Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

Rube stepped on something loose on the deck, a corner of a tarp. The sound wasn’t much, but the old man spun.

Rube thought of at least three things to say but couldn’t get them out his mouth.

“What are you doing on my boat?”

“I heard the dog whimper,” Rube said. It sounded lame, and he knew it. Then again, it was the truth. Or most of it.

Rube stared at Buddy. The dog’s head leaked blood.

“He’s a bad dog,” the captain said.

“I don’t understand,” Rube said.

“He attacked me at my son’s grave,” the captain continued. The way the old man went on, Rube almost felt he was talking to himself. “The dog’s old, and he’s gone quite mad, I’m afraid.”

The boat still moved toward the buoy marker, out to sea, and Rube wondered how he steered. An automatic pilot setting, maybe? The mist was just that now, no longer heavy enough to call fog, and Rube could clearly see the old captain’s face, the potato nose and the reddened, wrinkled skin. The chin was hidden in a thatch of heavy beard. But the blue eyes held Rube’s, and they accused.

“Look,” Rube said, “he’s an old dog. I’m an old man, too. I understand the madness of retirement. Let me take the dog.”

The captain glared at him — the way they all did at tourists.

“I’ve got room at my place, and a yard.” And a garden I haven’t started, he almost added, thinking he’d start one, thinking of the sheriff and how much he wished Boggert were here. Wish you were here, to protect the tourist? Like a joke message on a bad postcard. But Rube meant it. There was something lethal in the captain’s eyes and stance. The man wouldn’t let him go, and Rube knew it.

The captain moved from his position over the half-conscious dog. “You followed me, didn’t you?”

Rube backed up clumsily. “No. I followed the dog.”

“You’re clever, no?”

“No,” Rube said.

The captain’s eyes changed for just a second. He seemed unsteadier than the deck should make him. Fatigue or drink or grief?

“She thought she was clever, too,” the captain said.

Rube tried to look stupid. Hell, he felt stupid enough, swaying on the deck of a fishing boat next to a sad old dog half unconscious on the deck. Trouble was, he knew what the captain was talking about. Kind of. She had to be the girl Rube had found in the seaweed. And it must have shown on his face.

“It’s too bad,” the old captain said.

The light from the pilot’s house seemed to surround him as he thwocked the club heavily into one hand. “She thought she could steal Jesse from the sea, from me and his rightful heritage. She thought she could steal an old man’s life.”

Rube backpedaled clumsily toward the center of the deck. But sea legs must take time or special practice because he stumbled and fell backwards over a row of crates. His head banged hard, and the night darkened for a second. When his head cleared, the captain stood above him.

“She had no right to any of it,” the captain said.

“Of course not,” Rube agreed.

Rube felt like he was floating on the deck; he was dizzy even lying down, and he reached out for something to grab, something solid. His hand wrapped around a pole as round as a broomstick, in a rack. He grabbed the stick and pulled himself up, at least halfway, before the stick pulled loose and Rube clattered back to the deck. He still held the stick, though. The end gleamed in the light from the cabin, like a spear.

Later, there would be thought. Too much thought. But for now, as the captain stepped forward, drawing back the big club for the kill, Rube didn’t think. He sat up and launched the big harpoon like a man born to it. He’d once played softball, once thrown a javelin, and this was not much different. Except this dug its way into the captain’s stomach, right below the ribcage. The big steel end made a deep sound, like an animal sucking at meat. The shank quivered from the captain like an exclamation point as Rube scrambled to his feet. He stood there watching the captain grab at the wooden shank. The captain’s face beaded with sweat. Muscles spasmed, and then blood spurted form the captain’s mouth.

“She wanted it all. By damn, no!” and he crumpled onto the deck.

“Jesus Jehoshaphat.”

And Rube still didn’t really know what the captain had done. But he knelt beside him, shaking him with horror and revulsion.

The captain curled around the shank, as though it gave him comfort.

“Did you kill her?” Rube realized he was screaming.

No answer. Maybe a slight grin at the corner of the old man’s mouth? The captain died curled tightly around the shank of the harpoon.

Rube stood and tottered toward the pilothouse. There was some kind of automatic pilot, and Rube didn’t want to mess with it. He found the radio and got that working easily enough. A shoreside operator mumbled from the receiver.

“Get me Sheriff Boggert,” Rube said. “It’s an emergency. Wake him up if you have to. And I need to know how to drive this boat.”