The Death Tally

Corby flinched from the metal. He took a half-step back, his heels catching against the edge of the open bilge hatch. "Where did you get that?"

"A messenger brought it to your office while you were out securing the bond," Reese said. "You went white when you saw it. You thought someone had fished Gentry out of the bay and dropped his tally on your desk to let you know the contract was void."

"I didn't kill him," Corby whispered. His hands came up, palms out, fingers trembling. "I swear to God, Reese, I never touched Captain Gentry. I've known him since I was ten years old. He worked my father's draggers."

"You didn't touch him," Reese agreed smoothly. "You just paid him."

She reached into her coat a final time and produced the folded slip of yellowed manifold paper she had taken from Nora Gentry's bluff cottage. She unfolded it deliberately, smoothing the creased edges with her thumb before laying it directly across the top of the lantern lens, so the light shone straight through the dark ink.

Corby stared at his own handwriting: Hold radio silence. Do not signal Pier Four until the deck is clear of witnesses.

"Nora kept this behind her husband's sea-chest," Reese said, her voice dropping into a low, implacable cadence. "You gave Gentry two thousand dollars in bank notes on Thursday night to take the Osprey out to Section Nine and dredge the founding charter box out of the Sovereign's purser safe. You told him it was an off-book salvage job for Royston's investment pool. But you knew what was in that box, Tobias. You knew it contained the original settlement ledger proving the harbor trust's entire property title is fraudulent."

Corby's knees buckled slightly. He grabbed the flange of the fuel pipe to keep himself upright. "You don't understand the pressure," he stammered. "Royston... Royston was going to call the notes on all six of my trawlers. She held the liens. She found out Fallow had tracked the Sovereign's wreckage from the old surveyor logs. If the municipal board found that box first, the city would have seized every berth from Slip One to the rail depot. We would have been ruined. Beggars on the cobblestones."

"So you sent Gentry to dig it up," Reese said. "And what went wrong?"

Corby pressed his palms against his temples, smearing grease across his forehead. "It wasn't supposed to happen like that," he groaned, his voice cracking into a raw, pitiful rasp. "Gentry wasn't supposed to open the iron chest. He was just supposed to hook the salvage sling, hoist it into the fish hold, and bring it to the blind spot at low tide. But Gentry... he had a pry bar on board. He cracked the lead seal out on the shoals. He read the manifest from the disaster. He saw his own grandfather's name on the passenger casualty list."

Reese did not move. "And he told you he wouldn't hand it over."

"He radioed the private band on Saturday night," Corby said, his words tumbling out fast and desperate now, a dam breaking under pressure. "He said he was going to take the ledger straight to the union hall. He said the longshoremen had been dying for decades to make the trust families rich, and he was going to burn the whole waterfront to the waterline."

Corby lowered his hands, looking up at Reese with wide, bloodshot eyes.

"I couldn't let him do that, Adler. It would have destroyed everyone. Royston sent a boarding party out on Croft's tug to intercept them before they reached the lightship. It was just supposed to be a scare. Take the chest, disable their steering gear, leave them to drift until the morning patrol found them. But Martin and the deckhands fought back. Someone swung a gaff. A gun went off."

Corby choked back a sob, his fingers digging into his own throat. "They dumped Gentry and the boys twenty miles out in forty fathoms of water. Martin and the two deckhands who stayed quiet brought the boat in because they knew if they didn't, Royston would have their families put out on the street. I wrote the clearance slip to get them past the inspectors. I hired you because Mercer was already sniffing around Lockup C, and I knew if an independent pro with your reputation was standing in front of my door, nobody would believe I had anything to do with a missing crew."

"You used my license as a cover for a quadruple homicide," Reese said.

"I was trying to survive!" Corby pleaded, taking a step toward her, his hands outstretched. "Listen to me, Reese. We can still handle this. The chest is locked in Shed 9. The ledger is inside. Royston has ten thousand dollars in syndicate drafts waiting in her safe. Take half. Take five thousand dollars, get on the morning train north, and forget you ever saw the Osprey. Mercer and the union can't prove anything without Fallow's soundings, and Fallow is already out of the county."

"Fallow isn't out of the county," Reese said coldly. "He's the one who threw the phosphorus bomb into the bunkering station to kill Wyatt Croft. And Mercer isn't waiting for the union hall."

Above them, a heavy iron clatter shattered the damp silence of the dry dock.

The sudden sound reverberated through the steel hull like the strike of a sledgehammer against an anvil. Reese's head came up instantly.

From the upper catwalk thirty feet above, the screech of tearing metal tore through the night. Someone had just hooked a heavy cable winch to the companionway hatch, ripping the oak safety barrier clean off its hinges with a splintering crash.

Corby froze, terror washing the last remnants of color from his cheeks. "What... what was that?"

Heavy, uneven footsteps thudded across the iron plates of the main deck above their heads. The tread had a distinct, dragging hitch, the heavy, uneven limp of a man whose right knee had been ruined by twenty years of cargo loading.

"Mercer," Reese said softly.

A voice roared down the open ventilation shaft, thick with fury and industrial grit: "Corby! You little parasite! I know you're down there!"

The iron companionway ladder rattled violently as a massive figure swung onto the upper rungs.

Owen Mercer dropped down the ladder, his good leg taking the impact with a heavy thud while his stiffened knee dragged behind, his heavy canvas coat drenched in harbor rain. A four-foot steel pinch bar was gripped in his scarred right fist, and his left hand was hooked through the strap of a heavy brass cargo hook. His eyes were wide, rimmed in red, locked directly onto Tobias Corby.

"You killed Gentry," Mercer snarled, his voice vibrating with deafening force in the confined iron compartment. "You had your syndicate dogs dump my cousin in the deep trench for a box of moldy paper. And now you're going to join him at the bottom of the bay."

Mercer reached the lower landing and swung the pinch bar with terrifying, bone-crushing momentum. The heavy steel bar did not aim for Reese; it smashed directly into the iron rung ladder behind her, shattering the cast mounting brackets with a shower of sparks and shearing the lower ladder clean off the bulkhead.

The heavy steel ladder crashed across the bilge grating with a deafening clang, tumbling down into the flooded sump below.

The only exit from the engine room was gone.

Mercer raised the brass cargo hook, planting his boots wide on the narrow non-skid deck, blocking the gap between the fuel tanks with two hundred and forty pounds of muscle and raw hatred.

"Nobody leaves this hull alive," Mercer growled, and stepped forward to swing.