by Sue Henry
When the jab did not bring a light, humorous response, she gave him an inquiring look. “What?”
He was still reading the notes, one finger tracing slowly down the page.
“‘Remember the eyes.’ You’ve underlined it as a comment. What did you mean?”
“Oh, yeah.” She dropped onto her bed and sat there thinking for a minute, her lips pursed, a slight frown lowering her brows.
As he waited, Alex felt, rather than heard, the Spirit’s engines lose power, and the ship began to slow a Little.
“It was kind of a feeling,” Jessie said, at last. “Hard to explain exactly. Let me just talk around it for a while, okay?
“She was such a bitch, but it was like she was trying to be one, sort of. Then, when you got into the description of the belt—chain—thing, it was like she forgot and only remembered later, just before we left, to get back into her role-playing.
“The thing about the eyes was that every time you weren’t looking directly at her, she was watching you very carefully. Like she wanted to see how you were taking it—to see if you were buying what she was selling. You know? Does that make sense?”
“You mean the bitch bit was just an act? Covering something? I know that all of it except the description bothered me. But I hadn’t evaluated it because she pissed me off so much with her patronizing attitude.”
Jessie nodded and, standing up, began to walk around the small space, as if being in motion helped her to think. Once again the ship’s engine changed the frequency of its vibrations, half-attracting Alex’s attention. Before he realized it, however, Jessie had answered his question.
“Yes, exactly. But was she hying to make you—us—angry for some reason, the most likely being, of course, to hide something else?”
“What?”
“I’ve no idea. There was something else that made me feel uneasy, like she was playing a part. All those big words and la-di-dah pseudo-sophistication. Underneath it she seemed to be something else. There were a few times her vocabulary seemed to slip into words that wouldn’t cost a dollar and a half—more like a quarter.”
“Interesting. You’re right. That part about, like she lost it or something?”
“Yeah. Little things, hard to put your finger on.”
“Hm-m …” Jensen paused, concentrating. “I wonder if … that belt she described might not have been stolen at all? That’s a lot of insurance money. Wouldn’t be the first time someone wanted to have something and the money for it, too. Right?”
Jessie held up a finger to stop him. “Go you one better. Did anyone see that seventeen ounces of gold belt—fifty thousand dollars’ worth of gold belt? You have only her word it was stolen—that it ever existed. Lifting the Berrys’ watch and the Lovegrens’ cash and money clip would make a great cover for something of her own’s supposedly disappearing, wouldn’t it? Maybe she never brought it in the first place. She certainly wouldn’t have worried about leaving something on the ship unguarded that wasn’t really there, would she? That seemed a really strange and careless attitude to me when she shrugged it off and didn’t answer you about it.”
Alex was now on his feet. “Jessie, you could have something. I don’t see how she could have done it and still have been at the party in Haines, but … it’s not impossible. More difficult things have been pulled off with a little maneuvering. What if …”
A pounding on the door interrupted what he had been about to say.
Don Sawyer stood outside, a stricken expression on his face.
“You’d better come, Jensen,” he said in a strained, flat-sounding voice. “One of the passengers just spotted a … a …”
“What, Don? What?”
“… b-body.”
“What?”
“… a bo …” he couldn’t say it again.
“A body? Where?”
“In the … water.” He was practically hyperventilating.
Jessie grabbed his arm and pulled and shoved him to a seat on Alex’s bed. “Put your head between your knees,” she told him over her shoulder, heading to the bathroom for a glass of water.
Alex suddenly realized that as they talked the Spirit had come to a complete stop. He grabbed his jacket and promptly left Jessie to take care of Sawyer.
The ship had turned a dogleg into the passage and was now headed east. Looking down from the rail of the Upper Deck, Jensen could see that there was a human form in the turbulent currents beneath a waterfall that tumbled hundreds of feet down the side of the southern cliff. It was floating low, with shoulders and back barely showing above the surface, dark hair swirling like strands of weed around the head that bobbed gently in the agitation. Dark shirt, or jacket, possibly blue, with a hint of something red where the collar would be, hardly visible.
On the lower level, one of the deck crew had opened the outer door, caught one of the arms with a boat hook, and stood, holding on, keeping it from slipping away, his pale face betraying his aversion to this responsibility. Ray McKimmey struggled beside him to get a rope around the clearly female form, before it was pulled loose from the hook by the rolling pressure of the churning water that had drawn it in close on the surface and still tugged at it.
Jensen swallowed hard and ran down the stairs to the lower deck. A floater. He hated floaters—bodies of people that had been in the water for some period of time after they’d died. Some were worse than others, but all were water soaked and swollen. He would almost rather be faced, as he often had been, with blood—shootings, knifings, violence that many law enforcement personnel considered the worst. Bodies taken from the water were too revoltingly clean.
As he reached the bottom level, he wondered how long this one had been moved to and fro on this arm of the ocean’s all but frozen tides, and he hoped it had not been long. It could not be Julie Morrison; the currents could not possibly have moved her body so far. Who, then, could it be? And what a wretched coincidence.
15
10:30 A.M.
Tuesday, July 15, 1997
Spirit of ‘98
Tracy Arm, Inside Passage, Alaska
JENSEN REACHED THE LOWER DECK IN TIME TO ASSIST McKimmey in lifting the body up and through the door that opened amidships a few feet above the surface of the water. The crewman who had laid the boat hook aside held rightly to a line they had secured under the arms and around the upper torso of the corpse, so that it would not fall back into the sea.
Together they strained at the weight, which was exaggerated by the water-soaked clothing and hair. Both men were panting with exertion by the time the woman’s body lay on its side on the deck, water draining in pools around it.
The dark hair had lost the floating appearance given it by the support of the water and clung suddenly to the head, hiding the upper part of the face. The mouth was covered with a strip of duct tape. The same material tightly bound knees and ankles, and the wrists were taped together behind the woman’s back. A length of line, with a few inexpertly tied knots, trailed in several loose loops around her. Luckily it had caught on her arms, but Jensen could see that just a little longer in the turbulent water would probably have pulled it loose. It was an interesting combination of colors, blue and pink, he thought, remembering white or yellow on the boats he had seen before. Perhaps she had fallen or been put into the water not from a boat but from the land somewhere. It was something to have the lab check.
“Get a mop,” McKimmey told the deck hand, “and a blanket, or something to cover her.” He looked up at Jensen. “God, what the hell is going on here? Who’s this? It’s not Julie Morrison, though Sawyer went off to get you in panic and confusion—afraid that it was.”
“Yeah, I know. He’s in the cabin with Jessie for the moment. It obviously can’t be Morrison. We’re too far from where she could have gone in. Let’s take a look.”
He stepped forward and knelt by the body, carefully lifting away the hair that obscured the face. Eyes open, staring, this woman was a complete stranger to him, blue eyes, me
dium brown hair, darkened with water, and young, perhaps twenty-five, he thought. He glanced up at McKimmey questioningly.
“I don’t know her.” The engineer shook his head and turned away to find Captain Kay coming down the stairs. Above and behind him, a couple of passengers peered curiously down.
“Who is it?” he asked. “Not Morrison.”
“It’s not,” Jensen agreed. “We have no idea. You recognize her?”
Kay leaned over to look. “No idea. There’ve been no reports of anyone missing. How can we possibly have just lost one woman and found another? Got any ideas, Jensen?”
“No, sir, I haven’t. She didn’t come from this ship, that’s clear. You’d better get out another coast guard communication, though they’re going to think something’s really strange about all this. There’s more happening on and around this vessel than I can even begin to understand. I guess, right now, we’d better deal with the problems at hand and worry about the rest later. For instance, where can we put this body until we can get it to the authorities? We can’t leave it here.”
The captain frowned, thinking hard. “No, we certainly can’t, but the whole ship is packed. We have no empty staterooms and, although it should probably be kept cool—right?—I can’t put a dead body in with the food in the only cooler, or freezer, we have.”
McKimmey had a suggestion. “We’re right next to the engineer’s cabin, sir. We could wrap her in sheets to absorb the water, and plastic to keep a bunk dry, and put her there. We’d only have to move her a few feet, and we could stay on this deck.”
Jensen nodded. “That’s a good idea, but where would you guys sleep, Ray?”
“Actually, we wouldn’t need to put it on a bunk,” the captain considered. “We can put it in there, but on the floor. It won’t be that long, because we can make an unscheduled stop in Petersburg tonight and turn the body over to the authorities. They can take turns borrowing the extra bunk in the hotel manager’s cabin in the meantime. It has the same arrangement as theirs—a bunk and a Pullman that’s almost never used.”
“Okay. I want to examine the body to see if I can figure out what killed her, but then I think that’s the best course of action, if it’s all right with you, Ray.”
Captain Kay went back up to the bridge to make the necessary notifications. In less than half an hour, Jensen had completed his examination, and they had placed the woman’s body, successfully contained in plastic and several sheets, on the floor of the engineer’s cabin. He had found nothing to confirm violence in his scrutiny of the body, which was limited; he had hesitated, then decided not to remove the tape to make a thorough inspection. It was obvious she had not applied the tape to her own face and extremities then jumped overboard from whatever boat she had come from, and it was fairly certain, in this area, far from any town or community, that she must have come from one. Someone had meant her to die. A postmortem examination would reveal more about her death, and he determined to leave her as she was, to give the pathologist a better chance at any evidence. For now, he elected to leave what he could do nothing about and focus on the other problems on board the Spirit.
Before Jensen went back up to his cabin, he asked Ray McKimmey to show him the stateroom where me gold was being kept, with two guards, who even slept with it at night, in shifts, so one was always awake.
In the forward section of the same lower deck, the stateroom dedicated to the treasure was located along the only interior corridor on the ship that had staterooms opening into it. The rest, on the top three decks, all opened outward. Six staterooms lined either side of this corridor, and the rest of this deck was occupied by the galley, dining room, and Soapy’s Parlour. Three of the staterooms held two single beds, two held double beds, and the last, forwardmost of the six, surprising large, held not only a queen-sized bed but also a sleeper sofa, so it could be used for triple occupancy.
The gold, in its fifteen wooden boxes, was in the first twin-bed stateroom on the port side of the long hallway. This door, when Alex tried it, was locked. He knocked. Someone from inside called out, “Who is it?”
“Sergeant Jensen, Alaska State Troopers, and Ray McKimmey, ship’s engineer,” he answered, and the door opened a few inches.
“Trooper, you say?”
Holding out his wallet with identification and badge, Alex waited till the guard was satisfied he was who he said he was, and opened the door a little wider. McKimmey stood behind Alex in the corridor.
The guard wore sweats and was in his stocking feet. Jensen didn’t blame him, A week confined to the inside of a stateroom, no matter how comfortable, with all your meals delivered from the galley, and little chance to relieve the boredom, would assuredly not call for a uniform. He grinned.
“Taken to playing poker for the cargo yet?” he asked.
The door opened completely, and the guard smiled, yawned, and scratched his head. “No, but that’s not a bad idea. No matter who won, the pot would stay where it is.”
“How’s it going for you guys? Everything okay? Any disturbances or problems?”
“Naw. Nothing but peace and quiet, damn the luck. The dancing girls haven’t shown up yet.”
Beyond the guard, Jensen could now see the boxes of gold stacked up along one wall, three high. They took up a fair-sized section of the smallish stateroom, leaving the beds for relaxing and a narrow strip of the floor in which to move around. A window showed the scenery they were passing.
“You alone? I thought there were two of you.”
“There are, but we take turns going up for short breaks, just to get a little exercise and fresh air, periodically. Jim’s gone for a smoke. Should be back any minute. As long as we’re underway it’s unlikely anyone would have a try at the gold. Where would they go with it? Besides, who could carry it away without help?”
It made sense, and they couldn’t be expected to stay cooped up completely. A little fresh air would keep both of them more alert.
“Well,” Jensen told him, “if you need anything … help, someone to relieve you once in a while, or whatever … let me know. Okay?”
“Sure. Nice of you to offer.”
The door closed, and Jensen turned with McKimmey back toward the entrance to the corridor. As they reached it, a man who was unmistakably the second guard, in a similar pair of sweats, came toward them from the direction of the dining room. As he came closer, the condition of his face stopped Jensen in concern.
“What the hell happened to you?”
An angry, recent bruise reddened one of the man’s cheekbones. His eye was swelled half-closed and looked as if it had every promise of soon turning black. His lower lip was split and also swollen. All in all, he was not an attractive picture.
“What business is it of yours?” he growled.
“Hey. Every business. I’m a State …”
“Yeah, I know. You’re that trooper aboard to be gorgeous for the muckity-mucks. So what?”
“So it might be a good idea to get rid of the attitude and tell me what happened. Unless you’d like me to see about having you replaced.”
“Oh, shit. I fell on the stairs. Okay?”
Jensen looked dubiously at this statement. “Which stairs?”
“Those.” He pointed to the ones leading to the next level up. “Slipped about halfway down ‘em last night.”
“Do you need medical attention?”
“No. Hell, no. Just leave me alone.” He turned away and headed down the hall they had just left. They watched him knock on the door to stateroom 112. As the door opened, he cast a resentful glance in their direction before disappearing within.
“Real sweetheart,” McKimmey commented.
“A honey,” Alex agreed, frowning toward the stateroom into which he had vanished. He hesitated, then turned to the engineer. “There’s no way that damage was done in a fall. I know the result of a beating when I see one. Somebody competently worked that guy over, and I’d like to know who. I know you’ve got things to do, but I’m goin
g to look up the captain. I want to know who he is and see if I can find out who pounded him.”
“Any word?”
“No. Stay away from me. I’ll let you know when I hear.”
“Goddamnit. It’s too long. They’re gonna screw it up.”
“Don’t get your tail in a twist. There’s time. Go. When I hear, I’ll leave a note, yes or no, in your stateroom.”
“Okay.”
“Now listen, you imbecile, stay clear. If anyone sees us together … I don’t intend to have you wreck this. I’ll …”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“Hey. Who’s in charge here? And who’s in the most trouble now? Just shut up and go.”
“I’m gone.”
Jensen took the elevator to the Bridge Deck, favoring speed over exercise, and he was startled, when the door opened, to find a large number of passengers collected along the rails, where they could get a good view of the glacier they were approaching. Working to examine and secure the body of the woman they had found, he had completely dismissed the fact that the Spirit had continued its trip to the upper end of Tracy Arm. Now he wondered if Jessie was still in their stateroom with Sawyer, or if she was somewhere on deck where she could see the wall of ice that rose over a hundred feet out of the water. It was hard to believe that something so large and solid could be a river in motion, but numerous icebergs, of various sizes, bore witness to the fact that they had been forced by its massive weight and flow to calve off into the sea.
Dozens of seals, many with pups close to them, lay on the pieces of floating ice, their dark spotted coats distinctly visible in contrast to its light color.
“Ladies and gentlemen. The seals you see on the icebergs are harbor seals. They can be identified by their spotted appearance, though they may vary from dark to nearly white. They haul out here on the ice in groups of a few to several hundred, to birth their single pups where they are safe from predators, particularly orcas—killer whales. The pups are a silvery color, but still blotched, and they darken as they mature.