The sheriff yelled up the ramp. “Hello. Have you seen Deputy Bunker?”
Manny quickly answered. “I haven’t seen her since lunch. I think she left on the mail boat.” Now I could see Cal and the sheriff coming up the ramp. At the top of the ramp, they were met with a shotgun in their faces.
Manny tried to talk sense into Clark. “Hey, man. I want no part of this. I agreed to scare her off, not kill anyone!”
“Toss your gun overboard,” Clark barked at the sheriff. The sheriff did as he was instructed, slowly pulling his gun out of its holster and dropping it over the railing where it splashed and sank. I slowly crawled out from behind the truck. Manny and Clark had their backs to me, but Cal and the sheriff could see that I was there with my gun aimed at Clark’s head. My hands shook uncontrollably as hypothermia had reached a more advanced stage.
The sheriff had his hands up in surrender and started talking.
“You know, Deputy Bunker didn’t know it was you. She thought it was all your daughter, then she had it all on Manuel. She didn’t know that your daughter is an addict, either.”
“Shut up! Trudy is a good girl! And if Midge Kohl hadn’t been trafficking chemicals from China, we would never have had them here.”
“And that’s why you killed Mrs. Kohl? Or was the killing to hide your affair from your wife?”
“It wasn’t an affair! I needed something against her. I wanted her to leave the island so we could have it back. She ruined everything. I didn’t want to kill her, but she refused to leave.” Manny quickly shoved his hands in the air along with the sheriff and Cal. Clark shoved Manny toward the sheriff. All three men stood in surrender to Clark, who was clearly preparing to spray them with his twelve-gauge at close range. All three men could now see that I had my gun aimed at Clark’s head.
“You don’t want to do this,” said the sheriff. “You’ll never get away with it. And what about Trudy and Joan? They will have to live with your legacy. Do you want to be known as the cold-blooded killer of four innocent people?”
“No, they won’t. I have four rounds. The last one is for myself,” he said coolly and pulled the hammer back, cocking the gun to shoot the sheriff. I steadied my hands and squeezed the trigger of my gun, catching Clark in the right shoulder.
The sheriff quickly moved in and wrestled the shotgun from Clark. As Clark spun around to face me, I could see the look of surrender in his eyes. He seemed relieved to have been stopped from killing anyone else. He dropped to his knees and cried out loud. “I just wanted to protect my family. I wanted my island back,” he said softly between sobs. “Our island,” he clarified as he looked me in the eye.
TWELVE
Clark Proctor hadn’t slept in weeks, I thought. I watched his head sway from side to side as the Sea Pigeon made her way over the southern bay, leaving Acadia Island in her wake. I assumed that I was exhausted, too, but was running on pure adrenaline. After bringing me up to speed on more details that Deloris was able to muster, the sheriff sat on the bench seat with his back against the port bulkhead. He placed himself strategically between our two suspects, I assumed to keep them from communicating. Manny sat staring into nothingness with eyes wide open and cuffed hands resting in his lap. I stood directly in front of the bus heater, rotating a quarter of a turn every few minutes to dry my clothes. I draped a wool blanket Cal had aboard over my shoulders that now ached and burned. The side of my right calf felt hot. I spun another ninety degrees to allow the heater to blow onto both shins; positioning myself to look over the bow and toward dim lights that grew brighter and brighter as I slowly stopped shivering.
Cal was the epitome of quiet confidence as he navigated between and around islands, ledges, and buoys. I assumed that this was a first for my trusted friend: transporting a cold-blooded killer and ex-con who, in light of the screaming accusations we had been witness to in the short time between the dock and the deck of the boat, were guilty of several crimes. The café would be buzzing tomorrow morning, I thought as I realized that this may well be the beginning of a long row of dominos to fall. A killer would soon face justice. Not just any killer. This killer had murdered and assumed that his island shield would protect him from due process, as it had … Who knows? If what I had been told by my own mother had been true about Acadia, its residents did whatever to whomever, whenever they pleased, without fear. Islanders were, they thought, beyond the reach of the long arm of the law. Their only legitimate form of justice had been retaliation. And retaliation had a habit of escalating. This time it had grown to a frenzy that had done irreparable damage.
I clenched my jaw tight to gain control of my chattering teeth. My muscles were convulsing in response to the extreme cold. The only part of me that was functioning properly, I thought, was my brain. I would use this time on board to thaw out, and to piece together what I knew and what I had just learned from the sheriff. Midge Kohl had paid with her life for her involvement in spearheading the trafficking of illicit drugs and the chemicals used to manufacture them. She and a handful of wealthy summer folks who invested in ALP had constructed a scam of great proportions. I was confident that her fellow investors were ignorant of the drug running, and were only interested in devaluing island waterfront property, enabling them as a legal entity, Acadia Island Property Improvement Association, to scoop it up for pennies on the dollar. Now that the scheme’s mastermind had perished, members of the group would never see return on their investments. The future of ALP was grim, thus the future of the ex-cons who had moved to Acadia for employment was also quite bleak.
Deloris had been correct about the activities at Empire Seafood out on The Peninsula. Empire was one of many distribution points of the drugs smuggled in from China mixed among bags of legitimate chemicals used in seafood processing. Deloris and I would follow up on Empire, I vowed. According to Manny, the illicit money resulting from drug sales was the only profit realized by ALP. Clark and Manny both had palms being greased to simply remain silent. But that silence was hard to maintain when Trudy came home from college with an addiction to designer drugs. Backing out of drug smuggling was never an option. Many dealers had died trying. And when investors and employees were all counting on continued operation of the plant, a secret lover pulls little weight as the sole dissenting opinion.
Mrs. Kohl was willing to walk away from the plant and all activities, signing everything over to the employees. But when it became obvious that Clark would never leave his wife, or his island, for her, she started wavering on giving up ownership. To do so would have put her right back into her former dull existence with a jet-setter husband who was never home, and paid little attention to his wife when he was. It became clear that Mr. Kohl had funded much of the ALP start-up, giving his wife “something to do.”
Manny had broken his probation in so many ways that his fate was sealed. He would return to prison where he would likely remain until he was a very old man, I assumed. Old habits are hard to break. He had gotten a taste of a free life on Acadia. He had a job. He had a home. He had family in his coworkers with whom he shared the label ex-con and shame of owing their one chance to investors who could pull the plug on their common existence with the stroke of a pen. The plug had been pulled, and Manny had struggled against the floodwaters circling the drain the only way he knew how.
I knew that a full confession was ready to spill out of a despondent Clark Proctor. I had already pieced together the chain of events, and only needed to hear it from him. Linking Trudy’s addiction to his involvement with importing and distributing drugs must have driven Clark insane, I thought. And when he couldn’t convince Midge Kohl to cease and desist, he flew into a murderous rage. I would need details from Clark of exactly how Midge Kohl went from consensual sex to the vat of boiling water. A bump on the head, or choke hold? Once submerged and dead, the evidence spoke for itself. Clark had transported his victim to her home, and torched the place to cover up the murder. And if I hadn’t been sent to Acadia by Mr. Dubois to document the fire dama
ge for the insurance claim, Mrs. Kohl’s death would have been determined to be accidental. Clark Proctor would have gotten away with murder.
Clark’s life, as he knew it, was indeed over. Once people realize that they have reached the point of no return, well, they don’t return. There was no doubt in my mind that Clark would have killed Cal, the sheriff, Manny, and himself had I not been able to squeeze off that one shot, winging him and allowing the sheriff to pounce. Teamwork, I thought. If Deloris hadn’t been so persistent and skilled in technical analysis, if Wally hadn’t answered the phone at the café and relayed my message, if Cal and the sheriff hadn’t shown up when they did, if I had succumbed to hypothermia, if my Glock hadn’t fired after submersion.… Well, the gun firing was perhaps luck, which bothered me. I knew that if I depended on luck for my survival, that one day my luck would run out. My life has been a long string of close calls. But this one had been a little too close.
When the Sea Pigeon bumped against the dock, Clark wakened from his forty-minute nap. The sheriff escorted Manny and Clark to the waiting State Police car and the two uniformed troopers who would transport them to the county jail where they would be processed and locked up until their trials. Clark would be on suicide watch.
Blue flashing lights ricocheted off snowbanks as the State Police vehicle left the parking area at the dock and wound through Green Haven’s narrow Main Street. Although it was only seven thirty, most of the town was black. “Can I give you a ride to the hospital?” the sheriff asked as we waited for Cal to finish putting Sea Pigeon to bed.
“No, I’m fine. Thanks, though.”
“I think you are better than fine,” he said with a smile. And that was the first and only compliment I had received from my boss since I was deputized. “But you should get checked out. We don’t need you out sick with pneumonia.”
“All I need is a hot shower, a hot meal, and a warm bed. I’ll grab a ride with Cal. He has to pass my place on his way home,” I said, dismissing any concern the sheriff had about my physical condition.
“Suit yourself,” he said. He looked as though he was waiting for me to say something. So I did.
“You know, Deloris is amazing. She is not being used to her potential as dispatcher and errand girl.”
“She is not getting a gun, period.” From that I gathered that the issuance of a firearm to Deloris had been a point of heated discussion in the past. I would let it go, for now. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow. Good night.” And with that, he climbed into his car and drove off just as Cal opened the passenger side of his truck for me.
Cal and I rode in comfortable silence until he pulled his truck up to the door of the Lobster Trappe. “You guys saved my life tonight,” I said as I found the handle and opened the door.
“And you saved ours.”
“See you at the café. I’ll bring my checkbook,” I said. The usual $100 boat fare didn’t seem like quite enough after what he’d been through. But I knew Cal wouldn’t expect anything more. I slammed the truck door and hustled into the well-lit Lobster Trappe.
Before I made it to the stairs, the door of the main house flew open exposing three very relieved faces. The wonderful aroma of something briny and hot wafted into the cool shop, creating a haze of steam that shrouded my “family” like a heavenly cloud.
“We were scared!” Wally shouted as he approached me with arms open for a hug. “Cold! Yuck!” he yelled after shoving off from a quick embrace. “Did you get the bad guys?”
“We got ’em.”
“Come in, dear,” said Mrs. V as she held the door for Wally and me to enter her kitchen. “You must be hungry.”
“We waited dinner for you,” said Mr. V. “Mussel stew and yeast rolls. Bet you’d drink a wee dram of Scotch first.”
“That sounds great! Thank you! Sorry I worried you, Wally,” I said as I took my place at the table.
“Audrey likes my name to be Walter. I am too old for Wally,” my baby brother said as he took the seat across from me.
“What? I leave you with Audrey for a day, and she changes your name?” I laughed.
I sipped a small glass of single malt and devoured two hot, buttered rolls and a huge, steaming bowl of mussel stew before the interrogation began. I knew it was coming. All three of my dinner mates stared at me, hovering like vultures hungry for a shred of fresh kill. I was nearly ready to excuse myself and head upstairs for a hot shower when Mr. V broke the silence. “We are extremely proud of Walter,” he said, patting Wally on the shoulder.
“Me too. Always.”
“Maybe you and the sheriff will make him a deputy?” Mrs. V asked.
“Yes, that is a great idea. I’ll check into getting you a real badge,” I said to Wally. “You have earned it!” I stood, ready to thank Mrs. V for dinner.
“And a real gun,” my brother added.
“Well, let’s start with the badge, Wally.” I almost laughed thinking of Deloris and her quest for a gun.
“Walter,” Wally reminded me.
“Yes, sorry. But now I need a shower and lots of sleep. Thanks for dinner and the drink,” I said to my landlords. I pushed my chair into the table and started toward the door. “And I will see you all in the morning.”
“I love you, Janey,” Wally said.
“I love you, too, Wall … Walter.”
Also by Linda Greenlaw
JANE BUNKER MYSTERIES
Slipknot
Fisherman’s Bend
NONFICTION
The Hungry Ocean
The Lobster Chronicles
All Fishermen Are Liars
Seaworthy
Lifesaving Lessons
WITH MARTHA GREENLAW
Recipes from a Very Small Island
Maine Summers Cookbook
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Linda Greenlaw is the author of the bestsellers The Hungry Ocean, All Fishermen Are Liars, The Lobster Chronicles, and Recipes from a Small Island, as well as the Jane Bunker mysteries, including Slipknot and Fisherman’s Bend. Before becoming a writer, she was the captain of a swordboat, the career that earned her a prominent role in Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm and a portrayal in the subsequent film. She now lives on Isle au Haut, Maine, where she captains a lobster boat. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
About the Knot
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Also by Linda Greenlaw
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
SHIVER HITCH. Copyright © 2017 by Linda Greenlaw. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover illustration by Adrian Chesterman / Artworks Illustration
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-10756-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-25010757-2 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250107572
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promoti
onal, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800- 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
First Edition: June 2017
Shiver Hitch Page 24