SIX

 

 

The late morning air was fresh and crisp as they motored north across calm, dark waters. Despite the beauty of the day, Miles was consumed with dread over what he was going to find. He'd seen plenty of dead and wounded in France during the Great War. But they'd been strangers. This could involve locals—even people he knew. For whatever reason, that made it different.

He and Bill had asked a local fisherman named Riley to run them up from Westcott Bay to Stuart Island in his big troller, knowing they were going to need to tow the drifter back to the state wharf at Friday Harbor for further investigation. Riley was a small man with dirty fingernails and coveralls perpetually stained by fish slime. But he was an expert boatman, and his troller had a powerful diesel engine.

"Blackfish," Riley said, pointing to a pod of killer whales a quarter mile off the starboard bow, running close to the shore of Speiden Island. Their dorsal fins and backs were breaching the surface in intermittent rhythm, drawing fleeting lines of white foam in their wake. Riley turned his wheel a few degrees to port to give the whales a wide berth. They were probably hunting salmon, just as the region's countless eagles, sea lions, and fishermen all did at this time of year. Miles admired them for a minute before returning his gaze to the heavily forested length of Stuart Island, dark and ominous, slowly rising in front of them as they grew closer.

"I expect we should round Turn Point before the tide shift," Riley said.

That, at least, was good news. Running against the powerful tidal currents at Turn Point could easily add twenty minutes to their journey.

 

*****

 

They spotted the drifter, still chained to a mooring buoy, as soon as they entered the dead-calm, forest-lined waters of Prevost Harbor. It was a common fishing boat. But, like Eldon Turley before them, they noted that it was painted an uncommon flat gray and had no registration number on its hull.

"Rumrunner?" Bill asked Miles.

"Maybe. Not one I know."

Turley and Pierre Charlevoix were waiting at the end of the harbor's mail boat dock, mute, staring out at the drifter as they smoked cigarettes. Spotting Riley's boat rounding the point, they flipped their cigarette butts into the water, clambered down into an old rowboat, and shoved off for the obligatory rendezvous. As they all converged on the drifter, Miles could see that Turley and Charlevoix were wide-eyed and looking grim. As Riley brought his boat alongside the drifter, Miles and Bill tossed lines over the drifter's cleats, drew the two vessels together, and stepped aboard as Turley and Charlevoix did the same from the opposite side. A dozen flies were buzzing near the closed door to the wheelhouse.

"Morning, gentlemen," Miles said as they gathered on the aft deck.

"Sheriff," Turley and Charlevoix said in unison, their voices tight.

"Thanks for waiting for us. What's the story here?"

The men glanced at each other, neither looking the least bit eager to talk about what they'd found. Turley swallowed hard and began his account of spotting the vessel drifting toward the rocks of Turn Point and of their recovery efforts. By the time he came to the subject of what they'd discovered below, he was following Miles around the deck while the sheriff took stock.

"One thing that's bound to jump out at you is that she has two huge gasoline engines," Turley said. "And a radio receiver."

"On a humble fishing boat?" Miles said, his implication clear to everyone. He leaned out over the starboard side of the bow. "There's a big dent and fresh scuff mark on the hull up here."

"From a collision with a hijacker?" Turley asked.

"Could be," Miles said.

"Could be from anything," Bill added.

"Do you want to go below?" Turley asked.

Hell no, I don't want to go below, Miles thought. "You gentlemen have a brush or rag or something?" he asked, still leaning out and examining the starboard side of the hull.

"You seeing something?" Bill asked. But Miles didn't answer. Whatever he was focusing on had his full attention. Turley retrieved a stiff scrub brush from the wheelhouse and handed it over to Miles who, getting flat on his belly on the bow, reached over the side and set to work scrubbing at a section of the hull. After less than a minute, he got to his feet.

"Take a look," he said.

The other men leaned to look over the side.

"A registration number," Turley said. It read M-886, in large block lettering.

"Someone covered it up with creosote," Miles said.

"Definitely a rumrunner then," Bill said.

"Hey, I know that boat," Riley shouted from the bow of his own vessel. "M-886 is the Lucky Lena."

"Lucky who?" Miles asked.

"Lucky Lena. She's owned by a fella named Jensen."

"There are dozens of men named Jensen around here," Miles said.

"Hans Jensen. Deer Harbor. Fishes with his son, Leif. Boat's Canadian built. Didn't recognize her under all this gray paint."

Rumrunner camouflage, Miles thought. "The gray paint is new?"

"Far as I know. Last time I saw her, she was painted white."

"When was that?"

"Oh, maybe a month ago. Out by Sekiu, I think. Hey, look," he added, pointing at the limp line dangling from the hawsehole. "Her anchor's gone. She probably just broke free of her moorings in the storm last night."

"Broke free of moorings in Deer Harbor, and then drifted all the way to Turn Point?" Miles said. "Against the wind?"

"I think you'll discount Riley's theory once you go below decks," Turley muttered under his breath as they made their way to the wheelhouse. Turley handed Miles a kerosene lantern and opened the door for him. "If it's all the same to you, I think I'll stay topside this time."

Stepping into the wheelhouse, Miles was greeted with the same warm, stagnant air and mélange of troubling smells that had greeted Turley earlier in the day. A strong, damp woodsmoke smell, like that of the steaming coals of an extinguished bonfire. And a new copper penny smell that put an unpleasant metal taste on the back of his tongue. Blood and smoke, he thought, his mind jumping—against his will—to a particularly terrible wartime memory of a courtyard behind an Army field hospital near the front lines in France. Of an incinerator. Of a crate full of . . .

"Damnation," Miles muttered, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head to stop the mental image from taking shape.

"You alright in there, Sheriff?" Turley asked from outside one of the windows.

"Yes, I'm just—yes."

"Looks to me like she was ransacked."

The flies that had been buzzing just outside the door had followed Miles in and were searching the interior in frenzied zigzags. At the front end of the wheelhouse, he saw the dark companionway and large blood smear Turley had described. Strewn about the floor was the usual paraphernalia of the commercial fisherman. Binoculars. Hand tools. Coffee mugs. Nautical texts and charts. A ship's logbook. On the wall, a calendar with an advertisement for engine oil. More notably, in the corner, a hulking, expensive-looking, ultramodern radio receiver—something Miles had surely never seen on a fishing boat.

The closer Miles got to the companionway, the worse the air smelled. At last, he came to it. He bent down, trying not to step in the large blood smear, stuck his head in, and lowered the lantern into the darkness. Like Turley before him, he wasn't able to see much from where he stood aside from a great deal of blood pooled at the foot of the ladder.

Here we go.

He took a deep breath, turned around, backed himself into the companionway, and, rung by rung, descended the ladder into the hold. Reaching the lower deck, he had no choice but to step into the large pool of blood at the base of the ladder. He stepped around the corner of the ladder and into the aft hold, looked up, and froze in place.

Holy smokes.

The lantern illuminated what appeared to be the scene of a slaughter. Dark blood covered most of the deck and was splattered all over the walls and ceiling. Much of it was still wet—especially where it had pooled. There were also what looked like several bullet holes in the wood. Curiously, there were half a dozen rectangular areas on the deck that were nearly blood-free, as though large crates had been removed from the hold in the aftermath of the massacre. In the lowest section of the deck, there was a shallow, roughly three-foot-wide pool of bloody saltwater, upon which floated a few partially burned pieces of scrap wood, rope remnants, and torn paper. The hull wood visible around the periphery of the pool was thoroughly charred.

Stepping around the blood as best he could, Miles made his way toward the stern end of the hold where he found several 50-lb. sacks labeled as salt, as well as the broken glass of several smashed bottles. Most of the bottles' labels were still at least partially intact. They had once held Glenfiddich Scotch whiskey, the scent of which cut through that of the blood and smoke as Miles bent down for a closer look.

"What's it look like, Sheriff?" Bill called down through the companionway.

"It ain't pretty."

"Need an extra set of hands?"

"Not yet. But let's pop the hatches and get some more light down here. And fresh air, for heaven's sake."

Miles retraced his path, heading for the forward hold, noticing large drag marks in the blood, as well as numerous large footprints. The footprints looked to have been made by two different sets of work boots. They ran back and forth from the stern hold to the forward hold, all coming together, along with the drag marks, at the base of the ladder to the forward cargo hatch. The ladder itself was covered with bloody footprints.

The forward hold also contained a large, bolted-down work table across which was spread various parts of a heavy-duty diving apparatus, including a three-window copper and brass helmet, a corselet, a weighted rubber suit, and a coiled air hose. Miles wondered why a fisherman would have an industrial dive suit. As he looked it over, perplexed, something on the forward bulkhead caught his eye. The dim light of the lantern illuminated what appeared to be some sort of symbol. It looked a bit like a cursive lower-case j alongside a backward lowercase t, topped with a horizontal slash. To Miles, it looked Asian. Maybe Chinese or Japanese. As he walked toward it, it became obvious that it had been drawn in blood.

What in the hell?

He stared at the symbol, wondering what it meant, wondering why it was drawn in blood. Then he noticed something else. On a narrow workbench attached to the bulkhead to his right, there was a small, pale object. Taking a step closer and raising his lantern, Miles saw that it was a severed human finger.

"Holy Toledo," he muttered.

The finger was pointing at something that had been drawn or written on the flat work surface. Miles bent over for a closer look. At the tip of the finger, also written in blood, were the words Romans 1:18.