The River Killers

by Bruce Burrows

  “And I want to meet him. I definitely want to meet him.”

  “If you could stall him, it would help,” I said. “Tell him the building is closed for cleaning or something. We’ll be watching him and he might lead us to other evidence, physical evidence that would tie him to the sockeye experiment.”

  Rose considered this. “There’s a potlatch this weekend. All my staff are involved in the preparations. I’ll tell him he can’t have access to the files until Monday.”

  Louise stood and placed her hand on Rose’s shoulder. After a while she said, “I’m sorry, Rose. I’m sorry we didn’t catch on to this earlier. But we’re closing in on Griffith now. He’s got four days to stew over this. He’ll do something stupid and we’ll be there to nail him.”

  Rose didn’t say anything and after a bit we left. I had to stay out of sight so Griffith wouldn’t spot me. I went back to Louise’s house, while she went to alert her constables and arrange their coordination with Tommy’s two surveillance guys who would be on the plane with Griffith.

  I sat in Louise’s kitchen and stared out over the water. The water taxi came around the corner from Shearwater. A herring skiff ran across to the other side of the bay and stopped. Checking a crab trap, I thought. Two seine boats made a stately transect from south to north and exited out into Seaforth Channel. Heading home to Rupert, I thought. How very normal. There’s no way those waters could be harboring mutant sockeye produced by mad scientists working in secret. Poisonous mutant sockeye that kill people.

  When I’d almost convinced myself that it was all a bad dream, I turned my thoughts toward Fleming Griffith. In spite of the confident façade I was displaying for Tommy and Louise, doubts were creeping in about our ability to nail him. Best-case scenario: we’d find evidence in the records that people had died from unexplained causes. Could we link the deaths to eating the sockeye? Probably not. When Griffith got access to the files, he would probably try to destroy them. So what? Shredding files wasn’t in the Criminal Code of Canada. We could probably damage his career. He’d be forced to retire and live on his pension. That would show him!

  My growing depression was alleviated somewhat when Louise walked in bearing dinner in a box marked “pizza.” The labeling was commendably accurate. As we engaged in slice allocation, Louise brought me up to speed. Griffith had pressed Rose for access to the files but had been refused. He was now wandering around town looking angry and out of place.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “He’ll probably go over to Shearwater to stay in the hotel. It occurred to us he might try to take a boat to one of their locations we haven’t discovered yet. We left a couple of bait skiffs at the wharf. They’ve got hidden transmitters so he’ll be easy to follow.”

  “How’s Rose?”

  “She’s hard to read. She spent a long time talking to Griffith, pretending she didn’t know why he wanted access to the files. He made up a story about looking for cases of red tide poisoning.”

  “I hope you’re right about her being discreet,” I said. “If she told anyone what Griffith had done, he’d probably be dead by morning. We wouldn’t want that. Would we?”

  “Of course not. I don’t want to have to arrest anyone for doing my job.”

  “Doing your job?”

  “Justice, Danny. Bringing Griffith to justice. And that’s my job and no one else’s.” She went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Riesling. For the next half hour, we interspersed sips of wine with bouts of serious nuzzling. Then the phone rang. Louise answered it and listened for a second before swearing quietly. She slumped back into her chair.

  “That was Rose. Griffith is at her place and he’s taken ill. They’re moving him to the clinic.”

  I was shocked. This wasn’t part of our game plan. I thought for a moment. “You go to the clinic and check on Griffith. I’m going to talk to Rose. Where’s her house?”

  Her answer was muffled by her hands covering her face. “Two houses down from the school. Opposite side of the street.”

  I left in a hurry. When I got to Rose’s house, she was sitting placidly on her porch. I took a second chair and sat down beside her. “What happened, Rose?”

  “Mr. Griffith is a guest in our village. I did the necessary thing and invited him to supper. I meant to take a spring salmon out of the freezer, but I must have made a mistake and unthawed a sockeye.”

  I sat for a while, trying to think of the proper words. “Rose . . .” Nothing came to me, so I left. I tried really hard to ignore the dead cat next to the stairs.

  I got to the clinic quickly and was shown to Griffith’s room. A nurse and a doctor were paying more attention to him than he deserved. Louise observed from a corner by the window. The doctor issued some orders to the nurse, along the lines of “I don’t know what the hell he’s got but watch him closely,” and he left.

  Griffith looked awful, which cheered me immensely. His usual pallor had taken on a grayish tinge. He was sweating and panting and on the verge of panic. I waited until the nurse had left. “Flem, buddy, I think I know what’s ailing you. I think you know too.”

  No response.

  “Flem, buddy, does the phrase chickens come home to roost have any meaning to you?” No response except for quicker breathing and dilated pupils.

  “Flem, buddy-oh, several people, we don’t know how many, have died from this and it’s entirely and completely and absolutely your fault. Any thoughts on that?”

  No response but moans and momentary spasms.

  I leaned in over him. “Crowley’s got the antidote.”

  His eyes focused on me. I offered him the deal, which was as honorable as his entire career had been. “Tell me what happened to Billy Bradley, and I’ll try to hook you up with Crowley.” I didn’t care if God wouldn’t forgive me. I hoped my Mom would, but she didn’t know.

  Crowley groaned and grabbed one twitching arm with the other. He spoke with difficulty, jaws and lips not entirely obeying his commands. “Why do you care about him? He was a fisherman. He pushed his way into the lab and ranted and raved about some dead cat. He threatened to disrupt an experiment that would have put us at the cutting edge of genetic manipulation. We could have dedicated the Fraser River to a better use.”

  “You asshole! Do you think anyone cares about your stupid experiments? Billy Bradley wasn’t an experiment. He was part of our lives. What the fuck did you do to him?”

  “I was using an electroshocker on some large spring salmon. Your friend lunged at me. The shocker contacted his chest. He was dead. Not my fault. Now tell Crowley to phone me. I need help.”

  “I’ll try to pass on the message. One other thing—who authorized the second mandate?” But it was too late. He had slipped into unconsciousness. I looked at Louise and we walked out together.

  “Sweetie,” I squeezed her hand. “Rose inadvertently fed one of the mutant salmon to Griffith. Do you think that’s a cause for concern?”

  She stiffened. I looked away from her. She spoke in a slightly distant voice. “Bit of a species mix-up. Why would the RCMP be concerned?”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  Six hours later, Griffith ceased to exist. I waited until the morning and then phoned Mark. He was remarkably unemotional. “I’ve sort of known for a while what happened to Billy. But it’s good to know the details, I guess. I’ll tell Christine and Fergie.” A pause. “You okay?”

  “Better than I’ve been for a hell of a long time.”

  “I think we all are. Friday, the Princeton, 6:00 PM. We’ll all be there.”

  “Roger, skip.”

  Twenty-five

  The gathering at the Princeton was quiet at first, but gained volume as everyone became more comfortable with the story.

  “How did that cocksucker look at the end?” Fergie wanted to know. “Suffering?”

  “He was struggling for breath,” I said. “Twitching, starting serious convulsions. And maybe starting to realize the phone call from Crowley wasn’t c
oming.” I examined my guilt quotient and discovered it had increased not one bit. “I didn’t stay until the end but Griffith was starting to look extremely un-ministerial.”

  “Poor Billy,” Christine said. “He lacked bureaucratese. If he’d had Igor in a proper fish carrying case, and maybe offered to fill out a form, he’d be with us now.”

  Mark spoke very seriously. “It must be hard on Rose Wilson, knowing that she accidentally poisoned Griffith.” He looked at Louise, who responded impassively.

  “Rose is coping very well. Obviously there will be no repercussions for what was clearly an accident.”

  I tried to save Louise from any further obfuscation. “I’m sure we could have nailed Griffith eventually.” I paused to see if my nose was growing. “But this outcome saved everyone a lot of trouble. I think Billy would be satisfied.”

  Fergie asked, “What happened to Billy’s body?”

  I filled him in on the details. Bodies can be difficult to dispose of, but not if you have access to two thousand pounds of anchors and four thousand feet of water. The circumspect waters of Burrard Inlet, conveniently available from the DFO dock with a DFO workboat, became Billy’s final resting place. His beloved Camaro was driven across the Patullo Bridge to the less than genteel district of Queensborough. Abandoned on a back street in the land of not-fully-licensed auto wreckers, it quickly disappeared. Thus ended the not unlamented life of our shipmate and dear friend, William George Bradley.

  They all seemed to share my sense of satisfaction at the outcome. It wasn’t textbook justice, but it was undeniably justice. After some desultory conversation and promises to get together soon, the crew began to disperse.

  Louise and I were left alone. She spoke in a contemplative voice.

  “Relationships are strange, aren’t they? You can’t really plan them, although everybody tries to. But they do need consideration. What do you think, Danny? How much thought should you put into a relationship, as opposed to just letting it develop?”

  I looked around nervously. There was going to be some emotional heavy lifting here, and I hadn’t had any nourishment for quite some time.

  “Well, you certainly can’t force a relationship. It’s kind of like juggling: if you think about it too much, or try to analyze what you’re doing, you’ll drop all your balls. I guess a relationship is something that you should, you know, just sort of do.”

  “Hmm, the running shoe philosophy of human relationships. How interesting. Fortunately, we’re not having a relationship. We’re just having casual sex. Sort of just doing it, you might say.”

  “Louise, I don’t do casual sex. Anymore. At all. Sex is important, um, meaningful, you know?”

  “Danny, I want to get to know you.”

  “I guess I’ve always sort of mistrusted anyone silly enough to be interested in me. But you seem to have very good judgement.”

  She placed her hand over mine. “Trust me.”

  Louise took me to meet her parents. She’d already met them, of course, but they hadn’t yet had the pleasure of my company. Fortunately, for them, they lived in Hope.

  My vehicle was in Ottawa and Louise’s was in Bella Bella, so we were vehicleless. Vancouver to Hope would have been a hell of a taxi fare, so we took the train.

  It felt good to sit on the train. It was going where we wanted to go with absolutely no effort on our part. For the first time in quite a while, I felt free of fraughtness. As the train followed the Fraser River more or less east, I regarded my companion and felt more or less in love.

  Louise squeezed my hand and pointed to a bunch of kids angling from the bank of the river. Time-honoured childhood pursuits, fishing for dreams and catching memories.

  I thought about the river and the fish. The salmon that pulsed up the Fraser like an annual heartbeat had sustained humans for eons. Native fishermen had fed body and soul. Commercial fishermen had built lives and raised families. Sports fishermen had fed their inexplicable but undeniable need to hook and land fish. But none of them, dream-dazzled child, time-drenched Native elder, commercial pragmatist, or Gore-Tex-clad idealist, had even an inkling that this miraculous gift had almost been stolen. Louise and I and our steadfast friends had defeated the river killers.

  Chaos was stayed. The center had held.

  I felt good.

  Acknowledgments

  Many of the sayings in this book I have “borrowed” from friends of mine. The soliloquy on number eight trolling wire came from Laurie Belveal, an old shipmate who has now crossed the bar. The saying about not going ahead too fast but never going backwards came from my longest-serving skipper, Bob Koskela. The dissertation on the sociological similarities between the Scots and the West Coast Native culture came from Yvon Geisinghaus, an old friend from Alert Bay.

  Finally, I would like to thank my friend Shane Field, who was the first non-Bruce Burrowsoid to read and comment on the book; Ruth Linka from TouchWood Editions who phoned one day and said she liked the book; and my editor, Linda Richards, who made me work much too hard.

  Any errors in the book are obviously mine, although I’ll try to pass them off as the literary license of a creative mind.

  With years spent working as a fisherman, commercial diver, and most recently, an at-sea observer, BRUCE BURROWS is a true man of the sea. During his time as a fisherman, he wrote a weekly column called “Channel 78, Eh” about fishing on the West Coast. His collected column can be found in Blood on the Decks, Scales on the Rails (1992). Bruce lives on a small island off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. The River Killers is his first novel.

  A detail of one of Kayak Bill’s paintings appears on the cover of this book. BILL DAVIDSON, known as Kayak Bill, was born in 1948 and grew up in a Calgary orphanage. He found escape in the mountains and cliffs around Banff. Bill became a legendary climber, but gravity sets limits with harsh consequences. Around 1980 he escaped to the inlets and passageways of the British Columbia coast. He became a self sufficient hunter gather and self taught painter. In 2004, while living on the isolated Goose Islands, he escaped altogether and forever. Facebook.com/pages/Kayak-Bill-Prints

  REBEKAH PARLEE’s drawing of the Maple Leaf C appears on page ii. She was born in 1975 and raised in Jennis Bay, hand logging and fishing. She began selling her art at the age of fifteen, and in 1997, began a four-year course at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, supporting herself by skippering a prawn boat for part of the year.

  In 2001, she moved to Sointula. artifexus.com

  Copyright © 2011 Bruce Burrows

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (ACCESS Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Burrows, Bruce, 1946–

  The river killers [electronic resource] / Bruce Burrows.

  Electronic monograph in HTML format.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-926971-57-5

  I. Title.

  PS8603.U7474R57 2011a C813'.6 C2011-904176-6

  Editor: Linda Richards

  Proofreader: Lenore Hietkamp

  Design: Pete Kohut

  Cover image: Kayak Bill

  We gratefully acknowledge the financial support for our publishing activities from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, and the province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  This is a work of fiction and all the characters are made up, including the boats. Only the Maple Leaf C, Ryu II, W 10, Jessie Isle, James Sinclair, and W.E. Ricker are, or once were, real boat names.

  TouchWood Editions

  www.touchwoodeditions.com

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  Bruce Burrows, The River Killers