Zero Worship: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective #6

Chapter 29 - ...Splash

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The man in the van is a lot of things, but he's had too many opportunities to supremely fuck me over to not hold true to his word about providing a boat. He could've killed me at the cul-de-sac house—in exchange for one less shot at Luis, of course—but he didn't. He could've had his driver run me over when I delivered Luis to him outside the gyro restaurant, but he didn't.

Still, there's a catch.

"He's not direct about anything," Zandra says when they're finished smoking. "He said the boat would be near the Curd Queen."

Glenn holds a set of binoculars to his eyes. From the edge of the shoreline, he scans the Wisconsin River downstream and upstream toward the Curd Queen.

"I don't see a boat nowhere," Glenn says and pulls the binoculars away.

Zandra nods. "Exactly."

"I don't get it," Glenn says.

Bexley walks to Glenn and reaches out for the binoculars. "Give me those."

You're thinking what I'm thinking.

"You only looked at the water. That's too obvious," Bexley says, scanning the shorelines upstream. "Of course, I'm not seeing anything there, either."

Getting warmer.

With a limp, Zandra starts back up the trail. Chad follows. Bexley hands the binoculars back and climbs off the shoreline.

"Hey, can someone tell me what's going on?" Glenn says.

The four of them walk the trail, with Zandra in the lead setting the slow pace. It doesn't take long until they reach the sink site of the Curd Queen. The first responders may be gone, but they left plenty behind. It's almost as if the wreckage of the Curd Queen rose up and out of Devil's Hole and onto the shore.

Pick your shit up, people.

None of the responders' trash is all that useful, but something tucked between two trees and covered with camo netting is. Zandra slips the lawnmower out of from under her sleeve and cuts away at the netting.

"There was a boat under there? Wow," Chad says.

Well, yeah. What else did you think it was going to be?

"He dragged it a long way," Bexley says.

"I doubt he did anything. He's got people for that. I bet he took credit for it, though," Zandra says.

The boat measures about 14 feet long. It's wide with a flat bottom, and in another life might've been used for duck hunting. Relative to deeper-hulled fishing boats, it's a lot lighter. It'd normally be hauled with a trailer, but it's obvious the boat was placed between the trees by hand.

The perfect design for both staying stable on the water and lugging through the woods.

Glenn looks inside. Everything needed for the dive is there: a five-horse outboard motor, scuba gear, dive lights, an underwater torch, burlap bags, contractor bags, tape, not a life jacket in sight, and a six-pack of beer to top it all off.

"I can make this work," Glenn says after inventorying the contents of the boat and cracking open a beer. "We're splitting the haul two-thirds and one-third."

Wrong.

"I think you know better than that," Zandra says.

"Yeah, there are four people. How are we supposed to split that into thirds?" Chad says.