I piloted the Noble Lady across Rosario Strait, down President Channel, and around the east tip of Spieden Island. Roche Harbor has east and west entrances off of Spieden Channel, and a south entrance from Mosquito Pass. I headed for the narrower east entrance. Slightly after eight in the morning, I rounded Davison Head, about a mile from Roche.
I looked to port and counted three large motoryachts leaving through the western entrance. The sleek, aerodynamic shape of one seemed awfully familiar. I grabbed my binoculars from a shelf behind me and watched as Longhorn cruised out of Roche Harbor and into Spieden Channel.
With a top speed around eight knots, the Noble Lady would never catch up to Longhorn, which I’m sure could push eighteen to twenty knots with her throttles wide open. I whipped my VHF microphone from its holder and pressed the transmit button.
“Longhorn, Longhorn, Longhorn. This is Sea Sleuth, Sea Sleuth, Sea Sleuth on channel sixteen.”
“Sea Sleuth, this is Longhorn.”
“Longhorn, switch to Zero Niner.”
“Zero Niner, Roger.”
I pushed the arrow-down channel key on my VHF until the backlit LED read 09.
“Sea Sleuth, this is Longhorn on Zero Niner.”
I reached deep for a Texas drawl. “Longhorn, I’m just entering Roche and see that you’re leaving. I heard you were in port and had hoped to catch up to my old friend Dennis Kincaid.”
“Roger that.” The male voice on the other end sounded relaxed, easygoing. “We’re headed out the Strait of Juan de Fuca for Neah Bay, then up the BC coast to Port Alberni for some salmon fishing. Unfortunately, Mr. Kincaid isn’t aboard. He’ll be joining us at Neah Bay for the cruise north.”
“That’s too bad. I just missed him several days ago, too. I heard that Longhorn was in Eagle Harbor about the time that woman’s body was discovered there. How awful to bring up a body on an anchor.”
Silence followed.
Then finally, “Sea Sleuth, can I tell Mr. Kincaid who called?” Strain had replaced the relaxation in the man’s voice.
“Martin Hunt, from Dallas.”
“Mr. Hunt, where is Sea Sleuth right now?”
“Entering Roche from Mosquito Pass.”
“Roger that. Mr. Hunt, we’ll be sure to relay the message to Mr. Kincaid that you attempted to catch up with him. Longhorn out. Going to sixteen.”
“Sea Sleuth out. Back to sixteen.”
Longhorn executed a sharp turn and headed back into the west entrance of Roche Harbor. I also executed a sharp turn and headed back across Spieden Channel. Close by the east tip of Spieden Island, I looked behind me. Across the channel, Longhorn steamed out of Roche again. My VHF radio crackled.
“Sea Sleuth, Sea Sleuth, Sea Sleuth. Longhorn, Longhorn, Longhorn.”
I didn’t answer. Longhorn tried hailing me several times, the man’s voice sounding more exasperated with each attempt. Finally he gave up. Funny how the mere mention of Eagle Harbor had caused Longhorn to change course.
I cruised back to Bellingham under a hot sun and blue skies. The fog in Hale Passage had burned away. I thought about tooting my horn when I crossed the ferry’s path again, wondering if the captain would remember our morning encounter, but I didn’t.
I turned the corner at the end of Portage Island into Bellingham Bay. Behind the hills surrounding the city, Mount Baker rose majestically, crowned with snow. I flipped open my cell phone and placed a call to Ben Conrad. I got him at his desk.
Ben grumbled. “I hate typing reports. You know, soon that’s all cops’ll do. Sit at a desk. Look at video monitors. Type up reports. Satellite imagery. Weaponized, small aerial drones. Robotic vehicles armed to the gills. They’ll do all the police work.”
“What about the investigative work?”
“You mean like asking questions and hunting down suspects?”
“Uh huh.”
Ben chuckled. “Probably be handed out to smart-ass PIs like you.”
“Got a question.”
“See, I told you that’s what’d happen.”
“If I give you the number of a crab-trap float, can you get me the owner’s name?”
“Trap from Eagle Harbor?”
“Uh huh.”
“Shoot.”
“3-4-7-4-2-8.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Ben hung up.
I made it back to port around noon. I’d just swung open the refrigerator door to rummage for lunch when my cell phone rang.
“Ray Bob,” Ben said.
“Last name?”
Ben laughed. “Boy, you still got a lot to learn. This ain’t like being down South where you get guys with a name like Billy Bob Thompson. This is the Northwest and Ray’s a Native American fellow. Lives out on the reservation, and that is his name, first and last. Raymond Bob.”
“Got it.”
“He’s got a record, too. DUI several years ago. Arrest for possession of drugs with intent to sell. Another for domestic abuse.”
“So Ray likes to get drunk, sell drugs, and slap women around?”
“All qualities of a fine citizen.”
After I hung up with Ben, I called Raven.
“Know a guy who lives on the reservation, named Ray Bob?”
“Yes.”
“Know how I can find him?”
“Maybe.”
“How?”
“You had lunch yet?”
“No.”
“You like fish sandwiches?”
“Maybe.”
“Pick me up in ten minutes,” Raven said. “We’ll grab something to eat.”
“Where?”
“On the rez.”
“At the casino?”
“No. At a little stand in front of the college.”
“And this is how we’ll find Ray Bob?”
“It is.”
eight
The road out to the Lummi reservation worked around the northern edge of Bellingham Bay before dipping inland near the airport. Across a small bridge over the Nooksack River, a sign with a red, yellow, and white image of a salmon read, “You Are Entering the Lummi Nation.”
Raven nodded toward the sign as we passed by. “Sovereign nation. It’s why there’s so much conflict between landowners and Indians on the rez,” he said.
“Landowners? I thought the land belonged to the tribe.”
“It does, but not all of it. Some of the best shoreline spots are owned privately.”
“But it’s a reservation.”
“Uh huh. Decades ago, those waterfront parcels were taken from Indians in backroom deals.”
“So, on the reservation not all of the land is part of the reservation. Sounds complicated.”
Raven smiled. “But the Lummis still own all the water rights.”
“And the landowners probably don’t like that, because it means the tribe is in control of a critical service.”
“Uh huh.”
“Sounds even more complicated. Landowners and the tribe working anything out?”
Raven chuckled. “Some. Mostly it’s in the courts.”
“Sounds like the only people who will win are the lawyers.”
“It’s the price you pay when egos and emotions run high.”
We came to an island of trees, which split the road into a confusion of arteries. In the center of the island, a purple sign with painted gold letters read, “No Excuse for Abuse.”
We drove around the island to a road on the other side. Not far down that road we pulled to a stop in front of the Northwest Indian College. Across the road, a large painted carving of three figures in a dugout canoe sat on the grounds of Saint Joachim’s Catholic Church. The figure in the middle of the canoe wore a priest’s skullcap and carried a Bible close to his chest. The carving seemed to depict a missionary being carried into Indian lands by willing converts.
When we exited the car, I turned and pointed to the carving. “That when the problems began?”
Raven didn’t answer. He turned and stared
across the road.
“By transporting that priest, it seems like they’re unwittingly introducing the seeds of their own undoing,” I said.
Raven shook his head slowly. “You don’t understand Lummi ways. Many years before the priests came, our people received a great prophecy: ‘When the men dressed like loons arrive, have mercy on them.’” He pointed. “That priest isn’t in control, those paddlers are.”
He sighed, then walked toward a pink travel trailer on our side of the road. I followed him. The trailer, attached to a pickup truck, had been turned into a mobile lunch stand. A pink awning stretching out from the trailer’s roof provided meager shelter for customers waiting to order. When our turn came, a rotund man with a short ponytail stuck his head out from the movable café. A dirty pink apron hung around his neck. He looked at me, but spoke to Raven.
“Ain’t seen you for a long time, bro.”
Raven reached in and gave the man a clasped-thumbs handshake.
“You want some food?” the man asked.
Raven turned to me. “Fish sandwich okay?”
I turned to look at the menu board. “Let’s see, what’re my choices?”
Raven jabbed me in the ribs.
“Great. I guess I’ll have a fish sandwich.”
The sandwich came on a bun, and the sauce tasted as good as the fish. We stood under the awning, eating. When Raven finished his sandwich, he stuck his head back into the trailer.
“Have you seen RB?”
The man handed a sandwich to the next customer in line. “He fishes some. Mostly he works out of his home.”
“Dealing?” Raven asked.
The man stuck his head out and eyed me again. “Why, you suddenly working with the law?”
“Know where we could find him?” Raven asked.
“At his home.”
“Which is where?”
The man grimaced. “Bro, you hardly ever come around. And when you do, you come asking questions. I sell lunch, not information. . . . Next.”
The man went back to his customers. Raven tapped me on the arm. “Come,” he said. “Lunch is over.”
We walked through the rest of the lunchtime crowd back toward the car. Someone tugged my shirtsleeve. I turned to look down into the eyes of an older woman. Her salt-and-pepper hair framed a pleasant, bronze-skinned face, though sadness dulled her hazel eyes.
“Ray Bob lives off Smokehouse Road,” she said. “First street on the left after you turn off Haxton.” She squeezed my arm tighter. “I hope you are the law. We need to clean up the rez. And we’d do well starting with him.”
She took a bite of her fish sandwich. Then she pivoted and walked away.
Turning onto Smokehouse Road afforded a tree-lined vista clear across the reservation to Bellingham Bay and beyond it, to a regal view of Mount Baker framed perfectly by the trees. From this vantage, the mountain shimmered and hovered above the city and the bay, twice as large as it appeared closer up.
Old-time mariners called this phenomenon “looming.” From a distance, many a frightened seaman mistook a native canoe with only three paddlers for a three-masted man-o’-war headed their way. At the Coast Guard Academy, we learned that cold air beneath warmer air deflects light down, magnifying objects behind it and displacing them upward.
A pickup truck emerged from this mirage, speeding down Smokehouse Road. It turned in front of us, onto the road where Ray Bob lived.
“You get the feeling that our good names have preceded us?” I asked.
“Maybe Carl doesn’t sell information, but he gives it away to his friends,” Raven said.
I turned onto the unnamed road. Up ahead, the pickup screeched to a stop. Its doors flew open and three men jumped out. They raced to a rectangular, prefabricated house. I stopped behind the pickup. I reached under the seat and grabbed my pistol. Then I tucked it into the small of my back. The men stood shoulder to shoulder at the front steps of the light gray house. Raven and I stepped from the car. I pulled my T-shirt down over my jeans and the handle of my gun.
“Somehow I don’t think they’re delivering fish sandwiches to Ray Bob,” I said.
Raven stepped in front of me. He walked up to the men.
“RB home?” he asked.
The man in the middle of the trio shook his head. “Nope.”
He folded his thick arms across his chest. With his gut spilling over his belt, he reminded me of a sumo wrestler.
“If you haven’t been inside, how do you know Ray Bob’s not home?” I asked. I walked up beside Raven.
“’Cause he ain’t,” the man to one side of Mr. Sumo said. This fellow wore a cut-off T-shirt that exposed skull-and-crossbones tattoos on both arms.
“Why don’t you tell RB that a friend of his wants to see him?” Raven asked Mr. Sumo.
“Told you, RB ain’t home.”
“Then you won’t mind if we leave him a note?” Raven said.
I took a step closer to the stairs. The three men stiffened.
“Won’t mind if you leave, bro,” Sumo said.
The third man eyed us silently. Thin and wiry, the same height as Raven, he looked like a real scrapper. A thick, angry scar curved from his left ear down to the corner of his lips. He stepped to one side. I watched him from the corner of my eye while I spoke to Sumo.
“We only want to ask RB about his crab traps. It’s not worth any of you getting hurt over.”
Raven moved toward the stairs. The man with the tattoos stepped in front of him. He threw a left hand at Raven. Raven leaned to one side, dropped down, and caught the man with a swift, powerful round-house kick. The cracking sound recalled stepping on fallen leaves. The man groaned, then fell to the ground clutching his side. Raven jumped in front of the big man. I spun around to the scar-faced man. He reached behind his back and pulled out a knife. He took another step closer. I threw up my hands. He stopped.
“Whoa,” I said.
Then I quickly reached behind and pulled out my gun. “Bullet trumps blade,” I said. “Now why don’t you pick up your friend and take him to the emergency room. I think he’s going to need his ribs taped.”
Sumo glowered. Scarface sneered, but he put his knife away. Raven and I stepped back. The two men dragged their friend off.
“Nice kick,” I said to Raven.
“Courtesy of the United States Navy,” Raven said.
“SEAL training?”
Raven nodded.
“You wanna knock? Give me a minute. I’ll go around the back, just in case RB doesn’t feel like company,” I said.
I crouched below the height of the windows and worked my way to the back of the house. A red pickup truck parked there had stacks of crab traps in its bed. I stood beside the back door, pressed up against the house. Raven knocked.
“RB, it’s Raven.”
A moment later, RB crashed through the back door. I raised a leg and caught his shins, which sent him sprawling in the dirt on his stomach. I pounced on his back and rammed the muzzle of my pistol into the soft spot at the base of his skull. Then I patted him down and pulled a knife from an ankle holder, which I tossed into the nearby brush.
I turned RB over. Raven stood at my side. RB sat up. He tried to stand, but I shoved him back down. He had a pretty-boy look. Tall. Clean-shaven. Boyish features. He’d slicked his black hair back, then turned it forward, under and around his ears.
“What the fuck you want, Raven? Come bustin’ onto the rez askin’ questions ’bout me. And who’s this?” He pointed to me.
“Man with the questions,” Raven said. “You dealing?”
RB nodded toward me. “Thought Sherlock Holmes here was the one with the questions.”
“Decided I’d ask one of my own first. You dealing?”
“Is that what this’s all about? Drugs? You still angry about Richie’s death? Bro, you got to let go of the past if you ever gonna get on with the future.”
Raven thrust the flat of his palm into RB’s face. RB toppled back and blood spur
ted from his nose. I put out a hand and held Raven back. Given what I’d seen before, I knew Raven had already reined himself in. I’m sure the ex-SEAL could have easily driven RB’s nasal bone into his brain. RB grimaced. He shook his head.
“Fucking broke my nose.”
I reached into my pocket and threw RB a handkerchief. He wadded it and stuffed it up his nostrils.
“We’re not here to settle old scores,” I said to Raven.
“Then what the fuck are you here for?” RB said.
The bloodstained handkerchief in RB’s nose gave his voice a muffled, nasal sound. Behind me, Raven sighed.
“Your crab traps were in Eagle Harbor,” I said.
“What of it? Some’re still there.”
“The bodies of three young women were found weighted down under the water. One of your crab traps sat on top of one of the corpses.”
“Hell, I stopped using young women for crab bait a long time ago.”
I raised my gun. “Smart ass. If Raven didn’t break your nose, I will.”
“What the fuck do you want me to say? I killed three women to attract the crabs?”
“No. I want to know when you dropped your traps in Eagle Harbor.”
RB sneered. “I’ve been dropping them and picking them up there every two or three days for the last several weeks.”
I pulled the picture that Ben had given me from my shirt pocket and flashed it at RB. “Have you seen this woman?”
He turned away without looking. “No.”
I slapped the muzzle of my pistol against his head, not hard but enough to hurt. RB winced.
“Look at her, dammit,” I said.
He gave the young woman’s photo a quick glance. His head twitched. He squeezed his eyes closed. “No. Like I said, I ain’t seen her.”
“Have you seen the Longhorn in Eagle Harbor?”
“Could have. Lots of boats in there this time of year.”
“I didn’t say the Longhorn was a boat.”
RB winced. He rubbed his head. “Yeah, well other than boats, what else would I see in Eagle Harbor?”
“What else have you seen?”
“Look, I didn’t see those women. I didn’t kill those women. And I didn’t see anyone dump their bodies.”
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