Alaskan Legal: A Legal Thriller

by Dave Daren

  “Have you heard anything about the jet ski?” I asked as I returned to my seat.

  “Yeah, Luke called me yesterday and told me about it,” the captain answered. “He also told me about the brawl on the beach. He told me he was sorry for making the case harder for me.”

  Morris smiled happily from the memory, and a far away look crossed his face as if he was picturing the scene at the beach.

  I nodded in response while I considered what he’d just said. Although I had guessed Marniq would most likely be the one to keep Morris in the loop on the case, I was still surprised to have had my guess confirmed. After all, Diana had been the first person I had told about the jet ski, so she should have been the one to break the news.

  So why hadn’t she? Maybe by the time we had finished our conversation she had forgotten, though I didn’t believe information that important was easily forgettable even for someone suffering from a migraine. She might have thought I would share the news with her husband myself, which was perfectly reasonable, though I still thought it was odd that she hadn’t at least called her husband at some point.

  “Do you do that often?” Morris asked as he pointed at me.

  “Do what?” I asked as I lowered my hand, and I knew then what he was referring to. “Oh, the scar thing. It’s a habit. I just do it when I’m lost in thought. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Sure, okay,” he said as he nodded, but curiosity marked his face.

  I figured what he really wanted to know was the story behind the scar, and I decided I’d share it with him when the case was over. Assuming he was still interested by then, which wasn’t a sure thing.

  “Anyway, since neither you nor any police officer came to talk to me about the jet ski, I figured I wasn’t off the hook yet,” my client continued.

  “That’s correct,” I confirmed. “Another piece of evidence was discovered this morning. Traces of a drug were found in Vann’s wine glass. All signs point to a third person being on the boat, but the police think this person was an accomplice, not someone operating independently.”

  “Of course, they fucking do,” he sighed and rolled his eyes. “What will it take for them to believe for just one second that I had nothing to do with Vann’s death?”

  “A confession from the real killer,” I answered. “There’s plenty of DNA evidence for your involvement, and none whatsoever from our mystery third person. We need either a confession or some concrete evidence that proves this other person not only killed Vann but did it independently.”

  “Okay, then what about the drug?” Morris suggested. “If we figure out what the drug is and who owns it, then I’ll be in the clear, right?”

  “That should be the case,” I sighed. “The police haven’t identified the drug yet, but they suspect it’s a kind of sleeping pill. That’s an issue.”

  Morris shut his eyes, sighed, and then slowly opened them. The despair on his face was so potent that it could have been tangible, and for a moment, it seemed like the area around him darkened.

  “Yeah, that’s a big fucking issue,” he whispered. “Do you know how common sleeping pills are in this town? They’re even more common now because of the sun. The only person I know who doesn’t use or own any sleeping pills at all is Marlene. She could be boiling alive, and sleep would still come naturally to her. Luke doesn’t need them all the time, but he has some. And, God, don’t even get me started on Diana.”

  “I was really hoping you were going to say Mr. Marniq was the one who doesn’t use pills,” I admitted.

  “Instead of Marlene?” he questioned. “Why? The police don’t think she did it?”

  “She couldn’t have,” I told him. “She has an alibi that places her here in town during the time frame of Vann’s murder.”

  “And Luke doesn’t?” he asked, and I shook my head. “Fuck. What about Ronan and Yura? Do they have alibis?”

  “Yura doesn’t,” I answered. “Ronan claims he was gambling at home, but that’s a hard alibi to prove.”

  “Gambling?” Morris said. “Ronan? I didn’t know he gambled. Well, of course, I didn’t. Why the hell would I know that? Gambling’s illegal in Alaska.”

  “I know,” I said. “Turns out Ronan was doing more than just gambling. He was also embezzling money from Vann.”

  Morris’ jaw dropped, and then he snapped it shut to grin at me. His body started to shake just a bit, and then a laugh from deep within his body traveled up and emerged as a loud roar. It was a display of pure, concentrated joy, and it hurt to look at. Hope had been restored in the battered man on the bed, but he didn’t understand why this information about Ronan changed little about the case.

  He stopped laughing abruptly when he noticed I wasn’t partaking in the celebration. Concern made his smile twitch, but the smile remained on his face.

  “That should have been the first thing you told me,” he remarked. “Do you know how bad this makes Ronan look? This gives him a motive for murder, and it makes sense for him to use me as a scapegoat. We’re not friends. We’ve never been friends.”

  “He’s not going to confess to Vann’s murder,” I sighed.

  “He doesn’t need to,” Morris snapped, and the smile finally vanished. “There’s enough to work with to slap him with a guilty verdict.”

  “You’d both end up going to jail,” I said.

  “What?” he yelled with widened eyes. “Why? We would never work together!”

  “If you both felt threatened by Vann, you two could put your differences aside to kill him,” I explained. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. You’re also forgetting something important.”

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Right now, the only people who know about your illegal excursion on the Arctic Ocean are me, Diana, and Vann,” I said. “Notice that one of those people is dead. Unless you plan to commit perjury, you’ll be expected to answer honestly when asked why you went out to confront Vann on the night of his murder. Then we’d have an embezzler and an illegal fisherman on trial, and the one thing they have in common is that a dead captain knew their crimes.”

  Morris shook his head in frustration.

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” he complained. “At what point in time would Ronan and I have confessed our crimes to each other and then planned to kill Harrison? That conversation would never happen between us.”

  “It doesn’t need to,” I countered. “You interrupted whatever plans Vann had that night, remember? If Vann had planned to confront Ronan on his boat, Ronan would have decided then and there to kill him. You come along, start a fight with Vann, and Ronan overhears the entire ordeal. Now he knows you both have a reason to kill Vann. Why not work together?”

  “Bu-But,” he stammered. “Then where do the pills come into play? And what about me being knocked out?”

  “Ronan could have drugged Vann before you showed up, and the effects of that drug weren’t felt until after the fight,” I explained. “The part about you being unconscious could be a lie. In actuality, Vann was the one knocked out that night, and you decided to use that detail in your own testimony.”

  Morris opened his mouth to protest, but he must have known I’d have an answer ready because he chose to sigh instead. Despair returned to his face, and I could see it weigh him down like a two-ton piece of lead. He slumped down in his bed and then rolled onto his side so he could look out the window at the endless day.

  “I’d like for you to leave,” he finally muttered.

  The request caught me off-guard, and I arched my eyebrows in response. I got to my feet, but rather than head toward the door, I came to Morris’ bedside and blocked his view of the window.

  He flipped onto his other side with an annoyed sigh.

  “Just go,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about this case anymore.”

  “I didn’t intend to discourage you,” I said to his back. “I’m just trying to make you see why going to court is a terrible idea. A lot of the hard evidence in this
case comes from you. The rest are hypotheticals, and that’s dangerous. A jury only needs to be presented with your DNA evidence and a convincing hypothetical to put you behind bars. Let’s not give them that.”

  He said nothing in response.

  “Mr. Morris, I need you to cooperate with me,” I said.

  “I have nothing that can help you,” he finally said. “You told me about the drug and about Ronan, and we both know neither of those are going to prove my innocence. What else is there to discuss? You’re better off not coming back here until you’ve found the actual killer. If you do.”

  His voice shook on that final sentence.

  I sighed in disappointment, but I understood the sentiment. It felt like every new path that came up in this case was promptly blocked with an obstacle. I had hoped discussing the case with him would open my eyes to something I hadn’t noticed before like a detail I had overlooked or somehow forgotten.

  And then I gasped as I remembered the picture on my phone of the red stain on the deck.

  “How long would you say the two of you fought?” I asked suddenly.

  “I don’t know,” Morris sighed. “It all felt really fast to me, but it had to have been longer than ten minutes.”

  “And you’re certain the wine glass wasn’t anywhere on deck when you climbed aboard?” I pressed, and Morris went silent as he thought.

  At least, I hoped he was thinking. I couldn’t see his face, and so I wasn’t sure if he was trying to picture the scene when he arrived at Vann’s boat or if he was refusing to answer because he thought the conversation was pointless.

  “Officer Jackson thought the glass might have been placed on deck before I climbed aboard, but I know that’s not true,” the captain finally said. “Harrison didn’t have a glass in his hand, and there wasn’t one anywhere on deck. I never looked below deck, but I was near the entrance, and I didn’t see a glass over there, either.”

  “I see,” I said.

  Anything Morris told me meant nothing to the police since it could be construed as a lie or unreliable, but it was all crucial information in my eyes. I took his word as truth since he knew better now than to lie to me. If he said there hadn’t been a wine glass on deck, then there hadn’t been one, and this explained the stain on the deck. With the information about the drug, it made sense now.

  There were two instances where Vann’s killer would have had the opportunity to drug the captain’s wine glass. It was either when Vann was operating the boat from the wheelhouse or when he was fighting Morris on deck. Vann had been out on the water for a considerable amount of time before Morris arrived, and so Morris would have found an already dead Vann had he been drugged earlier. The type of drug used was still unknown, but no drug would take hours to work. This meant the drugged wine had not been consumed until after Morris arrived.

  After the fight, Vann must have gone below deck to retrieve both his glass of wine and his companion. Considering his hatred for Morris, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d brought his guest onto deck to show them the unconscious fisherman.

  During that moment of gloating, he probably would have drunk some of his wine to toast his victory, and when the drug started to take effect, he would have started to lose consciousness. He must not have lost consciousness immediately since he would have dropped his glass and shattered it if he had. I imagined he had felt light-headed and crumpled to the deck before finally losing consciousness and his grip on the wine glass.

  I considered sharing these thoughts with Morris but ultimately decided against it. They wouldn’t give him any hope since none of them confirmed a killer. All it confirmed was when Vann was likely drugged. These thoughts did, however, give me an idea of who the killer would likely be.

  I couldn’t imagine Vann returning to the deck with either Marniq or Diana by his side as he casually pointed out an unconscious Morris and sipped wine. In fact, only one person came to mind as someone he would have treated to the sight of his vanquished rival.

  Yura.

  “The next time you see me, Mr. Morris, I’ll have figured out who the killer is,” I promised.

  He grunted in response.

  I moved around the bed to head toward the door, and once again Morris turned in the bed so I couldn’t see his face. It was childish, but so was a lot of my client’s behaviors. On a normal day, it probably made him a fun, loveable guy, but in such dire circumstances, it left him angry and not able to properly cope. I thought about offering a last word of advice, but I wasn’t sure Morris would want to hear it.

  So I opened the door as quietly as I could and stepped back into the corridor. It was still empty, though I could hear machines beeping in some of the other rooms. I spotted a nurse as she pushed a patient in a wheelchair, but there was still no sign of a doctor. I shook my head at the strangeness of it all and headed back toward the main exit.

  As I walked across the lobby to return to my truck, I pulled my journal from my pocket and flipped to Yura’s page. I sighed as I discovered I hadn’t written her home address on her page and wondered for a moment if I could navigate there on my own. After all, the town wasn’t that big, and I was sure someone could tell me where she lived.

  But I decided it would probably be smarter not to rile up any more of the locals for the moment, so I pulled out my phone and texted Cassandra. She would still have the bank statements, and those would have Yura’s address. Besides, if that failed, I was sure Cassandra would find someone to ask and would do so without starting another brawl.

  I smiled when my phone vibrated within thirty seconds to notify me of a message from the talkative paralegal. Yura lived across the street from Ronan, just two houses up the street. This information made me quicken my pace as I considered the implications. I had to remind myself, again, that the town really wasn’t that big, so it wasn’t unusual that they would live so close to each other.

  When I reached my truck, I placed a hand on the door handle and started to open the door. But as I looked over to my left, I could see the road that led out of the hospital and the residential area just beyond that. In fact, I could see Yura’s house from where I stood, and I realized I only needed to cross the empty road to reach her.

  The only reason why I had driven from Ronan’s house to the hospital was because I hadn’t wanted to block his truck while I was gone. But with Yura, I realized that I did want to block her in.

  If she somehow managed to escape me while I confronted her about drugging Vann, I didn’t want her Chevrolet to be her getaway vehicle. Not that I had much to worry about, though. There were only two real types of escape vehicles in Utqiagvik, boat and plane. The best the Chevy could do was get her to the boat before I had a chance to call the police.

  But once again, I wondered if I was letting my sun-addled brain get ahead of me. Yura had given me no reason to believe that she would suddenly tear off across the tundra just because I showed up on her doorstep with some more questions. I watched her house for a moment, and then I slammed the Ford’s door shut again.

  I turned away from my truck and trudged off in the direction of Yura’s house. If it came down to it, I wasn’t worried about her escaping me. She didn’t seem like the type to run away when things got tough, and if it came down to it, I was pretty sure I could take her down before she reached the Chevy.

  But once I was closer to her house, I found myself starting to frown. The pale-blue house didn’t have a garage, and the makeshift driveway that ran along the side of the house was empty. The street was still empty, though, so there were no neighbors I could consult with about Yura’s presence or absence.

  I stomped up to the front door and pounded on the flimsy wood. I really wanted Yura to fling the door open and glare at me, but the door remained stubbornly closed.

  The wind howled in my ears as time passed until I decided to knock on the door again. The whole door shook as I threw my weight behind my pounding, but I finally had to admit that Yura probably wasn’t home.

 
Where could she be this morning? Part of me wondered if I needed to be concerned, but I shook my head at the question. After all, Yura had no reason to be on the run. No one but me suspected her of murder as far as I knew, and I didn’t think I’d said or done anything in her presence to tip her off. And yet, wouldn’t that be the perfect opportunity to run? When everyone least suspected you?

  Or maybe the news of the drug being discovered had triggered her departure. But who would have told her? I shook my head at the stupid question as I thought about how easily Cassandra had gathered information. This was a small city where news traveled fast, and the local police department apparently leaked like a sieve. Someone would have been happy enough to pass along the information, if only to assure Yura that the police were closing in on Morris.

  I sighed at the thought as I trotted down the porch steps and looked around at the surrounding homes. I considered crossing the street and asking Ronan where Yura might be at this time, but I decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation. They were friends, not secretaries, and if they weren’t heading out on the boat together, there was no reason for them to share their plans for the day.

  I decided I would need to search for her myself, and though I wasn’t a local, the town was small enough that the number of hiding places was minimum. I also knew what her car looked like, and I had a vague memory of her license plate. It was the old ‘I’d know it when I saw it’ standard, and I heard myself chuckle at the tired cliche.

  As I walked back to my truck, I texted Cassandra asking her if Yura had stopped by the police station or had reached out to her. I frowned when Cassandra replied with a negative to both questions, though I hadn’t really expected it to be that easy.

  I asked my paralegal to keep her eyes and ears peeled for the fisherwoman and then returned my phone to my pocket. I stopped for a moment to pull out my journal, and I flipped back to Yura’s page. I realized I didn’t have any information on her location for the night of Vann’s murder, and I sighed in frustration.