by Dave Daren
“And why would he do that?” I asked. “What does he gain from protecting his unfaithful wife? If he was vengeful enough to kill Vann, then wouldn’t he be vengeful enough to frame his wife for murder?”
“Oh... yeah, that’s a good point,” Waska said as he nodded.
“Not to mention, Diana also abandoned Vann’s jet ski at Northernmost Point,” I continued when Ansong provided no response.
“We don’t know that for certain,” she countered. “We assume the jet ski was abandoned there.”
“Either way, she had no reason to abandon the vehicle anywhere if she didn’t kill Vann,” I argued.
“Maybe she hid it after she found out Vann was killed,” the tattooed officer suggested. “She probably left it at the dock, and then she got the call about Morris being in the hospital. Once she found out Vann was murdered, she went back to get rid of it.”
“Two problems with that,” I said. “First of all, someone in this town would have noticed Vann’s jet ski floating at a dock and would have told the police about it. Second, when would Diana have had the chance to go back to get rid of it?”
“No one was interested in the jet ski until you arrived, and she wasn’t being observed by the police,” Ansong answered. “As a matter of fact, she wasn’t being observed by many people. She had plenty of opportunities to get rid of the jet ski.”
“Plenty?” I repeated. “Last time I checked, she wasn’t much of a driver. Does she even have access to Morris’ car?”
“No, it’s still parked near the dock where he keeps his boat anchored,” Waska answered. “It’s been there since the night of Vann’s murder. I thought his wife would have gone to retrieve it. I didn’t know she didn’t know how to drive.”
“She does,” Ansong said. “She chooses not to, but there are other ways to get around town.”
“Again, if someone drove her to a dock so that she could move Vann’s jet ski, I would like to think they would have notified the police,” I explained.
“Unless it was either Tash or Marniq that drove her,” the middle-aged officer argued. “Or anyone who would want to protect her.”
“Does she have a lot of people like that in town?” Waska asked with an incredulous shake of his head. “Besides, we both know Marlene and Luke wouldn’t go that far in protecting her. She’s their boss’ wife, not someone they grew up with. We know where their loyalties lie, and it’s with Harrison.”
“Yeah, I know,” Ansong admitted. “Look, Brooks, I understand Yura’s version of Vann’s murder has some holes in it, but you have to understand that Morris’ version is even worse. Whatever questions you have might be answered by Diana herself.”
“And what if they’re not?” I persisted.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Ansong said. “What do you think happened that night?”
“I think the simplest answer is the correct one,” I answered. “I think Yura and the rest of you are overthinking what happened that night to give Diana the benefit of the doubt. Diana boarded that boat with the intention of killing Vann, and she followed through with her plans. She just lucked out in having her husband show up and take the blame.”
“How’d she get him in the water?” Ansong challenged. “Even if he was unconscious, Vann was too large for her to move him alone.”
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. That was the one glaring issue with my proposed scenario, and I had no answer for it other than to say that sheer willpower is what Diana relied on to get Vann overboard. Cassandra, the embodiment of life, had joked that she would have broken her arm if she had tried to move Vann’s body. How, then, could a woman nicknamed the hypochondriac ice queen accomplish the feat uninjured? Uninjured?
My eyes widened at the thought. Was she uninjured? I remembered the jokey image I had imagined last night when I tried to picture Diana killing Vann. I had thought she was only capable of killing herself in the process, but it now occurred to me that she was more likely to harm herself. She might not have died, but she certainly must have broken something. I sighed as I realized that hiding a broken arm was no easy task, especially after she had fallen yesterday. It would have been obvious then.
I stopped tracing my scar when the memory of yesterday’s fall came to mind. Tash had asked Diana if the fall had resulted in an injury because the pale woman had rubbed her wrist. The captain’s wife was always rubbing her wrist, and as a smile stretched across my face, I realized this act of hers was probably not habitual. Her wrist did hurt, and she hoped to massage the pain away. Maybe it was sprained from moving Vann’s body?
“What are you smiling for?” Waska asked with a concerned expression, and then his eyes widened. “Did you think of something? Something that might prove why Morris isn’t the killer.”
“Maybe,” I answered, but my smile fell away.
As much as I hated to admit it, an injured wrist proved nothing. I knew that fall from yesterday wasn’t drastic enough to have caused an injury that lasted more than twenty-four hours. Her palms might have hurt from breaking her fall, but her small frame couldn’t have put too much pressure on her wrists. It didn’t matter. If I confronted her about the injury, she could easily use the fall as an excuse, especially since Tash and Marniq had both witnessed it. No, I still needed a confession to win this case, and I realized there was almost no way to obtain that.
Diana would only confess if she felt cornered. Would the three of us showing up with questions about her affair with Vann make her feel that way, especially when she was trapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean? I hoped that was the case, but nothing ever seemed to work in my favor when it came to this case.
“We’re in the Bering Strait now,” Ansong announced. “Let’s hope they’re here.”
There were far fewer boats surrounding us as we moved into the deeper waters, and for several minutes, we were the only watercraft speeding across the strait. Time dragged on, and I thought Ansong was about to give up when a trawler that resembled the Arctic Wizard appeared ahead of us.
Still, the earlier excitement just wasn’t there, and we’d become used to disappointment. Waska and I stayed in our seats until we were close enough to read the name of the vessel. And then we both sat up straight as we saw the words ‘Arctic Wizard’ across its bow.
Ansong slowed the boat and pulled up next to the trawler. The two ships bobbed on the waves together, and then Marniq finally noticed our arrival.
“What are you guys doing here?” Marniq asked in surprise as he leaned over the side of the boat.
“We have some pressing questions to ask related to the murder case,” Ansong answered. “You need to pull over.”
Waska chuckled at her phrasing, but Marniq frowned in concern. The toned fisherman disappeared from the edge to do as he had been ordered.
The middle-aged officer reversed the motorboat until it was trailing behind the trawler. Once she saw the trawler’s propellers shut off, she pulled up directly behind the watercraft, killed the engine of the motorboat, and then anchored the speedboat to the stern of the trawler. She climbed onto Morris’ boat and walked ahead without waiting for me or Waska to climb aboard. She didn’t get very far because Marniq stood in her path with a lot of questions on his face.
“Is everything alright?” he asked as he approached us.
Ansong ignored his question.
“Where’s Diana?” she asked instead.
“She’s below deck,” Marniq answered with a slight tilt of his head in the direction of the bow. “Have you guys found the killer?”
“Maybe,” Ansong said as she moved around the fisherman. “We’ll know for certain once we talk to her.”
Marniq waited for the three of us to pass him before he fell in step behind us. His face made it clear that he still had questions to ask, but something kept him silent. He probably guessed he wouldn’t get any straight answers from us, and if he raised too much of a protest, Ansong wouldn’t let him listen in.
The hatch to
the lower deck was already open, and Ansong quickly climbed down with Waska and I taking the ladder almost as quickly as she did. We didn’t realize how cramped the space would be until all three of us were down there along with Diana and Tash. The two women were sitting at the table with Tash’s back to us. The pale wife jumped at the sight of us, and this prompted Tash to turn around.
“What are you all doing here?” the confident woman asked.
“We’re here to speak to Diana,” Ansong answered as she moved further into the cabin.
Ansong stopped when she reached the end of the passageway, and Waska and I followed suit. I looked behind me to see if Marniq had decided to join us since he’d seemed interested in our appearance, but I was relieved to find he had stayed on deck and had made no move to follow us. No doubt he’d realized that the small cabin couldn’t handle another inhabitant, especially not one as broad as Marniq.
“You need to speak to me?” Diana whispered.
“Yes, privately,” the middle-aged officer said as she stared directly at Tash. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
“Actually, I do mind,” the confident fisherwoman said as she stood up from the table. “Haven’t we been interrogated enough?”
She stood between me and Waska since that was all the space allowed.
“Come on, Marleen,” Waska said as he draped his arm around her shoulders and smiled. “Haven’t you seen a crime show or something? New things come up in a case, and then all the suspects have to be asked questions about them. We’re just doing our jobs.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said as she pushed his arm away, but a small smile appeared on her face. “Just be quick about it. We got on this boat to stop thinking about the murder case, and we’d like to get back to doing that.”
Diana threw a saddened look at Tash, and the act must have caught the fisherwoman off-guard because in a rare display of affection, she reached over and gave the pale woman a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Diana smiled as her cheeks flushed red for only a moment before returning to their normal pallid hue.
Tash turned away from Diana and had to move past me to reach the ladder. Although the cabin was crowded with all of us in it, there was still enough space for her to pass through with ease. Even so, she pressed herself against me as she passed by and shot a sly glance in my direction once she was all the way through. She climbed the ladder, and we waited until she had closed the hatch before we turned our attention to Diana.
The pale woman shifted uncomfortably underneath our combined gazes, but she wasn’t a nervous wreck. Would she become one once we revealed what we had discovered? Years of lying to Morris as she maintained her affair with Vann had likely prepared her for this situation. She had lied to me and the police with ease, and so I didn’t expect her to confess to murder so easily. Still, how did she plan to get herself out of this situation? She rubbed her wrist, and I found myself staring.
“Is your wrist okay?” I asked. “I notice you rub it a lot. It can’t still be injured from the fall yesterday, is it?”
This was a trap and a risky one at that. I hoped that by bringing up her wrist while we stood in front of two police officers, she would panic. If she feared the officers might connect her injury back to the murder, then she would lie about it being injured in the first place. This was the direction I wanted her to go in all while knowing, with dread, that she could easily choose to embrace the injury and claim that the fall had harmed her. That would be a bold move on her part, but Diana was far from bold.
“No, no, it’s not injured,” she said, and I willed my face to remain neutral. “It’s just a habit of mine.”
With that said, she stopped rubbing her wrist and clasped her hands together instead.
If I could prove that her wrist was sprained and that it was connected to Vann’s murder, this case was solved. How I was going to accomplish that stumped me for the moment, until I realized I was approaching this situation wrong. I needed a confession or undeniable proof that Diana had killed Vann, but I wasn’t going to get that by being aggressive. Attacking her with accusations was only going to make her either pin the murder on Morris or lie her way out of the situation. Despite her fragile appearance, I realized Diana was going to be a tough opponent. I needed to take a gentler approach to this. Unfortunately, I needed to take a page out of Vann’s book and appear to be a friend.
“Good to hear,” I said with a smile.
“Now, let’s get to business,” Ansong said as she took the seat across from Diana.
I was happy to let Ansong take the lead in this situation since it would paint her, and Waska by affiliation, as the big bad villains. She would present Diana with the information, and I just needed to find a good moment to step in as the benevolent savior. I almost laughed at the realization I was becoming her white knight.
“Of course,” Diana said with a nod. “Really, I’m hoping you came to tell me that you’ve found the actual killer, and my husband is no longer on your radar, but judging from your face, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Not at all,” Ansong confirmed. “I’m here to ask you about your affair with Vann.”
Diana stared at the middle-aged officer with wide eyes before erupting into laughter. Her laughter caused Waska and I to glance at each other in surprise while Ansong regarded the amused woman in front of her with as much interest as someone would express watching grass grow. Neither woman, however, appeared to be fazed by each other’s response, and I considered for a moment if Diana’s previous statement about answering Ansong’s questions out of fear had been a lie.
“My what?” the wife said as she wiped a tear from her eye. “You think I was having an affair with Harrison? Oh, my God.”
She almost started laughing again, but she placed a hand over her mouth to suppress it.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “This isn’t a laughing matter. I can see how serious this is for you.”
“Yes, it’s quite a serious accusation to make,” Ansong said. “You’re claiming that you weren’t having an affair with Harrison?”
“I’ve never had any kind of relationship with him,” Diana answered as she brought her hand to rub the back of her neck, but the action wasn’t as mechanical as before.
I wondered if she was deliberately performing her ticks in order to appear genuine. I was starting to realize how much me and the police officers may have underestimated this woman.
“Where is this accusation coming from?” Diana asked as she looked around the cabin at me and Waska. “I didn’t know Harrison very well, but I think he was single. At least, the way some of the women spoke about him at the store made me think he was single.”
“What does that mean?” Ansong asked.
“It was just silly rumors,” Diana said with a shrug. “Well, that’s what I treated them as, anyway. I didn’t bother to verify if it was true, but I heard Harrison was a bit of a Casanova. Not so much here, but in Anchorage when he went to visit.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of this,” Ansong said as she folded her arms on the table and leaned forward.
Diana looked away and set her sights on Waska. Her blue eyes pierced him with both their beauty and coldness.
“Did you ever hear anything like that?” she asked the young officer as she narrowed her eyes.
“Uh, well,” Waska began as he glanced over at Ansong and then shifted his weight uncomfortably.
“Did you?” Ansong asked in a tight voice.
“Yeah, I did,” Waska finally answered with a sigh. “But that was because no one knew about Yura. We assumed he was playing around until he found the right girl.”
“Yura?” the pale woman said as she sat up straight. “What’s this about Yura?”
I was absolutely mystified by the performance in front of me, and I really hoped Ansong was aware of what was happening as well. Diana’s first mistake had been in not admitting to being Harrison’s lover. She could have admitted to having an affair with Vann, and that M
orris had killed Vann out of rage once he found out. But maybe she thought this admission was too risky? It made her look worse than Morris? She still had the opportunity to admit she had been lying because she feared her husband, but that was a direction I wanted the conversation to never turn toward.
“Yura was in a relationship of several years with Vann, and she was the one who told us about your alleged affair,” Ansong explained.
“I had no idea they were together,” Diana said. “I wonder why they hid it. I’m even more curious to know why Yura thinks I was having an affair with Harrison.”
“She said Harrison told her,” Waska said.
“Well, that’s ridiculous,” the pale woman chuckled. “Why would Harrison say that, and why would Yura not do anything about it? She never approached me about this, which ought to tell you something. I can see why you guys are following up on what she said since it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Maybe her jealousy was making her imagine he was having an affair? I’ve met women like that before.”
“It’s not just her,” Ansong insisted. “Vann’s phone confirms he was seeing another woman, and this woman was on the boat with him the night of his murder.
This was it. This was the moment all three of us had waited for. We expected the reveal of this information to crush Diana’s confidence and end her act. If there was ever a moment to come clean and pin the murder on Morris, this was it, and I went through every scenario I could think to prevent it from happening. But I stopped when I realized that the pale woman wasn’t panicking or crumbling under the weight of the statement. Instead, she appeared confused.
“His phone?” she said as she rubbed her temples, and this appeared to be a genuine attempt to massage a migraine away. “What, like text messages?”
“Exactly that,” Ansong said as she watched the woman in front of her carefully.
“I don’t have Harrison’s number,” Diana said as she reached for the pocket on the waterproof overalls.
I realized this was the perfect time to appear on her side.
