The River Killers (30 page)

“Sure, I'll tell central we're on the move.” He made a quick phone call, did something to the alarm panel, and we left. We exited by the private door at the side of the building, Jerome in the lead and me swivel-necking in his wake. It was only about one hundred feet to the car and there were no pedestrians in sight, but the hairs on the back of my neck were quivering the whole way.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, a dark Chevy two-door left the curb and fell in behind us. Jerome's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “Friendly.” I relaxed a little but my pulse rate didn't go down to normal until we were inside the police building. Louise met me in the lobby and waved at Jerome to take five.

Safely in her office, we embraced until I winced and she drew back in alarm. “It's okay, I'm all right. Just a touchy nerve.”

She looked at me with concern in her eyes. “I don't like it when you're in pain.”

“Neither do I. But it keeps me focused.”

The door swung open and Tommy regarded me anxiously. “How you feeling?”

“Better by the hour. What have you guys been up to?”

“I've been doing paperwork,” he said. “And Louise has been pretending not to pine.”

“Tommy! I was deep in thought.”

“Bette called this morning,” I informed them. “Evidently Griffith has slithered onto the scene.”

“The Dark Lord himself,” Tommy said. “I think he's worried. When they tried to whack you, it was like coming out into the open. Everything they've done up 'til now has been surreptitious. Now it's like they don't care anymore.”

“We need to hear what Bette has to say,” I said. “What time's she supposed to be here? Two? Let's assemble then and plan our next move based on what she's got off Crowley's computer.”

The meeting actually took place in Tommy's office because it was bigger. Present were Louise and me, Tommy, Bette, and High-Top Jerome. Tommy emceed.

“Afternoon, everyone. Everything that's said here is highly confidential, of course, need-to-know-only, etcetera. Ms Connelly, we've been waiting anxiously for your report. The floor is yours.”

She seemed hesitant, as if unsure of how to broach an unpleasant topic. She shook her head, looking as haggard as an attractive thirty-two-year-old woman can. But in spite of her grim mouth and tired eyes, I detected a sort of triumphant energy.

“This was by far the toughest job I've ever done,” she began hesitantly. “I have the impression that Crowley knew that someday someone like me would need to read his files. He deliberately made it difficult because, in his eyes, only the truly worthy would be able to pass the test. But it was almost too difficult.”

She had us spellbound. Was this the missing piece of the puzzle, the information we needed to solve the mystery of three, and almost four, deaths? She continued with growing confidence. “In this binder is a complete printout of Crowley's computer files. Much of it wouldn't be of interest to anyone but a fish scientist. But I'll summarize the high points, or the low points. We know the results of their operation, but Crowley lays out the genesis, that's a good word for it, and the early days of the setup.”

She paused to organize her thoughts.

“Griffith organized it, of course, and initially he had a simple goal in mind: salmon farming was metastasizing all over the coast and anyone who could invent a fish that grew really big really fast would be a hero. He didn't have the scientific credentials to pull it off, even though he liked to hang around in the lab. So he recruited guys who did. We know Crowley was arrogant, but the other two guys on the team, who he refers to as ‘The Farmers,' made Crowley look like a Buddhist monk.”

Tommy made as if to reach for a glass of water but decided to remain still.

“So this unholy trinity,” Bette continued, “set out to create a big sockeye, and the methodology of choice was gene splicing. Back in the early eighties, there was a worldwide moratorium on gene splicing, but that didn't bother our guys. Factor in the competitive aspect—don't forget other teams were working on the same problem—and our guys threw caution out the window. The concept of scientific responsibility, of the safety of the public, was treated with as much respect as, in Crowley's words, a cheap date on the morning after.”

I leaned across the table. “So they're cutting corners like a blind jaywalker. And they did something stupid?”

Bette shrugged. “So stupid only a genius would have done it. They'd taken genes out of cancer cells, three genes that cause rapid cell division, and they inserted them into the
DNA
of an Adam's River sockeye. The cells multiplied like crazy but they figured out a way to eliminate mutagenesis, so the cells developed properly as gills and scales and muscle, and they introduced a limiting gene that would stop growth at about fifty pounds.”

I couldn't help interrupting. “Jesus Christ, Bette! A fifty-pound sockeye!” Seven, maybe eight pounds was the biggest I'd ever seen. Or heard about. Well, that wasn't quite true, fishermen's stories being what they are. But no reputable source had ever claimed to have seen a sockeye salmon more than about eight pounds. “They actually produced these things?”

“Oh yeah. There are pictures. But here's where things get really interesting. Griffith came back to his team with a second mandate, and Crowley is vague on exactly where this came from. But Griffith told the team that step two, which had been authorized by ‘the highest sources' was . . .” Bette hesitated and looked at me. I couldn't read her expression, but it was like she wanted something from me. Absolution?

My thoughts swirled formlessly and the shape of something hideous coalesced out of the darkness. They had produced sockeye that stayed in one area, that spawned in the ocean, that weren't anadromous. Why? And then I saw it.

“They wanted salmon out of the Fraser River!”

“You've got it, Danny. The fifty-pound sockeye would end up being raised in pens by fish farmers. But the Fraser River would still be full of those pesky wild salmon, which the general public are very fond of. How could you dam the Fraser and sell the water to Americans if once a year millions of wild salmon swim up it?”

I was stunned. In my wildest nightmares I'd never foreseen a plan to kill the Fraser River. But that's what it was. I forced my attention back to what Bette was saying.

“I figure this would have been even more exciting for Crowley and his crew. Behavioral changes are more cutting edge than changing phenotypes. Griffith knew they were playing for huge stakes, so he raised the security level and told them to be very, very careful. Problem was, Griffith couldn't really micromanage the project because he was spending a lot of time brownnosing in Ottawa. To whom I don't know, and I don't know if I want to know.”

I felt sick. The deliberate destruction of the biggest salmon run in Canada, food for millions, and then one of the great rivers of the world—to choke it to death it with dams . . . This was beyond criminality—it was evil incarnate. Premeditated ecocide. For money. I pulled myself back to the moment. Louise was looking at me anxiously.

I tried to ignore the nausea and encroaching fatigue. Pieces were falling into place like bodies from a burning skyscraper. “We know they partially succeeded; they produced a prototype with a few flaws. How the hell did these things end up in the ocean?”

Bette looked at me dispiritedly. “They started growing the man-made mutants in tanks in the basement lab and everything seemed to be going well. They spawned in saltwater and exhibited spatial preferences, became non-migratory. And then, whomever Griffith was taking orders from decided they needed to demonstrate ‘viability in competitive conditions.'”

I couldn't believe it, even though I'd seen the results. “The stupid bastards released a bunch of bioengineered mutants into the wild! How the hell did they manage that?”

“Well, they saw an opportunity. The lab had a contract with the provincial government to produce half a million coho to be released in time for Expo '86. Enhance the image, Supernatural
BC
, and all that. All the fish were tagged, which is very labor-intensive. So our three basement boys figured they'd just throw some of their experimental sockeye juveniles in with the coho juveniles and the hatchery crew would do the tagging and release work for them. They didn't utilize the radio tags until later.”

“My God, they were idiots.”

“They were geniuses, which is sort of similar, I guess.” She shrugged.

“Later on, they set up the ocean-monitoring system at Codville Lagoon.” I was able to supply this part. “Alistair resigned from
DFO
to live up there and monitor the experiment, right after he saw Billy at the West Van lab.”

“At least one of them stayed at the lab and Alistair would send him updates. The other? Who knows?”

I continued putting the pieces together. “So Crowley found out from Mark that Billy had been killed. Presumably because when Billy visited the lab with Igor he saw something that tipped him off to the scheme. Plus, Crowley might have been having a morality attack about introducing mutant fish into the wild. He contacts the guy at the lab, threatens to end the experiment, and our bad guy goes up there and kills him.”

“That's an almost credible hypothesis,” Bette said, “but I can't see people getting killed because other people were worried they'd get mentioned in memos for breaking in-house regulations.”

“Well, don't forget, careers were at stake.”

“Were they? You know our bureaucracy is specifically designed to avoid accountability. No one would have been too worried about being outed for doing experiments without the necessary permits.”

Bette was right. The accountability thing should be number six on the list of “Reasons Our Bureaucracy Keeps Screwing Things Up.” The currency of accountability is praise and blame. No one gets a credit card.

“Did Griffith authorize Crowley's killing,” Louise asked, “or was the killer playing Lone Ranger?”

“Don't know,” I replied. “Could've been either way. The important thing is we know most of what happened, and Griffith doesn't know we know. So how do we play this? What I'd like to do is feed him some misinformation. If we could plant something in his brain, something that would make him panic, he might do something stupid and expose himself.”

“Danny, we haven't done well in setting traps for these guys. They are smart and cautious.” Louise's expression was serious to the point of being grim. “We can't afford any more collateral damage, to you or to Tommy's career.”

“Louise, I'm a ten-year detective who's never gonna make Superintendent. Let's not worry about my career. You at least have a shot at the big time.”

“You mean escorting the
PM
at the Calgary Stampede?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Okay, we're not going to be distracted by career planning, but I don't think Mr. Swanson is ready to take another bullet. We need to be very careful.”

Their concern flattered me, but I was still thinking about ways to crack open the case. “I still think we can run a little misdirection play on these guys without leaving ourselves open. I need to think about it. I'm going to have another crack at the code in Crowley's log. Is there somewhere I can work?”

Louise looked at me solicitously. “You're not tired? You need to take it easy.”

“I'll be okay until I'm not. Then I'll take a rest.” I must have sounded irritated because there was a bit of a pause before Tommy responded.

“You can use interview room number four,” Tommy said and winked. “I'll tell them to clean the blood off the floor.” The meeting adjourned and I followed Tommy down the hall to my new workplace.

Interview room number four was
not the least bit claustrophobic, unless you happened to be a human being. I sat at a battered table on which I had placed Bette's printout of Crowley's computer files plus Crowley's journals and my copy of his ship's log. I felt like I was stuck with an overdue homework assignment.

I started by quickly leafing through the three hundred and forty-seven pages of Bette's printout. She had summarized the material pretty accurately. The first section was simply the experimental data from the attempt to grow large sockeye. There were even photographs.

The team consisted of Crowley and the two others he called The Farmers. Fleming Griffith would drop in occasionally to monitor progress and “play with the fish.” Crowley was pretty caustic in his comments about the abilities of Griffith and The Farmers.

“The Farmers are adept at following Fleming's orders and not much else. Their academic qualifications must have been obtained by filling out the back of a matchbox and their reasoning abilities are just superior to their subject's. Fleming is smarter than the farmers and he seems to revel in it. It is not evident why, as it's the same as being smarter than fish.”

Go Alistair!

The second, larger section recorded the experiment from the “second mandate.” This was a much more complex endeavour because it entailed manipulating multiple behavioral characteristics rather than a single physical characteristic. There were a number of false starts and discarded hypotheses before the first breakthrough. In 1982, they succeeded in designing a fish that exhibited preference for a slightly lower than normal salinity. They were on their way.

I didn't want to think about who had authorized the second mandate. Griffith wouldn't take orders from anyone below ministerial level and no Fisheries Minister would expose himself to this sort of potential scandal. I pictured a shadowy power broker murmuring in Griffith's ear. Who? Representing what interests? And how would we ever find out?

I turned my attention to the log of the
Jessie Isle
that contained what we had surmised were false entries for May 6 and 7. I was sure that the minutes given in the time entries were actually coded for letters of the alphabet. But the code didn't work if you used the standard alphabet sequence, so there must be a key somewhere. I looked carefully through the rest of the logbook but couldn't find anything that might be a key.