A Killing Tide (5 page)

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Light rain fell steadily now, and the fire was almost out. Kaz was shivering so hard that she knew she'd have sore muscles by morning.

Chapman stood down on the dock, silhouetted against the orange glow of the dying fire. The flames reflected off his face shield, looking for one crazy moment like the comforting flames in a fireplace, seen through a window. Then he flipped his shield to speak into a portable radio, and the image dissolved.

The fireboat, the
Harry Steinbach
, which had been hosing down the other boats, turned a fog stream from its deck guns onto the
Anna Marie
. Chapman stopped a patrolman carrying a camera and pointed at the crowd. Then he headed back toward her, talking into the radio unit. "…don't hit inside the wheelhouse. I don't want the evidence washed away if we can avoid it." His deep voice had a calm, soothing quality to it.

But Kaz couldn't count on Michael Chapman to be either soothing or helpful. He thought the fire had been set on purpose. And she'd be willing to bet, based on the way he was keeping an eye on her, that he thought she might be involved.

Of course, the idea was patently absurd—Lucy could vouch for her, or for any of the fishermen, for that matter. But Chapman was a newcomer—he didn't know them. What was it she'd told Lucy earlier in the tavern? That they were lucky to have him? Those words might be coming back to haunt her.

She'd been dead-on in her earlier assessment of him, though—the man all but radiated a force field of authority. The volunteer firefighters, most of whom barely even knew him, were jumping to carry out his orders. She knew those guys—they weren't prone to take orders from anybody, much less a newcomer. Then again, he
did
seem to know what he was doing—the men had worked quickly and efficiently to put out the fire and protect the other boats.

She let out a sigh. The fact was, she should be grateful that Michael Chapman had arrived on scene so quickly. If he hadn't, she could be lying down on the dock next to Ken. Tonight made the second time in her life that she'd narrowly escaped death. And this time, she couldn't claim any of the credit for her survival—she owed her life to Chapman's quick thinking.

Which made her beholden to him, and she didn't like that one bit. She was inexplicably drawn to him, and that scared her, because he wouldn't be on her side in all of this.

He was slowly scanning the crowd of onlookers and jumble of fire, police, and aid vehicles, those knowledgeable eyes of his cataloguing and filing away everything he saw. What was he looking for? Or whom?

She followed his lead, working her way through the crowd, then froze. Chuck was standing off to the left, his calm gaze trained on her. He cocked his head slightly, sending her a quick, silent message she couldn't decipher, then stepped back, immediately swallowed by the surging crowd. She strained for another glimpse of him, but she saw nothing. If Chuck was around, then so was Gary. He had to know she was there, and yet he wasn't coming forward. Before she could sort through the significance of that, Chapman walked over to her.

"Is that your truck over there?" he asked.

She looked in the direction he was pointing. "It's my brother's. He frequently leaves it parked here." She was careful not to glance at the place where Chuck had been standing.

"So your brother was here tonight."

She hesitated, then shook her head. "I don't know where he is."

Chapman's pale gaze lingered on her for another moment, his expression giving away nothing. Then he turned and motioned to Clint Jackson, the cop who was keeping the crowd back. "One of you guys will want to impound that truck."

"Hey!"

At her reaction, he replied over his shoulder, "Standard procedure. Your brother is a possible person of interest."

"You're kidding—you think
Gary
would set this fire?" She waved her arm toward the docks. "The
Anna Marie
was built by my grandfather, named after our mother. Gary is a third-generation waterman."

"Anyone is capable of murder under the right circumstances. Setting a fire to cover it up is the easy part."

"Murder." She pressed a hand to her roiling stomach. "You think Ken was killed."

"Yes."

"And you believe Gary killed him," she repeated dully.

He turned to her, his expression all business. "Your brother was seen arguing with the deceased earlier this evening in the tavern."

Kaz shook her head. "You've got it all wrong."

"I'm told your brother has a record for assault."

"If you knew the circumstances—"

"And in an arson investigation," he continued as if she hadn't spoken, "it's standard to check out the owners of the property."

"Look." She strove for calm. "I'm sure you're used to things working differently in the city. But around here we take into account what we know about someone before we go around accusing him of something he isn't even remotely capable of!"

Chapman raised an eyebrow. "Your brother seemed plenty capable of violence in the tavern."

God.
He had it all worked out. Except he was wrong, he had to be. "What makes you so sure the fire was deliberately set?"

"I smelled gasoline when I first came on board. That, and the pattern of the fire—"

"We don't keep gasoline on board the
Anna Marie
—she runs on diesel. It's crazy to keep gasoline on board any boat."

He opened his mouth to speak, then sighed instead. "You don't have to educate me about the potential hazards on a boat, Ms. Jorgensen. And the fact that someone used gasoline to start the fire when there was none on board makes it look even more deliberate."

He was right. She stared at the now smoldering trawler. My God. Someone
had
planned this.

"You were the first person on the scene, correct? You saw no one else, no one perhaps running away from the
Anna Marie
?"

"No. The marina is usually deserted this time of night."

"So why were
you
here?"

She hesitated. She needed to be very, very careful with regard to how much she revealed. At least for now, until she could find Gary, talk to him, and straighten out this mess. With the odds stacked so heavily against him, she couldn't take the chance that she'd provide information that could worsen his situation. "I wanted to talk to Gary," she said finally.

"Why did you think he'd be here?"

"I didn't find him at home, and Gary sometimes sleeps aboard the
Anna Marie
. But before I could get to the boat, the fire exploded."

He glanced up from the notes he was taking. "Did the explosion knock you down, or was it more of a whooshing sound?"

"The latter," she said after thinking about it. "I realized that Gary might be on board, so I yelled for help and then ran to the boat."

"You called the fire in?"

"No. I didn't have my cell phone with me, and I didn't want to take the time to go back to the car to get it."

"Someone
called it in. Who, if no one else was here?"

"I don't know," she replied coolly. "Perhaps someone who has a view of the mooring basin."

He studied her, his expression turning speculative. "When I got here, the gate was chained shut, and I had to use bolt cutters. The other gates along the wharf aren't locked. Did you do that?"

"Of course not!" Then she remembered. "Someone had chained it from the inside. I didn't have time to deal with it….I climbed over."

"So you thought your brother was down below."

Chapman was relentless, and he wasn't going to give up or go away until she gave him the answers he wanted. "Yes. The wheelhouse door was open, and when we're in port, we keep it locked. We have expensive equipment on board—radios, a depth finder, radar—"

"Who has keys?" Chapman interrupted.

"Just Gary. And me, of course."

"All right, what happened next?"

She repressed a sigh and told him about trying to use the fire extinguisher, about finding it gone. "We never move it, except twice a year to check that it still works."

"Probably tossed overboard." He made a note. "I'll have a diver check."

She pulled her coat tight around her, feeling the cold all the way to her bones. It had begun to rain harder, adding to her discomfort, and the wind was picking up again, chopping the rain into drenching sheets.

Wrapping her arms tighter around her waist, she inhaled the acrid odor of the smoke that clung to her clothes and hair. A new thought occurred to her. It had to be common knowledge that Ken was rarely on the boat when it was in port. So had Gary been the real target and Ken just an innocent bystander? Whirling, she started walking toward her SUV.

"Wait up," Chapman said, catching her arm. His hand was startlingly warm, his grip firm. "We're not done here. And you'll need to go to the hospital for tests."

"I'm feeling fine," she protested.

Gripping her shoulder, he urged her toward the ambulances. "I'll have one of my men take you."

She dug in her heels, staring pointedly down at his hand. "You most certainly will not."

A look of exasperation flashed across his face, but he dropped his hand. "You really should go to the hospital, Ms. Jorgensen. You could collapse any time in the next couple of days from whatever you breathed when you were down in the hold."

"I have other priorities that don't include spending the night at the hospital being subjected to a lot of unnecessary tests."

"And I'll need your clothes," he added, ignoring her explanation.

She gaped at him.
"What?"

"You were first on the scene, remember? And you
are
part-owner in the family fishing business, are you not?"

"If you're suggesting—"

"—that I'll need to test your clothes for accelerant. Standard procedure."

She really was beginning to hate that phrase. She started to retort, but broke off as Lucy, Ivar, and Jim Sykes walked up the ramp. Ivar came over to stand beside her. He didn't say a word—just used one of his big hands to rub gently between her shoulder blades.

Lucy walked up on Kaz's other side and slipped her arms around her, hugging her. "Are you okay?" she asked, sounding a bit tenuous herself.

"Yeah, mostly." Kaz tried to smile and failed, then nodded to Jim Sykes, who was shaking hands with Chapman.

"So," Sykes said, turning to Kaz. "One of your boats out of commission, your crewman dead, and your brother possibly the prime suspect."

Chapman frowned slightly at Sykes, which struck Kaz as odd since he seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "You know Gary wouldn't do this, Jim," she replied as calmly as she could manage.

"Are you planning to issue a BOLO on him?" Chapman asked Sykes.

Kaz looked from one to the other, not comprehending.

"We need to talk to Gary," Ivar explained to her in his soft rumble. "Find out what he knows."

"Possibly armed and dangerous," Sykes confirmed.

"Hey," she snapped. "No way—"

Lucy spoke up. "Chief, I don't think—"

Sykes held up a hand. "Jorgensen has violated his parole, and he should be approached with extreme caution. It's in this community's best interests, as well as his, to bring him in off the street as soon as possible."

"That's
way
out of line," Kaz retorted.

Ivar gripped her shoulder gently. "With all due respect, sir—"

"You've known Gary all your life, Jim," Kaz protested. "And you know damn well he'd never hurt Ken."

"Yeah, but I also know that his military training alone, with or without a firearm, makes him a deadly force." Sykes' tone hardened. "Your brother has been a walking time bomb ever since the war, Kaz. You need to stay out of this, and let us handle it."

"Why should I?" she shot back. "What I'm hearing so far doesn't give me any confidence that you'll look for the person who really did this."

"Kaz," Lucy said quietly. "Trust us to do our job. We just need to talk to Gary."

Kaz shut up. She had to find Gary before anyone else did. If they tried to arrest him, she couldn't predict what he would do. And there had to be another explanation for all this—Gary simply wasn't capable of arson or murder.

Chapman had been standing back, observing all of them, his expression intent. For some reason, he didn't look any happier than she was.

His next comment, however, showed that he hadn't softened his stance. "So, Ms. Jorgensen. Your clothes. You can either go to the hospital with an official escort or give them to me here." His lips quirked. "Your choice."

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Chapter 4