Friday harbor, p.1
Friday Harbor, page 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PLOT SUMMARY
Books by D.C. Alexander
~MAPS~
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-EIGHT
FIFTY-NINE
SIXTY
SIXTY-ONE
SIXTY-TWO
SIXTY-THREE
SIXTY-FOUR
SIXTY-FIVE
SIXTY-SIX
SIXTY-SEVEN
SIXTY-EIGHT
SIXTY-NINE
SEVENTY
SEVENTY-ONE
SEVENTY-TWO
SEVENTY-THREE
SEVENTY-FOUR
SEVENTY-FIVE
BLOOD IN THE BLUEGRASS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
REGIONAL HISTORY
"CLAMS FRIDAY HARBOR" RECIPE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
P L O T S U M M A R Y
It's the Roaring Twenties. Prohibition is the law of the land. A rumrunner's boat is found adrift near the United States-Canada maritime border of Puget Sound, its crew missing, its cargo hold riddled with bullet holes and awash with blood. San Juan Islands Sheriff Miles Scott takes on a murder investigation with a list of suspects including rival rumrunners, temperance fanatics, anti-immigrant labor leaders, and the hatchet men of Seattle's powerful underground crime syndicates.
Fighting to protect the vulnerable population of his rural islands, and contending with a hidden array of informants and corrupt officials, Miles races against a killer who continues to spill blood to cover his tracks.
Note to readers: This story includes depictions of racism involving Chinese and other East Asian immigrants. Discretion is advised.
Copyright © 2024 by D.C. Alexander
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, scanned, sold, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is purely and entirely coincidental.
Light House Cover Photo by Scott Bufkin
Photo 218880475 / Lime Kiln
© Scott Bufkin | Dreamstime.com
Washington and British Columbia maps obtained from:
https://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=7812&lang=en
https://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=23532&lang=en
Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9886585-1-1
Printed in the United States of America
Books by D.C. Alexander
Friday Harbor
Blood in the Bluegrass
Chasing the Monkey King
The Shadow Priest: Book Two
The Shadow Priest
The Legend of Devil's Creek
For further information, visit:
www.dcalexander.com
~MAPS~
F R I D A Y
H A R B O R
Inspired by a true story . . .
ONE
Hutouling Village, Guangdong Province
Republic of China
July 1922
When I came inside after fetching water from the river my father was weeping. He tried to hide it, but I saw. I had only ever seen him weep three times in my life. The first time was last spring, when the river flooded the valley and washed away all of our sweet potato fields. The second time was two months ago, when government soldiers came and took my older brothers away to help fight against the Guangxi warlords. This was the third time.
A man had come. A man I did not know. Not from our village. Not a farmer. A city man. I could tell by his clothes and shoes. He sat stone-faced across the table from my father in the front room of our small stone house. They spoke in hushed voices. The conversation was hard to hear. It was something about money. The price of something. Then the city man raised his voice and said 'no.' My father wept harder. It frightened me. My mother, her face like stone, the creases of her tunic stained with sweat, turned from preparing tea and told me to go into the back room and close the door.
The back room was hot and stuffy and dark. The air smelled of dry dirt. Whenever it was hot, the dirt smell seemed to rise up through the gaps between the floorboards. I propped the shutter open just enough to let in a little air and a little light. But not too much light because my little brother, Qiáng, a year and a half old, was napping on his mat in the back corner after again refusing to eat. Our dinner had been rice, mustard greens, and roasted grasshoppers. I hate grasshoppers—especially the big ones with their flavorless, mushy bodies. Qiáng won't eat them even if they're mashed up with rice—even if he hasn't eaten all day. Whenever my mother tries to sneak grasshopper into his mouth, he makes a face, spits, then cries as it dribbles down his chin. He is losing weight.
We have to eat grasshoppers because the soldiers took all of our pigs and chickens the same day they took away my brothers. When we can't catch grasshoppers, my father tries to catch birds and snakes. Most days he can't. Most days we are hungry.
Though I pressed my ear to the door, I could hear nothing of the conversation between my father and the city man. Suddenly, the door swung open. I jumped back hoping nobody would guess that I'd been eavesdropping. There stood my unsmiling mother. Behind her, I could see my father still at the table, his face buried in his hands. "Father, what's wrong?" I called. "Father, why are you weeping?" He refused to answer. Refused, even, to look at me. The city man was now standing. He stared at me from the far side of the front room with no hint of care, then put his hat on.
"Yin, pack your things," my mother said.
"Why? Where am I going?"
"Do as you're told, Yin. Quickly."
"When will I be back?"
"Do as you're told."
My mother watched as I gathered my things, her face hard as ever. It was the face of a woman who had seen too much hardship. A woman who always did what needed to be done without complaint.
"Not that," she said when she saw me taking my late grandmother's old wooden comb—the only thing of hers left to me. "Only necessaries that you can carry." When she turned away, I snatched the comb and slipped it into the inner pocket of my tunic.
"Who will feed Snow while I am away?" I asked, meaning who would go and gather grass seed from the edge of the forest to feed my pet mouse. Snow was almost completely white. That was why I named her Snow. I had never seen actual snow but I knew it was pure white, like a late morning cloud. I had heard stories about it and then dreamt of it falling over the farm. "Who will keep Snow's box clean and give her fresh water?"
My mother didn't answer. She gestured for me to hurry.
I rolled my things up into a bundle inside a piece of old cloth and tied it off with twine. Then I ran to the corner where I kept Snow's box. I took the lid off and reached in and took her in my hands for a moment, holding her up to my nose to smell her fur.
"Quickly now, Yin," said my mother. "You keep everyone waiting."
"Be brave," I whispered to Snow. "I will see you again soon. Don't be messy."
I put Snow back in the box and was closing the lid as she looked up at me with her tiny black eyes. To me, she looked confused. Afraid. I couldn't bring myself to close the lid on her. I began to worry that my mother wouldn't bother to feed her. That she might even get rid of her. My mother never wanted me to have a mouse in our house—just one more useless thing to worry about, she'd said. It was my father who, seeing what joy Snow brought me, convinced my mother to let me keep her.
Snow climbed up onto her back legs and put her little front paws up on the side of the box as she sniffed the air, still looking at me. I think she wanted to come with me. I checked over my shoulder. My mother was no longer in the doorway. I reached into the box, grabbed Snow, and tucked her in the inner pocket of my tunic, next to my grandmother's comb. Then I ran over to where my baby brother slept and put my palm to his forehead and held it there for a second, feeling the softness. I bent down and smelled him. Smelled his hair. He still had a baby smell that I loved. It was a smell of home. Of family. I wanted to remember it just in case I was away for a little while.
TWO
San Juan Island, Washington
September 8, 1922
Sheriff Miles Scott hated the new channel markers. The Coast Guard installed them, in early June, where the narrow San Juan Channel opened into the main shipping lanes of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Fueled by pressurized acetylene gas, they were far brighter than the old markers. Indeed, their brilliant lights—one red, one green—cut right through the midnight darkness. That was, of course, good for vessels attempting a night passage of the rocky and treacherous mouth of the channel. But to Miles, the new markers attracted far too much attention. All but invited outsiders into the very heart of the San Juan Islands—a sparsely populated archipelago of quiet harbors, forests, pastures, and orchards. A remote, mercifully forgotten corner of the United States. His home.
Miles stood atop an outcropping of rock on the edge of the vast darkness of the shipping lanes, just north of the Navy's new unmanned radio compass station on Cattle Point, powerful binoculars pressed to his eyes as he scanned the approaches to the channel. An unseasonably cold wind was blowing in from the North Pacific, whistling across the open grassland covering this end of the island, carrying with it the faint smell of woodsmoke—probably from one of the isolated cabins that dotted the western shore. But Miles was warm in his heavy wool overcoat—a last souvenir of his time in the Army. The only parts of his broad-shouldered, six-foot-two body that were at all cold were his nose and cheeks, which got him thinking about growing a beard. A thick beard would help keep his chin and cheeks warm in the coming winter. It would also partially hide his baby face, which might help him be taken more seriously as a lawman. Then again, beard or no beard, the locals—many of whom had watched him grow up—would probably still see him as nothing more than an overgrown boy.
Though he'd stood watch for more than an hour, Miles had seen nothing untoward. He hadn't necessarily expected to. Standing lookout was just something he did as a matter of habit whenever he had trouble sleeping, which was often—especially since the war. He called such vigils night watches. Sometimes they took him into the small town of Friday Harbor, sometimes down to its docks and cannery, and sometimes to high viewpoints on the wild western shore of the Island where rumrunners could often be seen speeding down Haro Strait under the light of the moon, their cargo holds loaded with illegal liquor picked up just over the border in Canada. But usually his night watches took him to Cattle Point, where he now stood. It was the southernmost tip of San Juan Island. Miles favored the spot because Seattle, Tacoma, and most of the other cities on Puget Sound were to the south. He'd come to believe that cities bred ambition, materialism, and greed—things that always gave rise to corruption and crime. When trouble inevitably came to his simple, peaceful islands, it would come from the cities. He was certain of it.
But on this night, all he had seen were the distant navigational lights of what he guessed was a large cargo ship heading out to the open Pacific. Perhaps it carried wheat from the fertile hills and prairies east of the Cascade Mountains, or coal mined from the foothills outside of Seattle, or locomotive-sized logs from the ancient forests surrounding Puget Sound. Perhaps it was bound for San Francisco, Honolulu, Tokyo or Shanghai. The ship had steamed west, its lights eventually disappearing in the darkness, leaving Miles feeling lonely. Passing ships always made him feel lonely. So did passing trains. He didn't know why.
As he was about to lower his heavy binoculars to give his fatigued arms a break, he thought he saw something. A flicker of light just across the San Juan Channel. He trained his binoculars on the area and stared.
Unable to spot whatever it was no matter how hard he squinted into the darkness, he at last lowered the binoculars. But then, with his naked eye, he saw it again. A brief flash of light.
It was probably just the light of a cabin in amongst swaying trees over on Lopez Island. Then again, it could have been a rumrunner boat signaling to a shore party waiting to help offload liquor. Miles lifted the binoculars once more, his tired arms screaming for mercy. There was indeed a light out there. It was steady now, but he still couldn't tell what it came from. And the longer he gazed at it, the more convinced he was that it was moving.
A boat, then. Definitely a boat.
His arms had had enough. There were no nearby tree branches or other objects upon which he could rest the binoculars, so he sat down on the cold, bare rock and did his best to balance them on his knees. It wasn't a comfortable position. He had to keep his abdomen clenched to stay motionless and upright. Before long, his belly burned with the effort. Still, he watched the light.
After several thoroughly uncomfortable minutes, he realized that he hadn't had to change the aim of the binoculars. Hadn't had to move them at all. Perhaps the light wasn't moving after all. Perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him. Autokinesis, they called it in his army training. The longer one stared at a distant but stationary bright spot in a dark environment, the more the bright spot appeared to be moving. The movement was illusory.
He tried to test his theory, looking for some point of reference he could watch vis-à-vis the light. But none were visible in the distant darkness, so he settled for simply watching the light for another few minutes. At last, he convinced himself the light was stationary. A cabin. Not a boat. Not a smuggler caching his opium or liquor on the shore.
You're paranoid, he thought as he was buffeted by the strengthening wind. For heaven's sake, there's nothing out there.
But there would be the next night.
THREE
Haro Strait, British Columbia
(near the U.S.-Canada maritime border)
September 9, 1922
"My hands are trembling," eighteen-year-old Leif Jensen said to his father, Hans.
"Come over by the stove."
"It's not from the cold."
The two men sat in the wheelhouse of their wooden, 47-foot commercial fishing boat—the Lucky Lena—a stone's throw from the southeast shore of tiny D'Arcy Island. They were in British Columbia, Canada, barely two miles from U.S. waters. It was nearly dark. A cold drizzle rained down from the cast-iron autumn sky as a strengthening northwest wind threatened an eventual gale. But the Lucky Lena was anchored in the shelter and relative calm off the island's leeward shore.
Hans sat on a low stool, holding his palms close to a small oil heater mounted near the wall while Leif held one side of a headset to his ear as he tried to tune their radio receiver to a station based in Seattle, 70 miles to the southeast. A single storm lantern filled the wheelhouse with dim yellow light, enveloping the Jensens in its anemic halo on an otherwise gloomy sea.
"Bad weather is brewing," Leif said after a quick glance at the barometer.
"Good. It'll make it harder for anyone to spot us. We'll stay ahead of the worst of it."
A silent moment passed as Leif continued to fiddle with the radio dial, trying to get rid of static. Then he turned and looked at his father. "I don't trust these people," he said.
"They're just people, son."
"We don't know them."
"It's worth the risk."
"If we get caught . . ."
"We won't."
"They almost caught Prosper Graignic last month. He has the fastest boat in the islands."
"He had engine trouble."
"Anyone can have engine trouble."
"That's why we have two engines. That's why we painted the hull gray. They'll never spot us in the darkness and filthy weather. Even if they do, we know every shoal, every cove, every hiding place from here to Anacortes."
A pause.
"Lyle Miller heard a rumor about some new fast patrol boat operating in the area," Leif said.
"There are always rumors. Have you ever seen this supposed new fast patrol boat?"
