The rest of the summer passed quickly. There was little more word about Brittany, and that secondhand. Lisa called one evening to report that Brittany was actually thinking about moving back home to take care of her parents, mostly to get out from under the expenses of having to deal with the house.

Adam didn’t know what to think about that. If it happened, it would give her something else to occupy her time, but would obviously free up more cash for detectives. The best he could call it would be six of one, half dozen of the other. On the other hand, Lisa also said that Brittany had been seeing Dr. Preble on an outpatient basis, so maybe that was doing some good. There was no way of knowing how that was working, either.

In the later part of summer Adam was able to do another trip up to the Channel Stop, this time for four days, and managed to get out sailing on the Pixie on three of them. Though there was still a lot to learn, he was getting better at handling the boat, and more confident doing it. He was starting to think this was something he could really do. While he was there, he made plans with Jake for a week’s cruise in the Canadian waters on the far side of Lake Huron. “The customs regulations are a pain in the butt,” Jake explained. “But we’ve got enough time to do the paperwork so we can minimize things.”

“Good, let’s get it done. I’m really looking forward to the trip.”

“The weather in September is always iffy,” Jake said. “But with any kind of luck we ought to catch a few nice days.”

Three weeks later Adam was back in Winchester Harbor, after the usual routine of leaving his car at the airport and taking a rental. This time it seemed like a waste of money, except for the fact that James had found that a new tracker had been placed on his car – a little scratch he’d left in the paint showed that it wasn’t the one that had been there the last time he checked. That meant that someone was still servicing the device, for what it was worth. It couldn’t tell whoever had put it there what they wanted to know, and he had to wonder why they were wasting their time for so long.

Since Adam got to the Channel Stop late in the evening he spent the night at the motel, but fairly early the next morning he and Jake had breakfast before they went down to the boat and got ready to go. Jake had already done most of it, including things like topping up the water tanks and putting fresh food on board, but they went through the usual routine of checking things, getting the sail covers off, and otherwise getting ready to make the trip. It was still quiet when Jake had Adam fire up the engine and steer their way across the harbor and out the channel.

The winds were fairly light, and it took them most of the day to make the run across Lake Huron, and between the Canadian Cockburn and Manitoulin Islands. The day was waning when they found a good place to anchor for the night in Meldrum Bay.

For the next several days they slowly worked their way down the north shore of Manitoulin Island, a place Jake admitted he hadn’t been before. There were several deep and interesting bays to poke their way into, just to see what was there; it was a new experience for Adam, and he found that he was enjoying it immensely.

They were caught by a fairly strong storm system, but they managed to find a quiet, well-protected bay to anchor in. It blew hard through the night but they were hardly aware of it. The next morning it was still blowing hard under an overcast sky that spit raindrops at them. It seemed like a good day to stay at anchor and they did so without discussion, spending most of the day inside the cabin, mostly sipping coffee and telling stories of years gone by. Adam learned a good deal of what Brittany had been like in high school, things she’d never told him, and they covered quite a bit of other ground, sometimes talking about seamanship, sometimes fishing, and admittedly sometimes about what Adam’s life at the office was like.

And they talked a lot about Matt and Mary. “I really need to get up and see her,” Adam said at one point. “I still haven’t seen Matty and I want to, but what with everything going on and being watched as closely as I think I am, I don’t dare to right now.”

“Yeah, that’s a shame,” Jake agreed. “I’m sure she would like to see you as well, but she understands why you haven’t been able to get there.”

“I’ll get to sometime. Maybe not soon, but sometime. The way things are now, it just strikes me as too much of a risk.”

“Maybe things will die down a little by next summer, and you could chance going.”

“I sure hope so. Things could change a lot in the next few months, though.”

By the next morning the storm had blown itself out; crystal clear skies and a gentle breeze greeted them. They got going and sailed on down the island to Little Current, where they got off the boat for the first time, mostly for a beer and a bar burger.

Soon their time was getting tight. “It’s like this,” Jake explained late in the afternoon as they were going through the Owen Channel between Manitoulin and Fitzwilliam Islands. “We can duck into South Bay, set the hook for the night, and get going at first light. With luck, that might get us back to Winchester Harbor by dark. Or, we can skip the stop, sail all night, and get in during the day sometime. The winds will probably be pretty light all night, and we won’t be getting into the shipping lanes until into the morning, but it would give you a chance to see what it’s like.”

“Really, you’re running this thing,” Adam told him. “But given a choice, I wouldn’t mind seeing what sailing at night involves.”

“Talked me into it,” Jake grinned. “I don’t get to do it very often, either.”

So they did, trading off watches navy style, with Adam steering the Pixie and keeping a lookout while Jake slept below. Though things were fairly placid, it was a strange experience, and Adam felt just a little honored that Jake would let him do such a thing. It was very dark out there, with a huge dome of stars overhead like could rarely be seen from land. No traffic got close, and it was mostly a case of keeping the boat on course and trying to stay awake. When the sun came up they were out in the middle of the lake, with land nowhere in sight. It gave Adam a little hint of what it must have been like for Matt, out of sight of land on the Mary Sue. Once again, it gave him a little bit of a feeling of being closer to the memory of his son.

The wind picked up over the course of the day, and they were running along at a pretty good speed. Sometime after noon a thin green line began to be seen in the distance ahead and to one side of them; by the middle of the afternoon it was starting to turn into the familiar shore near Winchester Harbor.

It made Adam a little sad to have to steer the boat up the channel and into the harbor. It had been a wonderful sail, and the week had been far too short. They had seen some beautiful, rugged countryside and some interesting bays and harbors; sometimes it had seemed nearly as wild as the voyageurs must have found it hundreds of years before. It was going to be a hard experience to give up.

As they were putting the sail covers on and buttoning up the boat, Jake asked Adam how he’d liked the experience. “The only thing wrong with it was that it was too short,” Adam told him. “I could have stayed out there a lot longer if I didn’t have to get back. I wouldn’t mind doing it again sometime.”

“There are a lot of neat places to go poking around in on the Canadian side of Lake Huron, Georgian Bay and the North Channel. We hardly touched them. Maybe we could do it another time. Probably not this year, though; I’ve taken off enough as it is. This is good fishing season, and Rachel and Nate had to do a lot to cover for me while I was gone. But I think it was worth it, for both of us. I think I needed the break about as bad as you did.”

“I can’t speak for you, but I’m real glad I had it.”

“So do you think you want to buy your own boat?”

“Not yet,” Adam sighed. “The one thing I’ve learned on this trip, more than anything else, is how much I still have to learn. But it’s getting to be more and more of a possibility, if I can work out some of the other details. One of them is getting still more experience and more comfortable with it. Do you expect to keep the Pixie in the water much longer?”

“Probably till early November,” Jake told him. “I usually take it out the same time we have the crane here to take the Chinook and the Coho out, and that’s not till after fishing season is over with. But it usually doesn’t get sailed much in October. It gets a little chilly, and you have to wait for a really nice day. Sometimes they’re not all that common that time of year. Why? Do you think you want to come up and take another crack at it?”

“If things can be made to work out, between weather, work, and everything else.”

“Well, we can think about it, but we’d better keep an eye on the weather and talk about it ahead of time. But we might get lucky and be able to work in a day sail sometime.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes.”

On the way home, Adam kept thinking about the trip. It had worked very well, and he found he enjoyed every minute of it – but a big part of the fun of the trip came from the fact that he wasn’t alone; it was good to have Jake with him, not just as a teacher, but as a friend. When it got right down to it, his main reluctance to buying a boat just yet came down to that one question – not having anyone to share it with. Jake had to steal just about every minute he’d spent sailing from his primary business, and it had put a strain on everyone. But everyone seemed to think it was worth it, so that made things a little different. Even so, it wasn’t something he felt like he could do very often.

The question of how much he could get out sailing remained. He’d been out about once a month, which considering the circumstances and the long drive was about all he’d thought he could handle. It would be nice if he had a boat, even one not as nice as the Pixie, only an hour or less from home; it would be possible to go out after work, or get out a lot more weekends, given favorable weather. That couldn’t be done at the distance of Winchester Harbor.

He remembered back to the days when Greg had taken his father’s boat north in the spring and brought it back in the fall. For all the expense and trouble, his father only got to use the boat a couple weeks in the summer, plus two or three odd weekends. It hardly seemed to be worth the trouble. What with everything, he’d probably been out on the Pixie more than that this summer; he couldn’t comprehend the idea of putting that much money into a boat to use it so little, and in his current situation, he couldn’t imagine using it more.

So it was still a decision that had to wait for the future. There was a good chance that things would be considerably different in a year.

Once again he went through the hassle of changing cars at the airport. Something had to be done about that; it cost him an hour each way every time he went to Winchester Harbor, and it was starting to irritate him. It seemed like less of a game and more of a pain in the ass every time he had to do it.

The next couple days at the office seemed dull indeed, at least comparing them to the week he’d spent in the North Channel with Jake. Things were going smoothly, and Bob had been able to handle anything out of the ordinary that had come up. It seemed like most of the time the place could run without him; maybe in a future summer he could dare to be gone a little more.

It was hard to go back to the apartment in the evenings, too; there really wasn’t much there he wanted to do. Oh, he could read, he could watch TV, but it seemed so mundane after the wild country of the week before. More and more it seemed like he was spinning his wheels.

He was busy watching the news on TV, depressing though it might be, when he heard the apartment’s doorbell ring. That hardly ever happened, especially when he wasn’t expecting it. He went to the intercom located near the door and said, “Yes? Who is it?”

“Mr. Caldwell,” a somewhat-familiar sounding female voice said. “I need to talk to you.”

He couldn’t place the voice, but there was something about it that said he didn’t want to invite her into the apartment. “I’ll be right down,” he told her.

He made sure he had his keys, then locked the door and headed for the stairs. That voice sounded familiar somehow, but he couldn’t quite place it. He got downstairs and opened the door to face a familiar face: that woman from Protective Services who had invaded his office back in the spring. He couldn’t think of her first name but her last name was Bitch or Belch or Balch or something. “Can I help you?” he asked suspiciously.

“Mr. Caldwell,” she asked icily. “Where is the child?”

“What child?”

“The child you’ve visited several times over the last few months. You were gone for a whole week last week, and I’m sure you must have visited him. We still have a complaint we have to clear.”

“You’re really barking up the wrong tree,” he said, an interesting light beginning to dawn in his mind. “The child I visited last week is thirty-one feet long and has a white fiberglass hull.”

“Bullshit,” she sneered. “I know you’ve been flying off to see the child.”

“Miss Belch, I believe I told you to direct any inquiries of that nature to my attorney. Good night.”

He closed the door and locked it, but watched through the peephole as she got in her car and drove off. As soon as she was out of sight, he pulled out his cell phone and called Deke. “Hey, guy!” he said when he got him on the line. “You’re not going to believe what just happened!”

“What’s that?”

“That broad from Protective Services, Belch or Bitch or something like that, just gave me hell because I flew off to visit Matty last week.”

“Holy shit!” Deke laughed. “That sort of answers the question of who had the tracker on your car, doesn’t it?”

“Sure does, and I think it’s time I lost the goddamn thing.”

“Not just yet. I’ll call Reuben James and have him come over to your place, while you keep an eye on your car to make sure she doesn’t come back and get it. Let’s have him take it off, it’ll make for a more credible witness. I assume you’d like to jam that little box right down someone’s throat?”

“Yeah, hers.”

“If it’s still there we have grounds for a lawsuit. We ought to be able to get an injunction at a minimum, and maybe we can get a look at their records. We might get damages, and we might even get lucky and get her fired, but that’s a long shot. I know those bozos use tracking devices like that occasionally, but I think this one is way over the line.”

As it turned out, Deke was also there when James showed up, and found that the device – well, at least a device, was still operating on the car. He took his time with it, taking pictures of the car and the device in place before he carefully removed it and placed it in a metal box. “It’s still operating,” he said. “But in a metal box like that it won’t be able to get its signal out. That ought to make you a nice little piece of evidence.”

“Oh, yeah,” Deke grinned, looking and sounding somewhat like a cat just about to pounce on a mouse. “We’re going to have all sorts of fun with this one, especially considering the security tape from your front door camera. Rube, I think maybe you’d better check this car every few days just on general principles, but now that they know we’re onto them, there’s no point in letting one stay active. Adam, if you want to go someplace you don’t want anyone to know about for a while, just stop by Rube’s place and have him check it over to make sure there’s not another one of these little gadgets operating. But, if it really is Protective Services, they’d be fools to do it again after they learn about the lawsuit we’re going to hit them with.”

Deke was as good as his word; he went into his office early the next morning to get going on the paperwork, and by mid-morning he’d filed a petition for an injunction that would bar further investigation and emplacement of tracking devices by Protective Services. Along with that, he filed a lawsuit seeking discovery of the sources of the complaints to the agency, and requesting considerable damages.

The agency tried to stall for time, of course, but couldn’t block temporarily suspending any investigations under way. It was several weeks before the hearing came down, in conjunction with the permanent injunction. Adam had to be present for the hearing, of course, and so was the Balch woman, still with fire in her eye and a determination to correct injustice.

When called to the witness stand, Balch said rather angrily that the agency had considerable authority to investigate cases of reported child abuse, and that placing a tracking device was consistent with their practices. “I don’t suppose you bothered to get a warrant for it, did you?” Deke asked.

“Of course not,” she sneered. “It hasn’t been our practice to do so.”

“So you are stating that you had the device placed on Mr. Caldwell’s car?”

“Of course. I believe he was visiting the child on numerous occasions. We have a considerable number of complaints about the child being abused, but he’s been very unhelpful in allowing us to investigate them, and has totally refused to give us any information about the location of the mother or the child. I had the device placed because he visited the child on several occasions, and it offered the chance to locate the child.”

“Miss Balch,” Deke asked. “What would you say if you were to find out that Mr. Caldwell had actually been out sailing on those occasions, and not visiting the child?”

“I believe he was visiting the child. He may have been sailing, but he must have visited the child in the process.”

“But what if he wasn’t?”

“He had to have been.”

“What would you say if I were to tell you he’s never once laid eyes on the child?”

“I’d say he was lying.”

“Miss Balch,” Deke went on, “It is our belief that the complaints in this matter all come from a single person, who has never laid eyes on the child, and who has no substantive knowledge of the conditions the child is living in. She is a mental patient who intends to use any means, fair or foul, to gain custody of the child, and Mr. Caldwell’s decision to not reveal anything about the child’s location is based on trying to keep her from attempting possibly illegal actions.”

“I can’t reveal anything about the complainant. It’s against agency policy.”

Deke turned to the judge. “Your honor, it is one of the bases of our common law that an accused has the right to be confronted by his accuser. Holding that person anonymous violates all of those rights. I believe that if you will force this agency to reveal the identity of the accuser, it will be obvious to everyone who doesn’t have an axe to grind that her accusations are frivolous, unwarranted, and without any basis in fact whatsoever.”

“Counselor,” the judge said, “it seems to me that a great deal could be simplified if the child could be produced. That would allow the agency to determine the veracity of the complaints, and they could be easily disposed of.”

“Your honor, I’m afraid that’s impossible. Neither the mother nor the child are residents of this country, nor are they citizens. What’s more, I am informed that the mother has no intention of visiting this country with the child when a rogue agency such as Children’s Protective Services could seize the child without a warrant or court action and possibly drag the process out for years. I might add that her decision to stay out of the United States was taken on my recommendation before the child was born. The agency has no jurisdiction in this matter, and we are petitioning you to force them to drop their investigation and to reveal their sources in furtherance of the lawsuit Mr. Caldwell currently has filed against the agency.”

“It seems to me that the agency has a rather unlimited view of the latitude they may take in investigating such matters,” the judge said. “And, while admittedly they have a fairly wide latitude, they are not exempt from some simple limitations, which seem to be well surpassed. I therefore order that the injunction barring investigation of Mr. Caldwell in this matter be continued on a permanent basis. Therefore, any further investigation, which includes emplacement of tracking devices, is barred and if it occurs will be treated as contempt of this court. I also order that within five days the agency turn over the files on this matter without redacting any information that would identify the complainant, in order to further the lawsuit pending in this matter.”

“But your honor,” the agency’s lawyer protested. “That would be a violation of the agency’s policies.”

“Be that as it may, counselor,” the judge replied icily. “An agency’s self-promulgated policies do not overrule the rule of law.”

“It is common practice for complainants to not be revealed out of fear of retribution. This is a long-standing principle of protecting children from their abusers.”

“Be that as it may, however long-standing it may be, it does not overrule the Constitution, nor does it overrule this court.”

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