Cold Water Burning

Chapter One The storm had passed, Toddy was dead and I was clinging to the overturned hull of my yellow skiff. I pulled down the hood of my rubber survival suit and looked up to see gulls circling the tangled mess my life had become. There was no help, and there wouldn't be. Light dazzled on the tip of every gray-green wave, but there were no ships. I was wide awake in the empty sea wishing I could go back in time, back to the dock before I had pushed away, back to the unsolved homicide, back to the recurring nightmare of murder, gasoline and children screaming. It could be argued that being a private investigator in a small Alaskan town is one of the worst career decisions a person with a high-school diploma can make. But there's lots of opportunity for free time. In that regard, the summer started off well. I had spent six wonderful days catching a few of the early king salmon, all thanks to the money I'd made working for a rich herring boat captain who had crushed some fool charter fisherman's face in a bar brawl. The case was my dream come true: a rich client with serious felony charges. The summer was looking up, but summers are short here. The skipper settled his case long before trial; I had spent most of his money on bait and boat repairs before September came around. I would never have gone out into that storm willingly. The weather radio had been tracking two low-pressure systems on a collision course in the north Pacific. If the systems joined forces it would become the kind of storm that would crack the limbs off alder trees and churn the shoreline white. I still remember the feeling of those few days as the storm moved in: black clouds like bags of anvils rolling up over the horizon, and the trees along the beach standing motionless as if they were trying to hide from what was coming. I remember the expectation and the dread before the storm hit. It was two days before the peak of the storm when Patricia Ewers walked into my office and asked me to find her husband Richard, who had gone missing with fifty thousand dollars of their money. Richard Ewers's case may have been my greatest success as a defense investigator. Three years ago he had stood trial on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of arson, and had been found not guilty. He had been accused of killing two adults and two children on board a fish-buying scow, soaking the deck with gas, and setting the whole mess on fire as he escaped in a red tin skiff. This was Richard Ewers. My client. A five-month murder trial is an ordeal that forges loyalties that only come out of combat. All the subtle conflicts boil down to "us" against "them." I thought of Patricia Ewers as an old army buddy. Captain of the "us," Patricia provided the strength and calm presence during the wildest part of the ordeal. All through the halfhearted police protection, the ugly phone calls and the reporters digging through her garbage, she never wavered in her support of Richard. She and her parents had stood by him; they had lost both their houses and their savings accounts to legal fees. The not-guilty verdict was some vindication, but nothing could pay them back for what they had been through. When I saw her walk up my stairs unannounced three years later, I knew something more serious than a multiple murder count had to be bothering Patricia Ewers. "Cecil, he's gone. I think they killed him this time." I put my hand on her back and moved her to my sagging couch near the woodstove. "He took the money. In cash. A large amount of cash," she said as she flopped herself on the old couch. Dust rose up in a plume. "I told him not to take it." "What money?" I asked her as I offered her a towel to dry her hair, for she had been caught in a rain squall walking to my house. "The tabloids. They kept offering Richard money for hiStraley, John is the author of 'Cold Water Burning' with ISBN 9780553106435 and ISBN 0553106430.