wrong with every town they had seen—too commercial or too shabby, too self-consciously quaint or too self-satisfied. Today, Brad knew, they would either find the right town or give up the search, for if they continued on, they would be into the unrelieved dullness of Aberdeen and Hoquiam, having made a complete circuit of the peninsula. Maybe Elaine’s right, Brad thought. Maybe Clark’s Harbor is the right place. He rolled the name of the town around in his mind. Clark’s Harbor. Clark’s Harbor. It had a nice lilt to it, like an old New England fishing village.

  “It’s right up ahead,” Elaine said softly, breaking the silence.

  Brad realized he hadn’t been paying much attention to the road, driving more by habit than by concentration. Now he saw they were in the outskirts of a town.

  It didn’t seem to be a large town, which was fine, and it seemed to be well tended, which was even better. The houses were scattered along the road, frame houses, some neatly painted, others weathered to a silver patina by the sea wind. But even the older structures stood firmly upright, solidly built to withstand the elements.

  They drove down a slight incline into the heart of Clark’s Harbor. It was little more than a village. There was a side street running perpendicular to the highway, and Brad made a right turn onto it. The incline steepened and they dropped quickly into the center of the village. The street ended at a wharf. Brad brought the car to a stop and he and Elaine looked curiously around.

  “It looks like something out of New England,” Elaine said softly, echoing Brad’s thought. “I love it.”

  And it did look like a picture-postcard New England town. The buildings that clustered along the waterfront were all of a type: neat clapboards, brightly painted, with manicured gardens flowering gaily in the spring air. Set apart, grandly aloof from the rest, was an old Victorian building, its lawn and garden neatly bounded by a white picket fence. A hand-lettered sign proclaimed it the Harbor Inn.

  There were several people on the streets, enough so the town seemed busy but not frantic. One or two glanced at the Randalls’ car, but with no particular interest. No one stopped to stare; no one gestured or commented. Brad frowned slightly, feeling a strange lack of curiosity in the people who had glanced at them so disinterestedly. Always sensitive to her husband, Elaine looked quickly at him, concern clouding her face.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Brad said. Then he grinned at her. “What do you say we get something to eat?”

  Rebecca Palmer had noticed the strange car passing by as she was about to go into Blake’s Dry Goods, but she was preoccupied with other things. Right now she was more concerned with her shopping than with who might have arrived in Clark’s Harbor. The dark green Volvo had seemed somehow familiar, though. Wishful thinking; she pushed it out of her mind.

  She pulled a cart from the row that stood waiting just inside the front door and began wheeling it slowly through the aisles, stopping to look at a display of china that struck her as being in particularly bad taste, even for dime-store dinnerware. Shaking her head sadly at the garish pink and blue pansies that paraded helplessly around the perimeter of the plates, she moved on, picking up an item here and there and depositing it in the basket of the cart.

  The crash came as she was pausing in front of a rack of inexpensive dresses. She whirled around and saw George Blake hurrying toward the china display. Satisfied that the accident had had nothing to do with her, Rebecca turned back to the rack and continued her search for a dress that would set off her almost ethereal prettiness. Rebecca had a fragile look to her, and it was difficult for her to find clothing that didn’t overwhelm her. She was about to give up her search when she heard Mr. Blake behind her.

  “You’re going to have to pay for that stuff.” His voice was gruff, as if he was expecting to be contradicted. Rebecca turned and looked shyly at him.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The china,” Blake said accusingly. “You’re going to have to pay for the things you broke.”

  “But I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Rebecca explained. “I was standing right here, looking at the dresses.”

  “I saw you looking at the china,” Blake said evenly.

  Rebecca frowned unhappily. “But that was five or ten minutes ago. And I didn’t even touch it.”

  Blake’s face darkened, and Rebecca almost recoiled from the man’s unconcealed hostility.

  “Don’t lie to me, Mrs. Palmer. You must have knocked the stack over. There isn’t anybody here but you and me.”

  Rebecca glanced quickly around and saw that. he was right Except for her and the proprietor, the store was empty.

  “But I didn’t have anything to do with it,” she insisted helplessly. “I told you, I wasn’t anywhere near that table.”

  Blake just stared at her.

  “Don’t know why you want to say something like that,” he said finally. “Ever since you and your family got here, we’ve all known there was something funny about you. Now I guess I know what it is—you’re a liar.”

  “I am not!” Rebecca flared. “If I’d done it, I’d admit it, and pay for the damage. But I didn’t do anything.”

  “All right,” Blake replied. “I’ll take your word for it. But if you don’t mind, I’ll just put all that stuff in your basket back on the shelves.”

  “You’ll do what?”

  “I don’t want you shopping here anymore,” Blake said. “I suppose you have a right to be in Clark’s Harbor, but that doesn’t mean I have to sell to you. From now on take your business somewhere else.”

  Rebecca Palmer bit her lip and forced herself not to burst into tears. What is it, she asked herself. What is it about this town? But she knew there was no point in asking Blake, less point in arguing with him.

  Silently, Rebecca left the dry goods store, wondering how she would explain the incident to her husband and how he would react to it. Not well, she was sure. Glen Palmer controlled his artist’s temperament well, but sometimes he blew. This, she was sure, would make him blow.

  “There’s a café,” Elaine Randall said, pointing. The restaurant was on the second floor of a two-story building, above a tavern. The Randalls had to pass through the tavern to go upstairs, and Brad glanced around when his eyes had adjusted to the gloom. The bar was nearly empty—only a couple of old men sitting at a scarred oak table, a checkerboard and a pitcher of beer between them. He grinned his approval to Elaine and followed her upstairs.

  The café, in contrast to the bar, was nearly full. There was one empty table by the window, and the Randalls headed for it. Brad scanned the menu, deciding on a crab salad without really considering the options, then put the menu aside in favor of his favorite hobby: people watching.

  A few minutes later a waitress appeared and took their order. When she was done, Elaine placed the menu back in its holder behind the napkins and folded her hands.

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Tell me who’s here.”

  “Not much to tell, really,” Brad said. “It looks to me like mostly fishermen—”

  “Very astute of you,” Elaine broke in, “considering there’s a wharf right outside the window.”

  “Also some housewives and shopkeepers,” Brad continued, ignoring the gibe. “And one person I can’t figure out.”

  “Where?” Elaine asked, glancing around. “Never mind—it has to be that man sitting by himself over there. I see what you mean.”

  “Really? What do I mean?”

  “He’s different from the rest of them,” Elaine said. “He looks like he doesn’t quite fit in, and knows it.”

  Brad nodded and glanced once more at the man they were talking about. It was his clothes, Brad decided, and something about his face. Like a number of the men they’d seen, this one wore jeans and a faded work shirt, but somehow he wore them differently. It was the fit of them. They fit too well. And the face. What was it about the face
? Then it hit Brad: the man had recently shaved off a beard, leaving a pallor where the lower part of his face had been protected from the sun. And something else hit Brad: a sense of recognition. He was almost sure he knew the man.

  Before he could ask Elaine about it their food arrived and the Randalls began eating, though every now and then Brad’s glance moved curiously to the man whose clothes fit and who had just cut off his beard. The man kept his eyes on his plate and ate steadily, not rushing, but wasting no time. Once he signaled for more coffee. The waitress poured it willingly but didn’t stop to chat for a few seconds as she did with everyone else in the café. When the man finished his meal, he dug into his pocket, dropped some money on the table, and started to leave. But as he moved toward the stairs his eyes suddenly met Brad’s, and he stopped short. A grin lit his face and he moved quickly across the room, his hand extended in greeting.

  “Dr. Randall? Is it really you?”

  Brad recognized him then and stood up. “Glen Palmer! For Christ’s sake! I’ve been sitting here all along, sure I recognized you, but I couldn’t place you.”

  “It’s the beard,” Glen Palmer answered. “I shaved it off when we moved out here.”

  “Sit down. This is my wife, Elaine. Honey, this is Glen Palmer, the father of Robby Palmer.”

  Elaine’s brow furrowed with puzzlement, then cleared as she extended a hand in greeting. “Of course,” she said, smiling. “How is he? Brad tells me there was some kind of miracle.”

  “That’s the only word to describe it,” Palmer agreed as he sat down. Brad looked at him expectantly, wanting to bombard Palmer with questions but reluctant to embarrass the man.

  Robby Palmer, Glen’s nine-year-old son, had been under Brad Randall’s care for nearly three years, a victim of hyperkinesis. It had been a particularly severe case. The first time he had seen the child, Robby was six years old, and unable to sit still for more than a second or two, talking constantly, compulsively, his hands and feet always moving, sometimes only nervously, but more often destructively. Brad had quickly learned to remove all breakable things from his office when Robby Palmer was coming. A small boy with an angel’s face and a “devil” within. There was something inside him, some malfunction in his nervous system, that kept him moving, relentlessly, exhaustingly, sometimes frighteningly. The child had been subject to sudden fits of senseless rage, and it had been during these fits that his violence would surface, his small hands darting out to seize the closest objects—any objects—and hurl them at the nearest window, wall, or person. Brad had a memory, one he would not soon forget, of two pieces of Steuben crystal, his two favorites, bought when he could ill afford them, that had been smashed irreparably one afternoon by a mildly upset Robby Palmer, who had then stared at the splinters of glass, puzzled, as if he wondered what had happened to them. There had been no evidence of remorse in the child, no fear of punishment. Only a second’s detached coldness, as if the shattered figurines had nothing to do with himself, before the compulsive nervous motion took hold again.