saw the fire just after five-thirty this morning. By the time the fire department got there, the cabin was fully engulfed. They didn't know there was a body inside, though, until just a few minutes before Watty called you. I came in early to finish up the paper on yesterday's domestic in West Seattle, but I wasn't getting anywhere. I couldn't concentrate. I was glad the other two guys turned him down.'
'Turned who down?'
'Watty. When he asked them if they wanted to work this case.'
'Asked them?' I repeated. 'I thought Watty's job was to assign detectives to cases. Since when did he start issuing engraved invitations?'
'Don't take it personally, Beau,' Sue counseled. 'You know how people talk.'
'No, I don't. What's the problem? What are they saying?'
Sue Danielson shrugged. 'That three's the charm. First Ron Peters and then Big Al.'
So that was it. Those jerks. I had wondered, but this was the first time anyone had come right out and called a spade a spade. 'You mean everybody really is scared shitless to work with me.'
'Don't worry about it, Beau,' Sue said with a laugh. 'I told Watty I'm a big girl, and not at all the rabbit's- foot-carrying type.'
'Gee, thanks,' I grumbled. 'I suppose, under the circumstances, I should take that as a vote of supreme confidence.'
Sue clicked on the turn signal. We swooped off Fifteenth and tore around the cloverleaf onto Emerson. At the Stop sign, she paused, looked at me, and winked. 'As a matter of fact, you should,' she said. 'Besides, now we're even.'
'What do you mean ‘even'?'
'You give me advice on child rearing, and I help you get along with your peers. Fair enough. Tit for tat.'
Enough said.
The official name, the one used by the mapmakers who write the Puget Sound version of the Thomas Guide, may be Salmon Bay Terminal, but most Seattleites know the north end of the Interbay area as Fishermen's Terminal. It's the place where Seattle's commercial fishing fleet is berthed during the months when the boats aren't out on the Pacific Ocean, plying the waters between the Oregon Coast and the Bering Sea, trying to beat the foreign-owned, U.S.-registered vessels and each other to whatever remains of the once-plentiful West Coast fishery.
We raced through the parking lot outside Chinook's Restaurant and bounced over a series of killer, tooth- rattling speed bumps. Past two huge buildings marked Net Shed N-4 and Net Shed N-3 we darted up a narrow alley that was crammed full of fire-fighting equipment. We threaded our way as far as Dock Three where the fire lane out to the boats was full of trucks and a throng of firemen rolling and restowing equipment. Sue pulled over and parked the Mustang, leaving the blue light flashing on top of the vehicle.
It was early in November, and all the boats were in port. On the east side of the pier stood a long line of two-masted wooden fishing schooners. A few were old sailing vessels that had been converted from wind-driven to diesel propulsion. The others had been built with engines but had carried sails as well at one time. These old wooden boats, used by long-line fishermen to harvest halibut and black cod, were berthed down one side of the planked dock. On the other side were the seine-style-pilothouse-forward-long-liners. On Dock 4, next door to the west, were the salmon seiners, recognizable by their raised mainbooms and open afterdecks.
I wouldn't have known the difference if it hadn't been for Aarnie 'Button' Knudsen, one of the guys I once played football with for the Ballard High School Beavers. The summer between our junior and senior years in high school, Button invited me to come work on his father's salmon boat. He told me it was a great part-time job, one he'd had every year from the time he was eleven.
I'm sure it would have been a good deal-if I had ever made it to the fishing grounds, that is. Unfortunately, it turned out I was a terrible sailor. I signed on, but by the time we reached Ketchikan in southeastern Alaska, I was so horribly seasick that Aarnie's disgusted dad gave up, put me off the boat, and finagled me a ride home. Who knows? Had things been different-had I actually found my sea legs and followed in Button's family footsteps-I might never have become a homicide detective. I might have spent my life slaughtering fish instead of studying slaughtered people.
Out beyond the buildings, we came to the place where the fire department had set up a perimeter by roping off the wooden pier at the point where it met a wider paved section. A group of old salts in coveralls, men I suspected to be mostly of Norwegian descent, stood talking to one another in subdued tones, all the while uneasily eyeing the charred wreck of a boat halfway down the dock.
I come down to Fishermen's Terminal sometimes, just to walk around. Early on a chill late-fall morning like this one was, it can be a seemingly idyllic place. Noisy gulls wheel overhead, appearing and disappearing, flying in and out of the fog. Water laps against the pilings. Boats shift and creak, occasionally thumping against the pier. But this idyllic setting is only that-a setting, like the flat backdrop painted on a stage.
The foreground holds the action where a troupe of men do the 'work' of fishing-repairing boats and nets, cleaning fish-holes, hosing, painting, building bait benches and fish pens. I have utmost respect for these guys who, year in and year out, pit themselves not only against the unforgiving sea but also against the vagaries of international politics and government regulation. Most of them are independent as hell and more than slightly ornery-a little like the mythical cowboys of the Old West. Come to think of it, a little like me.
On this particular morning, I supposed that most of them had come to work early expecting to spend the day working on their wintertime maintenance logs. Instead of overhauling engines and preparing for the next season's first opener, however, they were stranded far from their boats on the landward end of the dock. From the grim looks on their faces, I realized word must have spread that someone was dead-most likely one of their own.
A uniformed harbor-patrol officer named Jack Casey glanced at Sue's I.D., nodded to me, and waved us through the barrier. 'Any idea who it is?' I asked him on my way past.
Casey shook his head. 'All I've heard from the firemen is that the stiff's too crisp to I.D.'
'Oh.'
Sue and I made our way down the dock. Even without having been told beforehand, I would have known we were walking into a fatality fire just from the appearance of the firemen we encountered along the way. They had done their job promptly and well. Not only had they managed to put out the fire, they had kept the blaze confined to only one boat-a schooner called Isolde. The flames hadn't spread either to the pier or to any of Isolde 's nearby neighbors. Even the Isolde herself hadn't burned on the outside, although the forward portion of the boat was heavily damaged.
In terms of fire-fighting success, that should have been a clear-cut victory. But the men and women I saw rolling up their hoses were a bedraggled, disheartened-looking crew. Someone had died in the blaze. Firefighters always take fire deaths hard, as though each and every person lost in a fire is a personal affront-a needless fatality they somehow should have been able to prevent. It's an occupational hazard, I understand all too well. Murder victims affect me exactly the same way.
A few feet from the Isolde a husky firefighter still in yellow coveralls and heavy rubber boots broke away from his companions and hurried toward us. 'You from Seattle P.D.?'
Only when I heard the voice did I realize the firefighter was a woman, not a man. Her hair was cut short. Her broad shoulders were muscular, her at-ease stance seemed to reflect some kind of military training. In her early thirties, she looked tough but capable-the kind of woman who's instantly intimidating to a lot of men, but someone you wouldn't mind having on your side during an emergency.
'Detective Beaumont,' I answered. 'And this is Detective Danielson.'
'I'm Lieutenant Marian Rockwell,' she returned. 'Seattle Fire Department, Arson Investigations.'
Seattle's fire department has a team of arson investigators who carry weapons and are authorized to make arrests when necessary. Once the ashes and debris are cool enough to handle, the arson investigators are called in to do their stuff. They handle some fires entirely on their own, but when someone dies as a result of a fire, whether accidental or deliberately set, Seattle P.D.'s Homicide Squad comes into the picture. In those instances, we handle the investigation jointly.
'What's going on?' Sue asked.
'We got to it fast enough that it didn't have a chance to spread outside the fo'c'sle,' Lieutenant Rockwell said, abbreviating the word 'forecastle' to the approved nautical pronunciation of 'foc'sul.'
'One crew is just now finishing mopping up and checking for hot spots,' Lieutenant Rockwell continued. 'We
