The River Killers by Bruce Burrows

strange guy but I sometimes trade him halibut for prawns. You know who I’m talking about?”
    Crowley was the stuff of legend. He haunted the annals of DFO lore like Marley’s Ghost. He had done brilliant work, first on acid rain and then on Pacific Ocean regime shifts. After those peer-acclaimed works, he had retreated deeper into the basement of the West Van lab and had begun experiments that few understood and even fewer approved of. And then he was gone. Fired? Quit? Medical leave? The rumors were numerous and unresolved. But he’d still been there in 1996 when Smiling Billy had, presumably, turned up on the doorstep with a large mutant fish.
    â€œYeah, Mark.” I tried not to appear too eager. “I’d love to talk to him. Let me know when you’re headed his way.”
    The raucous noise of the bar suddenly increased by a factor of, by God, the Kairikula brothers. They burst through the door like a Force 8 storm, yelling and insulting all and sundry in a generically malign fashion.
    â€œShearwater is the asshole of the world and the whole goddamn herring fleet is five fathoms up it.” This from Hari.
    The punch line from Jari. “So that makes everyone here a hemorrhoid.”
    Gleeful laughter as they swaggered toward the bar. The Kairikula brothers were, in their eyes, the pride of Sointula, and the product of a century of Finnish lineage. Some would say they were the product of a restricted gene pool. But I’d fished with and around them for years, and my many painful attempts to match their capacity for vodka had resulted in a typically shipmate-fisher-guy sort of bond.
    I both cringed and delighted when Hari fastened his eyes on me. Hari to Jari, “Look who’s here. It’s Swede Swanson, the wannabe Finn. Hey Danny, you’re a good guy. Gimme fifty bucks and I’ll get you a Finnish passport.”
    Jari to Hari, “No fucking way. He’s good for a Swede but not good enough to be a Finn.” He elbowed through the crowd and threw his arm around me. “But he’s good enough to buy me a drink.”
    Mark smiled to himself and leaned against the bar. It was starting to feel like old times. “Okay, guys,” I said. “What can I get you? Virgin Chi Chi?”
    Jari waved at the waitress, and she responded amazingly quickly with two double vodkas. The brothers and their tastes were well known from Steveston to Prince Rupert. Vodka and water on normal occasions. Vodka and Carolans for special occasions.
    Hari downed his drink and looked at me sternly. “Haven’t seen you around for a while, Danny. Someone said you came out of the closet.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Jari said. “He joined DFO .”
    â€œOhmigod, if there’s one thing worse than sucking cocks, it’s just sucking period.” They guffawed and gasped for at least three minutes over that one. They recovered their breath and gazed reverently as the waitress removed her sweater to reveal a “Spawn Till You Die” T-shirt.
    Mark interjected calmly. “I was just telling Danny we should run over to Yeo Cove and get some prawns off Alistair.”
    Hari looked at him. “You guys didn’t hear? Sonofabitch blew his head off this morning. Crazy prawn fisherman, they’re all the same. Traps, all they do is set traps, and fight over turf until they start goin’ squirrelly.”
    I looked at Mark and saw shock deaden his face. “I saw him yesterday. He was as happy as I’ve ever seen him. Talking about getting a bigger boat.” He paused. “Jeez, I’ve still got a box of his stuff. He lent me all his journals and records so I could study the local herring movements. There’s no monetary value to it, but I should return it. It’s part of his estate, I guess.”
    I was curious. “Let me look at it and I’ll see it gets into the proper hands. It could be DFO property, or at least they