I pick the farthest pier because the halogen there is temperamental and the fish shack exhaust masks voices with fried salt. The wind smells like diesel, wet rope, and that thin sour of percolated church coffee drifting from the festival prep tent two slips over. I log the time on the recorder and let it roll. A seiche has been breathing all day; the lake inhales, exhales, and my headphones translate it into low drift and sudden hush.
“I’m in the gray sweatshirt,” I say into the windscreen. “I’m alone. My lens cap stays on.”
Footsteps click from the dark. He doesn’t come all the way into the light. He stops where the cone thins and keeps his hood up. I see a jawline and a neck tattoo disappearing beneath fleece, the kind of ink you get too young and learn to hide at interviews.
“You carry police,” he says, voice wrapped in the lake.
“I carry process,” I say. I flick the recorder so he sees the red LED. “You said you wanted a mike check.”
He holds out a hand like he’s testing the rain. “Do it.”
I walk him through proximity like I would a classroom volunteer. “Soft count to five, then your ABCs, then anything you want to say that isn’t your name.”
He breathes against the foam. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five.” The seiche hits the pilings and turns the numbers rounder. He continues, “A, B, C, D,” and then snorts, embarrassed. “Z, you happy?”
“Your S’s ripple,” I say, keeping it practical. “Back off a thumb. Good. If we blur and darken and I cut outside your cadence, no one who isn’t trying to know will know.”
He slips fingers under his cuff and exposes a palm that looks crushed glass healed wrong. A crescent of shiny tissue curves from thumb web to wrist bone. “You said you take scars like testimony,” he says. “That true?”
“I take evidence,” I say. “I honor it.”
He barks a small laugh. “Honor gets you iced out at the marina.” He turns his wrist, letting halogen paint the damage. “They called it cleanup. I call it a burn.”
I don’t ask if I can photograph it. I know I can’t tonight. I let the recorder drink the sound of the lake half a second longer, like the water knows when to witness. “Tell me how,” I say.
He holds his hand still like the dock is a surgeon’s table. “Regatta night, the year before she—before Celia. Crew comes in late, drunk, rope dust on their cuffs, bell ring on their teeth like they’d been sucking metal. Somebody says, ‘Countdown.’ Somebody else laughs. I ask questions I shouldn’t, because I’m new and stupid and think the club’s family means family.”
“And Mason Yates?” I ask. The name sticks to my tongue like sugar burn.
He looks past me to the tower silhouette like the shadow could answer. “He comes down the ramp with his shirt perfect and his hair perfect and that ‘we’re all reasonable men here’ look. He says, ‘Hand me your glove.’ I say no. He smiles. Don’t ever trust a man who smiles at no.” He flexes his scar once, a muscle memory flinch. “He takes my hand and he puts it on a hot plate they use for epoxy. Says, ‘Accidents happen on docks when people panic. Don’t panic.’ I smelled my skin before I felt it.”
I swallow and keep my voice where the recorder likes it. “Who else was there?”
“Three I won’t give until you promise blur and police, in that order. I’m not dying for your download count.”
“Blur, voice-map, police,” I say. “And we timestamp tonight with chain-of-custody. You can sit with my retired detective at the Annex and watch me label the file.”
He laughs softer than the water. “I know Ruth.”
“Everybody knows Ruth,” I say. “She knows where the floorboards squeak at the Annex because she wore the squeaks into them.”
Wind shifts; fried batter smell thins and the lake’s metal breath bulks up. Sound travels too far under a seiche, then not far enough. St. Brigid’s throws a single bell ring, out of schedule, bleeding sideways through air that doesn’t agree with clocks. The witness flinches and then pretends he didn’t. I pretend not to note it and note it anyway.
“Here’s the thing,” he says, and his hood dips like the words weigh ten pounds each. “They run the countdown for girls. Three, two, one, clang. Make a show. Pretend it’s baptism. Rope burns, deck bruises, somebody laughs; somebody else says don’t be dramatic. That year, they scared one into the pilings. She came back up furious and Mason said, ‘See? Resilience.’”
I let the silence stand there with us and face the lake, so he doesn’t have to watch my throat work. When I speak, I aim for neutral. “You said you have a burn because of cover-up. What did you cover?”
He puts his hand flat on a piling cap and the scar shines. “A blood smear on the bell yoke. Old, tacky. Not a lot, but too much for church. I took Simple Green and a rag and did small circles while Mason talked about second chances. He said, ‘We do this so the town survives its kids.’ He said, ‘Our donors keep the lights on.’ He said, ‘You want hours next week?’”
“Did you clean the clapper?” I ask, tasting brass in my mouth. The clapper on my desk hums in memory like it’s here.
“No, the clapper was off that week,” he says. “I thought maintenance. Now I think souvenir.”
The wind drops for a breath. Voices from the prep tent feather out, then get pulled into the dark by a stronger draft coming the other way. The lake goes mirror-black, then shivers. Farther out, a motor coughs alive and settles into a slow idle. Not a patrol skiff. The rhythm is too smooth, the money kind of smooth.
“We keep talking,” I say quietly, “but I move you into my shadow.” I step so the halogen puts my body between his hood and the water. He doesn’t argue. He angles closer, shoulders hunched, and for a second we share a circle of warmth off my thermos lid.
“You’ll blur me?” he says.
“You’ll get to watch me do it,” I say. “We’ll pitch the voice down, not into monster, just into unremarkable. We’ll cut your filler words and replace them with my tape note so no one who collected your speech patterns will make you out of it.”
He nods once, like yes costs money. “You going to say Mason’s name?”
“Not tonight,” I say. “I’m going to say there’s a lieutenant who enforced cleanup and pain, and we have chain to corroborate. When we’re ready, I’ll say it on a day his lawyer expects to sleep in.”
“He doesn’t sleep,” the deckhand says. “He leans on people at gas stations and in small back rooms where the ice chest makes more noise than your heart. He’s the whisper that says, ‘You don’t want to be a problem in Ashgrove.’”
Micro-hook: The boat out there surges a foot closer and idles harder, the sound shaving away the soft edges of his consonants. I raise the mic and collect the room tone of pressure. Sound carries too far; I lower the gain so his breath doesn’t clip.
“You told me he called it the countdown,” I say. “Did Everett call it that, too?”
He shifts in place. “Everett doesn’t say the rotten words. He hires men who say them and then brings flowers to a fundraiser. He likes to be the soft shoulder after. Mason likes the before.”
“You’re giving me a frame,” I say. “The town will try to hang prettier pictures inside it.”
“They already did,” he says, chin up toward the festooned pennants that someone never took down. “They called girls brave when the girls had been cornered. They clapped after the bell.” He takes a breath that sounds like splinters. “You going to air me raw?”
“No,” I say. “I’m going to air you protected and boring, which is safer than brave.”
He looks at my hands, not my face. “You don’t ask to see the burn again.”
“I already did,” I say. “You gave it to me.”
He nods. “Okay. Blur me and I’ll go on record. On paper. I’ll sign with my left. I owe her that much.”
“Celia,” I say.
He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t correct me.
The boat cuts another slow arc. I catch the green starboard light blink and vanish as the hull turns, keeping its better ear toward us. I hate that I can feel its listening like a human attention.
“We should move,” I say. “Walk to the fish shack, get under the fryers, add cover noise.”
He steps but then stops, eyes fixed on the water. “They’re logging us,” he whispers. “They like to say ‘we were down by the pier too’ when a story hits, so everybody believes nobody is special.”
I roll out the little shotgun mic, angle it at the motor, and feed it fifteen seconds of pure engine to fingerprint later. “Let them log,” I say. “I log better.”
He laughs without humor. “You people and your logging. I clean decks. I know which stains come back when the weather changes.”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” I say. “Weather changes. Stains come back.”
We walk, not fast. The fryers throw a warm wall, and the cook eyes me with the tolerant annoyance of night men who don’t want anyone messing with their quiet kingdom. I buy a paper boat of fries and pretend hunger. The witness stands close enough to share steam and not close enough to be a friend.
“Say the condition,” he says, eyes on the oil. “Blur, down-pitch, and you don’t drop my name on the internet. You take me to the Annex first and log with Ruth before you publish.”
“Yes,” I say. “And we give the police a copy sealed. We’ll label it so chain holds even if someone tries to pry.”
He nods. “I’ll bring a photo of the burn from when it was fresh. The date stamp’s on an old phone, but it’s there.”
“Bring the phone,” I say. “We’ll shoot the EXIF live.”
He smirks a little. “You’re not from here, not really.”
“I am and I’m not,” I say. “That’s why I can hear the bells wrong and still love them.”
He eats one fry like communion and winces when salt hits scar tissue where skin never regrew smooth. The boat’s motor pauses—the long, low cough of someone tapping throttle. The fryers can’t cover that. He angles his body away from the water and the halogen together.
“Time to go,” he says. “If I stand here more, I stop being a rumor.”
“I can walk you to your truck,” I say.
“No,” he says. “I can walk me.” He lifts the scar like a flag no one else can see. “You got the story?”
“I have the start of it,” I say. “I’ll hold the rest until you say your name to paper.”
He hesitates, then the words come, low and fast like contraband. “Mason made me place that burn. He laughed and said, ‘One, two, three,’ like he was keeping time with the bells. He said, ‘Don’t be precious about pain.’”
My throat tightens so hard I cough. He flinches at the cough like a shot and then drops his hood lower. “I’ll text the time tomorrow,” he says. “Annex door. You bring the blur.”
He moves into the dark, careful not to look back. The green light out on the water nudges closer like a cat that learned to become a boat. I step to the pier edge and hold the recorder out where the wind flattens my fingers and the metal smell spikes. I give the motor ten seconds more of me listening to it listen to me.
Micro-hook: A faint clink rides the chop—the bell-yoke screw in a jar sound from the voice memo last night—then stops, like a hand closed around it.
I pack the rig with the muscle memory of panic, neat and fast. I leave the fries on the railing for gulls who don’t show this late. The locket at my throat goes cold then warm against skin, like it can’t decide which way to conduct.
When I reach the lot, a white SUV idles with lights off behind the ice house. I can’t see plates. My stomach lifts and settles. I pull my phone and text Ruth two words—recording secured—and add a location ping for the tape’s first and last seconds.
The motor on the water bumps a notch louder. I slide into my car and lock the doors and breathe through my nose until the taste of brass thins. I press the recorder to my chest. Inside it, a voice names a lieutenant, and a lake names a listener.
I turn the key. My headlights print a bright rectangle on the pier end that looks like a stage without actors. The SUV stays dark. The boat does not move away.
I put the car in gear and say to the recorder, voice steady even if my fingers aren’t, “Witness going on record upon blur. Name: withheld for now. New name given: Mason Yates. New threat logged: boat observing.”
Then I drive, and the motor’s thrum follows me along the breakwater like a metronome I can’t turn off, counting down to a next step I haven’t written yet.