“Don’t fuck with us!” yelled the other man, who was sporting a red, puffy cheek that would soon be a huge black eye. His clothing had been tattered, and I could tell he had been roughed up a bit. “Where’s the box?” he demanded as he continued to plow through boxes and containers on a shelf.
“The sheriff took it to the lab for analysis,” I said.
“That’s bullshit!” he yelled. “There’s nothin’ illegal about the chemicals, and if I don’t get them back right away, there’ll be hell to pay.” He continued to rifle through everything in the storage area while his partner kept the gun trained on me. Both men were jittery. I assumed that the shaking was a combination of needing a fix and the fear of what would happen if they did not deliver the goods to whoever had intended to receive them, and who had likely paid dearly for them.
“It looks like someone beat you up. Is that because a lobster shipment may be held up without your box of chemicals?” I asked. “Why don’t you just tell me who you work for? Otherwise you’ll both be going down while your boss finds some other morons to run his errands.”
“Look, bitch! You are on the wrong end of this equation to be asking us anything. Now, I am going to ask you once more, nicely. Where is the box?” The look on his face was utter desperation. I was not afraid of being shot. In fact, I was confident that the man with the gun was scared, and was not about to pull the trigger. The way he held the gun was with extreme unfamiliarity. He was so awkward with it that I wondered whether it was even loaded. Best to not find that out the hard way, I thought as I backed up, increasing the distance between my chest and the gun.
“You are being stupid,” I said bravely to the gunman. Maybe I could reason with him. “You are going to be arrested for possession with intent to sell an illicit substance. And if you do not drop that weapon right now, you’ll be charged with assault of an officer with a deadly weapon. These are felonies. You know what that means, right?”
“Don’t talk to her!” the lead man screamed. “Give me the gun!” he demanded, and grabbed the pistol from his partner. “Get on your knees!” he yelled at me as he waved the gun toward my head.
“Donny, don’t,” pleaded the weak link. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Are you crazy? You’re not the one that’s gonna pay for this. I need to get that box back, NOW!” His eyes widened and he started breathing very loudly. Sweat rings had wicked wider in the armpits of his T-shirt. He fired a shot into the ceiling, which startled his partner more than it did me. “The next one has your name on it,” he said through clenched teeth as he brought the barrel down slowly from pointing up to directly at my head. “Now are you going to give me my stuff? Or am I going to kill you?”
As he started moving in closer to me, I got nervous. I could probably outmaneuver him and suffer a glancing wound at worst, I thought. I needed him to get closer to make my move and not get shot. The barrel of the gun was almost touching my blouse when I swatted it away with all of my strength. The gun skittered across the linoleum floor, coming to rest at the base of the wall. The man went for the gun, and I went for him, tackling him and pinning him to the floor with great ease. “Get the gun!” he screamed to his partner as I straddled his torso and locked my hands around his frail wrists. His partner turned to escape and ran directly into the sheriff, who now filled the doorway.
Within two minutes both men were cuffed, read their Miranda rights, and marched off to be booked and jailed to await bail and an arraignment date. Both men waved their rights to silence as they walked down the hall with the sheriff. They bickered back and forth like schoolchildren. The Hancock County Jail wasn’t like what I had known as typical lockups in Florida. It was a small facility, and the warden and guards were honest family men who did not mistreat detainees. There would be no drugs or gang rapes. It was jail, period. These boys would sleep, eat, and wait. Oh, and detox. Because of the explosion in drug-related arrests recently, all authorities within Maine’s criminal justice system had undergone extensive training and had ample stores of all antidotes for withdrawal from a variety of toxic substances. Hancock County even offers counseling and therapy to addicted inmates who find themselves suddenly in a drug-and alcohol-free zone. The two addicts were clearly jonesing, and would be suffering some form of DTs shortly, I knew.
I remembered the first time I faced the barrel of a gun, and how I had silently prayed. I hadn’t prayed for my life to be spared, but rather for forgiveness. Since then, I had been close to meeting my maker so many times and in so many different ways that I hated myself for being so cool about it. Was I lucky? Or was I really that good at what I do? That was a question I had pondered often throughout my illustrious career. I always came down on the side of being good. After all, if I attributed my life to luck, I would have to believe that someday my luck would run out. And that would make it hard to get out of bed in the morning.
As I collected myself and headed back to my office, I found a bit of comfort in knowing that I had been right about the two addicts. The weak link would eventually talk to save his own skin, perhaps leading me to someone higher up in the organization. Getting these two out of circulation was not a feather in my cap at all. They would be replaced by two more just like them—probably already had.
Before I opened my laptop I had a sudden, gut-wrenching thought come over me. What about Deloris? She had headed out to find the addicts’ boss at Empire Seafood. She was alone and unarmed. These guys played a little rougher than I had anticipated. There was no sense in my going to find her without a gun, I decided. What if her feelings about people on The Peninsula were spot on? When the sheriff returned from booking the addicts, I would let him know where Deloris was heading and why. Until then, I would continue my thorough search for clues through Mrs. Kohl’s phone.
The email attachment I had forwarded to myself from Mrs. Kohl’s deleted files that originated from [email protected] sat ready to download. The attachment appeared to be a lengthy video. I wondered what I would do with an email that came from such a vile address. Would I delete it without opening? Or would curiosity get the best of me? I hit the “open” icon under the attachment and watched.
The video’s caption was “Undercover at a Lobster and Crab Slaughterhouse,” and subtitles included, “PETA’s groundbreaking investigation of crustacean slaughter recorded animals who were ripped apart and boiled alive.” I knew little of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) before moving to Maine, but here, many PETA activists rallied and protested during the weeklong Lobster Festival. Protesting lobster fishing in Maine is not an easy gig. When activists start meddling with livelihoods, things can escalate quickly, making a peaceful protest a real challenge. PETA had pretty much been run out of town by an angry mob two years in a row. Maybe this video was a safer way to get their message out.
I watched the video from start to finish, twice. It was quite an exposé that featured the grimmer side of lobster processing. The narration was real conversation taped in live footage by the undercover PETA agent who was posing as a new employee-in-training at a processing plant. The trainee/agent was shaken to his core while being instructed. He kept asking if the lobsters could feel pain. The answer from a supposed manager was “Who gives a crap? Keep up!” Suddenly, the back of my neck tingled. I hadn’t had that feeling in months. This was the “aha moment” I had been waiting for. Trudy Proctor. Joan and Clark’s save-the-world daughter.
I scanned through the text messages again until I found the one that included the circus, and read it again. “Well, you have created quite a circus, haven’t you? You have ruined everything I have ever cared about, and things will never return to normal.” Hadn’t Trudy used the phrase “freak show” when I met her? And didn’t her picket sign profess that lobsters felt pain? This made sense, I thought as I scribbled more notes on the legal pad. [email protected] may very well be the same person who had sent the hateful text messages from an untraceable cell phone. I had my first real suspect. Trudy Pr
octor had motive. But was she capable of murder? Maybe Mrs. Kohl’s death was unintended, and then had to be covered up by the fire. Trudy certainly appeared to be exhausted when I met her. And she didn’t seem upset or surprised about learning that the Kohls’ house had burned to the ground. And maybe the picketing at ALP was a guise to hide the fact that she knew Mrs. Kohl was not there.
As I combed the contents of Mrs. Kohl’s phone, looking for more evidence that might support or deny Trudy’s involvement in the death, the sheriff returned from the jail. “Mind if I interrupt for a minute?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I replied and put the phone down. “I wanted to speak with you anyway. I am concerned about Deloris. I let her go to Empire Seafood to poke around. In light of having a gun pulled on me, I am now regretting allowing her to go.”
“She’ll be fine,” he answered with confidence.
“Really? I’m not so sure. Drug dealers who lose a large package are not kind. And they do not appreciate people nosing around their turf uninvited.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk with you about. The chemicals you confiscated are not illegal. They are actually used in shipping live lobster to China.” I was stunned. I would not have been surprised to hear that the chemicals had not yet been added to the list of banned substances. But to hear that they actually served a legal purpose was hard to believe. “But at least we have the punks on aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. They’ll never make bail.”
“Wow, I did not see that coming,” I said quietly. “I guess I shouldn’t be worried about Deloris. What about the mini meth lab? Did the lab analyze the contents of the soda bottle?”
“Spittoon. I suspected that, the lab confirmed, and they were both in possession of chewing tobacco that is now in storage at the jail.” This revelation did nothing to relieve my anxiety about having been so wrong about the two men. “Didn’t you notice the Copenhagen rings on their left rear pockets?”
“I did not. I guess I was too busy wondering if my head was going to be blown off,” I sniped defensively. “I’m sorry. I just don’t believe that those guys are on the level. Why come wielding a gun to collect something that is not illegal and would have been released anyway?”
“The Peninsula.”
“Yeah, so I have heard,” I smiled. “I’m not buying it, though.” Before I could update the sheriff on what I had found in Mrs. Kohl’s text and email messages, the sheriff’s cell phone rang loudly.
He snapped the phone out of the case he wore on his belt and answered. He listened and nodded. “Oh, yes. Yes, okay. What? Jesus. When will you have more information? Thank you, and we’ll look for your formal report.” The sheriff placed the phone back on his belt and sat in the chair next to me. He rubbed the back of his neck, massaging what looked like stress. “That was Dr. Lee, the state pathologist. He’s having a hard time due to the condition of the corpse.”
Although I had no formal training in pathology, I had assumed that there was not enough left of Mrs. Kohl to make any definitive statement. I waited as the sheriff stared into space and shook his head. When he made eye contact with me he continued, “He is confident that the victim was dead prior to burning.” The sheriff sighed, removed his phone from his belt, opened it, and stared at it as if it held answers to questions that were bubbling to the surface in both of our minds. Snapping the phone shut and clipping it back on his belt, he continued, “Dr. Lee is still working and will know more later.”
Looks like I had myself a murder to solve.
SIX
“Overkill” was all I could muster in response to the sheriff’s bombshell. I never imagined that Mrs. Kohl’s death may have been premeditated. In light of the autopsy findings revealing that the fire had been set to hide a murder, I now had much more to consider. And the condition of the corpse might make it very difficult to prove how she was actually killed. Modern science and technology in capable hands were nothing short of miraculous. But I wasn’t confident that Dr. Lee had the latest and greatest of any of the ingredients needed to pull off a conclusive finding that a decent defense attorney couldn’t shatter. For now, I didn’t have time to worry about the chances of getting a conviction. I had a killer to find and arrest.
I have never been much of a multitasker, so I would not attempt to straddle two cases. I would put aside my feelings about illicit drugs and The Peninsula. If I was correct about something being askew that could not be brushed away with the usual justification of happening “east of the Sullivan Bridge,” there would be ample opportunity to crack that wide open after I closed the door on Mrs. Kohl’s murder. The nefarious nature of the killing of Mrs. Kohl would haunt me, and that would propel me to the case’s conclusion at the cost of neglecting everything and everyone else in my world. I had made a number of mistakes in the last twenty-four hours. And I was not going to make any more. My single and intense focus would be arresting the vicious killer of Mrs. Kohl.
The information that the sheriff had delivered from the state’s pathologist raised one big question in my mind: Was Trudy Proctor capable of these godawful actions? As soon as Deloris returned from her road trip, I would hand her the task of researching Trudy. I needed school transcripts, medical records, all social media activity, and a list of people with whom she associates. Until Deloris could dig in, I would work on a plausible and possible time line of events that could possibly incriminate or exclude Trudy from my suspect list. Right now, with the texts, emails, and attitude, she was looking good for it.
All I knew about Trudy’s schedule was that she was home from law school; Georgetown University, as I recalled. So she had to have been on Acadia Island at the time of the murder. I knew that Trudy had a dislike for Mrs. Kohl. It seemed to me that for the fire to have done such extensive damage, the house must have been burning all night—even with the help of the red-dyed diesel fuel. And the diesel must be readily available on the island, and used by anyone with a diesel-powered boat, truck, tractor, or generator. I did a Google search and was disappointed to see that some firefighting pumps are diesel powered, which would explain the presence of the fuel at the scene if the island’s volunteer firemen had access to such pumps. I made a note to check that out. And what about the broken propane line? I wondered if I could examine and determine whether it had been broken by the “frost heave,” as Clark Proctor assumed, or may it have been broken by the murderer to intentionally fuel the fire? That would have been difficult to do without some equipment to dig up the gas line from the frozen ground. Just a shovel would not have sufficed. Maybe the line had been broken where it entered the house, I thought. I wished I had taken a better look at that when I was there. I could sift through my pictures and hope to see something useful. I jotted that on my notepad.
Before I knew it, the sheriff was in my office saying “good night.” Time had gotten away from me, I thought as I realized that I had gotten lost in Google. It had started with the fire pumps, gone to proper propane line installation, and I would now consider myself an authority of frost heaves and what havoc they can wreak. Researching had consumed my afternoon and early evening. The sheriff complained that he had also suffered the “lost in Google” syndrome, as he had been researching sodium tripolyphosphate or STPP, the chemical that I had confiscated. “It is used in lots of seafood processing and shipping,” he stated. “It helps fresh product retain moisture and quality. I learned that using it to ship live lobsters is very recent technology. When live lobsters are treated with a solution of STPP, they don’t lose weight on the flight to China. Shrinkage has been a huge problem in the past.”
“That explains the Chinese writing on the box,” I said.
“Yes, I called a friend here in town who works at a lobster shipping house. They ship lobster in a specialized container, which is too expensive to be disposable. So rather than shipping back the empty containers for reuse, which is also cost prohibitive, they fill them with these chemicals, which are cheaper to buy in China than in the US,” he said. “The two
-kilo pouches are good for one thousand pounds of live lobster, which is the capacity of each individual shipping container.” The sheriff yawned and looked at his wristwatch. “And the big producers get the chemicals for free from their Chinese customers, which sweetens the deal.”
I filled the sheriff in on where I was with organizing and putting together a strategy for the Kohl case. I had hoped to return to Acadia Island the following morning, but knew I needed to wait for final results of the autopsy and labs. No sense getting off on the wrong course if I could have all of the information soon, I knew. I would stay and research a little more before going home, and would return to the office early in the morning.
“Besides, I’ll need to wait for Deloris to get back here to switch the phones to her cell, right?” I asked, remembering that the office isn’t actually manned after five p.m., and that all incoming calls go to voice mail unless it is an emergency. In the case of an emergency, the caller is prompted to hang up and dial 911, which automatically transfers to Deloris’s cell phone. If Deloris doesn’t pick up within three rings, the call transfers to the Maine State Police. This technology is critical in small-town law enforcement where budgets do not cover around–the-clock enforcement. Although the Staties make rounds at night, they don’t understand the lay of the land like a local does, nor do they know the bad actors in the same way that childhood friends do. The sheriff can usually snuff a conflict before it gets out of hand, while the presence of State Police can sometimes add fuel to the fire. The sheriff is more likely to drive a drunk home, while the State Police are quick to fill the jail. Of course, most people planning to do harm do so after hours for all of the logical reasons.
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