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The wind had picked up and was blowing from the southeast as Dan took the line from Johnson’s hand and turned the dinghy away from the float. A particularly strong gust carried another wave of the miasmal smell and he glanced back, partly in sympathy with the men who had to continue working despite being immersed in the nauseous soup of decomposing fish, and partly in amazement that anyone would stay with a job that exposed them to those unbelievable conditions.
He had been wrong to think the high turnover was suspicious. In fact now he had experienced it himself it seemed incredible it wasn’t even higher. Yet he could still see the men moving back and forth, seemingly unaffected, routinely emptying the nets the divers passed up into the totes, and Reg Johnson was still standing where he had left him, staring out over the water. It was a crazy way to make a living Dan thought as he turned away again, eager to be out where the air was fresh. His fingers tightened on the controls and he eased the throttle forward, but pulled his hand back when his peripheral vision caught movement. Johnson was no longer still.
As Dan watched, the man jerked upright and swung around to face first the building, then the far end of the float, then back towards the building again. His body twisted abruptly from side to side and then he leaned forward and appeared to peer at something, before straightening up again and lifting his hands into the air. In other circumstances Dan would have thought Johnson had either suffered some kind of mild electric shock or was having a very animated conversation with someone, perhaps chastising a worker for some failure or other, but there was no one else in sight.
Curious, and a little concerned, Dan slowed the dinghy and steered it back to the float. Johnson had seemed pretty laid back when he had been talking to him, but maybe it had all been an act. Maybe he was unstable. Unpredictable. Maybe knowing a man had been murdered almost in front of him had set him off. Hell, it could even be a medical emergency. He might be in need of help.
As Dan approached the float the changing pitch of the motor drew Johnson’s attention, and the man swung back around, looked directly at him and started beckoning him in with unmistakably urgent movements.
“Are you okay?” Dan asked as he slid up to the float. “You look like you have a problem.”
“No, no. Not a problem. At least not exactly.”
Johnson looked more puzzled than upset or ill and he turned to look at the end of the float again. “You said to tell you if I remembered anything. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but there was a big powerboat here that day. It was tied up right over there.”
He pointed to the end of the float, near the hoppers, not far from where they were standing.
Dan felt the first shiver of excitement thrill along his nerve endings. It was a familiar reaction and one he welcomed. He always felt a jolt of adrenalin when there was a development in a case. He turned the motor off and stepped back onto the float, no longer bothered by the overpowering smell of dead fish coming from the open totes.
“What kind of powerboat?”
“Damned if I know.” Johnson shrugged. “I’m a wooden boat kind of guy. Don’t even care much for the aluminum crew boats we use, and as for all of those plastic things, they all look like bleach bottles to me. Not much difference between them. All I can tell you is that it was big and white and had those weird smoked glass windows.”
“How big is big?” Dan asked. The smell had caught up to him and he turned his back to the wind, but it didn’t help much.
Another shrug. “I’d guess at least thirty feet, maybe bigger. Maybe thirty-five?”
A white powerboat somewhere around thirty-five feet long. It was a critical piece of information, perhaps the most important Dan had received so far, but unless Johnson could give him something more, it was close to useless. At this time of year there were probably two or three hundred boats that fit that description cruising around the Broughtons. They filled every marina, every bay and every cove, and that wasn’t even counting the ones that were simply moving through the area on their way to somewhere else. He needed to get more, but as he was trying to figure out a way to stimulate Johnson’s recollection of the boat, another thought came to him.
“So how come you let him tie up here? When I arrived you tried to wave me off.”
“Head office orders. At least that’s what I heard.”
Dan stared at the man in front of him. Was he being deliberately obtuse or had he genuinely been so uninterested in the boat that he hadn’t paid any attention either in it or its reason for being there.
“So it was someone from head office?” he asked. This was like talking to a child.
“No, at least not our head office.” Johnson seemed unsure and he looked a little awkward, perhaps embarrassed by his lack of knowledge and the fact he had only now recalled something so obvious. “I guess it belongs to some bigwig from one of the fish-food companies—or maybe it’s someone from the company that manufactures the totes the food comes in. I’m not sure which, but it’s one or the other. Something to do with the food anyway.”
He pushed back his cap, scratched his head and glanced at the end of the float again.
“I wasn’t working when the office called. One of the other supervisors, Don Eastman, was on shift then. He said they told him there were some guys coming out on a boat and he was to look after them. I didn’t know anything about it until I came back on a few days later—he told me when we switched off. He said the boat had already been out and one of the guys on it told him they would be out again so I would have to deal with them.”
There was a pause and then another shrug. “Don was pretty vague about everything—who they were or what they wanted. I figured whoever called from the office didn’t make it clear, or maybe Don just didn’t hear what they were saying properly. That happens all the time if we’ve got a barge in. Like I told you, it gets pretty noisy here then.”
He looked expectantly at Dan, apparently wanting to confirm that his earlier comments about the noise were remembered. Dan nodded his head in agreement, not wanting to interrupt Johnson’s story.
“Anyway, Don told me we were supposed to let it tie up and we were to answer any questions they had. That’s all I can tell you, but it was here when the barge arrived. I remember Reuben came out of the wheelhouse to check there was enough clearance behind it for him to get in.”
Dan blinked and squinted his eyes to try to relieve the stinging. While he might have briefly forgotten the stench in his eagerness to learn about the powerboat, it was now at least as strong as before. He’d learned about both the potency and effectiveness of smell after attending his first autopsy. He’d been sitting in the hallway outside the coroner’s office waiting to pick up some paperwork when one of the staff came by, knocked on the door and ask if the clothing was available for a Mrs. Something-or-other to collect and he thought he heard a special emphasis on the word ‘clothing’. It sounded like a private code with a special meaning and it made him curious. When the coroner finally emerged Dan asked him about it. The man—Dan recalled his name had been Dr. Theodore Tod and a casting agency could not have found a more perfect fit for the role—was tall, thin to the point of looking cadaverous, and even his name had been perfect: Tod meant ‘death’ in German.
In any case, Dr. Tod had told him that they took great care with the clothing of the deceased because the family always wanted it. It carried not only the visual memory of their loved one, but also the scent that was created by the presence of particles—actual molecules—from the person who had worn them. He said smell, more than any other sense, was intimately associated with the part of the brain that stores memory, and so the clothes were a continuing link that provided solace and comfort to those left behind. He also said he had heard of people, usually the parents of a young child, who kept the clothing for twenty years or more.
Dan sincerely hoped that his memory of this particular smell lasted for a much shorter period of time—twenty seconds would seem too long.
“Don’t rub your eyes. It’ll only make it worse.” Johnson had seen his discomfort and understood the source.
“I’m damned if I know how you stand it.” Dan blinked a few more times hoping it would help. It didn’t. He needed to get as much information as he could and then get the hell out of there.
“So did these people ask any questions?” he asked.
“Nope, at least not to me. Didn’t do anything but look at the totes and the hopper. Mostly they got in the way.” Johnson’s dismissive tone left no doubt as to his opinion of the visitors.
“Sounds like there were a few of them?”
“Four the first time, although there might have been more inside. No way to tell. I think there was less that day the guy fell off the barge . . .” Johnson caught himself, his hesitation reflecting his unwillingness to acknowledge the truth.
He took a quick breath and ploughed on. “That day the barge was here—three maybe, but I can’t be sure. Too much happening to worry about a bunch of management types wandering around and making a nuisance of themselves. As long as they stayed out of the way I didn’t pay them any attention.”
He pointed to the area where the boat had been. “You couldn’t even see it from the other side of the float anyway.”
There wasn’t much more he could offer. Dan asked him if the boat had a name, but Johnson had simply shrugged. He wasn’t even certain if it had been flying a flag.
“Has it been back since Farnsworth was shot?”
Johnson winced as Dan said the words he had avoided using.
“Came back once for sure, but it was late, almost dark. I was already in the crew boat and heading home so the security guys handled it.”
“Same security guys on now?”
Johnson turned to stare at the building at the end of the float.
“Maybe. I don’t have a lot to do with them. They have different shifts than the rest of us. I only know a couple of them but they’re good guys. There might be a schedule in the office but I haven’t seen one. Head office could tell you.”
“You never have security on during the day?”
“Yeah, if we know there’s going to be a problem, like some big protest or something, but not on a regular basis.” He looked around the float. “What would they do? Me and the guys can handle the kids and the odd boater.”
It didn’t seem likely Reg Johnson was going to be able to provide much more information and Dan could see he was starting to glance restlessly over to the men on the other side of the float who appeared to have finished their gruesome task and were standing around talking.
Dan tried to reassure himself that he had all the information he could possibly get and that for now at least there was nothing more he could do out here, but he knew he was so desperate to get away from the smell he couldn’t be objective. All he could think about was getting back to Dreamspeaker and standing in the shower for however long it took to feel clean again—and that was going to be a very long time.
Although he knew it wasn’t true, it felt as if those airborne fish particles had somehow permeated his skin and he was sure he would never be able to get the foul stench out of his clothes. He would have to throw them away.
He glanced down at the T-shirt he was wearing. It had ‘Kinda Blue” stenciled across the front together with a graphic of a trumpet and it was a gift from Claire to celebrate their most recent anniversary. He hated to lose it and she wouldn’t be happy to know he had put it in the trash, but right now it was not something he could worry about. He needed to get the hell out of there.
He stepped back down into the dinghy and re-started the motor. “I’ll probably be out to talk to you again once I’ve spoken to your head office.” He had to shout over the noise of the motor.
Johnson had already turned his back was walking away but he lifted a hand in acknowledgement.