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

  Brandon smiled.

  “So not much sympathy around town when this Sash guy got killed?”

  The guy shrugged, pushed his hat back and turned to the screen. “Hey, like I always say to my players, you run with junkyard dogs, eventually you get bit.”

  Brandon left the library the way he’d come in, past the woman at the desk. She had a newspaper spread out in front of her, the Portland Press Herald. Brandon could see his photo, a file pic from a shooting in the Old Port. He said, “Thanks for your help,” and the woman looked up, said, “Hey, you’re—”

  And then he was out the door and onto the street, his phone buzzing as he got service. Three missed calls, three voice mails.

  Danni.

  Ten feet down the sidewalk, the phone buzzed again. Brandon kept walking, answered.

  “Hey, this is Danni.”

  “Hey.”

  “Sorry to bother you, but you know that note you found? In the diary?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not there.”

  “Really? I thought I put it back.”

  “Nope. So you think it’s on your boat? ’Cause I could come back down.”

  “You sure it isn’t there?”

  “Yeah. Listen, where are you?”

  “In town,” Brandon said.

  “Need a lift? I’ll give you a ride back.”

  “Not quite ready to go. I’ll be a couple of hours.”

  “I’ll wait for you,” Danni said. “You getting provisions or what not for the boat? I could help you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “No, really. Where are you? I’ll swing by.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  There was a muffled sound, like the phone bumping against somebody’s face. “Brandon,” Danni said. “Listen to me. I do have to. I have to have that goddamn paper.”

  “Or else what?” Brandon said.

  There was a muffled rattle, then a door slamming. And the phone went dead.

  Seventeen

  Brandon stood for a moment on the sidewalk, people veering around him. He tapped the screen, said, “Hey. It’s me.”

  “Liking your home away from home?” Davey said.

  “No. But I need a ride back to the Bowl.”

  “What do I look like? A taxi service?”

  “And I need to talk to you.”

  “Where are you?”

  Brandon told him.

  “Gimme five.”

  The cruiser rolled up in four minutes, Davey swiveling the laptop aside, tossing his briefcase in the back. Brandon climbed in and Davey pulled out into what passed for traffic in Woodford. The radio burbled. Brandon could smell leather and gun oil. He was home.

  Davey swung off the main street at the next light, headed south toward the coast and the Bowl.

  “July 21, 2007,” he said.

  Davey glanced over, reached out and turned the radio down.

  “So?”

  “Danni wrote something in the diary about July 21 being an anniversary. Of something bad.”

  “And you found something bad on that date? At the library?”

  “Your local newspaper. Three people killed in a gravel pit. Drug deal. Bikers from Mass. and one local guy. Shot each other up and it was kind of out in the middle of nowhere. They bled out.”

  “Case closed?” Davey said.

  “Cut and dry. Kind of like a murder-suicide,” Brandon said. “Good news is you know who did it. Bad news is you’ll never know why.”

  Davey swung left at a fork, the houses spreading out, driveways with the occasional boat on a trailer. “You think this is Danni’s anniversary?”

  Brandon shrugged this time. “Could be something personal. But in her note she said something about him, Clutch, being capable of something. Like it had scared her.”

  “Did he know the local who died?”

  “The kid who got shot, Damian Sash, played football freshman year. So did Clutch’s older brother. Guy sitting next to me in the library was their old coach.”

  “C.J. Violette,” Davey said. “There all the time. Supposed to be writing a book about the glory days of Woodford football. Half this town played. It’s the low-budget Friday Night Lights.”

  “Gotta love small towns.”

  “That we are. So you’re thinking they were buddies? Clutch knows something about this?”

  “Where’d he get money for a wrecker?” Brandon said.

  “Insurance settlement,” Davey said. “Or dealing drugs. Who knows?”

  “The outlaw path to prosperity,” Brandon said. “Nobody robs banks anymore.”

  “Actually, they do.”

  “To get money for drugs. Not to get rich.”

  Davey drove and thought about it. The ocean flickered in and out of sight through the trees beyond him.

  “Worst kind of cold case is one that’s been solved,” he said.

  “Maybe there were alternative theories.”

  “Better than three drug-dealing bikers dead on the ground after a shootout?”

  “It was just two,” Brandon said.

  They crossed the causeway past the Bowl. Brandon glimpsed Bay Witch on the mooring, her bow pointed east, the wind having shifted from the south. And then they were wending their way past the big houses with geraniums in boxes, Audis in the driveways. When they passed the golf course, a couple of silver-haired guys waved from their cart, like the cops were their private security force. No demonstrations here.

  Davey swung into the entrance to the yacht club, the cruiser’s tires crunching on the crushed clamshells used to line the drive. There were two cars in the lot by the float, a Mercedes SUV and Range Rover. When the cruiser pulled up, Brandon could see people on a sailboat on a mooring, a guy rowing toward the dock.

  The car ground to a stop. Brandon popped the door and Davey turned to him, reached out and held his arm. He locked on, a cop’s practiced hard grip.

  “I can ask around. But I know what you’re doing,” Davey said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Distracting yourself,” he said. “When you’re thinking about this woman and her crazy diary you’re not—”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “Okay, but when you’re chasing this stuff, you’re not thinking about everything else. The shoot. The protests.”

  “There’s more to that, too,” Brandon said.

  Brandon was halfway to Bay Witch in the dinghy when he saw Danni’s car coming fast down the yacht club drive. He’d said two hours. She hadn’t believed him. No dope.

  As he slid under the stern, she was getting out of the car, waving to him. He swung up and onto the boat, tied the dinghy off. Danni was trotting down the ramp to the float as he climbed the ladder to the helm, slipped the key in and ran the blower. She was calling, “Brandon! Hey! It’s me!”

  He started the engines and felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. As he slipped down and forward, crouched to press the winch switch, he felt the buzzing stop, replaced by the single buzz of an incoming text. The anchor came loose and the chain rattled on board. He fastened it down and, as the boat started to drift back on the tide, moved around the cabin and back up to the helm. Danni was waving as he put the engines in gear and swung past the mooring buoy and headed for the passage to the bay.

  Out in the channel, Brandon pressed the throttles forward and the motors rumbled as the boat pushed through the incoming tide. And then he was through the gut and into the bay. He steered for the entrance buoy, hit the throttles and the boat lifted, heaved once, and then settled into an easy rhythm. Leaning on the console, Brandon slipped his phone out, opened Danni’s text.

  where u going? where’s my paper?

  He texted back:

  police emergency. will be in touch.

  Seconds later the phone buzzed:

  But your on adm leave.

  Then:

  can we meet tomorrow?

  And finally:

  need that page, Brandon
. and the other ones. if I don’t have ’em, I’m fucked.

  Brandon said to himself, “Join the club.” He texted back:

  be in touch.

  It was 4:15 when he passed the buoy, headed north by northeast. Twenty-four miles to Portland harbor at 12 knots. The gauge showed 30 gallons of fuel, maybe a tad less. At 10 gallons per hour, he was cutting it close. He slowed to 10 knots, the motors rumbling, Bay Witch easing along with a following sea.

  It had clouded up from the south, leaving the sunset a band of pale gray sky. The waters were empty, a tanker five miles offshore, nothing else in sight. Brandon suddenly felt alone, and the dark thoughts closed in, like they’d been waiting. The kid’s blood. The look on his face the moment before he died. Amanda in the parking lot, sobbing after he took the knife away. Amanda under the tarp because her head was crushed.

  Just a kid.

  The boat heaved over the chop, bigger now out of the lee of the Bowl. As he stood with his hands on the wheel, the doubts started coming like a whirling pack of hounds. Should he have backed off, waited for the K-9? Should he have sent Amanda off in the back of a South Portland cruiser, let the E.R. order up a psych eval? Should he have given Danni the note? Who knows what it referred to? Was this just going to get her a worse beating from that stupid son of a bitch?

  Was Davey right? Was he just distracting himself by playing cop?

  “Uh-uh,” he said aloud, his voice lost to the rumble of the engines. “No way.”

  Brandon picked the phone up and, elbows on the wheel, texted Mia:

  On my way up to Portland. Harbor before dark. I’ll call you.

  And then he hit another number, held the phone up to his ear.

  “It’s me,” he said, shouting over the wind and engine noise. “We need to talk.”

  “No shit,” Kat said. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Coming north from Woodford. In the boat.”

  “Woodford? What the hell is in Woodford?”

  Brandon hesitated. The diary. Danni and Clutch. The bikers in the gravel pit.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just needed to get away. Sunset is 6:40. Be back at the marina before then.”

  “No you won’t,” Kat said. “Seen the news?”

  “Trying to avoid it.

  “Somebody took a shot at Dever.”

  “Jesus. Was he hit?”

  “Upper arm. Reaching for a bottle of water.”

  “He alright?”

  “Eventually.”

  Bay Witch throttled up the swells, heaved back down. Brandon felt a million miles away from Portland, the streets, engulfed by an urge to be back in it, be one of the cops swarming the city.

  “What, stick a gun in the window?” he said.

  “Sniper,” Kat said.

  “Shit.”

  “War on cops and all that.”

  “Sure it wasn’t on Dever? Somebody targeting him?”

  “He’s an asshole but this was random. Shooting at a black-and-white.”

  A big swell, the props revving as the bow buried itself.

  “How do you know?”

  “Some guy called it in to the radio station WPTL a minute later. Said it was time to fight back.”

  “You mean—”

  A long pause from Kat. Brandon’s answer.

  “Said, ‘This one’s for Blake. He can hide but his cop scumbag friends can’t.’ Sorry.”

  “Where?”

  “Parking lot off Marginal Way. A medical building. He was out back. Eating dinner in the cruiser.”

  “Where they’d shoot from?”

  “Still looking. Thinking from behind a fence other side of Bayside Trail.”

  “Distance?”

  “Forty yards.”

  “Any brass?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Residue?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “The caller? Any number?”

  “Burner.”

  “Track it?”

  “Peninsula. Probably drove up the hill to Congress, called, kept on going.”

  The marine radio squawked, a tanker looking for its pilot boat. Brandon turned the radio down, said, “Jesus. How is everybody doing?”

  “You know. Circling the wagons. Them against us now.”

  “Hunt is on?”

  “Oh, yeah. All the dogs turned loose on this one. Roadblocks. K-9 in the lot. Turning the neighborhood upside down. Everybody in.”

  Brandon swallowed once, started to say something and stopped.

  “Spit it out, Blake,” Kat said.

  He did.

  “Feel, I don’t know, like I started this one.”

  “They started it. We’ll finish it. But you can’t just be sitting on that boat like a sitting duck. Not there, not with this nutjob loose. He could just pick you off from the bridge.”

  Brandon was coming around Cape Elizabeth, the lighthouse at Two Lights beaming like a laser sight.

  “So where you gonna go?” Kat said.

  “I can use a space on the wharf.”

  “Where Estusa got that video?”

  “Yeah. I’ll hang in the harbor until it’s dark,” Brandon said. “Nobody will know.”

  “What if they do, you trapped in that goddamn wooden coffin?”

  “Okay, I’ll pick up a mooring,” Brandon said. “Where are you now?”

  “Eastern Prom. By the ferry ramp.”

  “Down there all by yourself?” Brandon said.

  “Park’s with me.”

  “I should be there.”

  “We’ll find him,” Kat said.

  “Or her.”

  “You thinking the mom?”

  “Which one?” Brandon said.

  Mia answered on the first ring. Brandon said he was coming into the harbor from the south, would swing around to the ramp at East End Beach.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “I know the way in.”

  “Not what I mean,” Mia said.

  She was parked at the ramp when he idled up to the float. There were two guys loading a skiff onto a trailer, buckets and striper rods on the dock. Mia stepped by them and hopped aboard and Brandon reversed, backed out into deeper water and swung the bow around. As he eased the throttles open, Mia came up the ladder to the helm. She leaned against him, put an arm around her shoulder.

  “I’m glad to see you,” Mia said.

  “Me, too.”

  “This is awful.”

  “Yeah.”

  Brandon swung further offshore, headed for the marker off Pomroy rock.

  “How are you doing? And please don’t tell me you’re fine.”

  Brandon half-smiled, said nothing.

  A third of the way to Fort Gorges, he throttled back. The motor rumbled as Bay Witch settled deeper into the water, the bow swinging into the southeast wind. Brandon shut the motors off and he and Mia stood at the helm, looked out at the harbor mouth, the red lights blinking atop the downtown buildings. Mia put her hand on his shoulder and said, “You heard what happened?”

  “Kat called.”

  “It could have been you.”

  “I’d rather it had been.

  “Don’t say that,” Mia said.

  “It’s true. Dever will hold this over me for years.”

  They leaned against the console, the boat drifting, the sea slapping the hull. Dusk was lowering and Brandon flicked the running lights on.

  “Where were you?”

  “Woodford.”

  Mia looked away.

  “Did you give her the diary?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So that’s over and done with?”

  Brandon didn’t answer. The boat drifted and rocked.

  “What?” Mia said.

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing?”

  “Nothing. I gave her the book.”

  Mia looked at him closely, reading his face, his eyes.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Another shrug, t
he only sound the wave slap and the murmur of the radio.

  “I don’t know. She seemed like kind of a sad person. I thought it was the right thing—”

  “Not that,” Mia said. “I mean, why are you shutting me out? I have no idea what’s going on in your head. You haven’t really talked to me since—”

  “Since I killed Rawlings? Since that girl killed herself? Since the rest of this goddamn mess?”

  Mia grabbed his upper arm, swung him toward her, held him by both arms.

  “Didn’t you sign up for this?” she said.

  Brandon hesitated, clamped his mouth shut.

  “Didn’t you, Brandon? You knew this was all possible. You knew you might have to shoot somebody. You knew that person might die. You knew that would be hard. You’d have to live it once and then relive it, carry it with you for the rest of your life. Didn’t you know that?”

  Brandon looked at her. Angry eyes, lips clenched in a pale line.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “So what are you feeling sorry for yourself for? That it was you and not Kat? Not O’Farrell or Dever or any of the others? That it was you who had to have this happen?”

  “I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I’m just sorry it happened at all.”

  “No you’re not,” Mia said. “You’re just sitting there and letting this take you down. And everyone around you, too. You don’t want to get past it. You don’t want us to help you. You just want to wallow in your bad luck.”

  He steeled himself.

  “What are the odds? The odds are exactly what you knew they were when you chose to become a cop. One in a thousand? One in ten thousand? I have no freakin’ idea. But there was always the chance you’d be the one. And now that you are, you act like it’s some conspiracy against you. That kid didn’t know you. The girl didn’t, either. It’s just bad luck. And the world is full of bad luck. You know. You see it. Kids killed in car crashes. Babies abused. Women killed for marrying the wrong guy. So pick yourself up, Brandon. Get on with your life. Let us help you. Let me help you. And help yourself. You’ve been on your own your whole life. You’ve overcome everything else, you can get past this.”