“You had enough on your plate.”

  “But I saw or heard nothing. And the only possible sniper position had no trace.”

  “It wasn’t a person.”

  “Come again?”

  “It was an armed drone employing AI to fire a machine gun on a target, Devine.”

  “Seriously?” said Devine.

  “Yes.”

  “Then real soldiers will be obsolete before long. Did you catch the guys, then?”

  “Agents Saxon and Mann were close, but they found nothing.”

  “Couldn’t the drone follow them, or shoot out the tires?”

  “It would have, but it suffered a mechanical failure and had to be recalled. It might have been shot for all I know, and those things are not cheap, let me tell you. They’re examining it as we speak. We also checked the film footage from the drone’s camera, but there was nothing helpful. Nifty piece of driving on your part, by the way.”

  “They might have flown into Bar Harbor airport. That’s the closest for jets.”

  “We’re already checking the flight logs. Got anything new to report?”

  Devine told him about Alex starting to remember details from that night. “It was a friend, someone she knew.”

  “Think they’re still in town?”

  “I believe Earl Palmer would say they are, if he could.”

  “But again, we come back to how would someone leverage Palmer to pretend to find Jenny’s body? Does the man have skeletons in his closet?”

  “By all accounts he’s a stand-up guy.”

  “Everybody has some shit that stinks, Devine. Everybody. So find his, and maybe that leads you to where you need to go. Oh, and about saving your ass last night? You’re welcome. But don’t take that to mean you’re special or anything. I just don’t have time to train a new one.”

  Campbell clicked off.

  CHAPTER

  56

  DEVINE LATER DROVE TO PUTNAM Harbor and looked around. The air was a little warmer today and the skies clear. The salt air smells filled his lungs as he watched men work on the few boats still docked here. And another man was taking a dinghy stacked with lobster traps out to one of the moored vessels.

  He looked over when someone called out to him. It was the same man that Devine had falsely accused of being a government informant his first night here.

  “Hey, dude, how’s it going?” said the man, walking over. “Name’s Phil Cooper, by the way, folks call me Coop.”

  “Okay, Coop, I’m Travis. I saw you on a lobster boat leaving out of here a few mornings back.”

  “You must’ve been up real early then,” said Cooper with a grin.

  “I thought you would have been out to sea today,” noted Devine.

  Cooper’s grin faded. “Damn motor on the boat burned out. I told the owner he needed to get the thing overhauled. He said that costs money. Well, so does having your boat sitting over there and not being able to catch lobster.”

  “Can you get on with another boat while his is down?”

  “Probably can, tomorrow at least. Thin crews these days. Not many guys want to take up the trade. Some captains go out by themselves now. Backbreaking work, and the money ain’t what it used to be.”

  “Earl Palmer was telling me that, too.”

  “Damn shame about Earl. Heard he hung himself. Shit. I mean, I know he was depressed about Bertie. But still, he had Annie. He had friends. Now I wish I had spent more time with him. Gone by to see him, shoot the shit about the old days. Drink some beers with him.”

  “We all have regrets like that, Coop. Hey, got a question.”

  “Okay, Travis, fire away.”

  “That night outside the bar? Dak left before I did, and he passed you and your friends. I’d seen him give a high sign to an old guy to leave his stool so I could sit down. Did Dak by any chance give you boys the sign to come after me?”

  This query wiped the smile right off Coop’s face. “Look, I don’t want to get in no trouble with a fed.”

  “You won’t, because you just answered my question. Now I’ve got another one.”

  “Okay,” said Cooper warily.

  “What would a boat be doing out in the middle of the night with a smaller boat lowered off that, and heading to shore where it could beach and then offload something?”

  “Where the hell did you see that?” asked a startled Cooper.

  Devine told him the general location. The other man slowly shook his head. “I don’t know. Nothing to do with lobster fishing or oyster farming, I can tell you that. Maybe it was the government. Coast Guard?”

  “I thought about that and looked it up. There’s a Coast Guard station at Boothbay Harbor, but they have a thousand-square-mile area of responsibility along the coast that ends far to the south of here.”

  Cooper scratched his head. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “There’s another Coast Guard station in South Portland. It’s part of Sector Northern New England. It covers multiple states, works with Homeland Security, performs search and rescues, and helps keep the maritime lanes running smooth. My people can check in with them to see if they had an op in the area, but it really didn’t look like that to me.”

  Cooper glanced out to the water. “You think somebody might be smuggling stuff in?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s possible.” Devine looked out at the water, too, and a question occurred to him. “What can you tell me about Wilbur Kingman’s boat going down?”

  “Really tragic. Hell, come to think, Earl was on that boat when it sank. He and Wilbur worked together for decades.”

  “I know. How exactly did it happen?”

  Cooper sat down on a bench and said, “It was a real foggy morning. Couldn’t see a foot in front of you. Most boats didn’t even head out, but Wilbur knew these waters like nobody else. At least we thought he did.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “There are rocky outcrops everywhere along the coast here, and some are farther out than you would think, just a quirk of Maine’s oceanic topography.” He grinned. “Didn’t expect those high-falutin’ words to come out my mouth, did you? Anyway, we all have sonar and depth finders and whatnot on our boats, so we don’t run into stuff we shouldn’t, including other boats. Well, apparently somehow Wilbur’s boat hit one of those rocks out there, hard enough to cave in the hull. Most commercial lobster boats range from around twenty-two feet on up to over forty. Wilbur’s boat, The Kingman, was a thirty-foot closed stern Beal, a nice size, and it handled real well on the water. But it didn’t have a hydraulic hauler, so they brought the traps up the old-fashioned way, with muscle.”

  “How do you know it handled well in the water?”

  “Whenever Earl was sick or couldn’t go out, I’d be the stern man for Wilbur. He ran a good operation, real safe.”

  “Until he didn’t,” noted Devine.

  “Right. Anyway, the thing was apparently loaded with lobsters in holding tanks full of water. It went down fast. Didn’t even get a distress signal or anything from them.”

  “Weren’t they wearing life jackets?”

  Cooper said, “You’re supposed to, sure. But you’re pulling up heavy traps all damn day, last thing you want is something restrictive like that on you. I just wear my orange overalls and heavy gloves. But all boats carry lifesaving gear. It’s required.”

  “What did Earl say happened then?”

  “He didn’t say much, which is very much like Earl. But he did say that in the collision he got thrown overboard and Wilbur got knocked out cold. He said he swam back to the boat and tried to get a life jacket on Wilbur, but the damn boat was sinking so fast, and stuff was sliding all around so much that he couldn’t. And Wilbur was a big man—hard to corral dead weight like that when you’re in the water. Earl barely had time to grab a floatable himself before it all went under and Wilbur was gone.”

  “But with Wilbur knowing the waters so well, and all the nav gear you carry, how did he hit the rocks?”

  Cooper shrugged. “Shouldn’t have happened, but it does. You lose focus, you don’t look at your screen consistently enough. Fog rolls in, you don’t know where the hell you are or what’s around you. It’s like that condition a pilot can get up in the air on a cloudy night, don’t know up from down and won’t believe his own instruments.”

  “It’s called spatial disorientation,” said Devine. “It’s what probably caused the deaths of JFK Jr. and his wife and sister-in-law in the plane he was piloting.”

  “Well, I think Wilbur got distracted and the fog didn’t help none, or his nav gear malfunctioned and bam, he hit the rock at speed. Hell, he really shouldn’t have gone out that morning, and he shouldn’t have been going that fast. But humans aren’t perfect. We make mistakes, particularly in situations like that. It’s not easy navigating in deep waters in the fog even with all the whiz-bang nav stuff they got. I’ve been on boats in real bad weather where I wasn’t sure the captain knew where the hell he was. And we’ve had some close calls. But we never wrecked. Just bad luck for Wilbur. Real bad.”

  “How was Earl rescued?”

  “Fog lifted and boats started going out. They saw him and picked him up. Poor man was in the water for hours. He’s lucky hypothermia didn’t get him. He was in shock, traumatized beyond all get out. They said he was still trying to find Wilbur. Didn’t want to get out of the water till he found his captain. Fought the folks trying to help him into the boat. Finally had to hog-tie the poor guy to save him. They recovered Wilbur’s body and he got a proper burial. Bing and Sons went all out for it, best of everything, and didn’t charge Ms. Kingman a dime for it.”

  “That was good of them,” said Devine.

  “Big loss for the town, for sure. But goes to show that no matter how much you think you know about what’s out there, the ocean always has surprises in store for you.”

  Just like this damn town, thought Devine.

  CHAPTER

  57

  A GUY NAMED PHIL COOPER SPOKE with me about the accident involving your husband.”

  Devine was standing across from Pat Kingman at the front desk of the inn. She was on the other side, sorting some papers.

  She looked up and slipped off her glasses, her expression pensive and faraway. “I’ve been thinking that it wasn’t just Bertie’s death eating Earl up. It was what happened with Wilbur. Even after all these years.”

  “You said he did everything he could to save him.”

  “But you didn’t really know Earl. He was as loyal as they come. He told me many times over the years that he wished he could have done more to save Wilbur. I told him he’d done all that was humanly possible. But I could tell he didn’t believe me. And then when Bertie died? It was too much.”

  “So you think that’s why he killed himself?”

  “Well, I can’t think of any other reason, can you?”

  “Did he have any enemies?”

  “Earl?! You must be joking. Everybody loved Earl. And Bertie.”

  “So no grudges with anyone? How about any strangers that might have come into town?”

  “Why in the world are you asking these questions? Earl killed himself. Nobody murdered him, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “Just the investigator in me, trying to cover all the angles.”

  She frowned. “Well, you can stop, at least with Earl. Poor man. Let him rest in peace.”

  “Getting back to the accident with your husband’s boat, seems the theory is he got disoriented out there, or his nav system failed, or both. What do you think happened?”

  She leaned on the front desk and shook her head. “If you want the God’s honest truth, I think Wilbur had a heart attack or a stroke while he was at the wheel. Maybe he fell on the throttle and slammed The Kingman at speed right into those damn rocks. His hull paint was found on them, clear as day. That boat was sturdy as a brick wall. The hull would not have failed with just a light impact.”

  “Did he have health problems?”

  “He was overweight, smoked and drank too much. Had high blood pressure and suffered from angina. I told him a million times to go get checked out, but he never would. Said doctors just wanted to find something wrong with you so they could make money. I think that attitude cost him his life.”

  “Was an autopsy performed?”

  “No. Everybody knew he drowned. And if he had a heart attack beforehand, what did it matter? He was still dead.”

  “You’d think they’d want to know the cause of the accident.”

  “Well, as far as I know, they spoke with Earl and he told them what happened. I guess if Earl hadn’t survived they would have done autopsies on both of them if they recovered the bodies. But he did survive,” she added emphatically.

  “Did Earl see him having a health episode or slump over?”

  “No. He was in the stern cleaning the deck. Had his back to the pilothouse. Next thing he knew he was in the water—the impact knocked him overboard. Earl hurt his neck when that happened. Had to have surgery afterward. I think it also messed up his back and knees, too—he hit the side of the boat as he went over.”

  Devine left her and drove to the police station. Thankfully, Harper and Fuss were out.

  Mildred James greeted him with a smile, and he asked her if he could look at the file for Steve and Valerie Palmer.

  “Can I ask what for?” she said warily.

  He leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “What with Earl’s death and Bertie’s recently before that, it’s gotten my suspicions up.”

  “But Earl killed himself.”

  “Did you know Earl?”

  “Sure did. All my life.”

  Devine knew he was taking a risk with his next question, but he had few options. He needed to see that file. “Do you think Earl, with all his physical ailments, could have climbed up on a chair, stood there stable while he put up a noose, wrapped it around his neck, and then kicked the chair away?”

  “Is that how it happened?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I didn’t know the exact details, no.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “Earl had one of those lift chairs put in his house.”

  “Right, I was there once when he used it.”

  “And he couldn’t do the stairs anymore, so he slept in what used to be the dining room on the first floor. And he had those special gadgets put in his car. So, no, Agent Devine, I don’t see him doing that at all.” Her eyes widened appreciably. “You don’t think… you think someone might have killed him?”

  “I just need to rule it out, or not. And four unnatural deaths in the same family? That’s a little much, don’t you think?”

  James nodded. “Yes, now that you put it that way, it is. I’ll get the files for you.”

  She settled him in the same room as before and then left him to it.

  Devine went methodically through the postmortem report. Smoke inhalation was the cause of death, the report concluded. There were no other indications of violence on the bodies, though they had both been badly burned. Even the hardened Devine was repulsed by the graphic photos of the couple’s remains. The official conclusion had been accidental death.

  Then he came to the official signature of the medical examiner at the end of the report and his suspicions spiked to a whole new level.

  Françoise Bing.

  CHAPTER

  58

  DEVINE WALKED INTO THE FUNERAL home, spoke to a woman at the front desk, and was directed back to Guillaume’s office.

  She was just rising from her desk. “I have an embalming to perform.”

  “This can’t wait.”

  Guillaume studied him for a moment, oscillating back and forth on her feet as she did so. “Then follow me.” She led him down a hall and through a door that she used a passkey to open.

  Inside was a long metal table with equipment on a rolling rack next to it. Under a sheet on the table was the body—to be embalmed, Devine assumed.

  “I hope that’s not another suicide or homicide,” he said.

  “No. A ninety-year-old who died peacefully in his sleep. We should all be so lucky.” She readied the equipment and some instruments. “I hope you don’t have much to ask unless you really want to see this procedure take place. I’ve never met a layperson who did.”

  In answer Devine pulled out a copy of the postmortem report on the Palmers. He held up the signature page. “You told me you were still in medical residency out of state fifteen years ago. So why is your signature on Steve and Valerie Palmer’s autopsy report? This was obviously before you were married, since you used your maiden name on the form.”

  She stared at the page for a few moments. He could almost see the inner machinery of her brain in high gear as it processed all this.

  “Oh, now I remember. I was home on vacation. The state had no one available to do the job. They asked me and I said yes. I wasn’t certified yet, and hadn’t taken the oath of office, but I was a licensed MD in the state of Maine. The chief medical examiner can make temporary appointments when the need arises, and it did in the Palmer case. Besides, it was a fairly straightforward matter, no evidence of foul play, but under the circumstances a postmortem of sorts was legally required.”

  “A ‘postmortem of sorts’? What does that mean?”

  “A full autopsy wasn’t required. I determined the cause of death. Smoke inhalation, if I remember correctly. They were dead before the flames reached them. Lucky for the Palmers.”

  “I wouldn’t call that lucky,” replied Devine. “Who suggested you for the job?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Maybe your uncle, Benjamin Bing? He was police chief back then, right?”

  “Okay, yes, I guess that makes sense. Uncle Ben would have done that. In fact, I recall now that he did contact me and told me the situation. He knew I was home, so that worked out all right.” She smiled tightly. “Forgive me for not remembering right off. It was a long time ago.”

  “Only you didn’t do a tox report or any blood work.”