Friday Harbor, page 6
"I'll send my photographs down to Seattle on tomorrow's steamer," Floyd said as their plates were cleared from the table. "Hopefully our research section can tell us more about some of the evidence. Oh—and I was also able to recover two more bullets."
"For a total of five?"
"Yes. And fragments of two more. Happily, I’m equipped to examine them here."
"You mean you brought along your, uh, double—"
"My comparison microscope. Yes. It’s in my equipment case."
"Do you have any preliminary thoughts?"
"I have. For one, marks in some of the blood smears lead me to believe that at least two people—presumably hijackers—were wearing gloves. But I also found a lot of fingerprints in the aft cargo hold, some of them preserved in dried blood. Tomorrow, I'll ship them off to the NBIC."
"To the what?" Miles asked.
"National Bureau of Criminal Identification. I doubt they'll connect the prints to anyone, unless you have a long habit of sending them your fingerprint cards from all the way out here."
"Never even heard of the place."
"Well, even so, if the prints have ever been put in the system by anyone, we might be able to match one up with an eventual suspect. Of course, it will take a few weeks for any results to get back to us. In the meantime, we'll need to get prints from the homes of the crewmen to eliminate those from our analysis."
"That shouldn't be hard to do."
"Oh, and you probably saw this for yourselves, but the dead finger was that of an adult male Caucasian. I'd guess middle-aged."
"Probably Hans Jensen's," Miles said.
"That would be my first guess."
"But why cut off his finger? To punish him? To torture him for information?"
"Excellent questions," Floyd said. "Maybe to emphasize whatever message that Bible passage stands for."
"To emphasize," Miles muttered. "Well, it certainly grabbed my attention." He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples. "By the way, Floyd, I can see that you're very knowledgeable. But you don't have to keep telling me that my questions are excellent, alright?"
Floyd looked genuinely confused. "My apologies."
"It's nothing. Anyway, big picture, what do you fellas make of this mess?"
"Well," Floyd said, "like you, I think the most likely thing is that it was a rumrunner hijacking. Crew was probably murdered, chained to the anchor, and thrown overboard. It would explain why the anchor is gone. I assume hijackings are a regular thing up here?"
"They happen. But I've never seen anything like this floating slaughterhouse."
"The quantity of blood is noteworthy."
"Noteworthy? I'd call it staggering."
"Yes. And as I said before, there's far more blood aboard than could have come out of a mere two-man crew. There had to have been more people aboard."
"Word on the docks is that the Jensens always worked alone," Miles said. "They probably just drew some blood from their hijackers."
"An awful lot of blood."
"Maybe there were a bunch of hijackers."
"Maybe," Floyd said. "Were the Jensens armed?"
"Not according to their wives."
"They didn't carry guns? Really? In this hotspot of smuggling and piracy?"
"The San Juan Islands are peaceful, the people generally law-abiding," Miles said, sounding indignant. "The only real trouble up here is caused by outsiders."
"Strictly speaking, the crew of the Lucky Lena were locals who appear to have been running liquor."
"Strictly speaking, the jury is still out on that."
"Well, whatever the case, this incident could signify an abrupt end to your alleged local peacefulness. An escalation in the violence of hijackings, I mean. Let's hope it doesn't trigger a full-fledged rumrunner war."
"Amen," Miles said, profoundly troubled at the thought of such a thing.
"Getting back to my findings with respect to the blood," Floyd continued, "given the temperature and humidity, as well as the extent of gelation and rim desiccation—"
"Wait—the what?"
"How dry the blood is. Given all of that, I'd say the blood was spilled last night just after dark."
"You can be that precise?"
"To within an hour or two."
"Where'd you learn to figure that out?" Miles asked.
"I'm a bit of an acolyte of Professor R. A. Reiss. University of Lausanne, Switzerland. And I suppose you could say he's a bit of a revolutionary. The world's leading authority on criminal forensics, in my view."
"Well, well. So the blood was spilled just after dark. Okay. Bill, let's take a look at that tide table and nautical chart."
Bill took both from the windowsill and spread them out on the table.
"So," Miles said, "last night we had a sustained northwest wind of 32 to 35 knots, with gusts to 70, until around 11 p.m. After that, the wind shifted, coming out of the southwest and strengthening to 38 knots for most of the rest of the night. It finally died out somewhere around 4 a.m. Meanwhile," he said, picking up the tide table, "the tide turned at 1:37 a.m. Okay. And the Lucky Lena was first spotted here," he said, pointing to the waters just off Turn Point, "at 6:37 a.m." They all leaned forward over the nautical chart encompassing the American San Juan and Canadian Gulf Island archipelagos. "So, if the blood was spilled just after dark, and assuming Lucky Lena was set adrift just after that . . ." Miles let his sentence hang as he used a pencil and the edge of his napkin to make several crude measurements. "I would say blood was spilled when the boat was just about here," he said, pointing to D'Arcy Island.
"Impressive," Floyd said. "And where did you learn to figure that out?"
"Pretty much everyone who grows up here works on boats at one point or another. Fishing boats, workboats, ferries, dories. You learn to read the water. I suppose you could say it's in our blood."
"I see."
"So, who hijacked the boat?" Bill said.
"Could have been some independent local pirates," Floyd said. "But I tend to think not because, given that the Lucky Lena appears to have been running Glenfiddich—a high-end Scotch whiskey—it was probably one of Stenersen's boats, since he's the only guy in the region whose outfit runs such high-quality stuff. And there are persistent rumors in Seattle that some new, well-informed syndicate of rumrunners is trying to horn in on Stenersen's territory. Targeting his shipments. Targeting his people. Assuming the new syndicate exists—and isn't a mere phantom conjured up by the press to explain unrelated incidents—they're supposed to be aggressive, well-armed, and possibly murderous. Whereas Stenersen doesn't even let his people carry guns."
"No guns?" Miles said.
"Nope. And although Stenersen doesn't publicly admit that he's a bootlegger, he's been repeatedly quoted as saying that the booze business isn't worth a single human life."
"Hard to take such a statement seriously, considering its source."
"He's supposed to be a very decent man."
"Said the policeman of the bootlegger," Miles said, again wondering what Floyd's real story was.
"Anyway," Floyd said, "my point is that it's entirely possible that rival rumrunners hijacked the Lucky Lena."
"But rival rumrunners wouldn't have smashed a bunch of whiskey bottles," Bill said. "They'd have taken them."
"That could have been accidental," Miles said. "A few bottles hit by stray bullets maybe."
"What about the Chink symbol on the bulkhead?" Bill asked.
"That suggests another possibility," Floyd said. "It could be a tong symbol. One of the tongs sending a message. Claiming responsibility. Sending a warning to another tong, maybe."
"Another tong?" Bill said. "What the hell is a tong?"
"Chinese secret society. Secret brotherhood. Brotherhood being a euphemism for gang of cut-throats. Tongs run most of the vice rackets in the big West Coast cities, including Seattle. Underground gambling clubs. Whorehouses. Opium dens. Could be one of the tongs hijacked the boat."
"A Chinese gang hijacking a rumrunner?" Miles asked.
"There's plenty demand for booze in the Chinese card clubs," Floyd said. "Or maybe the Lucky Lena was carrying opium too."
"Meaning the hijacking was one tong stealing from another."
"It's possible," Floyd said. "There's an undeclared tong war underway in Seattle right now between three of the five main tongs. They're killing each other over turf. Over control of the rackets. Over insults. Over one tong stealing another tong's brothel slave girls. You name it. Chinatown's a bloody mess."
"Damned heathen Chinks," Bill muttered.
Miles thought for a moment, then shook his head. "It's hard to picture Chinese pulling off a boat hijacking."
"Why?"
"Because I've never seen a Chinese-crewed boat. Not ever. They all work in the cannery or the lime works. Not on the boats."
"Not at all?" Floyd asked.
"No. And frankly, I don't picture a father-son crew of fishermen from Deer Harbor smuggling opium for a Seattle tong." He thought for a moment. "Then again, it wouldn't be any stranger than a former Seattle Police lieutenant becoming the king of West Coast rum running."
"Well . . ."
"Plus, what about the charring on the inside of the hull?" Miles asked. "The scorch marks? Someone obviously tried to burn and sink the Lucky Lena. Tried to destroy the evidence. But if one tong was leaving the symbol to claim responsibility or send a message or whatever, they wouldn't have tried to sink her. They'd have left Lucky Lena and their grim message intact."
The conversation went dead for a moment as they all thought about the evidence.
"Here's another thing," Floyd said. "Why did the Jensens have that heavy, commercial-grade diving suit?"
"I don't know," Miles said. "Maybe they rented it to make underwater repairs or scrape weed off the Lucky Lena's hull without having to dry dock her."
"That's a deep-water suit though, isn't it? Seems like overkill for that sort of work."
"Maybe they were trying to recover something they lost overboard in deep water then. Ship's log said they ran over to Sidney for a spare propeller. Maybe the old prop sheared off the shaft and they wanted to retrieve it."
Floyd appeared lost in thought. "Well. Not my province, so I suppose I'll take your word for it. I'll tell you something else we should keep in mind though. Whoever did this was methodical."
"Methodical? There's blood everywhere."
"There's blood everywhere, but it wasn't spilled everywhere. Evidence suggests there was an initial amount of violence in the pilot house. But aside from that, the vast majority of the blood was spilled in the very back of the aft cargo hold, which is also where most of the bullet holes and all the blood spray patterns are. The fact that there is blood smeared and pooled all over the lower deck is probably a product of bodies being dragged about after the fact."
"So?"
"It's a reasonable assumption that, through threats or lies, the killer or killers took the time and trouble to move most if not all of their victims below decks and then corral them in one end of the cargo hold before opening fire. This suggests that there was no passion or hot blood involved. No rage. The killing was methodical. Systematic. Efficient. It suggests a certain coldness of heart on the part of the killers."
"Coldness of heart?" Miles said.
"Sounds like a lot of college-boy hocus pocus," Bill said. "What about the rest of the real evidence? What about the finger pointing to the Bible reference?"
"The reference was to the Book of Romans," Miles said.
"Romans 1:18," Bill said, opening the Bible he'd brought. Finding the page, he turned it so that Miles and Floyd could see.
"‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,’" Miles read aloud. "A warning."
"Meaning what?" Floyd asked.
"Maybe that rumrunners will pay for their evil ways," Miles said, shrugging.
"Who would leave a message like that?"
"The sort of person who would have reveled in smashing those expensive bottles of Glenfiddich. A zealot. A temperance fanatic."
Floyd pinched the bridge of his own nose as if trying to relieve a headache. But he also smiled. "Okay. So, our list of suspects has grown to include rogue hijackers, a rival rumrunning syndicate, Chinese tongs, and now temperance fanatics."
"Plus, we have a missing crew, a mysterious symbol, a bible verse, a deepwater dive suit, a severed finger, and about a million gallons of blood to make sense of," Miles added.
"There's a lot to digest here."
"You're not kidding. How about we call it a night?"
*****
On the way to his truck, after asking Bill to take Floyd up to the Tourist Hotel to get him a room for the night, Miles stopped in at the fire station to ask that, come morning, the men drag the sea floor near D'Arcy Island for bodies.
"What sort of an area are we talking about?" asked Luke Gruden, the volunteer chief, looking up from the weekly fire brigade poker game Miles had interrupted.
"Let's start with a one-mile radius."
"That's a tall order, Miles. A bit east of D'Arcy, the water is some 700 feet deep. And closer in, there are lots of rocks for our grappling hooks to get caught on."
"True."
"Plus, the tides all around there are strong and fast. I mean, our chances of actually finding anything other than clamshells and sea anemones . . ." He shrugged.
"I know," Miles said. "Just do what you can. It's the hand we've been dealt."
"Also, that's Canadian waters. We'll need the necessary permissions."
"I'll radio RCMP in Victoria to let them know what you're up to. They'll just want us to tell them if we find anything."
"Fair enough. I figure we can get hold of three boats to rig with dragging equipment. We'll start quartering the area at first light."
"Appreciate it."
ELEVEN
Arriving home that night, Miles, utterly spent, parked his truck next to the weeping willow on the edge of the orchard and shut off the engine. A chorus of frog calls echoed across the still air. Halfway to the house, he stopped in his tracks, turned, and eyeballed the family's big white barn glowing in the moonlight. It was where they stored tools and farm equipment, crates for the fall apple harvest, and a 1909 Peerless Model 25 Raceabout that he and his father had been refurbishing before the war had taken Miles away—before the Spanish Flu had taken his father.
Miles pictured the old car. It was parked by the far wall, under a canvas sheet dotted with the droppings of field mice and barn swallows. All around it, various hand tools lay, gathering dust, exactly where his father had set them down years earlier, their wooden handles probably still bearing the residue of his father's sweat.
Acting on a tip, Miles and his father had found the abandoned wreck of the Raceabout in a forested ravine off a road near Anacortes and arranged to have it hoisted out and barged to Friday Harbor. Over the next two years, and up until Miles received his draft notice, whenever they'd had spare time and spare money, they'd gathered replacement parts from junkyards in Bellingham, Everett, and Seattle and worked at restoring it to like-new condition. It was a beautiful relic of the so-called brass era of automobile production, with polished black paint, shiny brass headlamps, new button-tufted red upholstery, and the largest automobile engine Miles had ever seen. All it needed now—all it had needed since he'd left for the war—was sparkplugs, motor oil, and a new set of tire tubes. Otherwise, it was ready to gas up and go. But Miles's father had insisted on waiting until Miles returned from France before taking it for its inaugural drive. It was something they would do together, father and son.
Miles stared at the barn for another moment, imagining what it would have been like—he and his father pulling back the dust cover, firing up the big engine, then racing down a sunny country road with broad smiles on their faces and the wind in their hair.
He pictured his father's joyful face. The general look of it came to him. But then, for some ill-judged reason, Miles tried to visualize the individual parts of it—his father's mouth, his nose, his eyes. Miles struggled to remember details. Precise shapes and sizes.
Startled by this, he went to the house, removed a framed portrait of his father from its hook on the living room wall, and took it to bed intent on memorizing everything about it.
*****
Hours later, despite his exhaustion, Miles couldn't sleep. As he lay in bed, his mind spun with unanswered questions, visions of the Lucky Lena's bloody cargo hold, and anxiety over what might come next. It all stoked a sense of urgency he couldn't shake.
Shortly after 2 a.m., he gave up on sleep, grabbed his binoculars, a kerosene lantern, and his saxophone, and drove out to Hanbury Point, on the far western side of the island, for a bit of night watch.
It was a warm, calm, and quiet night. After pulling to the side of the road and switching off his engine, Miles was surprised to hear none of the usual crickets or frogs singing away in the nearby pastures and ponds. He set off down the short trail to his usual lookout point atop the rocky shoreline. Once there, he turned down his lantern, leaned against a gnarled madrone tree, and scanned the entirety of Haro Strait with his binoculars. The moon had already set and a low layer of overcast obscured the stars. Spotting rumrunners or pirates out there in such conditions would be next to impossible. Indeed, all Miles could see were the distant masthead lights of a southbound ocean tug.
He sat down on a nearby boulder, took out his sax, and began working on a few bars of a new Sidney Bechet tune. The quiet that filled the gaps between notes whenever he paused for breath drove home a familiar sense of aloneness—made all the heavier by the vast surrounding darkness.
D'Arcy Island was roughly three miles due west of him, just across the Canadian maritime border. There wasn't enough light to see it. But Miles knew the little island was out there. He wondered what had happened there the night before. Wondered what cutthroat smugglers or pirates might be lurking, hidden, waiting to ambush another boat, waiting to spill more blood. And he wished, with no small measure of bitterness, that he'd chosen this spot for his night watch—instead of Cattle Point—when whatever happened aboard the Lucky Lena had happened. Perhaps he'd have seen something helpful. Something that would help him catch the killers. But for all his obsessive vigilance, he'd been in the wrong place and hadn't seen a damned thing.
