Alaskan Legal: A Legal Thriller

by Dave Daren

  “Look, no offense, but I’m not really in the mood to answer more questions,” he said. “I’ve had enough of my day wasted, and I don’t want to spend more of it engaging in pointless conversations.”

  “You think a conversation with me is pointless?” I questioned. “Why’s that?”

  “Well, I mean, you’re just looking for information that proves Austin’s innocent,” he said as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Stuff you can use in court. I don’t have anything like that for you. I mean, why would I? In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m not friends with Austin.”

  He started to walk away, but I maneuvered around him to block his path, and he stumbled backward and stared at me in astonishment.

  “Mr. Westcott, I’m not only looking for information that proves Mr. Morris’ innocence,” I corrected him.

  “Mr. Westcott’s my dad,” he said slowly as he regained his composure. “Call me Ronan.”

  I nodded. “Ronan, I’m also looking for information that points me to the actual killer,” I continued.

  “And you think I have information like that?” he asked with a nervous laugh. “The killer is Austin. No information you find is going to tell you otherwise.”

  Ronan’s refusal to speak to me had caught me off-guard, especially since he’d waited for me to approach.

  I realized the rest of Utqiagvik had spoiled me, since every suspect I had met with had been eager to share with me information about themselves or someone else. Even if they had told lies, they had at least taken the risk of telling me a lie in order to appear innocent rather than risk looking suspicious by shutting me out completely. And yet, here was Ronan, waiting for me so he could tell me to eff off.

  I found it strange that out of all the people who chose to decline my invitation to a conversation, Ronan was the one to do it. He and Yura were currently seen as the least likely to have murdered Vann because of their relationship with the deceased captain. Or rather, the public’s perception of their relationship with him.

  No one seemed to know that Yura and Vann had been lovers, and so I wondered if the relationship between Ronan and Vann had also been different from what everyone believed it to be. It might explain Ronan’s reluctance to talk to me.

  “You’re not hiding anything, are you?” I asked with the hopes of getting a reaction out of him.

  “What?” the mustached fisherman responded as his eyes widened. “What makes you think I’m hiding something?”

  “You refuse to talk to me,” I stated, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, and he appeared surprised by my tone. “You think talking to me is pointless because Austin’s guilty, but you haven’t said anything about you being innocent. Makes me think the real reason you don’t want to have a conversation with me is because you don’t want to accidentally reveal something.”

  “No, no, no,” he denied as he shook his head vigorously. “You’ve got it flipped. I don’t want to talk to you because I think I’m innocent. I mean, I am innocent.”

  I didn’t have anything flipped. Of course, I knew what he had meant, but now he was desperate to explain how wrong I was.

  “Do you hear yourself, man?” he huffed. “You really think I killed Harrison? My buddy?”

  The fisherman shook his head in disgust at me and the accusation.

  “It’s possible,” I told him. “I’m not from here. How would I know what your relationship with him was like?”

  “I worked for him!” he yelled as he pointed at himself.

  “And?” I challenged him. “You’ve never had a boss you hated?”

  His anger vanished in the face of the question, and he looked at the ground as he thought about what I’d said. After a couple of seconds of deliberation, he gave an embarrassed laugh and folded his arms across his chest while he stared at the space between his feet.

  “That’s actually a good point,” he admitted with another chuckle and then looked up at me. “Sorry, but I’ve been living in this town since I was fifteen, and I’m just used to people already knowing what we’re all like. You know, who’s friends with who and who hates who. That kind of stuff.”

  “That means you could explain the relationships between everyone involved in this case, then?” I asked as I retrieved my notebook from my pocket.

  “No one’s done that for you yet?” he said with a skeptical arch of his eyebrow.

  “No one,” I lied. “Everyone’s talked about themselves, but they don’t say much on the topic of other people.”

  He looked relieved to hear this, and I found the reaction odd, since he appeared more eager to talk about others than about himself, and I wondered if he was a gossiper.

  “Are you going to write this down?” he asked as he pointed at my journal.

  “Yeah,” I answered as I readied my pen. “Just for my own purposes, though. I don’t share anything unless it’s necessary to prove someone’s a killer.”

  I wasn’t really expecting him to add anything new to what I’d already learned, but I was interested to see the connections between everyone, and who knew what. I thought he might refuse to talk then as he eyed the pen in my hand, but he finally shrugged and stared at the sand some more.

  “Uh, let’s see,” he began and then took a moment to think. “I guess I should start with myself. I already told you I was friends with Harrison. I’ve known him since high school, and when he finally got a boat, I joined his fishing crew. Same with Yura. We dated for like two months when we were freshmen.”

  He laughed at the memory of this, and considering Yura was now his co-worker, I figured the relationship had ended on good terms.

  “Actually, I’ve known Luke and Marleen since high school, too,” he continued. “Marleen dated Harrison for all of high school. The three of us were in a friend group back then, so I was pretty surprised when Marleen turned down Harrison’s offer to join his fishing crew.”

  “Were they not on good terms?” I interrupted to ask, intrigued by this new information.

  “No, they were cool,” Ronan responded. “I didn’t know at the time that Yura wanted to join Harrison’s crew, but Marleen did. She and Yura hate each other. Well, actually, that’s probably more true now after what happened today. Before, it was more like Yura hated Marleen, and Marleen just pretended Yura didn’t exist.”

  Ronan snapped his fingers as he remembered something.

  “I guess I should have mentioned this earlier,” he said with a laugh. “You remember high school, right? Like all the emotions and stupid ideas teens had?”

  “Unfortunately,” I agreed with a nod.

  “Okay, well, Yura and I only pretended to date,” the fisherman explained. “Yura wanted to make Harrison jealous, but he started dating Marleen like two months later. She avoided him after that, and I thought she would try again after Marleen dumped Harrison. She still seemed interested in him when she joined the fishing crew, but she stopped showing any interest after a couple of years. I guess she gave up.”

  I nodded at this as I added Ronan’s ignorance of the true relationship between Vann and Yura to my journal. Most likely the moment Yura had appeared uninterested was the moment the two had become lovers, but why had they bothered keeping it hidden from Ronan?

  I could understand keeping their relationship a secret to the general public if they wanted to keep the gossips at bay, but why hide it from Ronan? Wasn’t he a close friend? But then again, he’d just told a complete stranger about their high school crushes, so maybe that explained why they felt they couldn’t trust him.

  “Let’s see,” Ronan sighed as he gripped his chin. “Who am I missing?”

  “Marniq,” I reminded him. “You’ve mentioned him once, and you haven’t said anything about Morris.”

  “Marniq?” he said in confusion, and then his eyes widened with recognition. “Oh, Luke! Right, that bastard. I can’t believe he’s still upset about the fucking net. It’s always the quiet ones, huh?”

  He arched his eyebrows at me as
though I had agreed with him, so I nodded and waited for him to tell me more.

  “Anyway,” he continued. “I never hung out with him in high school. I don’t think Yura or Harrison did, either. He was in a different friend group. He and Marleen hung out all the time because they were neighbors, but everyone thought they were siblings until someone pointed out they had different last names. Then everyone thought they were step-siblings.”

  He smiled at the memory of this, though I found it odd that no one seemed sure what the ties were between the two in such a small town.

  “Luke only became a part of my life when we both became fishermen,” he said with a shrug. “As for Austin…”

  One emotion transitioned to another in a slideshow of expressions on his face as he tried to pinpoint where to start. Some of the emotions flicked by so quickly that I didn’t have time to identify them, but anger and pity seemed to win out. But it seemed odd that Ronan had such a hard time talking about Morris. He’d known Morris for considerably less time than the other fishermen, so why not just say something simple?

  “Austin’s a weird one,” the fisherman finally began. “He shouldn’t be since he’s in the same boat as me. Both of us weren’t born here. The thing is, though, I moved here when I was still an idiot kid, and so I kind of grew up with the others. Austin moved here when he was already an adult, and he moved here only to take advantage of the fish market.”

  “Is that a problem?” I asked.

  This was the first time someone was alluding to Morris being viewed as an outsider. Morris himself had expressed concern about being treated as an outsider, but this was a concern that had grown out of the murder investigation, not from any explicit actions or thoughts from anyone prior to Vann’s death.

  “I didn’t think so,” Ronan answered with an awkward shrug, and I could see this topic made him uncomfortable. “When Morris first moved here, Harrison instantly made him the target of a bunch of pranks. Like when he lied to Austin about the best fishing spots, or the time when he painted over the windows of the Arctic Wizard’s wheelhouse. I thought the pranks were fun, so I joined in. Yura started to help out after Marleen became a permanent member of Austin’s crew. At first, Austin had no idea who was behind the pranks, but then he caught me red-handed when I was trying to cover his boat’s deck with party streamers. He vowed to get back at us. That’s how the rivalry between our crews started.”

  “So there wasn’t any real animosity between you guys?” I asked.

  Ronan squirmed uncomfortably in front of me as he thought of an answer. He looked down at the ground, then up at the sky, and then off to the shore. He looked unsure how to answer that question, and I wondered if he was worried about phrasing or about honesty.

  Regardless of which one it was, the fact that he was hesitant to tell me meant the answer didn’t make Vann look good. I doubted he would be deliberating over a response that made Morris look worse than he already was. I cleared my throat to remind him I was still waiting, and the fisherman finally sighed in defeat.

  “The thing is, I always thought we were doing the pranks for fun,” he admitted. “Well, and also giving ourselves a headstart on catching fish. I think everyone else saw it that way, too. I didn’t realize how much Harrison hated Austin until we had some drinks together on his boat one night two or three years ago. He went on a rant about Austin being a selfish outsider who only moved to Utqiagvik to get rich and that he had no appreciation for the people or culture here. Austin was stealing fish from ‘us.’ I wanted to dismiss the whole thing as the ravings of a drunkard, but I think he was sober. I was never able to tell if he was good at hiding his drunkenness or if he had a high tolerance. I know I was drunk. Anyway, he asked me if I agreed, and I don’t remember what I told him. I think I managed to change the subject or something.”

  “And?” I asked as I arched my eyebrows. “Do you agree?"

  Ronan stuck his hands in his pockets and shuffled his feet awkwardly. It was as clear as day on his face that he didn’t want to answer my question, much less dwell on this topic any longer. He turned his head up at the sky and sighed, and then after a moment of silence, he brought it down to look at the sand. He refused to make eye contact with me.

  “Vann was my friend,” he began in a strained voice. “I didn’t want to lose that friendship and make an enemy out of him, so I didn’t tell him how hypocritical his rant was. In my drunkenness, I was brave enough to ask him if I was a selfish outsider, too, since I also moved here, and he said it wasn’t the same thing. I didn’t move to Utqiagvik because I wanted to become rich. I moved because my mom had an anthropology project to do here. I didn’t realize how stupid his logic was until I was sober the next day.”

  Ronan shook his head and finally looked at me.

  “Vann was… white,” he said. “Just like me and Austin. Yeah, his family had moved here generations ago, and yeah, he had been born and raised here, but none of that changed the fact that he didn’t have any Inupiaq blood in him. Didn’t he find that a little odd? Over half the population of this town is Inupiat, and yet, somehow his family hadn’t married a single one. And there he was going on a rant about culture and people as if years ago his ancestors didn’t come here probably for the same reason Austin did. He was pretty much giving Austin shit for showing up at the wrong time.”

  The fisherman kicked at the sand bitterly and then shrugged. He seemed embarrassed by what he had told me, and I realized he had probably never gotten any of this off his chest before. He looked at me for validation, and then shook his head at himself for doing that.

  I never imagined our conversation would take this turn, and as I speedily added these details to my journal, I was glad I had managed to intercept him. It felt like I was finally getting the full picture of Vann, and maybe my client was justifiably paranoid about the town.

  “There you have it,” he sighed. “Everything you need to know about us fishing weirdos.”

  He offered a self-conscious smile at his attempt at a joke, but I was too busy contemplating Vann’s behavior to do anything other than nod.

  “Harrison never mentioned any of this to anyone else?” I asked. “Not even Yura?”

  “I have no idea,” Ronan said with a shrug of his shoulders. “I mean, the way he spoke sounded like he was getting it off his chest. Yura was there on the boat, but she had fallen asleep. I’m surprised his loud voice didn’t wake her up. I don’t know if he told her some other time.”

  “And what about Diana?” I asked. “You haven’t mentioned her at all.”

  “Diana?” he said with a puzzled look.

  At first, I thought he was simply baffled by the suggestion that Diana could somehow be a murderer, much like Morris had. But when the silence between us persisted, I realized he simply had no idea who I was talking about. I was baffled by this.

  “Morris’ wife?” I explained in the hopes that that was all the description he needed.

  His face suddenly lit up with recognition, and he started to chuckle.

  “Oh, the hypochondriac ice queen!” he yelled as he shook his head. “Her name’s Diana?”

  “Diana Morris,” I clarified.

  “Wait, no, I think I knew that,” he admitted as he stroked his chin. “I just haven’t heard her name in years. What about her?”

  “What’s her relationship like with you and your crew?” I asked.

  Ronan made a face as though I had asked him an incredibly stupid question, but I offered no reaction other than patient silence. He gave an exaggerated shrug when he realized I was waiting for his response.

  “I met her once when she and Austin first moved here ten years ago,” he said in exasperation. “Not long after that, Yura started calling her a hypochondriac ice queen, and that’s all I’ve known her as ever since. I haven’t seen that woman since I met her, I swear to God. I don’t think she ever leaves her house.”

  “Impossible,” I challenged. “According to her, she’s seen you and Yura with Vann around
town from time to time.”

  “So what?” he yelled as he threw his arms into the air. “But I haven’t physically perceived her since I met her ten years ago. She’s a fucking ghost. You could walk right by her and not see her.”

  “But you two share the same responsibilities,” I pressed. “Both of you are in charge of securing repairs and supplies for the boat. I highly doubt there are so many stores here that sell fishing gear that you two wouldn’t run into each other every once in a while.”

  He was shocked by my words and then became visibly uncomfortable. This reaction surprised me since he acted as though I had revealed some sort of secret. As far as I was aware, crew duties weren’t classified information.

  “I-I don’t know,” he stammered. “I guess we shopped at different times or something. Or maybe she was at the store, and I just didn’t see her.”

  He started to walk past me toward the road, but I put a hand to stop him. He stepped back and tried to give me an intimidating stare, but it didn’t work.

  “Look, man, I gave you plenty of information, and my balls are starting to freeze out here,” he said with a nervous laugh.

  “One final thing,” I lied as I dropped my arm.

  I knew I was pushing my luck with him, so I tossed out the last question ploy. The reality, however, was that this conversation was far from over. I planned to track him down first thing in the morning to figure out why he was suddenly so eager to disappear. Was it the fact that I had brought up Diana and his lack of interaction with her, or was it the fact that I knew what his duties were under Vann? Or maybe both? I was certain it was related to his job, but I couldn’t figure out why that was something he was worried about.

  “Where were you the night of Vann’s murder?” I asked.

  “What?” the mustached fisherman replied out of shock. “Are you seri--”

  He stopped to glare at me and then opened his mouth again to say something. He looked ready to explode at me for implying he had killed Vann, his buddy, but something made him change his mind. He snapped his mouth shut, looked out to the oncoming waves, and tried his hardest to relax his face. Anger became nervousness that finally mellowed out into a neutral expression.