A Death on The Horizon Read online

  In Juneau the Northstar was searched stem to stern—standard op. The reporter’s modest stateroom was dusted, wiped, and photographed. Earlier ports of call, Ketchikan and Wrangell, were put on notice with all-points bulletins. Posters of the mousy-haired and diminutive scribe—who looked young for her twenty-nine years--were up all over the Inside Passage within days. Coast Guard helicopters crisscrossed the voyage route fruitlessly. On July 9, the day the Northstar returned home to Seattle, Svenko’s cold-preserved, fish-nibbled corpse was pulled ashore by a group of Haidas who had dropped anchor for some beer-fueled revelry after a day of fishing.

  Melissa knew, as she watched her boss scan the case notes, that the dangerous-waters motif had caused him to take a special interest. Yet it was not the kind of case that mattered much anymore. He revealed that there were no lawsuits, and the minimal insurance Imbroglio had taken out on the poor woman had been paid without contest to her only surviving family member, her father, an elderly Russian immigrant living in New York.

  Melissa’s gaze rose to the dramatic swash of white on Scrimshaw’s oil painting, a wave reaching to breach the Doria’s rammed hull. “Who still cares?” was the question she had learned to ask when receiving an assignment.

  Scrimshaw looked up at her, as if deciding her professional fate at that very moment. “Imbroglio cares,” he said.

  He explained that the magazine felt it was beholden upon them to keep the inquiry open. “It doesn’t want to be seen as abandoning its own, even though Ms. Svenko signed away every shred of rights when she accepted the assignment.” Scrimshaw went on to intimate that the furtherance of the story helped the magazine’s profile, a web-print combo launched at the beginning of the Iraq War.

  Melissa’s wheels spun. It was her first case in months not to involve the crumbling financial infrastructure. While her boss fielded and rejected an incoming call from Ms. Claymore, she had another vision. She would not return to the Cape Lookout course catalog but would instead burn midnight oil. She saw herself reexamining every document, every news clip, and every testimonial pertaining to the case, reviewing everything from Fox News clips on YouTube to transcripts from the independent Juneau radio station that had grabbed the story and shaken it for all it was worth.

  The Old Turtle looked at his watch, a deep-sea submersible gold band that Captain Nemo would be proud to wear.

  “Imbroglio has some pretty deep pockets these days—we have reason to believe there may be George Soros money involved—so we’re going top flight with the investigation. We have booked passage for you aboard the Northstar as one of this year’s Rainier Policy Institute college press interns. You are heretofore assigned the name Sue Ross, from the Lewis & Clark Pioneer Log.”

  Melissa didn’t let her relief at this reprieve show.

  “We want you to extensively research the case,” he continued, “and feel that your passage on the ship is key to convincing Imbroglio that we’re going the extra mile, or league, as it were.” He rose from his high-backed throne and walked around the desk to shake her hand. “With a little good detective work,” he said, his father-turtle appeal at its strongest, “we have every confidence you will bring home for Charon and our client the answers that have evaded everyone else.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Walking toward the elevator, Melissa saw out the corridor window that it was raining again. A rogue sunbreak miles distant revealed the slopes of the Mount Rainier. It struck her that Washington State’s signature peak was almost bare of snow, odd for June. Whatever precipitation the Pacific Ocean was dropping on the Olympic Range was falling as rain there too.

  Passing through the HR waiting area, she felt the blue eye of the male applicant.

  A man in her life. It was a desire that fleetingly warmed her heart as she faced the disheartening realities of her future in a world grown colder which each passing day. A longing she prayed she could somehow reconcile without abandoning her dream of successful independence. To find love in all this, as it all tumbled down. The idea of accomplishing that was asserting itself, even as she followed bad trails and endured the looks of uncompromising men like the man next in line to see Scrimshaw, who had risen from his chair in human resources.

  Chapter Three

  Captain Radley Squier, US Navy retired, walked out to his locked mailbox in the gated community of Arbor Glen. The humid slab of jet-stream storminess had arced north in a huge serpentine motion, leaving stratospheric high-pressure skies and the best of all weather. It was warm for midmorning, even for mid-June, but too early and spring clear for the inevitable carbon emissions to stagnate over the Puget Sound. He looked toward the grassy sweep of the seventh hole, as he always did when retrieving his mail, to see who might be out on the fairway.

  Despite the dour mood that often plagued the decorated Vietnam troop transport ace after reading the paper, it always soothed him that life went on quite nicely here, despite the troubling news that had become as regular as rain with the election of Barack Obama.

  A golf party came carting over the undulate hill from the sixth hole—two couples. Though Rad prided himself on his still-sharp eyesight, he did not recognize the group. The foursome got situated, and Rad saw that one of the men was training a pair of binoculars on the seventh, which sat atop a gorgeous slope that featured regal Mount Rainier as its backdrop on clear days.

  He noticed a team of Latino landscapers quietly raking the spring duff off a lawn four door down. He smiled. Yes, the world was going to hell in a wave of liberalism, and President Obama’s promised transformation of America had begun. But at least in here, in this sheltered enclave, a traditional order remained. After ensuring that every laborer on the grounds maintenance payroll was green-carded, the community council had banned leaf blowers for good measure.

  In his mailbox was a flyer from a pest control outfit out of nearby Port Rachel—a flyer he would complain about. Such solicitations were prohibited. Also delivered were his copy of the conservative weekly Sentinel, a bill for his homeowner’s association dues, and a manila-colored Trans Oceanic envelope, which he knew contained his latest commission as helmsman of the Northstar’s upcoming Rainier Policy Institute Inside Passage cruise.

  The electric whir of a golf cart came up the street. The Seattle Seahawks flag fluttering off the back signaled Rad’s friend Alvin Alderson. Alderson was a clubhouse legend who held the record for being the most consistently under par of Arbor Glen’s resident golfers. He was also the last Goldwater man still swinging a club.

  “Hey, Big Rad,” Alderson said, his usual greeting for anyone taller than his 5'9" height. Both men were diverted as the golfer who’d held the binoculars drove a nice shot down toward the seventh, a drive that limned the hazard pond currently arrayed with a mother duck and five ducklings. The mother skittered squawking along the surface and then took flight, leaving her ducklings to querulously paddle in circles. The ball dropped well and then rolled within inches of the hole as if guided by the gods of golf.

  “A pretender,” Alderson joked. “I better get out there.”

  “I hear they’ve got that drainage problem on nine fixed,” said Rad.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty spiffy. They brought in rock and redid the whole back slope.”

  “Who got the contract?”

  “Shansky’s bunch.”

  “Good show, all American.”

  “I’ll say,” said Alderson. “Shansky himself was out there with a shovel. He’s had to lay off some of his guys.”

  Rad held up the flyer. “Apparently someone has not been apprised of the bylaws.”

  “Pest control? Oh yeah, I got that too. Did a good job with the clubhouse mice, though.”

  Alderson eyed the garish colors and exaggerated art on the cover of Rad’s Sentinel. “What’s the latest?”

  Rad held up the magazine, its glossy paper glinting in the morning sun. The cover story, “Can the GOP Come Back?” was decorated by a Democratic mule enjoying what looked like a piña colada
on the back lawn of the White House. A thinned-down, bedraggled GOP elephant peered from behind a street-side barrier.

  “A lot can happen between now and 2012.” snorted Alderson. He’d made his comfortable fortune brokering upscale homes. “Like a combined residential-commercial foreclosure rate into the high forties.”

  “They can blame Bush through 2010 at least.” Rad said,

  “At least.”

  The golf party had carted down and was setting up to putt on seven. The men were engaged in affected braggadocio, and the women’s laughter came across the heat-waved grass like memories of another summer. Rad held up the manila envelope with a philosophic air.

  “My Rainier Policy Institute orders.”

  “Fantastic,” said Alderson.

  “Just me again this year. Nancy is headed to Palm Springs to see the grandkids.”

  Alderson nodded. “Probably a good year to miss.”

  “Last year left us both with a bad taste,” Rad said.

  “Right,” said Alderson, “that liberal reporter.”

  “Can’t complain, though,” Rad continued. “Nan made every year from 1997 through 2007, except for, you know, 2001.”

  Alderson reflected. “Darcy and I talked about going. We had a blast in ’05, but with the election and all, we didn’t get our request in on time.”

  “The last really good year.”

  In 2005, soccer moms had become security moms, and the youth vote had failed to materialize. Gay rights measures brought evangelicals out in droves, part of an electorate smart enough not to switch horses in the middle of the War on Terror. George the Second didn’t even have to win the televised debates. Those were the days.

  One of the women on seven stepped up for her putt, measuring the distance, a stance that needed work but was easy on the eyes. Her blond hair was suddenly blown sideways by a breeze Rad couldn’t yet feel. When it reached Rad and Alderson, it was a hot blast that lazily turned the wrought-iron rooster weathervane on Rad’s roof. The gardeners, who were silently raking and edging their way up the street, looked up along with Rad and his neighbor at the sound of a loud “Whoa!” from the seventh green. The stiff but well-conditioned blond had sunk a five-footer.

  “Anything in the wind about you running for our next house representative?” asked Alderson.

  “Well, it’s been floated, as they say, but nothing in writing yet.”

  State Republican leaders had taken notice of the positive buzz created by his captaining of the Rainier cruises and approaching retirement. Rad’s name was circulating as a potential candidate for state house representative in congressional District 7, which included affluent Arbor Glen, respectably middle-class Port Rachel, and blue collar Sloughson.

  “We’re all hoping you’ll consider it,” said Alderson, “but you already know that.” He revved his cart and promised that he and Darcy would keep an eye on Rad’s place.

  Rad walked back into the house, pausing to notice in the hall mirror that even just the moment spent talking to Alderson in the sunlight had lent a blush of color to his face. His skin hadn’t been exposed to more than occasional Pacific Northwest sun breaks since the April Bahamas cruise that Nissan had chartered for its Japanese businessmen. There was a hint of warmth on his high brow, which ended with a crop of dark-brown hair, combed back and flipped in a fifties-style wave. In the mirror, he looked gaunt but for the rounded pot of a belly that needed more rounds of golf.

  In the dark-walnut-and-leather-appointed office off the foyer, he sat down and opened the envelope containing his authorization to captain the conservative cruise again. A letter of welcome featured the names of some illustrious right-wing notables who would be aboard, some new and some returning. None other than Newt Gingrich would deliver a remote, big-screen address at the moment of debarkation. Conservative talk show star Grant Sharpe would be aboard. A lovely color print of the Trans Oceanic flagship suggested all that might transpire on the voyage. There was a personal letter of commendation for Rad’s years of service from CEO Admiral Richard Blaisedale included.

  Rad stood and walked into the hall, the letter having stirred the old shipman in his blood. The computer-controlled air conditioning murmured to life, and he decided to kick it up a notch for the day ahead.

  He hadn’t let on to Alderson about his discouragement that Nancy would not make the voyage, even while understanding that time with their daughter, Rebecca, and her family was more golden than another political junket. He’d missed her on last summer’s Inside Passage cruise, but ultimately, with the death of the Russian reporter and the sinking feeling that Senator John McCain was not going to pull off a victory, it was better Nancy had stayed home. Now, with the Democrats installed at all levels of power, Republicans thoroughly defeated, and the economy in a tailspin, 2009 was probably a good year to bask in Palm Spring’s apolitical sunshine.

  Still, he would miss his wife. They’d had a great run despite the blips that occur in any long marriage, thirty-six years and never a thought that they would not be together forever. The Rainier Policy Institute cruises were always lazy-day affairs, and despite his professional and ceremonial duties, their togetherness on the ship always felt like fourth, fifth, and sixth honeymoons. Everything was more sociable, happier, fun, when sharing a cruise with like-minded conservatives, although this year, this dire year of failure and recession, promised to be a challenge.

  There was something else about leaving that troubled him. Islamist terrorists had been quiet of late. Rad was worried about what might happen while the Northstar ferried his tribe into the northern reaches of the Passage. He felt viscerally aware that the nation might look back on this time as being dangerously unvigilant. He’d been at the helm of Trans Oceanic’s South Sea United on a Mexican Riviera cruise on September 11, 2001—a cruise whose subsequent ports of call were merely depressed pit stops on the way back to a changed America. Nancy had stayed home to help Rebecca with her difficult first pregnancy and called that night when she knew he’d be off the bridge and watching the news, asking to fly south for the ship’s homecoming in San Diego. He told her no, but she wouldn’t have been able to anyway—the skies had been cleared of air traffic.

  He heard the garage door rumble to life and knew that meant her Cayenne was pulling into the driveway. He stuck his cruise commission into a copy of Dick Morris’s Catastrophe, a book he’d not found time for until now, when most of its worst-case scenarios were already playing out. Nancy was bright and smiling when she came through the back door with her key ring and a bottled water. She traveled light and was always at her lightest when returning from her workout.

  “I’m going to have a salad,” she announced, hugging him. “Want one?”

  He nodded. “My orders came.”

  She subtly turned the hug into something with a different promise. “I’m going to miss you,” she said.

  “Ditto,” he answered.

  As she clattered around the kitchen, he brought his Sentinel from the office and sat at the breakfast bar. The cover angle was familiar now—a treatise on what Republicans must do to avoid being tossed on the ash heap of history. It was customary to say that the debate was good for the party, and Rad expected to hear plenty as the Northstar made its way up the Passage. Romney’s troops would sing the tycoon’s praises, painting him as inevitable. There would be prayer meetings for the Governor Mike Huckabee believers. A cadre of neocons would reprise the “Bush kept us safe” mantra, the addendum being that McCain would have too. Buchanan’s isolationist brigades, survivors of Rudy’s lost battalion, and Sarah’s believers in thrall to the caribou-felling Earth Mother of the new, old right would eat mussels and endives together, filling every deck chair on the sold-out cruise.

  Nancy brought two salads and two iced teas to the table.

  “You’re all packed?” he asked. She would leave in two mornings for Palm Springs and ten days with Rebecca; their son-in-law, Sam; and the boys. Rad would sail from the Port of Seattle two days after that
.

  “I am.”

  They ate in silence, she glancing over a home and garden magazine while Rad focused on a Sentinel story about how some of the banks that had received TARP money had tried to refuse it, only to be told they couldn’t because it would make other banks look bad. That night they ate dinner at the Arbor Glen Country Club, had a few drinks. Everyone knew they were not sailing together, and the bon voyages reflected as much.

  Later, the bed gently rocked. The night before their last night together, she loved him in a way that Rad believed God himself ordained that only a wife can. Outside their bedroom window, Arbor Glen slumbered, the nights distinguishable from the days only by darkness and the absence of the quiet hum of golf carts. Ten days and nine nights at sea was not the end of the world, but the weekend before separation felt like it. Rad would think of Nancy when glistening slopes appeared through suddenly parted clouds and the Canadian Coast Range ascended from the shoreline under a full moon.

  She, Rebecca, Sam, and the boys would surely be safe in Palm Springs. Rad let go some measure of his fears about things being too quiet on the terror front, wistfully leaving his wife, daughter and grandchildren out of harm’s way. In truth, as captain of the ship that contained the political party most engaged in the war on terror, he was probably at much higher risk than his family.

  The following night husband and wife ate at home, watched some public television, made love in a state of anticipatory disconnect and, after that, there was nothing left but Nancy’s flurry of tears.

  Chapter Four