I sat down at the round table. Now that I was here my nervous tension receded; I felt calm and in charge. “I only have a rudimentary knowledge of maritime law. I gather the captain is complete master of the ship—that he evaluates any crimes committed under his jurisdiction and dispenses judgment, if any?”

Bemis looked at me seriously. “Technically, yes, as long as the ship is at sea. If some crime was committed on board, though, I’d probably just hang on to the person and turn him over to the regular judiciary at our next port of call.”

He turned to Winstein and told him to take over the bridge for a few minutes. The first mate finished drawing a line on the chart and then got up to stand by the helmsman. We were going through a channel with a lot of little islands planted in it—humps of earth with one or two trees or a scraggly bush clinging to them. The sun glinted off the gray-green water. Behind us, Thunder Bay was still visible with its line of elevators.

Bledsoe and Bemis joined me at the table. “You’re not supposed to come on board without the captain’s permission.” Bemis was serious but not angry. “You don’t strike me as a frivolous person and I doubt you did it frivolously, but it’s still a major breach of maritime custom. It’s not a crime, per se, but I don’t think that’s what you were referring to, was it?”

“No. What I really wanted to know was this: suppose you have someone on board who committed a crime while he was on shore. You find out about it while you’re at sea. What do you do with that person?”

“It would depend in part on what the crime was.”

“Attempted murder.”

Bledsoe’s eyes narrowed. “I assume this isn’t hypothetical, Vic. Do you think one of this crew tried killing someone? Who and why?”

I looked at him steadily. “I was the intended victim. I’m trying to find out for sure that someone here wasn’t after me.”

For a count of ten there was no sound in the small room but the faint throb of the engines. The helmsman kept his eyes in front of him, but his back twitched. Bemis’s jaw set in an angry line.

“You’d better explain that one, Miss Warshawski.”

“Gladly. Last Thursday night Martin Bledsoe here took me out for dinner. I left my car in the elevator yard. While we were gone someone cut through the steering controls with a cutting torch and emptied the brake fluid. It was a miracle that when my car crashed on the Dan Ryan I escaped with minor injuries. An innocent driver was killed, though, and one of his passengers is now paralyzed for life. That’s murder, assault, and a lot of other ugly stuff.”