She led Devine to the kitchen and made him coffee. “You must be exhausted,” she said, watching him closely.
“I’ll catch some sleep later.”
“When can I see Dak?”
“He’s having his surgery now. We can drive up after he’s out of recovery. Bullet went in and out. If it had hit an artery he wouldn’t have made it.”
She paled at this stark description and he said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so blunt. I guess I just got used to doing that in the Army.”
“No, I’m fine. Thank you for telling me.”
“So, did you know Dak’s friend, Hal?” he asked her. “I didn’t get his last name.”
“Hal Brockman. I knew he worked with Dak, but I didn’t know how or with what. He’s come by quite a few times. He seemed very nice. He was from the south, I think.” She rubbed her eyes. “Who could’ve done this, Travis?”
Devine didn’t provide an answer because he had none.
He left there with a promise to pick her up at eleven and drive her to Bangor.
Halfway down the road his phone buzzed. It was Françoise Guillaume. She sounded exhausted. She told him the post on Hal Brockman had just been completed.
“It was a .300 Norma Magnum round,” she confirmed. “Pretty much intact despite it having careened through one body and entered another.”
“Fuss already found the polymer casing, so I was pretty sure it would be the Norma. So maybe one shooter for Jenny and the shot taken at Dak?”
Guillaume said, “Out of my professional jurisdiction, but personally I would agree with that assessment.”
But I had the NATO round fired at me. So was it connected to the people who kidnapped me? And then chased me the other night? That seems logical.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Um, could you come to dinner at my house tonight? I... I sense things have gotten off the rails between us, and I’d like to talk to you. And... I might be able to share some things with you. Insights.”
“Okay, sure.”
She told him a time and he clicked off.
I wonder if you know where your uncle is? Maybe around a certain elver-smuggling operation early this morning shooting a .300 Norma Magnum round into two people?
He didn’t have time to think about that right now. He had another mission to complete before driving Alex to Bangor.
He had to find a secret in Earl Palmer’s past bad enough to blackmail the man.
Chapter 68
“You want to look through my grandfather’s things?” asked Annie Palmer.
Devine was sitting at the counter in Maine Brew, and she was standing across from him restocking the refrigerated cabinets.
“Yeah.”
“Why?
“To see if I can find a reason for what happened.”
“He was depressed, Travis. Depressed people sometimes kill themselves.”
“Granted. But I’m not sure he took his own life.”
“You mentioned that before, when we were up on the roof at Jocelyn Point with Alex, but you never bothered to explain to me why you thought that,” she said. Her face twisted in anger. “Even though you told me you would. And we both saw him fucking hanging there.”
“Okay, it’s time for me to lay out my theory for you. Better yet, I’ll show you.” Devine stood, walked over to one of the tables, grabbed a chair, and brought it back behind the counter.
“What are you doing?” she said, staring at the chair.
The place was still relatively empty at this hour, although the cook in back and two waitresses were readying the place for the morning crowd that would be arriving soon.
“Proving a point,” he replied.
He climbed onto the chair and then stood on his tippy-toes while she stared goggle-eyed at him. He reached up and gripped a metal pipe that was attached to the ceiling.
“What the hell are you doing?” exclaimed Palmer.
Next, Devine tried to kick the chair away while still standing on it. To do so he had to partially lift himself off it and kick at the chair back and seat. He made several spirited attempts, flailing some, before finally managing it on his fourth try.
He dropped to the floor, a little out of breath with the exertion, and righted the chair.
“Now, I’m thirty-two, a former Army Ranger, I work out all the time.”
She stared at the chair and then back at him.
He continued, “Now what if I had a fused spine, bad knees, a pair of wrecked hips, oh, and I’m about fifty years older. And one more thing: I didn’t have a noose around my neck choking me to death at the time. And the noose that was used? I’d have a hard time fashioning it and I don’t have arthritis in my fingers.”
Palmer stared at Devine for a few moments before she plopped into the chair and drew a long breath. Tears shimmered in her eyes. “Shit. Someone killed him.”
“I believe they did, yes.”
She stood, marched over to the counter, opened a drawer, pulled out a set of keys, and tossed them to Devine.
“These are to my grandfather’s place. Find the son of a bitch who did this,” she said.
“I plan to,” replied Devine.
Chapter 69
Does it ever stop raining in this damn town? thought Devine as he ran from the truck to the front door of Earl Palmer’s cottage. He’d done deployments in tropical climates where it was drier.
He unlocked the door and went inside. Devine was about to undertake a methodical search that would require several hours. What he was looking at were the remains of a life, of a family that had once lived here, cried here, and died here.
The place was neat, on the surface, but when Devine opened drawers, he found the clutter of decades that oftentimes folks just gave up on. And rather than tossing it all, they stuck it away in places that could not be seen. And as the years piled on so did the detritus.
Out of sight, out of mind.
The closet in the main floor bedroom still held Alberta Palmer’s clothes and shoes, and a large assortment of women’s hats. The latter were well used, billowy, some touched by the sweat and grime that came with hard work — but Earl, he was sure, would never have gotten rid of any of these things. He could imagine him opening this door every day to see the material reminders of the woman he loved.
There were lotions and a glass bottle of perfume on the bathroom sink. Two toothbrushes were still hanging from the holder built onto the wall.
In a drawer in the small den he found piles of notes that Alberta had written to her husband; most also had drawings of some kind that clearly showed the skill and talent of the artist who had created them. She had signed all of them with “Love, Your Bertie.”
Devine sat down in the only chair in the room and found his eyes watering as he read one note after another. “Have a good lobster day.” “Don’t forget, sunscreen. This ain’t the seventies anymore!” He lingered the longest over a drawing of what was clearly Earl and his missus walking hand in hand down the rocky shore. The accompanying note read simply: “Happy Retirement to Us, My Love.”
He carefully folded the notes and replaced them in the drawer.
As he looked out the window the rain picked up, and there was even a slash of lightning and an accompanying crack of thunder to go along with it.
He went back into the front room and looked over a shelf of tattered VHS tapes and DVDs. Some were commercial movies but others looked to be of family and other personal events. He looked at the labels on the cases: birthday parties, weddings, anniversaries. Then his gaze held on one. The label read: WILBUR KINGMAN’S FUNERAL.