Chapter 19 Chapter Seventeen

Early the next morning, Cody and I were steering my seventeen-foot Whaler slowly out of the small canal near my house.Cody, wearing a blue and yellow life vest, sat motionless on the ice bucket.Crouching slightly, with his head almost completely buried in the life vest, he looks like a brightly colored turtle. There were sodas in the ice bucket and a huge lunch for ten that Rita had prepared for us.I brought frozen prawns as bait because it was Cody's first time out fishing and I don't know how he would react if he were to put a sharp hook into a bait that was still alive.Of course, I prefer live baits myself, the livelier the better!

So he sat there until the boat approached Falway Rock.I slowed down, turned the engine down to minimum, dropped the anchor into the water, and waited until the anchor was fixed before turning off the engine. "Okay, Cody," I said, "we can go fishing." He smiled, which was rare. "OK." He watched me intently as I showed him how to bait the prawns and then he tried baiting himself, slowly and very carefully driving the hook in until the point reappeared. "Okay," I said, "now throw it in the water." Cody nodded, stretched the tip of the fishing rod overboard, pressed the payout button on the reel, and dropped the bait into the water.I also flicked the bait into the water with a "shua", and then we sat down together, shaking slowly with the waves.

Being out on open water with a small child reminds me a lot of Rekel.I still find him guilty.What would he do if he knew McGregor was missing?He'll probably panic and try to run away, but maybe he'll just be cautious for a while.If so, I can put him aside for the time being, and give priority to finding out the guy who made the "howling vegetative man on Northwest Fourth Avenue".But imminently, I had to find a way to get rid of Doakes. "Will you be my daddy?" Cody asked suddenly. The question was so sudden that I stammered, "Why do you ask such a question?"

His eyes were still on the tip of the fishing rod. "Mother said maybe it would." "Really?" I said, and he nodded, but didn't look up at me. My mind was in turmoil.She really thinks so?It's just unimaginable. I didn't know how to continue this topic, but fortunately, Cody's fishing rod began to shake violently. "You caught a fish!" In the next few minutes, the fishing line was pulled out whistlingly, and the fish fluttered back and forth in the water. It was far away from the boat several times, but Cody slowly pulled it Pulled back.I showed him how to keep the end of the rod above the water, how to reel in the line, how to slowly pull the fish alongside the boat, and then I grabbed the leader and pulled it over the boat.Cody watched it flop across the deck, its forked tail still flapping wildly.

"It's a golden trevally," I bent down to take out the hook, but it kept bowing and jumping up, and I couldn't catch it at all.A thin stream of blood flowed out of its mouth and onto the white deck, making people feel uncomfortable. "He probably swallowed the hook. We'll have to cut the fish open and get the hook out." I pulled the fish knife from its black plastic sheath and set it on the deck. "There's going to be a lot of blood," I warned Cody.I don't like blood and don't want blood on my boat, not even fish blood.I took two steps forward, opened the cabinet, and took out an old sanitary towel.

"Ha," I heard a soft shout from behind me, and hurriedly looked back. Cody had already picked up the knife and plunged it into the fish, watching the fish struggle to get away from the knife.Then he took careful aim again at the point of the knife, this time driving it deep into the gills of the fish, and a spurt of blood poured out onto the deck. "Cody," I said. He looked up at me, and then, curiously, he smiled. "I like fishing, Dexter," he said.