Friday harbor, p.7
Friday Harbor, page 7
TWELVE
Miles woke with the dawn after no more than three hours of sleep. The wind was whipping the tips of plum tree branches against his bedroom window. For what stretched into almost two hours, he tried to ignore the noise and go back to sleep. But his efforts proved fruitless, so he eventually rose, tired and frustrated.
He didn't bother to shower or shave. But in staring at his careworn face in the mirror as he brushed his teeth, he found that his mother's comments from the previous day's lunch—about his loneliness—were creeping, unwanted, into his mind. He wondered at how she always seemed able to zero in on his sensitive spots. To get under his skin. Ostensibly, she wanted to help him find happiness. But sometimes he wondered if she didn't maybe, just maybe, get some sort of sadistic pleasure out of watching him squirm.
*****
Miles parked his truck around the corner and down the street from the station. As he walked up the block, he glanced at each person he passed, watching for unfamiliar faces. For outsiders. But he did so with a growing sense of unease. Was it his imagination, or were some of the people avoiding eye contact? Acting just a hair too disinterested in his passing?
It occurred to Miles that people might actually be watching him. Keeping tabs. Maybe even reporting on his movements.
He told himself he was being paranoid.
He turned the corner onto Spring Street just in time to watch a frail old woman in what appeared to be a nightgown stumble out of Fields's dry goods store and fall to the sidewalk, hard, spilling her small paper bag of apricots as she hit the ground. As Miles sprinted forward to help her, he saw that it was Clarice Brennan, mother of Sean the boat engine mechanic.
"Mrs. Brennan?" Miles asked, reaching for her, helping her roll onto her back and then sit up. "Easy does it, now. Are you alright?" Her knees and palms were bleeding.
At that moment, the owner, Jacob Fields, appeared in the doorway in a dirty apron, an equally dirty towel flung over one shoulder, his hands on his hips. "I sent my clerk to fetch her son down at the docks," he said matter-of-factly.
"Mrs. Brennan, are you alright?" Miles asked again, surprised to see her at all. Last he'd heard, she was living in a home for the senile in Bellingham. She glanced all around, looking utterly bewildered as to how she came to be where she was. As she clenched her jaw through the pain, Miles saw the familiar, dark gap in her teeth where her late husband had once knocked two of them out in a drunken rage. A sharp odor told him that she'd wet and soiled herself some hours earlier. As his heart sank for her, his mind wandered to thoughts of his own mother and his nagging worries about how much longer she would be able to get around on her own. He wondered whether this was a vision of her future.
"Mother!" Miles heard someone shout, and he turned to see Sean Brennan racing up the street with Fields's clerk. "What happened?" he asked, falling to his knees at his mother's side and taking her old shriveled hands into his own. She turned and gazed at her son, looking agitated and confused. She said nothing.
"She was favoring that left hip of hers," Fields said. "Told her to be careful. But her foot caught on the door threshold when she was on her way out."
"You could have helped her," Brennan said.
"I told her to watch her feet and such. I'm not a nurse."
"Mother, you know you're not supposed to be out of the house."
"I wanted fresh fruit," she said at last, her voice meek, like that of a sad child.
"But this is the dry goods store. Where did you get these apricots?"
She didn't seem to comprehend her son's question. "I just wanted fruit."
"I'll get you fruit," Brennan said softly. "Anytime you like, you just ask me. I'll get you all the fresh fruit you like." He reached one of his big arms behind her back, the other under her knees, and gently lifted her into the air.
Miles scrambled to collect the scattered apricots and load them back into her paper bag. "How can we help?" Miles asked.
As Brennan turned, Miles saw the man's face twisted with sadness.
"I can manage," Brennan said. "If you could just put the corner of the bag between my knuckles here, I can carry it home with her."
"You're sure you don't need a hand?"
"Quite sure. Thank you."
With that he set off, cradling his mother in his arms as he carried her up the street.
"Mercy," Miles couldn't stop himself from saying as he watched them go.
"Yeah, well, time waits for no man," Fields said. "No doddering old lady, either."
Speechless, Miles watched Fields turn on his heel and disappear back into his store.
*****
Miles came through the front door of the station to find the air smelling of breakfast. Bill was already there, pouring himself coffee from a dented tin percolator and flipping a giant flapjack out of a cast iron pan he'd taken from atop the potbelly stove.
"Morning, Sheriff."
"Bill, how are you?"
"Tired after yesterday," he said, spooning a large dollop of butter onto the flapjack.
"You and me both. Where's the mysterious Detective Floyd?"
"He was here earlier, looking at the bullets under his microscope contraption. Waited for you for about an hour, then gave up and went back to the hotel. Care for a flapjack?" he asked as he poured dark molasses over the melting butter on his own.
"No, thanks." Miles poured hot coffee into his thoroughly stained porcelain mug. "Speaking of Floyd, do you have any ideas about who might have called Seattle yesterday to get him sent up here?"
"Could have been anybody. Maybe one of those meddling chumps on the county council who don't think we can do the job."
"Or one of the rumrunners' local lookouts or informants who probably keep an eye on us."
"You think Floyd's working for the rumrunners?"
"Well, he came from Seattle, didn't he? All cities breed corruption. Even in the police."
Bill smiled. "Don't start jumping at shadows just yet, Sheriff."
"Yeah, maybe not. Anyway, what do you make of him?"
"Of Floyd?"
"Yes."
"He likes to use a lot of fancy, college-boy words and expressions."
Miles smiled. "That he does. Matter of fact, if he uses the expression strictly speaking one more time, I think my head will pop off. Some of what he says makes sense though. And some of those new techniques he's been taught might help us."
"Book learning," Bill said, shaking his head dismissively. "Real evidence is something you can hold in your hand. Or beat out of a man when you take him to the woodshed."
"You're wise beyond your years, Bill."
"I'll say that Floyd seems like a decent enough guy, though. Genuine."
"That's my gut feeling too. Regardless, be careful what you share with him until we know more about who sent him."
"Right. So anyway, I put that list of names from the steamship office's passenger manifests on your desk there."
"Thank you," Miles said. There were several pages. "Your hand must be sore from copying down all those names."
"To be honest, they did half of it for me."
"That was unusually kind of them."
"Greetings, gents," Floyd said as he opened the front door to the station.
"Morning," Miles said, sitting down to take a look at the manifest lists.
"You want a flapjack?" Bill asked Floyd.
"Thanks, no."
"You sure? It's good sourdough batter. And I've got some fresh butter and molasses or wildflower honey to drizzle over the top of it. A man has got to eat."
"Thanks. I breakfasted two hours ago." He looked at Miles. "You feeling under the weather this morning?"
"No. Why?"
"What time do you normally get to the station?"
"I get here when I get here."
"Of course—I just, uh, for my own scheduling purposes—well, anyway, I'm glad you could join us."
Miles gave Floyd a skeptical look. "Right. How were the accommodations at the Tourist Hotel?"
"Impeccable."
"Sleep well?"
"Like a baby. It's so quiet here compared to Seattle."
"You live in the city?"
"Not downtown." Miles waited for more. "I'm on Queen Anne Hill."
"In a house then?"
"Yes."
"No kidding. I don't mean to pry, but how does someone your age afford a house on Queen Anne Hill?"
"Well . . . I—I share it with my mother."
"Ah-ha."
"Seattle has gotten really expensive. Downtown, they want five dollars a month for a room with a shared toilet down the hall."
"Five dollars a month? That's outrageous."
"It's robbery. So, you see, it just makes too much financial sense not to—"
"Hey, Floyd, you don't have to justify yourself to us. If a grown man wants to live with his mother, that's his prerogative."
"Yes, that's why I . . . Anyway, I discovered something noteworthy this morning."
"Do tell."
"It's about the bullets. I believe they were all fired from the same gun."
"How certain are you?"
"Ninety percent."
"So, one gunman then," Miles said.
"He still may have had accomplices. But yes, in all likelihood, one shooter—at least in the aft cargo hold. Interestingly, the bullets are .38 Long Colts. A notoriously underpowered and ineffective cartridge that the Army quit buying at least ten years ago. They're typically fired from a six-shot revolver. But I counted seven bullet holes. And mind you, there were probably more shots fired than there are bullet holes."
"Your point being?" Miles asked.
"My point being that the gunman had to reload. Had to stop what he was doing, and, mid-bloodbath, open the cylinder, extract the spent brass bullet casings from the chambers, probably shove them in his pocket so he wouldn't leave any behind as evidence, then reload each of the six chambers with new cartridges before resuming the slaughter. Like I said before, methodical, right? With all that time to reflect during the reload?"
"Cold-blooded."
"Exactly. It also suggests that our shooter didn't feel at all threatened by his prey. That he could take the time to stand there reloading."
"The victims must have been unarmed. Maybe tied up. Maybe just helpless and weak."
"Maybe all of the above. Anyway, we have our work cut out for us this morning, haven't we? Who do we start with?"
"The Jensen wives, over in Deer Harbor," Miles said, resuming his examination of the steamship passenger list. "While Floyd and I do that, Bill, can you re-canvass the docks to see if any fishermen or workboat crews saw the Lucky Lena anywhere on Tuesday evening, or whether they saw any other vessels in Haro Strait, especially in the vicinity of D'Arcy Island?"
"Will do."
Miles's gaze froze halfway down one of the pages of steamship passenger names.
"You find something?" Floyd asked.
"Uh . . ."
"What? What is it?"
"Nothing."
But, of course, there was something. The name of a single passenger who'd come in on the steamship from Seattle two days earlier. A name that conjured fond memories of fishing for sole on the beach at Mulno Cove. Of playing catch with an old grass-stained baseball. Of mud fights. Of stargazing. Of listening to jazz and swing music till all hours on a wind-up Victrola. Of dancing. Of jasmine-scented hair.
"Look, I have to step out for a bit," Miles said. "Catch up with you fellas at the top of the hour, alright?"
With that, Miles grabbed his coat and headed out the door.
*****
Miles turned his truck off the road a scant quarter mile north of his own childhood home, heading up a short drive that led to a well-maintained Craftsman bungalow. The house was fringed with beds of purple and yellow flowers that were happily soaking up the brilliant morning sunshine. He parked in the shade of a plum tree, checked his hair in the reflection of the driver's side window as he got out, ran his tongue across his front teeth to feel for bits of food, then walked to the dark wood door and gave it a feeble knock. His heart began to pound in his ears as he saw, through the panes of yellow stained glass in the upper part of the door, a blurred figure approaching. He cupped a hand to his mouth for a last-second check of his breath. Then door swung open, and there she stood—his best childhood friend.
"Hello, Marion."
"Miles!" exclaimed Marion Forde. She sprang forward to hug him and held tight for a long moment. Then she pushed him away and they gazed at one another. She wore a blouse and tie, golf knickers, and argyle socks. Her dark hair was bobbed. "As I live and breathe!" she said. "Look at you! None the worse for wear, despite the Great War."
"You cut your hair."
"That's the first thing you can think to say to me?"
"Oh, sorry. I—"
"I'm just jacking you, Miles. Heavens. How long has it been?"
"Since I left for the Army."
"Years. Too long. Far too long. I've missed you."
"Me too. My mother said you were living in New York City."
"Yes! Such an amazing place, Miles."
"But now you're back?"
"Just for two weeks. My grandfather's health is failing, so my mother asked me to come spend some time."
"I'm sorry."
"He's lived a long life. Anyway, it means I get to see you."
"I'm glad of that. But Marion, why didn't you call me?"
"Oh. It's been busy. And I wasn't entirely sure that, uh—"
"Do we have guests?" another female voice inquired from within the house. It wasn't the voice of Marion's mother. It carried a heavy Boston accent. As Miles tried to place it, another young woman appeared at Marion's side in the doorway. Her outfit was nearly identical to Marion's. But she also wore round spectacles of the sort Miles associated—perhaps narrow-mindedly—with Marxists. Her hair was cropped short, giving her an almost boyish appearance.
"Sylvia, this is Miles. My best and closest friend growing up. Like a brother to me. Closer than a brother. I've told you all about him, of course."
"So, this is Miles," she said, extending her ring-adorned hand and giving him an authoritative shake. "Sylvia Rosen. Pleased to meet you."
Still in disbelief that Marion had been on San Juan Island for two days and hadn't yet called him, Miles had to take a moment to gather his wits enough to respond. "A friend from New York?" he asked.
"And roommate," Marion said. "In New York, it's a must that you share an apartment unless you're independently wealthy. Rent there would make your eyes roll back into your head, Miles. I swear. But let's hear more about you. My mother tells me you're sheriff now."
"How very manly," Sylvia added.
"Manly?" Miles had to grin. "I wouldn't go that far. I spend most of my time chasing escaped sheep and goats, truth be told. Locking up the occasional drunk."
"You're being modest," Marion said. "I'm sure policing blows the doors off banking or lawyering when it comes to fun."
"I can't argue with that." He took a breath and his shoulders slumped just noticeably. "Look, I—I'm afraid I have to get back to the station."
"Of course. But we must catch up."
"I would like that very much. Call me later?"
"I will."
"Nice to meet you, Sylvia."
"Likewise, Miles."
THIRTEEN
The inter-island steamer wouldn't stop in Friday Harbor until just after 11 a.m., so Miles arranged for a fisherman to run him and Floyd five miles up the San Juan Channel to Deer Harbor, Orcas Island. As they were walking along the dock to the fisherman's boat, Miles heard a racket of shouting ahead and looked up to see a small cluster of men shoving one another alongside a new-looking gillnetter he didn't recognize. "Now what?" he muttered. They picked up their pace to approach the scrum before things escalated into a full-fledged brawl—or worse. "The hell is going on here?" he shouted as they met the group.
"That son of a bitch in the red cap is saying I jumped the line at the cannery," said Roy Brandt, an old local fisherman, as he did his best to be subtle about sheathing the long utility knife he clenched in his enormous, callused hand.
"Who the hell are you?" Miles asked the angry-looking young man in the red cap.
"Name's Peters," he answered.
"You aren't from around here."
"I'm from Seattle. And let me tell you something, chum. I'd been waiting at anchor just off the cannery wharf for damn near an hour, waiting to offload my catch, when this old coot motors right in and ties up just as the boat in front of me was finally pulling away and—"
"Listen," Miles said, holding up a hand.
"No, you listen, mac. I'm sick and tired of all your local bumkins always thinking they can just—"
Miles cut Peters off with a vicious backhand that split the man's upper lip. Blood immediately ran from his lip and nose.
"You son of a—"
"Be careful about what you say next," Miles said, stepping forward.
"Who the hell—who the hell—"
"Meet our sheriff," Brandt said, interrupting, bearing an amused smile.
That shut Peters up.
"Tell you what, city boy," Miles said. "I'm going to do you a favor. I'm going to give you sixty seconds to motor on out of here while your jaw is still unbroken."
Peters, his bloody face flushed and his fists clenched, stared hard at Miles for a long moment. Then he glanced to his right and left as if counting how many local men he and his deck mate would have to take on if they decided to fight. He spat blood onto the dock, backed away, and got aboard his boat.
