McKean S02 Blood Tide (3 page)

I had another sip of Coke and then set it down in its cup holder. “Do your lips tingle?” I asked McKean.

“I was hoping it was just the chill air,” McKean replied thoughtfully.

Adrenaline ran through me like an electric shock and I pulled to the side of the road, asking, “Have we been poisoned, somehow?” Without comment McKean opened his door, put two fingers down his throat and vomited. I followed suit, splattering the pavement on my side with a residue of fish, chips, Coke - and death.

“That may be too little prevention, too late,” McKean muttered. “It all depends on the dose. Can you drive, Fin?”

“To the hospital?

“No. Take us to my labs, quickly.”

I floored the gas and he got on his phone. “Janet, get all the mouse antiserum together. Get it ready for injection into two patients.”

“There’s not enough blood in a mouse - ” I began.

“You can dilute antisera vastly,” McKean interrupted as he clicked off his phone. “A little may go a long way.”

Panicky minutes followed as my car’s engine roared and McKean described the very symptoms I was experiencing. “Depending upon the toxin dose, the sensation of tingling lips progresses to tingling of fingers and toes - ” I felt my fingers tingle as I wrenched the steering wheel and skidded onto the ramp of the West Seattle Bridge; my toes tingled as I floored the accelerator and the tires screamed. “Next,” McKean continued as we streaked up and over the high-rise span across the Duwamish River, “you may lose control of your arms and legs - ” I struggled to keep on course as the Mustang rocketed through an interchange cloverleaf and northbound on the Alaskan Way Viaduct toward downtown. “Some victims experience a sense of floating or vertigo - ” My head swam and my vision grew hazy while I fought to keep from driving through the railings and dropping us fifty feet onto the railroad tracks.

“How about going blind?” I gasped. “I’m having trouble seeing the road. It’s all going red.”

McKean thought a moment. “Blindness is not a part of this syndrome. But seeing red is common when people feel extreme rage or fear.”

“I’m feeling both right now.”

“Is your heart pounding?”

“Isn’t yours?”

“Seeing red occurs when blood pumps so rapidly it floods the retina of the eye until one can actually see it. I suggest you keep cool, Fin.”

“Keep - ” I tried to protest but gagged on my pounding heartbeat. My vision grew redder as I turned off Highway 99 and onto the city streets. My hearing roared and McKean’s voice receded as he said, “Finally, the chest muscles become paralyzed and the victim stops breathing.”

Just two blocks from the lab, my vision went from red to black.

* * * * *

“Wake up, Fin.”

The angelic voice brought me back and I looked around groggily. “Wha - ? Where?”

“You’re with me, Fin,” Kay Erwin murmured, her pretty face coming into focus above me. “You’re at Seattle Public Health Hospital. How do you feel?”

“Better than yesterday,” I muttered, noticing Peyton McKean leaning over her shoulder, observing me like I was a lab rat.

“Better than two days ago,” he corrected. “You’ve been comatose for forty-eight hours. You took one more sip of Coke than I did. The antibodies barely pulled you through.”

“But your vital signs are great this morning,” Kay remarked. “No permanent damage.”

“How’d I get here?” I asked, struggling to remember missing events.

“You managed to get us to the lab, Fin,” McKean replied, “although just barely. Janet met us at the curbside and injected half the antibodies into each of us, and then called an ambulance. Kay tended us through the crisis. We’re both well on the way to recovery. My antiserum worked!”

* * * * *

The next day, as Kay signed my release papers, McKean rushed into my room. “I hope you’re up for a drive, Fin. Vince Nagumo just called with news. The police are after Craig Showalter. They raided his home and found a methamphetamine lab. Shot two of his henchmen dead in a gun battle. But Showalter’s still on the loose. He’d already hightailed it the evening before, according to his girlfriend.”

“So, what next?” I asked.

“Let’s go have a powwow.”

An hour later, we took our accustomed seats in Clara’s living room, joined by Frank, whom McKean had alerted by cell phone. When Clara offered us Cokes again, I waved mine off. “No thanks,” I resisted. “I’ve had more than enough Coke to suit my tastes lately.”

Peyton McKean, on the other hand, quickly picked up his glass and sipped from it as if to demonstrate good will and his trust in Aunt Clara. He then used his cell phone to show Frank and Clara his photo of the man beside the pickup.

Clara gasped, “That’s my nephew, Billy Seaweed. He can’t be mixed up in this! He’s a good kid.”

Frank nodded his head. “Billy comes around and helps out sometimes. Clara can’t get on too well without him.”

“I’m old and lame,” Clara complained. “My husband died from alcohol and the post traumatic stresses from his Viet Nam days. There’s no government support money for us Duwamish elders because the tribe isn’t recognized, so I have to get by as best as I can. Billy’s my angel. He cut up all that cordwood for me with his ax.”

“We’ve seen the ax,” I remarked.

“Billy’s a good boy,” Clara repeated. “Sold the tires and wheels off my old, broke-down car to get a little money for me to get by on.”

“Billy’s okay,” said Frank. “Got some strange friends though, like that Erik Torvald guy. For a white guy, I suppose he was all right, but he was still a white man to the bone.”

“In what way?” asked McKean.

“All about money. He was using Billy’s rights as a Native American to get geoduck licenses. Nothing really wrong with that, but the way he used his big, hot-rod boat and his scuba gear and power siphons to tear up half the sea bottom when he took ‘em? That’s not like we used to do, dig ‘em at low tide with a cedar shovel and fill in the holes when you’re done. Still, Torvald was a lot nicer than Billy’s new partner.”

“Craig Showalter,” McKean responded.

“How’d you know that?”

“I’ve got connections. Vince Nagumo, FBI. He says Showalter’s a bad choice of friends. He’s got quite a rap sheet - ex con, home invasion robbery, drug dealer.”

“Oh, my,” gasped Clara, putting a hand to her chest.

“Some other things you should know about Billy,” Frank said. “He’s an internet addict and a kinda Indian Goth. He’s obsessed with darkness and apocalyptic stuff. I think he was frustrated ‘cause he couldn’t afford junior college to get some training that would get him a good job. Even got into drugs for a bit, maybe through that Showalter guy if what you say is true. But I don’t think Billy’s a killer.”

One scruffy dog came to its place beside me on the couch and began nibbling the bare patch at the base of its tail. I choked back my disgust until the dog abandoned itself to a frenzy of licking and nibbling, leaning against my elbow while it raised a mangy stench that nauseated me. I stood up to get some fresher air and tried to seem nonchalant by wandering to a back window and pulling aside the curtain to gaze outside while McKean continued his discussion with Frank and Clara. I stared at the trees overarching the house but then spotted something on the back drive that sent a chill through me: pulled up behind the car on blocks was a black Dodge Ram pickup exactly like the one at the park when we were poisoned. I was immediately certain it was Craig Showalter’s truck, so I made a small wave to catch McKean’s eye and then pointed out the window.

“What is it, Fin?” he asked without an effort to keep my concern a secret. He came to the window and when he saw what I had seen, he turned to look expectantly at the people in the room. Clara flinched first.

“Oh, dear,” she moaned, her eyes welling with tears. She fanned her throat and then quit trying to hide the obvious. “He’s here!” she admitted, sobbing. “They’re both here. They’re in the basement. Billy’s been staying here for a couple of days now.” She covered her eyes and wept. “Poor Billy!” she gushed between wet hands.

McKean went to her solicitously. “Don’t be so sure we’re here to get Billy in trouble, Clara. He’s unlikely to be the murderer.”

A voice came from a back doorway. “I’m just as much to blame as Craig Showalter. I made the poison he used.”

We all turned to see Billy Seaweed standing in a doorway at the top of the stairs that came from the basement. “It’s all gonna come out pretty quick,” he mumbled. “So why hide any more?” He stood in the doorway with one hand braced on the jamb and an odd, faraway look on his face, seeming not to hear anyone’s exclamations of concern or questions.

“I was just tryin’ out the old man’s recipe,” he went on slowly. “Internet guys was stoked. I thought we’d try it on somebody’s dog or something. But Craig talked me into giving him some. When Erik Torvald turned up dead I knew I was in deep shit. Showalter poisoned Torvald so he could take over his business.”

“I figured that,” McKean responded.

“Showalter was looking for a way to get out of the meth business; go legitimate.”

“If you can call it legitimate,” I interjected, “to kill a man for a few geoducks.”

“Lotsa money in geoducks, these days.”

“Was he the one who tried to kill us at the park?” McKean asked.

Billy nodded. “We was here at Aunt Clara’s the first time you guys came by. We heard what you said to Frank, so we knew you were onto us. Craig jimmied your car door and poisoned your Cokes while I was in the woods yelling at you guys. I didn’t know it till later. I was tryin’ to protect the old man but Craig was tryin’ to get rid of you for good.”

“We were on the right track,” McKean asserted, “but unfortunately you were always just a step ahead of us.”

Billy laughed in an odd, sad way. “I’m still one step ahead.”

McKean’s dark eyebrows knit. “How’s that? And where is this dangerous Showalter fellow?”

After a long moment Billy turned robotically, saying to no one in particular, “C’mon. I’ve got something to show you.”

Frank and McKean and I followed him down the stairs, leaving Clara weeping upstairs. In the basement day room a TV was showing a sequence from Dancing With The Stars. At one end of the day room was a door through which a sink and toilet could be seen. Through a second we glimpsed a disheveled bed. In one corner of the day room a tall man appeared to be sleeping in a reclining chair facing the TV. My pulse shot up when I realized it must be Craig Showalter, but McKean went to him and pressed his fingertips to a carotid artery. Then he straightened and looked from Frank to Billy to me, shaking his head in the negative.

“I killed him with the poison,” Billy explained. “We got high on some red wine first so I knew he wouldn’t feel it coming on.”

“The police are gonna want to talk to you,” murmured Frank.

Billy shook his head slowly. “No, they won’t.”

I said, “I don’t see how you can stop that.”

“I do,” Billy replied. “I saved enough poison for me. Gettin’ a little woozy right now.” His eyelids drooped. McKean cell phoned for an ambulance but Billy was nearly gone when it arrived, slumped on the bed in the basement bedroom. He was on death’s door when Kay Erwin admitted him to Seattle Public Health Hospital, and although McKean had double-checked with Janet about antiserum as we followed the ambulance, Janet only confirmed that the antiserum was consumed completely in saving him and me. With no other source of antidote, Billy’s death was a foregone conclusion.

* * * * *

Several days later, McKean called me at my office to fill me in on developments.

“They’re closing the case,” he said, “after restating it as murder with Craig Showalter the perpetrator and, of course, justice delivered by one Billy Seaweed whose own death is listed as a suicide.”

“Sad,” I remarked, “but at least the case is solved.”

“Yes,” McKean agreed, “and you’ll be happy to know all’s well enough with Aunt Clara. Frank’s taken her under his wing. He’s going to look in on her regularly, and perhaps even move her into his house sometime soon.”

“Frank’s willing to take Billy’s place as her new angel of mercy, then?”

“Answer: yes,” McKean replied. “And I’m sure he’ll dispatch his duty faithfully.”

“Couldn’t she apply to the tribe for some money?”

“I was wrong about Muckleshoot Casino money, Fin. Only Federally recognized tribes can share casino profits, and therefore the Duwamish are excluded. Furthermore, the Gates and Allen money is all tied up in constructing the new longhouse. Duwamish resources are thin. Hence, Clara’s poverty is unchanged.”

“She could move to a reservation. There are a dozen in the region.”

“Yes, and there she’d be entitled to receive some financial help. But you’re forgetting that she’s a proud member of the Duwamish Tribe and has no intention of leaving the place where her ancestors lived, to join another tribe. She once told me that her home was built on land that’s been in her family since the beginning of time. As mind-boggling as that concept seems, I can’t find fault with it. No wonder she’s persisted there under less-than-happy conditions for so many years - her very sense of who she is, is at stake.”

Several days after that, McKean and I went to find the old shaman in his shabby camp. He came out to the riverbank with us, leaning on a tall wooden staff with totemic animals carved on it, and we discussed the circumstances of Billy Seaweed’s death. As we talked, a bald eagle called several times from a snag tree across the river on a little island. Two more eagles flew overhead and the first eagle flapped off to follow them toward the mouth of the Duwamish River, flying under the gray rainbow of the West Seattle Freeway bridge.

“That’s a fledgling,” remarked Henry George. “Joining Mom and Dad for his first hunt, going fishing along Alki Beach. Maybe Billy Seaweed’s spirit is in that eagle.”

“Too bad about Billy,” McKean sympathized.

“Billy’s buried now in the white man way,” George murmured. “Highpoint Cemetery. He should be over there on Muddy Island, left in a canoe until the birds pick his bones clean. Then you put the bones in a cedar box and maybe make a totem. Billy wasn’t rich or famous enough for a totem, I suppose.”