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The house across from the dojo was still owned by Victor Halvorsen. Dan had confirmed it by phoning the town hall and asking them to check their tax rolls. The city clerk informed him that Victor Halvorsen had inherited the house from his father who had died a little over six years previously. He also said Victor always paid his taxes on time and there was no lien against the property. It had never been registered as a rental nor had a complaint of any kind ever been recorded against it.
Another call, this one to the electric company, revealed that the house was hooked up to electricity although the monthly usage was low. They also said the monthly bill was always paid on time.
The phone company was next and they confirmed the house had phone service and the account was not in arrears.
A final call to the Motor Licencing Department down in Victoria informed him that Victor Karl Arthur Halvorsen, with an address in Port McNeill, was the registered owner of a blue Ford 150 pick-up truck.
It had been a blue pick-up truck Dan had seen in the garage and he now had little doubt that Victor Halvorsen was not only residing in the house, but also living in it even though it gave every appearance of being empty. But how did the dark-haired man he had seen there fit in?
Dan enlisted Maureen’s help to show him how to use the computer to try and find out what Masterton and his captain looked like. It was surprisingly easy. Simply typing the names into a search engine brought up so many listings Dan thought he might be there for months reading them, but Maureen quickly showed him how to find the most relevant.
Donald S. Masterton—the “S” stood for Stephen—owned a company that sold plastic wrapping of all kinds. The company was based in Vancouver, but the product was purchased from China. According to the website, Masterton Plastic Wrapping could provide pre-formed wrapping for any number of uses including, Dan suspected as he looked at the various items pictured, fish food bales.
A click on the heading “About Us” identified Masterton as both the founder and the manager of the company and provided a photo. It showed a heavy-set man well into his fifties, with short-cropped graying hair and a thin-lipped mouth turned up in an unpleasant smile. Something about the eyes made Dan think that the taut skin stretched across the broad cheekbones and heavy jaw was the result of surgery rather than genetics, but it didn’t matter one way or the other. This was not the dark-haired man.
Another entry into the search engine brought up a webpage for the Yacht Captains Association. That webpage provided a link to Daniel Vienza, who in turn had his own website complete with photographs. The photos showed a man dressed in a white jacket with gold buttons and some kind of epaulettes, sharply creased white pants, and a white cap, standing in the wheelhouses of several different and obviously large yachts. Not much hair was visible in any of the photographs, but what was there was at best a grizzled mid-brown as was the impressive beard.
Daniel Vienza was also well into his fifties, and looked to be considerably shorter than average. As the most recent shots showed the uniform jacket stretched tightly over a round paunch, he was likely heavier than average as well. His contact information gave an address and phone number located in Steveston. This had to be the Captain of White Lightning, but he too was not the dark-haired man Dan had seen.
Dan tilted his chair back and stretched out his legs. As he did so his hand brushed against his pocket and the roll of plastic bags he’d found out on the rocks along with the cedar bracelet and the bandana. He had removed it from the cedar bracelet before he had arrived at Tsa’wit and now he pulled it out and held it in his palm, staring at it as he tried think of a reason Billy Jules would have put it there. Jules mother had told Dan her son always wore the bracelet.
“It was a gift from his grandmother,” she had said, her fingers stroking the finely woven strands. “She was the last traditional cedar bark weaver in our family. She gave this to him when he became Hamat’sa. He never took it off.”
But Dan knew Jules had taken it off. He had deliberately and carefully tied it onto a bandana that he had also commonly worn, and the roll of plastic bags had been tightly stuffed inside. There had to be a reason.
Ten minutes later Dan stood up and walked down the hall to Markleson’s office.
“Those undercover guys you asked for to check out the drug situation up here yet?” he asked.
Markleson looked at him over the rim of his coffee cup. “Yeah, but they say it’s going to take a while. They need to establish themselves. Get familiar with the territory. Let people get used to them. All they’ve got so far is some dumb kids and a couple of low-lifes with a few pills for sale. No sign of anyone further up the chain. Why?”
“I want to show them these and see if they look familiar.” Dan held out the roll of bags.
Markleson frowned. “Where the hell did you find those?”
“In the water over near Tribune. They were wrapped in a bandana that belonged to Billy Jules. He’s the guy those people from the Quarterdeck found on the reef.”
“You think Jules was drug related? I don’t recall the coroner saying anything about finding drugs in his system.” Markleson shuffled through the piles of papers on his desk in a search for the coroner’s report. He didn’t find it and reached for his pipe instead.
“Ah hell, I don’t know,” Dan answered. “I’m just grasping at straws here, trying to figure out why he put these in a bracelet his mother said he never took off. He had to be trying to send a message of some kind.”
Markleson poked at the package with the tip of a pen, found the end of the roll and peeled a bag off.
“You thinking they were using these to package drugs?” he asked.
“I’m not really thinking anything. I just remembered you talking about a sudden increase in drug-related deaths, and then Maureen said a kid her son knows had died from a drug overdose, and I wondered if there was any link. I thought I would run it past the undercover guys. Maybe they would have some idea about whether these are the kind of bags the drugs came in.”
The two of them stared at the bag for a while. Markleson had laid it flat on the desk in front of him. It was about four inches wide and maybe six inches long.
“Looks pretty big to be used in a drug deal,” It was Markleson who broke the silence. “Pretty fancy too. The kids—hell even the adults—tend to buy one or two pills at a time. Go down an alley, hold their hand out with a twenty or a fifty in it, the seller drops a couple of pills or a twist of powder in their palm and it’s all over. I don’t think any of them are going to worry about packaging anything in a plastic bag.”
Dan nodded. “How about the next step up?”
“What? Oh, you mean whoever’s getting the pills to the local dealers? Yeah, maybe. Our guys haven’t found any of those yet, but that’s who they’re hoping to get to next. Follow the trail up the line to whoever’s bringing it in. Find the main distributor.”
The two of them looked at the bag some more and then Dan reached out and picked up the roll again.
“Is there any way you can set up a meeting between me and one of the undercover guys?”
Markleson tipped his head in a gesture that said neither “No” nor “Yes”.
“I can try, but I don’t know if they’ll want to do it. It might be too much of a risk. I can’t talk to them directly anyway. I have to go through Victoria.”
Dan stood. “Well, give it a try. Right now it’s the only thing I can think of.”