She went back to the railing, looking at the river again, before heaving a sigh and going to the stairs. Wilbur watched her ascend toward the texas deck, then took her place at the rail.
He stood there for a long time, but the river provided no answers for him.
Death on the Water
By Cherie Priest
1.
“Goddamnit, wake up and roll your ass over. Someone’s trying to break in.”
Leo’s eyes popped open. He blinked once or twice and sat up. “What? Who? What?”
“Wake up,” his wife commanded. The outline of her face came into focus, but the lights were off and without Leo’s glasses, Wanda was just some frantic blob with a death grip on his shoulders.
Leo Storgman rarely woke up fast, and never woke up happy. “It’s probably just … somebody’s got the wrong room.” He pivoted slowly on his hips and found the side of the bed, then dangled his feet—fishing around until his toes located his sandals.
She flipped on the lamp. “Here’s your robe. I’ll get the gun.”
The thought of his wife with a 9mm lit up Leo’s morning like a trash fire. He leaped to his feet and with sandals flopping he intercepted her on the path to his suitcase. “No! No, don’t … don’t do that. I’ll see who it is.” He took the robe and wrestled his way inside it.
Behind him, the knob rattled. A large, blunt body part slammed against the door, and somebody swore while a key scraped and jerked fruitlessly in the lock.
Leo held his eye up to the peephole, and there he saw one fishbowled face up close and personal. It belonged to a big, black-haired dude with black tattoos crawling out of his black T-shirt. A silver wallet chain dangled across the hip of his black jeans, and a black leather bracelet slipped up and down his wrist when he knocked.
Leo didn’t want any trouble, but he wasn’t particularly bothered by it, either. He leaned one shoulder against the door and in his best old-cop voice, he said, “Hey, asshole, this isn’t your room.”
Silence fell. Whispers rose.
Leo put his eye back on the peephole. Now he could see two other guys, one on either side of the man with the wrong damn key. One of them was a blond. The other had a hat. That was all he could tell from the narrow vantage of the little glass circle.
The first guy lifted up his face. His eye was as big as an apple. “Oh shit, man, I am truly sorry if we bothered you … but … isn’t this room thirteen?”
“Yes, and it’s occupied.”
The guy outside pressed on. “It’s occupied? Are you sure?”
“What kind of idiot question is that?”
“No, I mean, it’s just…” The eyeball disappeared.
One of his friends pushed him aside. The newbie was leaner and less decorated. He wore a gray cap and suspenders. “Excuse me, hello?”
“Hello, and go away.” Leo reflexively looked at his wrist, but he wasn’t wearing a watch. “This is an ungodly hour to be running around, knocking on doors.” Or so he assumed.
The dark-haired guy whined faintly from somewhere off to the right. “But our investigation doesn’t end until dawn. We’ve got all this equipment ready and everything.”
The new face at the peephole said, “I’m very sorry that we bothered you, sir, but we were told the room would be empty until the boat hits Memphis.”
“Well, it’s not.” He teetered on the cusp of finishing off with a “fuck you and good night,” but now he was curious. His hand hovered over the old-fashioned chain that did back-up duty to the dead bolt. He sighed, surrendered, and drew the chain back—then opened the door.
All three men shuffled their feet, suitably abashed. The first two looked related, but the blond one didn’t match them at all. He looked like a surfer, not a Hipster of the Night. For Christ’s sake, he was wearing Crocs with denim cutoffs.
The one in the hat was the most apologetic, and did the least mumbling when he began his apologies afresh. “Sir, we’ll leave you alone. Again, we do apologize.”
Leo eyed their cameras and the metal case that the blond toted—while simultaneously juggling what looked like a boom mike. “What kind of investigation are you up to?”
The dude in black wrestled his way back to the front and center and offered his hand in a firm, friendly shake. “Sir, I’m Ryan Forge from The Dead Report, on the Explore America channel. This is my brother Kevin, and our cousin, Sean Venters. We’re here on the Natchez to film a special: ‘Death on the Water,’” he said, jazz hands waving.
“‘Death on the Water’?”
Ryan nodded earnestly and launched into his sales pitch with a sincerity to be envied by the saints. “Believe it or not, this boat is one of the most supernaturally active structures in the world. There have been over two dozen documented deaths on board since it launched in 1948, and at least half of those departed souls remain on board … riding up and down the Mississippi River for all eternity.”
“You … you’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Super-serious, sir,” Ryan insisted, heroically failing to lisp. “This is our life, man. This is what we do. We communicate with spirits and enable them to find peace.”
Leo asked, “How do you do that?” and immediately regretted it, for he had unleashed a dragon. A dipshit dragon, who talked with his hands and peppered his speech with italic emphasis.
“Okay, what we do is, first we set up all our equipment—our cameras and recorders, and our EMF readers, and our amplifiers, and our spirit boxes, and then we create a base of operations—or that’s what we usually do, but we’re locked out of our base of operations right now because the bartender threw us out. So we took our light gear and thought we’d check out some of the individual rooms. Wait…” His eyes narrowed, and his forehead sank into a handsome, determined frown of confusion. “Does that plaque say this is the honeymoon suite?”
Wanda manifested over Leo’s shoulder, all smiles and white satin. “Why, yes, it is. Hello there, boys.”
Leo made room for her in the doorway.
All three faces darkened three shades of pink. All three throats required clearing at once, with the sound of three mortified lawn mowers puttering by. Ryan spoke for them all when he said, “Oh. Um. Our most heartfelt apologies. And congratulations, dude. To both of you, I mean. Ma’am. Dude.”
Leo slipped an arm around his wife’s waist. She was taller than him by an inch and a half despite his horns, but those mostly curled to the sides of his head. Even without them, she was better looking than him by a mile and a half. He knew how lucky he was. His joker card wasn’t that weird, and his wife was a ten.
The guys stared studiously at everything everywhere, except for anything beneath Wanda’s nightdress. Her nipples were out like stars.
Ryan successfully held his eyes above the danger line, keeping his gaze locked on Leo’s frowning face. “Right. Well. Once again, sir. And madam. We apologize for the trouble. Have a … I hope you…” He floundered. “Enjoy your honeymoon some more. Without us.”
On that note he turned and fled, with his cousin and brother hot on his heels. They scrambled down the deck, bumping into one another and scraping the boom mike along the wall—knocking it on every damn door they passed.
Leo shook his head. Wanda laughed. “That was exciting!”
Leo shut the door and kicked off his sandals. “That was annoying.”
“They were very polite, though. Such gracious and strapping lads, weren’t they? Especially the one in black. What was his name?”
“Like you don’t remember it.”
“Bryan something,” she teased.
“Ryan something,” he corrected. “And they were ghost hunting, I swear to God. The job market for millennials is worse than I thought.”
He shrugged out of his robe and wadded it up. He chucked it at his wife, who dodged it.
Wanda shrugged out of her nightdress and wadded it up. She chucked it at Leo, who caught it with his face. “I think we’ve got another hour until dawn, and I