The River Killers by Bruce Burrows Page A

might want it for their database.”
    The noise of the bar now seemed intrusive rather than welcoming. I looked at Mark. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s get back.”
    Outside the bar, it was chilly and still. As we walked down the dock, I looked up at the cloudless sky. Unaffected by urban haze, the stars were clear and bright and compelling. They posed a question I didn’t understand and twinkled an answer I was afraid I did.
    Mark steered the power skiff for the Coastal Provider where he jumped aboard and quickly returned with a cardboard box full of journals. “This is Alistair’s stuff.” Then he roared me over to the James Sinclair and nodded goodnight as I climbed aboard.
    I took the box to my stateroom and started going through it. There were seventeen lined journals, each one evidently covering a year of observations. They started in June of 1987, when I assumed Alistair had arrived in Yeo Cove. The last one had entries up to April 12, the day before Mark had borrowed them. But, as I continued putting them all in order, I came across one that didn’t fit the sequence. It was undated and I opened it with curiosity.
    It was unlike the others, which consisted of daily entries of environmental conditions correlated to fish counts and movements, the mundane observations of a working scientist. But this journal was full of pasted-in printouts from various databases and programs. I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. Bette crossed my mind again. She was the only person I knew who might be able to make sense of this stuff. And I thought there might be more data as well as other clues back at Alistair’s float house. What we needed was some sort of whaddayacallit, that thing they used to decipher hieroglyphics—oh yeah, the Rosetta Stone. I would try to run over there in the morning.
    I tried to sleep but couldn’t. Long dormant thoughts about Billy’s disappearance re-awakened old memories and they triggered a new resolve to get some answers, and that made me wonder what I would find at Alistair’s float house. As the queries chased answers that refused to come out and play, my mind tired of the game and settled into more comfortable thoughts of warmth and softness, and then I suppose I slept.

Four
    The next morning exploded with a roar. Huge diesels thundered to life and shattered sleep into shards of confused consciousness. My noise-bludgeoned brain placed me back on the Maple Leaf C . A few seconds passed before the starting roar subsided to a comfortable throbbing. I switched on the light and surveyed my stateroom. If this had been the fo’c’s’le of the Maple Leaf C , the space would have been smaller, the occupancy larger and the odor greater. Four bodies would have been bumping into each other as they groped for pants and shirts and gumboots. I felt a little alone as I donned my clean and non-smelly DFO fleecy gear.
    Upstairs on the bridge, I could have been back on the Maple Leaf C or any seine boat. It was still dark, and the only light was the green glow from the radar, blue and red from the sounder, and yellow from the instrument panel. Five radios crackled with static and snippets of conversation. Four of us stood quietly, grasping steaming cups of coffee as we completed our transition to full consciousness.
    One of the radios hissed static and then burst into speech. “ James Sinclair, Western Marauder . You guys awake yet?” One of our test boats. I reached up and grabbed the mike.
    â€œ Western Marauder, James Sinclair . Morning, skipper. What are you gentlemen up to this morning?”
    â€œWe’re at the top end of Spiller. We’ve been sounding since four and we’ve identified maybe a thousand or fifteen hundred tons. As soon as it’s light we’ll try a set and see what we get.”
    â€œThanks for that, skipper. We’re especially interested in the size of the females, so measure as many as