The Raft Read Free Page A

under one of
the cockpit's benches.
    Five years and Maggie hadn't aged a day,
Rachael marveled as she watched her work. Her dark skin still
exotic, with her hard-edged face that only softened when smiling.
Maggie stood a good head taller than Rachael, with wide, strong
shoulders, and lean, thin arms. Time seemed not to have touched
her. Her head of dark, tangled hair was well kept but still wild,
whirling around her head. With her jacket off, Rachael could see
the complex arrangement of her tattoos. The oversized, finely
detailed Cross of Lorraine on her right upper arm still held
Rachael's attention. Its significance escaped her.
    “So, what do you have? On the victim?” Maggie
said, now businesslike, turning to Rachael and dusting off her
hands.
    Rachael reached into the pocket of her coat
and came back with a folded photocopy. She unfolded it and held it
out for Maggie. The rain quickly began to smudge the grainy DMV
photo.
    “The girl's name was Joanna Church,
twenty-six,” Rachael began. She felt she needed to say something,
anything, even though Maggie could read the photocopy for herself.
“She was found by a homeowner at around seven this morning, bobbing
in the tide. First guess is she'd been dead in the water for maybe
three hours. Cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the back of
her head. No water in her lungs. Dead before she went
overboard.”
    “Meerkat,” Maggie said, looking at the
photocopy.
    “Sorry?” Rachael steadied herself, feeling
woozy.
    “I don't know any Joanna Church, but this
girl,” Maggie handed back the photocopy, “is Meerkat. And if
Meerkat has washed up dead... hell, truth be told, if anyone on the
Raft has mysteriously washed up dead... then there is only one real
suspect: Horus.”
    “Horus?” Rachael repeated.
    “Yes. Horus the Brontosaurus.”
    “What?” Rachael said, confused. “That's a
name?”
    “Meerkat's boyfriend. Nasty piece of work.
Weed dealer. Meerkat had her demons. Anyway, if she fell overboard,
then I'd bet you sixty hours to a second that Horus was standing
right behind her when she did. Sorry, Rachael, I doubt there's any
sort of story here for you. I think you came all this way for
nothing. Unless domestic violence is interesting to your
readers.”
    In all honesty, Rachael didn't care. She
hadn't really come to report on the murder.
    She'd come to get Maggie off the Raft.
    There was a storm brewing onshore, Rachael
knew, though she herself was only aware of it at the very edges.
The murder, the dead girl, the Raft... yes, a storm was brewing.
Murmurs were leaking out of cracks in the normally watertight
Seattle Police Department. Federal agents were walking the halls. A
murder aboard the Raft? It was a prime opportunity.
    But Rachael cared even less about the Raft
than she did about the murder. The second she'd seen the wire, a
flood of old emotions had welled up inside her. Her breakup from
Maggie had been... well, had they ever really broken up? Did it
count if you never said goodbye? A total, blinding panic had
consumed Rachael until she'd been able to positively confirm that
the murder victim was not indeed Maggie. If anything had
actually happened to Maggie, stranded out on that damn boat,
Rachael would have never forgiven herself.
    Logically, she knew that Maggie's exit from
dryland had not been her doing, but emotionally, she still bore the
full weight of it. Maggie had run away from Rachael, that was the
horrible truth that had welled up inside her as the terror had
consumed her. And it was Rachael's fault. Even when Rachael had
come to fully realize that Maggie was okay, totally unaffected by
the events detailed in the wire, Rachael had been unable to shake
the feeling of self-loathing that apparently sat locked up inside
her.
    But now it was all over – the Raft, that is,
not Rachael's guilt. When the storm building onshore finally broke
over the Raft, it'd sink it to the bottom of the Puget Sound as
sure as anything. Rachael had maybe