Chapter 12
Jerry Baugh
The cat was screaming, long, languishing yowls that made Jerry’s already small cabin feel even more minuscule. Jerry slammed
a pillow over his head. “Quit that, won’t ya? I fed you plenty.”
The cat watched him from the doorway, tail quivering like the end of a flame. Jerry lifted the pillow slowly. Had that worked?
The godforsaken creature resumed his shrieking. The cries were siren-like, hitting a pitch and frequency that Jerry truly
believed could drive a man to do terrible things. Wasn’t it enough that his dead brother and his worries about The Old Eileen were cutting his sleep hours in half? The last thing he needed was a demon cat from a ghost ship encroaching on his rest.
Jerry sat up after another minute of the screams and hurled the pillow with all his might at the cat, who easily leaped to
safety.
“Damn you,” Jerry growled. He stood so fast that his head hit the ceiling, and he struggled, still grumbling, into a Panthers
sweat shirt.
He resisted the urge to kick the cat as he went up on deck, shutting the hatch behind him. The animal stopped screaming, as
if satisfied by Jerry’s absence.
“Demon cat,” Jerry muttered, shuffling around his fishing gear to make himself a space to sleep in the cockpit. He was so busy lamenting his lost bed that the idea didn’t strike him until he’d settled in a chair and was staring straight at The Old Eileen.
She’s got beds, he mused to himself. At least six of ’em. Nice ones with thick blankets and an army of pillows. Jerry heaved himself from the chair. Take that, cat, he thought. You can sleep on this dump, and I’ll take a turn on your luxury yacht.
Jerry flicked on every light switch he could find belowdecks of The Old Eileen, not because he was intimidated by the empty boat, just as a matter of not bumping into stuff on a vessel he barely knew.
Now the question was which bed to choose. The primary suite certainly seemed to be the most sumptuous option, although even
one of the crew beds would be an upgrade from Jerry’s coffee-stained bunk. But why not go big? This was Jerry’s ship, after
all.
At least, for now.
The primary suite’s king bed devoured him. Jerry sank into the eiderdown comforter like a stone in the sea. He didn’t even
need to pull the blankets over his body. He tilted his cap over his eyes and let himself begin to doze.
My ship. My bed. My—
Something creaked in the hallway, muffled by the closed door. Jerry didn’t bother opening his eyes. Ships creak, that’s what
they do. He heard it again a couple minutes later, but at that point his body was heavy and drifting down deeper. The sound
might as well have been the prelude to a dream.
Then something banged. Jerry snapped awake. He knew that noise, had heard it a thousand times. It was the sound of a bilge
panel on the floor dropping closed. Jerry regretted not pulling the mountainous bedding over his body as a cold, creeping
sweat trickled down the back of his neck.
Someone else was on the ship.
Unlike when he’d found The Old Eileen, there was no harpoon gun within reach. No radio hooked to his pants. There was nothing Jerry could do but walk in slow-motion
horror to the door and peer outside. The hallway was dark. That couldn’t be right.
He had made sure to turn on all the lights.
Nothing had appeared out of the ordinary when he’d come in. Did that mean someone had just come aboard? But no . . . the bilge
panel slamming shut . . .
Someone had been hiding.
Jerry waited, too immobilized to do anything else. He stared into the darkness, fingernails sinking into the palm of his hand.
Had the intruder come out of the bilge? Or gone inside? The thought of opening the panels to check made Jerry fiercely wish
he had stayed on the Sheila 2.0 with the scruffy cat and its siren screams.
He forced himself to uncurl his fist and dive a hand into his back pocket. He didn’t want to turn on his phone. The light
might reveal things in the hallway he wasn’t ready to see. But someone was sneaking around his ship. He had to call for help.
He had to call Madden.
Against his instincts, Jerry pressed the phone’s home button.
Something rushed down the hallway past him, the air from its movement hitting his face. Jerry felt around for the nearest
light switch and flipped it, bathing the hallway in light.
No one was there.
He scrolled to Madden’s phone number with one hand as he barreled down the hall and into the galley. He turned on every light
switch, just as he had done the first time, and just like the first time, the boat looked calm and quiet.
The Old Eileen was empty.
“Hello?”
Jerry leaped out of his skin. “Jesus, hell . . .” He put the phone to his ear to confirm the voice was Madden’s.
“Detective?”
“You all right?” Madden sounded distracted and muffled. There was some kind of commotion in the background of the call.
Jerry kept his back flat against the wall to steady himself. “Someone’s on the boat. Or was on the boat. Just now. I heard
something.”
“Boats creak, Baugh. Sure it wasn’t that?”
Jerry cursed. “I know what boats sound like, Detective! It was a person, okay?”
“Okay, stay put. I’ll send someone over. One moment.” Static thundered over the receiver before Madden’s voice returned, clearer
than before. “Shit, sorry, it’s a madhouse over here.”
Jerry continued to look up and down the hallway. He couldn’t get his heart rate down. He tried to focus on their conversation
instead. “Uh, what’s going on?”
Madden was quiet for a moment before giving a big sigh. “Well, you might as well hear it from me. The media will be gorging
themselves on it by morning.”
“Tell me,” Jerry murmured, wishing fervently that he had put up with the cat’s screams and stayed on his own boat, that he
had never gotten caught up in this mess to begin with. Maybe he even wished, deep down, that when he saw The Old Eileen he had just kept on motoring by.
The detective cleared her throat. “Search party finally found someone. We don’t know who yet.”
Someone? Jerry couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t speak. “If you don’t know who, then . . .”
“All that was recovered were remains.” Madden’s voice was grim. “No good way to say it, Jerry. One of the seven is dead.”