A Killing Tide (4 page)

Landing hard on the engine room floor, she rolled onto her stomach, the scrabbled on all fours away from the flames that were burning next to the equipment. Inside, the roar was muted, but the heat was stifling. The timbers overhead hissed in the relative silence. Varnish from the ceiling plopped onto her coat, and thick, black smoke hung in the air.

Sweat poured off her, and a strong metallic flavor coated the inside of her mouth, making her gag. Her face and hands were unbearably hot, and her skin felt as if it was melting. She couldn't see more than a few inches into the smoky gloom.

In desperate need of air, she took a cautious breath. The bitter, chemical odor of hot carpet assaulted her. She crawled through the galley door. More flames, though smaller, ran in a line across the floor and were hungrily eating at the galley wall. With one hand stretched out in front of her, she crawled toward the forecastle where the berths were. "
Gary!
"

The timbers overhead hissed and groaned in the silence.

Kaz stood hunched over, then felt blindly along the berths. She tripped over something, landing hard on her hands and knees, then got back up.

Dizzy.

She shook her head. She had to keep going.

There.

Her hand touched a boot, then clung to a jeans-clad leg. Sobbing, she shook him.

He didn't move.

Yanking hard on his jacket, she managed to roll him. He fell heavily onto the floor, wedged on his side against the storage locker. She couldn't budge him, and she seemed to be moving in slow motion.

No. Can't black out.

Gripping the heels of his boots, she threw her weight backward. He slid a few inches toward the stairs. She sank onto her knees beside him, head hanging, ears roaring.

Hands grabbed her from behind and yanked her to her feet. He floated out of the haze above her, an apparition in a black oxygen mask, black coat with yellow stripes, and boots. When he pulled off his facemask, she saw that it was the new guy.

…Chapman, that was his name.

"We've got to get out of here!" he yelled.

No.

She heard a roar and looked up. Blue flames streamed across the ceiling from the engine room, reaching for her. Chapman dropped beside her, dragging her down, and covered her face with his arms. "Hang tight, they'll hose it down." He brought his face close to hers, pushing his mask over her mouth, and she gulped the oxygen greedily. Water rained down, scalding her scalp. She heard someone whimper and realized that it must be her.

Water began to fill the cabin—she was lying in several inches of it.
Gary's facedown in this.
She shoved at Chapman, hard.

He grunted and shifted sideways, and then rolled her with him, pulling her out of the stream of the hose. She pointed toward Gary. "My brother," she managed, but her voice broke.

"…cave-in! Move it!" He pulled her to her feet and dragged her toward the stairs.

Kaz fought him, but he simply wrapped an arm around her middle and walked backwards, hauling her with him. She rammed her elbow into his solar plexus, and he slumped forward, his grip loosening.

Staggering toward the berths, she fell over Gary's body. She heard Chapman swear, but then he seemed to catch on. He ran a hand along both berths next to her, then knelt and hauled Gary up over his shoulder. Above him, the ceiling sagged with a splintering
crack
.

Taking hold of her arm, he threw her toward the stairs. "Dammit,
move
."

He propelled her up the stairs and through the door as burning timbers fell behind them, showering them in roiling sparks.

He didn't let go of her until they were off the boat and several yards away. She dropped to her knees on the dock, coughing and retching. Firemen raced past them, dragging hoses.

Chapman laid her brother down several feet away, ripped off one of his gloves, and felt for a pulse. Then pulled back an eyelid.

She crawled toward Gary.
No, no, no.

Behind her, the rest of the deck collapsed. Sparks flew on the night wind, and from the adjacent dock, the sea lions barked excitedly.

Before she could reach Gary, Chapman pushed up his mask and threw out an arm to block her. She shoved it aside.

He turned then and gripped her shoulders, hard. His face was grim. "I'm sorry. He didn't make it."

She sobbed, pushing at him with both hands. "I have to go to him—" She froze, staring over his shoulder.

The man lying on the dock wasn't her brother. It was Ken Lundquist, their crewman.

~~~~

Chapter 3

Kaz sat on the back steps of an aid car, breathing oxygen from a mask attached to a portable tank. Her throat was raw, her skin hot and prickly. Flashing lights from emergency vehicles illuminated the wharf and marina in rhythmic sweeps, hurting her eyes. Occasional gusts of wind caused the boats' rigging to clank like gunshots, adding a syncopated unreality.

To keep the growing crowd at bay, Chapman had roped off the wharf with yellow crime scene tape strung between sawhorses and the wooden railings. Fire hoses twined around each other as they snaked down the steel grate ramp leading to the
Anna Marie
.

Kaz used a trembling hand to wipe her eyes and felt grit smear across her cheek. In spite of the heat from the fire, she couldn't stop shivering.

In the three generations her family had been on the water, they'd never lost a crewman, never had a fire on one of their boats. The importance of fire safety had been drilled into her at an early age—she and Gary never took chances.
Never.

Perhaps electrical wiring had deteriorated—somehow sparking near the fuel. The
Anna Marie
was rigged for drag fishing and frequently out of port, so she hadn't been on the trawler lately to assess its state of repair. Still, it would have been suicidal for Gary to let something as critical as bad wiring go unnoticed—a fire at sea was every waterman's worst nightmare.

Kaz frowned as a new thought occurred to her. Ken
never
spent time on the trawler when it was in port. He usually had a beer or two at the Redemption and then went home early to Julie and the kids, particularly now with Bobby so sick from the chemo treatments. So why had he been on board at this time of night?

She needed to talk to Gary, to see what he knew. Setting aside the oxygen mask, she stood and scanned the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Nothing. Surely he knew about the fire by now. Why wasn't he here? Increasingly uneasy, she begged a cell phone off the EMT.

No answer at home. She left a message on his cell phone, then disconnected.

Hugging herself, she turned back to the fire scene just in time to watch the
Anna Marie's
spool of fishnet and winch disappear in an explosion of flames.

#

After ordering the nozzle man to redirect his hose to the bow of the trawler, Michael turned and studied the Jorgensen woman. Her naturally pale complexion was washed of all color, and she looked unsteady on her feet. He wasn't surprised, given what she'd just been through.

Civilians always thought they could handle a fire, but they couldn't, dammit. In any blaze, there were enough toxic chemicals to take out even the strongest person. His jaw clenched. He doubted he'd ever forget the breathless panic he'd felt when he'd seen her dive into those flames.

He didn't like what he was seeing with this fire. It was burning way too hot. That would've screamed 'suspicious' to him, even if he hadn't hauled a body out of the hold. According to one of the firefighters, Kaz and her brother co-owned the boat. And the brother was on parole for assault—the near-brawl Michael had witnessed in the tavern evidently hadn't been out of character. He'd also seen Gary Jorgensen going at it with the guy who was now lying on the dock, dead. And his sister was the first person on the scene of a suspicious fire.

He frowned as he noted a look of renewed determination on her face that spelled trouble. When she started walking toward the dock, he stepped into her path, placing a hand on her arm. "Sorry, but you can't go any closer."

She gave him a brief, impatient glance, her expression distracted. "She's taking on too much water. You'll sink her."

Touching her was like touching a door with a raging inferno behind it. Disconcerted, he stepped back, removing his hand. "I'm keeping an eye on the water level," he assured her, only to have her shake her head.

"I need to talk to the firemen myself."

"Can't let you do that." He started to pull out a pencil and a small pad he kept with him for taking down notes. "Why don't we go over what happened here tonight."

Her expression was perplexed. "That's ridiculous—I have the right to protect my boat."

"She's a crime scene, for now. No one goes near her except authorized personnel."

"Excuse me?"

"That fire was deliberately set." Her face blanched of all remaining color, and he shot an arm around her slender waist. "Whoa. Maybe you'd better sit—"

"That can't be," she whispered, staring in the direction of the docks.

He studied her closely. Most people weren't that good at acting, but he'd seen all kinds. "I'm afraid it's a very real possibility."

After taking several deep breaths, she seemed to pull herself together, stepping away from him. Recognizing the pride and fierce self-control behind the move, he let her go.

"When will you know for sure?" she asked, her voice sounding more composed.

"After I go over the areas that burned, find the source of ignition."

She raised a slender hand to push her hair away from her face. When he saw the red, watery blisters that had formed along the outside edge of her palm, he reacted without thinking. His hand shot out, clasping hers, and he gently turned it so that he could examine the burn. "You need to have this taken care of," he said, his voice more gruff than he would've liked.

She glanced down and shrugged. "It doesn't hurt."

"It will once the adrenaline wears off." He forced himself to let go of her and pointed at the aid car. "Have the EMT put a dressing on it. And keep taking oxygen—smoke inhalation is nothing to mess with."

He waited for her to head in that direction, but instead, she turned her back on him and watched the fire, her shoulders hunched, her arms folded.

He shook his head. Stubborn, and a control freak to boot. He needed to get some distance—she was a suspect. At the very least, she could be her brother's accomplice.

It was one hell of a coincidence that she'd been first on the scene—he couldn't ignore that. And the bottom line was that he had an investigation to run.

#

Down at the dock, Lucy knelt beside the corpse, taking pictures while Ivar made notes and drew sketches. Jim Sykes stood a few feet away, observing. Her eyes burned, more from the effort to hold back the tears than from the smoke in the air. Ken had been a good man.

They didn't get many murders in Astoria—this was only her second since she'd been on the force. The first one had happened last year, when some tourist had beaten his wife unconscious inside their motor home, then gotten liquored up and set the whole mess on fire, himself included. That scene had been gruesome, but this was far worse.

As she moved back to let Greg Ewald, the medical examiner, do his job, Lucy sneaked a glance at in the direction of the wharf. Kaz looked like she was hanging in there, but it was hard to tell from this distance.

"This makes it pretty hard to ignore those rumors I've heard," Sykes said, breaking into her thoughts.

"Sir?"

"About the fishing community," he explained impatiently.

Lucy held her tongue. She wasn't ready to point any fingers or jump to any conclusions, not yet. The chief, however, had been on a warpath ever since he'd arrived. Crimes like murder and arson didn't happen in his town. From all appearances, he was taking this very personally.

Ewald straightened, having completed the in situ examination. He said something quietly into his tape recorder and then pulled off his surgical gloves, motioning for the EMTs to bag the body. "Going to be tough to get an exact time of death," he told her. "The fire retarded the rate of temperature loss in the corpse. I took a kidney temp, but—" He shrugged.

"Any preliminary determination on the cause of death?" Lucy asked, earning herself a glare. Ewald hated giving prelims. But dammit, she needed
something
to work with.

"Most likely blunt force trauma to the back of the head." Ewald's tone was truculent. "He's got grass stains and mud on his shoes and jeans—you catch that?"

"Yeah. The grass stains could've happened at any time, but it also might mean that the body was moved."

"They look fresh to me."

"Let's not get too exotic with the theories," Sykes interrupted. "Jorgensen probably followed Ken here after their argument in the Redemption and killed him. It's his boat, and he's our most likely suspect. Procedure says we need to concentrate on finding out whether he did it."