Page 79 of Trick of Light
“I’m just looking for Tamara,” he told the owl—just in case—even though he felt like a fool. Just because he didn’t have any way to communicate with the wild creatures around here didn’t mean Tamara didn’t. To hear her tell it, they spoke to her all the time.
If this owl was trying to tell him something, what would it be? Keep out? Or keep going? Weren’t owl usually active at night instead of in the daylight?
He decided to follow in the direction the owl had flown. Why not? So far he hadn’t stumbled across anything that told him where Tamara might be. Winding his way through the dense stands of old-growth spruce—one of the few places on the island where trees hadn’t been harvested for lumber or firewood—he noticed the smell of the ocean getting stronger. He was headed for the shoreline, the same rocks he’d clambered up as an angry kid.
Maybe the owl was telling him to get off this property, even if he had to swim.
As he emerged from the woods, the brisk wind hit him like a shot of adrenaline. But he saw no little white-haired elfin figure on the rocks, collecting mussels as she sometimes did. The tide was coming in, with a few feet of slippery rocks still exposed. Even though the wind was still high, this tiny cove was oriented in a way that kept it sheltered from the biggest waves.
Had Tamara taken her little blue rowboat out for a spin?
No—there it was, upside down on the eel grass, looking like it hadn’t gone anywhere in quite some time.
But there was something on the rocks. A flash of color that didn’t belong there.
He carefully climbed across the mounds of seaweed and colonies of mussels until he reached the item. It wasn’t much, just a scrap of wool that looked like it had been torn from a piece of clothing. The color—a deep royal purple—didn’t look like anything Tamara had ever worn.
Still, it was the only thing he’d seen so far that looked out of place. Had someone collected Tamara in a boat? Had she gone somewhere?
Frustrated and even more worried, he climbed back up the rocks and headed back to the cottage. He left a note for Tamara in case she’d simply gone to see a patient or something like that.
He was driving around the flagpole in the town center when someone yelled his name. Heather was waving at him from a bicycle heading the other direction. He pulled over and climbed out of the truck. She veered across the road and slid her feet off the pedals of a rusty old cruiser with a pink basket.
“Nice wheels.”
Heather swung her ponytail off her shoulder and wiped sweat off her forehead. “Thanks, it’s a classic. Gabby has my truck. I didn’t have your number and she’s not answering her phone, but I wanted someone to see this. I found something.”
“What’s that?”
She reached into her basket and pulled out a folder. “Gabby asked me to go to the school and look for photos of Keith Garner. I think I might have found one, but I don’t know how helpful it will be.”
His pulse picked up. “Let’s see. You never know.”
She handed him the folder, which held a photocopy of an old newsletter, just like the ones he remembered from back in the day.
“They wouldn’t let me take the original, but they gave me this copy,” she explained. “It’s the graduating class of the year two thousand and six. That’s Keith, standing in the back. The photo was already black and white, sorry.”
So that was Keith. He looked perfectly ordinary, a good-looking enough kid with broad shoulders, light eyes, and a large frame. A football player type of build, although the Sea Smoke Island school didn’t have any official team sports. Most of the kids who grew up here had a similar physique because they spent so much time on boats. That kind of work built muscles.
“Is his hairline receding?”
“I think so. I noticed that too. So Keith Garner, if he’s alive, is missing some hair. Or he wears a toupee.”
“Great. Narrows it down nicely.”
She gave a laughing shrug. “Does anything else catch your eye?”
He put his fingers on the photo as if to zoom in, then laughed at himself. “I’m too used to my phone.”
“I tried the same thing, except actually on my phone. I was trying to see what his t-shirt says, but the resolution is too low. I was hoping someone else’s eyeballs could make something out.”
“The pattern is familiar,” he said slowly. “The way the letters arch. I have seen this before.”
“Can you think where?”
“It’s from when I was in high school myself.” Pulling up the memory was like trying to see through fog. “I hated boarding school, and thought about dropping out and doing something else with my life. I looked at other schools, other options. Trade school. Is it a trade school? No, no, that’s not it.” It was right there, on the edge of his memory.
Finally it clicked into place. “It’s a police academy. There’s a program, kind of like ROTC, that recruits high school seniors and puts them on a fast track to a degree in criminal justice.”
