CHAPTER TWO
Declan
Dispatch had relayed a possible fatality at the harbor: fishing vessel, caller reported a body on board.
I grabbed my windbreaker and was in the SUV in under a minute.
Officer Bree Nakamura was two minutes behind me.
The rest of my department, all four of them, would trickle in over the next hour.
Small-town policing. You worked with what you had.
The harbor was fogged in when I arrived.
I could smell the diesel and the brine before I could see the water, and I had to park at the top of the lot and walk down because an ambulance and fire truck had already claimed the access road.
Paramedics were on the dock. A knot of fishermen stood near the ice house, arms crossed, looking grim.
The boat with the body had been towed to the main dock.
I pulled on gloves and stepped onto the Pacific Lady.
First, I walked the entire deck, scanning for anything that seemed out of place.
I then entered the wheelhouse, thoroughly checking all the electronics.
I frowned when I realized the GPS unit had been wiped.
Had that simply been an electronic glitch of some kind, or had someone purposely purged the system?
Next, stomach churning, I focused on Eddie’s body.
Eddie was slumped against the console, listing to his right, one arm hanging.
There was a wound above his right temple, deep enough to see the white edge of bone.
Blood on his face, his shirt, the console behind him.
I’d already observed that there was blood on the gunwale on the port side, roughly midship, and on the deck below it.
The smear pattern suggested he’d gone down there first and then moved, or been moved, to the wheelhouse.
The paramedics estimated he’d been dead around seven hours. Rigor was setting in.
The story the scene wanted to tell was simple: Eddie hit his head on the gunwale, probably lost his footing in rough water, stumbled to the wheelhouse trying to get help, and died. An accident. A senseless tragedy.
I had trouble buying it.
Three things bothered me. First, the blood on the gunwale.
The impact point was on the flat top edge, which meant Eddie would have had to fall sideways with considerable force to hit it at that angle.
Not impossible on a rocking boat, but by all accounts the seas had been moderate last night.
Three-foot swells, light wind. Not the kind of conditions that threw experienced fishermen off their feet.
Second, the GPS unit in the wheelhouse had been wiped for that day.
The screen was on, but the trip history was blank.
No route data, no waypoints, no record of where the boat had been in the last twenty-four hours.
Fishermen lived by their GPS. It was how they found their pots, how they tracked their routes, how they avoided the rocks and shoals that could gut a hull in bad visibility.
Wiping it was odd. I couldn’t think of a reason Eddie would have done that, but I could think of several reasons why someone else might.
Third, and this was the thing that bothered me the most, Eddie’s hands.
They were clean. No rope burns, no scrapes, no defensive wounds.
If he’d lost his footing on a rocking deck and gone sideways into the gunwale hard enough to crack his skull, his hands would show it.
You grab for something on the way down. It’s reflex.
Eddie hadn’t grabbed for anything, and there were lots of things he could have grasped.
Which meant either he was unconscious before he fell, or he hadn’t fallen at all.
I crouched next to the body and studied the wound.
Clean edges, concentrated impact. I wasn’t a medical examiner, but I’d seen enough head wounds to know this didn’t look like a typical fall.
The impact was too clean, too focused, like he’d hit that edge with force instead of just losing his footing.
I’d need the ME to confirm it, but my gut was already there.
Standing, I looked over the port side gunwale, down at the waterline.
Nothing obvious. No marks on the hull, no paint transfer, nothing to suggest a collision with another vessel or a fixed object.
The boat was intact. Whatever had happened to Eddie, it had happened on this deck, and I didn’t believe the ocean was to blame.
I waved Bree over. She was on the dock, managing the perimeter, doing a good job of it without being told. That was one of the things I’d noticed about her in my three months here. She didn’t need to be told how to do her job. I valued that.
“Get crime scene tape up,” I said. “Full perimeter. Nobody on or off this boat without my say-so.”
She nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And tell the harbor master I’d like to talk to him again. I need to know what time this boat left last night and when it came back in.”
* * *
Ray Tillman, the harbor master, told me that Eddie had taken the Pacific Lady out the previous evening around seven.
It had been a solo trip, which Ray said was unusual but not unheard of.
Gil Moran, Eddie’s fishing partner, usually went out with him, but Gil had told Eddie he wasn’t feeling well. So Eddie had gone out alone.
“What time did the boat come back in?” I asked.
Ray shook his head. “I wasn’t here. I close up at 9:00 p.m. She must have drifted in on the incoming tide this morning. That reporter found her.”
“Which reporter?”
“I forget his name. He works for the Beacon. He was down here early, working on some story.” Ray paused. “He’s the one who called it in. Came and got me out of my office.”
I made a note to talk to the reporter. Witnesses who found bodies always needed to be interviewed, reporter or not. But that could wait. I had more pressing things.
“Tell me about Eddie,” I said. “Any problems? Anyone he was having trouble with?”
Ray was quiet for a moment. He was a big man, weathered and solid, the kind of person who weighed his words. “Eddie was good people,” he said finally. “Everybody liked him. Reliable, honest, didn’t cause trouble.”
“But?”
Ray rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s a guy named Dale Pruitt. Another fisherman. He and Eddie had a thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
Ray grimaced. “Eddie outbid Dale for a crabbing permit a couple seasons back. Dale took it personal. He’s been running his mouth about it ever since. Made some threats at the Rusty Anchor. The usual fisherman bullshit, probably. But Dale’s got a temper.”
“Oh yeah?” I frowned. “How much of a temper?”
“Enough that people noticed. He was down here this morning, standing in the parking lot. But then again, most of the town was here when they heard the news.”
“True.” I didn’t share that it would have been more suspicious if Dale Pruitt hadn’t made an appearance.
“I think Dale is still here if you want to talk to him.”
“I’ll find him in a minute.” I hesitated. “Did Eddie’s wife call you when he didn’t come home?”
“No.” He grimaced. “Like I said, I left here at 9:00 p.m. But she wouldn’t have called because Eddie was doing an overnight run. He’d have told Rosa that. She wouldn’t have expected to hear from him until morning.”
“Was it unusual for Eddie to do overnight runs?”
Ray pursed his lips. “He didn’t do them as much as he used to, but he had done a few the last few weeks.”
I glanced out toward the open waters. “Why would he stay out all night?”
Ray shrugged. “Some trips, especially checking pots in certain areas or fishing for certain species, are overnight runs. The guys leave in the evening, fish through the night, come back in the morning.”
“Got it.” If Ray didn’t think it was weird Eddie had planned on staying out all night, there was probably nothing there. “As the harbor master, do you keep a detailed schedule of when the boats go out?”
He lifted his brows. “God, no. That would probably drive me crazy. Commercial fishermen in Oregon aren’t required to file trip plans with the harbor master.”
“Okay, I wasn’t sure if maybe it was like at the airport where they file flight plans.”
“No, there’s nothing formal in place. I mean, as the harbor master, I generally know who’s going out and roughly when. Fishermen check in with me out of habit, mention where they’re headed. But it’s casual, not regulated. Nobody has to file paperwork.”
That was a shame. With the GPS wiped, if Ray had known exactly where Eddie was going, that might have proved useful.
I asked Ray a few more questions about the harbor, the boats, who else might have been around the previous night. He gave me what he had, which wasn’t much. I thanked him and let him go.
I found Dale in the parking lot, exactly where Ray said he’d be.
Standing by a rust-colored pickup truck, arms crossed, jaw tight.
He was a thick man, mid-forties, with the kind of permanent sunburn that fishermen always had.
He watched me approach with an expression that was already defensive.
Was he just paranoid, or did he have something to hide?
“Mr. Pruitt? I’m Chief Hale. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“I figured you would,” he said. “Everybody’s been giving me dirty looks all morning like I did something to Eddie.”
“Why would they think that?”
His eyes went flat. “I have no idea. I assume what happened to Eddie was an accident.”
“We don’t know for sure what happened yet. Naturally, since I wasn’t there when Eddie died, I have to look at this from all angles and consider all possibilities.” I pushed my hands into my pockets, studying Dale’s surly face. “Where were you last night?”
He narrowed his eyes. “See, now when you ask me something like that, it makes me uncomfortable.”
“Why?” I frowned.
“Because it’s like you’re asking me for an alibi.”
I sighed. “I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that I’ve heard you had a problem with Eddie. I’ve also heard you have a reputation for having a bad temper.”