Snow Falling on Cedars

  ‘The fourth line you have there,’ Alvin Hooks pushed on. ‘Where did you find it, sheriff?’

  ‘Found it on Carl Heine’s boat, too, but it doesn’t match up with the rest of them. Found it on the starboard side, second cleat back from the stern. Peculiar thing is, it does match up with the lines I found on board the defendant’s boat. It’s pretty well worn, and it’s got the bowline in it just like the other one I showed you, just like all his mooring lines except the new one. It looks so much like all the others, it’s clear it came from the same set. Worn down just the same.’

  ‘This line looks like the ones on the defendant’s boat?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But you found it on the deceased’s boat?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘On the starboard side, second cleat from the stern?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the defendant’s boat – do I understand this right? – had a new line on the port side, sheriff – again the second cleat from the stem?’

  ‘That’s right, Mr. Hooks. There was a new line there.’

  ‘Sheriff,’ Alvin Hooks said. ‘If the defendant had tied up to Carl Heine’s boat would these two cleats in question line up?’

  ‘You bet they’d line up. And if he – Miyamoto there – had gotten in a hurry to cast off from the deceased’s boat, he could have left a line behind tied off to that second cleat.’

  ‘I see,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘Your inference is that he left a line behind, then replaced it with that new one – exhibit B, right there in your hand – replaced it when he got back to the docks.’

  ‘It is,’ said Art Moran. ‘Exactly. He tied up to Carl’s boat and left a line on it. That seems to me pretty clear.’

  ‘But sheriff,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘What led you to investigate the defendant in the first place? Why did you think to look around his boat and to notice something like a new mooring line?’

  Art pointed out that his investigation into the death of Carl Heine had led him, quite naturally, to ask questions of Carl’s relatives. He’d gone to see Etta Heine, he said, and explained to her that even in the case of a fishing accident there was a formal investigation to proceed with. Did Carl have any enemies?

  After Etta, he said, the path to Ole Jurgensen was clear, and from Ole to Judge Lew Fielding’s chambers: Art had needed a search warrant. He intended to search Kabuo Miyamoto’s boat, the Islander, before it left that night for the salmon grounds.

  18

  It had been the judge’s bailiff, Ed Soames, who’d answered the door when Art Moran knocked at five after five on the evening of the sixteenth and asked to see Lew Fielding. The bailiff wore his coat and held his lunchbox in his hand; he’d been on his way out, he explained; the judge was still working at his desk.

  ‘This about Carl Heine?’ inquired Ed.

  ‘I guess you heard,’ the sheriff answered. ‘But, no, this isn’t about him. And if you go down to the cafe and say it is, you know what? You’ll be wrong, Ed.’

  ‘I’m not that way,’ said the bailiff. ‘Maybe others are, but I’m not.’

  ‘’Course you’re not,’ said Art Moran.

  The bailiff knocked at the door to the judge’s chambers, then opened it and said that the sheriff was present on business he wished to keep private. ‘All right,’ answered the judge. ‘Send him in.’

  The bailiff held the door open for Art Moran and stood aside to let him pass. ‘Good night, judge,’ he said. ‘See you in the morning.’

  ‘Good night, Ed,’ the judge replied. ‘Could you lock up on your way out, please? The sheriff here is my last visitor.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Ed Soames, and shut the door.

  The sheriff sat and adjusted his legs. He set his hat on the floor. The judge waited patiently until he heard the lock click. Then he looked the sheriff in the eye for the first time. ‘Carl Heine,’ he said.

  ‘Carl Heine,’ the sheriff answered.

  Lew Fielding put his pen down. ‘A man with kids, with a wife,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ Art answered. ‘I went out this morning and told Susan Marie about it. Christ,’ he added bitterly.

  Lew Fielding nodded. He sat morosely with his elbows on his desk, cradling his chin in his hands. As always he looked to be on the verge of sleep; his eyes were those of a basset hound. His cheeks were creviced, his forehead furrowed, his silver eyebrows grew in fat tufts. Art remembered when he had been more spry, remembered him pitching horseshoes at the Strawberry Festival. The judge in his suspenders with his sleeves rolled up, squinting and half bent over.

  ‘How is she?’ the judge asked. ‘Susan Marie?’

  ‘Not good,’ Art Moran replied.

  Lew Fielding looked at him and waited. Art picked his hat up, set it in his lap, and began fiddling with its brim. ‘Anyway, I came down to get you to sign a warrant. I want to search Kabuo Miyamoto’s boat, maybe his house, too – I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘Kabuo Miyamoto,’ the judge said. ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Well,’ the sheriff answered, leaning forward. ‘I’ve got these concerns, judge. Five of ’em altogether. Number one, I’ve got men telling me Miyamoto worked the same waters Carl did last night when this thing happened. Number two, I’ve got Etta Heine saying Miyamoto and her son were enemies from way back – an old dispute over land. Three, I’ve got a piece of mooring line somebody left on Carl’s boat wrapped around one of the cleats; seems like he could have been boarded, maybe, and I want to take a look at Miyamoto’s mooring lines. Four, I’ve got Ole Jurgensen claiming both Carl and Miyamoto were out to see him recently ’bout buying his property, which Ole sold to Carl.’ Cording to Ole, Miyamoto went away hopping mad. Said he was going to have a talk with Carl. And, well, maybe he did. At sea. And things … got out of hand.’

  ‘And what’s the fifth?’ asked Lew Fielding.

  ‘Fifth?’

  ‘You claimed to have five categories of cause. I’ve heard four. What’s the fifth?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Art Moran. ‘Horace did a … pretty thorough autopsy. There’s a bad wound in the side of Carl’s head. And Horace said something interesting about it that fits in with what I’m hearing from Ole. And from Etta, too, for that matter. Said he’d seen wounds like this one during the war. Said the Japs made ’em with their gun butts. Said they were trained to fight with sticks from the time they were kids. They were trained in kendo, Horace called it. And one of these kendo blows, I guess, would leave the kind of wound Carl has. Now at the time I didn’t make nothing of it. I didn’t even think of it when some of the guys down at the docks said Miyamoto’d been out on Ship Channel Bank last night – same place as Carl. Didn’t even occur to me then. But I did think of it this afternoon when Etta told ’bout all the problems she’d had with Miyamoto, and I thought about it even more after Ole Jurgensen said his piece. And I decided I’d better follow this lead through and search Miyamoto’s boat, Judge. Just in case. See what signs there are, if any.’

  Judge Lew Fielding pinched the tip of his nose. ‘I don’t know, Art,’ he said. ‘First of all, you’ve got Horace’s off-the-cuff-statement regarding a coincidental resemblance between this wound in Carl Heine’s head and ones he saw inflicted by Japanese soldiers – now does that really point us toward Miyamoto? You’ve got Etta Heine, who I won’t go into, but suffice it to say I don’t trust that woman. She’s hateful, Art; I don’t trust her. And you’ve got at least fifty gill-netters out in the fog last night – any one of them as contentious as the next when he figures some other guy is cutting into his fish – and then you’ve got Ole Jurgensen. And I admit Ole is interesting. I admit you’ve got something worth thinking about with Ole. But – ’

  ‘Judge,’ Art Moran cut in, ‘can I say something? If you think about it too long we’ll lose our chance altogether. The boats’ll be going out soon.’

  The judge pulled his sleeve back and squinted at his watch. ‘Five-twenty,’ he said. ‘You’re right.’

&nbs
p; ‘I’ve got an affidavit here,’ the sheriff pressed on, pulling it free of his shirt pocket. ‘I did it up fast, but it’s right, Judge. Lays it all out plain and simple. What I want to look for is a murder weapon, that’s all, if there’s a chance of that.’

  ‘Well,’ replied Lew Fielding. ‘No harm, I suppose, if you do it properly, Art.’ He leaned across his desk toward the sheriff. ‘And for technicality’s sake let’s make this move, too: do you swear that the facts in this affidavit are true, so help you God – do you swear?’

  The sheriff did.

  ‘All right. You bring a warrant?’

  The sheriff produced one from the opposite shirt pocket; the judge unfolded it beneath his desk lamp and picked up his fountain pen. ‘I’m going to put this down,’ he said. ‘I’m going to allow you to search the boat but not Miyamoto’s house. No intruding on his wife and children, I don’t see there’s any hurry to do something like that. And remember, now, this is a limited search. The murder weapon, Art, and nothing else. I won’t have you running roughshod over this man’s privacy.’

  ‘Got it,’ Art Moran said. ‘The murder weapon.’

  ‘You don’t find anything on the boat, come see me in the morning. We’ll talk about his house at that point.’

  ‘All right,’ said Art Moran. ‘Thanks.’

  He asked, then, if he might use the telephone. He dialed his office and spoke with Eleanor Dokes. ‘Have Abel meet me down to the docks,’ he said. ‘And tell him to bring along his flashlight.’

  San Piedro fishermen, in 1954, were apt to pay attention to signs and portents other men had no inkling of. For them the web of cause and effect was invisible and simultaneously everywhere, which was why a man could sink his net with salmon one night and catch only kelp the next. Tides, currents, and winds were one thing, the force of luck another. A fisherman didn’t utter the words horse, pig, or hog on the deck of a gill-netter, for to do so was to bring bad weather down around his head or cause a line to foul in his propeller. Turning a hatch cover upside down brought a southwest storm, and bringing a black suitcase on board meant snarled gear and twisted webbing. Those who harmed seagulls risked the wrath of ship ghosts, for gulls were inhabited by the spirits of men who had been lost at sea in accidents. Umbrellas, too, were bad business, as were broken mirrors and the gift of a pair of scissors. On board a purse seiner only a greenhorn would ever think to trim his fingernails while sitting on a seine pile, or hand a shipmate a bar of soap as opposed to dropping it into his washbasin, or cut the bottom end off a can of fruit. Bad fishing and bad weather could result from any of these.

  Kabuo Miyamoto, as he came up the south dock toward his boat that evening – carrying a battery for the Islander – saw a flock of seagulls perched on his net drum and stabilizer bars and sitting atop his cabin. When he moved to board they lofted themselves skyward, thirty or forty birds, it appeared at first, a clamor of wings, more of them than he imagined possible, half a hundred seagulls rising from the Islander, exploding out of her cockpit. They circled overhead a half-dozen times in arcs that took in the entire breadth of the docks, then settled on the swells to seaward.

  Kabuo’s heart worked hard in his chest. He was not particularly given to omens, but on the other hand he had never seen this before.

  He went in and pried up the battery well cover. He slid his new battery into place and bolted the cables to it. Finally he started his boat engine. He let it run, then flicked the toggle for the number-one pump in order to run his deck hose. Kabuo stood on the edge of the hatch cover and washed gull droppings out the scupper holes. The gulls had disturbed his equilibrium, put him ill at ease. Other boats were pulling out, he saw, motoring past the buoys in Amity Harbor on their way to the salmon grounds. He looked at his watch; five-forty already. It occurred to him to try his luck at Ship Channel that evening; the good sets would be taken at Elliot Head.

  When he looked up a lone gull had perched arrogantly on the port gunnel ten feet away and to stern. It was pearl gray and white winged, a young herring gull with a wide, flaring breast, and it seemed to be watching him, too.

  Kabuo reached back delicately and turned the hose valve full open. The water shot harder against the aft deck and ricocheted to stern. When he had fixed in on the gull again he watched it for a moment out of the corners of his eyes, then shifted his weight to the left swiftly and aimed his hose at it. The stream caught the surprised bird broadside in the breast, and while it struggled to escape from the force of the water its head smashed against the gunnel of the Channel Star, which was moored in the adjacent berth.

  Kabuo, the hose still in his hand, was standing beside the port gunnel staring at the dying gull when Art Moran and Abel Martinson appeared beside his boat, both carrying flashlights.

  The sheriff, twice, slashed a hand across his throat. ‘Cut your engine,’ he called.

  ‘What for?’ asked Kabuo Miyamoto.

  ‘I’ve got a warrant,’ replied the sheriff, and took it out of his shirt pocket. ‘We’re going to search your boat tonight.’

  Kabuo blinked at him, and then his face hardened. He shut the nozzle off and looked the sheriff in the eye. ‘How long will it take?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t have any idea,’ said the sheriff. ‘It might take quite a while.’

  ‘Well, what are you looking for?’ asked Kabuo Miyamoto.

  ‘A murder weapon,’ answered Art Moran. ‘We think you might be responsible for the death of Carl Heine.’

  Kabuo blinked a second time and dropped the hose to the deck. ‘I didn’t kill Carl Heine,’ he insisted. ‘It wasn’t me, sheriff’

  ‘Then you won’t mind us searching, will you?’ Art Moran said, and stepped up onto the boat.

  He and Abel Martinson rounded the cabin and stepped down into the cockpit. ‘You’ll want to take a peek at this,’ the sheriff said, and handed Kabuo the warrant. ‘Meanwhile we’re going to start looking around. We don’t find anything, you’re on your way.’

  ‘Then I’m on my way,’ Kabuo answered. ‘Because there isn’t anything to find.’

  ‘Good,’ answered Art. ‘Now cut your engine.’

  The three of them went into the cabin. Kabuo hit the kill switch beside the wheel. It was quiet now without the engine running. ‘Have at it,’ Kabuo said.

  ‘Why don’t you just take a load off?’ replied Art. ‘Have a seat on your bunk.’

  Kabuo sat. He read the search warrant. He watched while the deputy, Abel Martinson, went through the tools in his toolbox. Abel picked up each wrench and examined it in the beam of his flashlight. He ran his beam along the galley floor, then knelt with a flathead screwdriver in his hand and pried ajar the battery well cover. His flashlight beam ran over the batteries and down into the recesses of the well. ‘D–6s,’ he said.

  When Kabuo did not reply to this, Abel slid the cover back into place and put the screwdriver away. He turned his flashlight off.

  ‘Engine under the bunk?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Kabuo answered.

  ‘Stand up and haul the mattress,’ said Abel. ‘I’ll have a look, if you don’t mind.’

  Kabuo stood, rolled the bedding aside, and opened the engine compartment hatch. ‘There you go,’ he said.

  Abel flicked his flashlight on again and poked his head into the engine compartment. ‘Clean,’ he said after a while. ‘Go ahead and put your mattress back.’

  They went out onto the aft deck, Abel Martinson leading. The sheriff was laying hands on things – rain gear, rubber gloves, floats, lines, hose, life ring, deck broom, buckets. He moved slowly, pondering each. He circumnavigated the boat carefully, checking the mooring lines on each cleat as he went, kneeling to look at them closely. For a moment he went forward and knelt beside the anchor, brooding in silence over something. Then he made his way back to the stern and tucked his flashlight into his pants waist.

  ‘I see you replaced a mooring line lately,’ he said to Kabuo Miyamoto. ‘One right there on that second cleat to
port. It’s a brand-new line, isn’t it.’

  ‘I’ve had that one around for a while,’ Kabuo Miyamoto explained.

  The sheriff stared at him. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Sure you have. Help me with this hold cover, Abel.’

  They slid it to one side and peered in together. The stink of salmon flew up at them. ‘Nothing,’ said Abel. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Jump down in there,’ urged the sheriff. ‘Poke around a little.’

  The deputy lowered himself into the hold. He knelt and flicked on his flashlight. He went through the motions of looking. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I don’t see nothing.’

  ‘There’s nothing to see,’ said Kabuo Miyamoto. ‘You guys are wasting your time and mine. I need to get out there fishing.’

  ‘Come on out,’ said Art Moran.

  Abel turned to starboard, his hands on the hatch combing. Kabuo watched while he peered up under the starboard gunnel at the long-handled gaff wedged against the wall. ‘Look at this,’ Abel said.

  He pulled himself out of the hold and grabbed it – a stout three-and-a-half-foot gaff with a barbed steel hook on one end. He gave it to Art Moran.

  ‘There’s blood on it,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Fish blood,’ said Kabuo. ‘I gaff fish with that.’

  ‘What’s fish blood doing on the butt end?’ Art asked. ‘I’d expect maybe to see blood on the hook, but on the butt end? Where your hand goes? Fish blood?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Kabuo. ‘It gets on your hands, sheriff. Ask any of these fishermen about that.’

  The sheriff took a handkerchief from the rear pocket of his trousers and held the gaff with it. ‘I’m going to take and have this tested,’ he said, and handed it to Abel Martinson. ‘The warrant allows me to do that. I wonder if I could get you to stay in tonight, stay off the water until you hear from me. I know you want to go out and fish, but I wonder if you shouldn’t stay in tonight. Go home. Wait and see. Wait there until you hear from me. Because otherwise I’m going to have to arrest you now. Hold you in connection with all this.’