Chapter 42
Jerry Baugh
Agent Koshida had left Jerry with his card, which Jerry now had in his pocket, the only tangible reminder that he had been
there. That the FBI had really showed up on Jerry’s dock step. That Steve’s death had really been . . .
They jetted over the water, pushing eighty. Ninety. Jerry had to hold onto his cap to keep it from tumbling into oblivion
while he steered with one hand. Lainey grabbed onto the edges of her seat, sweat shirt fluttering.
At least the cat was back in the marina on The Old Eileen. He wouldn’t have enjoyed a ride like this.
Lainey mouthed something to him as she hugged her sweat shirt around her body.
“What?” Jerry shouted.
“Aren’t we almost there?” she yelled.
Jerry realized he hadn’t been paying attention.
He was just going. They were a couple miles from the coast at this point, and this was as good a spot as any.
He switched off the engine and regretted it immediately.
This far from land, the soundscape smoothed into lapping waves and wind.
It was a peacefulness that he lived for, but now he couldn’t stand it.
Jerry stomped over to his fishing supplies and clattered through the various rods to find the right one. He huffed to himself
as he blundered with the line and bait. And he made a back-of-the-throat primal sound as he threw the line out into the blue.
Lainey watched him, taking a seat on an overturned bucket. “You think we’ll catch something out here?”
“Dunno.” Jerry mounted a second rod and tossed out the line. “Don’t care.”
He stood still for a second before realizing there was no greater form of torture than this: quietly watching the water that
killed Steve.
The water those men pushed him into.
“I need that!” Jerry barked at Lainey, who scrambled off the bucket. He picked it up, letting it scrape the deck, and grabbed
fistfuls of tackle, letting it knot up like spider webs and filled the bucket, then dumped it out and did it all over again.
Lainey pursed her lips in concern. “Jerry . . . You said a guy came to talk to you.”
He slammed the bucket onto the deck and hoped it left a dent.
“So what did he say? Something about the missing people?”
Something about the missing people indeed. Something about how that pretty, rich family were his little brother’s killers.
Something about how Jerry no longer cared whether the Camerons lived or died. It wasn’t the kids’ faults, he supposed. Or
the wife’s for that matter. But he didn’t care right now. He didn’t fucking care, and if the whole lot of them were feeding
fish underwater, the world would be better for it.
Jerry whipped his cap off his head and twisted it into a pretzel. Wished it would snap. He let it unwind, wrinkled and frayed,
then shoved it back on his head.
“Jerry . . .” Lainey pressed, and he whirled on her.
“I prefer to fish alone,” he said.
She went silent. He turned his back.
It’s what he’d said to Sheila, who had tried so hard to enjoy what Jerry enjoyed but had fallen so short.
I prefer to fish alone, he’d told her in a moment of pure frustration after his wife had blubbered like a baby when he’d put a spike through a red
snapper’s brain. They had been fighting for hours. For years, if Jerry were being honest.
Had they ever been in love? Time made it impossible to remember.
I think you prefer to live alone too, Sheila had said.
Jerry dumped out the bucket again and took a seat on it. Looking out. Open water. Quiet water. Devouring. Why shouldn’t he
mine the ocean for all it was worth? He’d never get back what it had stolen from him.
Sunlight dappled the sea. Jerry’s head was heavy and drooped into his hands. He began to quake with heaving, angry jolts that
shook his chest and belly. He raised his head and it only got worse. The light on the water was blinding. It could have been
blades or diamonds. Jerry just wanted it to break.
He was on his feet then, bucket dangling from one hand.
“Goddamn it . . .” he murmured, but it wasn’t loud enough. “Goddamn it!” He raised the bucket into the air—“God-fucking-damn it!”—and brought it down.
The plastic bounced off the deck harmlessly, and so he scooped it up again and threw it overboard. Then the snarled handful
of tackle and the container of bait and the nearest rod. All of it went over and shattered the surface, but not hard enough.
He searched for something bigger, something more devastating, and he found it: an ice cooler for keeping fish. He picked it
up, lifting with his legs, and brought it to the edge. Raised it high.
A hand touched his shoulder. Lainey.
“That hurts the fish,” she told him gently.
Jerry blinked at his equipment littering the surface, some of which was already sinking below. He swallowed a lump in his
throat. “Uh, sorry . . . Shit.” He set the cooler aside.
Then he jumped in.
Blue digested him, seeping past his protective layers, his T-shirt, his skin, and closing in on him. It would eat him if he
stayed down here. He hadn’t been submerged in decades, hadn’t done a goddamn thing more with the water than fish it.
He broke the surface, no longer able to distinguish between his tears and the ocean as he gathered what he could of the gear.
Lainey scurried on deck. She lowered the swim ladder, and he climbed it, the bucket slung over one shoulder, the rod in his
hand. He accepted the ragged towel she handed him and set the soaking fishing gear in a pile.
“Take us home, Lainey.” His voice cracked, and his hand went to his head to adjust the Bass Pro Shops cap. It wasn’t there.
Jerry peered over the side to see the twisted hat floating just beneath the surface.
“Don’t you want to—” Lainey started, but he shook his head and went to put away the rods and lines.
“No, Lainey.” He left puddles wherever he stepped. The ocean was unscathed, but here he stood, sopping wet.
Jerry turned on the engine, words cascading away at the sound.
“Leave it behind.”