by Dave Daren
“That’s a fucking lie!” Ronan shouted.
“He shoved me,” Marniq continued.
“Yeah, because he was in my face,” Ronan explained. “I didn’t think that would be the catalyst of this shitshow.”
Ronan sighed and pulled at his mustache, but before Marniq or anyone else could respond, Ansong held up a warning hand. When the dock was quiet again, she nodded to Ronan to continue.
“Besides, she’s the one who actually started it,” Ronan continued as he pointed at Tash. “She punched Yura after I shoved Luke away.”
“Guilty,” Tash announced with a smile. “And I’d do it again.”
“And that’s when the fight broke out?” Ansong asked.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Tash answered. “Yura tackled me when I punched her, but I got in a couple of hits before Luke pulled her off of me. Someone from the crowd thought Luke was trying to hurt her and attacked him. Another person attacked that guy because…I don’t know. I guess he’s friends with Luke? Then all hell broke loose.”
“What a mess,” Jackson sighed.
“You could say that again,” Marniq agreed.
“And you just arrived here,” Ansong said to me.
I nodded at her.
“Is Diana feeling better?” Marniq asked.
“No, she’s still a little under the weather, but she should be getting some rest now,” I answered.
“Why’d you come back?” Tash asked as she examined the tear in her shirt.
She pulled her shirt away from her body to get a better look, and her toned abs were exposed briefly. She grunted at the damage and then untied the jacket around her waist. She pulled it on, but she didn’t look happy to wear it. The jacket was clearly meant to be a fashion statement, not an actual tool for protection against the cold.
“I have a couple of questions for Mr. Marniq,” I said as I turned my head to look at him.
He sighed and shrunk under my gaze.
“That’s funny, because we do, too!” Jackson announced with a sly smile.
“No, we don’t,” Ansong barked, and Jackson’s smile vanished. “We’ve already questioned him. We need to interview Tash, and I want testimonies from all four instigators about what happened here.”
“Instigator?” Ronan muttered. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Ansong ignored him and began assigning officers their tasks. Including her and Jackson, there were six officers present. One officer was already getting Yura’s testimony, and so one was assigned to Marniq and another to Ronan. Ansong directed the remaining officer to return to the police station while she and Jackson approached Tash.
I found myself watching from the sidelines, and I sighed in frustration. I was wondering how long the interviews would take when I saw the officer that had been ordered to return to the station pause and then turn around. I realized it was the man who had asked about Cassandra, and he made a point of not looking in Ansong’s direction as he made a beeline for me. He was young, and there was a tattoo of a small bat on the side of his neck. He didn’t wear a name tag, and I wondered if it had come off during the scuffle.
“Reese, right?” he asked as he pointed at me.
“That’s me,” I answered.
“You work with Cassandra,” he said, and I already knew where this was going. “She single?”
“You’re going to have to ask her that,” I said with a laugh. “And don’t bother asking me about her hobbies. She just started working for me today.”
“Damn,” he muttered and began to walk away.
I watched him climb into one of the police cruisers before turning my attention to Marniq. My target was still speaking to the police officer, but the conversation appeared to be ending. Marniq nodded at the officer while she probably gave him a warning, and then he appeared to say farewell to her. It was the officer’s turn to nod, and after another warning, she turned away from him, bounded down the steps from the dock, and passed me as she headed toward the officer that was speaking to Yura.
Marniq slowly looked around the dock, and his gaze met mine. I could see him debate what to do, but he finally stood up and walked in my direction. Despite his decision, he became visibly more distraught with each step he took, until he was nearly a quivering mess by the time he stopped in front of me.
I tilted my head toward the beach and then started to walk toward the sand. I wanted us to be out of earshot of any of the officers, but I also wanted to give him space. It was obvious that something was eating at him, and I wanted him to feel like he could give me his confession.
We walked down the beach and away from the dock until Tash, Yura, and the rest were little more than specks in the distance. I finally stopped and turned to face the brawny fisherman, and I almost flinched at the raw sadness on his face. I couldn’t imagine what he was about to tell me, though I suspected it wasn’t going to be as easy as a confession to the killing.
“Let me save you some time,” he sighed. “I was at home the night of Harrison’s murder. I was watching The Walking Dead on Netflix, and I fell asleep on the couch. I slept through the night.”
“And your wife can confirm this?” I asked.
Impressively, the man was saddened further by this question.
“No, she and my son are in Qikiqtaġruk,” he answered. “They always go there in June to visit my wife’s family. When I come back from this fishing trip, I’ll be joining them.”
“So you have no alibi,” I sighed.
“Well, Netflix should show that I watched several episodes,” he argued.
“Your account will show the day you watched those episodes, not the time,” I countered. “And I’m sure your family has access to your account as well. Besides, just because the TV was on doesn’t mean you were watching it.”
“You think I’m a criminal?” he asked with a sad shake of his head.
“I don’t have any opinion of you,” I lied. “I’m just pointing out the flaws in your logic.”
Marniq was the embodiment of raw emotion just then, and I couldn’t understand why. Diana and Austin had described him as a calm, quiet man, and I was sure that was exactly what he was when in a neutral mindset. But all I had seen from him were the extremes, from his volatile anger to his overwhelming melancholy. It was as if his short stature was unable to contain his reactions, and so they spilled out uncontrollably when he found himself in high-pressure situations.
Honestly, he reminded me of a chihuahua but without the endless vitriol. But where a chihuahua was all bark and very little bite, Marniq was more than capable of inflicting serious damage on someone during a fight.
I did understand now, however, why Diana and Morris were confident in his innocence, and it had nothing to do with him being a kind man. I was convinced if Marniq had murdered Vann, he would be sulking around town shamefaced.
As I watched his frown deepen and his eyes sag with the weight of his troubled thoughts, it was obvious that Marniq had no poker face. Of course, there was always the possibility that all this was an act to throw me off. I’d only just met the man, after all, unlike the locals.
I remembered the indifference Tash displayed when Marniq had directed his rage at her. She had been completely unfazed, and I wondered if that was because she didn’t scare easily or because she had seen this side of him countless times before? If it was the latter, that would seem to support my idea that Marniq was bad at concealing his emotional turmoil.
It also made it clear that Diana hadn’t seen that side of Marniq. And neither had Ronan, if his earlier claim was accurate. Had Morris mentioned Marniq’s temper? No, Morris’ reflections had largely been about Vann and how people reacted to Vann. It was another question to put to my client, though I was already tired of trudging to the hospital.
“Why would I want to kill Harrison?” Marniq asked as he kicked at the sand. “That goes against everything I stand for.”
“And what do you stand for?” I asked him.
His mood changed e
ntirely when he heard the question. His gloominess was replaced with pride, and his eyes lit up with newfound life.
“I stand for justice, for fairness, for equality,” he said as though reciting the end of a speech.
“Would a man who stands for those things be fishing illegally in the Arctic Ocean?” I asked with a smirk.
My smirk immediately vanished when I saw how my question had sucker-punched him.
He closed his eyes and shook his head slowly in shame. The remorse on his face was so palpable that I almost felt guilty for asking my question. The scene before me did not compare to the imaginary shame-faced Marniq I had conjured in my head earlier.
This was worse than I expected.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” he admitted. “Marlene tried to change Austin’s mind, but he wouldn’t listen to reason. Marlene and I shouldn’t have helped him fish up there, but when he explained how much it would hurt us financially in the long-run if we didn’t do it, we stopped listening to reason as well.”
Shame immediately became anger as Marniq remembered something. He whipped his head around to glare across the beach at Ronan, who was still standing on the docks with a police officer. Despite my own doubts about Marniq’s guilt, it was hard to ignore the whipsaw of his emotions. It wasn’t hard to imagine him getting so angry that he would hold someone’s head underwater until they drowned, and the way he glared toward Ronan’s distant shape was hot enough to singe Ronan’s hair.
“If Harrison and his crew hadn’t destroyed our net, illegal fishing never, ever would have crossed our minds,” he growled.
He balled his hands into fists, and a vein bulged against the skin of his neck as he watched Ronan.
Ronan seemed to sense Marniq’s stare, because he suddenly looked away from the officer and made eye contact with Marniq. The mustached man flinched at the animosity directed his way and leaned toward the officer to say something. He pointed toward Marniq, and the officer looked behind him to see.
Marniq slowly breathed in, held it for five seconds, and then exhaled a sigh. He winced a little from an unseen injury, but this didn’t stop him from performing the process again. When he had himself under control, he unclenched his hands one last time and faced me.
At first, I thought his face was devoid of any emotion, but then I realized that wasn’t quite true, since his face wasn’t neutral and empty, but rather just peaceful. I couldn’t understand how that was possible after the slideshow of emotions he had just presented, and yet, there was no sense of seething anger below the surface. This was the face of the quiet, kind man Morris and Diana knew.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’m not acting like my best, and that hurts Austin’s case. Whatever I can do to help, please let me know.”
“You can help me by telling me who you think the killer is if it’s not you,” I said.
“It really couldn’t have been an accident?” he questioned.
“None of the evidence points to his death being an accident,” I answered. “His jet ski was just found in the Arctic Ocean.”
“I thought he took his boat to the Chukchi Sea,” Marniq said with a furrowed brow. “What was his jet ski doing out there?”
“The current theory is that the killer used Vann’s jet ski to flee the crime scene and then abandoned it in the water,” I explained.
“If that’s the case, then I guess Ronan would most likely be the killer,” Marniq said, but he didn’t sound certain. “What Harrison and his crew did to us was disgraceful, but I don’t think that makes them killers. I only say it’s Ronan because I saw him use Harrison’s jet ski all the time. I think he used it more often than Harrison did.”
“Any other reason why you think it’s Ronan?” I asked with a chuckle.
Marniq offered a sheepish smile and then thought for a moment. He gripped his chin and stared down at the sand as he searched his mind for something. His search ended with a shrug of his shoulders.
“He didn’t seem as close to Harrison as Yura did,” he offered. “If I had to choose between the two of them, then I’d go with Ronan. But I don’t think there was any bad blood between Harrison and Ronan.”
“What about Ms. Tash?” I asked as I glanced at the woman on the dock.
Marniq’s face twisted into anger and shock at the question, and I was once again struck by how quickly his emotions could change. He took a moment to compose himself before responding.
“Marleen would never kill Harrison,” he declared. “They dated in high school.”
“High school was a while ago,” I reminded him. “People change, and they weren’t dating when Vann was alive.”
“I know that,” he said. “What I mean is that out of all the people associated with Austin, she was the only one on friendly terms with Harrison. She didn’t care about the rivalry. Even when the fishing net was destroyed, she got angry, but she also acknowledged that it was a smart move from Harrison.”
He looked over to where Tash stood on the dock, and I turned to look as well. She finished her conversation with the officer and stepped back to scan the dock while the police consulted with each other. A moment later, she spotted us on the beach, and she walked off the dock and started in our direction. Even though we were the only people still on the beach, she apparently didn’t want to appear to be looking for us. So she shoved her hands in her pockets and kicked sand high into the air as she strolled toward us just like someone out for a stroll.
“Another thing,” Marniq added as he watched Tash approach us. “Marlene likes to go to this bar called Northern Peak. I bet she was there all night when Vann was murdered.”
I nodded in response since I had heard this before, but I didn’t see the need to inform him that she hadn’t been at the bar all night. He would find something, anything, to argue that she was innocent, just like Morris and Diana were willing to do for him.
Their eagerness to defend each other made it hard to believe the theory that Morris had a backstabbing accomplice among them. No one wanted to throw him under the bus to clear their own name, and I wondered if it was because they knew that doing so would put a target on their back with the police.
“Are we having a lovely chat here, boys?” Tash asked as she stopped to stand in front of me and Marniq. She flashed us a cheerful smile and turned her attention to Marniq.
“I hope you told him that you couldn’t have killed Harrison because you’re a pacifist,” she said to the burly fisherman. “What’s the point of these beefy biceps if you’re not going to use them?”
Marniq seemed embarrassed by this, and he struggled to come up with a reply. After a moment, he shook his head and glanced in my direction.
“I’m not a pacifist,” he mumbled. “There’s a time and a place for violence. It wasn’t today.”
She laughed at this and bumped her shoulder into his just like they were a pair of playful siblings, and then she wrapped her arms around one of his before she turned her attention to me.
“This meathead didn’t throw a single punch during that brawl,” she said with a dreamy sigh. “He pulled Yura off of me, shielded me from her attacks, and then ignored the guys who came to her defense. My hero.”
She planted a kiss on his cheek, and he rolled his eyes at her but didn’t push her away. He suppressed a smile, and I found myself re-evaluating their relationship yet again.
“Careful,” he warned. “If my wife finds out, she’ll have your head.”
“Oh please,” the radiant woman responded with a roll of her eyes. “You’re like a brother to me. If I wanted to be a homewrecker, I’d take your wife.”
“That’s fair,” he admitted. “My wife is quite the catch.”
She laughed at this, released his arm, and then looked back at the Arctic Wizard.
“I’m so glad we got nothing done today,” she sighed.
“We can still organize the stuff in the cabin,” he reassured her. “It’s not too late in the day.”
“Sadly true,” sh
e said and grinned.
“Do you have any more questions for me?” Marniq asked as he turned toward me.
“No,” I answered with a shake of my head. “That’s it for now. I know where to find you if anything comes up.”
“Well, have a good one, Mr. Brooks,” he said as he extended his hand for a shake.
I shook it, and he turned around to head back to the dock. I thought Tash would go with him, but she waited a moment and then studied me closely.
“You should seek me out when I’m no longer on your suspect list,” Tash told me as she slowly backed away.
“I’ll think about it,” I said with a smile.
“Yeah, you think about it,” she told me with a wink and then turned around to catch up to Marniq.
I watched her run off and then scanned the docks for Ronan. He was nowhere to be seen, and I feared I had lost my chance to speak to him. But then I spotted him in the middle of the beach talking to Ansong and Jackson.
I slowly strolled toward them in the hopes that by the time I reached their location, they would be wrapping up their conversation with him. I was only a couple of strides away from them when Ansong thanked him for his time and began to walk away.
Ansong saw me out from the corner of her eye but made no move to fully acknowledge my existence. She and Jackson continued on their way to the only remaining police car on the beach.
Ronan, on the other hand, made a move toward Osaka Restaurant, but he stopped when he noticed me approaching him. He seemed to debate what to do next, but he must have decided he’d rather get his talking out of the way. He waited on the beach, and when I extended a hand toward him, he shook it.
“Reese Brooks,” I introduced myself.
“Uh, Ronan Westcott,” he replied. “You’re Austin’s lawyer?”
“That’s me,” I confirmed with a nod.
“Oh, great,” he muttered.
He looked off to the side as though he hoped someone would appear and help him get out of this situation. Yura was nowhere to be seen, Jackson and Ansong were already in the car getting ready to drive away, and Marniq and Tash had already boarded the Arctic Wizard. It was just the two of us standing on the beach getting whipped by the wind, and this made Ronan sigh out of frustration.
