this fish for you, from this Rhys. I thought you needed it. Help you heal. That’s his brother. He’s the one who came for you. Where’s Maggie’s boy?”
“Ambulance is headed for the clinic. Maybe we should pick her up. Take her there.”
“Nothing she can do at the clinic except see that crazy Lester get more crazy.” John paused and looked over at Sven still sitting at the corner table. “Sven’s crew is waitin for him. All the boats are going out for that big net. We could start up Hecate. Net’s full of fish. Salmon, steelhead – everything. Sharks, tuna, everything’s in a net that big.”
“No. I’m going to Maggie’s. See how she’s holding up.”
John changed his tone and spoke as if Billy was the only person listening. “Sammy lost his breath; that’s all done. Doctors always keep them over night. I’ll call grandfather and we’ll start ceremonies tomorrow. Go see Maggie and tell her go to my place or Aunt Sue’s. Clean up first. You’re a mess.”
Billy looked from Rhys, who couldn‘t stop staring at the blood, to Quinn who was examining John and the salmon. “John, you should take the boat out; take Hecate out. And take these kids if they want to go. Make some money. You two want to go out on my boat with John?” They both nodded. “You have to promise to wear jackets? John, don’t let them on board without jackets. Hecate’s rules won’t allow that.”
John knew what the blood meant. “You’re getting warm now. I’ll take you to the clinic. We can all go out.”
Billy waved him off. “I’ll just get clothes out of the cabin and make sure these two have life jackets that fit. You go. Get money. And get that monster out of the channel.”
6:45 AM: Nehalem Clinic
Billy paced the clinic reception office in three strides, stopped, stared at Murphy and continued in long strides. “I’m cleaner than I was forty minutes ago in the Sandbar. I got pants and a shirt, maybe not shoes, but I don’t stink and I don’t yell at people for doing their job. You’re the sheriff, Murphy; I get that. You have to stay calm, but Christ, how can you listen to a drunk fool scream at that little nurse like that?”
Murphy stood beside the door to the examination room. “Sammy. Lester’s in a lot of pain. She understands that.”
“Rich said he never lifted his ass off that rock. Sometimes I think he hated Sammy the way he treated him. Hell, he slept on my boat as much as he slept in their trailer. Lester scared the shit out of him. And you gotta tell me to calm down? We share history. We’re practically brothers, but beside me you act like a numb Republican. OK. Ponytail, no uniform - boots, Levis and clean Pendleton shirts isn’t a suit. You’re calm, obviously I respect that, but that little girl isn’t a doctor or a social worker. She’s barely five years older than Sammy. Probably knew him. She’s trying to make it OK by washing him and getting him ready, with him lying there cold – and that alcohol soaked psycho is in there screaming at her. I should put his lights out and let her do her job.”
Murphy added a note of friendly warning. “Don’t even consider it.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what’s wrong with you having this job. It makes you think everything goes by the book. Sometimes the book is totally useless. You go by the book, I’d be assaulting him and you gotta read the rules to me. What about her? Don’t you think he’s assaulting her? You think she’s gonna sleep tonight? What do you think messes with her mind more: a dead child, someone she knew, lying on that steel table; or a crazy drunk threatening her, by screaming at her? Or both at once? Sometimes we have to make moral choices to protect innocent people and sometimes we have to burn the damn book and just do it.”
Murphy responded seriously. “If you clocked him, he would shut up. I don’t doubt you could do that, but he has or had a concussion – you heard that too. You might kill him. Then where do I stand? I take my brother-in-law to jail and book him with manslaughter, or worse? I don’t burn the book, because people smarter than me wrote it. I need to keep peace in this county. I need to keep both you and Lester out of jail.”
Billy’s anger continued heating up. “That is where you are wrong again. It’s not black and white – in jail, not in jail. You have to have a moral side that sees things before disasters happen. If you had been listening, when I told you about that thing with Amato, maybe that net wouldn’t be in the channel right now and maybe that boy wouldn’t be room temperature. Some things you can’t fix after they happen.”
“Bill, I’ll write all this down at the office. We can make an official statement when you’re a little calmer, but tell me one thing again. Who exactly did you talk to at the Coast Guard station? Was it only Amato?”
Billy stopped pacing and stared out the window before turning back to Murphy. He pressed his fingers into his temples and slowly massaged while he drew a series of deep breaths. “Good idea. Change topic. Yes. Yes definitely. The little prick was bustin my balls about my registration. I’m telling him a factory ship is hauling a pirate drift net over the banks and suddenly he’s yanking my chain about my registration. Never guessed it would be this multi-net monster, all I saw was some floats. It was night and I was trolling with the current.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked if it was legal for me to be drifting over the banks and what was I doing there? What kind of moron question is that? I’m trolling, not dragging a mile of net.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him he didn’t have the balls to do anything but safety patrol, and he should be kicking those assholes off our shores instead of giving parking tickets.”
Murphy smiled. “Your usual style of winning friends and influencing policy. Why do you think it was their net?”
“Who else has nets a mile long? We don’t even have boats that can pull a monster like that.”
“But why that ship?”
Billy heated up again. “What else is she doing inside our water? Waiting for repairs; checking the weather; mapping sea floor - or any of the other lame bullshit Amato claims? I don’t care what their official status says. They’re out there snagging salmon before they get to the river - and every other ocean creature that gets in its path. That was a harbor dolphin on the rocks. They’re doing it at night. And he’s too lame to go out after dark.”
Murphy countered rationally. “Nets like that have been illegal for years. An identified vessel isn’t likely to use one, or lose one, if the Coast Guard knows they’re inside our waters. Suppose someone still had one of these nets; they’re worth a fortune. No industry ship could afford to lose one.”
Billy calmed as he considered the options. “It is possible it’s a phantom net. Maybe it sank with a heavy catch and finally resurfaced. A pod of dead porpoise would sink one of those for years. Those nets catch everything from herring up to great whites. Once they fill with baitfish, everything big comes to feed and dies. If it’s not hauled in - storms, bad navigation, bad timing – it goes to the bottom till everything in it rots. If it’s deep water, it could take a year to get to the bottom and another year to get back up – killing all the way down and all the way up. And if no one spots it, it could keep doing that. Monofilament doesn’t die.”
It relieved Murphy that Billy had settled down. “Isn’t that more likely? How could an industry ship lose something like that over the banks?”
Murphy’s
