McKean S02 Blood Tide Read Online Free PDF Page A

woods yelling at you guys. I didn’t know it till later. I was tryin’ to protect the old man but Craig was tryin’ to get rid of you for good.”
    “We were on the right track,” McKean asserted, “but unfortunately you were always just a step ahead of us.”
    Billy laughed in an odd, sad way. “I’m still one step ahead.”
    McKean’s dark eyebrows knit. “How’s that? And where is this dangerous Showalter fellow?”
    After a long moment Billy turned robotically, saying to no one in particular, “C’mon. I’ve got something to show you.”
    Frank and McKean and I followed him down the stairs, leaving Clara weeping upstairs. In the basement day room a TV was showing a sequence from Dancing With The Stars. At one end of the day room was a door through which a sink and toilet could be seen. Through a second we glimpsed a disheveled bed. In one corner of the day room a tall man appeared to be sleeping in a reclining chair facing the TV. My pulse shot up when I realized it must be Craig Showalter, but McKean went to him and pressed his fingertips to a carotid artery. Then he straightened and looked from Frank to Billy to me, shaking his head in the negative.
    “I killed him with the poison,” Billy explained. “We got high on some red wine first so I knew he wouldn’t feel it coming on.”
    “The police are gonna want to talk to you,” murmured Frank.
    Billy shook his head slowly. “No, they won’t.”
    I said, “I don’t see how you can stop that.”
    “I do,” Billy replied. “I saved enough poison for me. Gettin’ a little woozy right now.” His eyelids drooped. McKean cell phoned for an ambulance but Billy was nearly gone when it arrived, slumped on the bed in the basement bedroom. He was on death’s door when Kay Erwin admitted him to Seattle Public Health Hospital, and although McKean had double-checked with Janet about antiserum as we followed the ambulance, Janet only confirmed that the antiserum was consumed completely in saving him and me. With no other source of antidote, Billy’s death was a foregone conclusion.
    * * * * *
    Several days later, McKean called me at my office to fill me in on developments.
    “They’re closing the case,” he said, “after restating it as murder with Craig Showalter the perpetrator and, of course, justice delivered by one Billy Seaweed whose own death is listed as a suicide.”
    “Sad,” I remarked, “but at least the case is solved.”
    “Yes,” McKean agreed, “and you’ll be happy to know all’s well enough with Aunt Clara. Frank’s taken her under his wing. He’s going to look in on her regularly, and perhaps even move her into his house sometime soon.”
    “Frank’s willing to take Billy’s place as her new angel of mercy, then?”
    “Answer: yes,” McKean replied. “And I’m sure he’ll dispatch his duty faithfully.”
    “Couldn’t she apply to the tribe for some money?”
    “I was wrong about Muckleshoot Casino money, Fin. Only Federally recognized tribes can share casino profits, and therefore the Duwamish are excluded. Furthermore, the Gates and Allen money is all tied up in constructing the new longhouse. Duwamish resources are thin. Hence, Clara’s poverty is unchanged.”
    “She could move to a reservation. There are a dozen in the region.”
    “Yes, and there she’d be entitled to receive some financial help. But you’re forgetting that she’s a proud member of the Duwamish Tribe and has no intention of leaving the place where her ancestors lived, to join another tribe. She once told me that her home was built on land that’s been in her family since the beginning of time. As mind-boggling as that concept seems, I can’t find fault with it. No wonder she’s persisted there under less-than-happy conditions for so many years - her very sense of who she is, is at stake.”
    Several days after that, McKean and I went to find the old shaman in his shabby camp. He came out to the riverbank with us, leaning on a tall