by Dave Daren
But Ansong looked unconvinced, and I didn’t blame her for doubting this new piece of information. Even I had a hard time believing Morris had forgotten something so important, and he now conveniently remembered it. But my previous experience revealed him to be an atrocious liar, just in the short time we’d been together, and if he was lying now, he had undiscovered talents as an actor.
Ansong pressed her lips together and then looked over at me.
“Are you sure Harrison’s jet ski is gone?” she asked.
“I went to his house to check,” I said. “It wasn’t in the garage or in his backyard. As far as I can tell, it’s missing. I talked to Yura as well. She said a friend probably has it and will bring it back. But I doubt that.”
Ansong stood up straight and gripped her chin. Her eyes found a point near Morris’ head as she processed the information, and Morris squirmed uncomfortably under the blanket.
“There might be a third party involved,” she finally admitted. “But that doesn’t let Austin off the hook. He could have an accomplice.”
It was the same theory Yura had suggested, and I could see why Morris was convinced the town was out to get him. Clearly, I had a long road ahead of me if I was going to prove the man’s innocence.
“I have another question,” I announced.
“Um, okay,” Morris nearly whispered.
“When Vann came up from below deck, was he holding a wine glass?” I asked.
Morris shook his head immediately and even managed a faint laugh.
“No,” he answered. “I’d be covered in stitches if that were the case. He definitely would have hit me with it and then used the pieces to cut me up.”
“Was there a wine glass on the deck when you woke up?” I asked.
Morris frowned and squinted at the ceiling.
“Yes,” he answered. “It was just rolling around. It seemed odd, because I didn’t see a bottle around.”
“Did you move--” I started to ask.
“He didn’t,” Ansong interrupted. “We checked for fingerprints on the entire boat. We found Vann’s on everything, including the wine glass, the bottle, and the counters below deck. Morris’ fingerprints only showed up on the edge of the wheelhouse and the deck.”
“Why does this matter?” Jackson huffed from his corner.
Ansong’s eyes narrowed as she sorted through the ramifications. She was a lot quicker than her partner, and I could tell she didn’t like what the new information suggested.
“If Morris is telling the truth, and the glass wasn’t in his hand during the fight, then that would mean Vann carried the glass up to the deck,” Ansong supplied. “After the fight.”
“And that means he wasn’t dead after he fought Morris,” I concluded.
Jackson leaned back in his seat and folded his arms behind his head. He reminded me of a high school kid who liked to challenge everything the teacher said just to create trouble. In truth, his mind was already made up.
“What are you thinking?” I asked the younger officer when I realized he wasn’t planning on sharing his thoughts.
“Well, I just think there’s another way to look at it,” Jackson argued. “Harrison could have been having a nice drink below deck. He hears his name being called, so he comes up and sees Austin. He puts his glass down on the deck and then walks out in full view of Austin. Glass was already there the entire time.”
“That’s reasonable,” I admitted. “Am I to assume that you think he was drinking alone?”
Jackson chuckled, but when he caught his partner’s warning look, he turned it into a cough and put on his serious face.
“Well, after the bombshell Morris just dropped, I’m not so sure,” he said. “The working theory ever since we arrested him was that Harrison was drinking alone.”
“Do you have information to suggest otherwise?” Ansong asked. “Besides the missing jet ski?”
“I do,” I answered. “According to Yura, Vann owned three wine glasses, and now there’s only one in his house.”
Ansong breathed through her nose and then looked at Morris for a moment. My client sank down into his blankets as he cast me a hopeful look.
“What?” she said in a firm voice. “How does this help your case?”
“Well, for one thing I have testimony from someone other than my client,” I explained. “And this testimony supports the idea that Vann took two of his glasses to his boat with the intention of drinking with someone. I should also add that Yura informed me that it wasn’t in Vann’s nature to drink alone. He drank in the company of others. But I’m guessing you already knew that.”
“Yeah,” Jackson admitted with a laugh. “Harrison was a fun guy to be around.”
Ansong turned on him with a vicious glare that caused him to recoil back into his chair. He held up his hands to shield himself, though I thought they offered little protection against Ansong’s anger.
“Come on,” he complained. “There’s no point in hiding it. Everyone in town knows how Harrison was. Brooks can find any number of people to confirm what Yura said.”
Ansong glared at her partner for a long heartbeat, took a deep breath, and then finally turned to me. She was trying to deny what I was saying, but I could tell she realized just how precarious their investigation really was.
“Be honest,” I said to her. “Do you really think Morris did it?”
Ansong’s face suddenly went blank, like a switch had been turned off. She might as well have been staring at a blank wall at the DMV for all the emotion she showed.
But Morris had mentioned before that she was acting completely different from what he was used to, and I wondered if this was an act to scare Morris into confessing or a psychological tactic by her to distance herself from potential suspects. Utqiagvik was small, and so their number of crimes were very low. When she responded to a rare call, the chance of her running into someone she knew was very high. In order to uphold the law and remain fair, did she resort to this sudden cold shoulder?
“Here’s the issue,” she began. “Even if I wanted to believe Morris was innocent, I couldn’t. The biggest piece of evidence we have is his physical presence on the boat during the night of Vann’s murder. The evidence you’ve gathered is all circumstantial. Maybe the wine glass was in his hand. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he owned three glasses. Maybe he broke one before last night. Maybe the jet ski was there. Maybe it wasn’t.”
She breathed in and released another deep breath.
“Most of your speculation can only be confirmed by Morris’ testimony,” she continued. “And the problem with that is the fact that he’s the prime suspect. His word means nothing because everything he says and does is being interpreted as self-preservation.”
“That’s not--” I started to protest.
But her glare was back, and she turned it on Morris.
“We’ll search for Vann’s jet ski, and we’ll keep checking on the other potential suspects,” she said. “But unless a piece of physical evidence is found that places someone else on the boat, you’re either confessing to the murder, or we’re going to court.”
She moved toward the door, and Jackson jumped up to follow her.
“Anything else you have to reveal, Brooks?” she asked as she stood in the doorway.
I shook my head since I had the feeling that actually speaking would earn me another wrathful look.
“Good,” she declared and marched from the room.
Jackson ran after, and a moment later, the door slammed shut behind them. Still, I waited a moment just to be sure they were gone before I looked at my client again. The man was understandably angry, and he slammed one bruised fist against the blanket before he looked at me.
“Can you believe that?” he yelled as he lifted a hand to point at the door. “Even with my quick thinking, she still doubts me.”
“Your quick thinking?” I asked in a puzzled voice.
“I made up the part about Harrison being tied to the boat,” he reveale
d.
“You what?” I yelled as I lunged forward.
I towered over him, and my hands reflexively balled into fists.
He pulled the blanket up to his chin as he tried to bury himself into the mattress of his bed. Fear and anger overwhelmed him, but I had no sympathy for him.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Aren’t you supposed to be on my side? Besides, the lie didn’t change anything.”
“What else have you lied about, Morris?” I demanded.
I’d intentionally dropped the title, and my voice had sunk to a near growl. I wasn’t even sure how well he could understand me, but he flinched away from me as he tried to hide beneath the blanket.
“Nothing, I swear,” he yelled.
I turned away from him to rub my forehead. This fucking idiot. I was really starting to think I should have refused the case.
“You just did exactly what Officer Ansong was talking about,” I said as I tried for a more even tone.
“I know, I know,” he said. “I just… I just don’t want to be treated like a criminal anymore. I want to live in peace.”
“She’s trying to get into your head,” I told him. “She wants you to think a confession will make her stop harassing you.”
“Well, it’s working,” he complained. “I’ve had drinks with that woman. We’ve told each other jokes, and now she looks at me like I’m nothing. It’s disturbing.”
“Here’s the thing,” I snapped. “It’s an act. If you confess, she won’t go away. In fact, a lot more officers just like her will appear, and your life will be anything but normal. And the same goes for telling lies. That’s considered obstruction of justice, by the way, and it’s a crime as well. So, no more lies, to me or to the police.”
“But you can’t tell them, right?” he pleaded. “It’s… privileged or something, right?”
“No,” I replied. “You said it in front of two officers, so there’s no privilege.”
“Oh,” he said as he seemed to realize just how deep the shit was that he’d jumped into.
“Here’s the deal,” I said. “No more lies, to me or any officer of the law. If you’re not completely honest with me from this point on, then I’ll drop you as my client. And I can assure you, that will only make you look more guilty. Now, do we have a deal?”
He nodded enthusiastically.
“Good,” I said. “Anything else you want to lay out in the open before we proceed?”
He shook his head quickly.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re going to proceed in the same fashion as the police. We’ll also compile a list of potential suspects, and I’ll go interview them. Understand?”
“Yes,” he answered in a small voice.
“Our list of suspects has to fit a specific description,” I explained. “They have to have a motive for killing Vann, and they have to be comfortable with you taking the blame. They might be someone who hates you or feels indifferent toward what happens to you.”
“Right,” Morris said. “Do you want me to give you a list of people who might fit that description?”
“Does anyone come to mind?” I asked.
He twisted the blanket around his hands in thought as he looked off to the side, and his lips twisted into a frown. The only sound in the room for what felt like hours was the heart monitor, and I was starting to wonder if there really were any doctors in the building.
When Morris had managed to wrap the blanket up to his elbow, he finally sighed and shook his head. He looked back at me with a pained expression, and it wasn’t hard to guess what he was going to say.
“I can’t think of a single person,” he sighed. “I’ve had some bad interactions with people around town, but nothing that would make anyone want to frame me for murder.”
“It’s not just about you,” I reminded him. “The victim is Vann. You need to think about who would want to kill him.”
“Well, that’s just the thing,” he said. “You heard Onalik. Uh, I mean Officer Jackson. Harrison was a well-liked guy, and if he had any enemies, I didn’t know them.”
“Didn’t he make enemies out of you and your crew?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” he asked as he furrowed his brow.
“He knew about you guys fishing in the Arctic Ocean,” I reminded him. “Didn’t he threaten you all with telling the police?”
Morris sighed and began at the blanket again.
“I know this sounds bad, but he only told me that he knew,” he said. “I mean, I think he only told me. I’m pretty certain Luke and Marleen would have called me if he had said anything to them. He didn’t threaten to go to the police until I was talking to him last night from my boat.”
“Then when did he tell you he knew?” I asked.
“It was two days ago,” he explained. “Our fishing trip in the Arctic Ocean was a couple days prior to that, and I guess he noticed how much fish we had caught despite being down a fishing net.”
Morris sighed and shifted in his bed. His gaze drifted to the window, and I imagined he was seeing the scene again.
“I was on my boat alone, doing some cleaning below deck,” he began. “I heard someone climb aboard, and I figured it was Luke or Marleen. But it was Harrison. He sat down on the steps like he owned the place. I told him to piss off, and he just laughed. And then he started asking me about the fish we brought in, how it seemed like too much. The last thing he said to me was something like, ‘I guess you found a new place to fish.’ And then that bastard winked at me.”
“But he didn’t actually say he knew where you were fishing?” I confirmed.
“Not then, no,” Morris sighed. “I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what he meant, and I was driving myself insane with worry. I could overlook what he said because it was just the usual trash-talk you hear around the docks, but it was the wink that bothered me.”
“And you finally went to confront him last night?” I said.
“That’s right,” Morris confirmed. “That’s when he outright said that he knew. When I asked if he was going to the police, he said that depended on me. I wanted to know what that meant. I saw a nasty side of him I had never seen before. It was a side of him I didn’t know existed.”
“Really?” I said. “But you two were rivals.”
Morris chuckled humorlessly.
“He mentioned that, too,” he said. “Yeah, we were rivals, but it was never serious. At least, I never treated it seriously. We did dumb stuff like remove boat parts or steal supplies and hide them. We just tried to waste each other’s time so we could get a head-start.”
“So it was a friendly thing?” I asked.
This description didn’t fit with the image I had in my mind. I had pictured their rivalry to be far more cutthroat based on what I’d heard fromYura and the police.
“Sort of,” Morris answered, though he sounded unsure. “It was silly in some ways, but at the end of the day, we were messing with each other’s livelihoods. One poorly executed prank could result in weeks without a fishing trip, and that meant weeks without pay.”
“And that could mean weeks without food or the other basic necessities,” I mused.
“Exactly,” he sighed. “We weren’t out to kill each other, but we were competing for the same fish. That’s why it was such a shock when I found one of the fishing nets broken.”
“Because that was the kind of prank that could set you back for more than a few days,” I said.
“The goal had always been to waste each other’s time so that one of us could get to the best fishing spot first,” he sighed. “The crew stuck behind would still be able to fish, they just wouldn’t bring in the best haul.”
“I see,” I said as I leaned back in my chair. “Let’s actually back up a second. How did your crew feel about the destroyed net?”
“They were pretty angry,” he answered. “But Luke took it the hardest. He’s a bit of a boy scout, so he thought it was pretty low of Harrison to do
something like that. He’s normally a quiet guy, so his reaction caught me off-guard.”
I nodded as I thought about Yura’s theory that Harrison had approached Morris’ crew.
“If Harrison had approached Luke about the illegal fishing while Luke was still angry about the net, do you think Luke could have killed Harrison?” I asked.
Morrison released a genuine laugh at the question, and color returned to his face as his cheeks turned red. When his laugh finally started to fade, he shook his head and looked at me like I’d just proposed a trip to the moon.
“There’s no way that would happen,” he said. “First of all, Luke would never get on a boat with Harrison.”
“He would if he was being blackmailed,” I argued.
“No,” Morris insisted. “Not Luke. Because then that would mean he’s okay with seeing me be shipped off to jail, and I know he wouldn’t be. We’re great pals.”
“Are you?” I asked. “Do you think you know him well enough to make that claim?”
Morris huffed, shook his head again, and stared at the blanket while he gathered his arguments. It was clear he didn’t believe Luke would betray him, and he was angry that I had even suggested it.
“You haven’t met Luke yet,” he finally said. “That’s why it’s so easy for you to slander him. Luke’s a good man, and he gets along great with me. Same for Marleen.”
“According to Yura, you and Marleen aren’t on the best terms,” I said.
Morris rolled his eyes at that, but he didn’t leap immediately to her defense like he had with Luke.
“It sounds like Yura really wants Marleen in jail,” he said. “Maybe you should look into Yura.”
He arched his eyebrows at the suggestion, but I only shrugged. Yura was on my list as well, but she wasn’t the one I wanted to talk about right then.
“Anyway, Marleen’s been complaining about the boat for years, even when it was practically new,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It’s a running joke at this point. Everyone ignores her. Except Yura, I guess.”
“Then you do spend money on your boat?” I asked.