She hesitated, then shook her head. "I don't know where he is."
Chapman's pale gaze lingered on her for another moment, his expression giving away nothing. Then he turned and motioned to Clint Jackson, the cop who was keeping the crowd back. "One of you guys will want to impound that truck."
"Hey!"
At her reaction, he replied over his shoulder, "Standard procedure. Your brother is a possible person of interest."
"You're kidding—you think Gary would set this fire?" She waved her arm toward the docks. "The Anna Marie was built by my grandfather, named after our mother. Gary is a third-generation waterman."
"Anyone is capable of murder under the right circumstances. Setting a fire to cover it up is the easy part."
"Murder." She pressed a hand to her roiling stomach. "You think Ken was killed."
"Yes."
"And you believe Gary killed him," she repeated dully.
He turned to her, his expression all business. "Your brother was seen arguing with the deceased earlier this evening in the tavern."
Kaz shook her head. "You've got it all wrong."
"I'm told your brother has a record for assault."
"If you knew the circumstances—"
"And in an arson investigation," he continued as if she hadn't spoken, "it's standard to check out the owners of the property."
"Look." She strove for calm. "I'm sure you're used to things working differently in the city. But around here we take into account what we know about someone before we go around accusing him of something he isn't even remotely capable of!"
Chapman raised an eyebrow. "Your brother seemed plenty capable of violence in the tavern."
God. He had it all worked out. Except he was wrong, he had to be. "What makes you so sure the fire was deliberately set?"
"I smelled gasoline when I first came on board. That, and the pattern of the fire—"
"We don't keep gasoline on board the Anna Marie—she runs on diesel. It's crazy to keep gasoline on board any boat."
He opened his mouth to speak, then sighed instead. "You don't have to educate me about the potential hazards on a boat, Ms. Jorgensen. And the fact that someone used gasoline to start the fire when there was none on board makes it look even more deliberate."
He was right. She stared at the now smoldering trawler. My God. Someone had planned this.
"You were the first person on the scene, correct? You saw no one else, no one perhaps running away from the Anna Marie?"
"No. The marina is usually deserted this time of night."
"So why were you here?"
She hesitated. She needed to be very, very careful with regard to how much she revealed. At least for now, until she could find Gary, talk to him, and straighten out this mess. With the odds stacked so heavily against him, she couldn't take the chance that she'd provide information that could worsen his situation. "I wanted to talk to Gary," she said finally.
"Why did you think he'd be here?"
"I didn't find him at home, and Gary sometimes sleeps aboard the Anna Marie. But before I could get to the boat, the fire exploded."
He glanced up from the notes he was taking. "Did the explosion knock you down, or was it more of a whooshing sound?"
"The latter," she said after thinking about it. "I realized that Gary might be on board, so I yelled for help and then ran to the boat."
"You called the fire in?"
"No. I didn't have my cell phone with me, and I didn't want to take the time to go back to the car to get it."
"Someone called it in. Who, if no one else was here?"
"I don't know," she replied coolly. "Perhaps someone who has a view of the mooring basin."
He studied her, his expression turning speculative. "When I got here, the gate was chained shut, and I had to use bolt cutters. The other gates along the wharf aren't locked. Did you do that?"
"Of course not!" Then she remembered. "Someone had chained it from the inside. I didn't have time to deal with it….I climbed over."
"So you thought your brother was down below."
Chapman was relentless, and he wasn't going to give up or go away until she gave him the answers he wanted. "Yes. The wheelhouse door was open, and when we're in port, we keep it locked. We have expensive equipment on board—radios, a depth finder, radar—"
"Who has keys?" Chapman interrupted.
"Just Gary. And me, of course."
"All right, what happened next?"
She repressed a sigh and told him about trying to use the fire extinguisher, about finding it gone. "We never move it, except twice a year to check that it still works."
"Probably tossed overboard." He made a note. "I'll have a diver check."
She pulled her coat tight around her, feeling the cold all the way to her bones. It had begun to rain harder, adding to her discomfort, and the wind was picking up again, chopping the rain into drenching sheets.
Wrapping her arms tighter around her waist, she inhaled the acrid odor of the smoke that clung to her clothes and hair. A new thought occurred to her. It had to be common knowledge that Ken was rarely on the boat when it was in port. So had Gary been the real target and Ken just an innocent bystander? Whirling, she started walking toward her SUV.
"Wait up," Chapman said, catching her arm. His hand was startlingly warm, his grip firm. "We're not done here. And you'll need to go to the hospital for tests."
"I'm feeling fine," she protested.
Gripping her shoulder, he urged her toward the ambulances. "I'll have one of my men take you."
She dug in her heels, staring pointedly down at his hand. "You most certainly will not."
A look of exasperation flashed across his face, but he dropped his hand. "You really should go to the hospital, Ms. Jorgensen. You could collapse any time in the next couple of days from whatever you breathed when you were down in the hold."
"I have other priorities that don't include spending the night at the hospital being subjected to a lot of unnecessary tests."
"And I'll need your clothes," he added, ignoring her explanation.
She gaped at him. "What?"
"You were first on the scene, remember? And you are part-owner in the family fishing business, are you not?"
"If you're suggesting—"
"—that I'll need to test your clothes for accelerant. Standard procedure."
She really was beginning to hate that phrase. She started to retort, but broke off as Lucy, Ivar, and Jim Sykes walked up the ramp. Ivar came over to stand beside her. He didn't say a word—just used one of his big hands to rub gently between her shoulder blades.
Lucy walked up on Kaz's other side and slipped her arms around her, hugging her. "Are you okay?" she asked, sounding a bit tenuous herself.
"Yeah, mostly." Kaz tried to smile and failed, then nodded to Jim Sykes, who was shaking hands with Chapman.
"So," Sykes said, turning to Kaz. "One of your boats out of commission, your crewman dead, and your brother possibly the prime suspect."
Chapman frowned slightly at Sykes, which struck Kaz as odd since he seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "You know Gary wouldn't do this, Jim," she replied as calmly as she could manage.
"Are you planning to issue a BOLO on him?" Chapman asked Sykes.
Kaz looked from one to the other, not comprehending.
"We need to talk to Gary," Ivar explained to her in his soft rumble. "Find out what he knows."
"Possibly armed and dangerous," Sykes confirmed.
"Hey," she snapped. "No way—"
Lucy spoke up. "Chief, I don't think—"
Sykes held up a hand. "Jorgensen has violated his parole, and he should be approached with extreme caution. It's in this community's best interests, as well as his, to bring him in off the street as soon as possible."