Since leaving the Willard Hotel late that morning, this was the first eleven minutes he’d spent away from the telephone. If he was going to leave the protective custody of the FBI, he was going to give himself the best possible odds. Getting information he might need in Alaska, Mercer called in almost as many favors as he’d promised. Even with Kerikov trying to kill him, and knowing the Russian would redouble his efforts, there was still no way Mercer was going to let this drop. He was enraged that his home had been violated and his friends put in danger. The threats to his life were something he could handle, but not when they involved those he cared about, especially Harry and, now, Aggie. He’d gotten her unlisted number from a friend at the phone company but had been frustrated by a continuous busy signal.
His phone rang as he was ready to carry his bags downstairs. The portable was on the nightstand. “Hello.”
“Dr. Mercer? This is Chief MacLaughlin in Homer. I have a message here that you’ve been trying to reach me.”
“Thanks for returning the call. I have a suspicion that I’d like you to check for me. It’s connected to the deaths of Jerry and John Small.”
“I’m afraid that’ll have to wait, Dr. Mercer. We had a murder here last night that’s got the whole town real jumpy.”
“A murder? What happened?”
“A fishing boat was found beached about a mile south of town. The owner was discovered in a forward cabin, his throat slit. Pretty gruesome stuff, if you know what I mean.”
“Was it a local boat?” Mercer felt hair rising on the back of his neck.
“Yeah, she was kept at the marina. The owner was born and raised right here in Homer.”
“What kind of boat was it?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Mercer, but I really don’t have time for this right now.” There was a weariness to MacLaughlin’s voice, like he’d seen and done too much in the past couple of days.
Mercer sympathized, but he persisted. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“She wasn’t a commercial vessel but a good-sized charter boat. In fact, she’s the largest in town. Can handle a twenty-person charter, she can.”
“Chief, would the victim have known the Loran coordinates where the Coast Guard sank the hull of the
“Sure. The Coasties make them available so the chartermen can use them when they turn into reefs after a few years.”
“You’ve got to send someone out to drag the bottom and make sure that the hulk is still there.” Mercer already guessed it wasn’t, but he had to make sure.
MacLaughlin bristled at Mercer’s demanding tone. “Now just a damn minute. I appreciate your cooperation concerning the Smalls, but I’ve got an important investigation and don’t have time for this.”
Mercer relaxed his tone. “I’m sorry, but if my suspicions are correct, you’ll find the boat’s owner was killed last night after being forced to use his boat to haul the
“And who are these men?” MacLaughlin asked suspiciously but nonetheless intrigued.
“I don’t know yet,” Mercer lied, “but you can believe that I’m going to find out.”
MacLaughlin responded after a long silence. “I suppose I can ask my brother-in-law to go out in his boat to snag the hull with a grapple hook on the end of a rope. I guarantee he’ll find her on the first pass.”
“Don’t bet on it, Chief. The
“Yeah, sure. In case I’m not here, let me give you my home phone number.”
“I can’t tell you what this means to me,” Mercer said. He took MacLaughlin’s number and snapped off the phone.
He exhaled a long breath, relieved that the Alaskan had agreed to help. Mercer didn’t like lying to MacLaughlin, but he felt he had no choice. He doubted that MacLaughlin’s investigation would lead him beyond the Homer town line, so the less he knew, the better his odds of avoiding Ivan Kerikov’s interest. There was no amount of warning he could give that would prepare the Chief for an international terrorist like Kerikov, and Mercer couldn’t take another death on his conscience if MacLaughlin got too close. But having him look into the whereabouts of the
He hefted the bags off the bed and noticed that the powerful sunlight beaming through the new skylight was drying the first coat of joint compound. In just a day or two, all the physical evidence of the attack would be gone. As promised, Dick Henna had hired a crew to restore his house. There was already new carpeting in the bar where Burt Manning’s blood had been spilled, and a master carpenter was repairing the bullet holes in the library and on the balcony and the antique staircase.
Mercer knew from experience that the psychological effects of the assault would take much, much longer to mend.
The phone rang again when he was halfway down the stairs. He left his luggage in the library and rushed to pick up the extension in his office.
“Enrico Caruso said it,” a voice said triumphantly before he could say hello.
“Took you long enough,” Mercer chastised with a smile.
David Saulman, a longtime friend, and Mercer had been engaged in a grueling trivia contest for as long as they’d known each other. Each enjoyed the tests immensely, Saulman because it allowed him to use his inexhaustible research skills, and Mercer because it taxed his phenomenal memory.
The latest question had been posed by Mercer three months earlier and it had taken all that time for Saulman to find the answer. “Who was quoted as saying, ‘The chandelier tried to touch the ceiling and the chairs chased each other across the floor,’ in reference to the great San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906?” It was one of Mercer’s most esoteric questions, but he felt vindicated by posing it because he hadn’t remembered that Benjamin Briggs was the captain of the
Invariably, Mercer’s questions dealt with earth sciences or engineering while Saulman limited his to maritime lore and history. Both were experts in their chosen fields and could draw from an unfathomable well of knowledge.
David Saulman had been an underage deckhand aboard merchantmen during the Second World War, slowly working his way through the ranks, “up the hawse pipe” in the vernacular. But an engine explosion in the early 1960s had cost him an arm and cut short his career. Forced from the working ranks, he turned his experience to the legal side of maritime commerce, putting himself through law school. Since then, he’d become one of the best marine lawyers a tremendous amount of money could buy. His offices in Miami boasted nearly one hundred fifty associates, and his new satellite office, recently opened in the shadow of Lloyd’s in London, was doing better than expected. With contacts ranging from stevedores to tycoons, he knew more about the industry than anyone in the world.
“I got your message from my secretary this morning,” Saulman said, his Brooklyn accent still crowding his speech after so many years. “I just now got the information you wanted.”
“I’m surprised you got it so fast.”
“I can’t remember how the hell we did business before computers,” Saulman said with the respect of those who really did remember the world before silicon chips took over. “So who do I bill the time to?”
Mercer laughed. Although Saulman would have done the research
“All right.” David Saulman paused and Mercer could hear him arranging papers on his desk. “There were one hundred and three ships in the Gulf of Alaska at the time you asked about. Ninety-four private or commercial fishing vessels, including the
