The Corpse Without a Country by Louis Trimble Read Free Book Online

mopped up my plate and got to my feet. “Thanks for everything, Jodi.” In the doorway, I stopped. “Arne, I’ll send your clothes back soon.”
    He grinned at my pointedly not thanking him for the meal. He said, “Don’t bother, Durham. I got them from a shanghied leper on my last trip to Honolulu.”
    I left to avoid more of his humor. Jodi caught up with me as I started along the dock. She was carrying my soggy suit. She handed it to me with a smile no engaged girl should offer except to her fiancé.
    She said, “Be careful, Peter.”
    I said, “I’ll go get the report and then lock myself in my apartment. Not even the blonde would invade me there.”
    She said, “Don’t sell yourself so short,” in the kind of voice that sent goose pimples prickling up my spine.
    I started off. She tagged along at my side. I said, “Maybe you’d better go back. The blonde might still be around.”
    “I thought I could help,” Jodi said.
    “From the way Arne acted, there isn’t any need to help. There isn’t anything to help about.”
    “Arne is scared silly,” she said. “He’s scared because he doesn’t understand what’s happening.”
    I hoped that was the reason. I said, “Just what
is
happening?”
    Jodi followed me along a narrow dock to the other pier. She said, “I mean he doesn’t understand about the fires.”
    I didn’t either. I said, “Did he say anything about them tonight?”
    “Not to me,” she said. “You got there before I did. When I arrived, Arne was trying to cook dinner with one hand and bring you around with the other. I came to argue him into staying at my house. You saw how far I got.”
    I said, “Arne’ll never leave his boat.”
    “It’s more than his just being stubborn,” she said. “Ever since I left here and went to England to study commercial art, he’s been mad at me. Why until I began to make a little money, he wouldn’t even write. It was all foolishness to his way of thinking.”
    I said, “That’s Arne, all right. How’s the art going, by the way?”
    “I did well enough in England illustrating children’s books so that now I can try some serious painting,” she said. “That’s why I came back to Corning Island. It’s wonderful for seascapes.”
    I didn’t answer. We’d reached the workboat. I went aboard and into the pilot house. I found the light switch and snapped it on. Jodi came in at my heels.
    I started for the locker where I’d hidden the report.
    Jodi’s scream of “Peter!” stopped me flatfooted.
    I saw him too. It was Mike Fenney, in his new nautical clothes. He lay in front of the locker where I’d hidden the report. His head was twisted in such a way that I knew he had a broken neck.
    He was obviously dead.

VII
    “T HAT’S M IKE F ENNEY ,” Reese Fuller said in a worried voice.
    This was the first time I had ever really seen him lose any of his suavity, and I was pleased. Despite the cool night air, he was sweating. Little droplets of water trickled down those features women loved to pet. Fuller kept dabbing at his chin with a linen handkerchief.
    Lieutenant Maslin, working out of Homicide, grunted. “I can see it’s Fenney,” he said.
    I was thinking that everyone in Puget City must have known Mike Fenney. The great Fenney, erstwhile professor of Journalism at the college, then columnist for the Express, and finally the town drunk. Not finally, I corrected myself, because when I had seen him in Bellingham he had become something else.
    I recalled the way he had looked when I had spoken to him up there: his tan, the clarity of his eyes, his fresh, expensive clothing. These were not the signs of a wino who has decided to lay off for a day or a week; these were the signs of a man who had gone through a cure—given it to himself maybe—and had regained his self-respect.
    I wondered what had wrought the change in him.
    And I wondered how much it had to do with what he had become now. His body lay twisted up, exposed harshly now