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

  She shook him.

  “Fight back, Brandon Blake.”

  Mia looked away toward the bay, breathless and flushed. Easing her grip, she let her hands fall away and looked out on the water.

  “So there it is, Brandon. I love you. If you need me, just tell me. But right now I want to go.”

  “Home? I don’t think—”

  “Carrie said I could stay in Cumberland.”

  A writer friend. A big house in the country.

  “Okay.”

  He glanced out at the harbor. The boat had drifted toward Cousin’s Island. He reached for the key, ran the blower. Started the motors. They rumbled as he put the boat in gear and swung the bow around. Mia was leaning against the console, arms folded across her chest, mouth clenched shit. Brandon took it slow, motored around the buoy and into the float. He reversed and idled, and Mia stepped to the ladder and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Brandon said. “You’re right.”

  “You know I’m with you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you going tonight?”

  “Back to the marina.”

  “You can’t do that. What about this sniper guy?”

  “I’ll pick up a mooring. It’ll be almost dark.”

  “And then?”

  “I don’t know,” Brandon said.

  “You’ve got to take care of yourself,” Mia said. “Fight for your job. Your reputation. For everything.”

  He feathered the throttles, said, “Hey.”

  She turned.

  “Two things. Thanks.”

  Mia nodded.

  “And there’s a gun in the hall closet at your place. Under the quilts. There’s a clip with it. I think you should snap that clip in and keep it near the bed. You know how to use it.”

  “One time shooting tin cans?” Mia said.

  “Good enough.”

  She shook her head, said, “I don’t think so. Guns—they cause nothing but trouble.”

  “If this guy decides to take it out on you because he can’t get to me—”

  “I’ll cross that bridge,” Mia said, and she stepped down the ladder, onto the deck. The boat lifted almost imperceptibly when she stepped off. Brandon eased away from the float and looked back. He would have waved but she never turned, just walked across the parking lot to the car. She got in, the headlights came on, and she pulled away.

  Brandon turned away from shore, and idled out toward the marker buoy. When he glanced back he saw the Volvo driving up onto the Eastern Prom and out of sight. He hit the throttles and Bay Witch lifted herself up, sliced into the chop.

  The mooring was at the most easterly point of the marina waterfront, a quarter mile from the bridge. If the sniper could make that shot in the dark, Brandon thought, more power to him.

  He motored in slowly, running lights on in the thickening dusk. The southeast wind was supposed to last all night, and would keep the bow pointed toward the shore, the telltale Bay Witch name facing the harbor. Would they attack by water? Brandon couldn’t picture it. Still, he slipped his loaded Glock into the waistband of his jeans, tossed his backpack into the dinghy, climbed down, and rowed.

  He slipped his way between the boats, silent in the gloom. The marina was quiet, most of the boats dark. A television glowed in the Galbraith’s big Carver, and when Brandon rowed past, he heard a newscaster say, “Police continue to search for...”

  Tying the dinghy to a cleat in his slip, he heaved himself onto the float, reached back for his pack. Straightening, he looked around the floats, started up the ramp to the yard. It was dark. Quiet. Something scurried along the fence and he touched the gun. A rat emerged, tumbled down into the rocks and headed for the water. Brandon hurried across the yard and through the gate. His truck was where he’d left it. He circled it once, checking to see the tires hadn’t been slashed. Then he unlocked it and climbed in. He drove out of the lot and down the street toward the Coast Guard station. And then he turned on the lights.

  He wouldn’t wallow. He wouldn’t be a sitting duck. For anyone.

  His Red Sox hat pulled low, he drove over the bridge to Portland, looped around and headed for the West End. At the first red light, he pulled his cap down lower, leaned back in his seat, wished his truck had blacked-out windows. He picked up the highway and headed south, his police radio on. There was a new tension in every spoken word, every traffic stop doubled up. Day-shift detectives were on, the big brass, too. The new normal in Portland, Maine.

  But Brandon was in South Portland, then Scarborough. He was slowing for the Woodford exit when his phone buzzed on the console.

  A text. Danni.

  Brandon, buddy. We really gotta talk.

  Eighteen

  He paid cash for the room at the Motel Five, a place on Route 1 that only saw cops when they busted drug dealers. The guy behind the desk—bald on top with a gray pony tail, probably cool in some distant past—asked for I.D. Brandon said he left his license in his other car and held out $60 in cash. The guy took the money and shoved a clipboard across the counter. Brandon signed his name, George C. Patton, the last biography he’d read. The guy behind the desk didn’t blink, said, “Here’s the key, Mr. Patton.” How quickly, Brandon thought, we forget.

  The room was on the first floor at the end, the door fronting a walkway bordered by a scruffy hedge with plastic grocery bags impaled on its branches. Brandon let himself in, threw his backpack on the bed. He turned on the TV, flipped through the channels until he saw his face, turned it off. Standing by the bed he called Marlon Davey.

  “Hi, there,” Brandon said. “It’s Brandon. You working?”

  “Yeah. Where are you?”

  He told him.

  “Jeez, Blake. Only reason we go there is to kick doors in.”

  “I missed the smell of dirtbags,” Brandon said.

  “Hey, you should come out with me. Me and an SP detective just arrested a forty-year-old guy tried to set up sex with a twelve-year-old. Said he thought she was fourteen.”

  “Wipe the slime off your cuffs.”

  “Seriously,” Davey said. “Ten minutes.”

  “I’ll meet you in the lot of the McDonald’s down by the road.”

  He did, Davey pulling his cruiser in beside his truck. Brandon got out and slid into the passenger seat and Davey pulled away. Brandon felt a pang as the cruiser accelerated, another as the radio hissed. Dementia patient wandered away from a nursing home.

  “Yours?” Brandon said.

  “Maybe, or they call in the K-9.”

  Davey was in the left lane, headed south on Route 1. Mattress stores, ice cream shops, lots of pizza.

  “What’s the word on the shooting?”

  “Everybody pulled in, going at it hard.”

  “Good thing. That asshole needs to be locked up for a long time.”

  “I guess,” Brandon said. “Dever was about six inches from buying it.”

  “Christ.”

  They were quiet for a minute, moving with traffic. The guy with dementia had turned up in somebody’s house eating their cereal. Davey turned off Route 1, headed toward the downtown.

  “Going to tell me why you can’t stay away from this thriving metropolis?” he said.

  Brandon considered which answer to give, decided on, “People are telling me to get off my butt, stop feeling sorry for myself.”

  “So there wasn’t enough to keep you busy in the big city?”

  “I’m pretty well known there. At least it feels that way. Go to Home Depot feel like I should wear a disguise.”

  “What else?” Davey said.

  Nothing like a cop to cut to the chase.

  “The dead bikers.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel like it’s worth pursuing.”

  “Long time ago.”

  “People around here move away?”

  “Not much,” Davey said. “When they do, they eventually come back. Like lost dogs.”

>   They drove, Brandon settling into the cruiser, basking in the glow of the laptop. He could learn to like this town, this P.D. Not that they’d jump to hire him, not if he were disciplined. He’d be damaged goods. An ex-cop. He fought off the thought and asked Davey, “Think you could check something for me?

  See if Clutch was in a bad accident? Something with a settlement?”

  “Can query DMV.”

  “Thanks. Also, since you’re being so helpful, people who know this Sash guy, where would they hang out?”

  They were coming into the downtown, a big renovated mill on the left, lights on in the towering wall of brick. Davey pointed right, a side street with dark storefronts, a sign for a bar: Twilight Lounge.

  “Be my first stop,” he said. “All locals, no kids from the college, no yuppies from the apartments in the mill. Go there to see your old buddies from high school, if they’re not in jail.”

  “How do they like strangers?” Brandon said.

  “Way more than they like cops.”

  “Drop me up here?”

  Davey looked at him.

  “You sure? Other ways to keep busy. Rake leaves. Walk the dog.”

  “Don’t have a dog. And I live on a boat.”

  “Scrape barnacles, then.”

  But he pulled to the side of the street, killed the headlights, reached up and switched off the dome.

  Brandon opened the door, said, “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  “Call if you need company.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “A stranger asking about old murders in a small town?” Davey said.

  “It’s not that small,” Brandon said. He smiled. Davey smiled back.

  The Twilight Lounge was darker than that. There was a baseball game on over the bar, Red Sox and Tampa, four guys hunched over beers, two together, two more apart. They didn’t look up when Brandon sat down between them, beside one of the singles. The bartender, a barrel-shaped woman with a red 80s shag, looked over from behind the bar and said, “Yeah?”

  Brandon said, “Budweiser.”

  She turned away and snagged a glass in one motion. Started pouring. Brandon glanced around the room. There was an older couple at a table in the corner—the guy looking at the game, the woman at her phone. She had the same hair as the bartender, like the place was frozen in time. Three young guys were playing darts on the far wall, a man and woman at the pool table. Brandon looked back at the TV as Mookie Betts hit a line drive to the opposite field, headed for second. “Oh, yeah,” the guy beside him said. “Mookie can motor.”

  Brandon nodded.

  “Sox farm system,” he said.

  “Grow their own,” the guy said.

  He was in his thirties, shaved head and a goatee. Smallish with big shoulders and biceps, ingrained dirt on his fingers, like maybe he worked in a tire shop. The bartender clopped Brandon’s beer down, said, “Tab?” Brandon nodded, looked to the guy’s nearly empty glass and said, “Him, too.”

  The guy looked over and Brandon said, “Sox fans gotta stick together.”

  “Yankees suck,” the guy said.

  Brandon lifted his glass and sipped. Betts had moved to third on a grounder to the right side. A guy two stools to the left leaned closer and started talking baseball, too. The two of them chatted and then the tire guy ordered beers for all three of them. Glasses came up again. “Go Sox.”

  The tire guy said, “New around here?”

  “No, just doing some work for a couple of days.”

  “A lot of new people these days. Apartments in the mill.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Brandon said. “Get me a latte.”

  “Right. Kid came in here with this girl. He’s got on these little tight pants, looked like he was wearing her clothes. Wanted some kind of fancy ale or whatnot. Gina goes, ‘We got PBR, Bud, and Bud Lite.’ They walked out.”

  “Good riddance.”

  “Got that right.”

  The third guy’s beer came. He was older, handlebar moustache with gray in it. He drank, wiped foam off his moustache with the back of his hand and hunched over the beer. Mookie scored on a squeeze bunt. Red Sox 3-Tampa 2. The tire guy said, “That’s the way you do it.”

  They watched the rest of the fifth, the moustached guy suddenly draining his glass, saying, “Gotta go to work.” He slid off his stool and headed for the door. The tire guy said, “Works security. Guards this factory that closed last year. Made chains you use in the woods. Gets paid to guard nothing from nobody.”

  “Huh,” Brandon said.

  During the commercial, the guy asked Brandon, “So what do you do for work?”

  Brandon took a long drink, wiped his mouth, too, the beer on his stubble.

  “Gonna sound weird,” he said. “But mostly I find stuff out. For insurance companies, lawyers. They don’t want to leave their cushy offices.”

  “Huh,” the guy said back.

  “Was working construction, got hurt, while I was out on comp my girlfriend’s father—she’s not my girlfriend any more—he says, ‘Why don’t you try this? Better than sitting around killing your liver.’”

  “Where you from?”

  “Mass. Haverhill.”

  “Oh, yeah. So what are you asking about in Woodford?”

  “Oh, no big deal. Just this lady, she’s suing an insurance company, been battling over paying out life insurance for some biker guy got killed up here a few years back. They’re saying they don’t have to pay because he was killed committing a felony crime. She says there’s no proof of that.”

  The guy watched the start of the sixth, the first batter for Tampa out on a called strike. The guy said, “So who hired you?”

  “The lady. She’s no dope, either, and her husband wasn’t. People think bikers are these animals but this guy had an auto body business, nice truck, condo in Florida. She’s smart, too. Got this big insurance outfit working their asses off.”

  “What does she want you to find out?”

  “Whether there was a crime involved. I mean, everybody says it was drugs but the guys are dead and there was no drugs there, so who’s to say?”

  The bartender was back with another round, said “on the house.” Brandon and his friend smiled and held up their glasses. A couple came in and the bartender turned and said, “Hey,” and they stood by him and talked.

  “So what do you do?” Brandon asked the tire-changer guy.

  “Work in a garage. It’s a chain, you know? Tires, brakes, exhaust. In and out. Pretty good money, no heavy lifting. Did the transmission, motor-rebuild thing. Work your ass off, people bitch about the bill. I mean, what do they make in a week?”

  “Right,” Brandon said. He drank. The next Tampa batter grounded to second.

  “I’m Chris,” Brandon said.

  “Kenny,” the guy said.

  They bumped fists.

  “What did the cops say?” Kenny said.

  “About the biker? They don’t care. More or less said they’re glad the scumbag’s dead.”

  “Goddamn cops.”

  “Yeah.”

  The Rays went down one, two, three. Brandon said, “Maybe you knew this guy. Damian Sash?”

  “Sash? Sure. Went to school with some Sashes.”

  “Make ’em out to be like some kinda Colombian cartel,” Brandon said.

  “Just a buncha gearheads, really. Mighta sold dope. I don’t know. I’m a beer guy.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I pictured. Guys who liked trucks and bikes. This guy named Clutch, he was his buddy.”

  “Oh, yeah, there was a regular crew. This guy Smoker, they called him that ’cause he drove this big diesel Dodge pickup, belched out this cloud of black smoke. He’s in jail now, like his fourth DWI. Dude’s got an alcohol problem. Wolf Man, he’s in Florida. Went down there for work, driving long haul. This guy Clutch, he’s around. He’s selling cars, got a wrecker. Him and his old lady run this little used-car lot.”

  “Mom and pop thing?”

 
“Oh, yeah,” Kenny said. “Settled right down like old folks.”

  Brandon smiled. They looked at game, Sox up in the sixth. Sandy Leon teed off on a fastball, deep home run to center. Another fist bump. The bartender, who had been washing glasses, turned to them and said, “You all set?”

  They nodded and she went out back.

  “So must have been a big deal, those three guys getting killed here,” Brandon said.

  “Oh, yeah. I mean, we got your regular murders but usually one at a time, some asshole shoots his wife after she serves divorce papers. Three people get whacked, that’ll get your attention.”

  “People talk about what happened?”

  “Mostly that the Sash kid, talk was he was selling drugs, owed them some money. But come on. I mean, how friggin’ stupid can you be, go up against those guys alone? I mean, hide the fuck out, you know? Or if you are gonna meet up, bring a crew.”

  “Yeah, seems like he must have been outmatched.”

  “Two on one. Ain’t like the movies, you know? The bad guys, they’re shooting all over the place, can’t hit the side of a house. Good guys taking everybody out like they got lasers.”

  On the TV, Pedroia doubled. Tampa was going to the bullpen.

  “I mean, any of those guys,” Kenny said. “They ain’t like trained killers but still, could’ve evened things up a little, you know? So those bikers—no offense to your lady there—three or four on two of them, they ain’t just walking away.”

  “Which nobody did anyway,” Brandon said.

  “I guess to hell.”

  “Newspaper said they weren’t killed outright. Sounded like everybody bled out.”

  “Wouldn’t that suck, huh?” Kenny said. “Dying slow. I mean, shit for luck or what?”

  Kenny said he had to get home, getting up early with his kid. With a last glance at the screen—Sox up two, batting in the eighth—he left. The bartender came over and asked Brandon if he was all set. Brandon nodded. He left a $20 bill on the bar and walked out.

  The street was deserted and it was cold, the autumn night descending. Brandon felt the beers, was glad he hadn’t driven in. He walked back to the main drag, lights showing in the side of the mill like portholes. There was a café open a half-block down so he walked that way, hoping to see a taxi. Cars passed and he wondered if Uber was in Woodford. He had his phone out, was searching for the app when a car horn honked. He looked up.