Part 17 (1/2)
She met his eyes. ”I don't think he killed them, but I think he knows who did.”
Jack examined her shrewdly. ”And you do, too.”
”Well, h.e.l.l, Jack,” she said with asperity, ”who's left? Ms. Flanagan, what kind of Monopoly game did you play with Neil Meany the night of the Fourth?”
The other woman stared at her with gathering anger. ”I don't see what that has to do with anything.”
”Dammit, did you play the short way? Did you” Kate had forgotten what Johnny called it.
Jack said, ”Did you deal out the deeds?”
The minister's mouth tightened, but she answered. ”Yes, we did.”
”How long did the game last?”
”I don't know.” Anne Flanagan made a visible effort to collect her thoughts. ”Neil won. He's very good at it.” She paused. ”It was a .short game,” she said slowly. ”He bankrupted the girls in nothing flat. I held on longer, but not much.”
Kate told Jack, ”Any Monopoly game I've ever played lasted three hours or more. I figured Neil Meany was at the Flanagan site long past the time his brother made it back to Alaganik, and Chopper Jim says the time of death was figured around midnight. Roughly.”
From where he come to a halt on the beach below the deck, Chopper Jim said, ”There's a lot of leeway in that figure because of the time he spent in the water.”
”Yeah, but that's just about the time he got back to the bay, according to Mary Balashoff. And, if they were playing Monopoly the short way, Neil Meany headed for home right after, and probably saw the drifter from the skiff. An easy detour for him,” she added, using Jack's words.
”Okay,” Jack said, frowning, ”but Neil Meany on the drifter with a what? Why such” He searched for the right words. ”Why did he have to be so d.a.m.n thorough?”
”You save up enough mad for a long enough time . . .” Kate said, and left it at that.
”Motive,” Jim said. ”Does he inherit?”
Kate shook her head. ”I think Cal Meany was playing real-life Monopoly, and I think it might have been going to interfere with his brother's plans.” She walked into the cabin. ”Frank, do you have a pair of binoculars?”
Frank had gone back inside to sit next to his mother, who had her head pillowed in her arms. He blinked at Kate, helpless in his own grief. ”Binoculars,” she repeated, and he raised an arm and pointed. They were sitting on the windowsill on top of a tide book. She took them out on the deck. The clouds had made good on their promise of rain and the resulting drizzle had soaked into her hair and the shoulders of her s.h.i.+rt.
She ignored it and concentrated on the scene revealed by the lenses.
There wasn't much to it. Meany's drifter rode placidly at anchor, a good distance from the few other drifters who had chosen to remain at Alaganik during the hiatus between openings. Probably they were avoiding contamination from close proximity to the scab boat. The hatch to the cabin was closed, no light shone through the galley windows and there was no other sign of any activity on board.
She lowered the binoculars and handed them to the trooper, still standing on the beach below, also impervious to the rain. He scanned the drifter. ”Doesn't look like there's anyone to home.”
”He's there,” she said, and pointed. The buoy used to anchor the Meanys' skiff was empty. ”And look.” She pointed again. Barely still in sight through the increasing fog and rain, a skiff was drifting out of the bay on the ebbing tide. ”Bet that's the Meany skiff.”
Jim looked at the skiff, puzzled. ”If he couldn't be bothered to tie up the skiff, why hasn't he pulled the hook and hightailed it for town?”
”Let's go out there and ask him.” He remained skeptical. ”Where's Evan McCafferty?” she said bluntly. ”He sure as h.e.l.l isn't hunting, Jim. Not in July, not in Alaska, and even if he was poaching, sure as h.e.l.l not in a place with as much traffic in and out of it as this one.”
His face changed. ”Let's go.”
They climbed into the skiff and Jack shoved them off, most displeased at not being allowed to accompany them, but, as Jim pointed out, he shouldn't even be bringing Kate with him, and he wouldn't be if he knew what Neil Meany and Evan McCafferty looked like.
And if he didn't need backup against a man who had already murdered twice. Jack stooped to slide his hands beneath the tarpaulin-shrouded body of Dani Meany, and carried it to the cabin.
17.
By the time they closed in on the no-name drifter, the weather had socked in so low that they were b.u.mping their heads on the clouds. The beach had long since vanished, they could barely make out the outline of the Freyas hull off to starboard, and the other boats were next to invisible. A steady drizzle collected on the brim of Jim's trooper hat and dripped down the back of his jacket. Kate had no hat and her hair was soaked through, leaving her braid a wet rope lying down her spine. She was engulfed in Jack's windbreaker, which gaped at the neck and didn't provide a lot of protection. All they needed now was for the wind to start to blow, she thought sourly, and as if in response a breeze caught at the rigging of the drifter and produced a low hum that startled them both.
For the rest, the boat sat silent and dark. It looked deserted, and forlorn, as does any working boat without its gear in the water and a crew hustling go for broke on deck.
”Looks like you were wrong, Shugak,” Jim said. ”There's no one on board.”
”Then why are we whispering?” Kate put her hand out to catch the rain-slick gunnel, and in that moment a dark figure rose up off the deck and brought a boat hook down on the trooper's head with a solid thwack that echoed off the fog and rain. Without a sound Jim fell face forward into the bottom of the skiff.
In falling Jim had cut the throttle. The kicker sputtered and died. The bow of the skiff b.u.mped into the hull of the drifter, and Kate used what forward momentum that gave her and both hands to pull herself up over the gunnel into a tumbling somersault that should have carried her past Meany and his boat hook to the other side of the deck. It would have, if the hold hadn't been open and she hadn't somersaulted right into it.
She hit heavily, not on the bottom of the hold itself, but on something just as solid but softer.
It took her a minute to get her breath back. When she did, she raised her head and opened her eyes.
She was lying full length on the body of Evan ”Mac” McCafferty, Cal Meany's summer hire, Dani's lover and the only witness to both of their murders. He was unconscious. She pulled herself to her knees to take a closer look. His pulse was rapid and thready, his skin clammy and his respiration labored. Blood clotted the hair at his temple, his left arm was twisted back to front. His ribs moved loosely beneath her hands as Kate got to her feet.
Neil Meany, standing at the edge of the open hold, reached down with the boat hook, he sharp metal hook at the end of the wooden handle caught Kate on the twisted flesh of her scar. It stung, and she felt a arm trickle pool in the hollow at the base of her throat.
It was not so very long ago that Kate herself had used a similar boat hook in her own defense. They were very effective weapons, as the grave in Dutch Harbor could attest to. She stood very still, and met Neil Meany eyes.
He was very calm, too calm. 'Im good with this,” he said.
”So I see,” Kate said, her voice level.
”My brother didn't think so. My brother didn't think I could do anything. I guess I showed him.”
Kate knew a momentary desire to laugh out loud and fought it back.
”He wouldn't let me on the boat did you know that? Did you?” he repeated, nudging her with the boat hook.
”No,” she said. ”No, I didn't know that.”
”Come on up,” he said, urging her with the hook, as if he were going to tug her on deck the way he would a gaffed halibut. ”Come on.”
She swallowed convulsively. ”Ya'll-you might skewer me with that thing if you keep it on me while I do.”
He glanced at the boat hook in some surprise. ”Oh. Yes. Of course.” And he removed it, as simple as that.
In the hold looking up, with no access to the controls or escape, she had no tactical advantage. On deck would be better. If he didn't gaff her over the side first. Besides, the smell of gas fumes that had collected below decks made her head swim, and she knew she had to get out of them if she was going to retain either sense or consciousness.
The hold wasn't that deep, but she was barely five feet tall. She flexed her knees and swung her arms, once, twice, on the third swing jumping to catch the edge of the hold with her hands. An agile twist and she was on deck. She could still smell the gas fumes, but they weren't as strong on deck as they were in the hold, and her head began to clear.