Page 14 of Slack Tide Kill

Brig shifted her weight. "Sometimes. It's funny, I guess. Nobody down here has dogs, though the Seafoam Strangler used to."

"The Seafoam Strangler?"

"Sure, old Whateley." Brig waved at the blue house. "Before he drowned his whole family in the Boils."

Sally blinked. "Mr. Whateley drowned his family?"

"Well, not on purpose, I guess." Brig beamed. "He was cleared. All an accident, right? Out on a rowboat or something. But that was like, decades ago? I wasn't even born." She lowered her voice. "Why, you think he's a suspect?"

Sally ignored that. "What happened?"

Brig waved a hand at the Channel. "I don't know. One of the Strangler's kids went over the side or something, got tangled up in the Boils."

"The Boils?"

Brig sighed. "Sure. Way back when, the reactors used to pipe coolant water out there or something? Hot water brought fish, which brought fishermen, lobster traps, lots of net and lines." She took a breath, like this was boring her. "So the first kid gets tangled, the other tries to get him out and gets pulled down. The mom next, and the Strangler goes last. He can't get them out, but he does manage to swim free."

Sally stared. "So he left them?"

"Oh yeah. Divers went out and found them." She lowered her voice. "All wrapped up around each other, they say, down at the bottom by the outflow pipe. Like they were strangling each other. Probably parboiled, too."

That image sank into Sally.

"They switched off the Boils after that," Brig went on. "Cut off the pipe or something. Whateley became this pariah. People started leaving the bodies of dead gulls at his door. Get rid of him, I guess. I think somebody even poisoned his dogs." She shrugged. "Didn't work."

Sally tried to square all that with the man she'd just met. A pariah. She weighed the vacant gaze, the hollow home, the photographs on the walls; all the cost of a horrific accident he was unable to stop. The tragedy of it seemed unbearable.

Was any of it relevant, though? It could certainly break a person; fill them with rage, make them want to lash out. But she couldn't picture Whateley, clearly half-blind and infirm, dragging a body across the beach. At best, it was something to formally rule out.

She cleared her throat. "Was anyone else at home last night, Miss Brig?"

"Nah, just me." She waved vaguely again at the Channel. "My Dad's out there."

"He's a fisherman too?"

"Sure. Not much to catch now, other than illegals in dinghies." She smiled at her joke. "Sink the lot of them, I say."

Brown shouted another question. Other reporters were gathering now, lending their voices to the hubbub.

"Last question." Sally pointed. "The Crab Shack, do you know who runs it?"

Brig frowned. "That old thing? It's gotta be older than the Strangler. Not been open for years. Nobody runs it, I reckon."

Nobody.

"Thank you for your time," Sally said, then headed back toward the beach. She tried to steer away from Tania Brown, but the reporter kept after her.

"Come on, Sally, help a sister out. You did so well for us last time!"

8 PROPER CHANNELS

Sally strode back toward the reactors, the shingle crunching underfoot, with Brown's words still stinging in her head.

'You did so well for us last time.'

None of that had been voluntary. They'd taken her past and used it to stab her in the back. She'd almost lost everything, and now Brown was trying to do it again. Antagonize her, force a slip, but she steeled herself. She had no intention of slipping now.

She glanced back at the shack as she walked, saw the red light blinking, and brought up her phone.