Free Foursome by Jeremiah Healy

Judson said, “Already been through this myself, you don’t mind. I’ll fetch Runty for you, Dag.”
    “Thanks, Ma.”
    As Judson went back up the path, Gates looked to me.
    I said, “I’m a private investigator from Boston working on the Shea case.”
    “The …” His face dropped. “You mean the killings, then.”
    “That’s right.”
    The index finger and thumb worked on the mustache at the right corner of his mouth. The thumbnail was broken and yellowed. “Guess you’ll be wanting to talk to me about it.”
    “If I could.”
    A reluctant nodding. “Seems right. Let me just get the dog here, and you can come back to my place, sit for a while.”
    “John, look to your left, now. About ten o’clock off the bow. See that loon dive?”
    The water was crystal clear and not so deep you couldn’t see the bottom. The big black and white bird went by the canoe, almost under it, using its wings to propel itself through the water. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes.
    Gates said behind me, “What does that look like to you?”
    “Like it’s flying underwater.”
    “That’s exactly how I’d describe it. First time I saw that, I rubbed my eyes, thought I must be hallucinating.”
    “Mr. Gates—”
    “Dag, please.”
    “Okay. But what’s ‘Dag’ short for?”
    A pause behind me. Runty, who was between us in the canoe, snuffled twice.
    “Actually, John, it’s short for ‘diagonal.’ After I lost my arm and leg, a little boy saw me in the hospital lounge and said to his mother, ‘Look, Mom, it’s daggonel man,’ on account of how my right arm and left leg made me seem. Well, one of the nurses heard it, and of course the mother was real embarrassed, so I said, That’s fine, son. Call me Dag from now on. It fits.’ And so it’s been, though ‘Donald’ was my given name.”
    Gates steered the canoe in toward the shore. As we had pulled away from Ma Judson’s place, I’d looked behind me, and realized that you could see her cabin only if you were directly in front of it and pretty close to shore, when her boat and dock stopped looking like big rocks and took on artifact form. As we approached the east shoreline, the same was true for Gates’s property. The white birch Sheriff Willis pointed out to me spread above a simple dock. Unlike Judson’s sunken dock, though, there was a ramp for the canoe made of short logs nailed together to form a series of X-shaped ribs, like an inverted picnic bench. After Gates let me and the dog off on his dock, he guided the canoe at a relatively high speed toward the ramp, pulling up a stringer with one good-sized bronzed fish on it from over the gunwale. He slacked off the motor just as the bow hit the first “X,” the canoe riding up onto it and its neighbors. Then he climbed out, the stringer in his hand. A long cane fishing pole with a rubber frog on its line stayed in the boat. Gates hopped agilely to the birch, set down the fish, and then played out line from a small hand winch on the birch. Going back to the canoe, he put a metal “S” through an eyelet on the bow and hopped back to the tree, cranking the winch and bringing the canoe all the way up and out of the water.
    I said, “Pretty clever.”
    “Used to teach shop, John. Or ‘Industrial Arts,’ you want to be formal. Comes in handy to sort of compensate for things.” He picked up the fish again. “Okay if I clean him while we talk?”
    “Sure.”
    “Hate not to clean them while they’re still fresh. Take that little folding chair from by the dock. I use it to watch the sunset, but it ought to hold you just fine.”
    I opened the chair with its white and green vinyl strapping and settled into it, Gates showing me his back as he moved to a rough table a few yards in from his dock. There was a spring clamp on the end of it and some lime-sized stones lying on top of it. Gates whacked the fish on the head with the handle of his knife. Runty barked once as Gates used his elbow to open the clamp