Chapter 19 of 20The Man in the Middle

Evelyn Sterling had one photograph, one board vote, and a $2.4 million offer standing between the Port Clement Maritime Museum and a demolition crew. She laid the print under the magnifying lamp on the archive desk and brought the lens down until the grain of the paper came up sharp. Leo Koskinen had told her to look at it close. He had not told her what she would find.

The photograph was small, mounted on card gone brown at the corners, and the back of it was blank. A group of men in dark wool stood on the deck of an ore freighter, a pilothouse door open behind them, the water at the rail smooth as sheet metal.

She found Eino Koskinen first. Leo had described him well enough — tallest of the crew, shoulders square, hands quiet at his sides — and there he stood at the left end of the front row, the only man standing straight. The rest leaned into their collars or hooked an elbow over the rail. Eino Koskinen looked as though he had been told to stand for inspection and meant to pass it. Evelyn's thumb hovered over him and did not land.

Captain Alistair Shaw had the tallest build in the frame, and he was standing only because the men at either shoulder were holding him up. Their weight was set against him, heels dug in, elbows locked. His jacket was buttoned wrong, left flap pulled across right, a gap at the throat showing gray undershirt wool. His cap sat crooked. His eyes, when the lamp caught them, gave the light back loose and bright, and the shine in them had nothing to do with the sun.

The diary had used one word for the man. Here it was, in his own uniform, on his own deck, held upright by his own crew.

She picked up the desk phone and called Saari Road.

"Mr. Koskinen. Evelyn Sterling."

"I know who it is."

"I have your photograph under the lamp. Your grandfather is the only man in the front row standing straight."

He took his time. Behind him she heard a refrigerator humming.

"That's him."

"The captain is in the center. He's leaning on the men beside him. His coat is buttoned wrong and his eyes aren't right."

"My mother used to say there were two photographs of that crew in this town, and only one of them ever got printed."

"Which one was that?"

"The one where his hands don't show."

Evelyn looked again. Captain Shaw's right hand hung clear of the men holding him, half curled, the fingers soft and blurred, the only part of him the lens could not resolve.

"Leo, if I put this in front of the board—"

"Put it in front of a lawyer first."

"I'm going to call Agnes Poole."

"Then call her," he said. "And Miss Sterling? My grandfather came home from that night with his palms cut open, and for the rest of his life he never heard his own name said in this town without somebody laughing at it. If that picture changes one word of that, I'll stand wherever you want me to stand."

"I'll call you tonight."

She hung up and dialed Agnes Poole.

"Mrs. Poole, it's Evie Sterling."

"You sound like a woman who has found something."

"I have a photograph. The crew of the Whitefish Rose, on the deck, before the last run. The captain is in the middle and he is—" She stopped, then said it anyway. "There's no polite word."

"There rarely is, with that man."

The kettle came off the burner on the other end.

"He's held up by the men beside him. His uniform is buttoned wrong. His eyes are glassy."

"Can you see it?"

"Under a lamp, plainly."

"Then write down what you see," Agnes said, "in your own hand, while the picture is in front of you, and date the page. A court prefers a contemporaneous note to a memory."

A spoon rang against china.

"Will it hold?"

"One photograph will not unseal a court file. It does something else. It puts a face on him, and a face is harder to argue with than a diary."

"Then I'll bring it to you."

"Bring me the original. I don't trust a screen with anything this old."

"Thursday morning."

"Thursday," she said. "And before you sleep tonight, ask yourself what the family will say. They will say he had a bad back. They will say the deck was rolling under him."

Evelyn wrote Thursday on a scratch pad.

"The deck isn't rolling. Every other man in that row is standing straight."

"Then say it exactly that way."

Maya came in at midmorning with snow on her shoulders and a Kwik Trip coffee in her fist, and stopped short when she saw the lamp.

"What's that?"

"A photograph. Leo Koskinen brought it in."

She set the coffee down and bent over the desk.

"Okay. Who's the one standing like there's a flag behind him?"

"Eino Koskinen."

"First mate, right." Her finger traced the front row. "And who's the guy in the middle who looks like he's about to fall off the—" She straightened. "Oh."

"Yes."

"He's drunk."

"That's what the diary says."

Maya leaned closer to the lamp.

"No, I mean he's drunk in the photograph. That isn't a rumor anymore."

She lifted her phone, then stopped with it in the air.

"Am I allowed to be seeing this?"

"You're already seeing it."

"Is this museum business, or the other thing?"

"Which do you want it to be?"

Maya glanced at the door.

"Okay. Here's the plan. After hours I take it to the library and scan it. If anybody asks, it's for the accession file."

"Not yet," Evelyn said.

Mateo Flores came at noon with snow melting off his boots and a paper sack that smelled of onion, which meant a pasty from the co-op.

"I brought you half," he said. "You can eat while I look."

"I'm not hungry."

"That's why I brought half."

He set the sack down and leaned over the lamp.

"Well. That's the Rose."

"You're sure?"

"See how her rail steps down by the hatch? The Ironwood's ran straight through."

Mateo took his time.

"And that's the captain in the middle."

"It is."

"Who are the ones holding him?"

"I don't know yet. Somebody wrote the names down once, but not here."

Mateo crouched to the level of the print.

"Look at that. Weight forward, heels dug in. Shipmates don't stand that close on a deck — those are men walking somebody home." He straightened. "A man gets a few in him the night before a boat goes out, and his friends don't let him fall."

"Mateo. Would you sign a statement saying straight out what you see in the picture."

He was quiet a moment longer than she liked.

"I'll sign it," he said. "You want the pasty heated up or not?"

She wrote it out on museum paper, in ink, with the print still under the lamp.

Crew photograph, undated. Captain Alistair Shaw stands at the center, held upright on both sides by members of his own crew; his jacket is buttoned wrong, his cap sits crooked, and his eyes are unfocused. No other man in the front row is leaning.

She signed it and dated it, and Maya signed underneath as a witness. Mateo signed below, printing his name so nobody could say he hadn't meant it.

Then she slid the print into an archival sleeve and laid it in her tote bag beside the diary.

"You're taking it home."

"I am."

"Because he has keys to this building."

"He has keys to this building," Evelyn Sterling said.

Outside, the wind came off the lake and the snow traveled sideways past the west windows. In the tote bag the photograph weighed nothing at all. It was the first thing anybody in that town had produced that could not be talked away: not a diary anyone could call local fiction, but a picture of the town's hero falling down before his ship ever left the dock.

She locked the west door and started the half-mile walk toward the square. If Harrison Shaw asked her for the photograph, she would have to decide what kind of liar she was, and she had the walk to work it out.