I needed to talk to Mark and I couldn’t do it on the air as Danny DFO. I grabbed the radio mike. Altering my voice just a bit, from BC midcoast drawl to Steveston third-generation Japanese twang, I called the Coastal Provider from a garbled boat name. One of Mark’s deckhands answered and asked me to repeat my boat name. I held the mike close to my mouth and gargled and hissed to imitate static, and then said “Mr. Billy says pump everything.” Normally Mark would pump the fish he couldn’t carry himself onto packers and head south with the rest. But I needed him and the boat here.
Pete was still back in the galley scoffing prawns, but George had reclaimed his territory in the wheelhouse and could not have missed my somewhat odd radio exchange. I looked at him as he recalibrated the radar but he radiated incuriosity. “Fun’s over here. Let’s head back to Shearwater,” I said.
He nodded and pushed the throttle forward.
Thirteen
On Sunday morning, I woke before dawn and took my coffee out onto the deck. Sleeping seagulls bobbed in the water like white corks. I paced and sipped, and after awhile glimmers of light began to struggle over the horizon. By the time full daylight revealed another scenic masterpiece, I had made a few decisions. By cup number three, I was in the wheelhouse waiting for Mark to call. By cup number four, he was on the air.
“James Sinclair, Coastal Provider.”
“Coastal Provider, James Sinclair.”
“Good morning. I’d like to give our final hail, four hundred and eighty tons.”
“Thanks for that, skipper. What’s your current position?”
“About a half hour from Bella Bella.”
“Roger that. Thanks for your input and good traveling.”
I turned to Pete. “I’m going to stick around here for awhile. Would you mind running me around the corner so I can jump on the Coastal Provider ?”
“Grab your stuff and let’s go.”
I shook hands with George, thanked him for his help and wished him luck on his trip north for the last opening. In my cabin, I threw dirty clothes into my bag, took a look around for stray belongings, checked the drawer under my bunk. Jesus Christ! Alistair’s journal, the odd one that I hadn’t given to Louise. How the hell was I going to explain this? More groveling. I grabbed the journal and left. On my way through the galley, I shook hands with Alex and promised I’d send him my recipe for smoked oolichan pie. He almost succeeded in looking interested.
Pete was already warming up the Zodiac when I jumped in. By the time we got to Bella Bella, Mark was idling by the government dock. We went alongside, and with my bag in one hand, I clapped Pete on the shoulder with the other. “That was one of the better fisheries and I think we should take full credit for it.”
“Absolutely. We were in full control at all times and never a worry wrinkled this baby-smooth brow. I’ll see you in The Big Smoke.”
I clambered onto the deck of the Coastal Provider. Pete waved and proceeded to generate a large rooster tail behind which he soon disappeared. I went forward to the wheelhouse and took a seat in one of the two captain’s chairs.
“Congratulations, buddy. Four hundred and eighty tons is not a bad score.”
Mark was slumped comfortably in the other chair, one eye looking forward, the other toward the radar screen off to the side. Fortunately, this temporary wall-eyeism never became permanent. He scratched absently at his week-old stubble.
“Yeah, it went well. I’m glad it’s over. Now I feel like I can concentrate on more important stuff.”
“Can you fly your crew home? We need the boat here.”
“Sure. Why?”
“Remember how the plotter showed the Kelp stopping in Morehouse Bay every time it went to Crowley’s place? Guess what I saw in Morehouse Bay?” I waited for Mark to crinkle his forehead into a questioning mode. “Sockeye. A huge school. Biggest bunch I’ve ever seen.”
“You’re crazy. Not at this time of the year.” He paused. “And so? You want to catch a few of them?”
“Exactly. We’ll take Christine and Fergie, Louise if she wants to come. We need some samples of those sockeye. They’re not normal or else they wouldn’t be here. So dollars to dandelions, they’re related to Igor. Then we’ll head for Vancouver and start following up on some of the leads there. We need to look at the personnel lists for the DFO lab back in 1996. I honestly don’t think Crowley killed Billy, at least not single-handedly. So I want to know who else was working there.”
“I think you’re right. Crowley seemed genuinely surprised when I told him Billy had gone missing.”
It took just a moment for this to sink in. “Jesus Christ! You told Crowley that Billy went missing?”
“Yeah, about three weeks ago, when we first got here. I went to see him just to pick his brains about what was going on, fish-wise. We started BS-ing and I told him the story of our last great salmon season. I had to include Igor and how Billy took it to the lab and we never saw him again. Crowley seemed genuinely shocked, which seemed a little odd because it’s not like he knew Billy or anything.”
“Did you ask him if he knew anything about Igor?”
Mark took a second before he replied. “Yes, but looking back, he kind of dodged the question. Or more that he ignored it and just focused on Billy.”
“This could be important. One of the big questions has been if Crowley’s death was connected to Billy and Igor and the lab back in 1996, why was he killed now? What was the catalyst? What precipitated the killing? It could have been your telling Crowley about Billy’s disappearance. Say Crowley was involved in nefarious activities at the lab with at least one accomplice. Billy shows up and is killed by the accomplice. Crowley doesn’t know anything about it until you tell him. Immediately after you tell him, he contacts the accomplice and raises shit. The accomplice gets nervous, comes up here, and kills Crowley. What was the date when you told him?”
Mark stood up and consulted the calendar on the back wall of the wheelhouse. “April 8.”
He sat down and put the boat in gear, idling toward an anchoring spot. I followed these maneuvers with about ten percent of my brain, while the other ten percent churned and cogitated and eventually spewed forth a theory.
“How’s this sound? Crowley finds out from you on April 8 about Billy’s probable murder. After you leave, he contacts his accomplice. How does Crowley contact him? Gotta think about that. Anyway, he says, ‘hey buddy, we gotta talk this over, you better get up here.’ So this bad guy makes a date to come see Crowley using the Kelp. We know that’s true because Crowley’s journal says he was expecting the Kelp, plus the Kelp’s plotter says the boat was there on the morning of the murder.”
I sat and thought as Mark went to the bow to drop the hook. When he came back inside he went to the chart drawer. “What was that other place that showed up on the plotter tracks of the Kelp ? Lagoon Bay?” After some rustling and snapping of large pieces of paper, he laid a chart on the chart table. It showed lower Fisher Channel and in particular Lagoon Bay. If we continued straight after exiting Lama Passage, we’d enter the bay. It was an interesting-looking place. The center of the bay’s shoreline was broken by a narrow, shallow pass that led into a large, deep lagoon: Codville Lagoon. The lagoon, in turn, sheltered a large island. “Man, if someone wanted privacy for something, that would be an ideal place. You ever been in there?”
I shook my head. “Never had the need to. And I bet that’s true for most people.”
We sat and thought some more. I remembered something that had been bothering me. I grabbed the mike and called the Racer on channel 16. Christine didn’t answer, but they went to get her. When she came on the air, I asked to switch to channel 22. Mindful that anyone could be listening in, I phrased my question carefully. “Miss Farnsworth, it’s Danny Swanson here. Last time we talked, you said you’d look for the second parcel that came in from Port Hardy. Did you find it?”
“Yes, I did. Shall I mail it to you?”
“I’ll be in Shearwater in an hour. C
an you meet me at the office?”
“Roger on that.”
I switched the radio back to channel 16. “There was a second person on Les Jameson’s boat. I wonder what she found that makes her think so.” I played around with this new piece of the puzzle and was repulsed by the picture that began to emerge. “Jesus, I think our boy’s pulled off the hat trick.”
“How do you figure?”
“Our bad guy gets a call from Crowley that makes him desperate to get to Yeo Cove before Crowley spills something. But it’s foggy in Port Hardy, and the planes are grounded for three days. But being DFO, or DFO connected, he knows half the fishing fleet is on their way north. So he hangs around the dock until he sees someone he knows, Les Jameson, and bums a ride. But because he’s already made up his mind to kill Crowley, he has to kill Jameson, and it’s easy to make that death look like an accident.”
Mark nodded. “I’m thinking of the plotter tracks. Let’s say our bad guy kills Jameson and throws him overboard somewhere, say Cape Calvert. Then he continues on in Les’s boat and sneaks into Bella Bella late at night. He rigs up a towing bridle on the Kelp and heads back south with both boats. In Fitz Hugh sound, he starts up the Kelp and casts Les’s boat adrift. That explains why that last trip of the Kelp starts in the middle of the sound. Then he heads north, kills Crowley in the wee hours of the morning, takes the Kelp back to Bella Bella, and disappears somehow.”
“Almost right, but not quite. Crowley saw the Kelp on the eleventh. So probably the killer stopped by for at least one visit before killing Crowley on the thirteenth. He wanted to check things out before he acted. Hey, did you see a computer when you were there?”
“Yeah, right on the kitchen table.”
“It wasn’t there later. Our bad guy obviously took it, but that one was bait. Crowley was suspicious of his accomplice. The computer with all the info was hidden. Then the killer spent the night of the twelfth in Morehouse Bay, so no one in Bella Bella would have seen him.”
“And he’s probably still in the area, maybe Lagoon Bay.”
“Yeah, but I’m almost scared to come face to face with him. In fact, I am scared to come face to face with him. He kills people.”
I lurched to my feet in what I hoped was a decisive manner. “And the truly scary thing about all this is that Fleming Griffith was running the lab when all this started. What if he’s involved in the murders?” Wordless pause. “I’m going to talk to Louise. Can you get hold of Fergie and meet us at the bar in an hour?”
“See you there.”
When I barged into Louise’s office, she was on the phone, or rather, talking into it. When she hung up, I leaned over her desk and kissed her with awkward passion. “Want to go fishing?”
“Explain.” I did. She groaned. “A minute ago, I was working on an unsolved homicide. Now you tell me we’ve got a mass murder on our hands.”
“Yeah, but just one murderer. And together, we can nail him.”
“And you want me to go where? Morehouse Bay?”
“It’s where the trail leads. Besides, you’ll get to see the old crew in action. It’ll be like reuniting the ’94 Oilers.”
“Give me a little time to arrange some stuff. Pick me up at the dock.”
By the time I got to the bar, the rest of the crew was seated at a table, untouched beers going flat in front of them. Mark raised an index finger in greeting. “I’ve brought these guys up to speed but they’re having a hard time digesting it.”
Christine spoke through hands covering her face. “I’m having a hard time, not so much digesting it, but believing it. It seems completely unreal. Three people killed over a science experiment gone wrong?”
“Just one, really: Billy. Then Crowley was killed because he found out that Billy had been killed and Les Jameson was killed because he could have fingered Crowley’s killer. The big mystery, the thing that’s driving me crazy, is why was Billy killed. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Fergie straightened up and slapped the table. “I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense. Maybe we’re dealing with a deranged lab rat. I just want to get the bastard and kick his balls up to his tonsils.” We all sat silent again.
A question occurred to me. “Christine, how do you know there was a second person on Les Jameson’s boat?”
“I started going through his gear. There were two carryalls full of clothes and personal stuff. One definitely belonged to Les because it had his wallet. The other bag was full of clothes that were too big to fit Les, and it had a toilet kit that included a hairbrush.”
Les Jameson hadn’t had hair for even longer than he hadn’t had morals. “Have you got the bag now?”
“Yeah.”
“Give it to Louise. We’ll pick her up in Bella Bella. You guys ready?” We left the beer on the table and walked out.
Twenty minutes later, I helped Louise over the cap rail of the Coastal Provider and led her up to the wheelhouse. She smiled at everyone. “Hi, everyone. Thanks for volunteering your time on this.”
“We were a pretty tight group,” Christine said with a smile, “the crew of the Maple Leaf C. I guess this seems to us just a case of helping out an old shipmate.”
I didn’t know if she was referring to Billy or me. Didn’t really matter. Mark put the boat in gear and we headed north into the gathering dark.
With five people in the wheelhouse, it was a little crowded, but not uncomfortably so. We bantered companionably for ten or fifteen minutes, and then I suggested that Christine and I do a wheel shift. Mark yawned and headed for his cabin and Fergie went to claim a bunk in the fo’c’s’le. Louise stayed with Christine and me. Soon we were heading westward in Seaforth Channel.
The wheelhouse was dark, lit only by the dim, comfortable light of the instruments. I was at the wheel with Louise standing beside me, staring with interest at the radar and sounder and GPS display, and Christine lounged on the bench along the port bulkhead. I spoke quietly. “Mark must have been a little tired. They were pumping fish all last night.”
“Seine boat guys are such sissies,” Christine snorted, “which I realized when I started gillnetting. Gillnetters stay up for days at a time.”
Louise turned to her. “You’re joking. That’s not safe.”
“You’re right, but working on a boat alone is not safe. Setting a net is not safe. Drumming in is not safe. Being on a slippery deck at night is not safe. But that’s gillnetting. So staying up for a few hours past what most people would consider a normal shift is just part of the game.”
“What’s the longest you ever stayed up?”
“I used to do forty-eight hours regularly, but after that, I’d start seeing the phantom deckhands. About fifty-six hours was my absolute limit. But I knew guys who swore they could do three days.”
Louise shook her head. “Good God. I had no idea that fishermen did stuff like that. After doing fifty-six hours, did you take a couple of days off?”
“No, I’d set the alarm and have a fifteen-minute catnap, do another few hours, another catnap, and so on. The only problem was that during those catnaps The Bad Things would appear.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, the thousand and one things that can screw things up: a slight shift in the wind blows your boat onto the net, a riptide sinks your net, a huge log drifts into the middle of your net, a boat comes around the corner and runs over your net. Shit like that.”
“I can’t imagine why anyone would want to fish for a living.”
“Masochists, I guess. But when things are going well, fish hitting your net, you’re making the right moves, and you out-drum some guy to get the next set, there’s absolutely nothing that compares to it.”
I silently agreed. After about half an hour, I altered course to head into Return Channel. At the wheel of a boat, in the company of friends, I felt better than I had in a while. I told Louise about our SPLAG scam. She chuckled softly. We ran northeast for an hour before I turned into Morehouse Bay. Christine was dozing
on the bench, but when she heard the engine slow, she woke up and helped me drop the hook. Then we all found a bunk in the fo’c’s’le, I kissed Louise goodnight, and we snuggled into our respective bunks and waited for what the morning would bring.
Fourteen
I was the second one up in the morning. It was almost daylight. We had slept in but that was okay because this wasn’t real fishing. We only needed to make one or two sets, catch a few of the refugee sockeye for specimens, and call it a day.
Mark and I sipped coffee and watched the eastern sky lighten and the scattered cirrus clouds start to turn pink. The boat sat quietly at anchor. There wasn’t a sound, but you could almost hear something whisper the meaning of life.
The pink dawn gave way to soft golden daylight and the sounds of human animals awakening drifted up to the wheelhouse. Soon everyone was there. Louise broke the silence. “I won’t be much help today so the least I can do is cook breakfast. Do you have eggs and stuff, Mark?”
“On this boat, we’ve always considered food as safety equipment. We never leave the dock without it.”
“Is a Western omelet okay with everyone?”
There was not a single objection so Louise went down the ladder, and soon we could hear pots banging in the galley. Fergie was staring intently out the window. “I don’t see any sockeye, Danny.”
“They’re around here somewhere. We’ll find ’em after breakfast.” I went down to the galley to get another coffee and stayed to watch Louise bustling competently around the stove.
“I thought you said you weren’t much of a cook.”
“If I was rich, I would have lied about that too. I want you to be interested in me, not my incidental attributes.”
The River Killers Page 13