considering the fact that visibility in the Hudson is limited to a few inches at high noon on a cloudless day, or why he should have been diving so far out from shore, in the deep channel, where all evidence of pollution would normally be rapidly dissipated in the huge volume of water that surges in that dredged canyon in the riverbed, a river within a river. However, an explanation for what seemed an example of extraordinarily bad judgment was not deemed necessary; whatever his reasons for being out there, he had been run over by a passing tanker, super-tug, or barge whose captain would have had no chance to see him, and he had died horribly when he had been sucked up into the vessel's enormous spinning propeller blades. His death had officially been ruled an accident.
Along with Garth and Mary, I'd been sitting on a worn sofa chatting with a small group of fishermen when I spotted Harry Tanner, whom I knew through Garth. The Cairn policeman was standing by himself over by a window that looked out on the river. I excused myself from the group, went over to him. He smiled warmly as I came up, extended his hand.
'How you doing, Mongo?'
'Okay, Harry, aside from the sadness of the occasion. Yourself?'
'Fair to middling. A shame about Tom, huh?'
'Yeah. You know he was after somebody, don't you?'
The policeman with the handlebar moustache and deep-set hazel eyes nodded. 'Garth told me about what happened last Sunday night when Tom towed you guys home-the green jugs and all that.'
'He said something about 'nailing the bastards.''
'Garth told me about that too.'
'And?'
'And what, Mongo?'
'I just wondered if the Cairn police were checking out the situation.'
'I'm not sure there's any situation to check out, Mongo. But even if there were, it's not our jurisdiction. Cairn's only one of a number of towns along the river, and we don't know where Tom was when he was killed.'
'Whose jurisdiction is it?'
'Coast Guard.'
'Are they going to investigate? I mean, isn't it just a little bit suspicious that within forty-eight hours after he announces his intention to 'nail the bastards,' he winds up dead?'
Harry Tanner shrugged, smoothed the ends of his moustache. He looked slightly uncomfortable. 'That's hard to say, Mongo. I'm not speaking ill of Tom when I tell you that he took that job of his pretty seriously. A lot of people called him a zealot. He was always talking about nailing some bastard or another, and you qualified as one of those bastards even if all you did was take a piss in his river.'
'Maybe this time some bastard who was doing more than pissing in the river nailed him.'
Harry thought about it, shook his head. 'I'm no more pleased about Tom's death than you are, Mongo,' he said. 'He was my friend. But I just think you're looking for something that isn't there. You think somebody's going to kill a man because he's been caught dumping something in the river?'
'You're a cop, Harry, so I don't have to tell you about the petty things that will drive some people to murder. Also, in this case it might depend on what was being dumped. Besides, what would he be doing diving in the deep channel, and at night, no less? The water must be thirty or forty feet deep out there, moving all the time. What could he hope to find? Even if he did find something, how could he hope to prove where it came from? Except for keeping an eye on sail- and powerboats to make sure they don't dump their waste-holding tanks in the river, all the action in pollution monitoring is along the shoreline, where you can tell where the stuff is coming from. Right?'
'You're saying someone took Tom-or his corpse-out there and arranged for the body to be diced up by a tanker?'
'I'm saying it seems surpassingly strange that anyone, much less an experienced diver like Tom Blaine, would have been diving in the deep channel of the Hudson River at night. Law enforcement agencies are supposed to investigate when people die under surpassingly strange circumstances.'
'I hear what you're saying, Mongo, and I understand where you're coming from, but you'd have had to know Tom to understand why the authorities aren't going to be as suspicious as you are. Like I said, he was a zealot, and he'd pretty much worn out the Coast Guard's patience. He'd sometimes work twenty hours at a stretch, and it wasn't at all unusual for him to be out on the river at night. He found you and Garth becalmed on your catamaran at night, didn't he? Maybe he saw something suspicious in the water out there and went in after it. He got careless, and he got sucked up into the props of a tanker that passed over his position. All of the people I've talked to, including the Coast Guard, think there's no question that Tom's death was accidental. I feel the same way. Aside from Tom's reason for being where he-was, everything seems pretty straightforward. I wouldn't worry about it, Mongo.'
I wasn't worried about it; I was curious about it. So was Garth. Most of the other mourners had left, but Garth, Mary, and I remained behind. We were sitting around the riverkeeper's widow, who was slowly rocking back and forth in a worn rocking chair, eyes half closed, adrift in sorrow and memory. Garth leaned forward in his chair and took the woman's hand. 'What do you think could have happened, Jessica?' he asked quietly.
Tears came to the woman's soft, gray eyes. She wiped them away, then wrapped both her hands around Garth's. 'I can't imagine,' she answered in a trembling voice, biting her lower lip. 'It's so. . horrible. Tom was always so safety conscious; he was a certified diving instructor. He was always so careful around the boat, and with the materials he handled. I. . it's awfully hard for me to understand.'
'Jessica, do you have any idea why Tom would have been diving in the deep channel at night?'
She shook her head, then closed her eyes as more tears welled up and ran down her cheeks.
'Garth,' Mary said with quiet alarm, 'maybe you shouldn't pursue this right now.'
'It's all right, child,' Jessica Blaine said to Mary. 'I don't mind. I guess I want somebody to ask me questions; nobody else has. It's like the police just take it for granted that Tom was stupid enough to do something like that. It bothers me.'
Mary nodded, then rose and put her arm around the woman's shoulders. I moved my chair closer to the rocker. 'Mrs. Blaine, the night Tom towed Garth and me back here to Cairn, he'd just come from someplace where he was investigating some kind of infraction; at least we assume that, because his diver's suit was still wet, and he mentioned that he was getting the goods on somebody. Do you have any idea what he might have been investigating, or who he could have been talking about?'
Again, the woman shook her head. 'Tom worked long hours, and he was usually working on a number of cases at one time. We didn't see much of each other, and so we made it a practice never to talk about his work when he got home-it would get him too aggravated. I always tried to get him to think about other things and relax when he was home.' Garth asked, 'There wasn't one particular company he was more mad at than the others?'
'He was mad at all the companies he caught dumping their dirt in the river. If he was particularly angry with one company, he didn't tell me.'
Garth turned to me. 'I'm working on getting a list of all the companies with plants on the river in the area Tom patrolled. I should have it by Monday or Tuesday, and I'll fax you a copy at the office. It can't hurt to know the names of the outfits Tom monitored.'
'It would also help to know which of them are serviced by tankers or barges.'
'Just about all of them use tankers or barges in one way or another,' Jessica Blaine said. 'That's why they're located on the river. They use water transport for shipping goods or bringing in manufacturing supplies, and often both.'
I asked, 'Mrs. Blaine, is there anyone else Tom might have talked to, anyone he might have confided in about some particularly urgent case he was investigating?'
'I really don't know. He worked for the Cairn Fishermen's Association, of course, so someone there might know. But Tom was given free rein by the association, and he was pretty close-mouthed about current investigations. He liked to wait until he'd gathered his evidence. Then he'd go directly to the Coast Guard. If the Coast Guard didn't act, or if Tom felt they were dragging their heels, then Tom would take the evidence to the association, and they'd decide whether or not to go to court. Aside from that, there isn't much I can tell you. Most nights he'd come home and work in his office for an hour or two, then come up to be with me.
Garth and I exchanged glances, then looked back at the woman. Garth asked, 'Tom had an office,
