North Harbor

by Kennedy Hudner

  Calvin had just reached Sheep Island when he became aware that there was a kayak paddling towards him. He stopped, treading water, upright in the water to see better. The pod of seals that were swimming with him all looked about excitedly, then dove underwater and disappeared. The sun was a bit over the horizon now and the golden light of early dawn had been replaced by a beautiful, shimmering light blue that sparkled on the waves. The kayak got within thirty feet of him, then stopped, the face of the paddler still in shadow from the morning sun.

  “Excuse me, are you lost?” a woman’s voice asked. “I’m assuming you were out jogging on this fine morning, but you should know that the road is about a mile behind you,” she said, pointing vaguely towards shore. “However, if you are too tired to make it back, I could call you an Uber.”

  Calvin laughed. “How did you find me?”

  Gabrielle Poulin put a puzzled look on her face. “Everybody is looking for the crazy tourist who plunged into the sea and started swimming towards his doom.” She sniffed disdainfully. “At least we assume it is a tourist, for who else would be so incredibly stupid as to swim out to Sheep Island in April? Certainly not a local, certainly not someone who lives by the sea and respects its power.” She shook her head in mock disgust. “No, it couldn’t be one of us. Ergo, it must be a nutjob tourist, for as is well known, tourists are capable of doing just about anything, so long as it is foolish.” She peered at him wide-eyed. “And you look like a foolish tourist to me.”

  Calvin laughed again. He and Gabrielle had been spending more time together for a few weeks now – not actually dating, but something – and it was exactly her flair for sassy boldness that made her so appealing. He rolled onto his back and began a slow backstroke. “I’m betting it was my grandfather.”

  Gabrielle smiled. “Close, it was your grandmother. I saw her at the grocery store and she told me all about your morning swims.” She smiled and shook her head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that your grandmother is trying some subtle matchmaking, though why I would be interested in someone who was a baby seal in a former life is beyond me.”

  Calvin abruptly flipped onto his stomach and began a hard, fast crawl towards the kayak, intentionally throwing up a lot of spray and water. Gabrielle shrieked and backpaddled furiously, staying just out of his reach. “Don’t you dare, Calvin Finley!” she yelled. “This water is freezing and I’m not wearing one of your fancy wetsuits.”

  Calvin stopped swimming and put on a pained expression. “Aw, Gabs, I’m hurt that you think I’d try to get you wet, I really am.”

  Gabrielle snorted and smacked the paddle against the ocean surface, spraying him in the face, then prudently backpaddled a few more yards. “I’ll see you ashore, Calvin. After I talked with your grandmother, your Mom invited me to come by for coffee after my kayaking this morning.” She laughed, a nice laugh, warm and rich. “They’re ganging up on us, Calvin. Good thing you’re ugly or I might be swept off my feet!” And, smiling, she turned and began to paddle towards the Dumas’ dock.

  Calvin watched her go, then laughed when one of the seals popped its head out of the water and barked at him. “You got that right,” he said, then began swimming home.

  ______________

  Frank Finley pulled into the driveway of Henry Mitchell’s house a little after ten o’clock. There were already three cars in the driveway and several more parked in front. The Mitchell’s extended family was large, he knew. Henry was the youngest of five brothers, all lobstermen, and there were a couple of sisters as well, plus aunts and uncles, and no doubt enough grandchildren to sink the Titanic.

  A young woman answered the door and looked at him coolly. “Yes?” she asked.

  Finley showed his badge. “I am here to speak with Mrs. Henry Mitchell,” he said. “It’s in regard to the missing person report she filed on her husband.”

  The woman studied him for a long moment, then turned and walked into the house. Taking that as an invitation, Finley followed.

  In a small sitting room in the back of the house, a stout middle-aged woman sat in an overstuffed chair surrounded by two more women and five men. Small children could be heard playing in another room. The young woman who let him in knelt beside the older woman and said quietly, “Momma, this man is a police officer. He’s here to talk to you about Dad.”

  Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and looked at Finley. The five men were probably Mitchell’s sons, he realized. All of them had the tough, weathered look of men who made their living from the sea. The other two women could be daughters or daughters-in-law.

  The woman who let him in stood and extended her hand. “I am Katherine Mitchell Prescott,” she told him. “I am the youngest daughter. I also practice criminal law out of Portland and if I think you are getting out of bounds, I will terminate this interview and kick you out so fast your head will spin. Do we understand each other, Officer?”

  Mrs. Mitchell gasped and shook her head when she heard what her daughter said. The five brothers grinned and shook their heads in amusement. Apparently, the youngest daughter was the she-lion in the family, and they had heard her roar before.

  Finley nodded. “You don’t have anything to worry about, Mrs. Prescott. Nor does your mother.” He turned to Mrs. Mitchell and knelt down on one knee, so they would be on eye level. “Ma’am, I’ve reviewed the report you filed about Mr. Mitchell. I’m sorry to tell you that the Coast Guard found the burnt remains of a lobster boat some twenty miles off shore. The Coast Guard didn’t find any people” – he refrained from saying ‘bodies’ – “but the timing is such that it could be your husband’s boat.”

  Mrs. Mitchell gasped and put her hand to her face. Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks and her daughters huddled around her.

  “I know this is hard, Mrs. Mitchell, but this is all I have right now,” Finley said softly.

  The sons looked at each other, then the oldest looking son leaned forward. “How long was the boat?” he asked.

  “At the waterline, forty-two feet,” Finley replied.

  “And the beam?”

  Finley pulled out a notebook and flipped to his notes. “Coast Guard said fourteen feet, six inches.”

  The sons exchanged looks again, and the older one sighed. “Could be a Duffy 42, like my Dad’s boat.” He rubbed one hand over his face. “Shit,” he muttered.

  “How did the fire start?” one of the other sons asked. Behind him, his mother’s face had taken on the look of a terrible certainty finally come home to roost. She seemed to collapse in on herself. Katherine turned on her brothers in a fury. “Take it outside, you idiots! Can’t you see what this is doing to her?”

  The five men looked abashed and contrite. They meekly stood as one and motioned to Finley to go out on the front porch.

  “We have reason to think the fire was set,” Finley told them, once they were all outside. “It’s circumstantial, but it looks intentional.”

  “Ah, Christ,” one of them moaned, then made the sign of the cross.

  Finley stood there for a moment, trying to figure out how to get the information he needed.

  “Listen, fellas, there’s no good way to ask some of these questions. I don’t want to upset you or suggest any disrespect for your father, but I need some answers if I’m going to do my job right,” Finley told them.

  One of the younger brothers nodded, tears in his eyes. “Fuck it, just tell us what you need to know.”

  “Okay,” Finley said slowly. “You guys knew your Dad pretty well, and you know the industry, know the informal rules lobstermen live by. So, I gotta ask this: Did your father do stuff that would make enemies? Did he poach traps, or cut buoys and lay traps where he knew he shouldn’t? You guys are all lobstermen, you know the stuff I’m talking about.”

  The oldest brother bristled. “Hey, fuck you! Our father is a good man. He brought us up right; he wouldn’t do any of that crap!” His face was red and his hands were balled into fists.

  Finl
ey just looked at him, then swung his gaze to the others. The other four looked at each other, then down to the ground, then at each other again.

  Uh oh, Finley thought to himself.

  After an awkward moment, the younger brother who had spoken up earlier sighed and shook his head. “Chris,” he told the oldest brother, “that’s not gonna help. We all know what Dad used to do, knew since we were kids.”

  Chris set his jaw stubbornly. “It’s not right! If Dad is gone, Mom shouldn’t have to live with any of this.”

  “Let him do his job, Chris,” the younger brother said softly.

  “I mean no disrespect, but if your father was up to something, I need to know so I can catch these guys,” Finley said. “You can’t share this with anyone, but we found two bullet holes in the top of the cabin. We can’t tell how old they are, so if you guys can rule out foul play because those bullet holes have been there for years, that would help.” This was bullshit, but he wanted to soften up what he was telling them.

  The brothers looked at each other in varying degrees of realization, then Chris sat down heavily in one of the porch rocking chairs. “I told him,” he said in a strangled voice. “I told him that someday he’d poach from the wrong guy and he’d be lucky if he didn’t get shot.”

  “Your dad poached other people’s traps?” Finley asked, as gently as he could.

  “Goddammit!” Chris shouted, red with anger. Or, maybe, from embarrassment.

  “Yeah, he did,” the younger brother said. “We’ve all known since we were in middle school, working on the boat weekends and summers. He liked to empty the traps of some of the big guys who fish out twenty miles or so. Liked to jerk their chain. Sometimes he’d pull up an entire trawl and empty it, then leave early and get back to the docks ahead of them, sell their lobsters to Cadot’s.”

  Finley nodded. “The lobstermen who owned the traps, did they know who was doing it?”

  “Dad never told us he got caught or anything,” one of the other brothers spoke up. “I think he would have. But catchin’ him in the act and knownin’ it was him are two different things.”

  Another brother chimed in. “People knew. They just knew. You’re in this business for a few years and you get to know who the poachers are.”

  “Ah, Christ,” the oldest brother sighed. “Ah, fuckin’ Christ.”

  “Okay, but would somebody actually kill your dad over this? I mean, kill him?” Finley asked, even though he knew the answer. In Philadelphia, after all, a drug dealer would kill another dealer just for standing on the wrong corner.

  The brothers just looked at him.

  “Okay,” Finley said. “Who else works out at the twenty-mile line?”

  The brothers collectively shrugged. “Well,” one said. “Bobby McDermott, he’s been fishin’ out there for years. He’s got two boys.”

  “McDermott fishes out there, but his sons both stay close to shore,” one of the others corrected. “But Todd Halpern’s out there come October when the big migration hits. Greg Ryan. Jimmy Pelletier.”

  “And the LeBlancs,” Chris, the oldest, said reluctantly, still resisting tarnishing his father’s name. “Dad hated the LeBlancs; used to poach their traps a lot when he thought he could get away with it.”

  Finley looked from one to another of the five sons of Henry Mitchell. “Would the LeBlancs do something like this?”

  The brothers shared another moment of silent communication, then nodded solemnly.

  “Oh, yeah,” Chris said. “They’ve got a whole section of the twenty-mile line that they treat as their private property.” He rubbed his hand over his face again. “And they don’t take kindly to trespassers, let alone poachers.”

  Now Finley was worried that he might have inadvertently started a range war, or whatever it would be called on the ocean. It wasn’t exactly unheard of for a lobster boat to have a shotgun or a rifle.

  “Okay, guys, listen up,” he told them in his best ‘I-am-not-shittin’-around’ voice. “A lot of this is conjecture and wild guesses, so I don’t want any of you going off half-cocked and doing something that will just land you in jail. We’re not even sure it’s your dad’s boat yet and we certainly don’t know who else might be involved.”

  “Hey, c’mon, we’re not fuckin’ vigilantes,” one of the brothers protested.

  Finley held up a hand to forestall him. “I’m not saying you are, but if something has happened to your dad, well, emotions run high. I’m just telling you, don’t do anything stupid or I will put your ass in jail.” He looked around at the five of them. “Are we good?”

  They nodded, grudgingly, but they nodded.

  “Good!” Finley said firmly. “I’ll keep you informed if I hear anything.” He paused, hesitating. “Listen, I noticed that none of you are in business with him. And the bullet holes we found in his boat? Is there any chance your dad was involved in drug smuggling? That would explain a lot.”

  The five sons of Henry Mitchell looked at him, stunned. This seemed to be a line they did not want to cross. “Good Christ, no!” Chris said emphatically. “Dad wasn’t…wasn’t…he wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to even get involved in something like that.”

  The youngest son shook his head. “I think we would have known,” he offered. “I mean, he could be pretty cocky about the lobsters, but hell, they were just lobsters. I just don’t see him smuggling drugs. I just don’t.”

  The other brothers nodded their agreement. Finley couldn’t decide how much weight to give to this. Clearly, none of the sons wanted to think of their old man running dope.

  And who could blame them?

  “Okay, worth asking,” Finley said by way of apology. “Listen, I hate to ask this, but in case we find somebody out there – a body, I mean – does your dad have any distinguishing marks? Tattoos, birth marks, something like that?”

  The youngest son said, “On his left forearm he has a large tattoo of an anchor, with a mermaid riding it. You won’t have trouble identifying him.”

  Finley knew that after several days in the ocean, there might not be much skin left, but kept that gruesome tidbit to himself. “Thank you for your cooperation. I mean it. I know this is a tough time for you.”

  And with that, he left the Mitchell house and drove back to the Police Station, all the while wondering if a man would really kill another man over a stolen lobster.

  And knowing the answer.

  Chapter 9

  In Route

  The freighter Tampa Bay, under a Panamanian registry, was off the coast of Delaware, steaming north at 12 knots.

  Five more days to Saint John, New Brunswick.

  Chapter 10

  Homeward Bound

  One hundred feet below the surface of the ocean, the body of Henry Mitchell gradually filled with more decomposition gases. A bluefish chasing a meal slammed into Mitchell’s back, which made it rock forward. Just a little bit.

  The chain over Mitchell’s foot finally reached the rounded toe of the boot and surrendered its fragile hold on the remains of Henry Mitchell, father of five sons and three daughters, and grandfather of too many to count.

  For a fraction of a moment, the body just hovered there, not moving at all. Then its hard-won buoyancy took hold and the body began to rise serenely to the surface far above him. There was no hurry, no sense of urgency. All that was past. The body was just an empty sleeve. Henry Mitchell had moved on.

  As the lobsterman drifted to the surface, another force came into play. He could no longer feel it, of course, but he would have appreciated it.

  The Eastern Maine Coastal Current took the fallen sailor into its gentle embrace…and so he began his final journey home.

  Chapter 11

  Buying a Fast Boat

  It was late afternoon before Finley got back to the police station. Chief Corcoran was waiting for him. Corcoran looked at him and frowned, a puzzled look on his face.

  “You take Harkins to Portland?” he demanded.

  Finle
y tried to appear casual. “Sure, that’s what you ordered me to do. I’ve got the paperwork here from Portland PD.”

  “No problems?” Corcoran asked suspiciously.

  “Problems?” Finley shrugged. “No, went very smooth.” He wondered if he was making life difficult for Harkins when he got back from Portland, then pushed that thought aside. First things first.

  The Chief stared hard at him for a moment, then abruptly changed the subject. “What have you got on the missing guy, Mitchell?”

  “Well, I think I know what happened,” Finley replied.

  Corcoran looked at him sharply. “Come into my office,” he said abruptly. Corcoran sat behind his desk and Finley took one of the uncomfortable chairs that managers of all sorts seem to inflict on their subordinates.

  “Tell me,” Corcoran ordered.

  “The Coast Guard found a boat about twenty miles out, an area that Mitchell liked to trap in. It was pretty badly burned, but they found two bullet holes in the pilot’s cockpit.”

  Corcoran looked alarmed. “Bullet holes?”

  Finley nodded. “No body, of course, but if Mitchell got shot and then dumped into the water, we’d be damned lucky to find him. I checked the marine weather for the day we think he disappeared. The wind was blowing out of the northwest. If he was floating in the water, the wind would have blown him right out into the Atlantic. Hell, if the Gulf Stream catches him, it could carry him half way to England.”

  “You said you had it figured out,” Corcoran said. He sounded wary, like a patient asking his oncologist for the diagnosis, but fearing the worst.

  Finley leaned back and crossed his legs. “Well, I asked around a bit. It seems our man Mitchell liked to poach lobster traps.” When Corcoran didn’t say anything, Finley added, “He was stealing lobsters from traps that belonged to other lobstermen.”

  Corcoran’s face darkened. “I know what poaching traps is,” he said testily. He sat back in his chair, glancing sideways to look out the window, then turned back. “So, you think somebody caught him red-handed and shot him?”