Amanda Doucette Mystery 3-Book Bundle. Barbara Fradkin
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degrees, probably about the same as the ambient water temperature where he was. Where was that?”
“We was 250 kilometres northeast. I gave Biggs here the coordinates.”
“There’s no visible mud or ocean silt in his mouth or ears, and rigor is minimal. At those temps, that’s not unexpected, but those two facts taken together, I’d say he wasn’t in the water too long.”
“Can you tell how he died?” Biggs said.
The doctor sat back on his heels. “No water in his lungs. Now, cardiac arrest or laryngeal spasm could have killed him when he entered the cold water …”
“But he could have been dead before he hit the water?”
“That’s one possibility of several.” He straightened with a creak and a groan. “Well, I’ve done what I can. The autopsy in St. John’s should tell us more, but meanwhile you can treat the death as suspicious.”
Chris looked over at the ring of townspeople still pressed against the tape. A few had departed but most waited for news, worried about family and loved ones up and down the coast.
“How about I show the photos to the boat crew and the locals, sir. See if anyone recognizes him or has any relevant information. Then they can go home.”
“Good idea.” Biggs gestured to the constable on guard. “Send the photos to Leger too and we’ll split up the interviews. It’s going to be a long night.”
People crowded around as Chris approached. Relief showed on their faces as one by one they shook their heads. They didn’t know who the dead man was, but a few echoed Norm Parsons’s belief that he was not a fisherman, indeed not likely even a native Newfoundlander.
“He don’t look like one of us,” said one elderly woman swathed in scarves and shawls. Chris knew that of all Canada, Newfoundland had the most homogeneous population. It was 95 percent white and Christian, comprised mostly of immigrants from southwestern England and southeastern Ireland. Many Newfoundlanders had the sturdy, compact frames, round faces, and blunt features of that gene pool, and Chris suspected the homogeneity, indeed, the shared bloodlines, was even greater in the remote fishing villages, some of which had been founded by a single family or two.
Like these Newfoundlanders, he had grown up in a fairly homogeneous community in rural Saskatchewan, settled by immigrants who had fled Europe at the same time and been granted land in the newly developing Prairies. In his case, however, they had been from the Ukraine. His mother could spot a kinsman at a single glance.
He studied the photo carefully, trying to see what the woman saw. The subtle differences that would set him apart from the locals. The dead man’s features were sharper, his nose finer, and his skin, although grey and mottled from the sea water, looked darker. Not at all the British and Irish stock on which Newfoundland had been built. Italian, perhaps? Or Middle Eastern?
Either way, he was a long way from home.
Amanda woke the next morning revelling in the soft mattress and the warm duvet. Outside, the surf ebbed and flowed against the rocks and sunlight slanted in through the motel window. Her languid stretch woke Kaylee, who crawled up to snuggle, her exuberant tail thumping the bed.
Amanda felt a warm thrill. She had slept without interruptions or dreams, without an all too familiar backdrop of formless dread. She sat up, wishing the feeling would never end, and headed into the shower. Only when she was sitting in the breakfast room with her first cup of coffee did she pull out her cellphone. To her surprise, she had a signal. One bar, but she would take it.
Chris had texted three more times during the night, first to tell her the man was likely not a local, second to say the death looked suspicious, and third to say a major crimes team would be arriving in the morning. “Sh-h!” he’d added. “Don’t repeat that!” The last text had been at 3:00 a.m.
She smiled. How she wished he were here, with his teasing banter and crinkly grin, helping her figure out their next steps together. Poor Chris. It appeared as if he hadn’t slept all night. In the hope he might finally be resting, she decided not to reply until later. She had nothing urgent to report yet anyway. Phil had had a drunken argument with a stranger, Tyler had explored a fishing stage, and they may or may not have gone off with the stranger at the end of the night.
The motel owner approached to refill her coffee and take her order of eggs and toast. “Where’s your friend?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye. “His bed wasn’t touched last night.”
Amanda laughed. “No, he was called away. He’s a cop.”
The twinkle vanished. “Oh, that dead body down S’n Ant’ny?”
How news travels, Amanda thought. Of course, even here in this land where cell signals could evaporate in a strong wind, there were probably tweets and videos all over the Internet. “What are people saying about it?” she asked.
“From away. Off a boat, most likely. One of them big foreign freezer trawlers that’s always sneaking into our waters. Some of them gots thirty, forty workers on ’em, paid next to nudding. Poor bugger probably fell overboard. Or jumped, hoping to swim ashore.”
Mindful of Chris’s admonition, Amanda said nothing about the major crimes unit. “Factory freezer trawler. That sounds ominous.”
“It is. They’s killing the local fishing industry all along the coast. Not just here, but in coastal communities all around the world. Big international corporations that can take in a haul of five hundred tons of fish at one go, freeze it on the boat, and ship it all over the place. Strips the fish right out of the water. First the cod, and now they’re doing it to the shrimp. Most of it goes to Asia.”
Amanda thought about the argument Phil had had with the stranger in the pub, who’d said he just wanted to go home. “What countries are these foreign ships from?”
“Oh, all over d’ world, my dear. The United States, Norway, Korea, you name it. Mind you, the government’s tried to put a few limits in place since all the cod disappeared. They tossed a bone to the Newfoundlanders here that were losing their livelihoods by extending Canadian waters to two hundred miles offshore and banning foreign-owned ships inside that — Jaysus b’y, dat was a helluva fight — but there’s a lot of ocean for Fisheries and Oceans to patrol to keep the foreign boats out, and even the Canadian trawlers ship their catch to Asia. Still cuts the local fisherman out of the lion’s share.” He rolled his eyes and turned away. “Oh, don’t get me started on Ottawa! Let me get them eggs on for you instead, darlin’.”
Once he’d disappeared into the kitchen, Amanda browsed through news and Twitter updates. The official news reports made no mention of possible murder, and apparently the lighting had been poor enough that none of the spectators and cellphone addicts had seen anything suspicious. Speculation was along the same lines as the motel owner — a foreigner off a trawler. From the tone of most of the comments, little sympathy was being wasted on him.
Her phone buzzed, startling her. She glanced at the call display and her breath caught with hope.
“Hi, Sheri!”
“Any news?” Sheri sounded tense and focused.
Amanda wished she could be more reassuring. “Chris and I have picked up his trail on the northern peninsula,” she said, avoiding mention of Phil’s black moods and heavy drinking. “The good news is, he’s still following a plan.”
“He sent me a letter.”
“When?”
“It arrived yesterday.”
Who sends a letter? Amanda thought. Not an email, but a letter! “What did he say?”
“It was a thank-you letter. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s what it was. Short and to the point. Thank you for giving me twelve great years and the joy of Tyler, thank you for taking a wreck of a man back and being so patient.”
Amanda’s breath caught. This was not a thank-you