The River Killers

by Bruce Burrows

  I explained who I was and, hedging a bit, why I was there. “Alistair was sort of a colleague, or ex-colleague, of mine. I can’t believe he killed himself.” And then, hesitantly, “Who found the body?”

  She gave me a direct look. Her eyes were an ordinary brown but they sparkled or glimmered or shone, or something, in a way that needed studying. I forced myself not to stare as her lips formed words. “He was found by the Heiltsuk Fisheries Guardians who stopped by regularly to share information with him.”

  I took longer to respond than I should have. “I thought he committed suicide. Is there some question about that? Is that why you’re here?”

  She smiled. “We’re just trying to cover all the bases. We take any unnatural death seriously. We thought, for example, that we should have found some records or journals or data of some kind.”

  “I’ve got those.” I explained the circumstances in what I hoped was a rational manner. It had been a long time since I had cared so much about not sounding like a twit.

  “You’ll have to give those to us, at least temporarily. I know it’s probably really important scientific data and we’ll make sure you get it back.”

  I tried to look sincere. And trustworthy. “It’s all on the James Sinclair.” And in what I thought was a flash of brilliance, “Maybe I can go over it with you, see if there’s anything anomalous or anything.”

  She gazed at me levelly, as Raymond Chandler would have said. Although he would have erred, due to Louise’s five-foot-fourish stature. “And where is the James Sinclair now?”

  I replied perhaps a touch too eagerly. “It’s sounding herring now, but it’ll be back in Shearwater tonight.”

  “I’ll see you there,” she said. She shook my hand, leapt back into her Zodiac, and thirty seconds later I was left with a rapidly diminishing image of bright yellow and orange, framed by white spray.

  Sergeant Louise hadn’t told me not to poke around. Maybe because I was DFO and she regarded me as a fellow enforcement professional. So, in the absence of anything better to do, I wandered up the dock toward the float house. Before entering the cedar-shaked building, I circled it uneasily. The solar panels on the backside of the roof, the southern exposure, were inconspicuous but for a brief glint of sunlight.

  Inside the house, I saw neatness and tidiness and cleanliness and order, all overlaid by a soft accumulation of recent dust and a baby cobweb here and there. Coleman lanterns. No electrical appliances. I looked for the computer that must have been the rationale for the solar panels. It’s not that hard to follow wires. Beneath the floorboards of Alistair’s bedroom I found it. The equipment was encased in a cedar box hung beneath a trapdoor covered by a scrap of cheap rug stuff. The central processing unit, an old Dell, and a slightly more modern monitor, were dry and, I hoped, functional. The RCMP had missed them.

  My first thought, embarrassingly puppy-like, was to present this potential evidence to Louise. In my mind, we were on a first name basis. But paranoia overcame infatuation. I better check this stuff out, I thought. If there’s anything relevant, I’ll show it to her. I gave the computer monitor the float test and it failed. I found a garbage bag to protect the CPU from salt spray, put it under my arm, and walked out of the float house.

  As I passed the Jessie Isle, I remembered that I had wanted to check the log. Beyond feelings of guilt now, I stepped over the cap rail and pulled open the galley door. Standard working boat configuration: table and benches on the starboard side, fridge and counter portside, oil stove against an insulated wall forward. I realized I’d never seen a different arrangement and wondered why.

  I walked through the galley and forward to the wheelhouse. Again, everything was standard. Windows in front and on both sides, steering wheel in the middle, and lots of electronic equipment mounted wherever would be handiest. At the back of the wheelhouse, portside, was the chart table, and under it, several drawers. In the top drawer, I found the ship’s log, almost full, with page after page filled with Alistair’s cramped but tidy writing. I shoved it in my pocket and left.

  As I untied the Zodiac, I glanced at the sun and reckoned it to be about two. It was less than an hour back to Shearwater, so I had time to kill. I rummaged around in the locker under the seat and was rewarded by finding a variety of cod jiggers. I remembered several jigging hotspots in Seaforth Channel where we used to stop when running home from Prince Rupert, the urgency of home momentarily overcome by the prospect of fresh fish.

  I better check those spots out. Research. Catch-per-unit effort. New data compared to old.

  I smiled inwardly and decided not to bullshit myself. I would steal a moment of enjoyment and refuse to feel guilty about it. I flashed up the Zodiac and headed south out of Spiller Channel and into Seaforth. There was a reef halfway to Bella Bella, almost a net length off the south shore, where I’d never failed to come up with some form of seafood delight—a halibut, red snapper, lingcod, or rockfish.

  The crème de la crème of bottom fish, black cod, usually lived more offshore and really deep. I’d never caught one on a jigger and relied on friendly long-liners to give me the occasional feed. But I hooked one now, obviously a wandering outcast, and as I pulled him into the boat, I was already planning the garnish.

  It was three-thirty and would be gathering dark by four, so I roared for home. As I passed Bella Bella, just around the corner from Shearwater, I saw the RCMP Zodiac headed for its berth. I thought I could make out Louise in the stern, so I altered course and headed to cut them off. I caught up to them just as they slowed to approach the downtown Bella Bella dock. As I came alongside I held up the ten-pound black cod and grinned at Louise. “Why don’t you come out to the Jimmy Sinc and I’ll cook dinner?”

  She thought this over carefully, obviously balancing “appearances” against the opportunity to take advantage of my keen intelligence. “You can cook it at my place.” She pointed at the big squat grocery store just up from the wharf head. “Four houses north of the store. Faded green. Bike in the driveway. Bring the journals.” She jumped onto the float to tie up, and I turned and headed for Shearwater with a large grin on my face.

  When I got back to the boat, I casually sauntered into my stateroom with the computer under my arm and stowed it in the drawer under my bunk. I went back out on deck, filleted the black cod, put the fillets in a plastic baggie, then put the guts and head in a crab trap and lowered it over the side. Waste not, want not. Not want too much meatloaf.

  By the time I’d showered and put on my cool DFO fleecy, it was five-thirty. I grabbed the box of Alistair’s journals and, after some hesitation, removed the one with the hieroglyphics and stowed it, along with the log of the Jessie Isle, under my pillow.

  In the galley, I nodded to the four guys playing crib. “Going ashore,” I said. “Won’t be long. Pete, would you mind doing the eight o’clock update?” He nodded. When they saw me take the bag of fillets out of the fridge, they exchanged knowing looks.

  I took my stuff out onto the back deck and lowered it into the Zodiac, then climbed in, started the engines, untied the bowline, and moved off. If the crew was looking out the galley window, they might or might not have been surprised to see me steer, not for the Shearwater pub, but around the corner toward downtown Bella Bella.

  By the time I tied up at the wharf, dusk had turned to dark and cool air to cold. I just had time to nip into the store and buy a lemon, a bag of salad, and a bottle of BC chardonnay. Then I set out on the trek to Louise’s house, and thirty seconds later was there. When she let me in, I raised the bottle of wine and said, “Hope you’re not still on duty.”

  “By the time you put that in the fridge, take out the chilled one, and open it, I’ll be off duty. What excellent timing you have.”

  I followed instructions, noting Louise’s fridge art as I did so. There was a photo of a serious-looking Louise with her arms draped over the shoulders of an older couple. Parents. Another of a smiling Louise hugging a furry animal. Dog. And a couple of Far Side ca
rtoons that hinted of an encouragingly skewed worldview. I poured two glasses of wine and raised mine in a wordless toast. “Are you hungry now, or should we wait a bit?”

  She considered this seriously, obviously taking internal readings on The State of the Appetite. “How long to cook the fish?”

  “I was planning on steaming it, maybe twenty minutes.”

  “Let’s take a quick look at the journals, and then we can relax and enjoy dinner.”

  I placed the box on the kitchen table while she tucked one foot under her and semi-sat on a rickety chair. As I removed the journals, I looked around the small interior: living room/kitchen and two doors opening to the bathroom and bedroom. Clean and tidy but very sparse. “You haven’t been here long?”

  “Three months. Posted from Winnipeg. First time in BC, although my folks are planning to retire out here.”

  “Welcome to God’s country.” I finished stacking twenty-six journals on the table, more or less in order, pulled out a chair, and sat down. “I’ve gone through these and I couldn’t see anything unusual except for the last one.” I opened the last journal and showed her the final entries, the strange references to kelp.

  She hitched her chair closer to mine and leaned in to read the entries. When she finished and raised her head, she was very close to me.

  “What’s strange about that?”

  I tried not to sound like a university lecturer. “Kelp grows in the summer and dies off in the winter. Alistair knew that it wouldn’t start to grow again until July or August. So why the references to the kelp being late and his concern about not being able to see it?”

  She nodded and held out her glass for more wine, then leaned back in thought. I poured myself another glass and watched her think. I hesitated to break the comfortable silence, but finally said, “You’re suspicious about something. What’s up?”

  She chewed on her lower lip, tapped fingers on the table. “I’m going to light a fire. Why don’t you put the fish on?”

  Not bothering to reply, I sprang into action. “I have sprung into action,” I noted with satisfaction. Louise looked at me oddly.

  I found a large pot. There was no steamer so I improvised by placing a round cookie rack in the bottom. I added an inch of water, placed the fish on the rack, put the pot on the burner, and gave it full throttle. By the time I’d made the salad, by opening the bag, she had the kindling blazing and was adding a couple of large logs.

  “I don’t mean to be unforthcoming, Danny, but this is a police investigation. I have to be a little bit careful about what I say. But I can tell you there’s no smoking gun anywhere. Sorry, bad metaphor. There’re just a couple of things that don’t quite fit.”

  I nodded. The water was boiling so I put a lid on it and turned down the heat. “Twenty minutes.” I remembered to slice the lemon and then topped up our wine. We both sat down again and she asked me for my life story, not in those words, of course. More like, So where are you from? Accompanied by slightly widened eyes looking at me over the rim of her glass. I gave her the Coles Notes version and she reciprocated.

  By this time the fish was done, and I could tell at a glance it was perfect. While she fetched two plates, I opened the second bottle of wine. I put a fillet on each plate and we sat down to eat. The fillets had just slightly separated into tender oily flakes. She followed my example and squeezed some lemon juice over the fish, then placed a forkful in her mouth. “Ohmigod! This is so so good.”

  Aha, I thought. You’re mine now. Out loud, “It’s black cod,” I said. “The best whitefish you’ll ever taste.”

  We ate mostly in silence, sipping wine and eating just enough salad to feel virtuous. She ate steadily and seriously but even so, I finished ahead of her. I had almost but not completely overcome the seine boat habit of two-minute dining. We sat back, satiated. When I offered to do the dishes, she looked at the two plates and the pot and indicated that she could probably handle it. But I knew I’d scored even more points, and was beginning to plan my “Don’t fall in love with me too quickly” speech.

  “Danny, is there anything else of Crowley’s I should have?”

  Like an overconfident boxer, blind to the lethal left hook. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “What about his boat’s logbook?”

  Guilty silence.

  “It occurred to me to check his last fuel-up, so I went back. Who else would have taken it but you?”

  Trying to perform a combination of anger and hurt, unlikely to be nominated for any award. “I didn’t realize I was being tested.”

  “It wasn’t a test, Danny. More of a trust-building exercise.”

  “How ’bout I fall over backwards and you catch me?”

  “And then the group hug?”

  I’m sure my eyes betrayed my sudden yearning. “Considering the group, a hug would be nice.”

  “The possibilities are endless. But we have some work to do.”

  I looked at her and she looked implacably back. I sensed a shift in mood and tried for a recovery. “To err is human, etcetera, etcetera. But I usually get things right the second time around.”

  “I’m sure you do.” She opened the door and stood by it.

  I decided to demonstrate understanding and cooperation. I donned my jacket, walked through the door, and turned to face Louise. “Good-bye?”

  “For now.” And the door shut.

  As I walked back to the boat my breath froze in the air. I was glad my cool DFO fleecy was warm. I considered the report card of my “date.” Danny tries hard but there is much room for improvement. Still?

  Six

  The James Sinclair pulled the hook at seven the next morning, right after I’d pulled up the crab trap, removed six large males, and thrown the females back. I’d lost track of the number of times we’d pulled anchor and steamed off trailing a crab trap behind. When a crab trap gets wound into the propeller, it’s generally considered to be a bad thing.

  We cruised through the narrow gap that leads into Seaforth Channel, and turned the sounders and sonar on. The brilliant stars faded as the sky lightened. The ocean was still a blanket of black, flecked with the white of small waves. A freshening breeze was kicking up a bit of chop but the three hundred tons of James Sinclair pushed imperviously through the water. Our heading was west, and by the time it was fully light we were turning north up Spiller Channel.

  We zigzagged up the middle, all eyes on the sounder. Every blob of red indicated a school of herring, and we estimated the size and noted it. The two test boats were performing the same exercise along both shorelines. By noon, we’d formed a rough estimate of the amount of herring in the area. The central coast seine quota that year was thirty-five hundred tons. Between us and the test boats, we’d identified six to eight thousand tons.

  We’d sent the plane up and the spotter had seen thin streaks of white in the green water along the Spiller Channel shore. Light spawning had started.

  The other key factor in the equation, the roe content, had risen to twelve percent in the northern part of the channel, although it remained at about ten percent in the south. This probably meant there were still fish moving into the spawning area from the open ocean. But D-day was getting closer. There would probably be a run on Rolaids and Tums at the Bella Bella store.

  About four o’clock, we headed back to Shearwater for the evening conference. George was somehow handling the boat without my assistance, so with nothing better to do, I plugged my computer into the sat-phone network and went to the DFO website. I’d meant to check some of the stats from the Gulf opening but was waylaid by an icon for the Strategic Policy Working Group. Guided by some masochistic impulse, I clicked on the icon and it opened the report of the Special Policy for Licensing Abalone Group (SPLAG). After reading for a couple of minutes, I burst out laughing. “Listen to this. The policy guys have come up with a solution to the abalone problem. They’re going to introduce area licensing.”

  Area licensing was a method by which DFO attempte
d to correct their screwups. It could be they’d issued too many licenses for a fishery, or mismanaged a fishery to the point where there weren’t enough fish to support the same number of boats that had once made a good living. What they did was divide the coast up into little boxes and tell everyone that, whereas before they could fish the whole coast, now they could fish only in one little box. And if someone wanted to break out of the box, he could do so only by buying another license from a fellow fisherman. Result: one less fisherman and more expense for those remaining.

  But this was ludicrous. Abalone was a dead fishery and the licenses were worthless. Pete and George rolled their eyes. They’d spotted the obvious flaw. Why would an abalone fisherman with a worthless license want to buy another one? “Stay tuned,” I said. “It’s a work in progress. I just know they’ll come up with a brilliant solution. These are, after all, Policy Guys.”

  Silence. Sort of like when your dim-witted uncle acts up at the town picnic and embarrasses the whole family. Maybe this should be number two on my list of “Reasons Our Bureaucracy Keeps Screwing Things Up.” The people who are affected by a policy should have some input into it.

  We cruised along in silence for a while. I wrestled with my thoughts but we were booed out of the ring. I stared out at the shoreline fading in the dusk. Eagles festooned the trees like large fierce flowers. Seine boats weren’t the only predators gathering to feast on the herring.

  And so my thoughts returned, laudably but late, to work. “Pete, when do you think it’ll happen?”

  He rubbed his jaw. “Well, I don’t know if George will agree, but things look pretty much on schedule to me.” George nodded without taking his eyes off the water. “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Pete continued, “I think we can afford to take the day off. But we’ll send the plane up and I think we’ll see more spot spawn, maybe fifteen, twenty miles of it. There’s bigger tides starting on Monday and they’ll push those southern fish farther up into the channel. I’m thinking maybe Wednesday we should let ’er go.”