Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

The horn behind the Eagle Cove cannery blows at eight o’clock in the morning, heralding a new day. Fish to be caught, fish to be processed. Packed into cans. Stacked up in room-sized ovens. Superheated in rows and stacks, like miniature coffins. Forklifted out to cool. There are two kinds of people who listen for that horn, the cannery workers asleep in their dormitory beds, and the fishermen asleep in their narrow berths.

The salmon season might have been closed, but work continued at Eagle Cove, at least for the next couple of weeks. Catching up on a successful salmon season. Prepping for the winter. Maybe switching over from salmon to crab, or halibut, or whatever else was next up for harvest. Which meant that breakfast rolls were still happening for the time being. Which was as good a reason as any to get out of a bunk. Ellie and I came through the cannery floor at nine. I was rolling the bike, retrieved from the place I’d left it the night before.

We found Guilfoyle sitting on a railway sleeper, looking out over the water. He held a hot breakfast roll in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Over by the oil dock, a bald eagle perched on a post looking for something to kill or scavenge.

Guilfoyle watched us coming over. I leaned the bike against the sleeper and made the introductions. “Guilfoyle, Ellie. Ellie, Guilfoyle.” They shook hands. I said, “Sorry I couldn’t get the bike back last night.”

Guilfoyle was finishing up a bite of his breakfast roll. The cannery people have a counter with a window where a guy can get one for himself. Just walk on up and put out the hand. Someone will put a freshly baked hot package in it. A package of cheese, egg, and sausage with ketchup and hot sauce included inside some kind of dough.

Ellie saw me looking at Guilfoyle’s roll. She was shocked. “You’re still hungry?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.” Looked at her. “Not you?”

“No, not me.”

I said, “Give me a second.”

Three minutes later, I was walking back with a breakfast roll of my own, hot and heavy in my right hand. A nutritious bundle of grease, protein, and carbohydrates. My motto is ‘get it while you can’. A cup of coffee was balanced in my left hand. Black, no sugar. Guilfoyle was finishing his roll, the last corner disappearing into his beard. Ellie was talking. When I came up on them, they both turned to me.

I said, “So where were we?”

Guilfoyle said, “We’re at the part where you ask me to take you out to Bell Island. You’ve moved from fisherman to private detective with a single shave.”

I said, “It’s an old Navy research base. Just want to take a look at it.” I jerked a thumb at Ellie. “She tell you about the missing kid?”

Guilfoyle said, “Yes. She did. Naval Surface Warfare Center is what they called it officially, the base out on Bell Island. The research was secret, but not the existence of that base. A lot of stories flung around about that. I’d be happy to take a look, just for my own curiosity. I’m assuming this is connected to the murders over at Beaver Falls everyone is talking about.”

I nodded. “It is.” Ellie shot me a look, I looked away and sat down on the sleeper next to Guilfoyle.

He said, “I heard a boat got scuttled out in the passage last night.”

“That right?”

“Apparently so.”

Ellie looked at me again. I hadn’t told her about the zodiac. I played it poker-faced. “They going to dive for it?”

He said, “Doubt it.”

I blew on my breakfast roll; it was very hot. “They’d need a damn good reason to bring in a dive team, what is it, seventy meters? For the time it would take to figure out what happened. Engine go down?”

“Yup.”

I said, “Well there you go. No chance of getting that working again, if the valves were open.”

Guilfoyle said, “More like eighty-five meters in that part of the channel.”

The sausage roll was exceptionally good. I finished off the last corner and washed it down with the end of the coffee. I stood up. “So let’s do it.”

Guilfoyle stayed seated. “Not right this minute, Keeler.”

I said, “What’s the problem?”

He said, “Bilge is getting pumped out this morning. Probably take until after lunch, knowing those guys. Let’s say three thirty or four to be safe.”

I looked at Ellie. She shrugged, said, “So, we’ll come back.”

We walked over to where the Sea Foam was docked alongside the other remaining boats in the fleet. I hauled the bike over the side and then fixed it back behind the smokestack. Guilfoyle had disappeared into the boat somewhere.

Ten minutes later, we were sitting in her truck. The keys were in Ellie’s hand. The engine was still warm, windows were open, and I had an elbow up on the edge. Gulls were flying over the woods on Ellie’s side. On my side the low cannery buildings stretched out below, and beyond that, the Pacific Ocean.

Ellie said, “What are you thinking, Keeler?”

I said, “Thinking about those two guys who were following Jane Abrams’ crew yesterday.”

She said, “Deckart and Willets.”

“Maybe I should go pay them a visit, maybe break their heads if they don’t talk to me nicely. What do you think?”

Ellie looked at me from behind the steering wheel. “Sounds exciting, but we need to do the boring stuff, Keeler. It always needs to be done.”

I said, “I can feel it coming. A room, a chair, a desk. Computers and telephones. Bad posture. Bad skin. The modern world. What did you have in mind?”

She said, “The basics. Who, how, when, what, where. Four of the five W's give or take an H.”

“Detective stuff.”

Ellie said, “I need to make a call about the laptop you picked up. It would be a good idea to get some information on the missing kid, George. Then we should do