Deep Pockets by Linda Barnes

told him. He followed orders.
    I focused on the backpack through the camera lens, barely distinguishing its rectangular bulk from the shadows and the bushes. I kept the camera to my eye and scanned the horizon. I waited for the beeper to shake and I listened. The occasional car thundered hollowly across the raised bridge over the rotary. I thought I heard a car pull into the turning where I’d parked. A stray dog snuffled at my bicycle. I shifted my feet, shooed him off, and took a quick hit from the flask in my pocket. I’d been strictly rationing the brandy because I didn’t want to have to find a place to pee.
    Rain poured down. The Charles is broad and placid at Magazine Beach. The sound of the river hadn’t played a role in the night symphony, and it took me a while to classify the new noise, the soft rhythmic splashing, barely noticeable at first, then louder. Deliberate. It hit me suddenly that I hadn’t taken the river into account. Denali Brinkman had been a rower; she’d have had friends who were rowers. I hadn’t considered the river for what it was, a roadway. Damn. How could I follow if the blackmailer traveled on the river?
    I ordered myself to relax. The important thing was identification. I trained my camera lens on the water, trying to get a fix on the rhythmic splashes. It was difficult to pinpoint the origin of the sound. Upstream toward Harvard and the Weld Boathouse? Downstream toward the lower Charles, the river basin?
    The small boat came into focus, a kayak like the one Denali’s roommate had described. Maybe Denali hadn’t stored all her possessions in the boathouse. Maybe the kayak, like the blackmail letters, hadn’t burned. I held my breath and pressed the shutter. I didn’t need a flash. I had a fancy night-shot rig Roz had borrowed from Lemon.
    I stayed in the shadows while the kayaker tied his craft off on a small tree and clambered up the bank, his feet making squelching noises in the mud. He used a small pencil flash to locate the backpack, then grabbed it. I focused on the money, took three more shots. The shutter click sounded as loud as one of the old cannons I imagined defending the site of the powder magazine in the old days, but the blackmailer didn’t seem to hear. He wore a hood drawn up over his head, but I thought I caught the pale oval of a face. Good. If he’d had the presence of mind to wear a face mask, I’d have been out of luck.
    I made a mental note of the black pants, the black hooded parka. Medium height, medium build. Rower’s shoulders. My gut said the boyfriend, the ex-con.
    I waited in the shadows till he pushed off. I could have followed him upriver or down, but if he crossed the water, made for the Boston side, I’d be stuck. I grabbed my bike and carried it to the car, dialing my cell phone as I moved.
    “Roz, get up on the bridge. Heading toward the center of the Charles from Magazine Beach in a kayak.”
    “A kayak? Like a fucking Eskimo?”
    “Find it, Roz.”
    “Can’t see it.” She sounded annoyed. “You didn’t tell me to watch for boats.”
    “I know.”
    “Aren’t boats supposed to have lights?”
    “Yeah. I guess he forgot his.”
    “Dumb remark, huh?”
    “See him?”
    There are rules on the river, rules that govern which way you can launch from which boathouse, and under which arches of which bridge you can pass in which direction. The bow light should be red and green, red for port, green for starboard; the stern light should be white. But those rules were for racing shells and coaching launches, and I didn’t think they held for blackmailers rowing kayaks in the middle of stormy nights.
    “I think I see something down there,” Roz muttered.
    “Upstream or downstream?”
    “Heading toward downtown, keeping midstream.”
    That would be the clever course, downstream to travel more quickly, keeping to the middle of the river till he could decide whether anyone was in pursuit. But where would he come ashore?
    I started the