All Washed Up

Written by Laird Long

“That is exactly the wrong course of action, sir. I know these waters and these currents. To try to row to safety in the lifeboat would be an exercise in futility – quite possibly, suicidal.”

“Yeah, you know these waters and these currents so well. Then what are we doing marooned on this desert island, Captain?”

Kildare took a swing at Jim Jensen. The younger man nimbly ducked, then pushed the Captain down into the sand. “You’re the one who got us into this mess, old man,” he sneered. “And I’m the man to get us out of it. Who’s with me?”

Kevin Morton helped Captain Kildare to his feet, holding the ancient mariner back as he struggled to get at Jensen.

“I’m with the Captain,” Marvin Fishback piped up, glancing anxiously out at the ocean – passive now, but subject to furious change at a moment’s notice. “We should just wait to be rescued. We’d all be drowned if we’re out on the open water in the lifeboat and another storm came up. Besides, I’m in no condition to row a boat,” he added because when he’d washed up on shore two days earlier, he’d badly scraped them on the rocks and they were now swollen and infected.

“Yeah, sure,” Jensen growled. “But your hands are still plenty good enough to lift food from the provisions chest, huh?”

Fishback jumped to his feet and pointed an angry finger at the accusing man. “I never took anything but my daily ration! It-it must’ve been an animal that got into the chest.”

“Seen any animals on this barren postage stamp of an island?” Mark Colson smirked. “I’m with Jensen. We have to take some action before we all starve to death or die of dehydration sitting around on this speck in the ocean. I’ll pick up Fishback’s slack.”

Jensen facetiously saluted the man. “That’s more like it.” He looked around at the others. Pointing at Mark Colson, he said, “now I’m sure we have to try and row out of here, before Mr. Champion Kayaker there gets it in his head to set out all on his own like he did during the storm, when he tried to hog the lone lifeboat for himself.”

“That’s a dirty lie!” Colson shouted.

Kevin Morton had to hold him back now from taking a swing at Jensen.

“You aren’t going to convince anyone by bullying or berating them, Jensen,” Morton said. He turned to the sixth member of the stranded group. “What about you, Latrisha? Stay or go?”

“I agree with the Captain,” the young woman stated. “He’s the only one qualified to decide on the matter.” Her eyes blazed at Jensen. “Unlike a certain someone who had the bright idea that a week-long cruise off the Baja Peninsula in a rickety old boat would somehow work wonders on a failed marriage.”

“Here we go!” Jensen said, throwing up his arms. “The good doctor has made her diagnosis. All her patients can die, so long as she gets the last word.”

Lanigan slapped Jensen across the face.

Morton shook his head and rolled his eyes. These people he’d been shipwrecked with were certainly no cooperative Swiss Family Robinson or jovial crew of the S.S. Minnow.

They had all been passengers on Captain Kildare’s old restored yacht, which had proved woefully incapable of handling the squall that blew up unexpectedly one hundred nautical miles or so off the Peninsula. The Mary Kildare had been tossed around like a cork in the suddenly raging seas and then been torn apart. Jensen, Lanigan, Colson, the Captain and Morton had scrambled aboard the lifeboat before the yacht had gone under, while Fishback had been washed overboard, to wash up later on the same small, rocky island with the tiny beach on which the lifeboat had run aground.

Now, three days later, with half the food and water gone from the lifeboat’s provisions chest, their chances of survival were slimming as rapidly as their physiques.

So, when the blistering sun had at last sunk into the sea, it was a surly group of people that bedded down under the flimsy tarp on the open beach. It came as only a mild surprise to Morton to find Jim Jensen missing the next morning. The morning after that they discovered his lifeless body in the surf.

Latrisha Lanigan examined her estranged and now deceased husband and then pronounced without emotion, “He was beaten to death. Judging by the decomposition that has already taken place, I’d say he died the night before yesterday.”

“He was clubbed with one of the lifeboat oars,” Captain Kildare stated, striding back down from the lifeboat. “There’s a small crack in one of them. There’re bloodstains on the bottom of the boat, meaning he was killed on shore and then rowed out to sea, his body thrown overboard to try to conceal the fact he was murdered. But the currents took him right back to the shore where he’d come from,” the man added, grimly shaking his head.

“The killer should have weighed his body down with something,” Lanigan said dispassionately, “because when a body decomposes, gases are released, which will force it to rise to the surface of the water.”

“So, someone tried to confine Jensen to the deep, huh?” Fishback said, glancing suspiciously around at the others. “Get him to sleep with the fishes.”

“Or maybe the sharks,” Colson said, eyeing everyone with equal suspicion. “To try to cover up his crime.”

Morton stared down at Jim Jensen’s body gently rocking back and forth in the surf.

“Hey, maybe he actually tried to row away by himself!” Fishback suddenly exclaimed. “Then he accidentally conked himself with an oar and took a header overboard, and then washed up with the boat back on this godforsaken island for a second time. It’s possible!”

“No, it’s not,” Morton said, looking over at the lifeboat. It was turned upside down on the beach to protect its interior. “That boat’s in exactly the same place it’s always been since we got here. That didn’t happen by accident. The killer must have carefully returned it, again trying to cover up his crime. We have to face the fact that one of us is a murderer.”

“Well, I can’t say he didn’t deserve it,” Colson commented. “The guy sure was a sour apple.”

Lanigan and the Captain nodded their agreement.

“And it’s one less mouth to feed,” Fishback added.

Morton looked from one haggard, sleep and food-deprived face to the other. Then he snapped his fingers, snapping the shipwreck victims out of their stupor. “I know who killed him,” Morton said, staring directly at the murderer.