“Hey, guys, nice gloomy night for some smuggling.”

  Both men whirled around and Hal’s hand went to a pocket on his coat but then he was staring down the barrel of Devine’s Glock. He let his hand drop to his side.

  Dak barked, “You’re trespassing, Devine. You have no business or right to be here.”

  “I saw a suspicious act take place in a public area, and the fruits of that act are right behind you in those containers.”

  “There’s nothing illegal with what we’re doing,” exclaimed Dak.

  “As though all legal business is done in the middle of the night on deserted beaches and involving boats coming into shore with a payoff for whatever’s in those containers?” He pointed at one with his Glock’s muzzle. “What is it? Drugs?”

  “We’re not drug dealers, for God’s sake,” blurted out a surprised Hal.

  “What, then?”

  Dak looked at Hal and then back at Devine. “It’s unagi.”

  “Come again?”

  “Unagi. It’s made from elvers.”

  Devine cocked his head. “Elvers? Sounds like something from The Hobbit.”

  “We’re buying and selling glass eels,” said Hal. He pointed behind him at dozens of large tubs set up on low tables. Devine could now see that they were all hooked up to aeration equipment. He assumed that was what Dak had been carrying on the beach.

  “Is it illegal?” asked Devine.

  “Not if you have a license,” said Dak.

  “And do you?” asked Devine.

  “Um, yeah. I do,” said Dak nervously.

  “Bullshit. Then why the middle-of-the-night shipment? Why hide your operation here?”

  “Do I need a lawyer?” said Dak.

  “I didn’t come up here to bust illegal ‘elvers.’ I came up here to find out who killed your sister. So, did Jenny know about all this?” said Devine, pointing his gun around the room.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?” Devine shook his head. Had he been focusing on completely the wrong thing this whole time? He looked at Dak. “Tell me how this all operates. You tell me the truth and I’m not going to come down on you like a ton of bricks. But you lie to me, you’re done and your ass is going to jail. And his, too,” said Devine, indicating Hal, who seemed to be attempting to shrink into the floorboards.

  Dak started talking fast. “Elvers are a huge market. The Japanese eat tons of eels. But overfishing depleted the Japanese populations. And there was an earthquake there about a decade or so ago that wiped out most of their aquaculture operations. So they turned elsewhere.”

  “To Europe and America,” chimed in Hal, who now also seemed eager to explain things to Devine. “But the European elver population nosedived, and the eel was listed as an endangered species and exports from the EU were banned. So that left us and a few other countries in the Caribbean as the primary sources. And the prices skyrocketed. And that made for a big black market. Then that all came crashing down because the feds and the states stepped in. Most states banned the fishing. Here in Maine they started issuing licenses and imposing quotas and arresting and fining people.”

  “Eels don’t breed in captivity,” explained Dak. “So all farm-raised eels have to be first caught in the wild. And there are lots of them in Maine.” He pointed behind him. “It takes up to two years to grow an eel to harvestable size. That’s normally done in an eel fishery.”

  “How’d you two hook up?”

  “Hal and I were in the Army together. He moved up here from South Carolina and told me about the eels. I researched it and we put a business plan together.”

  “Where was the boat tonight coming in from?”

  “New Brunswick,” said Dak. “Canada also has a lot of elvers.”

  “So are you running an eel fishery?”

  “We don’t have a license for that. And who wants to wait two years to get your money?”

  “So how do you make your money?” asked Devine.

  Dak looked at Hal. “Look, I think we need a lawyer. We’ve said too much already.”

  “What if this is connected to Jenny’s murder?” pointed out Devine.

  “It’s not.”

  “She was a fed. She came up here for some reason. She was murdered. Are there bad people involved in this eel business? Is it enough money to kill over?”

  Dak looked once more at Hal and closed his eyes for a moment before saying, “The price for elvers really sank during COVID, but now it’s back up to around $2,300 a pound. What you see in all those tubs are worth about $250,000.”

  Devine stared in disbelief at the tubs. “You’re shitting me.”

  “Nope. And you can make a lot more money off elvers than you ever can off lobster. And you don’t need a boat and all that other equipment. If you have a license you set big fyke or dip nets in a stream and you wake up in the middle of the night and go down there with five-gallon buckets and load up your catch, and then go buy a house or a fishing boat. It’s like Maine’s version of the California Gold Rush.”

  “Okay. Who buys them from you?” asked Devine.

  “Guys who come into town on a regular basis.”

  “What kind of guys?” asked Devine.

  “Mostly Asian,” said Hal. “Well, they’re all Asian, really.”

  “How do they pay?”

  “Cash. Bank wires and checks don’t really work in our business.”

  “A quarter million in cash? What, do they bring it in suitcases?”

  “Yeah, they actually do,” admitted Hal. “And they put the elvers in other suitcases. They typically put a legal export fish in refrigerated bags over them, like mussels. So long as they have an oxygen supply elvers are fine. They breathe through their skin.”

  Devine walked over and looked in one of the tubs. He recoiled at the sight of what looked like hundreds of strands of bright white and yellow spaghetti—albeit with pairs of inky black eyes—flitting spasmodically through the water in massive hordes.

  “So it is illegal the way you’re doing it?”

  “Well, it’s not exactly legal, no,” said Dak.

  “Why not just set up a licensed eel fishery? Or get a fishing license?”

  “The fishing licenses are given out in a lottery and capped at around four hundred or so. Believe me, there are a lot more folks than that who want to do this.”

  “And it ain’t fair,” interjected Hal. “They say it’s a lottery, but I say with that much money at stake some palms are getting greased, for damn sure.”

  Dak said, “And as an elver farmer, it takes years to make your money back. And you have to have the capital to build a facility and buy the equipment and then you need to hire a bunch of people. And there’s a limit on how many pounds you can legally process each year. We can make far more money faster this way.”

  “So this is how you get your capital to invest,” Devine said to Dak. “Not partners in Boston.”

  “Yeah,” conceded Dak. “But I’m using that money to invest in local businesses that employ lots of people, and are bringing some pride and dignity back to Putnam,” he added in a defiant tone.

  “Don’t go all altruistic on me. You’re doing it to get rich.”

  “Well, that too,” admitted Dak.

  “You got Coop Phillips and two other knuckleheads to come after me the night we first met in the bar, didn’t you?”

  “I—”

  “You believed I was really up here investigating you, right?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” replied Dak.

  “So this elver stuff is a big business?”

  “Globally, it’s billions of dollars a year,” said Hal in a reverential tone. “And I’ve been to China and Japan. Once the elvers get there, man, they are dumped into this supply chain that is full of corrupt assholes, smugglers, killers. Chinese mafia has their fingers all over unagi.”

  “And maybe some of them came over here because your sister was getting ready to expose them, and so they killed her?” said Devine.

  Dak shook his head. “No way. I can’t believe that’s what happened.”

  “Did she ever say anything that made you suspect she knew you were involved in this?”

  “Never, not once. I swear.”

  “Okay, so you get your supply from Canada? Why not here?”

  Hal replied, “We also deal with people here, but Maine has gotten pretty good about ferreting out folks like us. And Nova Scotia is right across the Gulf and New Brunswick is just a little bit north.”

  “Lock this place up,” ordered Devine.

  Dak said, “Please, Devine, do not shut us down. I’ve got big plans for Putnam.”

  “I could give a shit about that. And you said you were going to make millions off selling this property.”

  “Hopefully, yeah, but that could take a year or two to complete.”

  “Again, I don’t care. Now lock it up.”

  Dak was about to respond, but he didn’t. Or rather couldn’t.

  The bullet zoomed through the open doorway and hit Dak in the arm. He slumped to the floor bleeding, and screaming in pain.

  Devine already had his Glock out and fired multiple rounds in the direction of where the shot had come before taking cover behind the wall.

  Then, silence. Until he heard a vehicle start up. Devine was about to run to his truck and take up pursuit when Dak screamed, “Hal!”

  Devine looked over to see Hal on the floor, blood pouring from his chest. He knelt beside the stricken man.

  Only one shot had been fired, so it must have ricocheted off Dak and hit Hal, concluded Devine. He didn’t have time to even locate the wound before Hal gave a long rattling breath that Devine had heard before on fields of combat.

  “Is Hal… is he going to be okay?” said a sobbing Dak, holding his bloodied arm, and crawling over to them. “Is he breathing?”

  “No, he’s not,” said Devine curtly. “He’s dead.”

  CHAPTER

  67

  IT’S BEEN RAINING SO MUCH any trace from the vehicle is gone,” said Sergeant Fuss. She and Devine were standing in front of the outbuilding where Hal had been killed and Dak wounded. Dak had been taken to a trauma hospital in Bangor. Hal’s body had been transported to Augusta via helicopter for a high-priority postmortem. Guillaume had accompanied the flight.

  Dawn was breaking, and Devine was so tired he felt he was back in Ranger School.

  “Did you find a casing?” asked Devine.

  “Yep.”

  “NATO or polymer?”

  “The latter. Looks to be the same shooter as with Jenny.”

  “But NATO was the one that almost killed me,” said Devine, really to himself.

  Fuss eyed the outbuilding. “So, elvers, huh?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Always wondered where he got his money.”

  “To his mind he’s reinvesting it in the town, and I guess he is.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  Devine said, “Nothing. It’s not my jurisdiction. So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’ll have to confer with the chief.”

  “I expect you would.”

  “But if we do nothing…?”

  “No skin off my teeth. Unless what Dak was doing is connected to his sister’s murder.”

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know one way or another. I certainly have no proof.”

  “Okay, we’ll let you know what we find.”

  “I’m heading over to Jocelyn Point to make sure Alex is okay. I already filled her in on what happened, but I wanted to give her an update.”

  “Right.”

  Alex answered at his first knock. She must have been watching from the front window.

  “Thank God,” she whispered, weeping quietly into his shoulder after he gave her a positive update on her brother. “I… I can’t lose Dak, too.”

  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.