Port City Crossfire (A Brandon Blake Mystery, Book 1) Read online

  “Screw him,” Brandon said, but he was out of the car. They hurried to Kat’s cruiser, his old cruiser. Park was in the front passenger seat and Brandon got in the back. Park was silent. Another awkward cop.

  Kat threw the car in gear and wheeled out into the street. She headed west on Congress, past the morning-beer bars, down the hill toward the Greyhound station. Brandon stared out the window like a suspect in custody. Which, in a way, he was.

  “My truck,” he said.

  “We’ll swing around and drop you.”

  They circled and came back east of the hospital. A TV news truck was parked fifty yards from the spot where Amanda had fallen. A dark-haired woman was leaning close to the rearview on the passenger side, putting on lipstick. The crowd had grown, people stopping, blocking the sidewalk. Estusa was on the side of the embankment, shooting video over the police tape. There was an indentation in the mulch, like a sunken grave.

  Kat pulled the cruiser up close to Brandon’s pickup, looked over at him.

  “You gonna be okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  He got out and opened the truck door. Kat came around the front of the cruiser.

  “Go see Mia.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t be alone. I’d go with you but...”

  “I know.”

  “Gonna get worse before it gets better.”

  “Right.”

  “Internal will be starting up.”

  “I know,” Brandon said. “Tell the story a few more times.”

  “You didn’t kill this girl.”

  Brandon shrugged.

  “Had to tell Smythe about the knife,” he said.

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You were distraught. Because of the shooting.”

  “That argument will keep me out for months.”

  “Might be the best thing,” Kat said. “This media crap, goddamn Twitter.”

  “Yeah. No end in sight.”

  “And you’re a sitting duck on that boat. Where can you go?”

  “Boats move,” Brandon said.

  She gestured with her eyes for him to move away from the cruiser and stepped to the front of his pickup, away from Park.

  “Something’s all wrong with this,” Kat said.

  “You got that right.”

  “Nobody’s acting like they should. This girl. The kid with the toy gun.”

  “The parents,” Brandon said. “They seem fake, like they’re acting.”

  They looked away from each other, surveyed the quieting streets, the lingering cops, the dwindling crowd. Amanda Shakespeare had had her fifteen minutes. Maybe it was the spotlight. Somebody points a phone at you, you perform.

  “We’re working on something,” Kat said. “Think of it as Team Blake.”

  She turned away, said, “Maddie’s waiting to talk to you. The garage off Forest. She’s there now. Second level.”

  “Same car?”

  “Blue Outback.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “I’ll let her tell you. You’re on leave. I gotta go.”

  She glanced toward the cruiser. “Park’s a good guy but he sucks at keeping a secret.”

  Kat walked back to the cruiser, slung herself into the driver’s seat and pulled away.

  The Subaru was backed into a corner space that looked out toward the downtown. Brandon pulled the truck in three spaces away, got out, walked over, and got in. Maddie looked over and smiled. She had a metal travel mug of coffee between her legs.

  “Hey,” Brandon said.

  “Hi, Brandon. How are you doing?”

  She was forty, pretty, with dark hair in a runner’s ponytail and an easy, open smile. Kat said Maddie’s students spilled their guts to her in office hours, talking about everything but 20th century American literature.

  “I’m doing okay,” Brandon said.

  Maddie put her hand on his shoulder and said, “No, really.”

  It wasn’t just the smile, it was her eyes. They were green with flecks of gold and when she smiled they fixed on you like she could look inside your head, nestled there so you weren’t alone. Brandon could see why rough-tough Kat loved her.

  Brandon looked at Maddie, then away. The sign on top of the Time & Temperature Building showed 11:01 a.m., 53 degrees. A jet passed over it, headed east. He looked back and she was still watching him, waiting. He said, “Not so good.”

  “I heard about the girl.”

  Brandon blew out a sigh and his eyes began to water. He blinked and fought that back. “Yeah. Totally stinks. She was a nice kid. Seemed to be.”

  “Surprised?”

  “Yeah. She’d just called me. Thanked me for not arresting her and all. She said things were going okay, considering. I felt like I’d made the right call, you know? Like she’d crashed and was on the way back.”

  “Did she want to talk to you again?”

  “She didn’t say that. Just said she had to go. But it wasn’t like, ‘I have to go kill myself.’ It was like, ‘Somebody’s at the door.’”

  Maddie squeezed his shoulder. “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “Kind of hard not to. Maybe she would have gotten some help.”

  “Or maybe she would have hung herself with a bed sheet, Brandon.”

  Brandon took another long breath, let it out. Maddie took her hand off his shoulder and sipped her coffee. The smell of it filled the car. Vanilla.

  “A guy in my American short-story class. Randy. He was a friend of Rawlings. A year ahead of him in high school.”

  So this was it, what they were working on. Brandon waited.

  “Missed class the day after Thatcher died. And Randy’s never skipped. Came to office hours the day after that and wanted to talk. He knows I’m with Kat. Read the stories about you, and she was in there.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Maddie drank more coffee. Brandon waited. The temperature had gone up a degree.

  “He said Rawlings had some serious problem with his parents. Something that really shook him up.”

  “Say what it was?”

  “No. Just that Rawlings seemed totally thrown by it. And troubled.”

  “When was this?”

  “A couple of weeks ago.”

  “And he didn’t say anything else about them?”

  “Randy said Rawlings said his parents were total assholes. Randy said, ‘Like more than usual?’ I guess they’re this pair of narcissists. He said they ignored Thatcher all growing up, just care about money and appearances. Dad is this big macho type, hunts endangered species in Africa and wherever, and hangs their heads on the wall. The son wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Randy said the dad pretty much told the kid he was a huge disappointment.”

  “But something else recently?” Brandon said.

  “Yeah. Randy said Rawlings said, ‘Like totally messed up.”

  “Huh. And now he’s dead. I wonder who else he told?”

  “The girl?” Maddie said.

  “Amanda? Yeah, they seemed pretty tight.”

  “What did she say?”

  Brandon pictured Amanda, tears streaking her pale face.

  “That he had stuff,” Brandon said. “Like something weighing on him. That he’d promised they’d be together forever.”

  She paused. They sat. A truck swung through the garage, a black F150 with a young guy driving. Maine Law sticker on the back window. Maybe he’d be cheap.

  “I’m teaching For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Maddie said. “You know it?”

  “Vaguely. I mostly read history.”

  “You know the poem from the title? What it means?”

  “Yeah. No man is an island and all that.”

  “John Donne. So you do know literature.”

  “It must have been in a military history or something,” Brandon said.

  “But you know what I’m getting at.”

  “Yeah. Don’t be a martyr. Kat already gave me the lecture.”


  “We’re going to help you.”

  “What? This Team Blake thing? Please don’t.”

  “Not up to you, Brandon. You can’t help yourself, so we’ll do it.”

  Brandon shook his head.

  “I’m not a cop,” Maddie said.

  “You’re married to one. You could still get in trouble. Kat can, for sure. Just leave it alone. I’ll be fine.”

  Maddie looked at him. “You know you’re one of the most independent people I know. In this case it’s not a good thing.”

  Brandon shrugged. “It’s how I was brought up.”

  “By your grandmother?” Maddie said.

  “By myself.”

  Eleven

  He was glad Nessa hadn’t lived to see this. The silver lining in her liver quitting after fifty years of hard drinking. “You’re such a good boy,” she’d say before she passed out on the couch in the shabby sunroom in the big house overlooking Casco Bay, wine bottles scattered on the floor like spent artillery shells. Brandon would have the rest of the day to himself. Read his books. Explore the shoreline. Make up games with hard and fast rules, invent his own structure for his unstructured life.

  It played in his head as he drove back down Congress and up onto Munjoy Hill. He’d told Kat he’d go to Mia’s place so he did. He took a right on Munjoy Street. Two blocks down he rolled past her place, saw that her car wasn’t in the driveway.

  He kept going.

  The past still scrolled as he drove down to the Eastern Prom, doubled back toward the Old Port. His mom—strikingly pretty, impulsive, funny—played it just as loose as Nessa. Nikki partied, went where the wind took her, literally. She hung with a young boat crowd, people born to money but with no inclination to make more—at least not legally. Party girl Nikki went along when they cruised to the Caribbean, sailed back loaded with pot. When the money got too big, there were casualties and Nikki was one. She left Brandon behind but she’d always done that. His biggest regret was that she died without ever naming his father.

  It was like being orphaned twice. Now, for the first time in a long time, he felt just as alone.

  At the cruise ship terminal he pulled in and parked facing the harbor. The wind was still out of the southeast and the chop had built on the peninsula side, boats pointed into the wind, sterns swinging toward him. Brandon rolled down the window, listened to the rattle and jingle of the stays, the hurried slap of the waves on the rock shore. He closed his eyes and it was just as he feared. Amanda’s foot sticking out from under the tarp. Her last words to him, maybe to anyone on this earth: “I gotta go.”

  Brandon opened his eyes. The boats still were swinging. A yellow ferry was creeping across the harbor to Chebeague Island. It all seemed pointless, the coming and going, the boats on their moorings. He looked left, saw two cars parked. A drug deal going down, Brandon figured, a couple of days worth of heroin. And then they’d be back.

  He picked up his phone. Missed calls: Kat, Mia, Mia’s dad, Alex. The hotshot D.C. lawyer offering legal advice with the usual strings attached. Mia again. He texted.

  I’m OK. Don’t worry. Just don’t feel like talking. Will call later. xoxo

  Another tap at the screen. Email. The shop steward, Charlie Canavan, wanting to set up a time to meet. The AG’s investigator, Jim Beam, with a question. The department shrink, Harriet Foote, wanting to have “a sit down.”

  A message from Facebook. He opened it.

  Danni.

  Hey, Chris. hoping we can meet up, no hard feelings. can I buy you another coffee? In Portland tday for the dentist. good times! done by 10:30. If ur around txt me. 861-9080

  It was 10:45. Brandon looked out at the water. It had started to rain, a front blown in on the south wind. The windshield was sprinkled with drizzle, then drops, then the drops started to run together. He hit the wipers, one swipe. The kids doing the drug buy were gone. Ditto for the smiling guy in the mini-van. Brandon tapped at the phone.

  Hey, there. Okay. Where?

  He waited ten seconds. The phone buzzed.

  Great Chris. Dunkin’ forest ave?

  He texted back.

  See you in 15.

  Chris Craft would be there.

  The Dunkin’ was tucked up against a white apartment block. There was a patio out front with two tables with folded umbrellas and ornamental maples surrounding the patio. They had turned a pale yellow green, some of the leaves shriveled and fallen to the ground. Brandon drove up slowly, scanned the lot for Clutch’s truck. It wasn’t there but he did see the white Ford Focus, toward the rear under another yellowing maple. The Focus was empty. He parked beside it, texted.

  I’m out here. Medium coffee, milk. I’ll pay you back.

  You don’t want to come in and sit?

  Lot is fine.

  Brandon waited, wondering if he should have warned Danni that he was coming empty-handed, no bloodstained diary to hand over. He hadn’t wanted to drive all the way to South Portland, he told himself. Or maybe it was more than that. Once he gave the book back, it was over for Chris Craft and he’d be stuck with Brandon Blake, killer cop.

  He glanced over, relieved to see Danni coming out of the door with two coffees and a bag.

  Her reddish-blonde hair was pulled back at the nape of her neck, her part showing sandy brown. She was wearing jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, black work boots. The sweater fit her snugly, showed her belly, the roll of flesh that squeezed out above the waist of the jeans. She was big all around, four inches taller than Mia, 50 pounds heavier. If she’d been a guy, she would have played football.

  Danni smiled as she approached the truck, Brandon leaned over and popped the passenger door open and she elbowed it the rest of the way open and handed him a coffee. He took it and she climbed in, put her coffee in the console holder and opened the bag. She took out a jelly doughnut and handed it to him. He took it and she took out another and took a big bite, wiped jelly and powdered sugar from the corner of her mouth with her finger. Her nails were painted purple. There was a tattoo on the underside of her right wrist. Two padlocks, their hasps hooked together.

  “So,” Danni said. “This is a little better.”

  “A little bit,” Brandon said. “How was the dentist?”

  “Fine. Guy with peanut-butter breath picking in my mouth. Told me to lay off the sugar.”

  She held up the doughnut.

  “I don’t follow instructions real good.”

  Brandon said, “Ha. Right.” Danni took another bite, chewed and swallowed.

  “I’m wicked sorry about last time. Just a cluster all around, you know? You didn’t deserve that.”

  “No.”

  “Not after you came all that way to give me the book.”

  Brandon sipped the coffee, took a bite of doughnut.

  “I don’t have it,” he said. “So you know.”

  Danni glanced around the cab of the truck like he might be mistaken.

  “It’s at my house. I was downtown and didn’t have time to go get it.”

  Danni looked stressed but only for a split second. She smiled over at him and said, “I owed you a coffee anyway.”

  Brandon sipped.

  “You live far?” she said.

  “Far enough,” Brandon said.

  “I’m free pretty much all afternoon,” Danni said.

  “I have things I have to do.”

  They sat and chewed for a few seconds. Simultaneously they raised their cups and washed down doughnut.

  “I don’t blame you for being pissed,” Danni said.

  “I’m not,” Brandon said. “It wasn’t that big a deal.”

  She looked at him more closely.

  “You acted like it was kinda normal, having some guy come outta nowhere, take a swing at you. Most people are afraid of Clutch. He’s a pretty big guy. When he’s hauling a car off, he gets out of the wrecker, they’re like, whoah.”

  Brandon shrugged.

  “You kinda kicked his ass,” Danni said.

&nbs
p; Another shrug.

  Brandon was picturing Amanda in the marina lot, big eyes peering out at him from under her hoodie like an animal in a cave. Amanda. Gone.

  “You okay?” Danni said.

  He glanced at her.

  “Yeah, sure. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  She ate more doughnut, just a small chunk left. There was something refreshing about the way she ate.

  “I really appreciate you bothering,” she said, still chewing. Her lip gloss seemed pinker, or maybe it was the jelly. Under the makeup her skin was faintly pockmarked on her cheeks, like she’d had acne. She smelled like fruity shampoo.

  “I mean, you coulda just tossed the thing into the recycling. Instead you came all the way to Woodford, you know? And you coulda blown me off today, too. So thanks.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Brandon said. He hit the wipers.

  She popped the last bite of doughnut into her mouth and chewed. Then she swallowed and wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  “That’s okay. We can meet up. I can come back up and pick it up. I know you’re busy.”

  Brandon was sipping the coffee. He lowered the cup and looked over at her and said, “How do you know that?”

  Danni started to reply, then stopped. She took a quick hit of coffee, looked out as the Passat pulled away.

  “I know who you are,” she said, still looking away.

  Brandon waited.

  “You’re Brandon Blake, the cop who shot the kid.”

  She turned toward him.

  “Clutch figured you were something like that. The way you took him down and stuff. And you looked sort of familiar. So he went online. Your picture is all over the place.”

  “So I hear.”

  “I don’t think it’s fair what they’re saying. I mean, what if it was a real gun?”

  “Thanks.”

  “I know it must be pretty heavy and all. To carry that with you. It’s gotta eat at you something wicked. Even if it wasn’t your fault.”

  Brandon nodded.

  “If you really did something wrong. I mean, if you knew it was a bb gun or whatever, that would be one thing. But even this must really chew you up.”