“Jesus fuck!” the white-haired man bellowed, gesticulating at the scrap vessel. “Can someone get a patrol boat out into the Gorge and stop that goddamn marine traffic! We almost had her—now she’s been pushed under again.” He turned and stared at Maddocks as he approached along the dock.
As Maddocks reached them, the man said, “So, you’re the new guy from the horsemen?”
“Horsemen?” Maddocks feigned ignorance at the dig as he continued to survey the scene.
“Mounties—Mounted Police, that little blue horse logo on the sides of your cruisers?”
“Right. I’m Sergeant James Maddocks.” He extended his hand. “You must be Harvey Leo?”
The older cop assessed him for a moment with clear blue eyes. Slowly, he reached out and accepted Maddocks’s hand.
“The one and only,” he said. His skin was cold, rough. Iron grip and a craggy face to match.
“This here is Charlie Alphonse—city coroner.” Leo gestured toward the tall skinny guy. “And pathologist, Barb O’Hagan. We figured we’d get O’Hagan down here personally for this one.”
Alphonse was a lanky man with a small head, beaked nose. O’Hagan looked to be in her late sixties, built like a little barrel, short with coarse salt-and-pepper hair sticking out of her ball cap. Bright brown eyes. Maddocks exchanged greetings with them.
“What’ve we got?” he said, turning to watch the rescue vessels as they started to come around the dock and into the calmer waters on the shore side where the log boom surged on the new swells made by the scrap vessel.
“Our floater came up far side of the pier, then just as they’d almost snagged her with those hooks, a tug went by, sending a bunch of waves that shoved her back below the surface. Had to call in a diver. Now that scrap boat has washed her under the dock and through to the calm side. We think she’s somewhere beneath that boom of logs now. Tide’s pushing in hard, too.” Maddocks could see it from the ripples and chop in the channel.
“You certain it’s a female?”
“Negative. Our DB was floating facedown, but the hair was long. Brunette. Just assuming she’s female,” Leo said, watching the dive tender feeding his line into the gunmetal-gray water near the rolling logs. “Dangerous shit that, diving under a boom. Worse than diving under ice. Need a tandem team with one guy working the surface, or the diver could come up inside the confines of a boom—those agitating logs would crush him.”
“Probably several feet of silt and other detritus at the bottom, too,” Alphonse said as his phone rang. “’Scuse me.” He walked back along the dock and stopped under the protective cover of the bridge to take his call. After a brief conversation, he called out, “Barb! Got a vehicle pileup on the Malahat because of the snow at that elevation. Multiple fatalities—I need to get out there, stat. Can you handle this from here?”
“Go. We’re good,” she called back.
Maddocks got down onto his hands and knees and peered under the dock. Pylons were encrusted with slimy muck, mussels, and oysters. Sharp edges.
“They say the Gorge is clean enough to swim in now,” O’Hagan said, watching him.
“My ass,” said Leo. “Sewage is still pumped raw out to sea. How d’you know the currents and tide aren’t washing it all back into the Gorge? Like it probably washed this floater here in.”
Maddocks came to his feet. He moved to the outer edge of the dock and visually scanned the surrounding area. The city lay behind him. The harbor with its marinas and float plane terminal stretched to his left, and the bridge and kayak club were situated at his right. Across the water apartments rose into the dense mist.
“So, not only did you jump the homicide queue, I hear Buziak wants you as the lead on this,” Leo said, coming to stand beside him.
“Didn’t know there was a queue,” Maddocks said, his gaze tracking up the bridge toward the massive counterweight in the sky.
“At least six guys at the station champing at the bit to get that slot in homicide, all locals who know this city like the backs of their hairy ol’ hands. Plus a female detective in sex crimes who’s been rattling at the doors, like, forever.”
Little did they know.
This was not a career jump for him. It wasn’t even a lateral move. Logistically he should be moving up, managing things from behind a desk. He’d been pretty much Buziak’s equivalent back on the mainland. But he’d taken this job to be near Ginny. To make a break. To get away from the boyfriend issue with his wife, the messy divorce proceedings. To get down and dirty in the trenches. Maybe it was avoidance or plain self-distraction. Whatever, heneededthis.
Barb O’Hagan cut in. “Not thatshestands a chance with all you union deadwood plugging up the place, sitting there at your desks, shaving pencils, solving your daily jumbles, drinking bad coffee, and scratching your fat butts, eh, Leo?”
Leo snorted and tilted his head toward the squat little pathologist. “Crusty old morgue doc here can talk. Whenyouup for retirement, anyway, Barb?”
“And what would you do without me to solve your murders for you, Detective? I figure Pallorino would whip your fat asses if she got half a chance.”
“Yeah, right. She’s not a team player, okay? She’s a ... a misanthrope, a misandrist. It’s why you two get along so well, now, isn’t it? Barb?”
“Big words, Leo, big words. You looked those up for your daily jumble this morning?”
Maddocks mentally filed the tone of their banter. This pair was going to be interesting. Or trouble. He walked toward the bridge, looked up. It was maybe nine meters high on the west side, but more than twenty on the huge concrete counterweight side. “Who called it in?”
