Louise's Dilemma by Sarah R Shaber

blood, soaked deeply into the wood.
    I thought of the dead weight wrapped in canvas that Martin and his accomplice had carried to Martin’s truck last night.
    ‘Do you think that bundle those two men carried out of here last night could have been a corpse?’
    ‘That possibility occurred to me, too,’ he said. ‘We’ll know soon. The FBI can type blood in twenty-four hours now. Our crime lab is the best in the world, thanks to Director Hoover and Congress.’
    He pulled a pocketknife and a small glass vial with a rubber stopper out of his pocket. He sliced a sliver of the stained wood off the rough floor and placed it carefully in the vial, stoppering it and tucking it into his suit pocket.
    ‘I’ll get it back to the lab on the next bus and put a rush on it. Look for a weapon,’ Williams said. We searched the tobacco barn top to bottom and didn’t find anything that could have caused a wound that would result in so much blood.
    We piled the canvas back over the stain and left it looking as if no one had disturbed it, then went back outside to Martin’s car.
    ‘Let’s find that ferry landing,’ he said.
    We drove the four or so miles back to Solomons Island Road, passing the farmhouse on the hill again, then turned almost immediately south, on Broome’s Island Road, and drove the six miles to the ferry landing right on the Patuxent River.
    There wasn’t much to see. The road stopped at the landing, a dirt space that sloped down to the river. You wouldn’t necessarily know it was a ferry landing except for the sign mounted on a leaning fencepost shoved into the sand at the edge of it.
    The Patuxent was a good-sized river that ran between the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac. During the summer it would be thick with fishing boats and skipjacks, but now it was empty except for a few chunks of floating ice and one vessel headed our way.
    I grabbed Williams’ arm. ‘I think I see the ferryboat,’ I said.
    Williams lifted his binoculars to his face. ‘That’s it, all right.’
    We watched the ferryboat, powered by a noisy engine belching black smoke, coming towards us. What remained of the ice on the river cracked and broke apart as it approached.
    When the ferryboat struck the beach, a young man, a teenager really, leapt off the boat and used its momentum to pull the boat a few extra feet up the slope, then docked it to the solitary pier.
    There were two vehicles on the ferry: a truck loaded with hay bales and a car with no tread on its tires. Using the ferry saved them from driving way north to the bridge to get to the lower part of the western shore.
    The truck and car motored off the ferry and on up the road, and the ferryman jumped off the deck. It was Dennis, the angry man from the café, the one who’d threatened to beat up Collins.
    Dennis eyed Williams from head to foot, taking in his citified topcoat, suit and tie. ‘You looking to ferry across the river?’ he asked.
    ‘No,’ Williams said. ‘I’m Special Agent Gray Williams, FBI. This is my assistant, Mrs Pearlie.’
    Williams had abandoned our cover. I supposed it was time. We were investigating a possible serious crime.
    Dennis spread his legs and put his hands on his hips, as if standing his ground. ‘Son,’ he said to the teenager, ‘you go on board the ferry. I’ll be there in just a minute.’
    The boy shrugged and climbed back on board the boat.
    Dennis turned back to us. ‘What does a G-man want with me?’ he asked.
    ‘Why did you meet Leroy Martin’s truck here in the middle of last night and take him across the river?’ Williams said.
    Dennis leaned his head back and laughed. ‘You government people,’ he said. ‘You’re a bunch of idiots. Any ferry can use this landing! Not just mine. There are dozens of private ferries around here. You can’t prove it was me!’
    ‘How many ferries operate in the middle of the night in this cold?’ I said.
    Dennis didn’t even blink an eye. ‘You’re a fool too,’ he said.