The River Killers Read Online Free Page B

Vancouver. So it looks like you got to the lab, otherwise no picture of the fish. But why no records, and where the hell did you go afterwards?
    I stared at the computer screen and then began banging on the keys. DFO search engine. Google. Every customized academic search engine I knew. Nothing.
    Christ! This is supposed to be the most sophisticated fisheries database in the world. This is the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Of bloody Canada. And I’m doing a simple project on salmonid health and when I find a certain entry I can’t source it? What the fuck?
    The dull Ottawa sky was dimming into dusk. A metaphor for the entire soulless city and my life in it. I pushed my chair back and thought. Hard. If there was any chance of tracing the source of that jpeg entry, I would have to talk to the data lords, the geeks and trolls who controlled the information that was the foundation, according to them, of everything the department did.
    I was irritated by the prospect of that. The internal politics of DFO had increasingly come to favor the keepers of the data. Information is power. And the lower-order beings who now found themselves in possession of that power tended to gibber and posture like monkeys with a shiny stone. Or so I thought. But there was one who had crossed over, left the data kingdom, and ascended to the transcendental plane of “Policy.” The problem was, she didn’t owe me any favors and I had nothing on her. She was just a co-worker with whom I’d been friendly when we were both DFO rookies, doing lobster surveys in the Bay of Fundy. And in the power-centered interactions that typified most relationships within DFO , I didn’t know if simple friendship would count for anything. But maybe she’d be at the staff party scheduled for that afternoon. Bette Connelly. She’d been out east, with most of her department, trying to smooth over “The Cod Problem.”
    That was a misnomer, in my opinion; the cod weren’t the problem. People were. And the people who had caused the problem weren’t the people suffering from it. Maybe this should be number one on my list of “Reasons Our Bureaucracy Keeps Screwing Things Up.”
    But I’d heard Bette was back. The party—reception, actually, according to the embossed invitations that were scattered about the building—was something we’d both normally skip; an announcement of cutbacks and layoffs spun as “gains in efficiency.” But there was usually decent food, drinkable wine, and the odd old friend you could BS with.
    Even though it was only three, I shut down my computer and glared at nothing while I attempted to marshal the forces of logic and deploy them against the mystery. After several painful minutes, I conceded defeat in the attempt at thought, but scored a decisive victory in the exercise of mindless impulse. I grabbed my coat and headed for “Tears” over on St. Laurent Avenue. The real name of the bar was the Duke of Connaught Arms, but because it was patronized by civil servants from all departments of government, it had quickly acquired the sardonic nickname.
    I ordered the cheapest vodka they had, drank it, and ordered another. Gazing around the bar, I didn’t see anyone I knew. So I had a peanut. Then another drink. By this time, my thoughts were much less chaotic, and more focused on the primary imperative: another drink.
    Realizing my stomach had received no solid food for quite some time, I consumed the entire bowl of peanuts, then looked at my watch. Five-thirty. Perfect. The staff-party-slash-reception would be starting, and, with any luck, I could get some smoked salmon. Smoked salmon was pretty well guaranteed to be wild salmon. Damned if I was going to eat any of that farmed shit. I left the bar and headed back to the DFO building at 200 Kent Street.
    Unfortunately, Bette wasn’t there. Even more unfortunately, Fleming Griffith was. And still more