Death Takes Passage #4

by Sue Henry

  “Did they really only come once to Alaska?”

  “Yeah, only once, right after I moved up here. Dad’s school schedule gets in the way, and he doesn’t like to travel much. We’ll have to go to Idaho.”

  “Never been there.”

  Alex paused for a minute, thinking—back on the case, just wishing he could figure out what exactly the case was.

  “Sure wish I knew how this Carlson guy fits in. He’s giving us absolutely nothing to work with.”

  “And you’re going to turn him over to someone in Petersburg?”

  “Yes. I want him off this ship. We’ll be there before too much longer, between midnight and one o’clock.”

  Jessie yawned, turned out her reading light, and put aside the book that had been resting upside down on her lap. “You going to stay up till we get there?”

  “May nap a little, but I’ve got to be up for it. Interesting—we’ve got an engineer who won’t talk at all, a guard that didn’t tell the truth, Morrison, who refused a stateroom search, and Raymond, who lies—a lot of equivocation. It would be easier if, like the play, everyone had to tell the truth except the perpetrator. We also have a dead body, a live one, and an ax to put off the ship. The ship will move on as soon as they’re put ashore, but getting them off won’t solve anything. This gets more complicated all the time. There’s something I’m just not seeing here. Probably several somethings. Whatever. I’m tired. Disappointing to go through Wrangell Narrows in the dark. I wanted to see it. You know, we’ll have to come back. Remember the sailboat that belongs to that friend of Delafosse’s? He mentioned it in Dawson? Maybe we could …”

  “Is it really narrow?” Jessie muttered, drowsily.

  “Yes, really narrow, but not rushing water—more like a lazy river … smooth.” Watching her eyes close, he grinned. “But we’ll throw out a rope and you can water-ski behind the boat as we go through.”

  “Sure. And you can ride a bicycle over the captain’s bridge. I’m not asleep yet, trooper. No tricks, cause I will be soon. Go read a book or something and don’t plague me.” She yawned again, without opening her eyes, and, shortly, as Jensen watched, she began to snore softly.

  Still smiling he moved to his own bed, lay down with his clothes on, and did start to read. But, long before the first mate knocked softly on the door to let him know they were about to dock in Petersburg, he was matching Jess snore for snore.

  “He still okay?”

  “Yeah. We got him loose, no trouble.”

  “They’ll take the boat apart.”

  “Won’t find him. It’ll work.”

  “How the hell did they catch him?”

  “Because, you fuckup, your other guy couldn’t keep his hands off other people’s property, and you compounded it by sending Glen to put the stuff back. That’s twice. Should have tossed it.”

  “Had to do something to take the heat off. How’re you going to hide him?”

  “It’s taken care of. Don’t worry about it.”

  “He should get off.”

  “Not here. They’d catch him for sure.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Tough. I’ll do whatever I have to to make this thing work, and you’ll just have to go along with it. Liking it isn’t a factor. We’ve got to pull this off.”

  “I know why I’m in, but why do you need it so much?”

  “Shut up. It’s none of your business. I’ve got my reasons.”

  “What’ll you do with him until …”

  “Don’t fret. It’s all settled.”

  “Right.”

  “What I’m concerned with now is the pictures that trooper’s girlfriend took in Sitka. If she did manage to get anything, it might be trouble—for him and me. Got to keep an eye on her and see if I can get the film … or the pictures, if she decides to get it developed in Ketchikan.”

  “Shit. fust what we need.”

  “I’ll get them somehow.”

  The unscheduled stop in Petersburg was quiet, but it took longer than planned, and all that was removed from the Spirit to the dock was the ax and the body of the woman found in Tracy Arm. Glen Carlson, supposedly safely confined in the engine room, was nowhere to be found.

  The handcuffs Jensen had used to secure him had also disappeared, but Ray McKimmey was very much in evidence—unconscious at the foot of the stairs that went down into the hold. Whatever had been used to hit him had disappeared with his attacker, but the assault was clearly intended to put him out of the way while Carlson was liberated from the pipe to which he had been shackled. A deep cut on McKimmey’s chin said he had fallen at least partway down the stairs and was out cold when he hit the floor, where he lay, loose-limbed, on his face.

  Jensen, intending to collect Carlson to turn over to Petersburg law enforcement, was shocked to see him there when he came through the door and started down the stairs to the hold. Ray started to revive as Alex reached him, and he had soon struggled to his knees, against the trooper’s advice.

  “Stay still, for God sake, Ray. You’ve been hit pretty hard, from the look of it.”

  “What happened?” he asked groggily, stubbornly insisting on gaining a sitting position, his back against the newel post of the stairway. He was very pale, and his chin continued to bleed through his short beard and down the front of his coveralls. He smeared at it, in a dazed fashion, with one hand. “I fell.”

  “That’s pretty clear. You’ve got a bad lump on the back of your head …”

  McKimmey reached up to find it and winced when he touched the sensitive spot.

  “… and that nasty cut on your chin.”

  Another wince.

  “Who …” turning his head, carefully, “… where the hell is Glen?”

  “Gone. Whoever hit you turned him loose. You don’t remember anything?”

  “Nope. Not even … coming down here. Just a … vague … feeling that … I fell.”

  The first mate, who had disappeared at the first sight of McKimmey, returned with a first aid kit, a towel, two bags of ice, and a man wearing sweats and carrying a medical bag. He introduced himself, while examining Ray’s head, as Vern Repasky, and he fit Jessie’s description of the tall, bald doctor with fuzzy, gray eyebrows, who had stepped out of the crowd in the lounge to help Wayne Johnson. “We need to get him upstairs to his bunk,” he said, “but he’s going to need X rays, I think.”

  Jensen agreed.

  McKimmey did not.

  “There’s nobody to mind the store,” he objected. “With Carlson gone, I’m it.”

  “Forget it,” Alex told him. “First, before this ship goes anywhere, we get a doctor from Petersburg with an X-ray machine. If he says you’re hurt too bad to stay aboard, you get off. If you’re okay to travel, until tomorrow morning at the very least, all you’re going to be doing is taking care of yourself.”

  “Isn’t there someone else who can take care of the engine room?” Repasky asked.

  “There isn’t anyone. I’ll rest down here.”

  “Nope. Sorry. What you’ve got isn’t to be messed with,” the doctor replied.

  Alex also shook his head. “The engine room gets checked regularly by a crewman at night, while you sleep. They can check it now. If you stay aboard and there’s any problem, I’ll wake you up for it. Promise …”

  “There’s a valve that keeps sticking. Got to keep an eye on it.”

  “Where?”

  McKimmey pointed.

  “I see. Okay. I know a fair amount about engines and machinery. I was raised on a cattle ranch that grew its own hay, and we had a few of them, all right? I’m not your caliber, but I can pinch-hit … a valve’s a valve. If it sticks and I can’t keep it unglued, I will wake you—if you go on with us. Okay? Check it every half hour, between the crew checks.”

  McKimmey gave in. “But I’m not leaving the ship.”

  Between the doctor and Alex, he managed to get to his feet, up the stairs, and into his bunk, though his face was white and he was
wet with sweat by the time they reached it. “Bastards,” he breathed, gingerly holding a bag of ice, wrapped in a damp towel by the first mate, to the back of his head.

  “You got that right,” Alex agreed. “I’ll be back, but I’ve got to see the captain and a cop waiting on the dock for Carlson, and find out about waking up another doctor. You’re in good hands till we can find one.” He smiled at Repasky and the first mate, who nodded.

  They were carefully cleaning and dressing the wound on Ray’s chin, when Jensen left the engineers’ quarters and headed for the dock.

  “Damn it!”

  It was the first time Jensen had heard the captain come even close to swearing. With him it seemed overkill somehow.

  “So, he’s still somewhere on the Spirit?”

  “Yes, somewhere, and we certainly don’t want him to slip off without our knowing.” He turned to the Petersburg policeman listening to the conversation.

  “We need a doctor with an X-ray machine. Got one? And we need a couple of men to stand guard on the dock, and one to put in a boat on the other side.”

  “Okay, I’ll set it up and get the doctor.”

  “Great. I’ll set a couple of watchers on deck for now.”

  The officer went off to use the radio in his patrol car, and Jensen sent two crew members up to find a good view of the opposite side of the ship to make sure Carlson didn’t attempt to make a water escape.

  “He may have already gone. It’s been half an hour.”

  Jensen disagreed. “I don’t think he’ll try at all. This is a small town, on a wilderness island. In a couple of hours’ time everyone in Petersburg would know there was a fugitive on the island and be out looking for him. These people are Scandinavian fishermen and their families. They’re used to hard work and hard weather—tough guys, with a real sense of tradition and values. They’d get him. Where could he go? I doubt he’s stupid enough to climb off. Think he’ll wait for an easier answer—Ketchikan, probably. I’m just making sure. I want to leave him here, but on my terms, not his.”

  Captain Kay frowned, considering. “A search of the ship is going to take hours, Jensen. We’ve got to go on. This particular trip, more than any other all summer, is so important in terms of its timing that I don’t see how we can stay here long enough to make a total search. Tomorrow’s stop in Ketchikan is our last before Seattle. Passengers need time ashore before two whole days on board. Can’t skip it. The only thing that will make me delay much longer is if these doctors say McKimmey is too badly hurt to continue and I have to wait for another engineer. Even then, I would expect the company to advise me to go on to Ketchikan, where we could pick one up tomorrow from a Seattle flight. We’d have him faster that way than waiting for him to get here by air.”

  As he spoke a police car showed up, and a short, graying man got out with a medical bag in one hand. Alex came close to laughter, the man so utterly fit the comic image of a doctor disturbed in the middle of the night. His hair, what there was of it—a fringe around the sides of his head—stood out in every direction. He was wearing running-shoes without socks, and a raincoat over a pair of striped pajamas. He had remembered his glasses, though, and his slightly sleepy smile.

  “Hi. I’m the doc … Richards. They tell me I’ve got a patient who’s been hit over the head with something hard?”

  “Right.” Alex smiled back. “The ship’s engineer was assaulted about an hour ago by someone who wanted to free a prisoner we had arrested. He’s on board in his bunk, with another doctor who’s a passenger aboard, waiting for your opinion as to whether he needs a hospital or not. Don’t let him push you around, he’ll try. He doesn’t want to leave his engine.”

  The doctor nodded. “I don’t push easy, sir. I’m used to patching up commercial fishermen.”

  As a crewman led him aboard, the three men on the dock watched him go in silence.

  “How bad is Ray?” the captain asked shortly.

  “Touch and go. He got hit pretty hard.”

  “Well, if the doctor says he goes, that’s the end of it. He’s too good a man and engineer to risk.”

  Surprisingly, the doctors did not say he had to remain in Petersburg. They insisted on a quick trip to Richards’s office for the anticipated X rays, which McKimmey fought, afraid they were suckering him into a hospital. But Repasky and Richards brought him back, complete with a couple of professional bandages and the report that he was only slightly concussed, with no fractures or intercranial bleeding.

  Repasky helped McKimmey back onto the ship, headed in the direction of his bunk, while Richards gave them the report.

  “He’ll have one hell of a headache for the next couple of days. I’ve given him something for that, and orders to get as much rest as possible. Threw a couple of stitches in his chin. Will that do?”

  “You bet,” the captain told him with a grin, as they shook hands. “Thanks, doc. We’ll treat him right. We owe you for a midnight ship-call.”

  “Oh, your company’ll get a bill. I’ve seen a couple of your crew in the past for small stuff, cuts and bruises, now and then. Don’t worry.”

  He turned to Jensen. “Take care of that young man, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Off he went, yawning, to the police car. He climbed in, and it drove away, taking him back to a bed now undoubtedly cold.

  “Okay,” Alex told Captain Kay. “Here’s what we’ll do, if it’s all right with you. We’ll borrow one of Petersburg’s finest, here, to go with us as far as Ketchikan and fly back. I’m sure your front office will be willing enough to front him a plane ticket. He and I will each take a partner, senior crewmen, who know the ship well, and, while we do the Wrangell Narrows and get on down the road, we’ll search from bridge to bilges until we find Carlson. Okay?”

  Once again Kay smiled. “Better than okay. A good solution, if one of these cops will agree to the plan. I’ll personally guarantee that plane ticket.”

  One of them did, and within half an hour the Spirit was once again underway. Petersburg’s streetlights winked out one by one as the ship made a slow turn to the south that hid them behind the edge of a hill. The ship entered the famous Wrangell Narrows’s twenty-four miles, advancing slowly, but steadily, from one navigation marker to the next, all in the dark, to Alex’s disappointment—though he would have seen little of it anyway, since he and officer Tim Torenson worked with two of the senior crewmen to cover every spot on the ship that might be even remotely large enough to hide Glen Carlson.

  23

  5:50 A.M.

  Wednesday, July 16, 1997

  Spirit of ‘98

  Clarence Strait, Inside Passage, Alaska

  FOR THE REST OF THE NIGHT, THE QUARTET SEARCHED THE Spirit from top to bottom, but when the sky began to pale with morning light, they were still empty-handed. Carlson had vanished into the ship … somewhere … and they had looked everywhere they could think of. But Jensen was sure, doggedly and unconditionally convinced, that Carlson had not left the ship—that, somewhere, on board, he was lurking.

  At five o’clock, starving and discouraged, they paused for coffee and food. Alex was thankful to find that Carla, the early-rising assistant chef, was already in the galley. She insisted on cooking them the works: eggs and bacon, hash browns, toast—though Jensen assured her they could easily make do with whatever was available, if they could have fresh coffee.

  From Carla’s comments, word of Carlson’s escape had obviously already filtered out on the crew’s word-of-mouth information system.

  “Nobody works well on cold food,” she told them. “I can’t do much to help find this guy who killed Julie, can I?” she pointed out, looking up and smiling a teasing, quizzical sort of smile. She continued, “But this is my territory, and you’ll eat what I give you, right?”

  Her expression hit him, somehow, as sort of a challenge, a whole different attitude than her frustration of the day before. Seeing that he had no choice, he grinned back at her with his thanks. “We do
n’t really know that he’s the one, you know.”

  “Who else? Got any more candidates? I think he robbed those staterooms and killed her because she saw him someplace and was afraid to tell because of her background. We all know about that now.” She paused, then went on with a frown and an increase in intensity. “I’d like to get my hands on him.”

  “You liked her.”

  “Yeah,” Carta replied, with a grimace of sympathy, “I did. She was one of the good ones. I feel bad for her little boy.”

  “Sawyer told you?”

  “Yeah, I wanted to know, so I looked him up when I found out he knew her before. Was that okay?”

  “Sure. How long have you been working on the Spirit, Carla?”

  “Three years now. Why?”

  “You’re really familiar with the food stores, right?”

  “Yes. It’s all planned ahead for each trip. We have to be sure we have everything we need, even though we always repeat some of the menus from the last trip to use things up.”

  “If anything was missing, would you notice?”

  “Probably. But there’s extra of some things—staples, mainly.”

  “What do you do with leftover cooked food?”

  “That depends on what it is. The crew eats a lot of it. Whenever possible, things like sauces or specialty dishes and desserts are frozen for later.”

  “Watch, will you? This guy, Carlson, can’t exactly walk into the dining room, or sit down with the crew. And he’s going to get hungry …”

  “Right! Good idea. I’ll tell the kitchen staff, and we’ll keep close track of it. Now, the coffee’s ready in the waiter’s station in the dining room. Take that toast, go sit down, and let me scramble these eggs.”

  Gratefully, the weary searchers practically inhaled the food Carla soon set before them. After they had eaten, Alex sent the senior crewmen Captain Kay had assigned to him to get some sleep, and he and Torenson, the Petersburg officer, discussed the negative results of their night’s work.

  During the last hour of the hunt, Jensen had been thinking, in addition to climbing around in various sections of the hold, becoming more and more irritated with their singular lack of success. He was now ready to vent some frustration. Failure didn’t ever sit well with him.