"Detective Beaumont," I answered. "And this is Detective Danielson."
"I'm Lieutenant Marian Rockwell," she returned. "Seattle Fire Department, Arson Investigations."
Seattle's fire department has a team of arson investigators who carry weapons and are authorized to make arrests when necessary. Once the ashes and debris are cool enough to handle, the arson investigators are called in to do their stuff. They handle some fires entirely on their own, but when someone dies as a result of a fire, whether accidental or deliberately set, Seattle P.D.'s Homicide Squad comes into the picture. In those instances, we handle the investigation jointly.
"What's going on?" Sue asked.
"We got to it fast enough that it didn't have a chance to spread outside the fo'c'sle," Lieutenant Rockwell said, abbreviating the word "forecastle" to the approved nautical pronunciation of "foc'sul."
"One crew is just now finishing mopping up and checking for hot spots," Lieutenant Rockwell continued. "We should be able to go on board fairly soon now-as soon as the investigator from the Medical Examiner's Office gets here."
It's always a race between Doc Baker's folks and Homicide to see who reaches a crime scene first. We don't exactly keep score, but people from our squad always want to arrive before one of the M.E.'s somber gray vans. I was glad Sue Danielson had put the little Mustang through its paces.
"They'll show up eventually. Any idea whose boat this is?" I asked, taking out my notebook while Lieutenant Rockwell consulted one of her own.
"The guy who called in the nine-one-one report said it belonged to someone named Gunter Gebhardt."
"Nice Irish name. Pretty unusual for around here," I said.
"Why?" Sue Danielson asked.
Sue's from back East somewhere. Cincinnati, I think, so she could be forgiven for not knowing beans about Seattle's fishing fleet.
"Most of these halibut guys are born and bred squareheads," I explained. "An occasional Dane or Swede here and there, but mostly they're lutefisk-eating Norwegians through and through."
The soot-creased lines around Marian Rockwell's brown eyes wrinkled with amusement. "I thought so, too," she said. "No doubt the guy who made the initial call is. Alan Torvoldsen. Is that Norwegian enough to suit you? His boat's right across the way. He spotted the fire and called for help."
The very mention of Alan Torvoldsen's name rang a bell of memory that carried me right back to Ballard High. "You're kidding? Alan Torvoldsen? You mean good old ‘Champagne Al'?"
"That's not what he said his name was," Marian Rockwell replied. "At least not in the report that came to me."
The Alan Torvoldsen I remembered was a couple of years older than I was. A senior when I was a lowly sophomore, he had been the big man on campus-a high-school playboy, someone who sported new cars, flashy clothes, and a ducktail with never a single hair out of place.
Just as Button Knudsen worked on his father's salmon seiner, Alan and his younger brother, Lars, spent summers on their father's halibut boat. The Knudsens were nondrinking straight arrows. The Torvoldsens weren't. Red Torvoldsen was never far from his flask of aquavit, and the boys were a matched set of hellions. Alan was two years older than I was, while Lars was two years younger.
Even in high school, Alan was a booze-drinking chip off the old block. According to BHS legend, "Champagne Al" Torvoldsen didn't go anywhere without at least one case of beer stashed in the back of his '56 Chevy.
The prom during his senior year was the pinnacle of Alan Torvoldsen's high school career. During the dance, he and his long-term girlfriend, Else Didriksen, were crowned king and queen of the prom. To celebrate, Alan invited everyone to an after-prom party to be held at the far north end of Carkeek Park. That infamous blowout-a party that is still spoken of in hushed tones at Ballard High reunions-came complete with fifteen cases of cheap champagne. It earned Alan Torvoldsen his lifelong nickname of "Champagne Al." It was also his undoing.
Cops busted the party only eight or nine cases into the program. The debauch may have been broken up early, but not nearly early enough as far as some disturbed parents were concerned. Before the arrival of the cops, several highly intoxicated young women-normally prim and proper Lutheran daughters of local Ballard area gentry-had shed not only important parts of their clothing, but several of their respective maidenheads as well.
A delegation of outraged parents descended on the principal's office early the following Monday morning. Looking for blood, they wanted someone to blame-someone who wasn't their own particular offspring. Alan Torvoldsen took the rap for everybody, and he paid big.
Despite a fair but unremarkable academic record, Alan was summarily expelled from school without ever being allowed to graduate. Within weeks, "Champagne Al" was drafted into the army and shipped off to Southeast Asia. Even at the time it had seemed like a miscarriage of justice to hold him accountable for everybody's drunken behavior, but that was the way things worked back then. Near as I can tell, nothing has changed.
Champagne Al got drafted and headed off for Vietnam. I finished up my high school career, and in the intervening years our paths had never once crossed. I hadn't even heard Alan Torvoldsen's name mentioned, not until now.
Audrey Cummings, King County's assistant medical examiner, showed up right about then, accompanied by my old buddy Janice Morraine, the second-in-command criminalist from the Washington State Patrol crime lab. Seeing them together, the old comics characters Mutt and Jeff came instantly to mind.
Audrey is your basic fireplug of a woman. Short, sturdy, stocky, no-nonsense, and a tad beyond middle-aged. Janice Morraine is tall and spare, angular where Audrey is round. Audrey is a nonsmoking vegetarian. Janice smokes like a fiend. Both of these talented women are sharp and politically adroit. Both of them have bubbled to the top in work situations where women have traditionally been excluded rather than encouraged. Young cops of both sexes who make the mistake of not according those two ladies the professional respect they deserve do so at their own risk.
Lieutenant Rockwell cast an appraising glance around the group. "Is this everybody?"
"As far as I can tell," Sue told her.
"This way, then."
Marian Rockwell passed out day boots for us to wear, then led the way toward the Isolde, followed by the rest of us. As I attached myself to the end of the line, I realized, for the first time, that in terms of Equal Opportunity, the investigation into the death of whoever had been on board the Isolde was breaking new ground-even in the politically correct world of Seattle P.D. All but one of the five investigators assigned to the case were women. Four to one.
Four of them and one of me.
Marian Rockwell was the only one of the group properly dressed for the grit and grime of a fire-scene crime investigation. The other women gamely hitched up their skirts and then scrambled over the wet, soot-encrusted rail and down onto a filthy deck covered with piles of wet, ankle-twisting coils of line, meandering hoses, and evil-smelling debris.
As I watched the women clamber over the rail one by one, I couldn't help thinking, You've come a long way, baby.
Because they had. All of them.
2
Decks of commercial fishing vessels make for treacherous going in the best of times. Now maneuvering on the Isolde 's deck was downright dangerous. It was covered with water topped by a layer of slick, oily slime that left zero traction and made walking hazardous. We waded our way forward past the last of the grim-faced firemen who were wrestling with an impossible tangle of hoses.
One of the firefighters caught my eye. "Good luck, fella," he said, just loud enough for me to hear him. I wasn't entirely sure what he meant, but I had a pretty good idea.