CHAPTER TEN #2
Spencer laughed gruffly. “Because I can be charming when I want to be, Declan. I know how to get people to open up to me.”
I had to grudgingly admit he had a point. I’d started out thinking he was trouble and should be avoided, then I’d fallen into bed with him because I found him so appealing.
I said stiffly, “So you were at the Rusty Anchor trying to pump Gil for information. What happened? I doubt he spilled his guts to you.”
“No, but you’d be surprised how much he did tell me.” He looked smug. “He was very drunk, and he basically admitted the money he’s using to buy the boat came from somewhere he doesn’t want people knowing about.”
“He told you that?” I asked, shocked.
“No, but he told me he’d figured out a way to get the money, and then he did this little shushing gesture, like it was a secret.”
“A secret doesn’t equal illegal.”
“Right, but it does kind of imply it might be.” Spencer’s eyes glittered. “And then I got hit by a car walking home from the Rusty Anchor.”
My gaze sharpened. “You think those things are connected?”
He gave a half shrug. “Not necessarily. But I think the timing is interesting.”
The thought that Spencer had been poking around and that someone might have intentionally tried to kill him by running him over was concerning. I had no proof, but I agreed with him that the timing was suspicious, especially given how much he’d been openly asking questions.
I needed to find out who was still at the Rusty Anchor after Spencer left that night.
If Gil had conveniently walked out right after him, that was something I couldn’t ignore.
It didn’t make him guilty, but it gave me a place to start.
I also wanted to take a look at Gil’s vehicle, see if there was any visible damage that might line up with a hit-and-run.
If nothing else, I could ask him about his whereabouts and see how his story held up.
I rubbed my jaw, processing what Spencer had just told me.
I wasn’t sure how it fit with what I knew about Craig being out on the water the night Eddie died.
Then again, Craig had said he couldn’t find Eddie.
That Eddie hadn’t been where he usually fished.
Could that be because Eddie had been fishing somewhere he wasn’t supposed to?
“Did he tell you anything else you think I should know?” I asked.
He smiled slyly. “See, this information is useful, right? It could maybe help you solve your case.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
He laughed and then pressed his hand to his ribs. “Ouch.”
“But that doesn’t mean I want you to keep asking questions,” I warned.
He gave me a surly look. “Luckily, that’s not up to you.”
I let out a harsh breath. “Spencer, come on. Let me do my job. Just focus on getting better.”
He studied me, his blue eyes conflicted. “If there’s a story there, I can’t just ignore it, Declan, anymore than you can ignore if there’s a crime. You may not think what I do is important, but I do.”
“I never once said what you do isn’t important.” I moved closer to him and I took his hand in mine. “I don’t even think that, Spencer.”
“But you want me to pretend I don’t see something I see. That’s bullshit.” Despite his angry tone, he didn’t pull his hand away.
“I just don’t want anything to happen to you,” I admitted. “If Eddie was murdered, whoever did it is dangerous. I don’t know if your accident was connected or not, but if it was, that means they have you in their sights.”
He swallowed. “I’ll be careful.”
“Sometimes that’s not enough. Not when you’re dealing with someone who’s ruthless. Scared. Impulsive.”
He sighed. “I can’t just stop, Declan, not if I hear something. I won’t go looking for trouble, okay? But if something falls in my lap, I’m not going to ignore it.”
My stomach churned as I said, “Then I guess I better hurry up and solve my case before you get in anymore trouble.”
* * *
The next morning, I woke Spencer before I left for work. I sat on the edge of the bed and gently touched his shoulder. He opened his eyes, looking confused at first, then he smiled when he recognized me.
“Good morning.” His voice was husky.
“Morning. I’m going to work now. There’s leftover pasta in the fridge if you get hungry. Call me if you need anything, okay?”
“Okay.” He pulled the covers up to his chin. “But I think I’ll mostly just sleep today.”
I frowned. “Try to eat something.”
“I will,” he said drowsily. “After I sleep.”
I leaned down and kissed him, and he surprised me when he grabbed hold of the front of my shirt, deepening the kiss. I laughed against his mouth, and when the kiss ended, I straightened. “You’re the horniest invalid I’ve ever known.”
“How many have you known?” he mumbled, closing his eyes.
I laughed and stood. “I’ll call you later.”
“Okay.” His voice was muffled by the blankets.
I left the house, making sure the door locked behind me.
At the station, I pulled up everything I had on the Pacific Lady and spread it across my desk.
The case file was getting thick. Autopsy report.
Interview transcripts. Camera footage summaries.
Craig Barlow’s statement. Lena Castillo’s witness account.
And now, thanks to Spencer, a theory I hadn’t considered: illegal fishing.
I started with the catch logs.
The ice house kept a chalkboard where fishermen logged their hauls, but there were also paper records going back months. The harbor was old-fashioned that way. I called Ray and asked if he could pull the logs for the Pacific Lady going back three months. He said he’d have them ready by lunch.
While I waited, I turned to the GPS unit.
The trip data for the night Eddie died had been wiped.
But the previous weeks of data were still on the unit.
I’d noted the wipe early in the investigation but hadn’t dug into the older data because, at the time, I didn’t know what I was looking for. Now I did.
I pulled up the trip history on my laptop, coordinates and timestamps for every trip the Pacific Lady made in the three months before Eddie’s death.
It was dense, a long list of dates and numbers that didn’t mean much on their own.
I needed to know which coordinates corresponded to restricted waters.
The numbers meant nothing without a map.
For that, I’d need help. I called the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and got transferred twice before reaching a field officer named Gutierrez, who sounded bored.
I explained what I needed: a map of restricted fishing zones along the northern Oregon coast, overlaid with the coordinates from the Pacific Lady’s GPS.
“You’re looking at poaching?” Gutierrez asked, suddenly more interested.
“I’m looking at a homicide. The poaching might be connected.”
“Send me the coordinates. I’ll have something for you by end of day.”
I emailed the data and turned to the catch logs Ray had delivered while I was on the phone. He’d dropped them off with Bree, a stack of photocopied pages organized by date. I spread them across my desk and started cross-referencing.
The logs showed which days Eddie and Gil had brought in catch together versus days only one of them had logged a haul. For most of the three months, the pattern was consistent: Eddie and Gil went out together, logged their catch together, split the proceeds. Standard partnership.
But scattered through the records were days when only Gil had logged a haul. No Eddie. These weren’t frequent, maybe one a week, but they were there. On those days, Gil’s catches were noticeably larger than the catches he logged on partnership days. A two-man haul from a one-man trip.
That didn’t make sense. If Gil was fishing alone on a boat rigged for two, his catches should have been smaller, not bigger.
He’d be working fewer pots, covering less ground.
Unless he was fishing in areas where the catch was more plentiful.
Areas that were more plentiful because they were protected.
I called Ray.
“Ray, quick question. On the days when Gil logged catches without Eddie, was there any pattern there? Like, was it always a certain day of the week?”
Ray was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, now that you mention it. He’d take the boat out on days when Eddie was off. I didn’t think much of it. Partners fish solo sometimes.”
“How often would you say that happened?”
“Once a week, maybe. Eddie only took one day off a week.”
“Did Eddie ever mention anything about those solo trips?”
Another pause. “No.”
So Gil had been taking the boat out without telling Eddie.
If Eddie had noticed and wasn’t happy about it, he wouldn’t necessarily have said anything to Ray.
But Eddie might have checked the GPS to see where Gil had been going, and he would’ve found coordinates that didn’t match their usual fishing grounds.
Would he have gone out to see exactly where Gil had been fishing?
Gutierrez from Fish and Wildlife called back at 5:30 p.m.
“Chief Hale, I’ve got your overlay. You want the good news or the bad news?”
“Give me both.”
“The good news is your GPS data is very clean. Clear coordinates, consistent timestamps. Whoever was using that unit wasn’t trying to hide their routes on the earlier trips.
” He paused. “The bad news, depending on how you look at it, is that on fourteen separate occasions over the past three months, the Pacific Lady entered Oregon Marine Reserve waters. Specifically, the zone off Cascade Head. That’s a no-take area.
No commercial fishing, no crabbing, no exceptions.
Whoever was running that boat in there was operating illegally. ”
“Fourteen times?”
“Fourteen that I can see from the data you sent. Could be more if there were trips that didn’t log or if someone deleted specific entries.”
I thanked him and hung up. Then I pulled out the catch logs again and cross-referenced the fourteen dates Gutierrez had flagged with the haul records. Every single one of those dates was a day when only Gil had logged a catch. Eddie’s name wasn’t on any of them.
I sat back in my chair. The picture was coming into focus, and it wasn’t pretty.
Gil Moran had been taking the Pacific Lady into restricted waters, fishing illegally, and selling the catch.
He’d been doing it solo, on days when Eddie wasn’t on the boat.
The catches were bigger because protected waters were teeming with crab that nobody else was allowed to touch.
That’s where the money was coming from. Not savings.
Not investments. Illegal catch from a marine reserve.
And maybe Eddie had found out. Rosa had said Eddie wasn’t sleeping, that he’d been upset about something with Gil. At some point, Eddie must have checked the GPS himself and seen the same thing I was seeing now: coordinates in protected waters on days he knew he hadn’t been on the boat.
Maybe Eddie had confronted Gil. Perhaps that was what the fight had been about.
Not the affair with Tess, although that might have added fuel to the fire.
It made more sense, though, that the real issue, the thing that was keeping Eddie up at night and making him cold on the phone with Gil, was that his partner and lifelong friend was breaking the law with their shared boat.
Gil had endangered all that Eddie and he had built.
If Gil had been caught, he wouldn’t be the only one going down.
Eddie would have taken the fall with him.
Eddie wouldn’t have let that slide. He’d have wanted to do the right thing.
He’d have wanted to protect his name, reputation, and his family’s livelihood.
The question was what happened next. Maybe Eddie threatened to report Gil. That gave Gil a motive. If Eddie reported the poaching, Gil would lose his fishing license, face criminal charges, and the partnership would be destroyed. Gil’s life would be destroyed.
What was confusing was that Eddie’s death had damaged Gil anyway.
He’d lost access to the boat, the permits, everything.
Would a man running a profitable poaching operation destroy his own infrastructure?
I supposed if Eddie was threatening to report him, Gil wouldn’t have had anything to lose.
If Eddie had turned him in, he’d have lost everything anyway.
With Eddie out of the way, now Gil could buy the boat from Rosa with his ill-gotten gains and keep doing what he’d been doing.
Before long, he’d have recouped what he spent buying the boat.
He’d be flush with cash again, and Eddie wouldn’t be around to ruin the fun.
Gil would be home free to rake in as much money as he wanted, and no one would be the wiser.
But then Spencer had started asking questions. Even if Spencer had thought he was being subtle, it was possible Gil had realized he’d said too much to him that night at the Rusty Anchor. Had he gone after Spencer to make sure he didn’t share what he’d heard with anyone else?
I had to talk to Gil. Had to see his car and check if there was any visible damage to it. If he thought Spencer was a threat, I couldn’t just let him run loose. He might try again to silence Spencer.
One thing that kept nagging at me, though, was why Craig had said Eddie was sleeping with Tess. Had he just made that up, or had she lied to protect Gil? One of them was lying. That didn’t make either of them killers, though.
I poured over all the paperwork and GPS information for the next four hours, looking for any details I might have missed.
Eventually, my brain was overloaded, and I closed the case file and turned off my desk lamp.
It was almost 10:00 p.m. Spencer was probably asleep.
I wanted to go by his place to check on him, but felt guilty about Scout.
I’d left him alone yesterday and all night.
Spencer was probably fine. He was a grown man, and he didn’t need me to babysit him. Scout, however, actually did need me. So I left my office and went home to my lonely dog. Tomorrow, I’d pick up where I’d left off.