“Who else?” Bemis demanded.
“Anna. She fell over the side. She—she was crushed. She never had a chance. Vergil fell into the hold. Oh, Jesus! He fell into the hold and suffocated in the barley.” He started laughing and crying wildly. “Drowned in barley. Oh, Christ!” he screamed. “Drowned in barley.”
Focus and energy returned to the captain’s face. He straightened and took Winstein by the shoulders, shaking him hard. “Listen, Mate. The ones left are still your responsibility. Get them together. See who needs medical care. Radio the Coast Guard for a helicopter.”
The first mate nodded. He stopped sobbing, gave a few last shuddering breaths, and turned to the dazed crew.
“Martin needs some help, too,” I said. “Can you get him to sit down?” I needed to get away from the crowd on the deck. Somewhere, just out of reach in my mind, important information hovered. If I could just get away, stay awake, force myself into focus … I started back toward the pilothouse.
On my way I passed the chief engineer. He was covered with mud and oil. He looked like a miner emerging from three weeks in the pit. His blue eyes stared with horror through his mask of black.
“Where’s the captain?” he asked me hoarsely.
“On deck. How are things below?”
“We’ve got a man with a broken leg. That’s the only injury, thank God. But there’s water everywhere. Port engine is gone.… It was a bomb, you know. Depth charges. Must have been planted right on the center beam. Set off by radio signal. But why?”
I shook my head, helplessly, but his words jarred my mind loose. If it was set off by remote signal, it was done by someone along the bank. In the observation deck. The man with bright red hair and a pair of binoculars. Howard Mattingly, the second-string hockey player had hair like that. Boom Boom saw him someplace he shouldn’t be three weeks ago. Now here he was at the observation deck with binoculars when the Lucella blew up.
I forgot the ache in my left shoulder. I needed to find Mattingly. Now. Before he got away. I turned abruptly in front of Sheridan and moved back out on deck. My gun. I wasn’t going to tackle Mattingly without the Smith & Wesson. I went back to where I’d left it, to where Bledsoe and the captain were standing.
The bag was gone. I hunted for a few minutes, but I knew it was useless. Two shirts, a sweater, a pair of jeans, and a three-hundred-dollar Smith & Wesson were all lying with Vergil in fifty thousand tons of barley.
“I’m going,” I said to the captain. “I’ve got an idea I need to follow up. Better get one of your junior cooks to get him some hot tea with lots of sugar. He’s not doing too well.” I cocked my thumb in Bledsoe’s direction. I didn’t wait for Bemis’s response but turned to go.
It wasn’t difficult getting off the Lucella. She was resting at the bottom of the lock, her deck even with the bank. Clinging to the cables around the side, I swung easily across the two feet between her upraised stern and the side of the lock. As I picked my way up the narrow strip of land separating me from the MacArthur Lock, I passed an emergency crew coming from the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. Men in green fatigues, medics, a stretcher crew—a solemn procession befitting a major disaster. Bringing up the rear, of course, was a television news team. They were the only ones who took any notice of me. One of them stuck a microphone under my nose and asked whether I was coming from the ship and what I knew about it.
I shrugged my shoulders in embarrassment and said in Italian that I didn’t know any English. Disappointed, the cameramen continued in the wake of the Coast Guard.
The crossway stretched on in front of me, two concrete strips sandwiching a wedge of grass. The wind chilled my sore shoulder. I wanted to run but I couldn’t. My legs were leaden posts and would not race for me. I staggered up to the gates closed in front of the MacArthur Lock and made my way across the narrow path on top of them. Beyond me lay the rocks lining the channel into Lake Huron. We were lucky the gates had held.
A tremendous crowd had gathered at the observation deck. It took time and energy to force my way through the crush of people. Mattingly was no longer there.