P. Alderman - A Killing Tide

He'd lay odds he was looking at what was left of a small space heater, its electrical chord, and a simple timer. The guy had probably stuffed the heater with gasoline-soaked rags. When the timer had turned the heater on, firing up the electrical elements…kaboom.

"Our torch seems to have known what he was doing, huh Zeke?" Michael murmured. "Now isn't that a bad sign."

Marking the location of the ignition source on his diagram, he stood up, his eyes tracking the burn flow pattern down the stairs to the engine room and out the door to the foredeck. He stared at the decking, the hairs on his neck rising. He'd seen flow patterns hundreds of times, but this one….The pencil he was holding snapped in two, and he swore at himself. Don't go there. So some burn patterns had become, for him, emotional triggers, like Rorschach inkblots. He'd cope, dammit.

He rubbed the back of his neck with a shaky hand and made himself run through possible scenarios. Maybe a fight had erupted and gotten out of hand. The arsonist had hit the victim too hard, accidentally killing him. That fit Jorgensen's MO—he'd thrown a punch six months ago that had broken a guy's jaw.

Michael frowned and glanced around. Most people use whatever is handy to start the fire, maybe old rags and gasoline. Not a space heater. Had the Jorgensens actually kept a space heater on board? He supposed it was possible—it had to get damned uncomfortable out on the water during the winter. But in his experience, most crab boats had an oil heater down below for the crew. You simply didn't waste precious battery power on a current-hogging space heater.

As for the gasoline, Kaz Jorgensen had told him the night before that she and her brother didn't keep any on board. Which made starting the fire not so easy. To use diesel, Gary would've had to siphon the tanks. And according to Kaz, they typically brought the boats in on empty, which meant siphoning would've been a bitch and a half. Besides, he and Zeke had identified gas, not diesel.

Michael straightened and studied the layout of the mooring basin. The problem was, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to get rid of the body by dumping it in the river from the jetty. There was a nice, swift current, and last night, there'd even been a convenient storm as cover-up. Even if the body hadn't been washed out to sea, it probably would've gotten snagged under a dock somewhere downstream, which meant that it would've been days before it was discovered. Or it would've come ashore, possibly as far downriver as Warrenton. Either way, dumping it in the water was less risky than leaving it on board the Anna Marie .

And why, if Jorgensen was the torch, had the guy been willing to burn his own boat? Had he needed the money? Or was he just tired of struggling to keep the family business alive, had decided to cash out, and Lundquist had been in the way? Michael made a note to check into the Jorgensens' finances.

It was fully light now, and he noticed that more fishermen were arriving. The crabbers would want to use the window between storms to lift and rebait their pots. Someone—he couldn't remember who at the moment—had said that the fishermen crossed the bar just before the tide turned, on the slack tide. That way if they got into trouble, at least the tide would carry them out to sea before their boat was reduced to a pile of debris on the rocks or run aground on the sandbars. Michael grimaced. Hell of a way to make a living.

Several fishermen cast curious glances his way, but no one approached him. Those guys knew what was going on, he'd bet on it. He'd have to interview them later, but he had no illusions as to their willingness to cooperate. He shrugged, returning to the task at hand.

"Okay, Zeke, what about streamers?" He pointed to a burn mark that flowed away from the wheelhouse door and around to the deck. "If I'd been in this guy's place, I would've poured gasoline from here to the deck, where I dumped a shitload of it, then I'd continue around the corner and down the stairs into the engine room. What d'you think? Have I got it right?"

"Mawroooo."

"If I'd known you had conversations with that dog of yours, I might not have hired the two of you."

Michael glanced over his shoulder. Wallace Forbes, Astoria's mayor and his new boss, was standing on the dock. "Don't try to come on board, sir."

"Wouldn't even think of it. Just stopped by to see how things were coming along."

Forbes was typical of politicians everywhere, dressed casually to put his constituents at ease, persistently cheerful, and always careful about what he gave away in a conversation. He wasn't a bad sort, necessarily, just the product of the electoral environment. Michael had never had much use for politicians, but he'd learned to live with them.

"Zeke is helping me confirm that this fire was deliberately set," he said by way of explanation.

"From what I hear about that nose of yours, you already knew that," Forbes observed.

"Never hurts to have a second opinion."

"Now those are words to live by." Forbes pulled a cigarette out of a monogrammed silver case, tapped it a few times, and lit it. "So tell me you also know who set it."

Michael hesitated. "Fires have a way of burning up a lot of the evidence, and the weather last night was particularly foul. But with any luck, I'll find something useful."

The mayor nodded and looked out across the docks. He waved to the crew of a departing trawler. "Is there any possibility that it wasn't Jorgensen?"

"He had motive, as well as opportunity," Michael said, uneasy with giving the wrong impression. "But there are a few unanswered questions."

Forbes' gaze turned shrewd. "Like what?"

"I'd rather not say until I complete a thorough investigation."

The mayor watched him for a long moment through eyes half-shut against cigarette smoke, then let loose a chuckle. "Word has it you used to drive your superiors nuts."

Michael didn't respond. Forbes hadn't stopped by on a casual morning stroll along the waterfront, not at the crack of dawn. And he wasn't there to give Michael grief about his reputation as a maverick, which he had to have known about well before he'd made the decision to hire.

Michael's buddies in the Boston Fire Department had told him Forbes had checked him out. Thoroughly. He hadn't just conducted a routine, cursory check—he'd made it a point to talk to anyone who would volunteer information about Michael. And while Michael resented it, he respected the Mayor's thoroughness.

Forbes sighed. "You know, I've known the Jorgensens for most of my life. Knew their parents, too. Anna and Tim died in a freak storm—let's see—that would be fifteen years ago now. The twins would've been eighteen at the time. It was hard on them, real hard. Gary enlisted, ended up a Ranger in the Army—in one of those elite units that does things the rest of us would rather not know about." Forbes shook his head. "Now Kaz, though, she went south and got herself one fine college education. Made a go of that consulting business of hers. People round here don't let on, but they're awfully proud of both of them."

He paused while he flicked some cigarette ash into the water. "Kaz was with her parents that night, you know. She barely made it to Sand Island, a nasty pile of shifting sediment just this side of the bar. She couldn't save her parents, and that's eaten at her. She hasn't been back, other than for her annual visits, in years. That is, not until about three weeks ago, when she showed up and started working the crab pots."

Michael remained silent, wondering where all of this was leading. The mayor might think that Gary'd had a couple of bad breaks, but that didn't mean the guy hadn't finally snapped. And the fact that Kaz had come back to town for an extended stay right before the fire occurred wasn't exactly a point in her favor.