Michael Connelly - The Narrows

Of course, I knew why he was running it that way. He had another hobby-if you want to call it that-and he needed time to devote to that as well. I was putting the records back into the chart station drawer, with the intention of heading down to the bow to explore Terry's other hobby, when I heard the salon door roll open behind me.

It was Buddy Lockridge. He had come up on the boat without my hearing the Zodiac's little engine or feeling its nudge against the fantail. I also hadn't felt Buddy's considerable weight as he climbed onto the boat.

"Morning," he said. "Sorry I'm late."

"That's okay. I've got a lot to look through here."

"Find anything interesting yet?"

"Not really. I'm about to go below, check out his files."

"Cool. I'll help."

"Actually, Buddy, where you can help is if maybe you called the man who was the last charter."

I looked at the last name written on the page in my notebook.

"Otto Woodall. Could you call him and vouch for me and see if I could come by this afternoon to see him?" "That's it? You wanted me to come all the way over to make a phone call?"

"No, I have questions for you. I need you here. I just don't think you should be going through the files down there. Not yet, at least."

I had a feeling that Buddy Lockridge had probably already perused every file in the bow. But I was playing him this way on purpose. I had to keep him close but distant at the same time. Until I had cleared him to my satisfaction. Yes, he was McCaleb's partner and had received credit for his efforts to save his fallen friend, but I had seen stranger things in my time. At the moment I had no suspects and that meant I had to suspect everybody.

"Make the call and then come downstairs to see me."

I left him there and headed down the short set of steps to the lower part of the boat. I had been here before and knew the layout. The two doors on the left side of the hallway led to the head and a storage closet Straight ahead was a door to the small stateroom in the bow. The door on the right led to the master stateroom, the place where I would have been killed four years before if Terry McCaleb had not leveled a gun and fired on a man about to ambush me. This had occurred moments after I had saved McCaleb from a similar end.

I checked the paneling in the hallway where I remembered two of McCaleb's shots had splintered the wood. The surface was heavily varnished but I could tell it was newer wood.

The shelves in the storage closet were empty and the bathroom was clean, the overhead vent popped open on the forward deck above. I opened the master stateroom door and looked in but decided to leave it for later. I went to the forward room and had to use a key from the ring Graciela had given me to open the door.

The room was as I had remembered it. Two sets of V-bunks on each side, following the line of the bow. The bunks on the left still functioned as sleeping compartments, their thin mattresses rolled up and held by bungee cords. But on the right the lower bunk had no mattress and had been converted into a desk. The bunk above was where four long cardboard file boxes sat side by side.

McCaleb's cases. I looked at them for a long and solemn moment. If someone had murdered him, I believed I would find the suspect in there.

"Anytime today."

I almost jumped. It was Lockridge standing behind me. Once again I had not heard or felt his approach. He was smiling because he liked sneaking up on me.

"Good," I said. "Maybe after lunch we can head over there. I'll need a break from this by then anyway."

I looked down at the desk and saw the white laptop with the recognizable symbol of an apple with a bite out of it in silhouette. I reached down and opened it, unsure of how to proceed.

"Last time I was here, he had a different one."

"Yeah," Lockridge said. "He got that one on account of the graphics. He was getting into digital photography and stuff."

Without my bidding or approval Lockridge reached over and depressed a white button on the computer. It started to hum and then the black screen filled with light.

"What kind of photography?" I asked.

"Oh, you know, amateur stuff mostly. His kids and sunsets and shit. It started with the clients. We started taking their pictures with their trophy fish, you know? And Terry could just come down here and print out eight-by-ten glossies on the spot. There's a box of cheap-ass frames in here someplace. The client catches a fish, he gets a framed photo. Part of the deal. It worked pretty good. Our gratuities went way up with that."

The computer finished booting up. The screen was a sky of light blue that made me think of McCaleb's daughter. Several icons were spread across the field. Right away I noticed one that was a miniature file folder. Underneath it the word profiles was printed. I knew that was a folder I wanted to open. Scanning across the bottom of the screen I saw an icon that looked like a camera set in front of a photo of a palm tree. Since the subject had just been photography I pointed to it. "Is that where the photos are?" "Yup," Lockridge said.

Again he moved without my request. He moved his finger on a small square in front of the keyboard, which in turn moved the arrow on the screen to the camera icon. He used his thumb to depress a button below the square and the screen quickly took on a new image. Lockridge seemed at ease with the computer and it begged the questions why and how. Did Terry McCaleb allow him access to the computer-after all, they were in business together-or was this something Lockridge became efficient at without his partner's knowledge?

On the screen a frame opened under the heading iPhoto. There were several folders listed. Most were listed by dates, usually a few weeks or a month. There was one folder simply titled mail call. "Here we go," Lockridge said. "You want to see some of this stuff? It's clients and fish."

"Yeah, show me the most recent photos."

Lockridge clicked on a folder that was labeled with dates ending just a week before McCaleb's death. The folder opened and there were several dozen photos listed by individual date. Lockridge clicked on the most recent date. A few seconds went by and a photo opened on the screen. It showed a man and woman, both badly sunburned and smiling as they held up a horribly ugly brown fish.

" Santa Monica Bay halibut," Buddy said. "That was a good one."

"Who are they?"

"Um, they were from… Minnesota, I think. Yeah, St Paul. And I don't think they were married. I mean, they were married but just not to each other. They were staving on the island. Shacking up. They were the last charter before the trip down to Baja. Pictures from that trip are probably still on the camera."

"Where is the camera?"

"It should be here. If not, then Graciela probably has it."

He clicked on a left arrow above the photo. Soon another photo appeared, the same couple and same fish. Lockridge kept clicking and eventually he came to a new customer and his trophy fish, a pinkish white creature about fourteen inches long.

"White sea bass," Lockridge said. "Nice fish."

He kept clicking, showing me a procession of fishermen and their catches. Everybody seemed happy, some even had the obvious glaze of alcohol in their eyes. Lockridge named all the fish but not all the clients. He didn't remember them all by name. Some of them he simply classified as good or bad tippers and that was it.

Eventually, he came to a man with a delighted smile on his face as he held up a small white sea bass. Lockridge cursed.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"He's the prick who walked off with my goddamn fish box."

"What fish box?"

"My GPS. He's the guy who took it."

Backus stayed at least a hundred feet behind her. Even in the crowded Chicago airport he knew she would be on what they always called "Six Alert" when he had been with the bureau. Watching her back-her six-and always checking for a trailer. It had been tricky enough traveling with her so far. The plane from South Dakota had been small and fewer than forty people had been on board. The random assignment of seats had put him only two rows from her. So close he thought he could actually smell her scent-the one beneath the perfume and the makeup. The one the dogs could pick up.