Supreme Justice Read Free

mean?”
    “Just tell me what happened, Tom,” Miles said in a voice still thick from sleep.
    “OK, well, there’s a ship docked at the pier, and we found five dead men and a hold full of hashish on board.”
    “You what?” Miles said, fully awake now.
    “There are five dead men on board. Some shot, some stabbed, and a hold full of drugs.”
    “Jesus. Call OSP. We’re not equipped to handle something this big.”
    Oswald had expected Miles’s reaction. The chief was a politician first and a law-enforcement officer second.
    “I don’t think the Oregon State Police will be welcome at the crime scene, Chief.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “About fifteen minutes after we boarded the ship, three carloads of armed men from Homeland Security showed up and ordered us to turn over our forensic kit and leave.”
    “They what? Can they do that? This is our jurisdiction.”
    “The leader, a guy named Belson, told me he’d arrest us if we didn’t leave. I didn’t want to press my luck. They were better armed than we were, and Jerry and I were outnumbered. So, what do you want us to do?”
    “What a mess,” Miles muttered.
    Oswald could imagine the chief running his hand through his hair. He waited quietly for Miles to develop a plan.
    “OK,” Miles said finally. “Your shift is almost over, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Head home. Forget about the ship. Let the feds handle it. We’d have to call in help anyway. Five dead men and a hold full of drugs. We’d be in way over our heads.”
    “Should I write a report?”
    “Yeah, write it up, and be sure to mention how you were threatened. We need to cover our ass in case something goes wrong and someone tries to blame us.”
    “What should I do with the report when I’m done?”
    “Just file the damn thing. If we’re lucky, we’ll never hear anything about this mess again.”

Chapter Three
    Tom Oswald parked the police car next to the warehouse. A full moon in a cloudless sky illuminated the dock. It was just after midnight the evening after the 911 had directed him to the China Sea .
    “It’s gone,” Jerry Swanson said as he and his partner peered through the windshield of the cruiser at the empty space where the ship had been moored.
    Oswald didn’t say anything. He was angry and he didn’t know why. The mass murder and the drug smuggling had officially ceased to be any of his business as soon as Chief Miles told him to turn the matter over to Homeland Security. Still, the way the feds had barged in and thrown their weight around irritated the hell out of him.
    “We’ve got company,” Swanson said. Oswald snapped out of his reverie and glanced in the side mirror. A security guard was headed their way, flashlight in hand. He was at the rear of the car by the time Oswald could make him out clearly enough to see that he wasn’t Dave Fletcher.
    “Can I help you,” the rent-a-cop said as he shone the light into the car’s interior.
    “Yeah. It’d be a big help if you’d get that light out of my eyes,” Oswald snarled. Then he caught himself. It was late, he was tired and pissed off, but there was no reason to take that out on the guard.
    “Sorry, rough day,” Oswald apologized. “Where’s Dave?”
    “Who?” the night watchman asked.
    “Dave Fletcher, the guy who’s usually here.”
    “I got no idea. They just transferred me from the mall in Astoria.” The guard shook his head. “I hope this ain’t permanent. This place is too damned isolated for me. Know what I mean?”
    “Yeah. Look, we’re just taking a break. We’ll be out of your hair in fifteen.”
    “OK, then,” the guard said and he walked off.
    “The fuckers disappeared the whole damn ship,” Oswald said as soon as the night watchman was out of earshot.
    “I saw David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear on TV once,” Swanson said. “This is just like that, only Copperfield brought the statue back.”
    Tom Oswald lived by himself in a one-bedroom