Two hours later, I pulled into Assateague Island State Park. The ranger station was closed, and I found Bernie Aaliyah’s Jeep Wagoneer parked right where his girlfriend said it would be.
When I got out, the wind clipped me, and the sky spat rain. I dug in the trunk of my car and came up with an old rain jacket and a pair of calf-high rubber boots I kept around for crime scene work. I put them on, and with my hood up to block the wind, I walked up the trail, through the dunes, and onto the beach.
The Atlantic was gray and roiling. But to my left, there were surfers out on the swells, clad head to toe in black neoprene, and to my right, there were six or seven anglers. I stood there, looking at the anglers one at a time, until I saw an older man limp fast toward the crashing surf and then use his powerful shoulders to whip out a heavy fishing rod with a big pink lure.
I thought the lure’s arc would die quickly in the wind, but it had just the right angle, and it punched through, landing in the water far offshore. As I started toward him, he pumped the rod tip up and down several times, paused, then did it again. When I passed his chair, his cooler, his tackle box, and two Coleman lanterns yet to be lit, he twitched it a third time.
“Bernie Aaliyah?” I said.
The old man startled and looked over his shoulder at me, huddled in my rain jacket and hood. “I know you?” he said.
I pushed back the hood. “Alex Cross, sir.”
Tess’s father’s face broke into a toothy smile. “So you are. Been a long time, Dr. Cross. I’ve been following your career from way back.”
“I followed yours when I was at Johns Hopkins, sir,” I said.
“Hold on, let’s do this proper,” Bernie said, sticking the butt end of his fishing rod into a piece of white PVC pipe buried in the sand. “There, now.”
He turned awkwardly, due to a gunshot wound to his pelvis that had ended his remarkable career in Baltimore Homicide, but he shook my hand with the vigor of a man half his age.
“To what do I owe the honor of you driving all the way to hell and gone to see me?” Bernie asked.
“It’s about Tess,” I said. “It’s serious.”
CHAPTER
21
AFTER I DESCRIBED my concerns and the evidence to support them, Bernie Aaliyah was quiet for several moments, standing there, looking off toward the waves crashing in the falling light.
“I saw my daughter three days ago,” he said at last. “Tess was still grief-stricken, still remorseful, but I didn’t see suicidal, Dr. Cross. And I certainly will not go to court over her wishes.”
“I don’t discount your observations, Mr. Aaliyah,” I said. “And maybe you don’t want to legally compel Tess to undergo a full psych evaluation. But you could convince her to commit herself. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but I’d rather stand here with my tail between my legs than stand next to you at a grave.”
Before Aaliyah’s father could reply to that, there was a sharp popping noise. We both turned to see his surfcasting rod bending hard, the line straight and quivering.
“That’s a good one!” he cried, scrambling over to the fishing rod and grabbing it before it could come free of the PVC pipe.
Bernie held the rod tight about two feet from the bo
ttom, the butt still in the pipe. He leaned back, testing the weight of the fish and its strength.
“Oh, Jaysus,” Bernie said. “He’s gonna go forty minimum, maybe fifty!”
The reel started to whine. Aaliyah’s father reached down and adjusted the drag to let the unseen fish run. He let it tear out a hundred yards and saw the line slacken before he snatched up the pole from the PVC pipe and reset the drag.
“Bernie,” I began.
He barked, “I’ve been waiting on this quality of fish for two years running, Cross. So you can either leave or wait until I’m done here.”
I held up my hands. “Don’t let me get in your way.”
So I stood back and watched the retired homicide detective engage in an epic battle on the beach. Every time Bernie was able to pull and crank the fish closer to shore, it would make another run that left him gasping.
“He could go sixty,” Aaliyah’s father said with a grunt twenty minutes into the struggle. “Big, big striper.”
Thirty-five minutes into the fight, he said, “Maybe seventy pounds. My God, what a pig of a fish!”