On Fire (18 page)

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe they didn’t know anything. Last night over dinner he and Riley had rattled off a long list of places Emile could be, had winnowed it down to a dozen realistic possibilities. She and Sig had already checked out a few of them Saturday before the fire. That left several summer houses owned by Emile’s friends, boats he might have appropriated or been loaned, lobster pounds, uninhabited islands—places he could slip in and out of with ease.

They didn’t have the kind of time required to search them all one by one.
He
didn’t have the time. He’d just spent the better part of a day and a night making love to Riley St. Joe. That alone dictated a certain measure of urgency on his part. He was out of control. After they’d made love their third time, he’d stared into the darkness, exhausted but unable to sleep, knowing he needed answers.
They
needed answers. They needed to know why Sam Cassain’s body had turned up on Labreque Island. Then they could figure out what was going on between them.

“Hey, no dead bodies and women keeping you busy today?”

Straker smiled at A. J. Dorrman, one of the sheriff’s lobsterman nephews. “The day’s still young. How are you, A.J.?”

“Upright and taking nourishment. You?”

“I need to find out where you all have Emile stashed,” Straker said bluntly.

A.J. twisted his mouth from one side to the other. He was in his early thirties, beefy, used to a life of hard physical work and answering to himself. He rubbed his chin. “Shit, Straker.”

“Lou will have your head if he finds out you’ve been hiding a man wanted for questioning in a suspicious death.”

“Emile didn’t kill anybody. You know that. He’s just a crazy old fart.”

“His house was just torched. He’s being set up to take the fall.”

“I know, I know.”

Straker waited. Silence was often his most effective tool. Also, he’d known A.J. all his life. Pelting him with questions, pressuring him, would only convince the man to dig in his heels and keep his mouth shut.

A.J. scratched one side of his jaw. “You think he’s in any danger?”

“Yes.”

“So what happens if the wrong person comes down here hunting for him? I get shot and go recuperate on an island by myself?”

Straker shrugged. “If you’re lucky.”

“Yeah, Lou’d finish me off before I got my sorry ass to any island.” He started past Straker, said, “But if I snitched to you, I’d get stuffed into a sardine can and left to rot.”

He kept walking toward the parking lot, and in case Straker didn’t take the hint, A.J. wiggled a finger in the
direction of the old sardine cannery. It was a dilapidated, rambling wooden structure, long abandoned. With the touted health benefits of Omega-3 oils and the depletion of the populations of so many commercially popular species of fish, sardines were making a comeback. This building, however, had seen its day. Emile’s own grandfather had worked there years ago. The village had wrangled over its removal for years.

With the lay of the land, the inflow and outflow of pleasure boats and working boats, it was the perfect, if surprising, choice for a base. It had access and cover. No one would notice a network of lobster boats helping a discredited, brilliant, world-famous old man who was, when all was done and said, one of their own. Just as Straker was, no matter how many cases he solved for the FBI, how long he stayed away.

He walked around back. The building came right up to the edge of the water. Windows were broken and missing, boarded up. He spotted a ground-level door hanging half off its hinges in a corner formed by a six-foot concrete retaining wall and hill that sloped down to the water.

He picked his way over shards of glass and through overgrown brush, but when he got to the door, it opened before he had a chance to kick it in. Emile poked his head out and snorted in disgust. “I should have shot you yesterday when I had the chance.”

“I see where Riley gets her charm.”

“Where is she? I thought I asked you—”

“I know what you asked, and the best way for me to watch out for her—and you—is to get to the bottom
of this thing. She’s supposed to be on her way back to Boston.”

Emile scoffed. “She’s probably right behind you.”

Straker ignored the obvious point. “You have the
Encounter
engine in there?”

“Pictures. I still don’t know what Sam did with the engine.”

“Christ, Emile. I should haul your butt over to the sheriff’s myself.”

The old man gave a curt, dismissive wave and ducked back inside. Straker cursed silently and went in after him. If Emile shot him, so be it—but he didn’t seriously believe that would happen.

The door opened into a small entry, with dusty, sagging stairs leading up into the main part of the old building. Emile had set up housekeeping in a dark corner. He was using a turned-over wooden crate as a table. He had crackers, peanut butter, a six-pack of tomato juice, another six-pack of orange juice, a box of raisins.

He was perched on a stool, close to the door. “You listen, Straker. Then you leave me alone and let me do what I have to do.”

Straker glanced at the old man. He had on his khakis and black Henley, no obvious place for his .38. “You’re turning the lobstermen around here into accessories.”

“Sam brought up the
Encounter
’s engine two weeks ago,” Emile said, ignoring his last comment. “Matthew Granger funded him. In secret.”

“Your granddaughters figured as much. Have you talked to Granger?”

“No. I don’t know if Sam even told him he had the engine. Sam had his own agenda. If it tied in with Granger’s, fine. If not—” Emile shrugged his stringy shoulders. “Tough.”

Straker thought a moment. The air was damp, smelled of bad food and dirty socks. Blankets and a pillow were tangled up on a small air mattress in the opposite corner.

“All right,” he said, “what happened to the
Encounter?
”

“Sabotage.”

Straker was silent.

“It was a quick, easy job, if you know diesel engines. When Sam pulled up the engine, it was obvious what happened—it’s there in the pictures.” He nodded to a nine-by-twelve manila envelope amid his provisions. “Someone opened up the lube oil drain. The valve’s padlocked. The padlock’s cut, proving it wasn’t an accident.”

“Cassain found it?”

“So he says. I don’t know if the pictures are fakes or what. That’s why I want to find the engine itself. You cut the padlock, then just turn the valve. Easy as pie. Engine can’t run without oil. You get a main bearing failure on the crankshaft, which destroys the engine. On an old ship like the
Encounter,
that’d be the end of her.”

“But the engine’s safety features should kick in,” Straker pointed out.

“Normally, yes. There’s an automatic shutdown panel. Alarm goes off when there’s a problem, the engine shuts down. It’s like the engine’s brain.”
Emile spoke clinically, as he did in his documentaries. This unusual mix of intensity and unemotional stating of the facts, keeping his natural drama in check, had served him well over the decades. He was credible, believable, principled. “Disable the safety features, and the engine doesn’t know it has a problem. It doesn’t automatically shut down. It just keeps running.”

“Did Cassain find evidence the shutdown panel was defeated?”

“Jumper wire. A piece of wire with two alligator clips. It’d do the job.”

“It wasn’t destroyed in the fire?”

Emile shook his head. “I think our saboteur got more than he counted on. The crankcase explosion by itself probably wouldn’t sink the ship. When you open the lube oil drain and defeat the alarm panel, you also defeat the controls to the number-two fuel tank. It overflows into the bilge, and now you’ve set off a fatal chain reaction.”

“Number-two fuel’s more flammable than lube oil.”

“Yep. Lube oil draining into the bilge is a mess. Number-two fuel’s a catastrophe. Meanwhile, the engine runs dry without lubrication, it explodes and ruptures a disk on the side—”

“How do you know that?”

“Sam brought up the ruptured disk. It’s in the pictures. With the disk ruptured, flames can pour out of the engine and light the mix of fuel and oil in the bilge.”

“Jesus,” Straker whispered.

Emile was very still, his expression grim. “It was
a huge, tremendously hot fire. Not much burns hotter than number-two fuel. It warped the bulkheads, fed on the fuel in the main tanks. The
Encounter
took on water.” He sighed, looking tired and old, except for his eyes, which were alert, gleaming with determination. “With that kind of fire and flooding, she didn’t stand a chance.”

“It couldn’t have been an accident,” Straker said quietly.

“No.”

“Once the shutdown panel was disabled and the lube oil drain valve opened, an explosion was virtually guaranteed. It’s just a question of whether the saboteur realized how catastrophic the explosion would be—the chain reaction he’d cause.” Straker imagined Riley amid this chaos, the
Encounter
burning, flooding, her friends dying. “What about timing? If the engine had exploded closer to land, you might have had a better chance of getting the fire out, getting the crew out. On the open sea—”

“On the open sea, we were doomed. Timing with this kind of sabotage would be hard to predict. An explosion was certain, but when…” He shrugged. “I don’t think that mattered.”

“What did matter? What did the saboteur want to accomplish?” Straker narrowed his gaze on his old friend. “You have ideas, Emile. If the explosion was unpredictable, it’s unlikely a particular individual was the target—murder wasn’t the point. Our saboteur didn’t use this as a way, for example, to kill Bennett Granger.”

“No,” Emile allowed.

“You don’t believe the saboteur intended for the
Encounter
to burn and sink, killing five people.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Cassain?”

“I need to find the engine.” Emile sprang up from the stool. “That’s why Sam’s place was burned down. Someone wanted to make sure the police didn’t find any evidence of what he’d been up to these past few months. Then they came up here and set my place on fire to throw suspicion on me.”

Straker moved toward the old man. “If I found you, someone else can. Trust me, Emile. Let me get you the protection you need. You’re not safe here.”

Emile nodded. “I know.”

“Tell me about Sam. When did he bring you the pictures?”

“Saturday afternoon, right in broad daylight. Riley got here Monday morning, found his body on Tuesday.”

“I take it he didn’t come up here to apologize,” Straker said.

“He had no reason to apologize. It wasn’t my idea to bring up the
Encounter
’s engine,” Emile said with a trace of disgust. “She was lost. I did nothing to find out what the truth was.”

“You believed it was your fault.”

“If I’d had a watchman on duty—”

“Then you’d have six crew dead instead of five.” But Straker wasn’t here to make Emile feel better about what he’d done, or failed to do. “Was Cassain interested in the truth?”

The old man slipped back outside into the sunlight.
Straker followed. Emile was staring out at the glistening harbor. “He’d suffered this past year. He wanted his pound of flesh. If it was in the form of cash, the more the better. He showed me the pictures for my reaction.”

“And?”

“We both had the same idea about what happened—that whoever sabotaged the
Encounter
didn’t count on the day tank overfilling.” The old man continued to stare out at the lobster boats, sailboats, the odd yacht. His expression was unreadable. “I don’t know who sabotaged my ship or why. It could have been a crew member with a bone to pick with another crew member. Sam could have faked the evidence, the pictures. I have to find the engine.”

“That doesn’t explain his murder, the fire at his house, the fire at the cottage. Go ahead, Emile. Speculate. Based on what you know, what’s your best guess about what happened to the
Encounter,
what’s going on now?”

He inhaled, shifted his gaze to Straker. “Look at what’s happened in the past year. Look at what the loss of the
Encounter
accomplished—”

“It killed the center’s chief benefactor and drove out its founder.”

“No one could have predicted Ben’s death,” Emile said, “or that I would tuck my tail between my legs and flee home.”

“From what Riley tells me, this past year has been a public relations disaster for the center.”

“Initially. Henry Armistead, Abigail Granger, my son-in-law, Riley—the entire center staff has worked tirelessly to turn it around. I asked myself, and Sam
asked himself, what would have happened if the
Encounter
hadn’t gone down in flames, if there hadn’t been any loss of life.”

“If it was a near thing instead of a catastrophe, you lose the
Encounter
because of a crankcase explosion, but no one gets hurt.”

Emile eased back against the retaining wall. “People loved that ship—it was part of the romance and adventure of our work. A new ship was in the works, but it was underfunded. We weren’t sure when, or if, we’d be able to finish it. And our supporters, even some of our own staff, didn’t want to give up the
Encounter.
”

“As long as it could put out to sea, people wouldn’t get excited about its successor.”

“You can’t underestimate their sentimental attachment to it.”

“A narrow escape for the great Emile Labreque and his crew would elicit sympathy and galvanize support for a badly needed new research ship. The old ship dies in battle, so to speak. Let’s honor her memory by building a new one.”

“The
Encounter II
is back on schedule. Support’s up. The catastrophe of the
Encounter
was a setback at first—”

“But now things are working out.” Straker frowned, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Emile. It’s a hell of a stretch. Wouldn’t our saboteur
want
the
Encounter
and any evidence of his handiwork at the bottom of the ocean?”

“Immaterial. People would have been outraged at the idea of sabotage. Support would have poured in.”