Rikki eyed the shorts and halter and laughed. “Nope.”
“That the best picture you got? I’ve seen less blurry shots taken out the truck window.” Burt nodded in agreement with himself.
“She hauled fish up the cliff to a packing plant. I’m thinking it has to be the old Emerald operation just outside town.”
“Closed for years.”
“Fishing’s declined that much?”
“Not hardly, honey,” Rikki said.
“Then?”
“Owner died.”
Damn.
I took a pull of the beer. It was worth the drive from Anchorage, but not a flight from Vegas. “No heirs? Didn’t anyone want to buy it?”
Rikki leaned forward as if she couldn’t believe anyone in the world didn’t know. “Bad luck operation. Harris Henkley, the guy who owned it, he was up to his eyeballs. Owed everyone he could still see. Been up to his hairline if he coulda found anyone who didn’t already have an uncle or cousin he’d stiffed already, and if he’d had any hair. Nothing left to sell.”
Damn.
“Couldn’t his creditors have sued?”
“Not worth it. Too many claims in line already.”
“Couple fraud claims from buyers. Two sex harassment claims.”
“Sex claims? Is that common in that type of place?”
“Hands on your ass? Back then no one raised a fuss,” Rikki said. She was older, stockier now but she had the look of a woman who’d known those hands. “You weren’t surprised, you didn’t complain, and if you couldn’t take care of the problem yourself, you stayed out of the way. And you didn’t talk about it to strangers.”
What you didn’t repeat was exactly what I wanted to hear. But Rikki and Jed clammed up and it took me three long casting couch tales, one with a particularly sweet revenge, to convince them I was simpatico. By the time I guided the conversation back to the Emerald operation incidents, a crowd had gathered.
“Folk who worked there weren’t about to go to the law,” Burt said.
“Because?”
“Because, hon, Harris hired by the week, paid by the week. No withholding, no records, no questions asked.”
“But two women did file papers with the court.” Behind me someone rested their hands on the top of my chair. I could feel breath hitting my hair.
“Caused a lot of talk. ’Course the cases went nowhere.”
“Because?”
“’Cause Harris died.”
“Inconvenient.”
Rikki shrugged. “Those girls weren’t going to get anything, settlement-wise. They just filed because they were fed up with him being such a pig.”
I nodded. Above, dollar bills tacked to the ceiling fluttered in the breeze from the door. “And then he died. How’d he die?”
Rikki snorted. Behind me, there were a few more laughs.
“Hey, a man died. Show a little respect.”
“Oh, right, Burt.” She turned to me.
“See, hon, the way he had the path set, he was at the top and the girls had to go right past him. They’re carting big loads of fish and they’re watching their step because it’s a long way down that cliff and Harris didn’t waste profits on maintenance. Those girls, they’re worn out, so they’re too beat to be skipping out of the way if he sticks out his paw and grabs ass. That
grab, it was his m.o. He had other tricks, but that was the one drove girls crazy. Still, good money in a tight job market, what’re you gonna do?”
“Yeah. But then he died.”
Rikki grinned. “Story was he tied one on Friday night, grabbed for ass that wasn’t there and shot all the way down to the water. Didn’t find him till Monday morning.”
“What’d the police conclude?”
Burt shrugged. “They didn’t. No witnesses. No one was sorry to see him go.”
“Yeah, afterwards, the stories that came out. Wasn’t just ass-pinching. Like Burt said, no one was sorry.”
“Didn’t people lose their jobs?”
“Well, yeah, but the season was over. Lot of ’em just moved on.”
“When was that?” I asked, holding my breath.
“What was it, Rik, fifteen years ago?”
“Sixteen. Because, we’d just gotten Scout. Remember he chewed up the paper when you were trying to read the story? Scraps everywhere—you were in a fit.”
He grinned. “Yeah, but what could I do. Can’t blame a pup.” Sixteen years. Three years after Sonora Eades made her escape from Star Pine. I took a long swallow of beer and said, “If one of the women pushed him off, would anyone have been surprised?”
“They would have cheered.”
“Who wouldn’t have?” a male voice behind me asked. But he was asking a question, not just chiming in agreement.
Burt and Rikki looked up, wary.
I knew that voice. I tensed but didn’t turn.
Rikki said, “No one bitched then. No one’s squawked since. Weren’t even heirs fighting over the cannery.”
“Yeah,” Burt said. “It was like throwing trash over the side of the boat: It floats a minute then it sinks. In another minute there’s no sign it was ever there.”
“Do you recognize the girl in this picture?”
I still didn’t turn around. Of course it was Karen Johnson, Karen Johnson when she was Sonora Eades sitting for her high school yearbook picture. Sonora Eades with hair that looked like brown kale, pulled back in bunches and caught at the nape of her neck. Other girls must have agonized about what to wear, but Sonora’s plaid shirt looked like she’d grabbed it out of the laundry bag. Behind her defiance there was an earnestness, a yearning. She must have been such easy pickings for Wallinsky. I could see her overwhelmed with outrage at possible abuse of migrant workers, of Madelyn’s treatment of Claire. And yet there was something in her expression, something I couldn’t place, that made me—like Wallinsky—wonder.
The newcomer held the picture out for Burt and Rikki. “Do you remember her?”
Rikki jerked back, grabbed her beer and stared into the glass a few moments before she took a swallow.
“Never seen her,” Burt said.
“Really? High school pictures of strangers make you people this nervous?”
“Don’t know her,” Rikki muttered.
He put a hand on my shoulder. “If you—”
I slapped it off and turned around slowly to face my brother John. “Who the hell are you? We said we don’t know her. How clear do we have to make that?”
John hesitated. Then he grabbed the photo and stomped off.
I thought I saw a glimmer of admiration in his eyes.
28
“WHEW!” I TOOK a sip of my beer and tried to gauge Rikki and Burt. What did they know? Did it incriminate Karen Johnson, or them? Or had John’s heavy-handedness just gotten their backs up? I waited for them to comment, to wrap me into the tribe of the offended. They sipped, too. Rikki stared intently into her glass. Burt turned to watch the stage where a guy was positioning a mike. I glanced around to see if John was trying his number at some other table, but he was out of sight. He wouldn’t be far, though. There was so much I wanted to know from him, not the least of it being how he ended up here. Having him lurking nearby should have been a comfort, but chances were good it would end up being a problem.
But I’d underestimated John. A guy in a house T-shirt plunked down a bottle of Irish and three shot glasses. “Compliments of some dude who said he pissed you all off.”
“From the looks of you, Keith, he must’ve given you city money.”
“Yeah. A real L.A. tip. If he wants to insult you again, drag him in here.”
I laughed, trying not to overreact. I was having a hard enough time not reaching for the bottle and pouring. But it had to be one of them who made the move and tacitly accepted the gift, one of them who became my host and answered my questions. Rikki and Burt seemed fine; they’d been
decent to me. People like them were the reason I’d washed out as a PI’s assistant in New York, interviewing a suspect’s parents, trying to get them to reveal something that would incriminate the entire family and destroy their lives more than their lowlife son already had.
“Where is he, Keith?” Burt asked, meaning John.
“Gone.”
“You sure?”
“Saw him walk out, why?”
Burt shrugged, then reached for the bottle and poured.
“What was he after?” I asked.
“Same thing as you are.”
Damn! Was it that obvious?
“Harris Henkley, you mean?” I took a smaller swallow than I wanted. I have a good head for liquor but I didn’t dare push it.
Burt nodded. But Rikki drank the whiskey and laughed. “He’s Seward’s Judge Crater. Every couple years we get a reporter like that, or a guy doing a feature. Once it was for
The New Yorker.
”
“Woulda been if he’d found out anything. We tell ’em: nothing to find. They think we’re lying, so they spend a week in town irritating people—”
“But buying drinks. Bartenders love to get a whiff of them. I got a damned good lunch once at that fancy place by the marina, the one that went belly-up—”
Burt laughed. “Too bad for it there weren’t more reporters, huh?”
“But who was the girl in this guy’s picture?” I asked.
Burt put down his glass and eyed me anew. “Just what is it that brings you to Seward?”
“Scouting a location. I’m a stunt coordinator now.” That line always worked.
“Movie location? You mean a movie about Harris Henkley?”
Any advantage in that?
“Not per se, no. The movie’s fiction, but it deals with a similar kind of story, so, you know—that packing plant? Could it be a location? I mean, is it still there? Doesn’t it look like
real?
Can you show me?”
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
“Rik? You want to?”
“Let me finish my drink.”
The drink turned into two, but when I climbed into their old black pickup, I wasn’t sure whether they’d bought my story or the drinks made the whole thing seem like a perfect foray for a slow night. It’d be a good story for them tomorrow, whichever.
By the time we reached the path up to the Emerald Packing Plant outside town, night was finally coming on in this northern outpost and the light had changed. Civil twilight, the bridge between clear afternoon and the first shadow of dusk, the last time you could see clearly without artificial light. I wished I’d known how little seeing-time I had left. The cliff was more rock than earth, more dirt than grass and almost vertical. The path, or what I could make out through the haze that coated it, was sharp switchbacks. It looked endless. “Omigod!”
“Believe it. Damn thing nearly killed us. We started right here.” Rikki pointed to a dirt-browned cement slab.
We!
“You call this a path? I’ll just follow you.”
Burt leaned against the truck. “You girls go right ahead. I’ll catch you if you slip.”
“Burt’s got no head for heights?” I asked Rikki.
“That, and the bottle in the trunk.”
I hoped he settled in with it, kept an eye on the path and wouldn’t spot John, who’d surely tailed us.
Rikki headed up a switchback trail of dirt, mud, and the remnants of wooden stairs. The cliff was like a wall, the trail narrow. “What kept you from falling right off here?”
“Desperation. It was a little better back then. Henkley didn’t want to end up paying hospital bills. Rope rail then, but the damned thing burned your hands so bad you only grabbed it if you were going to fall, and then you just hoped it wasn’t frayed.”
Wind snapped my shirt, gusts smacked my face. “This is crazy. How long did you do this?”
“Me? Just that season.”
“That last season?” The season right before it closed?
She mumbled something. I couldn’t tell what.
I was right behind her. It wasn’t dusk, but shadows blurred the steps. She was moving more slowly. I tried to remember how much she’d had to drink, but she’d already been in the bar when I arrived. If she lost her footing, we’d both go shooting down to the bay. “I’m in good shape, but I’m panting. How could you do this with a load of fish?”
“Like . . . I said . . . desperation.”
“You were
all
desperate?”
She made a move I took for nodding.
“The girl in the picture, what about her?”
Rikki didn’t answer.
Had I pressed too fast?
The path curved back, even steeper now.
“There used to be . . . stairs here. Hard enough with them.”
“I can’t believe you did this every day. How many times a day?”
“Sixteen. Eight hours. Two loads . . . an hour.”
“The girl in the picture did this, too? She sure didn’t look in that good shape.”
“Not when she got here.”
Bingo!
“But by the end of the season. Yeah, I can imagine. The gym of the damned, huh?”
“We’re almost . . . at the top. Here’s . . . the place he . . .”
“The place Old Harris was waiting to grab ass?” The path veered inward. Its steep dirt surface passed a level cement slab. “Fucking bastard! If I’d worked here I would have dreamed every night about taking one good swipe and knocking the shithead clear off his little perch.”
She plopped on the weeds at the top, panting. “You and everyone.”
“Like it must have been Topic A in the powder room.”
“You mean the outhouse . . . over there?” She rolled to her left and pointed to a pile of rotted boards.
“It’d be so easy to shove him off. Irresistible.”
She rolled back, pushed herself up, and suddenly she had me by the shoulders. I was on my knees. I couldn’t get my balance. She shoved me hard. I grabbed for her leg and flung myself on the ground, digging my fingers into the dirt, imagining the two of us shooting over the cliff and down into the water.
She moved to face me, her mouth contorted in anger. “There’s no location site, is there? Goddamn you!”
I was inches from the edge. One angry shove and all the grass on the ground wouldn’t save me. I pushed up.
“Don’t you move.”
“Rikki,” I said with more bravado than I felt, “are you making my point for me? It’d be so easy, wouldn’t it?”