The First Victim

CHAPTER 75

The constant coming and going had worn a trail through the rust and corrosion on the trawler’s deck, beating a path around to the far side where any opening of a hatch or door was fully blocked from view of land. Even from across Salmon Bay, because of the trawler’s angle in the graveyard, there was no chance of anyone being seen using this entrance. Coughlie had found himself the perfect hideaway.

The ship’s deck vibrated underfoot like a kitchen appliance. She left the worn route and found her way along the determined shadow on the port side, moving incredibly slowly, every pore in her body alert, every hair at attention. She passed one door after another, having no idea where she was or which to use, and it was only her reporter’s eye that finally spotted the fresh litter of cigarette butts accumulated around one particular door at her feet, causing her to stop and press her ear to this door.

A confusing rumble filled her head, the clatter louder but distant. She looked up to see the tractor trailer truck backing down between two rows in the boatyard. The trailer stopped just on the other side of the chain-link gate and the air brakes hissed.

She eased down on the levered handle and it moved, and she pulled the door open no more than it took to aim her eye inside.

The pitch-black foreground was accompanied by a warm yellow light to her left. She gathered her courage and slipped quickly inside, pressing her back to the cold metal and holding her breath for the benefit of her hearing. Blood pulsed so loudly in her ears that she heard nothing else. She stayed flat against the wall while her eyes adjusted to the limited light and her ears to the distant sounds. Although at first she thought she was in a room, she was in fact in some kind of hallway; the yellow light came from yet another passageway at the end. She gathered her courage and slowly walked toward that light, each footfall feeling like a lifetime, her mind cluttered with memory and thought to the point of confusion. She fought to clear her head but won little ground, conscious thought subverted by whatever process demands reflection at such moments. She saw her father, Melissa, Su-Su. She saw the studio set.

At the end of the long passageway she came across a narrow stairway leading down into the guts of the ship. An aluminum work light hung from an orange extension cord strung through the overhead metal beam at the bottom of the stairs. Stevie stood there, reluctant to descend, to risk putting herself into that light. But at last there seemed no choice in the matter.

She knew enough about ships to know that they were comprised of companionways, passageways, cabins, staterooms, holds, heads and galleys. But to her the trawler was a labyrinth of poorly lit gray steel corridors and steep ladder stairways, one leading to the other, leading to the next, lined with pipes and filled with the occasionally deafening groan of industry. The way they all connected seemed somebody’s joke. For the most part, she followed the string of lights-crudely fashioned extension cords and bare bulbs strung at random, stretching shadows along the walls and turning a simple hallway into something at once both terrifying and mysterious. The farther she ventured, the less likely it seemed to her she would ever find her way out. And if those lights were to fail. .

When there’s nowhere else to go, try moving forward, Su-Su had once advised. She trusted that.

Stevie placed her foot onto the step, like a swimmer testing the water. Then the next step. The third. Down she went, into that light, a shadow stretching behind her. She assumed they would kill her if they caught her, or maybe not because of her celebrity-she wasn’t sure. On reflection, Brian Coughlie had had ample opportunity to kill her, to make her disappear. So why not? Because he had missed on his first try? The hard metal walls amplified both her breathing and the grind of machinery, and thankfully covered her footfalls. She reached the bottom where the passageway turned sharply back on itself and she crept along, one hand touching the wall to give her reassurance. The smells were more caustic here: the salty tang of human toil and sea, urine and sweat, and a bitter taste like plastic in her mouth. The air grew hazy, and that haze grew thicker to her right where another passageway fed off this one. This new hallway was darker, and it led to a partially open door that was clearly the source of that sound. She felt drawn to it, unable to stop herself from entering the darker passageway and approaching that cacophony. Step by precious step she continued, checking both behind her and in front of her, expecting someone to jump out and grab her at any second. Beyond that partially open door was more darkness, but the locker-room smell of women grew more intense, and that sound-how could she describe that sound? — ever louder. Without being fully aware of her actions, her hands sought out the zipper on the camera case and blindly ran it down and around the corners to where the lid lifted open and the camera itself found its way into her hands. The lens cap came off. The switch went on. Stevie stepped up to the metal hatch and peered through. She jumped at the sound of her own gasp. She’d never seen anything like it.

This hatch led to a catwalk landing that hung like an observation balcony out over the enormous hold and in turn accessed a steel grate stairway that turned back and forth on itself descending through yet another landing before reaching the floor. She stood looking out over the forward hold of the ship, once intended to store tens of tons of fish, forty feet deep, forty wide, and perhaps sixty feet long, its floor converted to an industrial plant where dozens of women-a hundred or more-with their heads shaved bare, bowed over poorly lit sewing machines that echoed off the steel walls into a deafening noise. The machinery was crowded tightly in rows, the scraps of discarded fabric like a patchwork-quilt carpet on the floor, the lone Asian guard patrolling the aisles with what appeared to be a stun stick in his hand. The size of the operation overwhelmed her, as did the dusty air and the putrid stink. She raised the camera to her eye and began to shoot, mesmerized by it all, determined to capture it, painfully aware that as her eye took to the camera she lost all peripheral sense of her surroundings. She moved behind that steel hatch door, using it as a shield so she couldn’t be seen from the hallway. It required both hands and a heavy pull to open it slightly farther in order to screen her from the stairway as well. She pushed herself more tightly into the far corner of the tiny landing, comfortable with her hiding spot and able to see and film the activities below.

This location gave her a momentary sense of protection, despite the fact that the catwalk balcony on which she stood allowed her to be seen from most anywhere on the floor. She reminded herself that she appeared as small to them as they appeared to her; and that if she remained perfectly still, it would take a good deal of concentration to pick her out up there. The recorder counted off its footage in time: thirty seconds. . forty. . fifty. . She didn’t need much. She could make her case by simply matching the images that Melissa had shot, for hers would look nearly identical, and the realization that she was standing in the exact spot where her little sister had stood before disappearing gave her a shudder of fear.

The camera’s LOW LIGHT warning troubled her. Sometimes a camcorder did fine in such light, despite the warning, but sometimes it recorded nothing but black. She could stop the recording, rewind and review her footage to make sure she had captured her proof. She was just about to do so when a bell rang out and all motion in the giant room stopped on cue.

Directly below her by some forty feet a man entered the room and spoke sharply in fluent Mandarin. ‘‘Stop your work! Line up!’’

The women obeyed like terrified soldiers, hurrying to form two long lines in a scuffling of bare feet and bowed heads. They stood at attention as the room’s lone guard moved from station to station, freeing the few women chained to their machines. What footage! Stevie’s eye remained glued to the camera. She panned from face to face hoping to see Melissa, excitement and anticipation pounding sharply in her chest. She wanted so desperately to confirm her among them.

‘‘We are leaving ship at once,’’ the man announced. ‘‘Groups of six. No more. No less. You will go orderly and quietly or you will get the stick,’’ he said, hoisting the cattle prod.

The women mumbled amongst themselves.

‘‘Silence!’’ this man roared. ‘‘Groups of six! Begin!’’

The first six shuffled out of the hold in fast little steps, as if practiced in boot camp.

We are leaving ship at once. .

Did they know someone had sneaked aboard? Had the sentry in the cabin cruiser raised the alarm? Or was this simply the plan, the reason for the semi truck?

Stevie heard the clap of quickened footsteps approaching from down the hallway behind her. Rodriguez’s thickly Hispanic voice, not twenty feet away and closing, spoke with a chilling authority. ‘‘Three of them charges go forward, two in the back. . We flood both them holds. Set the trip on the starboard door. You got that? Only the starboard door. That’s important.’’

He stepped out onto the balcony not three feet away from her-so close she could have reached out and touched him-a huge man with wide shoulders and a sour smell. She cowered on the far side of the steel hatch as he leaned over the rail to watch the work progressing below. She knew that smell: It was the same man who had invaded her apartment. The temperature in the hold was in the low nineties. Stevie McNeal shuddered.

He said, ‘‘Only the starboard door. Make sure them others are sealed tight as a ten-year-old.’’ As he spoke, great gushes of water began to pour into the hold from all four corners. The cold seawater rushed toward the feet of the women who stood at attention without saying a word. That power cord she had followed was strung along the floor like a snake. Its electricity wouldn’t mix well with water.

Rodriguez said, ‘‘With them holds flooded she’ll go down fast. Our guy’ll be the first aboard when they get here-he’ll make certain it trips. Get ’em in that truck. Fast. Hurry!’’

‘‘The machines,’’ a guttural Asian voice objected. ‘‘What about the machines?’’ Hidden by the door, this man went unseen by her.

‘‘He said lose ’em,’’ Rodriguez replied. ‘‘It don’t look right otherwise. With the mud down there it’ll be a mess. We buy ourselves a day at least, maybe a week or more. That’s all that matters. He thunk it through, I’m telling ya. It’s sweet.’’

‘‘Expensive.’’

‘‘Not your worry. Not mine. His decision. He’ll live with it.’’

‘‘Maybe not,’’ that Oriental voice replied.

Rodriguez coughed out an uptight laugh. ‘‘You got that right.’’

He turned and ducked through the hatch. She heard their footsteps fade down the hallway. She exhaled and grabbed for air, soaked in sweat.

Huge conveyors hung suspended overhead and attached to the wall, apparently to lift the dead fish to the processing area where they would have been cleaned before being frozen while still out at sea. A metal wall ladder ran up to them. An enormous hatch half the size of a tennis court occupied the center of the ceiling-the deck hatch through which the catch was initially deposited. A catwalk ran alongside this hatch as well, maintenance access perhaps. She could make out only two other doors to the giant hold-steel hatches-both directly below her: one on the ground level through which the women now passed in groups of six, and another that suddenly swung open at the middle landing. Seawater continued to flood the chamber. With the hatches left open, the entire ship would flood.

She heard a sound below and looked down to see Rodriguez step out onto the middle balcony directly below her, again leaning his head over to inspect the progress. He was a man charged with a particular task, and she could feel his impatience to see it through. Standing alongside him was an Asian with hands the size of oven mitts.

The plan was a simple one, she thought: evacuate the illegals- protect the investment-and then later let Coughlie raid the ship himself, acting as an INS agent. If she had it right, Coughlie intended to scuttle the ship while he was aboard-another ploy intended to buy him both support and sympathy and to mislead any subsequent investigations.

She looked down at her right hand: All this time the camcorder had been recording. She hadn’t realized it, too caught up in Rodriguez’s proximity, but his voice had been recorded on tape as he issued his instructions. This camcorder had the man dead to rights.

But it was all worthless if she didn’t get to Boldt immediately. She had to move fast.

She stepped toward the hatch door, but in the process the strap to the camera case snagged behind her on a metal spur and tilted the case over, dumping its contents. Before she could react, a power cable, a blank tape and a spare battery spilled out noisily onto the steel landing, sounding like a drawer of kitchen utensils hitting the floor.

Stevie, who reached to catch the contents of the case a moment too late, found herself looking straight down through the slats under her feet and into the eyes of Rodriguez, directly below.

As the contents banged off the lower landing and rained down to the floor of the hold, every eye lifted up to look at her.

For a moment Stevie’s heart simply seemed to stop. She was the center of attention-the very place she had made the focus of her professional life-and she suddenly wanted anonymity. Everything, everyone, stood still. She couldn’t breathe; the pain was so great in her chest. Rodriguez, too, seemed frozen by the discovery of her. But then he moved to climb the stairs, taking them two at a time, and Stevie understood she was a dead woman.

The one thought that flashed before her was that Rodriguez controlled these women with fear. He and his men were grossly outnumbered. To disrupt that control-regardless of what happened to her and her tape-was all she had left. Rodriguez could offer them only fear; she had a far stronger weapon.

He had twenty or more feet to climb as Stevie stepped up to the rail and shouted in her best Mandarin. ‘‘Little Sisters! I am with the American press! The police are on their way! You are free!’’

For a thousandth of a second there was absolute silence. Rodriguez stopped his climb and looked down below. But then their cheer arose-a unified cry of salvation-so loud as to be deafening, so exuberant as to bring tears to Stevie’s eyes. The women broke ranks and charged the one guard. There was a great male scream from within them and the distinctive sound of bones breaking, like tree limbs in a storm.

As a group they made for the one door, but as the crowd bunched, others jumped onto the same metal stairs that ended at Stevie’s landing, and they climbed as quickly as spreading fire. Rodriguez turned the corner to her, now only a few short stairsteps below.

Stevie rounded the hatch, jumped through into the hallway and pulled with all her strength, the camcorder dangling from the strap around her right forearm. The damn door was far heavier than she had expected. She knew that to seal that door was to seal Rodriguez’s fate at the hands of his captives. She pulled and pulled, one eye cast through the slowly shrinking crack as the huge man grew ever larger with his approach. He bounded the final steps.

The screams of the excited women filled the ship now, shrill and electric. They came from every corner. Their feet shook the steel with a growing rumble. She heard two claps of gunfire, but then no more- that guard overwhelmed as well. Rodriguez had let loose the water, but Stevie had let loose the tide.

Her final tug pulled the door to closing, but it bumped and wouldn’t catch, and it wasn’t until she looked down that she saw the four stubby fingers-all broken and at odd angles, caught in the steel jamb-that she understood the impediment. Those fingers clenched and pulled despite their pain, and then four more appeared in the crack along with a pair of thumbs, and he overpowered her with his strength and slowly increased the gap, forcing the door back open.

Stevie held on tight and then let go the door all at once. Rodriguez, unprepared for this, flew back off balance and Stevie stepped forward and kicked him in the face, feeling the bone and gristle of his nose give way. Blood poured out. Rodriguez skidded face down along the metal stairs, his head rising and falling with each step.

He was caught there by his own captives. Three stepped over him and rushed for the hatch. But the next several stopped and took out their anger on him. A woman lifted herself up by the rail and came down fully on his head, then used his back as a trampoline. The others joined in. The fallen man glanced up the stairs at Stevie and they met eyes as the blows continued, as the blood flowed, as the defeat registered.

‘‘Don’t kill him!’’ Stevie shouted desperately in Mandarin. She looked down into those yellowed eyes. ‘‘Where is she?’’ she hollered-screamed. ‘‘Where?’’

But the tide was not to be turned back. Blood was in the air. Three of the women continued to kick. His jaw hung off his face like a broken lampshade. He crawled blindly, his eyes bloodied and swollen. Crawled too close to the edge. One of the women shoved, then another. They launched him over the side to the steel floor below, where he landed with the final authority of death’s brutal calling.