J. Jance - A more perfect union

The City of Seattle covers an area of ninety-two square miles. What most people don't realize is that there's a whole lot more to the city than meets the eye-parts that are underwater. As a consequence the Harbor Patrol, based in Harbor Station, has jurisdiction over some ninety-three miles of shoreline, all within the city limits. Seattle operates a fleet of six boats and boasts the only twenty-four-hour municipal marine unit in the state. When King County's and Mercer Island's police boats aren't working, Seattle P.D.'s Harbor Patrol handles all of Lake Washington on an emergency basis.

Originally the unit was a separate police organization under the jurisdiction of the Port of Seattle, with a warden in charge. Later, it was part of the Seattle Fire Department. In the late fifties, Harbor Patrol became a branch of the Seattle Police Department. Some of the officers stayed with the fire department while others went through the police academy and became police officers.

Jim Harrison wasn't one of those originals, but he was close. I found him drinking coffee in the Harbor Station kitchen when I got there.

"Hey, Beau, how's it going?"

"Can't complain," I said. "How about you?"

He grinned. "I'm counting the days until I'm outta here," he said. "Then I'm going fishing."

I laughed. He sounded like a kid waiting impatiently for summer vacation to start. "After all these years, haven't you had enough of boats?" I asked.

"Working on boats, yes. Playing on boats, no."

I shook my head. Boats hold no fascination for me. I'm a believer in the old saw that boats are just holes in the water you pour money into.

"So what are you up to today?" Without asking, Harrison filled a cup with coffee and handed it to me. "From what Manny said yesterday, I was under the impression they were still going to be filming today and that J.P. Beaumont was stuck for the duration."

"I took a powder," I told him. "I'm playing hooky."

He shook his head and clicked his tongue. "Couldn't that have long-range repercussions? Isn't the director some kind of buddy-buddy with the mayor?"

I shrugged. "Let 'em fire me. I'm supposed to be there to give them technical advice, but they won't take it when I do, so what's the point?"

"Beats me," Harrison said, then, with a sly grin, he added, "Is that what you're here for, to cry on my shoulder?"

"Actually, I came by to ask you about that boat fire last week."

"Which one?"

"There was more than one?"

"Three by actual count. It was a bad week on the water."

"Peters told me it blew up."

Harrison nodded. "Oh, that one. It blew all right, to kingdom come. We're still not sure we've found the body. We had divers down for two days straight. They came up empty-handed."

"Where was it when it exploded?"

"Out in the middle of the lake. If the boat had been in a marina when it blew, we wouldn't have any trouble finding the body, but it wasn't. That's the way it goes."

"Any idea what caused it?"

Harrison paused thoughtfully. "Stupidity mostly. That's my guess. It was a gasoline-powered Chris-Craft. One of those old fiberglass jobs from the early seventies. We got there as fast as we could, but it burned all the way to the waterline. The boat's a total loss."

"What kind of stupidity?" I asked.

Harrison shrugged his shoulders. "We see it all the time. These goddamned landlubbers buy boats, keep them for less than two years, and then sell them again without ever learning a damn thing about the boat or how to use it. They don't bother to maintain their equipment properly. My guess is either his fume-sensor system wasn't working or his blowers weren't. The engine room filled up with gas fumes. You know all about low flash points."

"One spark?" I asked.

He nodded. "It must've popped him right out the top of the wheelhouse like a goddamned champagne cork."

"You're saying it's an accident?"

"That's right. It's a joint investigation, us and the Coast Guard. We're pretty much agreed on this one. The boat was called Boomer, incidentally, and it sure as hell did."

"How about the missing owner? Does he have a name?"

Harrison walked into the other room, plucked a file folder out of a drawer, and brought it back into the kitchen with him. "Tyree," he said. "His name's Logan Tyree. I told Manny and Kramer about him, just in case."

"And this Tyree character. Did he happen to be an ironworker?"

Harrison ran his finger down the file then peered at me over the top of his glasses. "As a matter of fact, he was. How'd you know that?" he asked.

"Just lucky," I told him. "What happened to the boat? What did you call it, the Boomer?"

"Like I told you, the fire was out there in the middle of the south end of the lake. We couldn't leave it there, what with float planes landing and taking off. We had it towed back to Tyree's moorage at Montlake Marina, over here by the bridge. The owner says the rent is paid through the end of the month." Harrison's eyes narrowed. "How come you're so interested in all this, Beau? You're not working this case, are you?"

"Curiosity more than anything else," I answered. I put down my cup, thanked Harrison for the coffee, and took off before he had a chance to ask me any more questions. I couldn't have given him a better answer, because there wasn't a better answer to give.

I got back in the Porsche and sat there for a moment without starting the engine, trying to sort out exactly what was going on. No, I wasn't working the case. Playing was more like it.

When I finally started the car and got going, I pulled up to the stop sign at North Northlake Way. I had two choices. I could go right and go back home, or I could turn left and drive past the Montlake Marina.

I turned left.

Once you've seen a burned-out fiberglass boat, you don't forget it in a hurry. It's a scary sight.

Just as Harrison had told me, Logan Tyree's Chris-Craft Boomer had burned right down to the waterline. Most of the wheelhouse had disappeared, melted into a gaping hole in the deck. What little was left of the superstructure was lined with an eerie fringe of blackened icicles which were actually melted fiberglass. It had obviously been one hell of a fire.

If Logan Tyree had been blown clear by the force of the explosion, he must have died instantly. On that score, I counted him among the lucky ones. To my way of thinking, instant death is preferable to enduring the well-meaning tortures of a burn unit's intensive care. If that ever happened to me, I'd want to go quick.

"Were you a friend of his?"

Startled by the sound of a voice, I turned from studying the charred wreckage to see a wizened old man limp onto the dock from a peeling junker of a boat that looked more like a derelict tug than anything else. The deck was cluttered with an odd assortment of mismatched patio furniture and the unassembled parts of several bicycles. Two lines of clean laundry hung lifeless from wires strung between the cabin and the bow.

"I'm a police officer," I said, flipping open my identification wallet to show him my badge.

"Your friends have already come and gone if that's who you're looking for," he said. He was smoking a cigarette. He finished it and tossed the stub into the water between the two boats, where it disappeared with a minute sizzle. At first I thought the man was entirely bald, but closer inspection revealed his head was covered with a thin fuzz of iron-gray hair. The unshaven stubble on his jaws was much more plentiful. If he owned a set of dentures, he wasn't wearing them.

He ran one hand over the top of his head and then reached quickly for a baseball cap which stuck out of a frayed hip pocket. "Chemotherapy," he explained self-consciously, covering his scraggly head. "The name's Red Corbett." He held out his hand in greeting. The jutting toothless chin evidently didn't bother him the way his bald head did. His handshake was firm and thorough enough to belong to an old-time politician.