Cold Smoked

by K. K. Beck

  “Ha!” Amanda said aggressively. “You think it was easy? The salmon producers didn’t know their asses from their elbows when I moved in. They were living in the past. First I had to educate them, bring them up to speed, make them see that without promotion they’d all die. They just didn’t have a grasp of the Darwinian facts of business life.”

  Jane imagined her companion rising from the table like someone in an old film and shouting, “Fools, fools. They said I was insane!”

  Amanda reached over and clicked off the tape recorder. “Off the record,” she said, lifting an eyebrow dramatically. “The only way they got their act together was when they perceived an external threat.”

  “Really? What threat?” said Jane in a bored tone.

  “There have been certain rumors,” Amanda said archly. “Nothing I can’t handle now I have the account, of course, but it concentrated their tiny minds.”

  Jane recalled that Carla had alluded to that when she’d grilled Magnus Anderson back in Seattle. A real journalist would have pounced on this tantalizing little clue, she realized. Instead she marveled at Amanda’s lack of discretion. For a moment she had started to buy in to Amanda’s idea that she could conquer the world and get everyone on the planet to eat nothing but salmon. Now it occurred to her that this woman was possibly the world’s klutziest flack.

  Leaving the machine off as the waiter brought them their plates, Jane asked casually, “Have you run into this Swiss guy? Gunther Kessler, his name is. He seems to be big in salmon.”

  “I haven’t been able to make out who he is, exactly,” said Amanda, looking unsure about something for the first time. “He’s never part of the official program. It’s all rather mysterious. Needless to say, the Swiss don’t farm salmon. He may be a banker or something.”

  “He told me he’s in refrigeration,” said Jane.

  Amanda looked puzzled. “Sounds a bit peripheral.”

  “He has something to do with that tall Norwegian, the tall blond one who was at the reception. Who’s he?”

  “They’re all tall and blond,” said Amanda.

  “This one looks like a hero from the sagas. He’s got a bit of a tan, and he was wearing a double-breasted suit.”

  “Ooh, him,” said Amanda, suddenly girlish. “That’s Hans-Christian Haakonsen. Yum! He’s an assistant fisheries minister. Big chief stuff. He’s in with all the cabinet, and the king and queen, for all I know.”

  She leaned over the table. “It all just goes to show how big-time this campaign is!”

  “That must be very gratifying for you,” said Jane, wondering what the hell a Swiss detective with the demeanor of a sociopath was doing hobnobbing with cabinet-level fish bureaucrats, posing as some sort of a refrigerator salesman. Even more, what he was doing poking around in her suitcase.

  Gunther Kessler wasn’t lurking there when she got back to her room, but her message light was blinking red. The desk clerk told her someone had found her passport and turned it in to the desk. The clerk sounded critical, as if she’d been careless to leave it lying around. She realized she’d left it in her room with her airline ticket, feeling that Norway was such an honest place. She should have kept it in her purse. When she went down to fetch it, she asked who had turned it in.

  “A Swiss gentleman,” said the clerk.

  Jane arranged for an early wake-up call and a shuttle to the airport, trying not to let the clerk see how upset she was. She supposed she should be grateful he’d returned it to her. But then, she realized, he’d done that just to show her he could act with impunity. Just to let her know that despite being muscled around by Putnam and kicked in the knee by her, he could have the last word.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Back in Seattle, it took two large Nordstrom shopping bags, relics from more prosperous days, to hold all the fish materials Jane had collected on her trip. She drove the bags over to Carla’s apartment and delivered them with a feeling of immense relief.

  Carla dove at them like a kid on Christmas morning, then spread the brochures around her happily. “They have great promotional materials!” she said. “And there’s lots of statistics here.”

  “You can keep the other stuff, too,” said Jane. “The head scarf and the fridge magnets. There’s a kind of sweet silver fish pin.”

  Carla looked grateful, and her pale fingers caressed an oven mitt. “Did you have a great time?” she asked wistfully. “How was the hands-on cod harvest experience?”

  “Bad weather kept the boats at the dock,” said Jane.

  “What a shame,” Carla said with feeling.

  “Bad luck, wasn’t it. So how’s the job search going?”

  “I’m up for a tech writer position at the College of Fisheries at the university,” she said. “I’d like that. No advertisers.”

  “Sounds good,” said Jane. “A state job. Security. A great medical plan. Retirement.” All the things she didn’t have. “Grab it.” Then, worried, she added, “But you will write the Norway article, won’t you? Even if you find something right away?”

  “Of course,” said Carla. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Good. Here are the tapes. I’ve written on the labels who’s speaking on all of them. And I have everyone’s business cards so you can spell their names right. I interviewed a lot of people. Including Amanda Braithwaite. Do you know her? They added this salmon promotion thing to my itinerary. There’s a press kit in here, maybe you can write that up as a smaller piece.”

  “Amanda Braithwaite!” exclaimed Carla. “Wow. She’s a terrific fish marketer.”

  “Yeah, well, she landed the generic salmon campaign.”

  “That’s so exciting,” said Carla. “The industry has needed to get together and promote itself for years.”

  “I know,” Jane said. “All that infighting has been so counterproductive. Even the wild sector is involved. One of the Putnams was over there. Just a small increase in consumption would really stabilize things.”

  Jane realized with a cold chill that she was talking with real feeling about the fish business. She had better stop herself before she got pulled in further. She might end up at the Women’s Seafood Network monthly dinner, networking and bristling with fish jewelry and eventually growing a set of gills.

  “Well,” she said briskly, “I’ll let you get to work. Call me if you have any problems or want me to get in touch with any of these people to ask follow-up questions or anything.”

  The sooner she got that article delivered and got herself out of the fish business, the better, as far as she was concerned. Her priority now was to focus on Marcia.

  She supposed too that she should give the Hunters some kind of interim report. Unfortunately she had learned much more about cod and salmon than she had about Marcia St. Francis, who remained a complete mystery in Jane’s mind. Neither did she relish telling Phil and Barb Hunter that the man they suspected claimed to have been chained to a radiator in some sort of kinky sex stunt by their dead daughter.

  In the end, Jane decided she’d put off talking with them until she’d interviewed their other daughter. Besides learning something about Marcia, she could also feel her out about how the parents might take this bizarre news.

  She called Lisa, who knew all about Jane and sounded a little warier than her parents had. “I suppose if you really could find out anything, it would help them. The police haven’t done a thing as far as I can tell.”

  A few days later they met in Lisa’s house in Kent, the kind of place realtors called a “starter home”—a small square box painted yellow with white trim, sitting in a larger square of lawn, a concrete path leading to the door, on a street full of identical houses in different pastels.

  Lisa looked about thirty, a little plump, with a round, open-looking face, made up very carefully with black mascara and pink lipstick. She wore jeans and a light blue sweatshirt and tiny diamond studs in her ears. On her left hand she had a bigger diamond in a complicated setting next to a wedding band.
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  They drank weak coffee in a small, neat kitchen, and Lisa told Jane that she hadn’t seen her sister for ages before she died. “Ever since that boyfriend of hers, Curtis. She just dropped out of sight. We were never that close, really. She’s five years younger. . . .” Lisa still hadn’t switched consistently to the past tense when speaking of her sister.

  “I’ve met Curtis,” said Jane. “I didn’t know quite what to make of him.”

  “That’s more than I did. She used to call once in a while when she was at the U. But we had different shifts. I was working nights. Anyway, she told me she met this guy and that he was Mr. Right. She said he was a genius and so sensitive, and really exciting and so kind.”

  Jane hadn’t exactly seen Curtis as Mr. Charisma, but she knew there was no accounting for sexual attraction.

  “I invited them to a barbecue once, but she said he was a vegetarian, and she’d become one, too. I said no problem, we’d make a big salad or whatever. Or they could bring tofu or whatever he eats, but she said they’d pass. I was kind of hurt.”

  “So you never did meet him?”

  “No. To be honest, it bugged me the way she acted about the barbecue. It was like she expected me to change the menu for them. I didn’t call her for a long time after that. Then I thought maybe the vegetarian thing was some kind of excuse, that she didn’t want to see me, and that hurt me even more.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?” asked Jane.

  “About two weeks before she died. She just showed up at work. I work in a convenience store about a mile or so from here. It was about two in the morning, and she just walked in. Said she was in the neighborhood, which I thought was weird. Anyway, I went and got her some coffee, and we sat there behind the counter and chatted for a while.”

  “How did she seem?” said Jane.

  “Real normal. I asked her about Curtis, and she said he was fine, and she made kind of dumb small talk. By then she had sort of cut herself off from my parents, and I asked her about that. She just said that she had changed and they never would, and that if she had to choose between them and Curtis, she’d have to choose him. I didn’t get it. She’d always gotten along with my parents.”

  “Seems harsh,” said Jane.

  “Oh, but Diane was kind of harsh,” Lisa said. “There was always only one right way.”

  “Did you know she’d changed her name?”

  “No. Not until the police told us.” She leaned toward Jane. “I never told my parents about the vegetarian thing. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I know a lot of vegetarians, especially since I moved here. But it would have hurt their feelings. I mean, beef consumption is way down because of this health stuff. It’s been tough for their business.”

  “Curtis told them they had blood on their hands,” said Jane. “I bet he meant beef blood.”

  “God, what a thing to say to a couple of people who just lost their daughter,” Lisa said bitterly. “I’d like to get my hands on that creep.”

  “Is there anything else you didn’t tell your parents?” said Jane.

  Lisa was quiet for a minute, then she went over to a drawer in the counter and took out a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray, sat back down, carefully lit one and exhaled. The whole ritual seemed to be accompanying some kind of decision-making process. Jane kept silent and waited.

  Finally Lisa said, “I should have told the police, but I wasn’t sure. And I sure didn’t tell my parents, because they’re already worried about my job. But I think maybe Diane stole my gun.”

  “Your gun?” said Jane.

  “The store is in an okay neighborhood and all, but at first I was nervous, so I went out and bought myself a gun. My boss wouldn’t like it, so I never asked his permission. I kept it under the counter, way in the back. There’s a drawer that’s sort of mine.” She gave a sly little smile. “I put it in a Tampax box. I figured he’d never look in there.”

  “And when did you find it missing?” asked Jane.

  “I think it was about a week or so after Diane came by. I was messing around in my drawer and I pushed the box aside and it was too light.

  “I never thought it was her that took it. Not in a million years. You see, there are lots of people working there during the day, and there’s lots of turnover.” She wrinkled her nose. “Some of the clerks are pretty scuzzy, to be honest. I figured one of them took it, but I didn’t want to say anything because I wasn’t supposed to have it in the first place. I mean, it was legal and all, but my boss wouldn’t have liked it. He says if we get held up just hand everything over, but I was afraid of some psycho. Plus, growing up on a ranch and all, I’m not afraid of guns.”

  Lisa took a deep breath. “When the police asked my parents if Diane had a gun, the idea that she might have taken it occurred to me. I’d left her there alone for a sec while I got us some coffee from across the room.

  “Now that I think about it, I don’t think any of those scuzzy clerks would have looked in a Tampax box, do you? I mean, they were all guys, the ones I suspected.”

  “But Diane knew about it?”

  “Yeah. I told her. I told her not to tell my parents because they were already freaked about my working there.” She ground out the cigarette. “It’s not for much longer. Just until my husband finishes school and starts working full-time again. He went back to school and we had house payments, so I took a second job at night. It works out okay. He studies while I’m at work.”

  “What kind of a gun was it?” asked Jane.

  “A little black thirty-eight-caliber revolver with a rubber grip. Lightweight. I think it was called a Rossi. I bought it used at a gun store for a hundred and fifty dollars. The bullets cost eighteen bucks.”

  Lisa looked suddenly horrified and began to shake a little. “Everyone was worried about me, but then Diane got shot,” she said. “The police say the bullet went into a million pieces inside her, but they added them all up and they’re pretty sure it was a thirty-eight.”

  There were four messages on Jane’s machine when she got home. One was from Carla. “The story’s done,” she said. “I think you’ll be interested in my angle on repositioning cod for an upscale market.” Jane decided not to bother to read Carla’s opus. Carla’s voice continued: “Can you find out if Norman wants that salmon sidebar, too? And there’s another thing. There’s something really weird on one of the tapes you gave me. It isn’t what your label says at all.”

  The second call was from Jack Lawson. “Where’ve you been?” he said. “I’ve been trying to call you. I’ll get back in touch soon. The album’s going great.” Jane sighed.

  The third message was from Norman Carver. “Have you got that Norwegian cod copy? There’s a bunch of faxes here for you. Oh, and some German-sounding guy called for you. I gave him your home number. I hope that’s okay.” Jane felt a horrible little stab of fear. She had thought she was rid of Gunther Kessler.

  The fourth message was a hang-up. Maybe it was Kessler. She tried not to panic and reminded herself that he was probably back in Europe, investigating whatever it was he was supposed to be investigating. Still, before she left the house she chided herself for not having called a home security company yet. She imagined finding the sinister Swiss in her house when she got back from delivering Carla’s copy to Norman.

  Carla had a big envelope ready, with a hard copy of the story as well as a computer disk. “Did you find out about the salmon sidebar?” she said. “I’m still in the running for that tech writer job, but they told me it might be weeks before they decide. I could use the work, to be honest.”

  Jane assured Carla she’d pitch the idea to Norm, even though she didn’t really want to. She felt sorry for poor Carla and grateful to her for providing her with a cover, but she had also been looking forward to telling Norm to take his job and shove it.

  “And here’s that weird tape,” said Carla. “I don’t get it at all. It’s creepy.”

  “What’s on it?” said Jane. She recognized the labe
l she’d made herself: “Knutsen. Seattle Speech.”

  Carla shrugged. “I just listened to a chunk in the middle. It wasn’t about fish,” she said in the same tone she might have used to say “It wasn’t in English.”

  In the car on her way over to Norman’s office, Jane popped the tape into her car stereo, rewound it and began to listen.

  A reedy male voice began to declaim in a dreary monotone. “Trygve Knutsen, Assistant Fisheries Ministry of the kingdom of Norway, is our prisoner,” said the voice. “He is being held by soldiers of the Army in Solidarity with Animal Victims, Cetaceans Division.

  “His safe return depends on the actions of his government. Our nonnegotiable demands include: number one—an immediate moratorium on all whaling in Norwegian waters; number two—a public apology from the Norwegian government to all cetaceans and the humans in solidarity with them; number three—the publication of the following statement in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, the latter to be translated into Norwegian.

  “When these demands are met, Knutsen will be released unharmed in a neutral area. The prisoner is being treated humanely and is receiving a healthy, animal-free diet. He has already expressed regret at the vicious genocide of minke whales in waters controlled by his government and understands that the temporary inconvenience of his imprisonment is a small price to pay in order to save innocent lives. But be forewarned, we are steadfast in our purpose, and the prisoner will not be released until all conditions are met.

  “To prove that we are holding the prisoner, we will send, in due course, a personal object we have taken from him to the Norwegian embassy in Washington, D.C.”

  The Fremont bridge was up. Distracted, Jane had to brake hard as she entered the line of waiting cars.

  She was quite sure that the voice was Curtis Jeffers. He cleared his throat like a nervous after-dinner speaker and went on to read the statement he wanted published in Norway.

  “All life has certain inalienable rights,” he began, and launched into a rambling treatise based loosely on the philosophy of the Enlightenment as applied to animals, the whole thing laced with quasi-legalisms and the threatening pseudomilitary language of 1960s student bombers. “We have taken up arms in defense of the innocent lives of the planet,” he said. “If necessary, we will sacrifice our own lives to prevent genocide. Let the oppressors, the torturers, the killers, all with blood on their hands, be forewarned. And remember, the innocents who are being slaughtered and cut into pieces all over the globe every second of the day, receive no such warning. We will not rest,” he ended, his voice quavering with emotion, “until all that walks on the land or swims in the sea or flies in the air can live freely and without fear of the only truly vicious species—until the day when all the creatures of the planet live in harmony—when every life, regardless of specificity, is lived to the fullest and each creature is free to love and to achieve his or her full creative and spiritual potential.”