Snow Falling on Cedars (4 page)

‘He banged his head,’ whispered Abel Martinson, pointing to a wound Art hadn’t noticed in Carl Heine’s blond hair. ‘Must have banged it against the gunnel going over.’

Sure enough, Carl Heine’s skull had been crushed just above his left ear. The bone had fractured and left a dent in his head. Art Moran turned away from it.

Nels Gudmundsson, the attorney who had been appointed to defend Kabuo Miyamoto, rose to cross-examine Art Moran with a slow and deliberate geriatric awkwardness, then roughly cleared the phlegm from his throat and hooked his thumbs behind his suspenders where they met their tiny black catch buttons. At seventy-nine, Nels was blind in his left eye and could distinguish only shades of light and darkness through its transient, shadowy pupil. The right, however, as if to make up for this deficiency, seemed preternaturally observant, even prescient, and as he plodded over the courtroom floorboards, advancing with a limp toward Art Moran, motes of light winked through it.

‘Sheriff,’ he said. ‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning,’ replied Art Moran.

‘I just want to make sure I’m hearing you right on a couple of matters,’ said Nels. ‘You say the lights on this boat, the
Susan Marie,
were all on? Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ said the sheriff. ‘They were.’

‘In the cabin, too?’

‘That’s right.’

‘The mast lights?’

‘Yes.’

‘The picking lights? The net lights.
All
of them?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Art Moran.

‘Thank you,’ Nels said. ‘I thought that was what you said, all right. That they were all on. All the lights.’

He paused and for a moment seemed to study his hands, which were riddled with liver spots and trembled at times:
Nels suffered from an advancing neurasthenia. Its foremost symptom was a sensation of heat that on occasion flamed in the nerve endings of his forehead until the arteries in his temples pulsed visibly.

‘You say it was foggy on the night of September 15?’ Nels asked. ‘Is that what you said, sheriff?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thick fog?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Do you remember this?’

‘I remember, yes. I’ve thought about it. Because I went out on my porch about ten o’clock, see. Hadn’t seen fog for more than a week. And I couldn’t see more than twenty yards.’

‘At ten o’clock?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then?’

‘I went to bed, I guess.’

‘You went to bed. What time did you get up, sheriff? Do you remember? On the sixteenth?’

‘I got up at five. At five o’clock.’

‘You remember this?’

‘I’m always up at five. Every morning. So on the sixteenth, yes, I was up at five.’

‘And was the fog still there?’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘Just as thick? As thick as at ten o’clock the night before?’

‘Almost, I’d say. Almost. But not quite.’

‘So it was still foggy in the morning, then.’

‘Yes. Until nine or so. Then it started burning off – was mostly gone by the time we set out in the launch, if that’s what you’re driving at, sir.’

‘Until nine,’ answered Nels Gudmundsson. ‘Or thereabouts? Nine?’

‘That’s right,’ replied Art Moran.

Nels Gudmundsson raised his chin, fingered his bow tie, and
pinched experimentally the wattles of skin at his neck – a habit of his when he was thinking.

‘Out there on the
Susan Marie,’
he said. ‘The engine started right up, sheriff? When you went to start it you had no trouble?’

‘Right away,’ said Art Moran. ‘No trouble at all.’

‘With all those lights drawing, sheriff? Batteries still strong?’

‘Must have been. Because she started with no trouble.’

‘Did that strike you as odd, sheriff? Do you remember? That with all those lights drawing, the batteries still had plenty of charge, enough to turn the engine over with no trouble, as you say?’

‘Didn’t think about it at the time,’ said Art Moran. ‘So no is the answer – it didn’t strike me as odd, at least not then.’

‘And docs it strike you as odd now?’

‘A little,’ said the sheriff. ‘Yes.’

‘Why?’ Nels asked.

‘Because those lights do a lot of drawing. I’d reckon they can run a battery down quick – just like in your car. So I have to wonder a little, yes.’

‘You have to wonder,’ said Nels Gudmundsson, and he began to massage his throat again and pull at the dewlaps of skin there.

Nels made his way to the evidence table, selected a folder, and brought it to Art Moran. ‘Your investigative report,’ he said. ‘The one just admitted into evidence during Mr. Hooks’s direct examination. Is this it, sheriff?’

‘It is.’

‘Could you turn to page seven, please?’

The sheriff did so.

‘Now,’ said Nels, ‘is page seven an inventory of items found on board Carl Heine’s boat, the
Susan Marie
?’

‘Could you read for the court the item listed as number twenty-seven?’

‘Of course,’ said Art Moran. ‘Item twenty-seven. A spare D-8 battery, six celled.’

‘A spare D-8 battery, six celled,’ said Nels. ‘Thank you. A D-8. Six celled. Would you turn now to item forty-two, sheriff? And read one more time for the court?’

‘Item forty-two,’ replied Art Moran. ‘D-8 and D-6 batteries in battery well. Each six celled.’

‘A 6 and an 8?’ Nels said.

‘Yes.’

‘I did some measuring down at the chandlery,’ said Nels. ‘A D-6 is wider than a D-8 by an inch. It wouldn’t fit into the
Susan Marie’s
battery well, sheriff. It was an inch too large for that.’

‘He’d done some on-the-spot refitting,’ Art explained. ‘The side flange was banged away to make room for a D-6.’

‘He banged out the side flange?’

‘Yes.’

‘You could see this?’

‘Yes.’

‘A metal flange that had been banged aside?’

‘Yes.’

‘Soft metal?’

‘Yes. Soft enough. It’d been banged back to make room for a D-6.’

‘To make room for a D-6,’ Nels repeated. ‘But sheriff; didn’t you say that the spare was a D-8? Didn’t Carl Heine have a D-8 available that would have fit into the existing well with none of this banging and refitting?’

‘The spare was dead,’ Art Moran said. ‘We tested it after we brought the boat in. It didn’t have any juice to it, Mr. Gudmundsson. Didn’t have any juice at all.’

‘The spare was dead,’ Nels repeated. ‘So, to summarize, you found on the deceased’s boat a dead spare D-8 battery, a working D-8 down in the well, and beside it a working D-6 that was in fact too large for the existing space and which forced someone to do some refitting? Some banging at a soft metal flange?’

‘All correct,’ said the sheriff.

‘All right now,’ said Nels Gudmundsson. ‘Would you please turn to page twenty-seven of your report? Your inventory of
items aboard the
defendant’s
boat? And read for the court item twenty-four, please?’

Art Moran turned the pages. ‘Item twenty-four,’ he said after a while. ‘Two D-6 batteries in well. Each six celled.’

‘Two D-6s on Kabuo Miyamoto’s boat,’ Nels said. ‘And did you find a spare aboard, sheriff?’

‘No. We didn’t. It isn’t in the inventory.’

“The defendant had no spare battery aboard his boat? He’d gone out fishing without one?’

‘Apparently, yes, sir, he did.’

‘Well, then,’ Nels said. ‘Two D-6s in the well and no spare to be found. Tell me, sheriff. These D-6s on the defendant’s boat. Were they the same sort of D-6 you found in the deceased’s battery well? On board the
Susan Marie
? The same size? The same make?’

‘Yes,’ replied the sheriff. ‘All D-6s. The same battery.’

‘So the D-6 in use on the deceased’s boat could have – hypothetically, since it was identical – made a perfect spare for the defendant’s batteries?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘But, as you say, the defendant
had
no spare on board. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right, sheriff,’ Nels said. ‘Let me ask you about something else, if you don’t mind, for a moment. Tell me – when you brought the deceased in was there some sort of trouble? When you hauled him up from the sea in his fishing net?’

‘Yes,’ said Art Moran. ‘I mean, he was heavy. And, well, his lower half – his legs and feet? – they wanted to slide out of the net. He was hanging by one of his rain gear buckles. And we were afraid if we pulled him out of the water maybe we’d lose him altogether, he’d come out and the buckle would give or the rubber around it would and he’d be gone. His legs were hanging in the water, you understand. His legs weren’t quite in the net.’

‘And,’ said Nels Gudmundsson, ‘can you tell us what you and Deputy Martinson did about this?’

‘Well, we cupped the webbing. And then we pulled on the lead line. We made a sort of cradle with the net, got his legs inside it. Then we brought him in.’

‘So you had some trouble,’ Nels said.

‘A little, yes.’

‘He didn’t come in cleanly?’

‘Not at first, no. We had to jerk the net around, work it. But once we had him in and the webbing grabbed it was fairly smooth from there, yes.’

‘Sheriff,’ said Nels Gudmundsson, ‘with all of this jerking of the net and this trouble you’re mentioning now – is it possible the deceased hit his head on the transom of the boat as you were bringing him in? Or somewhere else? On the stem gunnel, say, or on the net roller? Is it possible?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Art Moran. ‘I would have seen it if we did.’

‘You don’t think so,’ said Nels Gudmundsson. ‘What about when you pulled him out of the net? When you laid him on the deck? He was a big man, as you say, two hundred and thirty-five pounds, and stiff, as you’ve pointed out. Was he difficult to move around, sheriff?’

‘He was heavy, yes, real heavy. But there were two of us and we were careful. We didn’t hit him on anything.’

‘Are you sure of this?’

‘I don’t remember hitting him on anything, no, Mr. Gudmundsson. We were careful, as I’ve said already.’

‘But you don’t remember,’ Nels said. ‘Or to put it another way, do you have any uncertainty at all about this? That in moving this awkward and heavy corpse about, in operating this winch equipment you’d rarely operated before, in doing this difficult job of bringing in a drowned man of two hundred and thirty-five pounds – is it possible, Sheriff Moran, that the deceased banged his head sometime
after
his death? Is that possible?’

‘Yes,’ said Art Moran. ‘
Possible.
I guess it is – but not likely.’

Nels Gudmundsson turned toward the jury. ‘No more questions,’ he said. And with a slowness that embarrassed him – because as a young man he had been lithe and an athlete, had always moved fluidly across the floorboards of courtrooms, had always felt admired for his physical appearance – he made his way back to his scat at the defendant’s table, where Kabuo Miyamoto sat watching him.

Judge Lew Fielding called for a recess at ten forty-five that first morning. He turned to observe the silent sweep of the snowfall, rubbed his graying eyebrows and the tip of his nose, then rose in his black robe, slid his hands through his hair, and lumbered into his chambers.

The accused man, Kabuo Miyamoto, leaned to his right and nodded just perceptibly while Nels Gudmundsson spoke into his ear. Across the aisle Alvin Hooks rested his chin in his hands, drumming the floorboards with the heel of his shoe, impatient but not dissatisfied. In the gallery the citizens stood and yawned, then wandered off into the less stultifying atmosphere of the hallway or gazed out the windows with awed expressions, watching the snow lash toward them in parabolas before it struck against the leaded panes. Their faces, bathed in the attenuated December light from the tall windows, appeared quiet and even faintly reverent. Those who had driven into town felt fretful about getting home.

The jurors were led away by Ed Soames to drink cone-shaped cups of lukewarm cooler water and to make use of the lavatory. Then Soames reappeared and plodded about like a parish beadle, backing down the steam radiator valves. Yet it remained too hot in the courtroom despite this; the trapped heat wouldn’t dissipate. Steam began to coalesce in a film of vapor on the upper reaches of the windows, closing the courtroom in a little, muffling the pale morning light.

Ishmael Chambers found a seat in the gallery and sat tapping his pencil’s eraser against his bottom lip. Like others on San Piedro Island, he’d first heard about the death of Carl Heine
on the afternoon of September 16 – the day the body was discovered. He’d been calling the Reverend Gordon Groves of the Amity Harbor Lutheran Congregation to ask about the sermon topic for Sunday in order that he might paraphrase the reverend’s answer in his ‘At Our Island Churches’ column, a weekly feature in the
San Piedro Review
that ran beside the Anacortes ferry schedule. The Reverend Groves was not in, but his wife, Lillian, informed Ishmael that Carl Heine had drowned and been found tangled in his gill net.

Ishmael Chambers did not believe her: Lillian Groves was a gossip. He was not inclined to believe such a thing and when he hung up sat brooding over it. Then, disbelieving, he dialed the sheriff’s office and asked Eleanor Dokes, a person he did not entirely trust either: yes, she replied, Carl Heine had drowned. He’d been fishing, yes. He’d been found in his net. The sheriff? Not in just now. She supposed he was seeing the coroner.

Ishmael immediately called the coroner, Horace Whaley. That’s right, said Horace, you’d better believe it. Carl Heine was dead. Terrible thing, wasn’t it? The man had survived Okinawa. Carl
Heine,
it was
unbelievable.
He’d hit his head on something.

The sheriff? said Horace. You just barely missed him. He and Abel both; just barely gone. Heading for the docks, they said.

Ishmael Chambers put down the receiver and sat with his forehead held in his palm, remembering Carl Heine from high school. They had both graduated in ’42. They had played on the football team together. He remembered riding the team bus with Carl to a game against Bellingham in the fall of ’41. They rode wearing their uniforms, their helmets in their laps, each boy carrying his own towel. He remembered how Carl looked sitting beside him with his gym towel draped around his thick German neck, glaring out the window at the fields. It was dusk, a brief November twilight, and Carl was watching snow geese land in low flooded wheat, his square chin set, his head tilted up, a man’s blond stubble on his jaw. ‘Chambers,’ he’d said. ‘You see the geese?’