by Fire
"You got any witnesses?" Jacobson demanded hotly.
"About ten, all together," Liam said dryly.
The blunt answer squelched Jacobson for the moment. "Oh."
Neither McCormick nor Jacobson would be missed by the gene pool if either disappeared off the face of the earth, Liam reflected. "Why'd he do it?"
"Shoot up the P.o.?"
Liam nodded.
Jacobson glanced at McCormick. They seemed to commune telepathically for a moment or two, and then Jacobson looked back up at Liam. "I'm not saying he did do any such thing," he said.
"Uh-huh," Liam said.
"But if somebody," Jacobson said, stressing the last word, "if somebody took a gun and shot up the post office, then somebody might have had a really good reason."
Liam maintained an expression of polite interest. "And that really good reason might be-what?"
Again there was an exchange of looks. "That Gilbert guy, he's the postmaster."
"Yes."
"He's also the minister for the Trinity Church."
"Yes."
Jacobson shuffled his feet, then blurted out, "He won't give you your mail if you quit going to his church."
"Ah." It was about what Liam had expected, and it was yet another instance of how far out of his jurisdiction he was wandering in his new posting. My kingdom for a United States postal inspector, he thought. There's never a federal cop around when you need one. "So Kelly here thought he'd get the Right Reverend Mr. Gilbert to hand over his mail at gunpoint."
"Hell," Jacobson said, suddenly irritated, "the only reason we ever went to that damn church in the first place was because those babe daughters of Walter Sifsof's started going. Couple of stuck-up broads they turned out to be," he added in disgust. "So we quit, and then Gilbert starts holding our mail back."
The slit of one imploring blue eye looked up at Jacobson, reminding him to be cautious. "Anyway, I'm not saying Kelly did or he didn't. But if somebody did, that might may be how it went down."
Liam sighed. "I don't suppose it occurred to either of you to file a complaint with Gilbert's boss? Tampering with the United States mail is a federal offense. You can go to jail for it."
Jacobson stared at him. "But his boss is in Anchorage!"
"Of course he is," Liam murmured. "Okay. We'll come back to this, but right now I've got another question for you."
"Oh yeah?" Jacobson's relief at getting away from the incendiary topic of shooting up federal buildings was almost palpable. "What's that?"
"Did you fish the opener this afternoon?"
Jacobson glanced down at McCormick. "Yeah."
"Your dad with you?"
"Yeah."
Liam nodded at the figure on the bed. "Your friend, too?"
"Yeah, we were on our boat and he was on his." Jacobson was wary but as yet unsuspicious. "Why?"
"Where were you fishing? What area?"
Liam noticed that the figure in the bed had become very still.
"Dutch Girl Island," Jacobson said readily enough.
"Where Cecil Wolfe and his bunch were fishing."
Jacobson shrugged. "There were a lot of boats in a lot of places."
"I was up in the air today, observing for the Sea Wolfe. Flying with Wy Chouinard."
McCormick clawed again for Jacobson's arm, but Jacobson had already stiffened. "So?"
"So I spotted the Mary J. from the air. Cecil ran over your skiff, didn't he?" A sullen look settled in on Jacobson's young face. "You always fish where Wolfe fishes?"
"A lot of people do," Larry said defensively. "He's high boat, he's got a reputation for finding fish. Sure, we follow him around. Us and fifty other boats."
"Uh-huh. Anybody spotting for you?"
Jacobson and McCormick exchanged a quick look. "We don't need no spotter," Jacobson said, thrusting out a pugnacious jaw. "We got sonar, we got crow's nests, and today was clear, you could see the herring balling up from miles away."
"Of course you could," Liam agreed cordially. "That's why you followed Cecil Wolfe around, because it was so easy to spot the herring on your own."
Jacobson flushed a dull red.
"How about the last opener? Anybody spotting for you then?"
"No," McCormick said loudly, making both his friend and Liam start. "Nobody spotting for us."
Liam sighed. "Figured you'd say that." He went to the edge of the curtain and paused, looking back. "Nice to meet you finally, Mr. McCormick. We'll be talking again, about that business at the post office." He pulled his cap on. "Right now I've got to go down to the small boat harbor. I got a call from the dispatcher on the way to the hospital. Seems that a boat has sunk at its moorage. Little gillnetter by the name of Yukon Jack." He settled the cap just so. "Looks like somebody opened her sea cocks and left her to sink."
He couldn't have sworn to it, but he thought McCormick's eyes filled with tears. "Since the harbormaster says the local police are busy, I'm going to go down and take a look."
"That son of a bitch!" Jacobson's face was now as red as it had been white. "That motherfucking son of a bitch!"
He was trying to shake McCormick's grip loose. "No," McCormick said in a harsh whisper. "No, Larry, don't. He'll kill you. He'll kill you." He managed to haul himself up into a sitting position, groaning with pain at the effort. "No, Larry. No."
"The hell with that!" Jacobson raged. "Look what he did to you, and now he's sunk the Jack! How far does he get to take this? Who's next? What's next? Does he blow up the Mary J. with Dad passed out in his bunk? Does he burn down the house with Mom in it?"
McCormick wouldn't turn him loose. "They would have killed me if he'd told them to. There's too many of them, and they're too big. We can't go up against them. He'll sic them on all of us if we talk, if we say or do anything. Your dad wouldn't survive this kind of beating. Don't, Larry. Don't." McCormick was almost weeping with the last word.
Liam waited as the red faded from Jacobson's face, leaving a drained and despairing expression behind. "Goddamn him. Goddamn him to hell."
Liam met the harbormaster on the slip next to the little gillnetter. Liam remembered catching a brief glimpse of her when he'd helped Darrell down to the boat harbor; she'd been a tidy little craft, neat and clean. Today she was awash up to her jaunty red trim line and then some, listing up against the slip, her crow's nest tilted at a drunken angle. Sort of made her look like her skipper after a rough night, Liam thought. She was stern-heavy and one of her hatch covers had floated away. Some kind soul had fed a hose attached to a pump into her hold, and water gushed forth from the other end in fits and starts. A rainbow sheen covered the water from leaking oil and fuel stores.
There is no more pathetic sight than a once proud vessel reduced to hanging on to the slip of a small boat harbor to keep her bow above water.
From the proximity of the Yukon Jack to the Mary J. he could make a pretty good guess as to what had happened the day before. Fresh from his armed assault on the might and power of the United States government, as exemplified by its postal system, Kelly McCormick hadn't had enough oomph to get himself all the way home, and had passed out in the nearest friendly bunk. He had been the comatose lump opposite Darrell Jacobson that afternoon. Fishing partner to Jacobson pere et fils, and boon companion to Larry Jacobson, he probably saw the Mary J. as a second home.
The harbormaster, a rotund little man with rosy cheeks and a bouncy step, didn't have much to tell him. "Somebody opened up the cocks and walked away," he said sadly, or as sadly as his cherubic little Father Christmas face would allow.
"Did you notice when the Yukon Jack got back into the harbor?"
Jimmy Barnes shook his head. "It was a steady stream after the closing. Herring's so quick anymore, the whole second part of the season only lasted twenty minutes. They deliver, they get their fish tickets and checks, and then they pick up their girls--or their girls pick them up; wives in particular like to intercept the paycheck at the dock--and head back into town to drink up thei
r profits."
"Anybody see anything suspicious around this boat during that time?"
"If so, nobody's saying."
With real curiosity Liam asked, "Would you say, if you'd seen anything?"
Jimmy laid a finger alongside his nose and regarded Liam out of wise eyes. "Well, now, Trooper Campbell, it would all depend on what I was seeing, and who was doing what I was seeing, and how many other people were around while I was seeing it. If you catch my meaning."
Liam caught his meaning. He closed his notebook. "What now?"
The harbormaster sighed. "Now we pump her out enough to tow her around to dry dock. We'll leave the sea cocks open, get a lot of the water out of her that way at low tide, close the sea cocks, and pump out the rest. The engine'll probably have to be replaced-saltwater, you know. It's to be hoped that young Kelly is up to date with his insurance. So many of the younger fishermen can't afford it, and the ones who fish alone usually figure they can't be sued, so they don't bother." He shook his head. "Sometimes I think it's a real shame that keelhauling has gone out of style, you know?"
He wasn't referring to the uninsured mariners.
At that moment, their conversation was interrupted by a scream.
* * *
FOURTEEN
The scream was followed by the slamming of a hatch and a woman's voice yelling, "Help! Somebody, help, help, HELP!"
Liam knew that voice. His heart in his mouth, he ran toward it, pounding down the slip, past boat after boat after boat, the vessels increasing in size as he came to the end of the floats and the mouth of the harbor. It was barely nine o'clock, and there was still enough light to reveal an occasional lone fisherman climbing out here and there to the deck of his gillnetter or drifter or seiner to gape at Liam as he pounded past.
She was standing on the deck of the Sea Wolfe, and Liam put one hand on the gunnel and vaulted on board. "Wy! Wy! It's all right, I'm here. I'm here now. What's wrong?"
Her face was white. Mutely, she pointed, a piece of paper crumpled in her pointing hand.
Liam followed her gesture to the door of the Sea Wolfe's cabin and looked in.
This was no little gillnetter with a one-room cabin that served as living room, bedroom, and bathroom combined. This seiner had a separate head with a flush toilet, staterooms with two bunks each, and a galley that resembled the kitchen of a luxury hotel.
The galley, reached through a passageway that ran down the center of the cabin, took up the forward part of the cabin, with side-by-side rectangular windows set into the bulkhead that took in a 180-degree view.
It was the interior view that held Liam's fascinated and appalled attention. Cecil Wolfe was sprawled backward on the deck, arms outstretched, eyes open and staring at the ceiling. Blood was everywhere--smeared on one of the two doors into the galley, on the table, all over the floor--as if Cecil Wolfe in his dying convulsions had waged an unceasing struggle to retain his grip on the life pouring so rapidly out of him.
Because he was most definitely dead. Liam stooped and put two fingers against Wolfe's throat. The carotid artery was silent and still, and Wolfe's flesh was already cooling.
Liam stood up again. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit."
A gasp made him swing his head around. The harbormaster stood in the passageway, turning an interesting shade of green.
"Jimmy?" It took a minute for the harbormaster's eyes to tear themselves away from Wolfe's body and refocus on Liam. "I need you to phone for the ambulance. And then I need you to go to the trooper vehicle. It's the white Blazer parked on the dock. Here's the keys." Liam dug them out of his pocket. "There's a briefcase in the backseat, and a big roll of yellow plastic tape. I need you to bring them both back down here. Okay?"
Jimmy didn't answer at once, and Liam repeated with more emphasis, "Okay?"
Jimmy Barnes swallowed and said in a weak voice, "Okay." He took the keys from Liam's outstretched hand and tottered back down the passageway, nearly blundering into a palefaced Wy.
"What happened here, Wy?" Liam said.
"I don't know," she said numbly. "I found him like this."
"What was he doing down here? What were you doing down here?" Liam could hear his voice rising, and he didn't even try to keep it down. "Last I saw of you, you were settled in at Bill's for the duration. What the hell are you doing down here!"
"I was getting tired of waiting around the bar to get paid," she said, still in that numb voice. Either she didn't notice his anger or didn't care. "So I asked Cecil for my check, and he said he'd left them on the boat. He suggested we come down here to get the checks and bring them back to Bill's for the crew."
Liam was unable to contain himself. "And you said you would? After I warned you how dangerous this asshole was? Jesus, Wy, I thought you were smarter than that!"
Her eyes fell. "I didn't take what you said seriously. I thought you were jealous."
"Oh yeah, right," he said, throwing up a hand in disgust, "like you've been encouraging this jerk all along." He pulled off his cap and rubbed a hand over his hair.
"I'm not a complete idiot," she said, her strained manner robbing her words of indignation. "I didn't come down to the boat with him, I waited for him in the truck."
Liam took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. "All right, you're waiting for him in the truck--what happened next?"
"I got tired of waiting."
"How long did you sit there?" he demanded.
"I don't know. Twenty minutes or so, I guess."
"And then you came down to the boat?" She nodded.
"What happened?"
She gestured at Wolfe. "I found him like this."
"When?"
"What? When I came on board. He was--" She gestured. "He was lying right there."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"And you screamed right away?"
She nodded.
"Bullshit," Liam said.
"What?"
"First of all, you're not a screamer. Secondly." He leaned forward and snatched the piece of paper still crumpled in her fist. "Secondly, you looked for this before you screamed."
A faint flush warmed her pale cheeks. "It was in his hand."
"There's no blood on it, Wy," Liam said tightly. "There's blood on pretty much every other goddamn thing in this room, including all over Cecil Wolfe, including both of his hands, but there's no blood on this check."
She said nothing.
"Let's see," he said, "if I were a check, where would I be? In a desk, maybe? Let's look for one, shall we?" He stepped into the passageway and opened a door. "A couple of bunks, a porthole, no desk." He opened another door. "Shower, toilet--this must be the head. No desks in the head--first law of the sea, I'm sure." He opened a third door, and paused. "Aha. Two bunks, one of them not made up--tsk, bad housekeeping--and one desk. Let's just see what's in it, shall we?" He stepped to the desk and scanned the surface. There was a laptop computer, turned off and folded down. A wire basket suction-cupped to the top of the desk held a small stack of envelopes. Liam took a pen from his pocket and lifted the envelopes up one at a time to read the names scrawled on the outside of each. "Kirk Mulder, Ralph Gianetti, Elmer Ollestad, Angel Fejes, Ben Savo, Joe English, Mike Lenaghan, Tom Howes." He looked back at Wy, framed in the doorway. "Nope, no envelope for Wyanet Chouinard, and she was instrumental in all these guys' getting their paychecks today." He let the envelopes fall back in the basket and stood up. "I ought to know, I was there."
"All right," she flared, "so I looked for the check before I screamed. So what? What's it matter anyway--I didn't kill him!"
"I never said you did," he yelled, "but you're not making it any easier for me to find out who did by screwing with the crime scene! How the hell am I supposed to find who did do it if you're in here stumbling around destroying evidence!"
They glared at each other.
From the passageway behind Wy there was an apologetic clearing of throat. "I'm sorry," Jimmy Barnes said, hea
d down in a conscious effort not to meet anyone's eyes and thereby precipitate an inclusion into the ongoing debate. "Here's the tape and your briefcase, Liam. The ambulance is on its way."
Liam pulled himself together. "Thanks, Jimmy."
"Think nothing of it."
"Mind if I ask you for another favor?"
The harbormaster looked wary. "What?"
"I imagine there are a few people standing around on the slip outside."
"A few," Jimmy agreed cautiously.
"Could you kind of stand guard, keep them off the boat, while I gather evidence?"
Jimmy looked relieved. "Sure. I can do that."
"Thanks. And flag down the ambulance driver when he gets here."
"Sure."
Liam ordered--there was no other word--he ordered Wy to wait for him on deck. When she had gone, he found the crumpled envelope with her name on it in the wastebasket next to the desk, and smoothed it flat. Before returning the check to the envelope, he paused to read it. It had been drawn on Wolfe's business account, imprinted with the business name, Sea Wolfe Enterprises, Inc., with an address in Seattle. Today's date, "Pay to the order of Wyanet Chouinard, twenty thousand dollars," and then the big black scrawl of a signature that took up most of the bottom right of the check.
His heart jarred with a thickening thud, and he read the check again.
He stood in the middle of Wolfe's stateroom for a long moment, thinking hard. In the end, he heard the sound of wheels on wood and read it rightly as an approaching gurney.
With a decisive movement that was nevertheless a little furtive, he stuffed the check back inside the envelope and the envelope inside his shirt and went out to meet Joe Gould, who surveyed the carnage with the same detached expression Liam had noticed at the airport on Friday, his Lucifer-before-the-fall face tonight looking more sinned against than sinning. He squatted beside the body. "Stabbed, huh?"
"What was your first clue?" Liam said.
"No need to be sarcastic, trooper," Joe said tranquilly, "just a passing comment. Help me with the bag?"
Liam helped unroll the body bag and slide Wolfe into it. The blood had dried enough to be sticky, and for the first time since landing in Newenham Liam was glad he wasn't wearing his uniform.
