The River Killers (17 page)

“You guys will love this. The latest from the Special Policy on Licensing Abalone Group. It says right here, hard to believe but true, that all abalone caught under the new licensing regime must be individually identified.” I selected a large humpback prawn in time to save it from one of Pete's grapplements. “So, if you manage the paperwork to obtain a license, design an abalone trap that fits the new rules, and if you were to actually catch an abalone, you would have to name it: Alice, Herman, Brunhilda?”

“Don't be silly,” George waved a large side-stripe prawn at me. “You're assuming the
DFO
policy gurus would do something stupid. Has that ever happened? Aside from the odd mistake on the east coat, the west coast, the Arctic Ocean, the Great Lakes, plus some very large lakes in western Canada?”

“Yeah, I hate to be critical. To err is human, to fuck up beyond all possible belief in the face of overwhelming advice on the right course of action is not divine, it's
DFO
.”

The radios started to chatter with the latest hails. The
Pacific Gambler
, which had originally given an estimate of six hundred tons, had ripped its net while drying up and most of the fish had escaped. I felt bad for the crew. They'd thought they had something, had busted their ass in adrenaline-fueled toil and sweat, and then lost everything. I wondered if they had a license for up north. That could make the difference between severe depression or a we're-still-in-this-ball-game attitude.

Or maybe their pool partners had done well. In the modern era of short openings and high license fees, boat owners often resorted to pooling as a way of evening the odds in the ever-more-risky and high-stakes crap game that the coast herring fishery had become. Hopefully the
Pacific Gambler
had partnered with a couple of other boats and those boats had caught something. The catch would be shared and the crew of the
Pacific Gambler
wouldn't go home completely broke.

The
Coastal Provider
was still hailing four hundred and fifty tons, and I knew Mark wouldn't bullshit. Other hails were being adjusted as hope gave way to reality, and the time for bullshitting was over anyway. The boats that had the big sets, like Mark's, would be pumping their fish for hours. The numbers were becoming more concrete as time passed. We wouldn't get the final tally until the fish were delivered to the processing plants in Vancouver and Prince Rupert and weighed on actual scales. But I knew that the hails were usually accurate to within twenty or thirty percent. So we had caught a little under or a little over the quota of thirty-five hundred tons. This had been a successful fishery and I felt like congratulating myself even though I knew it had been mostly luck. And other matters were crowding into my consciousness.

I needed to talk to Mark and I couldn't do it on the air as Danny
DFO
. I grabbed the radio mike. Altering my voice just a bit, from
BC
midcoast drawl to Steveston third-generation Japanese twang, I called the
Coastal Provider
from a garbled boat name. One of Mark's deckhands answered and asked me to repeat my boat name. I held the mike close to my mouth and gargled and hissed to imitate static, and then said “Mr. Billy says pump everything.” Normally Mark would pump the fish he couldn't carry himself onto packers and head south with the rest. But I needed him and the boat here.

Pete was still back in the galley scoffing prawns, but George had reclaimed his territory in the wheelhouse and could not have missed my somewhat odd radio exchange. I looked at him as he recalibrated the radar but he radiated incuriosity. “Fun's over here. Let's head back to Shearwater,” I said.

He nodded and pushed the throttle forward.

On Sunday morning, I woke
before dawn and took my coffee out onto the deck. Sleeping seagulls bobbed in the water like white corks. I paced and sipped, and after awhile glimmers of light began to struggle over the horizon. By the time full daylight revealed another scenic masterpiece, I had made a few decisions. By cup number three, I was in the wheelhouse waiting for Mark to call. By cup number four, he was on the air.

“
James Sinclair, Coastal Provider.”

“
Coastal Provider
,
James Sinclair
.”

“Good morning. I'd like to give our final hail, four hundred and eighty tons.”

“Thanks for that, skipper. What's your current position?”

“About a half hour from Bella Bella.”

“Roger that. Thanks for your input and good traveling.”

I turned to Pete. “I'm going to stick around here for awhile. Would you mind running me around the corner so I can jump on the
Coastal Provider
?”

“Grab your stuff and let's go.”

I shook hands with George, thanked him for his help and wished him luck on his trip north for the last opening. In my cabin, I threw dirty clothes into my bag, took a look around for stray belongings, checked the drawer under my bunk. Jesus Christ! Alistair's journal, the odd one that I hadn't given to Louise. How the hell was I going to explain this? More groveling. I grabbed the journal and left. On my way through the galley, I shook hands with Alex and promised I'd send him my recipe for smoked oolichan pie. He almost succeeded in looking interested.

Pete was already warming up the Zodiac when I jumped in. By the time we got to Bella Bella, Mark was idling by the government dock. We went alongside, and with my bag in one hand, I clapped Pete on the shoulder with the other. “That was one of the better fisheries and I think we should take full credit for it.”

“Absolutely. We were in full control at all times and never a worry wrinkled this baby-smooth brow. I'll see you in The Big Smoke.”

I clambered onto the deck of the
Coastal Provider
. Pete waved and proceeded to generate a large rooster tail behind which he soon disappeared. I went forward to the wheelhouse and took a seat in one of the two captain's chairs.

“Congratulations, buddy. Four hundred and eighty tons is not a bad score.”

Mark was slumped comfortably in the other chair, one eye looking forward, the other toward the radar screen off to the side. Fortunately, this temporary wall-eyeism never became permanent. He scratched absently at his week-old stubble.

“Yeah, it went well. I'm glad it's over. Now I feel like I can concentrate on more important stuff.”

“Can you fly your crew home? We need the boat here.”

“Sure. Why?”

“Remember how the plotter showed the
Kelp
stopping in Morehouse Bay every time it went to Crowley's place? Guess what I saw in Morehouse Bay?” I waited for Mark to crinkle his forehead into a questioning mode. “Sockeye. A huge school. Biggest bunch I've ever seen.”

“You're crazy. Not at this time of the year.” He paused. “And so? You want to catch a few of them?”

“Exactly. We'll take Christine and Fergie, Louise if she wants to come. We need some samples of those sockeye. They're not normal or else they wouldn't be here. So dollars to dandelions, they're related to Igor. Then we'll head for Vancouver and start following up on some of the leads there. We need to look at the personnel lists for the
DFO
lab back in 1996. I honestly don't think Crowley killed Billy, at least not single-handedly. So I want to know who else was working there.”

“I think you're right. Crowley seemed genuinely surprised when I told him Billy had gone missing.”

It took just a moment for this to sink in. “Jesus Christ! You told Crowley that Billy went missing?”

“Yeah, about three weeks ago, when we first got here. I went to see him just to pick his brains about what was going on, fish-wise. We started
BS
-ing and I told him the story of our last great salmon season. I had to include Igor and how Billy took it to the lab and we never saw him again. Crowley seemed genuinely shocked, which seemed a little odd because it's not like he knew Billy or anything.”

“Did you ask him if he knew anything about Igor?”

Mark took a second before he replied. “Yes, but looking back, he kind of dodged the question. Or more that he ignored it and just focused on Billy.”

“This could be important. One of the big questions has been if Crowley's death was connected to Billy and Igor and the lab back in 1996, why was he killed now? What was the catalyst? What precipitated the killing? It could have been your telling Crowley about Billy's disappearance. Say Crowley was involved in nefarious activities at the lab with at least one accomplice. Billy shows up and is killed by the accomplice. Crowley doesn't know anything about it until you tell him. Immediately after you tell him, he contacts the accomplice and raises shit. The accomplice gets nervous, comes up here, and kills Crowley. What was the date when you told him?”

Mark stood up and consulted the calendar on the back wall of the wheelhouse. “April 8.”

He sat down and put the boat in gear, idling toward an anchoring spot. I followed these maneuvers with about ten percent of my brain, while the other ten percent churned and cogitated and eventually spewed forth a theory.

“How's this sound? Crowley finds out from you on April 8 about Billy's probable murder. After you leave, he contacts his accomplice. How does Crowley contact him? Gotta think about that. Anyway, he says, ‘hey buddy, we gotta talk this over, you better get up here.' So this bad guy makes a date to come see Crowley using the
Kelp
. We know that's true because Crowley's journal says he was expecting the
Kelp
, plus the
Kelp
's plotter says the boat was there on the morning of the murder.”

I sat and thought as Mark went to the bow to drop the hook. When he came back inside he went to the chart drawer. “What was that other place that showed up on the plotter tracks of the
Kelp
? Lagoon Bay?” After some rustling and snapping of large pieces of paper, he laid a chart on the chart table. It showed lower Fisher Channel and in particular Lagoon Bay. If we continued straight after exiting Lama Passage, we'd enter the bay. It was an interesting-looking place. The center of the bay's shoreline was broken by a narrow, shallow pass that led into a large, deep lagoon: Codville Lagoon. The lagoon, in turn, sheltered a large island. “Man, if someone wanted privacy for something, that would be an ideal place. You ever been in there?”

I shook my head. “Never had the need to. And I bet that's true for most people.”

We sat and thought some more. I remembered something that had been bothering me. I grabbed the mike and called the
Racer
on channel 16. Christine didn't answer, but they went to get her. When she came on the air, I asked to switch to channel 22. Mindful that anyone could be listening in, I phrased my question carefully. “Miss Farnsworth, it's Danny Swanson here. Last time we talked, you said you'd look for the second parcel that came in from Port Hardy. Did you find it?”

“Yes, I did. Shall I mail it to you?”

“I'll be in Shearwater in an hour. Can you meet me at the office?”

“Roger on that.”

I switched the radio back to channel 16. “There was a second person on Les Jameson's boat. I wonder what she found that makes her think so.” I played around with this new piece of the puzzle and was repulsed by the picture that began to emerge. “Jesus, I think our boy's pulled off the hat trick.”

“How do you figure?”

“Our bad guy gets a call from Crowley that makes him desperate to get to Yeo Cove before Crowley spills something. But it's foggy in Port Hardy, and the planes are grounded for three days. But being
DFO
, or
DFO
connected, he knows half the fishing fleet is on their way north. So he hangs around the dock until he sees someone he knows, Les Jameson, and bums a ride. But because he's already made up his mind to kill Crowley, he has to kill Jameson, and it's easy to make that death look like an accident.”

Mark nodded. “I'm thinking of the plotter tracks. Let's say our bad guy kills Jameson and throws him overboard somewhere, say Cape Calvert. Then he continues on in Les's boat and sneaks into Bella Bella late at night. He rigs up a towing bridle on the
Kelp
and heads back south with both boats. In Fitz Hugh sound, he starts up the
Kelp
and casts Les's boat adrift. That explains why that last trip of the
Kelp
starts in the middle of the sound. Then he heads north, kills Crowley in the wee hours of the morning, takes the
Kelp
back to Bella Bella, and disappears somehow.”

“Almost right, but not quite. Crowley saw the
Kelp
on the eleventh. So probably the killer stopped by for at least one visit before killing Crowley on the thirteenth. He wanted to check things out before he acted. Hey, did you see a computer when you were there?”

“Yeah, right on the kitchen table.”

“It wasn't there later. Our bad guy obviously took it, but that one was bait. Crowley was suspicious of his accomplice. The computer with all the info was hidden. Then the killer spent the night of the twelfth in Morehouse Bay, so no one in Bella Bella would have seen him.”

“And he's probably still in the area, maybe Lagoon Bay.”

“Yeah, but I'm almost scared to come face to face with him. In fact, I am scared to come face to face with him. He kills people.”

I lurched to my feet in what I hoped was a decisive manner. “And the truly scary thing about all this is that Fleming Griffith was running the lab when all this started. What if he's involved in the murders?” Wordless pause. “I'm going to talk to Louise. Can you get hold of Fergie and meet us at the bar in an hour?”

“See you there.”

When I barged into Louise's office, she was on the phone, or rather, talking into it. When she hung up, I leaned over her desk and kissed her with awkward passion. “Want to go fishing?”