Hard Aground

by Brendan DuBois

  His voice got sharp. “What I gain is none of your business, Mr. Cole.” And then, like he knew he had gone too far, he added, “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. Mr. Cole, your home doesn’t just belong to you. It belongs to history. It belongs to future generations. Certainly it has changed over the years—I do realize that—but the basics of your house, the foundation of your house, it’s remained the same. And all I ask is some time and courtesy to let me record a part of it.”

  “History and future generations don’t pay the utility bills or the property taxes,” I said. “I do. Is that clear enough?”

  “I—”

  His wife, Marjorie, got up on the granite steps, tugged at her husband’s jacket. “David please, that’s enough.”

  His face was red and he stepped down hard from the steps, like he was making a statement. Marjorie rubbed her hands—she looked pretty cold, even with the April sun up high and warm—and she said to me, “I’m sorry. David … he’s a bit of a compulsive, you know? The kind of guy who eats M&Ms by putting them on a plate and organizing them by color, or who makes sure his shirts are hung by sleeve length and fabric. When he gets a notion in his head …”

  Her husband stepped back a few more steps. Marjorie glanced back at him and then turned back to me, lowering her voice. “I know he’s being a pain.” She gave me a wide smile. “You should try being married to him.”

  “No thanks.”

  A pleasant nod. “I understand, and I’m sorry for disturbing you again.”

  “I appreciate that, Mrs. Hudson. And honest, just give me two more weeks, all right? I’m sure I’ll be in a better position then.”

  She nodded. “I get it. Again, sorry.”

  Marjorie stepped back and went to her husband, and there was a brief yet spirited discussion that I couldn’t quite make out, and then she took his arm—not the one with the folder—and started walking back up my dirt driveway. Marjorie turned and gave me one more sympathetic look, and then she turned back to her husband.

  I watched for another minute or so as the couple walked away, heading up to the parking lot of the Lafayette House, and then Hudson shook off his wife’s grasp, stood, and then looked back at me.

  His gaze wasn’t friendly or open or forgiving.

  It was pure hate.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After that dreary event, I had a lunch of defrosted frozen soup and some cheese and rolls, the soup having come from Diane Woods’s fiancée, Kara Miles. And as chance would have it, Diane called me and we made a date for an early dinner. So I napped and poked around and, thanks to Paula’s help, I called the Tyler Historical Society three times. Each time, the call went to voice mail, except the voice mail box was full and couldn’t accept any more messages.

  At five P.M., Diane came through the front door without looking at me and flopped down on my couch, barely missing my feet.

  She looked very tired, wearing jeans, a black turtleneck, and short leather jacket. I said, “Thanks for coming by.”

  “Glad to do it.”

  “I thought you’d be busy at work.”

  She rubbed her face with her right hand. “Ah, yes, I would be, if there was any work for me to do.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You’re aware that this state is in the middle of an opioid crisis?”

  “I know, but I’m sure I don’t know enough.”

  A sigh. “Get this. Our little Granite State, our little slice of heaven, it’s ground zero in the current heroin epidemic. Per capita, we’re number one—not as newsworthy as having the first-in-the-nation primary, but it’s right up there. Each day we lose a couple of men and women, boys and girls, to ODs. Over in Manchester we had a mom and dad who OD’d and died in a restaurant bathroom while their kiddos were having the early-bird special.”

  “I don’t remember hearing that or seeing that in the papers.”

  Diane stretched her legs, rubbed her hands along her jeans. “That’s because it didn’t really officially happen. Sometimes, if there’s no real crime involved, like an underage victim or someone forcing the drug into a person, the families like to keep it quiet. You’ll see it in the obits if you read it the right way. ‘Died unexpectedly.’ ‘Died at home.’ ‘Died with friends at his bedside.’ Saves the family a bit of grief, though that’s changing now. Lots of families want to get the word out, even if they’re embarrassed, so they can help save another family.”

  She took a breath and I interrupted. “Then what does this have to do with Maggie Branch’s murder?”

  “Yesterday morning, it had nothing to do with Maggie’s murder. Then after we did another sweep of her barn office, it had everything to do with Maggie’s murder. We found a little plastic envelope of high-grade heroin. Goddamn stuff even had a stamp on it, that’s how brazen the goddamn dealers are getting.”

  “What kind of stamp?”

  “Oh, just a stamp with a bird on it. A bluebird. Your stamp of approval that you’ll be getting one honking good high, accept no substitutes.”

  “And who’s doing the stamping?”

  “Some outfit out of Lowell. Not to pick on Lowell and Lawrence, our distressed neighbors to the south, but they’re currently the Axis of Evil when it comes to distribution up here.”

  Lowell, I thought. Where Felix went last night, talked to a gang that had its members at Maggie’s place the night of her murder, and where they apparently had left a souvenir behind …

  “Lewis?”

  “Sorry, I was daydreaming. What did you say?”

  She shook her head. “What I said was that when that little envelope of heroin was found, it was ‘Katie, bar the door.’ The Feds are pouring money and resources to help us local yokels do something, when the real temporary solution right now is to stop arresting people and getting them into rehab. But allocating money for rehab centers isn’t sexy enough for our elected betters, so most of the money is going to law enforcement.”

  “They took the Maggie Branch case away from you.”

  “The state most certainly did,” she said. “Including one handsome, young, and energetic assistant attorney general named Camden Martin, who’s hell-bent on making a name for himself. He has a special task force set up with the authority and ability to go anywhere and take over any case that has a connection to heroin.”

  “One little packet doesn’t seem like much of a connection.”

  “Ah, but what’s more fun for our handsome young Attorney General Martin: meeting with local police chiefs to try to track down the midlevel dealers, most of whom live in distressed housing and are addicts themselves, or diving into a case that will tug at the state’s heartstrings?”

  “A lonely elderly antiques dealer, murdered by a shotgun blast to her head, connected to the opioid crisis.”

  “Yep. So they have it, and are being polite, but the Tyler Police Department has officially been shoved out. Even though it’s my case, damn it.”

  A right foot snapped out, kicking my coffee table a few feet. “My case, damn it!”

  I paid special attention to a pile of history books near me, all written by the famed British historian John Keegan, and Diane reached over and patted my arm, shaking her head in dismay.

  “Sorry. Not enough sleep and I lost it there. You and your furniture and books don’t deserve it.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Forgiven and forgotten.”

  “Thanks.” She moved on the couch to get a better look at me. “How are you doing?”

  “Doing all right.”

  “And how are you when it comes to painkillers?”

  “I took one prescription pill. Made me constipated for three days, gave me crappy dreams. That was it.”

  “Good for you,” she said. “You know, if there was a blame game on this situation, I’d blame big pharma and the doctors. Big pharma for making these powerful painkillers and making it seem like your Constitutional right never to experience a twinge, and the doctors who go along for the ride, writing scri
pts for their patients because they’re tired of hearing them whine about how it hurts so much. And when the scripts run out, and they can’t get them refilled by any doctor, then the patients go another route. Just to satisfy the craving that hadn’t been there in the first place.”

  I wanted to change the dreary subject so I asked, “How’s Kara?”

  That brought a smile to Diane’s scarred face. “My honey is doing fine, thanks for asking. The Internet is a wonderful and dangerous thing, but Kara knows to keep on top of things. When a company or a person has a problem with their websites, Kara can dive right into the mess and make it right. I have no idea what the hell she’s doing, but it makes her happy, so that’s great with me.”

  Diane said, “Oh, crap, here I am, talking about my woes and worries. How are you doing? Any more mysterious visitors?”

  “If there are, they’re not making themselves visible.”

  “We’ve got an Explorer unit at the police department. I could arrange to have a husky lad or two spend the night, just in case.”

  “Any husky lasses?”

  Diane smiled. “Not at the moment.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll be all right.”

  “Good. Hungry?”

  I made a point of looking past her. “I am, but I don’t see anything with you.”

  Diane got off the couch. “I got a cooler I dumped on your steps before coming in. I was getting tired of the damn thing and I didn’t want to trip and dump it all over your nice clean floor. Hold on and I’ll got get it.”

  She took three steps and then glanced down at my floor, and stopped. “Your floor’s not that clean, Lewis. Everything okay?”

  “What is it?”

  “This,” she said, squatting down and picking something up, and then holding it out to me; I tried very, very hard to keep a friendly, bland expression on my face.

  For “this” was a wad of bloody gauze, from when I had fixed up Felix earlier.

  Long seconds dragged on for a long time. I held out my hand. “Thanks,” I said. “Guess I missed that one.”

  “An accident?” she asked, giving me the dry and brown-looking piece of gauze.

  “You could say that,” I said. “Sometimes … well, sometimes you just don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Turn around.”

  “What?”

  “Turn around.”

  I did as I was told, before she went from using her friendly-but-concerned voice and slid into hard-ass police-detective-sergeant voice, lifting up my T-shirt. I felt her strong fingers poke around back there.

  “Mmm,” she said. “Your two bladders are definitely filling up. You want me to empty them before I leave?”

  “Paula might be by … but if not, that would be nice.”

  “Ah, Paula Quinn. Glad to see the two of you making a go of it.”

  “Trying,” I said. “Did you run into her this morning?”

  “About the burglary at the Chronicle? Nope, letting a patrol sergeant do that. Give him some experience if and when we ever get another detective hired.”

  Her fingers still gently traced my skin. “When do you hear about the pathology results?”

  “Any day now,” I said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Any day now,” I repeated.

  “Huh,” she said, fingers still softly back there. “Doctors.”

  “I’m hopeful,” I said. “The other times I’ve had growths like this removed, they’ve all turned out to be benign.”

  “Yeah, benign, but still forcing you to get gutted like a goddamn chicken. And I hope you like chicken, ’cause that’s what we’re having.”

  And then, in a quiet moment, and before she lowered my T-shirt, Diane gave a gentle kiss to my back.

  I tried to help in the kitchen but she shooed me away, although she did notice my walking implement.

  “Good God, where in hell did you get that cane from? The estate of H. P. Lovecraft?”

  “No,” I said, at least laying out silverware and dishes. “It’s a gift from Felix Tinios. It belonged to an uncle of his.”

  She peered at the wolf’s head at the top of the cane. “The uncle the mob shooter, or the uncle the exorcist?”

  “The uncle with the bum leg or hip.”

  As promised, dinner was a roasted chicken, with carrots, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and homemade gravy, and it tasted damn fine. We had glasses of ice water, and since Diane belongs to the same wine club I do—red goes with everything—we made do with a nice pinot noir from New Zealand.

  When there was a pause in the meal, I asked, “Wedding plans still on for June?”

  “They are, and you better be one healthy bastard to walk me down the aisle. So get going on that healing process.”

  “Doing the best I can,” I said. “Funny … last year I thought you’d be going down the aisle in a wheelchair, and this year I thought it was my turn. Make sure Kara doesn’t piss off any gods or goddesses related to medicine.”

  Diane smiled. “I’ll pass that along to her. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”

  We ate some more and I sensed something was troubling Diane—besides having the homicide investigation taken away from her and given to the state police—and since I’ve known her for quite some time, as she scooped up the last of the stuffing, I said, “All right, give.”

  “What? More gravy?”

  “No, what’s bugging you. Besides the state police and the charming and too-cool Camden Martin, assistant AG, complicating your life?”

  Her chin scar whitened just a bit, meaning that emotions were now coursing through her, and a part of me thought, Dummy, you should have just asked her if she wanted chocolate or strawberry ice cream for dessert.

  Then the scar went back to its normal color, and she said, “The deputy chief has announced his retirement.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m thinking about applying for the job.”

  “Why not?” I said. “I think you’d be good at it.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  I quickly didn’t like where this was going. “Um, because you’re good at everything you do.”

  “Hah,” she said. “What do you think the deputy chief does?”

  “Fill in for the chief when he’s absent?”

  “No,” she said, “and I hope this doesn’t burn your tender ears, but the deputy chief is the chief’s bitch.”

  I struggled to keep my face expressionless.

  It didn’t work.

  “Lucky for you we’re having this discussion now, and not before dinner,” Diane said. “Otherwise, I would have taken your meal away.”

  “What do you expect?” I asked. “I don’t know much about softball, but I think you just tossed a big fat slow one right over the plate.”

  “Hah.”

  “All right,” I said. “The chief’s bitch. Details, please.”

  She shrugged. “Lots of scrut work. Doing financial research on budgets, wages, health-care costs. Being the bad-ass disciplinarian when the need arises. Representing the chief at certain civic functions. Pretty much any task that the chief doesn’t want to do.”

  I took that in and said, “Doesn’t sound much like police work.”

  “God, no,” she said. “And I’d have to wear a uniform every day. Have you seen that thing? Ugly color not seen in nature, makes my ass look huge—no, I wouldn’t like that. Plus, yeah, no more real police work. Investigations, helping people out, tracking down the scum that need to be put away. It can be a grind, it can be a pain in the ass, but it also gives me a real sense of satisfaction at the end of the day.”

  “I see what you mean. I can’t see you feeling so satisfied by balancing a budget or disciplining a cop for using naughty language in front of grandma.”

  “Yep.”

  I wiped my fingers on my napkin. “Lots of negatives you’re putting out there. But you are still considering applying for it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay, h
elp me out, then.”

  Diane leaned back on her stool. “Because … because I’ve been in the department long enough, and it’s considered bad form not to seek advancement. Like you’re not taking your job or the department seriously enough. If I don’t apply, then some folks will see that as a weakness, and I don’t like being thought of as weak.”

  “Especially with what just happened with the Maggie Branch homicide.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “So I’ll probably apply for the job and hope I don’t get it, and if I don’t get it, I’ll manage to soldier on.”

  “But suppose you do get the job?”

  “Bite your tongue, son,” she said. “I don’t want you jinxing anything. But at least I’m not up in Porter.”

  “What’s going on up in Porter?”

  Diane frowned. “The police chief up there is a good man, a fine man, and there’s a witch hunt after him for something that happened in his department long before he became chief. Fools. They’ll end up running him out of town and God knows how long it’ll take for them to get a permanent chief to replace him.”

  I did my best to help clean up, Diane did her best not to bump into me, and as we were wrapping up, the door opened and Paula Quinn came in. Diane and Paula nodded at each other and I said cheerfully, “Dear me, my favorite fantasy comes true. Diane and Paula, under the same roof, at the same time.”

  Paula stuck her tongue out at me and Diane tossed a napkin at my head. Diane picked up her cooler and as she went out the door, she had a brief conversation with Paula, which Paula nodded at while closing the door.

  “Hey, it looks like you’ve got enough leftovers for one hungry journalist.”

  “Sure does,” I said. “Come on over.”

  “Don’t have to invite me twice,” she said. “And you can tell me about your interesting day, and I’ll do the same.”

  It only took a few minutes to warm up what was left of the dinner Diane and I had shared, and Paula dug in enthusiastically as I watched in awe as she ate. Paula always had the capability of putting away big meals without it showing up anywhere. “A long day but not much to show for it,” she said. “Besides the story about Maggie Branch, I also had to do a story on a proposal to expand the town hall, which is getting all the poor overwhelmed taxpayers in a snit.”