Birds of Prey : Previously Copub Sequel to the Hour of the Hunter (9780061739101)

by Jance, Judith A.

Here was Leave It To God’s ugly philosophy rearing its head once again, but I was pretty sure Lars Jenssen wasn’t a card-carrying member of an anti-progress terrorist movement or a hired-gun hit man, either.

  “You did the best you could,” I said quietly. “You almost saved Mike Conyers. It’s not your fault that you couldn’t hang on to him. Nobody could have done more.”

  “You t’ink so?” Lars asked, then he sighed. “The way I see it,” he added, “there’s a whole lot more I shoulda done.”

  19

  BEVERLY JENSSEN LEFT Lars and me plenty of room for our “man-to-man” chat, but I think she would have been disappointed had she been a mouse in the corner and able to hear it. Because, other than those few veiled references to Mike and Lucy Conyers when Lars first came out of the shower, we didn’t mention them again, either directly or indirectly, for most of the afternoon. If that’s not man-to-man, I don’t know what is.

  That doesn’t mean, however, that we didn’t talk. We did. We talked about glaciers the entire time the Starfire Breeze was sailing around Glacier Bay without her passengers getting a close look at anything but a few close-up ice floes covered with seals. As far as I could see, the clouds never lifted, the rain never stopped, and visibility didn’t improve.

  Cruise-ship brochures usually picture blue-ice glaciers set against sunny skies, but viewing glaciers, even in the summer, comes down to the luck of the draw. The U.S. Park Service limits the number of cruise ships that can be in Glacier Bay National Park on any given day. If the Starfire Breeze’s assigned day meant her passengers couldn’t see squat, that was too bad for us. We wouldn’t be allowed a second chance to come back and try again.

  So rather than seeing glaciers, I listened to Lars Jenssen tell stories about glaciers. “Used to be, before all the halibut fleet was refrigerated, we’d go climb up on glaciers or icebergs and hack out some ice before it was time to go to the fishing grounds. Stuff’s so hard it’s hell to cut, but it lasts for danged ever. Even in the middle of the summer, we could take a load of halibut from here to Seattle and never have to worry about running out of ice or having to stop along the way to buy more.”

  “Isn’t cutting ice off glaciers dangerous?” I asked.

  Grinning, Lars looked almost like his old self. “It is if you stand too close to the edge,” he said.

  “What about floating icebergs? Aren’t those dangerous, too?”

  “Best advice is don’t run into ’em,” he said. “It’s just like running into rocks. Nobody ever mentions it much, but as far as I’m concerned, hitting skim ice is way more dangerous than hitting icebergs.”

  “Skim ice?” I asked. “What’s that?”

  “In the spring, freshwater melt freezes and forms a razor-thin layer on top of the salt water. It’s so damned thin, you don’t even see it. But if you go running through it long enough, the ice can cut clear through the bottom of your boat. Next t’ing you know, your boat doesn’t have a bottom. You’d better be in your survival suit and have your lifeboat released.”

  “Did that ever happen to you?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not to me personally, but it did to a good friend of mine, Tommy Olsen. Had a boat called the Reckless. We looked for old Tommy and his crew that whole spring and summer, but we never found any of ’em. Part of the Reckless washed up on shore later. That’s how the Coast Guard knew what had happened. It had been cut in two at the waterline. Poor old Tommy. Left behind a wife, a son, and two little girls. They must all be grown by now.”

  Lars lapsed into somber silence. I wondered if this Alaskan cruise and its accompanying trip down memory lane wasn’t too hard on him. Over the years I had heard Lars tell stories about his life in the halibut fleet, but those tales had all been filled with fun and high jinks and more than a few drunken brawls. The one about Tommy Olsen was tinged with ineffable sadness. It seemed as though some of those old ghosts from the fleet were weighing Lars down almost as much as he was being haunted by what had happened to Mike Conyers.

  Hoping to lighten his load, I tried changing the subject. “It’s a shame the weather’s so bad. I’d like it to break up enough for us to get at least a glimpse of a glacier.”

  Lars shook his head sadly. “It’s nothing,” he said. “If you’ve seen one glacier, you’ve seen ’em all.”

  His dour response told me Beverly’s assessment was right. Not only was Lars Jenssen depressed, he was acting every one of his eighty-seven years.

  “Have you had anything to eat?”

  “Naw,” he said. “Wasn’t hungry.”

  I finally convinced Lars to go upstairs to the Lido Deck, where I persuaded him to try some of the buffet’s lunchtime offerings. What’s that old saying about you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink? Lars allowed the servers to dish up food, but once we sat down at a table, he wasn’t interested in doing anything more than sliding little piles of spaghetti and meatballs around on his plate. I was sitting wondering what I could do to cheer him up when the perpetually cheery voice of the cruise director came over the loudspeaker.

  “Captain Giacometti regrets that today’s weather has been so uncooperative. We will of course remain in Glacier Bay as long as possible in hopes that visibility will improve. However, as a consolation, the captain is pleased to announce two special tango contests to be held later on this afternoon and evening in the Twilight Lounge. First-seating diners may participate beginning at five P.M. The contest for second-seating diners will begin promptly at seven. Those wishing to participate should sign up with the purser’s desk in advance.”

  I understood what was going on. The ship’s crew was gamely trying to make the best of a bad situation by setting up impromptu events to keep people occupied while they weren’t looking for glaciers. It was true some disgruntled passengers had turned surly. Even sitting in the Lido Buffet, I had overheard grumbles and mutters of complaint, especially from people who, due to the Mike Conyers incident the previous day, had missed out on a planned trip on the White Pass excursion train. Now they were missing out on viewing glaciers as well. It occurred to me that the proposed tango contest would do little to settle those folks’ ruffled feathers.

  Then, shortly after the tango contest announcement ended and through the din of clattering tableware, I heard my own name being broadcast through the loudspeaker. “Mr. Beaumont, Mr. J. P. Beaumont. Please call the purser’s desk for a message.”

  Not again, I thought. At this rate, I could just as well be back on duty and wearing a beeper. Lars, however, gave no indication that he had heard the announcement or cared whether or not I responded.

  “Wait right here,” I told him. “I have to go check on something.”

  He nodded absently and waved me away. I hurried to the nearest house phone, which was in the wood-paneled elevator lobby. When I spoke to the purser’s desk I was directed to contact Marc Alley, in Bahia 626. Marc answered his phone after only one ring.

  “Where are you?” he asked as soon as I identified myself.

  “Up in the Lido Buffet,” I told him. “The opposite side from where I saw you this morning. Why? Is something the matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Just wait,” he said. “I’ll come show you.”

  I went back to the table, where I found Lars sitting and staring off into space. “Marc Alley is coming to join us,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Marc Alley?” Lars asked with a frown. “Who’s he?”

  “The other guy who was out on the platform with you and Mike Conyers yesterday—the guy who got knocked down. He had stepped outside hoping to get a picture just as the back of the train went into the tunnel. In all the hubbub of what happened, I don’t think the two of you were ever properly introduced.”

  “Oh,” Lars said. “All right then.”

  Marc showed up a few minutes later. As he approached the table, he caught sight of Lars and started to back off.

  “It’s okay,�
� I said. “Lars Jenssen is my grandmother’s second husband. Lars, this is Marc Alley. Marc, meet Lars.”

  Lars held out his enormous, liver-spotted hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Marc took it and gave it a shake. Then he pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “From the sound of your voice, I’d say this is something urgent,” I ventured.

  Marc nodded. “But are you sure . . . ?” He inclined his head ever so slightly in Lars’ direction. “Maybe we should discuss this in private.”

  “Lars has been around,” I said. “Whatever it is, I’m sure he can handle it.”

  Marc reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a familiar bright-yellow Kodak picture envelope. “After I talked to you this morning, I decided not to wait until after I took the rest of the pictures to have the film developed,” he said. “I had the photo shop print the ones I’d already taken. Here, look for yourself.”

  He passed a stack of color prints over to me. I sifted through them one at a time. Some of the pictures were taken on board the ship. Others showed views taken through the windows of the White Pass and Yukon train. The next-to-last shot was a crooked one that showed the rough rock surfaces of a tunnel along with an out-of-focus view of the steep tree-and-rock-covered terrain just outside the tunnel’s entrance. But it was the last picture in the stack that was the real stunner.

  In it a stark white face stared into the camera’s lens. Red-eye effect gave the face an unearthly appearance, like that of a monster dreamed up in the crazed mind of a horror-movie director and then crafted by a special-effects whiz. I was so astonished by what I saw there that I blurted out the words before I could stifle them.

  “Why, it’s Lucy!” I exclaimed. “Lucy Conyers. What the hell was she doing out there?” But then, of course, I came face-to-face with the answer to my own question—the only answer possible. Under the cover of darkness, Lucy Conyers had stepped out onto the platform for no other reason than to shove her husband off the train.

  Without a word, Lars Jenssen reached out a hand and lifted the picture from my fingers. He held it up to his eyes and studied it wordlessly for the better part of a minute. Then, nodding, he handed it back to me.

  “Ya, sure,” he said. “I knew it.” And then he looked away.

  “Wait a minute. You knew it?” I demanded. “Are you telling me you saw Lucy at the time it happened? You saw her out there on the balcony?”

  He nodded.

  “But if you saw that—if you knew she was the one who did it—why didn’t you say something?”

  “You haven’t been there, Beau,” Lars answered quietly. “You don’t know what it’s like. I’ve been through the same t’ing myself, with Aggie—through times when I wanted to put her out of her misery. When I wanted to put us both out of our misery. I know exactly what Lucy was up against—what she was going through. I understand why she did what she did. Once you’ve been there—really been there—you realize nobody has the right to tell her she was wrong.”

  “Murder is wrong,” I insisted. “But I can understand why you didn’t want to be the one to turn her in.”

  “It’s like I told you,” Lars said quietly. “I don’t like having the power of life and death over someone—never did. It’s too big a responsibility.”

  That’s when I realized that earlier, when Lars had been talking about having the power of life and death, he hadn’t been thinking about losing his grip on Mike Conyers and letting the man fall to his death. No, he had been agonizing over what he knew Lucy Conyers had done and whether or not he should turn her in because of it. For him it was more complicated than a simple matter of right or wrong.

  I didn’t doubt for a minute that Lars Jenssen had lived through exactly the same kinds of temptation with Aggie. The difference between him and Lucy Conyers was that Lars had resisted them. But he must have come close at times—close enough to realize that he, too, might have found himself sitting in a jail cell and under investigation for murder. No wonder he hadn’t been himself. No wonder Lars Jenssen had been acting “old.” If I had been in his shoes, I would have felt sick and old, too. This wasn’t a situation that came with easy, one-size-fits-all answers.

  Marc Alley had listened to this whole exchange in dead silence. “Does this mean I wasn’t the target after all?”

  His question made my face flush with shame before I even managed to reply. After all, I was the one who had gone around proclaiming Lucy Conyers’ innocence to anyone who cared to listen. It burned me up to think that I had been so wrong about her while Sonny Liebowitz had been dead-on right. Sonny was someone I didn’t care to see ever again. I didn’t want him close enough to me for the creep to rub my nose in my error, which, being the kind of guy Sonny was, he would be hell-bent to do if he ever had the chance.

  I’d had more than my fill of people like that. Detective Liebowitz was a near clone of my old nemesis back at Seattle PD—the supreme jerk of the universe, Detective Paul Kramer. It had been Kramer’s promotion to Captain Larry Powell’s place in homicide that had been the straw that broke this camel’s back. When Kramer moved his smirking face into Larry’s fish-bowl office and planted his wide butt in Larry’s leather-backed chair, it was only a matter of time before Detective J. P. Beaumont was on his way out. Permanently.

  “Mike Conyers was an Alzheimer’s patient,” I explained to Marc. “Taking care of him must have been too hard on Lucy, his wife. From looking at this, I’d say she reached the end of her rope somewhere along the track as we wound our way up the mountain to White Pass.”

  “I do remember seeing her,” Marc said, nodding. “I remember her crying in the car after it all happened. She seemed very upset. But she also seemed old to me—too old and not that strong.”

  “Desperation makes you strong,” Lars replied. “Sometimes, you yust don’t know your own strength.”

  I felt as though Lars and I owed Marc Alley the courtesy of a more detailed answer. “You see,” I explained. “Lars’ first wife had Alzheimer’s, too. It was after Aggie’s death that he married my grandmother.”

  Marc nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease for everyone concerned, but I still don’t know what I should do with this picture.”

  “You’ll have to turn it over to the proper authorities,” I said.

  “Why?” Lars asked.

  “Because this is a murder investigation,” I explained. “It’s against the law to withhold evidence or information, and you have to admit, this is pretty compelling evidence. The picture puts Lucy Conyers out on the platform right at the time Mike went over the rail. Look on the back of the photo. It’s even timed and dated. The picture doesn’t actually show Lucy giving Mike a push, but any first-year prosecutor will be able to make that case and have it stick.”

  “But what about Lucy’s lawyer?” Lars asked. “Can’t she do something?”

  “At this point, I’d say the best Carol Ehlers could go for would be a negotiated plea agreement. Now that you mention it, the sooner, the better. Once this picture falls into Sonny Liebowitz’s hands, things will only get worse.”

  Lars started to get up, then dropped back into his chair.

  “What about Beverly?” he asked hollowly. “What about Claire and Florence? What’s going to happen to them when they find out about what Lucy did? They all think of her as a friend. They’re not going to want to believe this.”

  “They may not want to believe, but they will,” I assured him. “They’re all big girls. They’ll be able to take it. And remember, Lars, my grandfather, Jonas Piedmont, may have died of a stroke rather than Alzheimer’s, but he was sick for a long time. He was in a wheelchair, unable to take care of himself, and totally dependent on Beverly for years before he died. Beverly may never have said anything to you about it, but I’m sure she’s lived though the same kind of hell you and Aggie did, and Mike and Lucy Conyers, too, for that matter. I’d be surprised if she hadn’t been subject to the same kinds of temptation.”

&nb
sp; Lars looked at me. “You t’ink so?”

  “I know so.”

  He nodded. “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll go find Beverly and tell her what’s happened. You call that lady lawyer.”

  I nodded. Meanwhile, Marc Alley had been gathering up his scattered pictures. “Mind if I tag along?” he asked.

  “By all means,” I told him. “After all, they’re your pictures.”

  We went back down to the Capri Deck. When I opened the door to my stateroom, I was a little concerned about whether or not Naomi would be at home. Not that she shouldn’t have been. Not that we were doing anything wrong. It was just that the situation would have been awkward, and I was happy not to have to deal with it.

  Again I cursed myself for not having brought along my cell phone. Once again it seemed to take forever to put through a ship-to-shore phone call. Once the call went through, however, Carol answered on the second ring.

  “Carol Ehlers here,” she said.

  “This is Beau,” I said. “J. P. Beaumont.”

  “Good to hear from you. Don’t worry. Things are fine.”

  “Things aren’t fine,” I told her. “In fact, I’d say they’re anything but fine.” For the next several minutes I explained the damning details of the photo.

  “The picture really is time-dated?” Carol asked when I finished.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “And it’s clearly Lucy Conyers in the photo—Lucy and nobody else?”

  “No mistaking her,” I said. “It’s Lucy, all right.”

  “It’s a good thing I’m still here in Skagway,” Carol said. “I’ll go talk to Lucy right away. I was visiting with the prosecutor a little earlier, and he was hinting around about a plea bargain. Charging sweet little old ladies with murder doesn’t win popularity contests. I’ll try to convince Lucy that we should take the deal before things get any worse—because you’re absolutely right. As soon as that picture ends up in Sonny’s hands, things will get worse. If we can put a plea agreement in place soon enough, there’s no reason it should ever have to.”