Prosecutor Alvin Hooks is questioning the first witness, Sheriff Art Moran. On the morning of September 16th, Carl Heine's boat, the Susan Marie, (named after his wife) was seen adrift in a bay. The sheriff had gone to investigate. There had been a deep fog the night before, and all the boat's lights were still on. The sheriff and his deputy, Abel Martinson, went out to the boat, and found everything neat and undisturbed, except for a coffee cup on the floor. Art Moran began to wonder if Carl may have been knocked over into the ocean the night before. Both men can guess at what Carl's fishing routes and practices might have been the night before.
"San Piedro lived and breathed by the salmon, and the cryptic places where they ran at night were the subject of perpetual conversation." Chapter 2, Page 9 The two men wondered what to do. Art knew the Heine family well: Carl had gone to war and his mother, Etta Heine, had sold the strawberry field that had been in the family for two generations while he was gone. When he got back, he became a gill-netter to support his wife and children. He was always polite but never very friendly. Everyone on the island liked him, and Art knew that the town would be very upset by his death. He wished he didn't have to deal with this problem. He and Abel bring up Carl's net from the water, and find Carl tangled in it. Abel, who is young and has never seen a drowned man before, vomits. They notice a wound on Carl's head, and wonder if he hit his head falling over the side of the boat.
