Dead in the Water by Dana Stabenow Read Free Book Online Page A

memory.
    "The Avilda is one of a fleet of deep-sea fishing boats owned by a consortium of fishing families from Freetown, Oregon, called Alaska Ventures, Inc. They've been smart and successful, and they've built up quite a sizable fleet over the last forty years." He pawed through the folder and by a miracle found what he was looking for near the top of the file. "There's the Avilda, your boat. There's the Lady Killigrew, the Madame Ching, the-"
    Kate sat up, and he looked at her. "What?"
    The names triggered a memory somewhere, but she couldn't immediately track it down. She shook her head.
    "Nothing. Never mind."
    He looked at her for a moment longer, decided it wasn't worth the effort and returned to his list. "There's the Mary Read, the Anne Bonney and a sixth on the ways at Marco, the-"
    Kate's memory clicked in and a wide grin spread across her face. "Let me guess. The Grace O'Malley."
    He examined his list again. "No, the Mary Lovell."
    Kate laughed out loud. "What?"
    She was still chuckling, but she shook her head. "Nothing.
    Never mind. It's not important."
    Jack mistrusted the smug expression on her face but shrugged his shoulders and looked back down at his list. "The fleet spends summers in Freetown, refitting, maintenance and repairs, upgrading equipment, that kind of thing. Winters, they spend fishing in Alaska, out of Kodiak or Dutch Harbor, always for crab, opilio, bairdi, red and blue king. Lately there's been some talk of refitting a few of the vessels for bottom fishing, but Alaska Ventures' board of directors seems to feel that bottom fishing is going to be severely curtailed in the near future."
    "They are smart," Kate observed. "A lot of marine biologists blame bottom fishing for the drop in king crab stocks in the mid-eighties, and they lobby hard in Juneau and Washington. They've got the tree huggers on their side, too. Hard to buck. What's any of this got to do with the Case of the Disappearing Crewmen?"
    "I'm getting to that. As you know, the Avilda is skippered by Harry Gault. During the tail end of last season, Gault used the Avilda to haul a barge from Kodiak to Dutch Harbor. The barge belonged to the processor Alaska Ventures delivers to, so he was doing them a favor. Not much of one, as it turned out."
    "What happened?"
    "It is generally agreed, if not said right out loud, that through bad weather and bad seamanship Gault lost the barge."
    "Lost the barge9"
    Jack nodded. "The line parted twice before he finally lost it for good the third time. They spent a lot of time going around in circles trying to find it. No luck. In the meantime, they ran out of water."
    "Ran out of water?"
    Jack nodded. "Ran out of water." When Kate would have said more he held up one hand and cautioned,
    "Remember, the deck boss and the remaining deckhand backed him up on this."
    "Ned Nordhoff and Seth Skinner."
    Jack nodded again. "So he drove the boat over to the nearest island, anchored, and the other crew members"Jack fumbled impatiently with the pile of paper in his lap-"doggone it, okay, here it is-their names were Christopher Alcala and Stuart Brown-went ashore to look for water."
    The faces of the two young crewmen appeared again before Kate's eyes. "Went ashore where?"
    "Ah, what, the island's name was Anua."
    "Got a map?"
    Jack fished around in his daypack and tossed a folded piece of paper over to her. She flattened it on the bunk and found the little island halfway down the chain, ringed in a circle of black Marksalot she had no difficulty in identifying as Jack's handiwork. Jack had always leaned toward black Marksalot for notes, arrows and marginal balloons on any piece of evidence that was write-onable, to the vocal disgust of the district attorneys who had then to introduce the evidence into the trial record. "What's on it? On Anua, I mean?"
    "An airstrip dating back to World War 11, an active volcano. That's about it. Pretty standard for an Aleutian island."
    Kate measured the air miles between Dutch