Rogue Wave

by Susan Dunlap

“Water.”

  His hand was steady as he poured. He added a dash of water to his own glass, brow tensing as he flicked the pitcher back up to stop the diluting effect. It made her think of her uncle Amon, taking her aside when she was too young to care and explaining in studied seriousness how to mix a highball. “Kerry, lass,” he’d said, slurring his sibilants, “after you stir the rye and soda always add a dash of rye on the top. Gives you that good taste of strength right off.”

  Cummings saluted her with his glass, but seemed careful not to drink until she had. It was good Scotch, and she felt the heat of it flow down her spine. She said, “I heard you Monday on the radio. You handled it well.”

  He leaned back and crossed his legs. “I’ll be the first to tell you it’s not easy debating that woman. It’s like fending off a pack of hounds. You toss a stick and while you’re watching one race after it, another’s got its teeth in your ankle.”

  Kiernan couldn’t suppress a grin at the accuracy of his observation. “From what I hear. Prop. Thirty-Seven is still up for grabs.”

  He smiled. “I take that as a testament to the good sense of northern Californians.”

  “And to your own handling of the campaign?”

  He shrugged. “Hardest market in the country. Out here they’re all environmentalists, even if they’ve never seen an unpaved street. You talk about offshore drilling and they think one end of the pipe’s in the well and the other opens directly into the ocean. I’ll tell you, Kiernan, it’s been a challenge to make people realize that tanker accidents like the Valdez in Alaska have no more to do with oil platforms than steers do with steering wheels. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have to explain that in offshore drilling we don’t use tankers, we pipe the oil from the platform to our onshore facilities.”

  “Not if Prop. Thirty-Seven passes, and you can’t get the zoning changes, sewer permits and roads built to allow you to have onshore facilities.”

  He stiffened. “Hey, you sure you’re not Leporek in sheep’s clothing?” Glancing at her green wool suit, his eyes came to rest at the hem, which ended on her thigh. “Or should I say, fox’s clothing?”

  It was a tacky comment. What was it Hartoonian had said? A problem with the bottle. Didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut, but he wasn’t a thief.

  Cummings finished his drink, held his glass up questioningly, and when she declined a refill, stood to make his own. With his back to her he said, “You’re here about Robin. What have you unearthed about her death?”

  No preamble, no words of regret, no movement to pour the Scotch or add fresh ice while he asked the question to which his nervousness was linked. Kiernan said, “We don’t know that she’s dead.”

  His hand stopped midair. It was a moment before he said, “Really? How could she have survived? It’d be a miracle.” The words were enthusiastic but the voice was wary. That was rating as the normal reaction.

  “You probably didn’t realize this, but you were her most frequent passenger. Did you know her from Alaska?”

  “Yeah.” Now he eased several ice cubes into his glass. “Robin was a great captain. Once you went out with her, she had a lot of loyalty and she made a point of being accommodating.”

  “How so?”

  “Not what you think!”

  “I don’t think anything, Mr. Cummings.”

  Cummings stared at his drink.

  She let a moment pass before asking, “Did you arrange the fishing parties?”

  He nodded and sat back down.

  “Business parties?”

  Again he nodded warily.

  “You work for the Energy Producers’ Group now, right?”

  “I’m on loan,” he muttered.

  Three years. A long-term loan. “So the parties you brought on board were from more than one oil company?”

  He jerked his head up. “What does that have to do with Robin’s boat sinking? It’s not as if we sunk it!”

  Very jumpy, Kiernan thought. “No. But I thought you might have some clue about malfunctioning. You’re an engineer, aren’t you? The men you brought aboard were engineers.”

  “We’re not all engineers. And even those of us who trained as engineers are likely to be pretty far removed from the slide rule. Besides, we were busy dealing with salmon or albacore or rock cod; we weren’t down below fixing the engine. At two hundred bucks a day per guest, you don’t spend your time covered in grease.” He stared at his glass a moment, and when he put it down the lines of anger in his face had eased. “These trips are called tax trips. Perfectly legal. We bring guys from different companies together, let them get comfortable with each other so they can cooperate on projects. We could bring them in cold and hope they’d all think alike—that’s the way it used to be done. But you can imagine that doesn’t work most of the time. Everyone’s used to being in charge. They don’t want someone else telling them what to do. Or they’re married to one way of doing things and they’d leave the oil under the surface before they’d consider another way of exploring. If you go into a project cold these guys are all sharp edges, all unknown quantities.”

  “And if they’re indiscreet, it’s not where anyone will overhear, right?” Anyone except Delaney with his wire. But Delaney had been investigating Robin, not the oil men.

  He shrugged. “But if you got these same guys together on a volleyball court—”

  “Or a fishing expedition?”

  “Right. They’re all buddies when they’re pulling in thirty-pound steelheads.”

  “As long as they’re all pulling them in?”

  He raised his glass to her.

  “So to ensure that you went with Robin?”

  “Right.”

  He shifted in his chair. “Look, the election is less than a week away. I’ve got enough work to keep me up till two. Could you get to the point?”

  “You knew Robin from Alaska. From the California Tavern?”

  “Right.”

  “Did you ever run across a guy named Garrett Brant there? An artist.”

  “Artist? No. Closest I came to art or artists was the paintings in the conference rooms. But plenty of guys passed through the bar without shaking my hand.” He glanced at his nearly empty glass but didn’t freshen it.

  Kiernan surveyed her remaining questions and went with the most pressing. “What about Robin’s deckhand, Carlos Delaney? Was he with her in Alaska?”

  “She didn’t have deckhands in Alaska. She was a hand there.”

  “Was Delaney there?”

  “Not as I remember.”

  “Up there you were in administration?”

  “Probability Analysis, Marine Division Project Coordinator.”

  “That means chances of things going wrong?”

  “That means running tests beforehand to make sure things don’t go wrong.”

  Kiernan took a swallow of Scotch. “That’s quite different from the media spokesman’s job you have here.”

  “Look, I agreed to talk about Robin, I didn’t—”

  “A memo was stolen from your office up there. Then you were transferred down here. What happened?”

  “I don’t know where you heard—”

  “A theft. You were transferred, so you were involved. But you weren’t fired, just gotten out of the way, just warned.

  You—”

  He slammed the glass on his knee. Ice cubes jumped. “Leporek! Of course, she’s been feeding you these lies. A week before the election, and she’s running scared.”

  Ignoring his outburst, Kiernan said, “If you’d been an innocent victim, no one would have bothered you, would they?”

  Cummings’s mouth tightened.

  “Unless you had a reputation for indiscretion.”

  “I don’t. Do you think the Energy Producers’ Group would choose someone unreliable to represent the entire industry?”

  If they didn’t expect the job to become as important as it had; if they couldn’t replace their spokesman without nudging the oppositi
on to wonder why. “What was in that memo?”

  “Out! Just get out of here. And you blab this slander to the press you’ll see a lawsuit that will make your ass twirl.”

  “What, Dwyer? You ran tests to make sure things don’t go wrong. Something did go wrong, right? What was it?”

  “Nothing went wrong. Our tests are monitored. There’s nothing that happened that I could have hidden.”

  Cummings was clearly so relieved to be able to give that answer that she believed him. And believed she was on the wrong track. “Still, that memo was enough to get you transferred. It was—”

  He dropped the glass, grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet, wrenching her around on the three-inch stiletto heels. She glanced down at his foot and drove her heel into it. He yelped.

  “Don’t try that again,” she said as she walked to the door.

  29

  IT WAS TWENTY TO eight when Kiernan stopped at the top of Dixie Alley. She pulled her soggy jacket tighter around her and ran down the stairs, hoping to find Olsen seated at his dining-room table staring at the lights across the Bay in Oakland. She wanted to see him eating pizza, drinking a beer, looking so comfortable that it would take all her control not to kick the man.

  She ran through the gate and up the stairs.

  The apartment was still dark.

  She knocked.

  No answer.

  Rain battered against the glass doors. Inside Olsen’s, nothing had changed since yesterday. The flashlight-lit rooms still showed no signs of conflict. The coffee mug was still on the table, as if he’d stepped out for a minute instead of a day.

  He had lied about hiring Delaney. What other fictions had he created, what errant paths had he suggested? She remembered their first meeting about the case. Olsen had been so earnest. She couldn’t believe he was a good enough actor to stage a scene like that. And couldn’t think of a reason why he should.

  But if he hadn’t hired the thugs and chosen to disappear—and those options didn’t make sense—then there was no getting around the fact that Skip Olsen was missing against his will. Kidnapped in a city where he’d made enemies on the dock and maybe worse ones on the police force.

  She climbed back up the staircase to the Jeep, picturing Olsen tied up, lying on his bad hip, his sciatic nerve shrieking down his leg.

  The phone was ringing when Kiernan opened the motel door twenty minutes later.

  “This is your office calling,” Tchernak announced. “You know there’s no point in leaving call-back messages if you don’t answer your phones.” After Cummings’s down-home voice, Tchernak’s deep tones sounded bearlike. She could hear Ezra’s groan of canine pleasure in the background. Tchernak must be scratching behind his ears.

  “He misses you. He spent all day moping in your office, your former kitchen. And you know he doesn’t approve of that reconstruction.”

  “That modem and printer buy his dog food. Or they would if you hadn’t spoiled him so he turns up his snout at kibble.”

  “Hey, hey. You wait!” Tchernak snapped. “Sorry, I was talking to him. But you probably figured that.”

  “It was one of the options.” She laughed. “You did good, Tchernak. If you weren’t destined to be a media star, I’d co-opt you for the world of crime.”

  “Always willing to help. Macho presence at your back.”

  Kiernan hesitated. Tchernak had been intrigued with the idea of investigating since the day he moved in. Her job had been a major selling point of his agreeing to be employed by her. No case had been concluded without his eager offer to stake out, to infiltrate, to intimidate with his looming presence. A houseman’s place is in the home, she’d insisted: cleaning, cooking, shopping, dog walking! You don’t spend all night cramped in the Triumph watching an entryway door that never opens, and come home and create a decent soufflé! She’d said it all before. Now she sighed and said, “Okay.”

  “Okay?” He was clearly amazed. “Does this mean you’re hiring me on?”

  “Tentatively. I’m going to need a bodyguard.”

  “You’re in danger!”

  Kiernan laughed at the outrage in his voice. “Tchernak, what kind of work do you think I do? There’s always danger. But it’s not me I need guarded. It’s Olsen, if I can find him so you can guard him. See if you can get here first thing in the morning. Now let me speak to him.”

  The great slurp told her Ezra was on the phone.

  It was 8:35 when she hung up. The motel room seemed emptier, shabbier. Like a cell, locked. “Damn,” she muttered, as she realized how relieved she vas that Tchernak was coming. “Damn, damn!” She missed him. She missed the easy comfort of his presence. And she resented his hold on her emotions. She wasn’t likely to fall into the hole Maureen Brant had, but by wanting Tchernak here, she wasn’t free either.

  She tried to push thoughts of Ezra from her mind. She didn’t want to think of Tchernak dropping him off at a cell. Tchernak always swore Ezra didn’t mind the kennel, but Kiernan knew otherwise. When she got home Ezra would rush up, licking her cheeks and arms, wagging his tail, and leaping like a Chihuahua. But in those big brown eyes would be the unmistakable sign of hurt.

  She dialed Olsen one last time. Again his machine answered. Slowly she put down the phone. She had done nothing but complain about him, but in an odd, baffling way she was fond of the guy. He reminded her of the old, overstuffed chair she’d moved from house to house. It ruined the look of her living room in La Jolla; she couldn’t make a good case for keeping it, but she couldn’t bring herself to haul it to the dump either. As for Olsen, she didn’t feel quite the fondness for him as she did for the chair, but she didn’t want to think of him lying helpless in pain somewhere either. He’d insisted on going to the Wharf yesterday. There’d been ample time for him to come home. Now she was going to have to spend the night tracking him down.

  30

  THE AREA AROUND FISHERMAN’S Wharf was uncharacteristically deserted for quarter to ten at night. Cold and rain were never attractive qualities to tourists, and only the hardiest would still be considering the T-shirts or souvenir shops. With the rain and fog closing in, few regulars would head out into the Pacific tomorrow. It was the perfect place to hide a kidnap victim.

  In the dim light, the wharf looked even shabbier than it had before dawn yesterday. Across the street the rain beat discarded bags and paper plates into gray slime. Behind it, the tacky shops seemed drabber than usual. Brine from the salt air had caked onto their plastic signs; it gave a scabrous look to the red and orange letters. The rain ran down the signs in rivulets, leaving a trail of dirt from the gutters above.

  Kiernan pulled up the hood of her slicker and headed across the street to the wharf proper. The restaurants and huge storage building that enclosed the acre of docks loomed larger and the docks looked more out of place than ever: reality consumed by its own hype. To imagine the wharf as real meant keeping her head down, looking at the gray, seasoned planks, smelling the briny water, and listening to the soft whine of mooring lines pulling taut and the single sea lion baying in chorus with the foghorn.

  The center dock was slippery. Most of the berths were dark. If the deckhands were on the boats, they were sleeping. But Ben Pedersen was awake and on board. Odd for ten at night. Through the misted-over window, Kiernan could see him sitting in his luncheonettelike cabin, writing on a yellow pad.

  “Hello, Ben! Can I come on board?” Kiernan called through the steamy window. Pedersen looked more bearlike than she remembered—a wily bear, one who’d survived many winters and outwitted more than a few hunters.

  Pedersen wiped clear a circle of glass. He squinted through it, his bearded face wary. “So what have you found out?” It was more of a challenge than an inquiry.

  She climbed onto the boat. From the radio came the rumble of desultory conversation. The cabin was little warmer than the open deck behind it. Pedersen was seated on the bench farthest in, his back to the wheelhouse. He turned the yellow pad facedown, and with
out asking filled a second mug of coffee and slid it toward her. “So?” he insisted.

  Taking off her slicker, she slipped onto the bench facing him, pleased to be closest to the door. “I need some help and some advice.”

  “Yeah?” he said, clearly making no commitment.

  “Skip Olsen—plump, pallid guy with a limp—was on the dock asking question a few weeks ago. He talked to Robin until she wouldn’t talk anymore. After she died, he was back asking about her. The last time he was here he got someone angry enough to smash his windshield. This time he didn’t come home.”

  Pedersen leaned against the bench, staring down at his cup. The coffee sloshed back and forth against the sides, mimicking the rock of the boat. “You working with him?”

  “He’s working for me. Do you know him?”

  It was a moment before Pedersen said, “I heard there was a gimp getting pushy. Word I got was your friend used to be a cop and he’s still got a cop’s sensibilities. Not everyone on the dock sees the cops as protectors of the peace.”

  Olsen’s ability to annoy was impressive. “He’s missing. I’m worried about him.” When Pedersen didn’t respond, she said,

  “He said he was coming down here yesterday. What do you think happened to him?”

  “Skip, that his name? I haven’t heard anything.” The lines of his face were pulled downward. And the expression in his eyes? Not just suspicion, but fear. Pedersen was lying, she was sure of it.

  She took a swallow of coffee and said, “But what do you think? I don’t want him lying tied up inside that storehouse over there for days.”

  Pedersen laughed. “No chance of that. The restaurants store their nonperishables in there, guys on the dock got gear in there. Guys are running in and out all the time.” He shook his head. “Look, a while back I got the newest temperature indicator, good to a tenth of a degree; I didn’t mention it to anyone—if it didn’t work out I wanted to be able to return it without anyone ribbing me about ‘electronic captains.’ I stored it in that warehouse overnight, and before dawn half the guys were offering to help me install it and get a free look. That’s how private it is. So don’t imagine you could hide a man there.”