How It Happened

by Michael Koryta

  Drugs were taking more lobstermen’s lives than the sea now.

  “A fisherman with the first initials J.R. died at his home in Tenants Harbor two years ago in July,” the librarian told Barrett. “Full name was Julian Richard Millinock.”

  The punch that Bobby Girard had landed with the first reference to the Harpoon now felt like a jab, and the librarian had delivered the big right cross hiding behind it.

  “Millinock,” Barrett echoed. “I know the name. But the one I know is named Mark. I don’t know anybody named Julian or J.R.”

  She was scrutinizing the story. “There’s a Mark mentioned here. An uncle. It says Julian was the beloved son of Adrian and Lucille, brother of Mary, and nephew of Mark.”

  Barrett had a vague memory of Adrian Millinock—he’d been a fisherman, and he’d kept his distance from his brother.

  “I guess I’ll catch up with Mark, then,” Barrett said, a cold stone in the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t wanted to find his way back to the Harpoon.

  The librarian handed him the printout of the obituary. It showed a muscular man with a bearded face split into a smile. Julian Richard Millinock, dead at twenty-six.

  He paid for the copies and was walking out, his head down, reading, when she said, “Have a good afternoon, Agent Barrett.”

  He looked back with surprise, and she regarded him without a hint of judgment.

  “I remember you,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said, unsure of how to respond to the flat statement.

  “Mind if I ask you a question?” she said.

  He waited.

  “Do you think they got it right? I know that’s also to ask if you got it wrong, but that’s not my point. People still talk about them so often, you see. Jackie and Ian, they were our tragedy. People still wonder.”

  “I didn’t get it wrong,” Barrett said, and he left before she could ask any more questions.

  The Harpoon had been an operation of arbitrary hours when Ray Barrett owned it, the locks turned according to his moods and sobriety, but Mark Millinock ran it with more consistency—he opened every day at four, and he closed whenever the last drink was paid for.

  It was just after three when Barrett arrived, and the parking lot was empty and no one answered his knock. Mark’s battered Jeep Wrangler was in its spot behind the building, though, so he couldn’t have gone far.

  The Harpoon wasn’t waterfront property, but it wasn’t far from the water either. In Port Hope, nothing was. The public landing, with its tourist-friendly bars and quaint general store and ice cream shop, was only a mile away from the Port Hope boatyard, which was just down the steep hill behind the Harpoon, but it felt like the two were much farther apart than that. The boatyard offered no entertainment value for visitors from away—it was about function, not form. The people who used it didn’t care that the dumpsters obscured the water view because nobody gave a damn about a photo op when he was hauling garbage on an icy February morning.

  Barrett had always liked the boatyard. As a kid he’d spent hours fishing with mackerel jigs off the short pier and talking to the men who came and went. Several of them had taken a special interest in him because they knew his grandfather, and they knew that it couldn’t be much fun to be Ray’s grandson.

  Today, the boatyard was quiet, and Mark Millinock was alone on the pier. He was in a lawn chair at the end of the dock, smoking a cigarette with his feet up on one of the wharf pylons, and when he heard footsteps on the dock boards, he turned without much interest. Then he recognized Barrett and swung his feet down and straightened up.

  “Look who’s back,” he said. “I thought they sent your ass to Missouri or someplace.”

  “Montana.”

  “How was it?”

  “Cold.”

  Mark laughed. He was showing none of the animosity that Barrett had expected, but there was no mystery to that—he seemed to be riding a good high.

  “So they sent you back to Maine to get warm?” he said. “That doesn’t make much sense.”

  Barrett leaned on the wharf pylon and watched the boats at mooring in the bay rise and fall gently in water that glittered like broken glass.

  “They didn’t send me back,” he said.

  “You quit the FBI?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You get canned?” Mark asked with hopeful enthusiasm.

  “No.”

  “Oh, mutual breakup, then. Yeah, that’s what I’ve called every one of mine.”

  “I’ve got some questions for you,” Barrett said, “but it’s important for you to remember that I don’t have a case here anymore. I’m vacationing, right?”

  “Vacationing. I like that. Came back to see old friends?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then the questions shouldn’t have anything to do with Ma-thias, ’cause he’s no friend of yours. Now that I think about it…” Mark made a show of pretending to count on his fingers before closing his hands into fists. “I can’t think of any friends you’ve got here anymore.”

  “That might be true,” Barrett said. “But I still have my questions.”

  “That’ll be on your tombstone,” Mark said. “‘Here lies Rob Barrett—he still has his questions.’”

  Mark gave a too-loud, too-jittery laugh. Whatever was coursing through his bloodstream was an awfully cheerful substance. Barrett wondered what he’d be like when he came back down and the laughter stopped.

  “My point,” he said, “is that I can’t do anything to you, no matter what you say. Understand? I’m just passing through. You could tell me what you’re using right now, for example, and I wouldn’t arrest you or even show any interest.”

  Barrett was expecting either denial or distrust, but instead Mark snorted and said, “Shit, you sound just like your partner. That mean you want the same thing?”

  Barrett cocked his head. “My partner? You mean Johansson? He’s come around?”

  Mark nodded, seeming surprised that Barrett didn’t know and a little regretful that he’d mentioned it. “You guys can’t let it go, can you? You’d think nobody had ever been murdered before.”

  Barrett felt an odd flush of pride and camaraderie, his surprise giving way to admiration. He’d thought Don would try to leave it behind. Nipping at the heels of that admiration, though, was a touch of envy—was Johansson already out in front of him?

  “Did he ask about your nephew?”

  Mark Millinock’s amused face went cold and dark.

  “You speak about my nephew, asshole? J.R. was a good kid, and he didn’t have shit to do with those murders.”

  “I know he didn’t. He was dead before they happened.”

  They held a stare until Mark’s jumpy eyes couldn’t take it any longer, and he turned and spat into the water angrily.

  “You need to leave. I don’t know what makes a man foolish enough to come back around the same fire that burned him before, but I don’t want to be a part of it.”

  Barrett said, “Do you want to know who sold him the bad batch?”

  Mark lit a fresh cigarette and blew smoke toward the water.

  “Will it matter to me?” he asked finally.

  “Maybe. It was Jeff Girard.”

  Mark Millinock turned and stared at him through the wafting smoke.

  “You’re serious?”

  Barrett nodded.

  Mark took a long pull on the cigarette and then released the smoke without seeming to exhale. It framed his face like a ghostly sketch.

  “This is news to you,” Barrett said.

  “If it’s not bullshit, then I suppose it could pass as news, yeah.”

  “It’s not bullshit. Came from Bobby Girard, down in Biddeford. He said that Jeff was tight with your nephew, sold him a bad batch, and felt like hell over it. Does that sound believable?”

  Mark leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees, looking suddenly weary.

  “He bought a few grams of that DC from somebody, no question about that. That was
back before people were really talking about it, though. And I’d seen Girard. He was around Rockland and out in T-Harbor that summer. Was the drugs that led him here, I think. Hard to find a consistent fix out in friggin’ Jackman or wherever he was from. Until the moose start cutting heroin, you’ll have to come out of the woods for it. I never knew Girard to sell, but, shit, everybody’ll sell if the price is right. My nephew…”

  He stopped, shook his head, and took a sharp, almost fierce drag on the cigarette. “My nephew was a good kid when he was straight. My brother got him a job working as sternman on Brian Wickenden’s boat, and Brian got him off the pills and onto beer, which was progress, believe me. But the heroin…that shit is hard to quit.”

  Barrett looked out at the boats and buoys, thinking of Kimberly Crepeaux’s reference to the killing drug that worked up the coast like a fever, leaving a trail of death behind. The wind came up and the water sparkled beneath it and somewhere beyond the farthest reaches of the light, old rigging creaked like footsteps on the stairs of a haunted house.

  “Does Mathias still come around?”

  “I told you, do not ask me questions about Mathias.”

  “What do you need in order to answer them?”

  Mark spat into the water again. “You still do not get it.”

  “What don’t I get?”

  “Anything about him. Or about this place. You remember being up here in nice weather as a kid, and you think that shit was real. It wasn’t. You got no clue what this is really like. When it’s twenty degrees and the wind is sitting down out of the northeast and the plow drivers are in my bar at noon and there ain’t a soul on the roads to miss them. That’s fine, man. Nobody ever begrudges you summer people coming here with your dollars. We need ’em. But don’t pretend you understand us.”

  “You started with Mathias and ended with us. All I’m asking about is him. What’s it matter where I was as a kid?”

  “It matters because you think you understand things, and you don’t. You thought you got it, and you were wrong. Divers went into the water and proved you wrong. Why can’t you let it be?”

  “Because she’s not lying.”

  Mark blew cigarette smoke with exhaustion and hung his head in near despair. “The people who will talk to you? You should be smart enough not to listen to them. The people who won’t talk to you? Listen to the silence, brother. It’s a lot more important.”

  Mark flicked the cigarette. The sparks flew in a pinwheeling arc before hitting the water with a soft hiss.

  “How do you know the drug came from DC?” Barrett asked.

  “Huh?” Mark frowned at him with genuine confusion.

  “The batch that killed your nephew. You said it was a DC batch.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I heard the words come out of your mouth.”

  “You heard them wrong. I didn’t say anything about where the shit was from. DC has nothing to do with a place, man. It’s for the devil’s cut or the devil’s calling.”

  Barrett had heard plenty of nicknames and jargon for drugs, but this was new.

  “Who started calling it that?”

  “Survivors, Barrett. They’re who started calling it that. The ones who took the devil’s cut? They never had a chance to say a word about it.”

  “Kimberly thought it was from DC.”

  “Exhibit A of what I keep saying—your trusted source has no clue what she’s talking about. What she doesn’t invent, she gets wrong.”

  “You hear a lot of talk, standing behind that bar. It’s been almost a year now. Do people in your world really think Girard killed those two?”

  Mark’s high laugh cut the air again. “Man, you’re really doing it, aren’t you! I saw you and thought, There’s no way he came up here for anything other than another pass at Liz Street’s lovely ass—”

  “Easy…”

  “Fuck you, easy, I’ll say what I want. I sincerely hoped she was all you were after. I sincerely hoped that Ray Barrett’s own blood wasn’t dumb enough to still be asking about this bullshit. The pond…was…empty. Kimmy lied. What’s left to say?”

  “You could tell me about Girard. You started to, because you cared about your nephew. Why not give me a little more?”

  Mark looked at him and smiled. “I wish you could’ve seen yourself the day you came up here looking for Mathias. Man, your face…you’ve never looked more like your grandfather than that day. Had your ass hanging out for the world to see.”

  Mark laughed a little louder, and the sound seeped into Barrett like heat, warming his blood and quickening his pulse.

  “Was Girard in the bar much?”

  Mark kept laughing for a minute, then stopped and wiped his eyes. “Sorry, man. I don’t mean to laugh in your face, it’s just that I’m sitting here thinking of how the person you decided to believe was Kimmy, and you arrested Mathias, and then the pond was empty. I mean…there’s screwing up a case, and then there’s that.”

  Barrett’s greatest asset in interviews was patience. That ability to see each page of anger and then close the book. For some reason he was struggling now.

  “Don’t laugh too hard, Mark. I still know plenty of locals with badges who will be happy to drop in on your bar.”

  “Sure. Like your old partner?” Mark laughed again as he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and shook one loose. “Go ahead and give him a call.”

  Barrett cocked his head. “Why all the teasing bullshit about Johansson? What’s going on with him?”

  “That’s private,” Mark said. “That’s between me and a man who has some authority in Maine, not Montana.” He was sitting below Barrett, cigarette halfway to his lips, face upturned, a smile on it. “You remember those kind of men?”

  “I remember them.” Barrett’s quickening pulse had moved into his temples. “Now you mind answering my question?”

  “What difference will it make? I could tell you the truth, could tell you a lie, it won’t matter, because you never know who to believe, not even when everybody else in the whole damned town—”

  Barrett’s backhand slap smashed Mark Millinock’s cigarette into his teeth, and for an instant Mark seemed too stunned to respond, the cigarette stuck sideways to lips that were now leaking blood. Then he bolted out of the chair and swung a big, looping punch at Barrett’s head that never had a chance of contact because Barrett drilled him in the eye with a closed left hand and then smacked the side of his skull with an open right, knocking him back into the chair, which fell sideways beneath him, spilling him onto the dock.

  Mark pushed upright on his hands and knees, looked at the blood dripping onto the deck boards in disbelief and then up at Barrett. Again, Barrett felt that odd distance from his own violence, just as he had when he’d hit Ronnie Lord in the bar all those months ago. His hands acted, his thoughts receded, and some dark part of him felt at peace.

  It was a dangerous feeling, because it wasn’t a bad one.

  “You need to be careful taunting a man,” he said. “You got my blood up.”

  He didn’t like the sound of his own voice. He took a step back and circled, his hands still raised, expecting Mark to come at him again. Almost wanting him to. It seemed like Mark was considering it, but he didn’t move, just spat blood without taking his eyes off Barrett.

  “I asked you a question,” Barrett said. “What’s Don Johansson doing on this case?”

  “You’re a lunatic,” Mark Millinock said, licking blood off his lips.

  “That’s not the answer I—”

  “He’s not doing anything on this case, you stupid son of a bitch!” Mark shouted. “There is no case! It’s over!”

  The heat flushed inside of Barrett again; his hands curled back into fists.

  “You said he and I were both the same, that we couldn’t let it go. So what is he asking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  Barrett grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him and drove him backward, slamming him into the wharf ra
iling so hard the security lamp rattled above them. He was about to throw another punch—or many punches; it felt as if things were going to get away from him fast, pull him under and hold him there in a red haze—when Mark shouted at him.

  “He just wants a friggin’ fix!”

  Barrett released him and stepped back. Mark hung from the top rail, wincing and breathing hard.

  “That’s the truth?” Barrett asked.

  “Yes, it’s the truth, you prick. The two of you are the same because you can’t let the damn thing die, you’re all twisted up by it, can’t just accept that you were wrong!”

  “What does he buy?”

  “Pills.” Mark spat blood into the water. Looked at Barrett with hate. “Oxy, Percocet, Vicodin, whatever. He’s in pain, he says. Bad back. But he’s just like you. Coming apart, because you got it wrong.”

  30

  Barrett drove out of Port Hope with Mark Millinock’s blood drying on the hand that held the steering wheel.

  You got my blood up, he’d said. That phrase so etched in his memory had risen easily to his lips as his heart thundered and his muscles bunched and he saw the pain he’d inflicted on another human being.