by North, Will
He wondered what Robbie would have thought about what was happening now. Old Robbie; now there was a true gent. His heart and soul had been in the business until his son Justin was killed. Robbie’s older brother Harlan became chairman after Robbie himself died. Fact is, though, the Bishop couldn’t have cared less; Soren had run the show from then on. Then, when Pete married and Harlan handed over the reins to Tyler Strong…well, that was the beginning of the end, wasn’t it?
The economics of coastal shipping had changed by then too. By the 1990s, break bulk shipping—the kind of soup-to-nuts mixed cargo Pacific Pioneer had always carried to the remote ports of western Alaska, the Aleutians, and the Pribilof Islands—was struggling. Container ships had captured the most accessible bulk markets, air transport costs had dropped, planes were more efficient than old ships at handling specialty goods, and shipboard labor and fuel costs had risen sharply.
In competent hands, these market shifts would not have been insurmountable. Soren had seen it coming. He’d warned Tyler, but the lad had done nothing. Then, a little over a year ago, SeaFresh Fisheries, the fresh and canned salmon company in Yakutat that always filled their hulls for the back haul to Seattle, canceled its long-standing contract. It seemed Japanese consumers, worried about reports of diseased farm-raised Coho salmon from Chile, had created a spike in demand for wild, flash-frozen Sockeye from Alaska—Pacific Pioneer’s principal backhaul—and SeaFresh decided to ship exclusively to Japan, via newer and cheaper Japanese refrigerated vessels. Though Pacific Pioneer still had clients for northbound shipping, Soren knew the company could not survive by returning empty to Seattle.
Immediately, Soren had called Tyler’s office. He received no response and left increasingly urgent messages. Finally, via registered letter, he wrote to propose a solution. The company, he urged, should be restructured:
I believe it is time for Pacific Pioneer to abandon the break bulk cargo business and establish retail supply store outlets to serve the West Alaskan fishing industry in ports like Dutch Harbor. No such service currently exists, and, because we are known and trusted, this could be the company’s salvation. Our own vessels can supply the stores and the margins provided by selling at retail will stabilize our financial situation. Unless we take this bold step, Pacific Pioneer will not survive.
It was two weeks before Tyler responded:
I will not oversee the downgrading of my wife’s family’s shipping firm to a chain of retail stores. I suggest you redouble your efforts to ensure the company’s profitability by seeking new customers and cutting costs. That is the general manager’s responsibility.
Soren looked at the letter and what he saw was Strong creating a paper trail to cover his own butt. Then, to Soren’s amazement, Tyler took out a major capital equipment loan to pay for overhauling two of their vessels, plunging them further into debt. It wasn’t until Soren received a copy of the new loan agreement from a bank they hadn’t dealt with before that he discovered how Tyler had swung the deal: his wife’s signature pledged her personal assets as collateral.
For a while, they limped along. But an old, established company dies by a thousand cuts: long-time customers—any company’s “cash cows”—cancel long-standing repeat orders because of economic reversals in their own sectors and go under. Demand for certain products in the target market either declines or shifts and shipping orders drop off. Fuel, parts, and labor costs skyrocket and net revenues decline as costs climb. Payments to fuel suppliers and repair companies get postponed, and very quickly, credit tightens. Deferred maintenance causes ships to break down in remote locations, necessitating expensive emergency repairs. Banks providing capital and operating loans note the declines in both orders and revenues, find the company in violation of performance covenants in loan agreements, and call in the loans.
All of it was happening to Pacific Pioneer. With each reversal, Soren wrote to Tyler, who was both chief executive officer and chief financial officer. Sometimes he got belligerent replies; mostly he got none. On a couple of occasions, Soren appealed to Pete’s father, Harlan, but the Bishop simply forwarded the correspondence to his son-in-law, which only further infuriated Tyler.
Finally, when two of their remaining three ships, the M/V ATKA and M/V COLD BAY, were seized by the U.S. Marshall’s Office in Seattle on behalf of unpaid creditors in August and the crews were let go, he’d had enough. He’d given his life to Pete’s family’s firm; he would not oversee its collapse. That belonged in Tyler’s lap. He spent the next few weeks organizing paperwork and then he was done.
There’d never been a pension program, of course, but Soren had set money aside for retirement. He wanted to say goodbye to Pete, whom he’d known since she was a toddler, but decided if anyone was to tell her that her grandfather’s legacy was lost, it should be her own husband.
thirteen
TYLER STRONG, barefoot and wearing only his boxer shorts, stood at the railing of the long waterfront porch at the Petersen Old House on Labor Day morning and tossed back the remainder of a screwdriver that might as well have been a vodka martini for all the orange juice it had in it. It was nearly nine o’clock and the sun turned the face of every wavelet on the incoming tide searchlight bright. His eyes hurt. His head hurt. The vodka was designed—if any form of conscious design could be attributed to him this particular morning—to medicate his hangover and, in some even less conscious effort, to smooth away the jagged state of his mind.
He was having difficulty patching together the present moment, as if it were a puzzle to which too many pieces had gone missing. Pete was one of the missing pieces. His children were some of the others.
Pete should be here packing. Kids, too. Justine and Two are old enough to know better than to disappear on Labor Day morning; too much work to do. But nothing’s been touched. Where are they? Why is it so quiet?
He heard a phone ringing and was surprised to discover a cell phone in his other hand. He flipped it open.
“Yes?”
“This is the King County Sheriff’s Office on Vashon. I believe you called 911 to report a missing person?”
“I did?” Did I?
“Is this Tyler Strong?”
“Yes, of course it is.”
“Well, sir, according to the call center in Burien, someone named Tyler Strong called to report his wife missing at eight thirty-one this morning and left this phone number. They forwarded the message to the island office, you see.”
Tyler stared east across the shimmering water as if by doing so he might find answers there.
“Mr. Strong?”
Tyler focused on the phone at his ear. “Yes?”
“Is your wife there?”
Tyler looked around. “Um, no.”
“And did you call 911 to report her missing? About a half hour ago?”
“Well, I guess I must have.”
Sherriff’s deputy Chris Christiansen had been an island-based King County police officer for nearly forty years. And this morning, he was thinking that in all those years he’d seldom had an odder conversation than the one he was having right now with Tyler Strong, whose family he knew well.
“That would be Martha Petersen Strong?”
“Yes. Pete.”
“And when did you discover she was missing, Mr. Strong?”
At some level, Tyler knew this should not be a difficult question. Obviously he’d called 911. Because Pete was missing. She wasn’t in the house. No one was but him.
“She wasn’t here when I woke up this morning,” was all he could think to say. Is that right?
“I see. And when was that, sir?”
“A couple of hours ago, I guess.” Was it?
“A stroll to the Burton coffee stand?”
“She doesn’t like caffeine.”
“I understand they have decaf now.”
“She doesn’t drink coffee.”
For a man who’d lived on coffee most of his life, this was nearly incomprehensible to Chris Christiansen, but
he soldiered on.
“Her car?” he asked.
Tyler peered around the corner of the porch. “Here.”
“I see. So, she’s been gone for a couple of hours.”
“I don’t know; maybe more.” Tyler was getting irritated by these questions, and by how much seemed so broken up in his head.
“Maybe more? You don’t know?”
“It was the Labor Day weekend beach party, Officer; I haven’t had much sleep.” It was, wasn’t it? Just last night?
“Yes, of course; and now you’re closing down the cottages for the season, I imagine, heading back to Seattle?”
“Yes. And she’s not here.” Where are any of them?
Christiansen decided to take the neighborly approach. “I certainly understand your concern, Mr. Strong; I felt the same way when my late wife Harriet disappeared, God rest her soul. She did once, you know. Oh, yes. Remember it well. November 1980, night of the presidential election. I was watchin’ the results on television, you know? When I looked around, she was gone. Figured she was in the kitchen or something, but no. Not in bed either. Strange, huh?”
“Strange,” Tyler repeated.
“You’ll never guess what had happened,” Christiansen continued.
Tyler was trying to make this conversation fit with the other pieces of reality that lay scattered like broken shards around the inside of his skull. He said nothing.
“Well, I’ll tell you. Seems she was pretty steamed Reagan was winning by a landslide so she took off to cool down. Scared me silly!”
“Uh-huh.”
“See my point?”
“Um…yeah.” Tyler wasn’t really attending to the conversation; he was scanning the beach for his kids.
“Your missus could be anywhere. Perfectly innocent. Who knows what women get into their heads anyway, am I right?”
“Sure…”
“You’ve checked the other houses on the beach, I’m guessing, Mr. Strong? Called her friends?”
“Uh-huh.” Did I?
“I see. Well, I can understand your concern, Mr. Strong. I certainly can. But here’s the thing: the county has a policy on missing persons. We don’t investigate until forty-eight hours have elapsed.”
“What?”
“So many false alarms, you see.”
“But anything could happen in forty-eight hours!”
“Actually, sir, what we’ve discovered is that almost nothing does. They nearly always show up, safe and sound.”
“What about my children? They’re gone, too!”
Chris Christiansen stared at the phone in disbelief. Strong must be drunk; that was the only explanation.
“You mean young Adam, sir?” he asked.
But Tyler Strong had hung up.
***
HAVING SEEN TO Mrs. Forrester’s dog, Colin was driving the clinic van south on his way to Edwinna’s when a cavernous emptiness opened in his stomach to remind him he hadn’t eaten anything yet this morning. In another half hour, hunger would leave him the gift of a knife-in-the-temple headache. He pulled over at the Cemetery Road intersection, let Eileen out, and followed her up the worn steps of the Coffee Roasterie. It was like stepping back half a century. The old wooden building with its broad front porch was home to the state’s oldest coffee roaster, a big copper and steel antique still in use roasting—naturally, on this right-thinking island—“Organic Fair Trade” beans.
The darkly made-up, partridge-plump younger woman behind the register grinned broadly as he approached. “The sun has just risen on my day!” she exclaimed.
Colin smiled and shook his head. The day was young and he was already tired.
“Morning, Cyn.”
“Like I’d ever be ‘your sin!’ What’ll it be, doc?” She pulled a dog biscuit from a jar and slipped it to Eileen.
“A large drip and one of your luscious muffins, thanks.”
“There’s a large drip in here, all right, but he can forget about my luscious muffins,” she teased, adjusting an ample bosom.
“That’s what I like about you,” Colin said. “You’re totally about customer service.”
Cyndy Blessing was a bit too old to get away with the Goth look anymore; Colin guessed late-thirties. But the spiked hair dyed raspberry, the steel eyebrow stud, the layered, lacy, torn, and curiously sexy black clothes that both covered and accentuated her zaftig figure, and the platform soled, patent leather “bother boots” she sported all suited her somehow and added a certain theatricality to the scene. The one thing she couldn’t darken was her eyes, blue as sapphires rimmed with stars; their iridescence was only accentuated by the heavy black eyeliner.
Cyndy was a single mom with a son who was a freshman in high school and who helped out at the clinic sometimes. He was a straight-arrow honors student and she was quietly but immensely proud of him.
“How’s that boy of yours?” Colin asked.
“Jean-Paul?”
The father wasn’t French; the father was unknown. She’d named the boy after the existentialist, Sartre.
“Do you have others hidden in the attic?”
“No way; one was enough. The latest is that he’s gonna be in AP classes this year.” She shook her head as if she’d have much preferred he’d been arrested for petty theft.
“You sure about your muffins? I’m ravenous, and in a hurry.”
She gave him a theatrical sneer. “That’s just like you men; always in a hurry with my muffins.” Pause for effect, then, “I’ve got a blueberry left.”
“Sold. You say hi to J-P for me, okay? Tell him he’s always welcome at the clinic. That boy has a nice touch with animals.”
“You’re just trying to get on my good side.”
“All your sides are good, Cyn.”
She waved him away with a smile and Colin took an empty cardboard cup out to the vacuum-press coffee dispensers on the porch, pumped out a pitch black organic French roast, and added half-and-half.
He sat on one of the benches in the sun, fed bits of muffin to Eileen and stared at the traffic. He knew he should hurry on to Edwinna’s, but he needed to think. Patsy had been right: he wasn’t thinking clearly this morning.
Colin Ryan had the sort of mind that, without effort, was always three or four steps ahead of wherever he was at the moment. It was a distinct advantage in medicine, but in life it kept him perpetually in advance of the present and therefore only dimly aware of it. It was a skill he’d learned as a teen, a way to anticipate and prepare for whatever danger might await at home, where the heat of his father’s anger or the cold of his mother’s anxiety could never be predicted and you had to be ready for anything. He’d come back after an evening out prowling the neighborhood or just hanging out on a stoop with his pals, stand in front of the olive drab door to his family’s apartment, stare at the brass doorknob, and sort through the alternative conditions that might exist on the other side. Before he turned the knob, he had mapped out two or three strategies: what reactions his arrival might cause—sullen silence, volcanic rage, drunken confusion—how he would respond, what the likely next step would be, and so on out to several iterations.
But he hadn’t anticipated Pete’s attempted suicide and he felt he’d somehow failed her. At the same time, he was struggling to come to terms with his own emotions about her attempt. He was angry with her, just as Patsy said—Patsy, who he realized he relied upon for much more than her professional skills; Patsy, who cared enough to tell him the truth.
Absently, he tossed another piece of muffin to Eileen. Unlike most dogs, she never simply snatched food in mid-air. No, she’d let it land and, if absolutely necessary, move her body to approach the morsel. Then she’d sniff at it awhile with a certain suspicion, as if, like some royal, she wished her official taster were present to demonstrate its safety.
He was angry with Tyler, too, incandescent with anger and struggling to get it under control. He’d experienced his friend’s odd volatility for years—his manic energy and petulant fur
y during otherwise friendly games, his tendency to say provocative things at inappropriate times, his need to attract the attention of women, his descents into surly silence. But he’d never imagined Tyler might hurt his wife. And yet how else to explain those wrist bruises?
There was a part of Colin—a somehow broken part, he now understood—that had believed for years that Pete would one day reward his fidelity. But it never happened. How ironic it was that she would rather be abused by a husband, and even attempt suicide, than seek his comfort and protection. And how pitiful. Who was he angry with? Himself, more than anyone. He was a fool. But a caring fool with work to do. He tossed the coffee cup in a bin.
“Come on Eileen, let’s go see our patient.”
fourteen
MARTHA “PETE” PETERSEN STRONG retched into the big aluminum stockpot for what seemed to her like the hundredth time. She was empty, drained dry, and wished she wasn’t, because the reflex would not stop. It was as if her body, having rid itself of the poison, was now punishing her for poisoning it. She wasn’t even fully conscious. She had no sense of time or place; her only reality was sickness.
Edwinna Rutherford wiped Pete’s forehead with a cool, damp washcloth. When the spasm subsided, she pulled the younger woman to a sitting position against a bank of white linen pillows in her bed. Beyond the window, through the glossy green leaves of the red-barked Madronas, a rower in a single shell white as a gull’s breast skimmed over the surface of the outer harbor, trailing molten gold in the slanting light each time the oars came out of the water.
Pete’s eyes struggled to focus.
“Edwinna.”
“That’s me, toots.”
“Where am I?”
“Be it ever so humble: my place.”
Pete made to shake her head but it felt like there were razor blades inside it. “I don’t understand.”