Friday harbor, p.8
Friday Harbor, page 8
"Is that how you normally handle things?" Floyd asked Miles.
Miles didn't bother to answer.
*****
The fisherman ran Miles and Floyd to Deer Harbor in a 12-foot seine skiff with a brand-new Evinrude motor clamped onto the back of it. Floyd insisted on wearing a bulky, cork-filled life vest. On the entire five-mile journey, his eyes were bugged out and his jaw locked tight while both his hands gripped the gunwales so hard that his knuckles were white.
"This boat is awfully small," Floyd said as they motored along.
"It's perfectly safe," Miles said.
"I hope you're right."
"I'm always right."
*****
They went first to Leif Jensen's home. A farmhouse very similar to Miles's family's, it sat at the end of a sunny orchard of young pear trees, a quarter mile up a dirt road that led away from the dock where they'd disembarked. Unfortunately, Birgit Jensen, who was very pregnant with twins and half frantic about her missing husband, had nothing helpful to offer aside from her observation that Leif had seemed preoccupied—"maybe even a bit anxious"—the day before he disappeared. But she figured it was because the family had been struggling over money.
"Even with salmon season in full swing?" Miles had asked.
She explained that there'd been so much competition from other boats the last couple of years, with fewer salmon to catch in the immediate area and salmon prices still low, that her father-in-law had considered moving the whole family out to Sekiu or Westport to be closer to richer fishing grounds where fewer boats operated. "But Lena, my mother-in-law, quashed that idea without giving it a second thought," Birgit said, shaking her head. "She wouldn't hear of it. Said Deer Harbor was her home."
"Are you not on good terms with Lena?"
"Are you on good terms with your mother-in-law?"
"I'm not married."
"Oh—oh, I'm sorry. I tend to assume that men of your age . . . Anyway, I suppose I get along with Lena as well as I have to."
"Most of the fishermen around here still seem to be doing alright," Miles continued. "They may not be making the same money they did a few years ago, but they don't seem alarmed just yet."
"Well, yes, but Leif and his father had also just put a lot of their money into upgrading the boat. I know it made Leif anxious."
"What did they upgrade? The engines?"
"I think so. But Leif doesn't really talk about his work with me."
"Did he have any run-ins with anyone recently?" Miles asked. "Any confrontations?"
"Leif? Heavens, no."
"What about Hans?"
"I wouldn't know. But I doubt it. He's a very gentle soul."
"Who do Hans and Leif associate with?"
She shrugged. "With themselves. With each other. They're not sociable."
"Have you known of either of them to be interacting with any other men at all recently?"
"Just the man at the Friday Harbor fuel dock, and then those little Oriental unloaders over at the cannery wharf."
Birgit appeared genuinely mystified by Leif's disappearance. She said the men probably just fell overboard while trying to pull in a net and were now marooned on some little islet, waiting to be spotted by a passing boat. But there was doubt and fear in her voice. She begged Miles to call her the minute he learned anything. They asked her for a household item that would have Leif's fingerprints on it.
"Why do you need Leif's fingerprints?"
"It helps us identify any prints that aren't his," Floyd said. "It may help us figure out if anyone else was aboard the boat."
"Who else would have been aboard the boat?"
"Well, Mrs. Jensen," Miles said. "That's what we intend to figure out."
She gave them Leif's Lillehammer tobacco pipe on the condition that it be returned when they were done with it. "He will definitely want this back."
Miles again refrained from mentioning the vast quantities of blood or any of the other evidence of mortal violence aboard the Lucky Lena.
*****
Hans Jensen's home was much closer to the Deer Harbor dock, on a tree-shaded lane running parallel to the harbor. Both the front yard and the simple, white house were neat and well-maintained. The paint was bright, and the beds of sweetbriar roses and pink zinnias lining the walk were weedless and abuzz with honeybees. But what Miles could see of the backyard encompassed a ramshackle chicken coop and the disorganized claptrap of commercial fishing: buoys, folded purse nets, a rack of gaffs and wooden booms, a damaged prop laying in the weeds, and, under a tin roof extending out from a tool shed, some sort of machine. Miles shielded his eyes from the sun to get a better look at it. It had a metal framework housing what looked like several brass piston cylinders and gauges, along with large metal flywheels to either side. Flywheels with long handles. Two of the pistons had been removed, and their various parts—large and small—sat on a small workbench next to an assortment of hand tools.
Floyd noticed Miles's stare. "You looking at that metal contraption?" Floyd asked.
"I am."
"What is it?"
"Might be an air pump of some sort. Maybe for that diving suit we found aboard the Lucky Lena. Piston cylinders are all taken apart. Must need new gaskets or valve work or something."
"That shoots holes in your theory, doesn't it?"
"My theory?"
"That the Jensens rented the diving apparatus to scrape seaweed off the hull of their boat. What I mean is, would Hans go to all the trouble of disassembling piston cylinders to make repairs like that if he'd rented the apparatus from someone else?"
"Seems unlikely."
"Ergo, Hans probably owns it," Floyd said as they neared the front door of the house.
"Big investment for a fisherman. Those things cost a small fortune."
"Exactly my point. So why did he buy one?"
Before Miles could give the glossy, pale-yellow front door a knock, it opened to reveal a stern-faced, gray-haired woman in a kitchen apron.
"Mrs. Lena Jensen?"
"Sheriff?"
"Yes, ma'am. And this is officer Ashton Floyd, who is visiting us from Seattle."
"Detective Ashton Floyd, actually," Floyd said, drawing a glare from Miles.
"Have you found Hans?"
"Not yet, ma'am."
"Have you spoken with Leif's wife, Birgit, yet?"
"Yes, ma'am, we have."
"What did she tell you?"
"May we come in?"
She appeared to deliberate for a moment, then, without a word, turned and led them to an austere but spotless parlor where she had them squeeze, side-by-side, into a small and surprisingly rigid loveseat to wait as she went to retrieve a pot of tea.
"Comfortable?" Miles muttered as they sat, crammed together, staring at the same wall.
Floyd grinned. "Feels like this thing is full of gravel."
"I gather she doesn't want us to stay here long."
The room was adorned with little more than lace curtains, a scattering of ceramic cow figurines, and decorative plates depicting Norwegian folk dancers. Yet something told Miles that Lena Jensen wasn't someone who much liked dancing.
Returning, Mrs. Jensen served the tea in her finest bone China, added a small cookie to each saucer, then sat down in a simple wooden chair facing the men.
"Mrs. Jensen," Miles said. "Let me begin by confirming that you still haven't heard from your husband or son."
"Don't you think I would have already told you?"
"Do you have any idea what your husband and son were up to the night before last?"
"Up to?"
"What they were doing."
She sat stone-faced and quiet for several moments, before at last replying, "Fishing."
"At night?"
"Coming back from fishing."
"Do you know where from?" She remained quiet. "Around Salmon Bank or Smith Island, maybe?" he asked, naming major salmon fishing areas in the region. "Haro Strait? Any idea?"
"No."
"Can you think of anyone who might have wished them harm for any reason?"
"No."
She gave the same unexpanded answer to most of the same questions they'd asked Leif's wife, Birgit—concerning whether Hans or Leif had been acting or doing anything at all out of the ordinary recently, whether they were in any sort of financial trouble, whether either of them were gamblers, drinkers, or brawlers, or whether she could think of anything at all that might help in their investigation—even a mere vague suspicion of something. Her replies were uniformly curt, her manner stern. Miles had always thought of Scandinavians as a reticent ethnic group, by and large. But Lena Jensen took it to a new extreme. He might as well have been talking to a brick wall. Until he asked his most direct question yet.
"Mrs. Jensen, do you have any reason to believe that Hans and Leif might have been transporting contraband? Liquor, for example? Or black-market opium?"
For a split second, Lena's face changed ever so slightly. She blinked a few times and pursed her lips. Then her expression quickly returned to normal. "Of course not. And I take the greatest possible exception to your suggestion."
"Question, not suggestion, Mrs. Jensen. And to be perfectly honest, rum running doesn't interest me in the least. Not my jurisdiction. Not my concern. But I do want to figure out what happened so that we can hopefully find your husband and son."
"I don't know anything about what you speak of."
"The potential paydays of rum running would be tempting to anyone. Understandably tempting. Especially to someone who feels responsible for a growing family. Someone who is perhaps under financial strain."
She flared. "Who said anything about financial strain? Birgit? Did she say that?"
"I also ask because we found evidence of Scotch whiskey bottles aboard the Lucky Lena, as well as large bags of salt of the sort rumrunners sometimes use to temporarily sink liquor crates."
Though her face remained colored, after a mute moment, she remastered her emotionless stare. "No. As I said, I don't know anything."
"The boat also has two very new, very costly, very powerful gasoline engines. Fishing boats don't typically have engines like that. They have chug-chugging diesels. It is also equipped with a modern and very expensive radio receiver—another thing you don't often see on fishing boats."
She sniffed. "Hans wanted to convert his fishing boat to a combination workboat so that he could run cargo."
"Very quickly, it seems."
She shrugged.
"What about the fancy radio?"
"I keep house, sheriff."
"I see. Then you probably wouldn't be able to tell us anything about the dive suit and air pump either."
"Dive suit?"
"We found a heavy-duty dive suit on board. There's also what appears to be an air compressor sitting in plain view under your shed roof out back. What was he using those for?"
"I have absolutely no idea. Probably the paraphernalia of yet another one of his crazy . . ." She stopped herself.
The men waited for more. Miles picked up and pretended to examine one of the small cow figurines from the coffee table. Floyd pretended to take notes. They let the silence hang. Let it do its work on Lena.
"Sheriff, my husband is a simple, hard-working man. You're mistaken if you think he's some clever schemer or rumrunner."
Does she mean 'simple' as in uncomplicated, or 'simple' as in dumb? Miles wondered.
The interview was going nowhere. Miles decided to drop a bomb. "There was also quite a lot of blood on board."
Lena's lips tightened and the corners of her mouth turned downward just perceptibly. "Probably just from an accident. It's not unusual for—"
"A lot of blood, Mrs. Jensen."
"I don't . . ." She sat perfectly still. But her eyes had popped wide. Twenty silent seconds ticked by. "If that's all, gentlemen, I have things that must be tended to," she said at last.
"Actually, would you mind if we took a look around?" Miles asked.
"Yes, I would mind."
"May I ask why?"
"This is my home."
"Certainly. But you understand that we're trying to figure out where your husband is, and that we might very well find something here that could aid us?"
"I value my privacy. And I'm certain there is nothing in my home that will tell you where my husband is."
As with Birgit, they asked Lena for an object that would have Hans's fingerprints on it. Floyd suggested a coffee mug. But in Miles's experience, Norwegian housewives of Lena Jensen's sort washed and hand-dried used dishware before it could even so much as be set down in a sink, so he asked for something else. Without any apparent hint of emotion or reluctance, she handed over Hans's expensive looking wooden Hnefatafl game board that she said would have both Hans and Leif's prints because they'd played each other after church every Sunday for many years. She didn't ask that it be returned.
*****
"There was black pepper in those cookies," Floyd said, pulling a face as they left the house.
"It's some traditional Norwegian thing," Miles said. "Not my favorite." He shook his head. "I feel sorry for Hans."
"Maybe he liked pepper cookies."
"No, not because of the awful cookies. Could you imagine being married to that old harpy? I mean, there we are, two complete strangers sitting in her parlor, and without even knowing whether her husband is alive or dead, she's implying that he's a chump who has a habit of blowing the family's money on hair-brained schemes. Poor guy was caught between a rock and a hard place, wasn't he? With that harridan pressing him to make more money, but then flat-out refusing to even consider moving to a town where he might actually be able to make more money at his trade."
"She was being evasive, too," Floyd said. "She knows something."
"Or at least suspects something. Maybe Hans kept her in the dark. But her female intuition tells her that he was definitely up to no good. Let's turn up this alley," Miles said, steering Floyd onto a rutted dirt path that led around the back side of the Jensen's property.
"Where are we going?"
"Hans's tool shed."
"The shed next to that air pump contraption?"
"It's the only shed I saw. I want to get a look inside."
"Why?"
"If I wanted to keep something hidden from my belittling, harridan wife, I'd keep it out back in my tool shed. The man's domain."
"Ah. But wait—you can't just break into his shed."
"I'm sure it won't be that difficult."
"No, I mean you need a warrant."
"A warrant?"
"Under the Fourth Amendment, for a lawful search—"
"I know what a warrant is, Floyd. My question wasn't literal."
"So, then—"
"Floyd, we're on Orcas Island. It's the edge of the world. 50 miles from nowhere. Let's not be anal," he said as they reached the back of the Jensens' property. He walked to where Hans's shed blocked him from direct view from the house, in case Lena happened to look out her back windows. Then he hopped the short picket fence and made his way to the shed's side door. To his relief, it wasn't locked. He turned the knob, gave a gentle shove, and he was in.
The dim interior smelled of dust, burlap, chicken feed, and turpentine, and the only light came from the narrow slit where Miles left the door open a crack. There were well-used garden tools, sacks of feed, jars of nails, hand planes, hammers, various cans of paint and solvent, and one small wooden chest of drawers. Miles went straight to the drawers and began opening them. The first held carving knives and carpenter's pencils. The next, documents. An invoice for 400 fir saplings clipped to a county plat map of a parcel of land just inland from Deer Harbor—perhaps for a Christmas tree farm. Another plat map with arrows and handwriting marking a 'bat cave' up on Mount Woolard, attached to clippings from an outdated U.S. Army index of guano acquisition prices—guano being something the Army once used as a source of saltpeter for its gunpowder. Finally, there were sketches of some sort of rope and pulley mechanism—possibly a hoist Hans intended to install on his boat.
The third drawer contained another sheaf of papers. A nautical chart, an outdated tide chart, and at least a dozen old newspaper clippings. The nautical chart, which covered Haro Strait and D'Arcy Island, was covered with pencil marks. Areas circled, then crossed out and marked with specific dates. Scribbled mathematical calculations. Times and tides. Wind speeds. Depths. As for the newspaper clippings, they all dealt with a single topic.
*****
"What topic?" Floyd asked, eyeballing the nautical chart Miles had burgled as they neared the Deer Harbor dock.
"The wreck of the RMS Empress of Burma. A steamship that was headed from Vladivostok, Russia to Vancouver in 1918. It wandered out of the Haro Strait shipping lanes in the late-night darkness, then tore its hull open on the kelp reefs off D'Arcy Island and sank. Somewhere around here," he said, pointing to an area on the chart east of D'Arcy Island.
"I remember reading about that in the Seattle Times."
"This tide chart covers the week of the sinking," Miles added. "It happened when I was over in France. Missed the whole circus. Fortunately, several other vessels were near enough to answer the distress signal, and all but two of the 380-odd passengers and crew were rescued."
"You figure Hans had some kind of salvage scheme in mind?"
"It would explain why he has a deep diving suit and air pump. But to my knowledge, nobody knows exactly where the wreck went down. The ship's forward momentum and a fast-running tide took it into a fog bank as it was sinking. By dawn, there was no trace of her. She's probably in relatively deep water."
"This chart says the area east of D'Arcy is only 115 feet deep."
"115 fathoms deep. That's almost 700 feet."
"Oh. Then why on earth would Hans go to the trouble? A lost wreck, possibly in water so deep nobody could dive to it. What's the point? What's his angle?"
"I don't know. But nobody really knows how deep the wreck is. Maybe it's in shallower waters after all."
