After the Coast Guard had assured and reassured Maeve McLeary that a response team was en route, she emerged from the cabin with an orange flare gun pointed in my direction.
It was hard to predict what might happen if she pulled the trigger. Odds were that she would miss hitting me altogether. The short barrel hadn’t been designed for accuracy since flares are meant to be fired high into the air. If it did hit, the incendiary might simply bounce off my body, causing a bruise at best, internal bleeding at worst. There remained the real possibility, however, that the projectile, loaded as it was with strontium nitrate, potassium perchlorate, and hot-burning magnesium, might set me afire. Since I had no desire to become a human torch, I kept my hands raised above my head.
“Who are you?” she shouted again.
I used my calmest voice. “My name is Mike Bowditch. I’m a warden investigator with the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife. This is my badge in my hand.”
She cupped her left ear. “Who?”
Maeve McLeary, I realized, was hard of hearing. No wonder she hadn’t responded to anything I’d said before.
“A game warden! Here’s my badge!”
She’d understood me this time, but my answer didn’t help her make sense of the situation.
“Where’s my crew?”
“I’ll explain. But can you lower the flare gun first, please?”
This time, she did as I asked. The haze was thin enough that I could see her face clearly. She looked significantly older than she did in the photos, but that wasn’t surprising. People keep their best pictures and discard the unflattering ones.
“Where’s my crew?”
I debated what to do.
No law enforcement officer wants to give a death notification. It is the worst part of the job. But the unenviable task is made even worse when uncertainty hangs over the scene. Unlikely as it was, I had to treat McLeary as a potential suspect for the time being.
“I am afraid I have very bad news.”
“Damn it! Hang on.”
She disappeared into the cabin again and reappeared fiddling with what must have been a pair of hearing aids. She’d thrust the flare gun into the front of her rain pants in case she needed to make a quick draw.
“All right. Go ahead.” Her words came out in a normal register.
“It would be best if I could come aboard your boat for this.”
“Fat chance! How do I know you are who you say you are? You’re not going anywhere until the Coasties show. You’re going to stand right there where I can keep an eye on you and tell me where my people are.”
“I promise I will,” I said, working to keep my voice level. “But I need you to do something first. Kendra Ballard said you took the station’s satellite phone when you went ashore.”
“You spoke with Kendra? Where the hell is she? Why can’t I raise her on the radio?”
If she could shrug off my questions, I could do the same with hers.
“I need you to use your sat phone to contact the Maine Department of Public Safety. A dispatcher will verify my identity. This will all be easier if you and I can get past this standoff.”
What struck me about Maeve McLeary, above anything else, was the hardness of her expression. There was an intensity to her affect bordering on I didn’t know what. Maybe it was madness.
“Someone’s dead here,” she said. “You wouldn’t be talking in circles otherwise. Who is it? Kendra?”
“Doctor—”
“For fuck’s sake, I’ll get the damned phone.”
I let my hands drop as she disappeared under the rain canopy. The Maine State Police would send a pair of homicide detectives out with the death scene examiner and an evidence response team. The primary investigator would loop in the attorney general’s office, as well as the new Lincoln County sheriff, whom I had yet to meet.
Sheriff Pat Santum was a retired navy lieutenant commander who had recently won election to the post by running to the right of Attila the Hun. No one had predicted his scare campaign would work in one of Maine’s most left-leaning counties. But Santum had eked out a win in a three-candidate race and was rebuilding the force in his own hard-nosed, hardheaded image.
McLeary was taking her sweet time.
I wondered how to get word to Stacey. She should have made the crossing to Ayers Island by now and had, hopefully, managed to get word to the mainland herself. Memories of the chuckleheads aboard the Persuader made me wish the nearest phones had been somewhere other than that village.
Questions were whirling around my skull not unlike the birds circling overhead.
Should I tell the Coast Guard to look for Stacey if she hasn’t already made contact?
What about putting out a marine APB for the missing skiff? Garrett Meadows might be aboard.
How would we search for forensic evidence of a homicide in a wildlife refuge that had been created to be disturbed as little as possible?
McLeary was suddenly back.
“You checked out.”
“That’s a relief.”
“No one can explain what you’re doing on my rock, though. You weren’t ordered here and didn’t request permission.”
“I can explain, but first I need to tell you about your staff.” I steeled myself and made the statement in plain language, as police officers are trained to do. “I have very bad news for you. Kendra Ballard and Hillary Fitzgerald are both dead. There are signs they were attacked by an intruder. Garrett Meadows is missing. He might have taken your skiff, but I saw one of the oars floating off the west side of the island. The state police investigators need to do their work before I can say anything more. I’m deeply sorry for your loss.”
She didn’t react to this news with confusion or shock. She didn’t fall in a heap on the deck. She seemed stricken but unsurprised, the way someone does who hears that a chronically ill friend has passed away. Certain deaths are foretold.
“I’m coming ashore,” she said at last.
“That’s not a good idea.”
She continued pulling the dinghy close enough to the boat to board. “Excuse me? This is my fucking island.”
“Actually, it’s the state’s fucking island.”
“I’m coming ashore, Warden.”
“No, ma’am. You’re not. Baker Island is a crime scene, and I can’t allow anyone—even you—to potentially contaminate it.”
“Contaminate? Contaminate?”
She began readying her gray inflatable to cast off. She was going to force me to restrain her. I had no good idea how to do that.
I was saved by the sound of an engine.
There was no way a Coast Guard response boat could have traveled from Boothbay Harbor to Baker Island this fast, especially in a fog that concealed anchored and moving boats, as well as multiple other obstacles to navigation.
The boat powered down its dual outboards, and then a spotlight brighter than the one that blinded Saul of Tarsus cut a hole in the fog. The beam swung from the Selkie to McLeary in her dinghy to me standing on Plymouth Rock. I squeezed my eyelids shut, but too late.
An amplified voice boomed: “Selkie, Selkie. Maeve, are you all right?”
“No! This son of a bitch won’t let me land.”
“You on the shore, I need you to remain where you are until we can sort out this situation.”
I could barely see through my dazzled pupils. “Spinney?”
“Mike? Is that you?”
It was my acquaintance from the Marine Patrol, the same man Hillary had mentioned bringing her doughnuts. I couldn’t fathom how Specialist Rick Spinney had managed to beat the Coast Guard to Baker Island.