The River Killers (14 page)

“Yeah, but I took a mediation course,” I said, trying to look confident. “Gentlemen, this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb and verily the mouths of men shall speak no ill.”

And I was right. Either the company guys had whipped the fishermen into line, or maybe because they hadn't spent all their grub money yet, a solid majority agreed to wait at least one more day. Mind you, the dissenting minority was extremely vocal and there was language used that would have resulted in mass arrests in a more normal setting. But for fishermen, it was undoubtedly a consensus. And the best part was that I didn't have to make a decision.

That and the fact that I had dodged a potential slangfest brightened my mood considerably. Perhaps more than was justified, because I still had to visit Louise and negotiate some reasonably acceptable version of the truth while concealing the fact that I was guilty of withholding evidence in a criminal investigation. Again.

As I jumped into the Zodiac to run ashore, I thought about how much I should reveal. Why not tell all and give her the computer files? One, she'd be really mad. Two, she might arrest me. Three, it might have a negative effect on what I insisted on thinking of as “our relationship.” What the hell, I might as well come clean, start afresh, get everything off my chest and begin a new era of trust and reconciliation. For five seconds, I was buoyed by a sense of relief, which quickly sank into the sea of despondency. Feeling like a guilty schoolboy, I tied the boat up at the Bella Bella dock and directed my steps toward Louise's little bungalow.

She answered the door, which hadn't even spoken, and looked at me for a second with the warm light of the fireplace behind her. “Hi, Danny. Nice to see you. Come in.”

“Hi, Louise. There's a few things we need to discuss about the case.”

She led the way toward the kitchen table, which was cluttered with files.

“I'm just going over the reports about what the techs found on the boat. Sit down. Glass of wine?”

“Sure.” I hung my jacket over the back of a chair and pulled it up to the table. “Anything interesting?”

She handed me a glass of white wine and I looked at her attentively as she sat down facing me. She wore jeans and a white blouse and slippers with no socks. Her ankles were extremely attractive.

“Nothing interesting. Lots of fingerprints but no matches with known criminals, no suspicious residues such as gunpowder. Nothing helpful at all. But I thought you and your friends might have spotted something. You know boats and I don't.”

“Yeah, a couple of things. There was a brand new towing bridle rigged up on the bow. The guy was either towed recently or expected to be towed. Also there's a new plotter in the wheelhouse. It may contain a digital record of the boat's last few trips.”

“Wow, I'm glad you came by. This sounds important. What's a plotter?”

I took a few minutes to explain as she gazed at me appreciatively and I basked in her gaze. “A plotter establishes the position of a boat and displays it on a screen. It can also remember different positions and show them as a course line. So I think we should impound the boat and get an expert to look at that plotter.” She nodded.

“And I've been thinking about the guy who ran the boat. He seems to be pretty smart. We might never trace him from this end. But if there's a connection to the
DFO
lab, it has to be someone who worked there at the same time as Crowley. We need to look at
DFO
personnel files. And we need someone to talk to Dr. James O'Rourke. If he and Crowley were really close, Crowley might have told him something.”

“Yeah, he was on my list of people to talk to, as well as the sister in Ontario. You've been very helpful, Danny. Thanks a lot.”

“Before you demonstrate your gratitude in a more meaningful way, which I'm sure you're dying to, we have a slight problem. Crowley had a computer hidden in his float house. You guys missed it. I found it and I've looked at some of his files. But we need a translator.”

“Well, aren't you the clever one? I'm going to assume you just found the computer yesterday and this was your first chance to tell me about it. That way I won't have to handcuff you. Unless of course you want me to.”

I leaned over and kissed her gently on the mouth. She put her hand on the back of my neck and pulled me toward her. I resisted, but only because I didn't want to fall off my chair. I stood awkwardly and pulled her up and into my embrace. She hugged me tightly as I touched her closed eyes with my lips and slid my hand under her blouse and caressed the bare skin of her back. After a moment, we pulled apart slightly and she looked up at me and smiled. “You should go. But come back tomorrow and bring that computer.”

I considered saying something clever but I didn't want to spoil the mood. This was obviously one of those times when natural charm would get you further than natural cleverness. So I brushed her forehead with my lips, waved good-bye, and left. And all the way back to the boat, I registered naught but the ineffable lightness of being.

Tuesday morning, we had the
plane in the air at first light. It reported more and heavier spawn. Obviously some herring had never heard of foreplay. The
Western Marauder
reported in that they too were seeing lots of spawn, as well as herring flipping in the shallows along the beach. The boat was lining up a set on a big school of maybe a thousand tons. The
Northern Queen
said they'd run farther north before setting.

I looked at George and Pete. “Looks like tomorrow for sure.”

“Yeah, everything looks really good,” Pete said. “Let's see what the percentages are.”

George nodded agreement. “Even the weather looks not too bad. Bit of a low, probably rainy and breezy, but nothing to worry about.”

We sipped our coffee and drummed our fingers while waiting for the test set reports. Finally the
Western Marauder
came back on the
VHF
. “
James Sinclair
,
Western Marauder
. Five tests—thirteen percent, thirteen percent, seventeen percent, fifteen percent, eighteen percent. Twenty-one slinks, nine spawned-out females. Average length—twenty-one centimeters. We're seeing more fish than yesterday and they're closer to the beach.”

I keyed the mike. “Thanks, skipper. We'd like one more test later this afternoon, maybe farther south, but you could be finished after that.”

“Roger, Danny. We'll be happy to take our charter fish and head home.” He was talking about the one hundred and fifty tons of herring he would be allowed to catch to pay for his test fishing work. None of the test boats got paid in cash because
DFO
didn't have the money. At least they didn't have the money to spend on fisheries management, which was supposed to be their primary mandate. I wondered how much they were paying the boy wonders of
SPLAG
. I made a mental note to check on their latest flashes of genius.

I was forced to flip back a few pages on my mental notepad when the
Northern Queen
reported in with a burst of static. “
James Sinclair, Northern
Queen
. Well, guys, we got a little ambitious here. We were on a really big school so I tried to just take a piece of it. I took a little bit too big of a piece. We had a hell of a time drying up. But they were beautiful fish, twenty-two to twenty-three centimeters; all the tests were thirteen to fourteen percent. It broke my heart to let them go.”

I replied. “Thanks, skipper. I know how hard it is for you guys to release fish. But with any luck you'll find the same bunch when it's time to take your charter fish.”

“No chance of that,” he replied dolefully. “Even if I was that lucky, which I definitely ain't, these fish are too smart to be caught twice. Oh well.”

“That was a fine whine,” I noted. “Full-bodied and mature, with a hint of an edge. But not his best work. I've heard him in the past where he's brought tears to my eyes.”

“The guy's caught more herring over the years than all these young guys put together,” George added. “The only reason he's still fishing is because he's genetically programmed to do it. That and the fact that he needs something to moan about.”

“My, aren't we unsympathetic today,” I said. “I happen to know that if it wasn't for his old-age pension, he'd have to rely totally on his investments. But let's get serious. We have a fishery to plan. We'll wait until this evening, but I'm thinking we should announce that we anticipate a fishery tomorrow. We'll ask the fleet to hold at anchor so they don't go roaring around and scatter the fish. We'll release them tomorrow morning and open the fishery at say, two in the afternoon. What do you think?”

Pete nodded. “By God, a fishing plan. Did you think of that all by yourself?”

“No, I read your notes.”

“I thought it sounded familiar. In that case, I agree.”

I looked at George and he nodded with absolutely no hint of a lack of enthusiasm. So it was unanimous. Just as I was thinking about how easy fisheries management was, Alex yelled up from the galley. “Danny, there's someone here to see you.”

When I poked my head into the galley, it took a bit of effort to recognize the clean-cut, dignified-looking gentleman helping himself to coffee from the pot on the stove. “Fergie, for Christ's sake. When did you get here? When did you get so respectable?”

Gone was the long hair and the Fu Manchu and the ripped jeans. But the grin was the same and so was the booming “hey, you” as he grabbed me and pounded my back into submission. “Goddammit, Danny. You don't look like a bureaucrat.”

“Well, you don't look like a responsible adult. Actually, you do. Hey! It's great to see you. Sit down. If a strange guy offers you food, eat it. It's good.”

“He already did. I don't really care for wild blackberries in a chocolate sauce spread over potato pancakes, but the genuine maple syrup topping kind of won me over.”

“Yeah, you're easy as ever. Have you seen Mark and Christine yet?”

“We anchored right beside Mark, and he yelled that you were here. I haven't seen Christine yet, but I need to talk to her about the Les Jameson thing.”

Several of my synapses flared inquiringly at that, but I decided to leave it until later. “Hey, Fergie, we need to talk to you about a bunch of stuff. Let's get together for lunch at the hotel. One o'clock?”

“Right on. I've been looking forward to this. It was a good crew, Danny. We were a really good crew. The truth is, I jumped on a boat to come up here just because I hoped we'd all get together again.” He stood up from the table, grasped my hand with one of his paws, and pulled me in so he could pound me again with his free hand. He gave me a thumbs-up as he stepped over the transom to the back deck. I leaned out the galley door and watched him jump into a standard piece of fishing aluminum and surf off in a non-shoreward direction.

I had things to do. There were the reports to fill out. I approached this with all the verve and panache of the Leafs defending a three-goal deficit. I was looking at several standard forms that were supposed to encapsulate the fisheries management situation for roe herring in Area Seven. But I couldn't fill in the blanks, not on this form nor any other, in such a way as to describe what was actually happening with real fish and real humans in this blessedly real area of the world. But paper was winning, over rock, scissors, and the conduct of life in general.

The imposition of the paper world onto the real world had always struck me as the first tragedy of bureaucracy. This was the third entry on my list of “Reasons Our Bureaucracy Keeps Screwing Things Up.” We'd forgotten. Paper could be shredded but reality could shred us.

I struggled with it for far too long. Finally Form 42P1A2 got the best of me. There comes a point where “none of the above” doesn't seem quite pertinent enough. Impertinence won out. In answer to line 27, reasons for variance from projection, I scribbled “reality rules” and went for lunch.

I was the last one there and the gang had obviously enjoyed a few barley-based appetizers. As I approached the table, Fergie finished a story with a rude hand gesture and they all roared with laughter. I sat down to shouts of, “Danny Boy, your round, pal.”

We
BS
-ed for awhile, studied the menus, and got the ordering out of the way. As the waitress left, Fergie remembered what he wanted to ask Christine. “You guys found Les Jameson's boat but no sign of him, right?” Christine nodded. “Was there any sign that there was another person on the boat?”

“We didn't have any reason to think so,” Christine sat up a little straighter. “What makes you ask?”

“We were at the fuel dock in Port Hardy the afternoon that Les pulled out. He was there fueling up and I just had the impression that there was another person on his boat. He was standing on the back deck and it sorta looked like he was talking to someone in the cabin. But I couldn't be sure. And if no one else is reported missing, I guess I was imagining things.”

We all mulled that over for awhile. “I guess what we could do is go back and look at the boat for a sign that there was a second person on it,” Christine said finally. “We never really considered that before. I'll do that this afternoon. And now, Fergie, Danny's got a story to tell you.”

By the time I finished, our food had arrived and been unconsciously inhaled. There was silence for quite some time before Fergie swore viciously. “Those cocksuckers! Those pencil-necked, scum-sucking shitbags! I don't care who they are, we're going to find them and make them suffer. Billy was too good a guy to have his life taken away by some dipshit fucking with fish.”

“We're not sure of anything yet,” I said, trying to calm him down. “We don't know what any of the connections are, but we've got things we can follow up on, and we can all make damn sure that we won't let it go until we know what the hell happened. Mark, we're going to fish tomorrow, and then you and I will be heading for Vancouver. Fergie will still be here waiting for the gillnet opening. Christine, do you know what the
Racer
will be doing?”