The River Killers (36 page)

Crowley groaned and grabbed one twitching arm with the other. He spoke with difficulty, jaws and lips not entirely obeying his commands. “Why do you care about him? He was a fisherman. He pushed his way into the lab and ranted and raved about some dead cat. He threatened to disrupt an experiment that would have put us at the cutting edge of genetic manipulation. We could have dedicated the Fraser River to a better use.”

“You asshole! Do you think anyone cares about your stupid experiments? Billy Bradley wasn't an experiment. He was part of our lives. What the fuck did you do to him?”

“I was using an electroshocker on some large spring salmon. Your friend lunged at me. The shocker contacted his chest. He was dead. Not my fault. Now tell Crowley to phone me. I need help.”

“I'll try to pass on the message. One other thing—who authorized the second mandate?” But it was too late. He had slipped into unconsciousness. I looked at Louise and we walked out together.

“Sweetie,” I squeezed her hand. “Rose inadvertently fed one of the mutant salmon to Griffith. Do you think that's a cause for concern?”

She stiffened. I looked away from her. She spoke in a slightly distant voice. “Bit of a species mix-up. Why would the
RCMP
be concerned?”

“Didn't think so.”

Six hours later, Griffith ceased to exist. I waited until the morning and then phoned Mark. He was remarkably unemotional. “I've sort of known for a while what happened to Billy. But it's good to know the details, I guess. I'll tell Christine and Fergie.” A pause. “You okay?”

“Better than I've been for a hell of a long time.”

“I think we all are. Friday, the Princeton, 6:00
PM
. We'll all be there.”

“Roger, skip.”

The gathering at the Princeton
was quiet at first, but gained volume as everyone became more comfortable with the story.

“How did that cocksucker look at the end?” Fergie wanted to know. “Suffering?”

“He was struggling for breath,” I said. “Twitching, starting serious convulsions. And maybe starting to realize the phone call from Crowley wasn't coming.” I examined my guilt quotient and discovered it had increased not one bit. “I didn't stay until the end but Griffith was starting to look extremely un-ministerial.”

“Poor Billy,” Christine said. “He lacked bureaucratese. If he'd had Igor in a proper fish carrying case, and maybe offered to fill out a form, he'd be with us now.”

Mark spoke very seriously. “It must be hard on Rose Wilson, knowing that she accidentally poisoned Griffith.” He looked at Louise, who responded impassively.

“Rose is coping very well. Obviously there will be no repercussions for what was clearly an accident.”

I tried to save Louise from any further obfuscation. “I'm sure we could have nailed Griffith eventually.” I paused to see if my nose was growing. “But this outcome saved everyone a lot of trouble. I think Billy would be satisfied.”

Fergie asked, “What happened to Billy's body?”

I filled him in on the details. Bodies can be difficult to dispose of, but not if you have access to two thousand pounds of anchors and four thousand feet of water. The circumspect waters of Burrard Inlet, conveniently available from the
DFO
dock with a
DFO
workboat, became Billy's final resting place. His beloved Camaro was driven across the Patullo Bridge to the less than genteel district of Queensborough. Abandoned on a back street in the land of not-fully-licensed auto wreckers, it quickly disappeared. Thus ended the not unlamented life of our shipmate and dear friend, William George Bradley.

They all seemed to share my sense of satisfaction at the outcome. It wasn't textbook justice, but it was undeniably justice. After some desultory conversation and promises to get together soon, the crew began to disperse.

Louise and I were left alone. She spoke in a contemplative voice.

“Relationships are strange, aren't they? You can't really plan them, although everybody tries to. But they do need consideration. What do you think, Danny? How much thought should you put into a relationship, as opposed to just letting it develop?”

I looked around nervously. There was going to be some emotional heavy lifting here, and I hadn't had any nourishment for quite some time.

“Well, you certainly can't force a relationship. It's kind of like juggling: if you think about it too much, or try to analyze what you're doing, you'll drop all your balls. I guess a relationship is something that you should, you know, just sort of do.”

“Hmm, the running shoe philosophy of human relationships. How interesting. Fortunately, we're not having a relationship. We're just having casual sex. Sort of just doing it, you might say.”

“Louise, I don't do casual sex. Anymore. At all. Sex is important, um, meaningful, you know?”

“Danny, I want to get to know you.”

“I guess I've always sort of mistrusted anyone silly enough to be interested in me. But you seem to have very good judgement.”

She placed her hand over mine. “Trust me.”

Louise took me to meet her parents. She'd already met them, of course, but they hadn't yet had the pleasure of my company. Fortunately, for them, they lived in Hope.

My vehicle was in Ottawa and Louise's was in Bella Bella, so we were vehicleless. Vancouver to Hope would have been a hell of a taxi fare, so we took the train.

It felt good to sit on the train. It was going where we wanted to go with absolutely no effort on our part. For the first time in quite a while, I felt free of fraughtness. As the train followed the Fraser River more or less east, I regarded my companion and felt more or less in love.

Louise squeezed my hand and pointed to a bunch of kids angling from the bank of the river. Time-honoured childhood pursuits, fishing for dreams and catching memories.

I thought about the river and the fish. The salmon that pulsed up the Fraser like an annual heartbeat had sustained humans for eons. Native fishermen had fed body and soul. Commercial fishermen had built lives and raised families. Sports fishermen had fed their inexplicable but undeniable need to hook and land fish. But none of them, dream-dazzled child, time-drenched Native elder, commercial pragmatist, or Gore-Tex-clad idealist, had even an inkling that this miraculous gift had almost been stolen. Louise and I and our steadfast friends had defeated the river killers.

Chaos was stayed. The center had held.

I felt good.

Many of the sayings in this book I have “borrowed” from friends of mine. The soliloquy on number eight trolling wire came from Laurie Belveal, an old shipmate who has now crossed the bar. The saying about not going ahead too fast but never going backwards came from my longest-serving skipper, Bob Koskela. The dissertation on the sociological similarities between the Scots and the West Coast Native culture came from Yvon Geisinghaus, an old friend from Alert Bay.

Finally, I would like to thank my friend Shane Field, who was the first non-Bruce Burrowsoid to read and comment on the book; Ruth Linka from TouchWood Editions who phoned one day and said she liked the book; and my editor, Linda Richards, who made me work much too hard.

Any errors in the book are obviously mine, although I'll try to pass them off as the literary license of a creative mind.

With years spent working as a fisherman, commercial diver, and most recently, an at-sea observer,
BRUCE BURROWS
is a true man of the sea. During his time as a fisherman, he wrote a weekly column called “Channel 78, Eh” about fishing on the West Coast. His collected column can be found in
Blood on the Decks, Scales on the Rails
(1992). Bruce lives on a small island off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island.
The River Killers
is his first novel.

 

A detail of one of Kayak Bill's paintings appears on the cover of this book.
BILL DAVIDSON
, known as Kayak Bill, was born in 1948 and grew up in a Calgary orphanage. He found escape in the mountains and cliffs around Banff. Bill became a legendary climber, but gravity sets limits with harsh consequences. Around 1980 he escaped to the inlets and passageways of the British Columbia coast. He became a  self sufficient hunter gather and self taught painter. In 2004, while living on the isolated Goose Islands, he escaped altogether and forever.
Facebook.com/pages/Kayak-Bill-Prints

 

REBEKAH PARLEE
's drawing of the
Maple Leaf C
appears on page ii. She was born in 1975 and raised in Jennis Bay, hand logging and fishing. She began selling her art at the age of fifteen, and in 1997, began a four-year course at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, supporting herself by skippering a prawn boat for part of the year.

In 2001, she moved to Sointula.
artifexus.com

Copyright © 2011 Bruce Burrows

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (
ACCESS
Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Burrows, Bruce, 1946–
The river killers [electronic resource] / Bruce Burrows.
Electronic monograph in HTML format.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-926971-57-5
I. Title.
PS8603.U7474R57 2011a C813'.6 C2011-904176-6

Editor: Linda Richards
Proofreader: Lenore Hietkamp
Design: Pete Kohut
Cover image: Kayak Bill

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support for our publishing activities from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, and the province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  

This is a work of fiction and all the characters are made up, including the boats. Only the
Maple Leaf C
,
Ryu II
,
W 10
,
Jessie Isle
,
James Sinclair
, and
W.E. Ricker
are, or once were, real boat names.

TouchWood Editions
www.touchwoodeditions.com