Lying in wait

2

Decks of commercial fishing vessels make for treacherous going in the best of times. Now maneuvering on the Isolde 's deck was downright dangerous. It was covered with water topped by a layer of slick, oily slime that left zero traction and made walking hazardous. We waded our way forward past the last of the grim-faced firemen who were wrestling with an impossible tangle of hoses.

One of the firefighters caught my eye. "Good luck, fella," he said, just loud enough for me to hear him. I wasn't entirely sure what he meant, but I had a pretty good idea.

I smelled it almost as soon as I stepped on deck-an odor not unlike that of baked ham. As we neared the entrance to the fo'c'sle, the combination of residual smoke and charred rubber and wiring obscured the unmistakable odor of cooked human flesh.

The shattered hatchway door was the first thing I noticed. In an effort to reach the fire, someone-a fireman, most likely-had broken the hatch-splintered the middle of it, probably with an ax. But the edge of the door was still attached to the frame, held there by a metal hasp over which dangled a still-locked padlock. That padlock had been locked in place prior to the fire, by someone standing outside the closed hatch.

Janice and the others had gone on ahead, climbing over the sill of the hatch and disappearing down into the inside gloom. I paused outside long enough to jot a note, reminding myself to mention to Janice that the padlock as well as the remains of the hatch should be checked for fingerprints in case any had managed to survive both the fire and the firefighting.

Men my size aren't built for fishing boats any more than we're built for airplanes. I whacked my head on the hatch cover as I stepped down onto a makeshift metal ladder that had been placed in the companionway. The temporary ladder replaced the permanent one that, if not too badly charred, might well retain some critical fingerprints of its own.

Down in the darkened galley, with the interior lit only by the shallow light coming in through a fire-ax-created skylight, and with the water sloshing around my ankles, I found myself staring at a hellish scene.

It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The fire hadn't burned long enough or hot enough for flesh to come off the bones. What I saw through the thick, smoke-dense air, was the still-recognizable form of an extraordinarily large man lying faceup on what was evidently the triangular, three-legged galley table. The cheeks of his face were strangely distended, like someone gathering up a mouthful of wind to blow out candles on a birthday cake.

It's funny what will strike you as odd in a situation like that. The first thing I thought about was a damn birthday cake. The second thing was the table.

Why was the victim lying on the table? I wondered. It didn't make sense for someone to be there. In bed? Yes. I could understand that perfectly. And I could see how someone might end up on the deck, especially if they were crawling on their hands and knees in an effort to avoid smoke and flames.

"What's he doing on the table?" I asked, moving forward to stand beside Sue Danielson, who had been next-to-last and who stood just ahead of me in line.

"Handcuffs," she replied, her voice tight and strained.

I saw them then, too. Three pairs of handcuffs, in fact. The man's shoulders were broad enough so that they almost covered the wide end of the three-cornered table, the part that was nearest the door. Bent at the elbow, his powerful forearms hung down beside and were fastened to the two chrome legs that supported the table's surface. Both wrists were secured to the table legs by locked metal cuffs. His legs dangled off on either side of the narrow part of the triangle with the ankles fastened together with cuffs just inside the table's third chrome leg.

Whoever had put the man there had meant for him to stay in exactly that spot. Permanently.

"Look at this," Marian Rockwell said, coming full circle around the far side of the galley so she was back behind me. Using a flashlight, she pointed to something in the sink. "The firefighter who found him said this was on the victim's chest. He had to move it so he could check vitals."

We had come in single file. Since I was the last one in line, I was also the person closest to the sink. What I saw was a metal plate of some kind-a pie plate, maybe-with what looked like so many pieces of charred hot dog lying in the bottom.

"What is it?" I asked stupidly, squinting through the dim light.

"I think it's his fingers and toes," Marian Rockwell said in a hushed tone. "All twenty of them. I think they were cut off while he was still alive and left where he could see them. In fact, they were probably the very last thing he could see."

That announcement was followed by stunned silence. Homicide cops can't afford to be queasy, but right then a rebellious bubble of morning coffee rose dangerously in my throat. Behind me one of my cohorts made a strange, strangled noise that sounded very much like someone attempting to stifle an overwhelming urge to gag.

After first letting her breath go out in a carefully controlled whoosh, Janice Morraine was the one who spoke. "Okay, folks," she said. "Let's get the hell out of here. No one touches anything at all until after we get the police photographer down here to take pictures."

Her order was one we were all only too happy to obey. From a crime-scene-investigation standpoint, that was the only sensible solution. Too many people in a confined area at once are bound to disrupt things. In a crowd like that, someone can easily, if inadvertently, destroy a critical piece of evidence.

But it was also a good call in terms of people. We were every one professionals in a world where evidence of man's inhumanity to man is business as usual. But the idea of cutting off some poor guy's fingers and toes and then leaving him to burn to death went far beyond the range of mere murder. This was murder with all the trimmings-murder with mayhem and mutilation thrown in for good measure. We all needed a chance to decompress.

This time I led the way. After climbing back up the ladder, I stood by the smashed hatch and offered each of the four women a gentlemanly hand up as they followed me out. Only Marian Rockwell, agile as a cat, refused my offer.

Once she, too, was out of the fo'c'sle, Janice Morraine resumed command. She herded us all off the boat and onto the wooden pier.

"I want undisturbed pictures of the entire boat before anyone else goes back on deck," she said. "Somebody call downtown and see where the hell that damned photographer is. He should be here by now. Anybody got a cigarette?"

While she and Sue Danielson set about lighting up, I marched purposefully off down the dock, intent on tracking down Janice Morraine's missing photographer. I didn't have to go far. The "he" in question turned out to be another she-Nancy Gresham, a talented young woman who has been taking pictures for the Seattle Police Department for several years now. I met her hurrying down the dock, carrying her camera and a box of equipment.

She turned down my gentlemanly offer to carry her case. "Don't bother," she said. "I can manage."

"Suit yourself."

Nancy looked up into my eyes. "I was talking to one of the firemen on the way in," she said. "How bad is it?"

"About as bad as I ever remember," I told her.

"Coming from you, that's saying something," she returned.

"I guess it is," I agreed. And it was.

She continued on down the dock toward the Isolde, and I made as if to follow her, but Officer Casey, one of the patrol officers, came puffing down the dock. "Hey, Detective Beaumont," he said. "We've got a little problem here."

"What's that?"

He motioned with his head back down the dock to where another officer was manning the barricade. "There's a woman down there," he said.

"A woman?" I returned, trying to inject a little humor into what was an impossibly humorless situation. "Why would that be a problem? The place seems to be crawling with them. They're all doing their jobs."

Casey looked uncomfortable. "I know," he said in a way that told me he had missed the joke entirely. "You don't understand. She says she's his wife."

"Whose wife?"

"The dead man's," Casey answered. "Or at least I guess it's him. She says her husband is the owner of the boat. She wants to go on board. When I told her that was impossible, she went ballistic on me. Would you come talk to her, Detective Beaumont? Please?"

I followed Casey back down to the barricade, where a young officer named Robert Tamaguchi was arguing with a heavyset woman who towered over the diminutive officer by a good foot. Long before I reached the end of the dock, I heard the sound of raised voices.

"What do you mean, I can't go on board?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Officer Tamaguchi insisted placatingly, keeping his voice calm, reasonable, and businesslike. "This is a police matter. No one at all is allowed on board."

"A police matter!" the woman repeated indignantly. "You don't understand. The Isolde is my husband's boat. My boat. I want to see what's happened to it. You have no right…"

I walked over to the barricade. "Mrs. Gebhardt?" I asked uncertainly.

A tall, thick-waisted woman with fierce, bright blue eyes and a long woolen coat to match looked angrily away from Tamaguchi and zeroed in on me.

"I want to know exactly what's going on here," she declared. "I understand there's been a fire. I can see that. But why won't this policeman let me see what's happened to my own boat? And where's Gunter? He has to be here somewhere. His truck was out front in the lot."

Behind the woman's heavy, angry features, there was a hint of someone I recognized, the shadow of someone I knew but couldn't quite place.

"And who are you?" she demanded shrilly. "Are you in charge, or should I talk to someone else? One way or the other, I'm going to find out what's happened."

Two distinct red splotches of irritation and anger spread out from both prominent cheekbones. With nostrils flaring and both hands glued to her hips, she looked fully prepared to take on all comers. She glowered at me, waiting for me to let her have her own way.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, Mrs. Gebhardt," I said quietly, moving toward her, reaching in my pocket, pulling out my I.D. I held it up to her, but she stared across it without ever allowing her eyes to leave my face.

"What kind of bad news?"

"A dead man was found on board your boat about an hour ago now. It's possible he's your husband."

One hand flew unconsciously to her breast. "His heart," she murmured, eyes wide. "It must have been Gunter's heart. I've told him time and again that he had to lose weight. I tried to tell him it was bad for him to go on living the way he always had with all that butter on his bread and all those mashed potatoes. I tried to tell him he needed to go to the doctor to be checked out, get some exercise…"

"I'm afraid it wasn't like that at all," I said.

"Wasn't like what?"

"The man on the boat didn't die of a heart attack, Mrs. Gebhardt. We believe he was murdered."

"Murdered!" she echoed in shocked disbelief. "That can't be."

"But it is. The investigators are down there now-taking photographs, gathering evidence."

"Else…" someone said tentatively behind her.

Mrs. Gebhardt spun around. A man stepped up out of the clutch of fishermen behind her. He was tall and lean and wearing a blue baseball-style cap with a Ballard Oil Company logo on the front. Worn Levis were held in place by a pair of wide red suspenders. The arms of his faded, still vaguely plaid flannel shirt were cut off halfway between the elbows and wrist.

"Alan?" she wailed in despair, moving toward him as she spoke. "Did you hear what he said? This man says Gunter may be dead. It isn't true, is it? It can't be true!"

"I didn't say we knew for sure," I corrected. "It is her husband's boat, though, and there is a dead man on board."

Else Gebhardt fell against the newcomer's chest. He gathered her to him with one hand and whipped off the cap with the other. As soon as he did so, I recognized him, even after all the intervening years. Alan Torvoldsen's ducktail was missing. In fact, only the smallest fringe of russet-colored hair remained in a two-inch-wide border from just over his ears and around the base of his skull.

"Al?" I said doubtfully. "Alan Torvoldsen? Is that you?"

He cocked his head momentarily, then a broad grin creased his face. "Beaumont? I'll be damned if it isn't J. P. Beaumont! Damned if it isn't!" He slapped the cap back on his balding head and then reached out to pump my hand. "What the hell are you doing here?"

I held out my I.D. close enough so he could see it, and he nodded. "That's it," he said. "You're a cop. I remember seeing the name in the papers. I kinda wondered if it wasn't you."

"It's me, all right," I said.

And then I looked at Else Gebhardt, sobbing brokenheartedly on Alan Torvoldsen's shoulder. I remembered Else Didricksen then; remembered her from years gone by as a tall, slender girl-a talented athlete in the days long before there had been any collegiate basketball programs for girls. There were few girl players back then, and even fewer scholarships.

I remembered that Else had started school at the U-Dub, as locals affectionately call the University of Washington, two years ahead of me, but I didn't remember ever seeing her on campus once I arrived there, nor did I remember hearing that she had finished.

"Else?" I asked. "Is this Else Didricksen?"

"Yeah," Alan murmured. "Look who it is, Else," he said, taking the weeping woman by the shoulders and bodily turning her around to face me.

"You remember this guy, don't you, Else?" Alan continued. "Jonas Beaumont. He was just a little pipsqueak of a sophomore the year we were seniors, but he was already a damn fine basketball player. Give him the ball, and he could run and jump like a damn jackrabbit."

Else Gebhardt looked up at me. "BoBo?" she said uncertainly.

It was the name that one year's batch of cheerleaders had stuck me with-a relic I had thought buried in my past right along with my given name of Jonas.

"That's right," I admitted reluctantly. "BoBo Beaumont. It's me, all right."

Although her bright blue eyes were wild with grief, Else Gebhardt smiled at me through her tears. Her hands sought mine. "Please, BoBo," she pleaded. "Just let me on the boat long enough to see if it's Gunter. I have to know."

"I'm not sure you should go anywhere near it," I answered dubiously. "The man on board-if he is your husband-has been burned very badly. You may not even be able to recognize him."

"I'll recognize him all right," she said determinedly.

In the end, we compromised. At my direction, the two uniformed officers reluctantly allowed both Else Gebhardt and Alan Torvoldsen past the crime-scene perimeter and onto the dock. I figured there wasn't that much of a problem. It didn't seem the least bit likely that Janice Morraine would allow Gunter Gebhardt's widow access to the burned-out boat, and I was right about that. Janice didn't.

While Else waited on the dock, Janice Morraine brought one of Nancy Gresham's police photos over to the side of the boat. The grisly Polaroid close-up she handed over to Else showed nothing but the dead man's face. For a long moment after Janice placed the small color photo in Else's hand, she didn't look down at it. Once she was actually holding the proof she had demanded, it seemed as though she couldn't quite summon the courage to look at it.

At last, though, she dropped her gaze and held the picture out far enough from her so she could see it clearly. Time seemed to stand still on the dock. There was no sound at all and no movement. Then Else Gebhardt's features seemed to fall out of focus, and she fainted dead away.

Luckily, Alan Torvoldsen was there to catch her. I'm not sure anyone of the rest of us could have managed. None of the rest of us were strong enough-with the possible exception of Marian Rockwell.