I smelled it almost as soon as I stepped on deck-an odor not unlike that of baked ham. As we neared the entrance to the fo'c'sle, the combination of residual smoke and charred rubber and wiring obscured the unmistakable odor of cooked human flesh.
The shattered hatchway door was the first thing I noticed. In an effort to reach the fire, someone-a fireman, most likely-had broken the hatch-splintered the middle of it, probably with an ax. But the edge of the door was still attached to the frame, held there by a metal hasp over which dangled a still-locked padlock. That padlock had been locked in place prior to the fire, by someone standing outside the closed hatch.
Janice and the others had gone on ahead, climbing over the sill of the hatch and disappearing down into the inside gloom. I paused outside long enough to jot a note, reminding myself to mention to Janice that the padlock as well as the remains of the hatch should be checked for fingerprints in case any had managed to survive both the fire and the firefighting.
Men my size aren't built for fishing boats any more than we're built for airplanes. I whacked my head on the hatch cover as I stepped down onto a makeshift metal ladder that had been placed in the companionway. The temporary ladder replaced the permanent one that, if not too badly charred, might well retain some critical fingerprints of its own.
Down in the darkened galley, with the interior lit only by the shallow light coming in through a fire-ax-created skylight, and with the water sloshing around my ankles, I found myself staring at a hellish scene.
It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The fire hadn't burned long enough or hot enough for flesh to come off the bones. What I saw through the thick, smoke-dense air, was the still-recognizable form of an extraordinarily large man lying faceup on what was evidently the triangular, three-legged galley table. The cheeks of his face were strangely distended, like someone gathering up a mouthful of wind to blow out candles on a birthday cake.
It's funny what will strike you as odd in a situation like that. The first thing I thought about was a damn birthday cake. The second thing was the table.
Why was the victim lying on the table? I wondered. It didn't make sense for someone to be there. In bed? Yes. I could understand that perfectly. And I could see how someone might end up on the deck, especially if they were crawling on their hands and knees in an effort to avoid smoke and flames.
"What's he doing on the table?" I asked, moving forward to stand beside Sue Danielson, who had been next-to-last and who stood just ahead of me in line.
"Handcuffs," she replied, her voice tight and strained.
I saw them then, too. Three pairs of handcuffs, in fact. The man's shoulders were broad enough so that they almost covered the wide end of the three-cornered table, the part that was nearest the door. Bent at the elbow, his powerful forearms hung down beside and were fastened to the two chrome legs that supported the table's surface. Both wrists were secured to the table legs by locked metal cuffs. His legs dangled off on either side of the narrow part of the triangle with the ankles fastened together with cuffs just inside the table's third chrome leg.
Whoever had put the man there had meant for him to stay in exactly that spot. Permanently.
"Look at this," Marian Rockwell said, coming full circle around the far side of the galley so she was back behind me. Using a flashlight, she pointed to something in the sink. "The firefighter who found him said this was on the victim's chest. He had to move it so he could check vitals."
We had come in single file. Since I was the last one in line, I was also the person closest to the sink. What I saw was a metal plate of some kind-a pie plate, maybe-with what looked like so many pieces of charred hot dog lying in the bottom.
"What is it?" I asked stupidly, squinting through the dim light.
"I think it's his fingers and toes," Marian Rockwell said in a hushed tone. "All twenty of them. I think they were cut off while he was still alive and left where he could see them. In fact, they were probably the very last thing he could see."
That announcement was followed by stunned silence. Homicide cops can't afford to be queasy, but right then a rebellious bubble of morning coffee rose dangerously in my throat. Behind me one of my cohorts made a strange, strangled noise that sounded very much like someone attempting to stifle an overwhelming urge to gag.
After first letting her breath go out in a carefully controlled whoosh, Janice Morraine was the one who spoke. "Okay, folks," she said. "Let's get the hell out of here. No one touches anything at all until after we get the police photographer down here to take pictures."
Her order was one we were all only too happy to obey. From a crime-scene-investigation standpoint, that was the only sensible solution. Too many people in a confined area at once are bound to disrupt things. In a crowd like that, someone can easily, if inadvertently, destroy a critical piece of evidence.
But it was also a good call in terms of people. We were every one professionals in a world where evidence of man's inhumanity to man is business as usual. But the idea of cutting off some poor guy's fingers and toes and then leaving him to burn to death went far beyond the range of mere murder. This was murder with all the trimmings-murder with mayhem and mutilation thrown in for good measure. We all needed a chance to decompress.
This time I led the way. After climbing back up the ladder, I stood by the smashed hatch and offered each of the four women a gentlemanly hand up as they followed me out. Only Marian Rockwell, agile as a cat, refused my offer.
Once she, too, was out of the fo'c'sle, Janice Morraine resumed command. She herded us all off the boat and onto the wooden pier.
"I want undisturbed pictures of the entire boat before anyone else goes back on deck," she said. "Somebody call downtown and see where the hell that damned photographer is. He should be here by now. Anybody got a cigarette?"
While she and Sue Danielson set about lighting up, I marched purposefully off down the dock, intent on tracking down Janice Morraine's missing photographer. I didn't have to go far. The "he" in question turned out to be another she-Nancy Gresham, a talented young woman who has been taking pictures for the Seattle Police Department for several years now. I met her hurrying down the dock, carrying her camera and a box of equipment.
She turned down my gentlemanly offer to carry her case. "Don't bother," she said. "I can manage."
"Suit yourself."
Nancy looked up into my eyes. "I was talking to one of the firemen on the way in," she said. "How bad is it?"
"About as bad as I ever remember," I told her.
"Coming from you, that's saying something," she returned.
"I guess it is," I agreed. And it was.
She continued on down the dock toward the Isolde, and I made as if to follow her, but Officer Casey, one of the patrol officers, came puffing down the dock. "Hey, Detective Beaumont," he said. "We've got a little problem here."
"What's that?"
He motioned with his head back down the dock to where another officer was manning the barricade. "There's a woman down there," he said.
"A woman?" I returned, trying to inject a little humor into what was an impossibly humorless situation. "Why would that be a problem? The place seems to be crawling with them. They're all doing their jobs."
Casey looked uncomfortable. "I know," he said in a way that told me he had missed the joke entirely. "You don't understand. She says she's his wife."
"Whose wife?"
"The dead man's," Casey answered. "Or at least I guess it's him. She says her husband is the owner of the boat. She wants to go on board. When I told her that was impossible, she went ballistic on me. Would you come talk to her, Detective Beaumont? Please?"
I followed Casey back down to the barricade, where a young officer named Robert Tamaguchi was arguing with a heavyset woman who towered over the diminutive officer by a good foot. Long before I reached the end of the dock, I heard the sound of raised voices.