The Big Both Ways (38 page)

George Hanson had been gloomy during the trip from Sitka to Juneau, and the sight of Juneau on that early evening did nothing to raise his spirits. The big empty mine on the hillside seemed to suck the sound out of the air. A motionless layer of smoke hung just above the rigging of the ship, and this gray cloud had thin appendages reaching down into the blackened chimney pipes of town, so that there appeared to be a giant spider walking along the rooftops. Sunlight did not seem to brighten a town like this; it only highlighted the shadows.

There was the usual commotion when the
Admiral Rodman
tied up at the wharf. After some jockeying around with the tugboats getting her turned around and into her place, the crew threw the lanyards to the dock boys and they pulled the heavy hawsers to secure the ship to the dock. There were men yelling back and forth, teasing and laughing. There were several families waiting for the ship to dock and a group of men in dark suits holding on to manifests waiting to check off some important cargo. A white bull terrier walked through the small crowd gathered on the dock. The
local people seemed to defer to the fat dog as if it were an important personage. It wasn’t until much later George learned that the old dog was, in fact, a revered member of the community who was rumored to have the uncanny ability to predict, and be at the dock to greet, unexpected ships.

George scanned all the faces at the dock wondering if the dog was to be the only one to great him. But soon enough he found the grim young face of Walter Tillman cutting through the crowd.

“I flew up here yesterday. My captain said I was to bring you this report myself,” Walter called out, as George walked down the gangway.

“It’s good to see you, Walter,” George said, reaching out his hand to the young police officer.

“Yes sir, I wanted to tell you about the murders we had down in Ketchikan. I think they relate to your case and to the people you are looking for. On June third we got a report …”

“Let’s take care of my bags first,” George interrupted. “Then let’s go someplace private where I can give you my full attention.” George handed Walter his briefcase and they walked over to where the crewmen were starting to unload the first sling of passenger baggage. “It’s best that people don’t know our business here, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yes.” Walter stood with the detective’s satchel clutched to his chest. George could tell that the young man had been ready to give his full report and to not do so had created a kind of vacuum in his brain.

George gathered up his one leather case, gave the crewman a dime, slapped Walter on the back, and started to walk uptown.

Later, after he had shown the Seattle detective to his boardinghouse, Walter cleared his throat and started in on his report. “On June third the department got a call concerning some loud noises down on the creek. No one from the department responded, but the next morning one of our officers was speaking to a woman who runs a sporting house on the creek. She reported that one
of her employees, named Ellie, had disappeared without telling a soul.”

“Did this woman have an injured hand?” George Hanson asked.

“Yes sir, she did.”

They were sitting in the empty parlor of the boardinghouse built against the hill. It was a clean house with rooms sharing a bath. It seemed to George that every flat surface in the room was covered with decorative lacework. The room smelled of coal dust, and all of the doilies seemed to have a light film of soot over them, so that if he traced the tip of his finger along the lace it would leave a faint line.

“The woman apparently had lost some fingers in a cannery accident and this … uh … proprietress of the establishment … was helping her back to health. A local doctor had treated the badly wounded hand.”

“This girl, Ellie, was she a longtime whore there in Ketchikan?” George asked, as he fingered one of several white satin roses set in a china vase.

“No sir, she had come there quite recently, just a matter of days I think. I don’t know if she had been actually working as a whore. I didn’t check on that.”

“That’s all right,” George smiled.

“Well, sir, I went down to the creek to look around and I saw that there were eagles feeding back up in the woods and that’s real strange unless someone dumps a carcass or something. So I went up and found them.”

“Them?” George put the rose down and stared at him.

“I found three men shot to death. Two slugs in each of them. Two men shot in the body and one shot in the head. The man shot in the head was in a small trench that someone had dug out on the hillside.”

“What else?”

“There were some women who worked along the creek who
said they knew the three men. They had arrived together and they said they were from Seattle on their way to Juneau. One of the girls got a name that she believed was a real name, because you know, many of the men don’t give correct names. She said his name was Ray and that this Ray was not very … how did she put it … he was not very genteel.”

“What’s that mean to a Ketchikan whore?”

“She said he used rough language with her and was violent during the performance of her duties.”

“He beat her?”

“In a way that made her think he was enjoying himself.”

“Ah.” George leaned back and looked out the window of the boardinghouse. Trucks rumbled down the wooden streets downtown while up in the woods there were songbirds trilling.

“This woman, Ellie, was she blonde?”

“Her hair had been dyed blonde some time ago, according to the women she worked with.”

“Anything else?”

“One of the girls at the house where Ellie stayed said that she was polite and sober. They said that she had encouraged them to start their own sporting house.”

“Start their own?”

“Yes, one of them told me that the injured girl had told her that she owned her body and that the madam of the house was exploiting her.”

“Well, bless her heart. How about the other three men, the ones you found dead. Had they tried to bring any of the whores of Ketchikan to the revolution?”

“No, sir, it appeared that they were pretty much all business.” Walter Tillman was blushing as he reached into his own satchel and took out some grimy-looking photographs. George glanced down at the top one where McCauley Conner stared up into the lens with half of his skull blown out into the dirt. The
flashbulb’s glare put a glaze on his face. His mouth was open in a misshapen oval that appeared to be frozen in place.

“All business,” George muttered.

He flipped through the pictures. George knew that photos somehow captured the essence of a murder more than any story could: the little man splayed out on the stones, head cocked awkwardly and his soap-white limbs pinwheeling from his body, his mouth stuffed with darkness. Policemen caught in the glare, walking around the body as if they were burglars. Then the photos of two other men with their faces pulled apart and their bodies so askew that it looked as if they had been dressed in someone else’s clothes: their bellies peeking out from their shirts, their ties flopped up into their eyes. Most people died in one bright flash of chaos. Murder wasn’t a story, George thought, it was that moment when a story ended. This moment of ending was where a homicide detective lived.

George pushed the photographs aside. The landlady had put out a plate of sandwiches. There was a pitcher of buttermilk in the icebox, she said. George offered Walter a sandwich and they sat without speaking for a few moments. Somewhere up the hill George could hear water running in a creek. A boat horn blasted in the harbor. The photographs of the bodies sat between the two men.

“Anything else?” George asked the young policeman.

“Your office in Seattle wants you to contact them. It sounds like there are revenge killings going on.”

“Who is dead?” George looked around for a glass to put some buttermilk in.

“A man named Francis Miller was killed in the steam baths. He was a Floodwater operative.”

George let his hand dangle in the air above a dust-coated glass. “Yes …” he said, “I knew him. He was called Fatty.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t know he was a friend of yours. He’s dead, sir. Shot in the head three times.”

“Not a friend exactly.” George took up the glass and walked to the icebox. “But a shame nonetheless.”

George poured the buttermilk, then looked over at the young man. “Tell me your impressions of the case so far.”

“Well, sir, I think the woman with the bad hand is Ellie Hobbes. She is one of the people you were looking for in the Seattle matter. I think the three men were sent to find her and she killed them and then left town somehow. Maybe stowed away on a ship or just headed up into the woods. We’ve got officers in Ketchikan working on that now.”

“Have you identified the dead men?”

“I haven’t got a good I.D. from Seattle. They had some gear stored in a bar along the creek but there was nothing printed. No identification or letters, no radical leaflets, nothing.”

George dug into his case and brought out his thin files on the union men. “Here,” he said. “These are photos of Pierce, Conner, and Cobb. It’s a good chance these three are your victims.”

“Thank you, sir,” the young officer looked down at the photographs, a little stunned.

“What about the logger and the little girl?” George asked.

“I’m not sure, sir. I was going to check the cannery in B.C. They might still be there. The girl’s just a niece. Ellie must have left her with the logger, when she was hurt.”

“Why’d your captain send you up to Juneau?”

“One of the whores said this is where the three dead men were headed. My captain supposed that Juneau is where the case would be made. He sent me here to help.”

George set aside his gristly pot roast sandwich and leaned back in his chair. “Now all we need is a yellow bird.”

“Yellow bird, sir?”

“Once the yellow bird gets here we’ll have the whole congregation.”

The Shepherd
rolled across the opening of Dixon Entrance without rattling a single cup. Annabelle took her turn at the wheel and Carl watched to make sure she could steer to a compass bearing. The sea swells were smooth and well spaced, so the boat rolled like an old mule with a light load on her back. Carl carved out a direct route into Revillagigedo Channel and north into Ketchikan. It was late in the afternoon when Carl pulled the boat up to the fuel dock and turned to Slip.

“Annabelle can stay here on the boat with the dory and your gear. You go see if you can find her aunt and you bring her down here to get her. If I can’t tie up right here, I won’t be far,” Carl called over to Slip, who was making fast the stern line.

Slip understood and waved to the girl before he turned and climbed up the iron ladder to the wharf. Then he took off running to the hospital.

Annabelle stayed in the wheelhouse on
The Shepherd
. She was looking forward to being with Ellie again. Annabelle had been frightened by Ellie’s injury. She found it hard to think that Ellie would never have all her fingers again. Maybe the doctors could do something, but Slip said it was pretty bad. She shook her head and tried to shake the ugly thoughts out of her mind.

She missed Ellie’s company. She missed the way she did impractical things. The dory trip had been full of practicality: pulling on the oars to a steady course. Annabelle wanted to talk with Ellie about the virtues of hot fudge and flying airplanes. She wanted to talk to her about what it was like to be in a Lockheed Vega. Annabelle had heard some men talking in the cannery that the Vega was like a flying log. What did they mean? Ellie had told her that Amelia Earhart had flown in a Lockheed Vega early in her career. Now Amelia flew a Lockheed Electra. Were they going to live in Ketchikan and buy a plane? She slid her glasses up her nose and took a deep breath. Asking questions raised her spirits.

Annabelle had hung a set of clothes to dry in the engine
compartment of the boat as it crossed Dixon Entrance. The heat from the engine had dried her shirt, pants, socks, and unders completely for the first time in what felt like weeks. As she sat waiting for Slip to bring Ellie down to the boat, she decided to put on dry clothes in case Ellie wanted to go out to get ice cream or something. That would be like Ellie to do something like that, ice cream rather than dinner or unpacking their things in this new place that might be home.

Annabelle put on the clothes and the faint smell of diesel didn’t reduce the pure pleasure of wearing warm clothes. She came back out on deck and wrapped her arms around herself. She felt good for the first time in days. Ellie would come and she could braid her hair nice and tight again. They would talk over things while she did it. She would tell her about meeting the man with the stolen sheep, and about Slip’s adventure on the snag. She would tell about Buddy flying off, and Ellie would understand and she would know just the right way to think about it so that it wouldn’t hurt so much.

Annabelle fell asleep on the skipper’s berth in the wheelhouse. The oil stove in the galley kept her warm without a blanket. She dreamed of flying in a Lockheed Electra around the world. Slip and Ellie were eating ice cream in the back of the plane and all they did was laugh. Yellow birds roosted in the treetops wherever she flew, and if she came down close enough they all flew up in a shuddering yellow haze, yellow birds chirping and calling out louder than the roar of the big radial engines.