The Last Run Read Online Free

up.
    “Ensign?”
    “Sir?”
    “Any chance you could run a check anyway on that
Cape Chacon
vessel?”
    As it turned out, the
Cape Chacon
did lose a crewman once, only not in 1997. The fisherman, Thomas A. Banks, had gone overboard near Cordova in 1987—two years before the
Tomboy
suit was manufactured.
    Hanson ran the name through the state computer anyway. Banks had prints on file, so Hanson asked the fingerprint lab to compare them against the
Tomboy
print. The results came back after lunch.
    Negative.
     

THREE
    D avid Hanson got up the next day feeling rested but sluggish. He showered, shaved, put on slacks, a clean white shirt, his black shoes and a bright tie and looked in the mirror. He undid the tie and walked down to the kitchen. He cleared a spot on the table, sat down, had a few handfuls of his kids’ cold cereal, a shot of cranberry juice and thought about
Tomboy.
The kids were loud and his wife said something to him but he did not hear it. He felt drugged, sort of. He put his coat on and went out to his car.
    Driving, he kept thinking about the survival suit. The windshield wipers squeaked back and forth. What had he missed? He felt as though he had overlooked something. There was always something. Life was a series of clues overlooked. Who had said that? He pulled into the parking lot.
    Three o’clock found him at his desk, typing. He had kept a running account of the
Tomboy
case and did not want to stop just because the investigation had flamed out. As he wrote, it occurred to him how many concrete leads had gone up like a puff of dust in a draft, and he kept on writing. He made a note that he never had contacted two of the men listed as owners of
Tomboy
vessels in Alaska. He’d called several times and left voice messages. Perhaps he ought to try them one more time. He reached into his drawer, took out his notebook and was flipping through the pages to find the numbers when the telephone rang.
    It rang a second time.
    He put his hand on the receiver, lifted it and said, “Hanson.”
    “Yeah,” a voice on the line said. It had a thick edge to it. A three, double-Scotch edge. “This here’s Eels, from Port Alexander.”
    “Eels?”
    “Yeah, some guy named Hanson called me and I’m returning the favor.”
    “Arthur Eels?”
    “Yeah.”
    I was just going to call you, Hanson thought. What he said was, “Arthur, I’m glad you called.”
    Silence.
    “Now, Mr. Eels-”
    “Arthur.”
    “Arthur,” Hanson said. “Listen; the reason I called was because you’re listed in Fish and Game records as being the owner of a boat called the
Tomboy
—”
    “I sold that boat.”
    “When?”
    “A couple months ago.”
    “I see. Well, who did you sell it to?”
    Eels gave him a name, then said, “I got myself a new one. The
Emily Ann.”
    “So you no longer own a
Tomboy
fishing boat?”
    “Not anymore.”
    Well, Hanson said to himself. Another strikeout. “Okay, well, Arthur, I, uh —I appreciate you calling back. You told me all I need to know. That is, unless you think there’s something else you can tell me.”
    “I don’t think —”
    “Right. Well, thanks again.”
    “I mean,” Eels went on, as if he had not been listening, “you probably already knew that one of the guys who died on the
La Conte
was wearing one of my
Tomboy
survival suits.”
    Hanson sat back in his chair.
    “Oh,
really?”
    “You didn’t know that?”
    “No.”
    Eels, who fished commercially during the summer months, told him he had taken a vacation to Oregon in December 1997, and had left his boat, the
Tomboy,
in his brother’s care. His brother, however, had gotten arrested and asked one of his buddies to keep an eye on it, a friend by the name of Mike DeCapua. Shortly thereafter, the friend —Hanson was scribbling down the name—had taken a deckhand’s job on an old schooner, the
La Conte,
which was short one survival suit.
    “And wouldn’t you know it?” Eels said. “But that old boat went down in a