Things aren’t always what they seem deep inside the memory warehouse, but you knew that already. Didn’t you?

[Spirit \\ Nature’s Way]

Right…off we go.

C1.4

The water in the yacht club’s marina looked to be about the same color as the sky, a deep cerulean blue and with not a cloud visible anywhere Callahan looked. There were, however, whitecaps all over the bay and a crisp 25 to 30 knot wind was funneling in through the Golden Gate. Looking at the bay, the few sailors out there seemed, as far as he could tell, to have their hands full. Callahan and Bennett looked at one another with their eyes wide open now, and both now seriously regretted popping by Bennett’s favorite diner for pancakes and eggs before heading down to the marina.

Callahan saw Dev Weyland standing up on the front of a sleek looking sailboat, and when their eyes met she waved at them.

“Wow,” Bennett smirked, “now I know why you’ve taken such an interest in the case. Sheesh, Harry, she’s a knockout!”

And Callahan had to admit that right now, standing out there in the sun and the wind she looked as pretty as any woman he’d ever seen. Her long chestnut hair was streaming in the breeze, and only a blind man could have ignored her smile – let alone her shapely legs; Callahan returned her wave and tried to match the excitement he felt in her smile, but then he remembered her drugged out shuffle the day before and realized this had to be one of her good days.

“Just be careful, Captain. Her father said he’d ‘have her ready’ for the day, so I assume that means well medicated.”

“Did he tell you what her condition is? Or what she’s taking?”

“No sir, but he did say she hallucinates, so I guess that implies schizophrenia…?”

Bennett shrugged. “Usually, but not always.”

Peter Weyland was waiting for them at the head of the pier, and after he opened the locked gate he walked ahead of Callahan and Bennett out to his boat – hardly acknowledging their presence as he stared at the sky. He guided them along a narrow finger pier that divided two slips, and simply pointed at the boxy little steps used to gain access to the deck of his boat.

“My-my, but that’s just a beautiful boat,” Bennett said. “Are those teak decks?”

And once the beauty of his ‘yacht’ had been recognized – and acknowledged – Weyland’s demeanor changed in an instant. Now his face registered pleasure and pride, and Callahan noted a subversive little smirk of satisfaction on Weyland’s face as he led them into the boat’s cockpit. “Yes, teak,” he finally said, as if he’d had to think about the matter. “I think it’s Burmese teak, however the yacht itself was built in Finland. Devlin? You ready?”

“Yes, Papa,” Devlin said, still smiling at Callahan.

“Callahan, if you wouldn’t mind taking the wheel for a moment…?”

“What?” Callahan cringed. “Me?”

“Yes, you! Are you deaf, or are you simply afraid?”

Callahan had never sailed anything larger than a battleship in the bathtub of his parent’s house in Potrero Hills, but now he hopped behind the wheel and stared at Weyland as he stepped forward and removed a dock line from it’s cleat on the pier.

“Okay Dev, cast off now! Callahan, see the lever on the right side of the binnacle?”

“The – what?”

“The wheel? Pull it back towards you about an inch, until you feel the boat moving back a little.”

Pulling the lever back, he soon realized, put the motor “into reverse” – and pulling the lever further back made the boat go faster…in reverse – so Callahan looked around and made sure the boat was backing out of the slip in a reasonably straight line…and then it hit him. This was a test. Weyland was testing him, watching how he responded to an unexpected challenge, so he took a deep breath and let his instincts take over.

‘Okay…there’s only one way out of here and after I back out of this slip I’ve got to turn right, which means the back of the boat has to go left…’ He turned the wheel to the left and right and settled on left and he felt the boat slowly back out to the left.

“Okay, now move the lever to the middle and just let her coast along for a moment. Right. Good. Now, slip the lever forward about an inch and feel what happens.”

“Got it,” Callahan said, though in truth he still didn’t have the slightest idea what he was doing.

“Okay, straighten out the wheel and look where you’re going…and keep right in the middle of the channel here…”

Callahan straightened up and looked ahead, trying to guesstimate the width of the channel, and then he saw an instrument that was showing their depth. “This gauge says seven feet…is that right?”

Weyland nodded. “A little more to the left for about fifty feet, then come right just a little.”

Callahan’s gut was churning now, but the feeling was indescribable. He looked ahead then checked the expression on Weyland’s face then checked their depth on the gauge. “Still showing seven feet…okay, 6.9…6.8…”

“Okay, start a gentle turn to the right, and add a little power. See the knot meter?”

Callahan found it. “Got it!”

“Accelerate to 5 knots, but not a bit faster.”

“Right!”

But now it was Bennetts turn to watch – and he couldn’t help but think that this psychiatrist was playing Callahan like a fiddle. Not simply testing him, but judging his usefulness – and Bennett had been around his type in the Navy long enough to know where this usually led. Bennett wouldn’t have cared one way or another, but Callahan was investigating a homicide, or a potential homicide, and watching the way Weyland was twisting Callahan’s perception, knocking him off balance, was making his old ‘cop on the beat’ instincts sing like a canary.

“Alright…good,” Weyland called out. “Straight ahead another fifty yards then a hard left, and don’t let her get away from you when we clear the breakwater!”

By this point Callahan could see where the water was deeper just by looking at the colors off to the left. Shallower water was lighter colored, almost sand colored in places, while the deeper water in the basin was a little greener – yet as he turned hard to the left the water ahead turned blueish-green, then a deeper blue, and the depth gauge quickly dropped from ten feet down to 15, then 25 feet.

Then they cleared the breakwater off to their left and that unobstructed wind funneling through the Golden Gate slammed into boat, and Callahan felt a new pressure through the wheel – and as the boat began to slide off to the right he countered with left input on the wheel…

“Okay Harry…see the left tower on the Golden Gate? Head right for that, and keep her pointed exactly at that tower…”

Callahan turned the wheel and he watched as Dev and her father raised the sail on the mast, and it began flailing about like it wanted to beat itself to death…

“Okay Harry, turn a little to the right…”

And as quickly the sail turned rock hard…

Then father and daughter raised the sail up front.

And now it felt to Callahan like he was riding on the back of a caged beast that had just been released from its shackles, and not only did the boat take off like a rocket it was now leaning over so far that water was rushing along right by the edge of the deck…

Then Weyland was by his side, first shutting down the engine then trimming the sails bit by bit…

“See Angel Island over there?” Weyland said, pointing past Alcatraz Island. “The right side, that’s Point Blunt…steer right for that.”

Callahan noted the boat wasn’t leaning over quite so much now, but as Weyland fiddled with the sails their speed began to creep up, hitting 7 knots within a few hundred yards then stretching for 8 knots…and Callahan could feel it then…the boat was no longer a simple machine…it was more like a wild creature running free at a dead gallop and everything around him was literally humming as their speed increased.

A gust slammed into them and the boat leaned hard to the right, the right edge of the deck disappeared under water for a moment – until Dev let out one of the lines – and then the boat straightened up a little…but now their speed was edging over 8 knots and heading towards 9 and the sudden sensation of building speed was exhilarating…no, Callahan thought, it was beyond exhilarating, beyond anything he’d ever experienced before…it was almost like flying, only…better…

And then Dev was standing beside him, leaning into his shoulder again…

“I feel like we’re flying,” Callahan said into her ear…

“I know…sometimes you can almost feel what a gull must feel out here…”

Callahan noticed a freighter coming out from under the Bay Bridge, and then another coming through the Golden Gate, and he started judging his own speed while he tried to guess how fast the freighters were closing…and suddenly little alarm bells started going off in his mind – because to his unpracticed eye it looked like all three vessels were going to arrive at the same point out there near Alcatraz – at the same time.

But Callahan also saw that Weyland was looking at the two freighters and performing the same calculation – and Weyland didn’t seem the least bit fazed. 

Another gust slammed into the boat and this time Weyland looked at Callahan and smiled. “A little starboard…uh…to the right now, Harry.”

And Callahan could feel an immediate difference. When a gust hit and the boat leaned way over, turning away from the gust lessened its impact and the boat sailed more upright, so as the gust passed he turned back to the left and the boat started to lean again, and it felt like they were going faster, too. And no one had adjusted the sails. ‘Interesting,’ Callahan said to himself. ‘What happens if I turn more to the left?’

The boat instantly leaned even more, the edge of the deck slipping into the water again, so he backed off and steered right…and the boat leveled the more he turned…

“You’re starting to feel it now, aren’t you?” Devlin whispered, still holding onto Harry.

“Yeah. You know, in some ways it feels like a Huey…”

“A what?”

“A helicopter.”

“Vietnam?” she asked.

“Yup.”

Her grip tightened on his arm and she seemed to pull herself even closer to his side, almost like she wanted to meld with him. “I’m sorry you had to go through that…oh…my God…”

“What?” Callahan said, suddenly aware of a galvanic impulse ripping through his body. “What’s wrong?”

“Falling…falling…you’re falling and I see a white snake…and there’s fire everywhere…”

Callahan cringed under the weight of sudden recall. To getting his Huey shot up and crashing in the swampy marshlands just outside the perimeter at C-Med during the Ten Offensive, and he could see the white python closing on the shattered windshield and feel the machine gun fire ripping through the engine compartment…

“Harry? You still with us?” Sam Bennett said.

And in the next instant he was back on the bay behind the wheel of a sailboat standing next to a girl he didn’t recognize and he felt the concussive blast of mortar rounds zeroing in on his position then the womp-womp-womp of another Huey circling low overhead and he felt plastic shattering on the overhead panel as more machine gun rounds slammed into his Huey and now he was spinning spinning spinning in some kind of pale vortex…

“Harry?” Bennett barked.

And then Callahan turned from the wheel and leaned over the aft rail, heaving his guts out into the grey-green water of the swamp and the white snake was suddenly gone…

…and as he looked up he saw a huge white owl perched on the rail by the side of his head, its amber eyes staring into his innermost being…

And then Devlin was beside him, holding onto him, and after a moment she leaned close again and whispered in his ear: “You didn’t see that coming, did you?”

He shook off the flaming remnants of the Huey and the glistening white python from his mind, then he looked for the owl but it was gone now too, gone and as suddenly forgotten – so he turned and looked at Devlin, and as he looked into the owl’s eyes again she started laughing.

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[The Stewart-Gaskin Band \\ Walking the Dog]