Free Minus Tide by Dennis Yates Page A

sheriff holster his gun and then attempt to pry the pack from the smuggler’s hand. But when he’d let go to find a better grip, the stiffening hand suddenly sprang open and the pack had splashed into the dark bay. Enraged by the corpse’s final jest, the sheriff had punched the grinning face until his fists were soaked in blood. Mitch had closed his eyes when he felt his dinner coming up. Dawkins had shouted at him to get up and find the aluminum pole he kept stowed while he struggled to detach the man from the boat. The trafficker had wrapped a muscular arm around the steel rail and refused to let go. Mitch had vomited before pulling himself to his feet, and while he’d stumbled to the front of the boat he’d heard the sheriff shouting and the sharp thwack of metal biting metal. When he’d found the pole and returned to the back again, the sheriff was rinsing an axe in a bucket of water. His hands were clean of blood, but his white shirt had turned pink as if it had been accidently laundered with something red. The trafficker was gone. Mitch hadn’t bothered to ask where.
    They’d searched for hours, but the current had pulled the trafficker’s pack under and they’d had no luck finding it. When it was almost dawn the sheriff decided they should head back. Mitch had wanted to go straight home, but the sheriff insisted they go to his house to settle down. Mitch was frozen to the core and couldn’t stop shaking. The sheriff built a fire and had Mitch sit near it while he went into another room to make some calls. A half hour later he reappeared with a bottle of Jim Beam and began pouring them drinks, talked loudly about fishing with his old man and how he’d once beat the crap out of a bunch of hippies and run them out of town. He’d confiscated their dope and then ended trying some of it and spent the night laughing his ass off. Changing the subject, however, did no good. Mitch had been scared shitless. As for Dawkins, the more he drank the higher his bravado had climbed.
    It wasn’t until the fourth glass that Mitch had felt anything like real consciousness begin to rise above the buzzing hive of nerves of his thawing body. His voice had remained shaky and thin.
    “What’s going to happen when that guy from the other boat tells his people what you did?” Mitch said.
    Dawkins downed his glass and quickly refilled it. His face reddened. “Well with any luck he won’t make it back to tell anybody, will he Mitch? Seemed to me he wasn’t doing so hot.”
    “But what if he does make it back? His guys are going to be coming here to find out what happened.”
    “It won’t be just them,” the sheriff said. “Everyone’s going to be paying a visit.”
    “But you’re going to give the money back to that guy in Portland, right?”
    “I haven’t decided yet.”
    “Jesus Sheriff, what are you talking about?”
    “We could have been killed out there, Mitch. I want my hazard pay, and I know you do too. It’s not my problem they picked unreliable people.”
    “You didn’t have to shoot them. They weren’t going to do anything.”
    “They were going to rip us off, Mitch. Couldn’t you tell? Yelling at us like that in Mexican. I’m no racist, but I do like to do business with people that can speak our goddamn language.”
    “I think they were just afraid of the light. Your lights were too bright and they must have thought that it would attract attention.”
    The sheriff picked up the whiskey and drank straight from the bottle. “Whose side are you on anyways?”
    “I’m just saying they weren’t going to rip us off. In fact I don’t recall either one of them drawing a weapon.”
    “Well I saw what I saw too. And that really ugly one at the helm was going for a shotgun.”
    Mitch had stood up and swayed. “Listen, if you’re not going to give that guy in Portland his money back, then I don’t want anything to do with this. It’s suicide and you know it.”
    “Well guess what Mitch. We’re in