Her expression was perplexed. "That's ridiculous—I have the right to protect my boat."
"She's a crime scene, for now. No one goes near her except authorized personnel."
"Excuse me?"
"That fire was deliberately set." Her face blanched of all remaining color, and he shot an arm around her slender waist. "Whoa. Maybe you'd better sit—"
"That can't be," she whispered, staring in the direction of the docks.
He studied her closely. Most people weren't that good at acting, but he'd seen all kinds. "I'm afraid it's a very real possibility."
After taking several deep breaths, she seemed to pull herself together, stepping away from him. Recognizing the pride and fierce self-control behind the move, he let her go.
"When will you know for sure?" she asked, her voice sounding more composed.
"After I go over the areas that burned, find the source of ignition."
She raised a slender hand to push her hair away from her face. When he saw the red, watery blisters that had formed along the outside edge of her palm, he reacted without thinking. His hand shot out, clasping hers, and he gently turned it so that he could examine the burn. "You need to have this taken care of," he said, his voice more gruff than he would've liked.
She glanced down and shrugged. "It doesn't hurt."
"It will once the adrenaline wears off." He forced himself to let go of her and pointed at the aid car. "Have the EMT put a dressing on it. And keep taking oxygen—smoke inhalation is nothing to mess with."
He waited for her to head in that direction, but instead, she turned her back on him and watched the fire, her shoulders hunched, her arms folded.
He shook his head. Stubborn, and a control freak to boot. He needed to get some distance—she was a suspect. At the very least, she could be her brother's accomplice.
It was one hell of a coincidence that she'd been first on the scene—he couldn't ignore that. And the bottom line was that he had an investigation to run.
#
Down at the dock, Lucy knelt beside the corpse, taking pictures while Ivar made notes and drew sketches. Jim Sykes stood a few feet away, observing. Her eyes burned, more from the effort to hold back the tears than from the smoke in the air. Ken had been a good man.
They didn't get many murders in Astoria—this was only her second since she'd been on the force. The first one had happened last year, when some tourist had beaten his wife unconscious inside their motor home, then gotten liquored up and set the whole mess on fire, himself included. That scene had been gruesome, but this was far worse.
As she moved back to let Greg Ewald, the medical examiner, do his job, Lucy sneaked a glance at in the direction of the wharf. Kaz looked like she was hanging in there, but it was hard to tell from this distance.
"This makes it pretty hard to ignore those rumors I've heard," Sykes said, breaking into her thoughts.
"Sir?"
"About the fishing community," he explained impatiently.
Lucy held her tongue. She wasn't ready to point any fingers or jump to any conclusions, not yet. The chief, however, had been on a warpath ever since he'd arrived. Crimes like murder and arson didn't happen in his town. From all appearances, he was taking this very personally.
Ewald straightened, having completed the in situ examination. He said something quietly into his tape recorder and then pulled off his surgical gloves, motioning for the EMTs to bag the body. "Going to be tough to get an exact time of death," he told her. "The fire retarded the rate of temperature loss in the corpse. I took a kidney temp, but—" He shrugged.
"Any preliminary determination on the cause of death?" Lucy asked, earning herself a glare. Ewald hated giving prelims. But dammit, she needed something to work with.
"Most likely blunt force trauma to the back of the head." Ewald's tone was truculent. "He's got grass stains and mud on his shoes and jeans—you catch that?"
"Yeah. The grass stains could've happened at any time, but it also might mean that the body was moved."
"They look fresh to me."
"Let's not get too exotic with the theories," Sykes interrupted. "Jorgensen probably followed Ken here after their argument in the Redemption and killed him. It's his boat, and he's our most likely suspect. Procedure says we need to concentrate on finding out whether he did it."
#
Light rain fell steadily now, and the fire was almost out. Kaz was shivering so hard that she knew she'd have sore muscles by morning.
Chapman stood down on the dock, silhouetted against the orange glow of the dying fire. The flames reflected off his face shield, looking for one crazy moment like the comforting flames in a fireplace, seen through a window. Then he flipped his shield to speak into a portable radio, and the image dissolved.
The fireboat, the Harry Steinbach, which had been hosing down the other boats, turned a fog stream from its deck guns onto the Anna Marie. Chapman stopped a patrolman carrying a camera and pointed at the crowd. Then he headed back toward her, talking into the radio unit. "…don't hit inside the wheelhouse. I don't want the evidence washed away if we can avoid it." His deep voice had a calm, soothing quality to it.
But Kaz couldn't count on Michael Chapman to be either soothing or helpful. He thought the fire had been set on purpose. And she'd be willing to bet, based on the way he was keeping an eye on her, that he thought she might be involved.
Of course, the idea was patently absurd—Lucy could vouch for her, or for any of the fishermen, for that matter. But Chapman was a newcomer—he didn't know them. What was it she'd told Lucy earlier in the tavern? That they were lucky to have him? Those words might be coming back to haunt her.
She'd been dead-on in her earlier assessment of him, though—the man all but radiated a force field of authority. The volunteer firefighters, most of whom barely even knew him, were jumping to carry out his orders. She knew those guys—they weren't prone to take orders from anybody, much less a newcomer. Then again, he did seem to know what he was doing—the men had worked quickly and efficiently to put out the fire and protect the other boats.
She let out a sigh. The fact was, she should be grateful that Michael Chapman had arrived on scene so quickly. If he hadn't, she could be lying down on the dock next to Ken. Tonight made the second time in her life that she'd narrowly escaped death. And this time, she couldn't claim any of the credit for her survival—she owed her life to Chapman's quick thinking.
Which made her beholden to him, and she didn't like that one bit. She was inexplicably drawn to him, and that scared her, because he wouldn't be on her side in all of this.
He was slowly scanning the crowd of onlookers and jumble of fire, police, and aid vehicles, those knowledgeable eyes of his cataloguing and filing away everything he saw. What was he looking for? Or whom?
She followed his lead, working her way through the crowd, then froze. Chuck was standing off to the left, his calm gaze trained on her. He cocked his head slightly, sending her a quick, silent message she couldn't decipher, then stepped back, immediately swallowed by the surging crowd. She strained for another glimpse of him, but she saw nothing. If Chuck was around, then so was Gary. He had to know she was there, and yet he wasn't coming forward. Before she could sort through the significance of that, Chapman walked over to her.
"Is that your truck over there?" he asked.
She looked in the direction he was pointing. "It's my brother's. He frequently leaves it parked here." She was careful not to glance at the place where Chuck had been standing.
"So your brother was here tonight."