“Alex, Jenny’s younger sister, and her brother, Dak. They live at Jocelyn Point.”

  “I suppose Jenny came up to visit with them when she was killed?”

  Kingman folded her arms over her chest and took a symbolic step back. “My, my, I can’t imagine why I’ve been gabbing so much about the Silkwells to a complete stranger. You have a nice visit here, Mr. Devine. And just so you know, outsiders aren’t usually welcome here.”

  “But I would imagine your entire business model depends on the exact opposite of that sentiment.”

  She twisted her mouth in displeasure. “Your place is right behind here, first cottage on the right.”

  She walked through a blue curtain set behind the front counter.

  Devine grabbed his bags and off he went, a stranger in a place that didn’t particularly care for them.

  Story of my life.

  CHAPTER

  6

  THE COTTAGE WAS COMFORTABLY FURNISHED, with a big four-poster bed being its chief feature with a duvet and matching canopy done in seascapes and lobsters. A blackened-faced wood-burning fireplace with a small stack of cedar logs and kindling set next to it in a wrought iron holder took up much of another wall.

  He put his things away and laid out several telltale traps in case anyone breached his room while he was away. He then sat at a small desk set up by the window and looked over the briefing book on his phone.

  Jenny Silkwell could have certainly made enemies in her line of work. But if a foreign government wasn’t behind her death, who else would have the motive?

  Well, that’s what you’re here to find out. So let’s get to it.

  He slipped his Glock into a belt holster, locked his door, deposited the one-pound lead slug key in his pocket, climbed into his Tahoe, and set off.

  He drove slowly past the harbor and marveled at the beauty of nature’s rock carvings. He saw a few boats puttering back in, the men on them looking bleary-eyed and exhausted, and smoking cigarettes and gulping bottled water, even in the cold.

  Tough way to make a buck. Hope they scored big on whatever they were going out for.

  He drove to Jocelyn Point along the winding coast road. As dusk set in, the equal parts grim and picturesque landscape assumed patches of pulsing darkness shouldered with sections still lit by the fading sun. Devine pulled out his military-grade optics and took a look.

  Set far off the road on an otherwise deserted stretch of land, the home’s backdrop was the black rock-strewn craggy coastline that the Atlantic pummeled unceasingly.

  Devine had seen pictures of the home, but it hadn’t done the place justice. The building itself looked like every haunted house you had seen in movies or on TV. Grim, stark, joyless, it stood like a defiant remembrance of a far more somber and unforgiving era.

  Constructed of rough-hewn timbers and rugged dark stone that was probably locally quarried, Jocelyn Point possessed the tall, looming face of a hunk of marble statuary with a wooden-railed widow’s walk at its zenith. Multiple turrets, both cone- and square-shaped, all topped by slate roofs fouled by the elements, stuck out here and there from the home’s façade like wayward strands of hair. The exterior was covered with nature’s makeup—chunks of moss and patches of lichen, which evidently flourished in the damp, briny air.

  He saw other buildings dotting the large property. Some looked abandoned, others were falling down, but still others looked reasonably habitable. Maybe these were old servants’ quarters, he thought, for when people actually had them on properties like this.

  The grounds had been allowed to mostly go to ruin. The hefty wrought iron gates that had once been attached to stout stone pedestals—emblazoned with the letter J on one and the letter P on the other—were both hanging on to life by a single rusted hinge each.

  The place had innumerable windows, all small, gleaming, and mullioned, like the eyes of a spider, with little ability to capture much sunlight but only to reflect it back. The large wooden door that was the main entrance to the place was battered and sullied by weather. Straggly, leafless trees stood next to the house, their bare limbs caressing the crudded walls with every passing breeze.

  Devine lowered his optics as the sun fell rapidly into the pocket of the western sky. Darkening clouds scudded overhead as the northeasterly breeze stiffened. As he continued to watch, a light came on in a second-floor window. Devine once more lifted his optics to his eyes. The range and clarity on this piece of surveillance equipment was impressive. For what it had cost the government he knew it should be.

  Twenty minutes later, as the darkness deepened, someone appeared at the lighted window, and Devine was quick to focus his device on the person.

  Alexandra “Alex” Silkwell had blond hair piled on top of her head, with a few tendrils slipping down to bookend her elegantly chiseled features. Her eyes were full of intensity, or at least it seemed to him that they were.

  Devine noted all of these things secondarily. Chiefly, he was riveted by the fact that she wore no clothes.

  Embarrassed, he lowered his optics but kept his unaided gaze on her, though he couldn’t make out the finer details now.

  Does she know she’s being watched?

  His was the only car out here. And she could obviously see it and its lights. Was she being defiant, giving the curious a show? Or did she not think anyone would be watching the house with the optics Devine was using?

  Yeah, that might be it, thought a shamed Devine. I’m a peeping Tom with next-gen hardware.

  He waited until the room went dark once more before driving off.

  As he headed along the whipsawing coast road he wondered what Alex and Dak thought about the violent end of their older sibling’s life.

  He also wondered whether one of them had killed her. Or knew who had.

  Dak had been in the Army, where he had obviously received extensive weapons instruction. Devine would have to find out why the Army and Dak Silkwell had parted company. The Army didn’t give up its recruits easily. They didn’t have nearly enough volunteers to fill the ranks, which had caused them to overlook things that in the not-too-distant past would have resulted in outright dismissal.

  He stopped and sent off a text to Campbell asking for these details.

  As he drove north to his prearranged meeting with the local cops, Devine thought back to the woman at the window of an ancient house that had long outlived its useful life and was aging with little grace; and yet two young people still resided there.

  This case might turn out to be even more complicated than he had thought.

  He checked his watch, hit the gas, and sped up. Time to go look at the body of a woman who should not be dead.

  CHAPTER

  7

  DEVINE HAD SEEN VIOLENT DEATH in multiple countries and had caused some of them in his role as a soldier. In certain respects he had grown desensitized to it. Once you’d seen a human being shot up, blown up, or hacked to pieces, what was one more? They all bled and died pretty much the same.

  He pulled into the parking lot of a funeral home named Bing and Sons. A police cruiser was parked near the front door. PUTNAM POLICE DEPARTMENT was emblazoned on the cruiser’s side door, along with a picture of an eagle. The majestic bird’s claws clenched an arrow shaft, its expression one of fierce determination.

  The building looked to be originally 1950s construction. It had obviously been remodeled and expanded, Devine noted, with two relatively new wings and what looked to be a crematorium with a long chimney stack housed in a separate building in the rear.

  He trudged across the asphalt, feeling the biting wind every step of the way as it pushed against him.

  Before he could tug on the door, it opened, revealing a woman in a police officer’s uniform and cap, who was standing just inside. No doubt she had been waiting for Devine.

  She was in her thirties, shortish and thickly built, and, to Devine’s eye, looked like she pumped some serious gym iron. She had on a long-sleeved shirt but no coat or jacket. The brown hair was clipped back. A Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum revolver rested in her holster. He didn’t know the police still carried revolvers. But whatever she shot with that bazooka would not be getting back up, ever.

  “You Travis Devine with Homeland Security?” she said shortly.

  “I am.”

  “Let me see your ID,” she demanded.

  He showed her. “And you?” he said.

  “Sergeant Wendy Fuss. Chief’s with Françoise and the body. This way.”

  They began walking down the hall.

  “Françoise?”

  “Dr. Françoise Guillaume. She’s the medical examiner for this area. Her grandfather and his brother started this funeral home. Passed it down to their sons. Now her brother, Fred Bing, runs it. But Françoise works here, too, in addition to being the local doctor.”

  “Busy lady. So did Dr. Guillaume perform the autopsy?”

  She stopped and turned to him. “You shitting me?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The fact is there was a pissing contest between your folks and ours. They brought someone up from DC to do the postmortem over in Augusta at the OCME, the Office of Chief Medical Examiner. Dr. Guillaume assisted because the chief medical examiner for Maine insisted. Jenny was killed here, making it our jurisdiction, not federal.”

  “Are the people from DC still here?”

  “No, they flew in on a government jet, did the postmortem, and flew right back out. Showed me how my tax dollars are being spent.” She looked Devine up and down in a disgusted manner. “And now you’re here to do the job we’re already doing.”

  “I was hoping we could collaborate.”

  “Sure you do. Feds are all the same. Think you’re better’n the locals.”

  “Have you had much experience with the federal government?”

  “The IRS. That was enough to last me the rest of my days.”

  She picked up her pace and Devine followed. He noticed that she was pigeon-toed and her left shoulder hung a bit lower than her right. Her gun belt squeaked as she walked, as did her rubber-soled shoes over the soft linoleum. That could give away your position and get you killed, but Devine did not think Fuss would be receptive to such federal criticism right now.

  She reached a door down a short hall, pushed it open, and motioned Devine inside.

  Fuss put out a blocking hand as he started to cross the threshold. “You seen a dead body before?” she asked in a brusque tone. “Don’t want you puking on my shoes or passing out.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you,” said Devine tightly.

  Two people were waiting in an interior room off the one they had entered. They were standing next to a metal gurney with a sheet over the body. The room held the potent smells of death and chemicals.

  Devine was introduced to Chief of Police Richard Wayne Harper, who was quick to tell Devine that he went by Richard, not Rich or Dick.

  “Or ‘Chief’ will do just fine,” he quipped, though the look he gave Devine held no humor.

  He was in his late forties, paunchy, and around five ten. But he seemed light on his feet and moved with the nimbleness of a far younger man. His hair was thick, and the original brown was mixed liberally with gray. He wore no gun, but he did have a metal baton in a holder on his belt. His thick fingers hovered near it at all times. He seemed to exude electrical pulses of confidence with every breath.

  Françoise Guillaume was also in her forties, an inch taller than Harper, and athletically lean, with auburn hair pulled back at her nape and secured with a band. Her eyes, active and intelligent, scanned Devine from behind tortoiseshell glasses strung on a synthetic cord. Her white lab coat only partially obscured her dark blue jacket and slacks.

  She looked no-nonsense and proved it by saying, “Ready to get to it, Agent Devine?”

  “I thought the autopsy was done in Augusta.”

  “It was. We transported Jenny’s remains back here so that you could examine them.”

  “Okay, let’s do it.”

  She lifted the sheet off Silkwell, former CIA ops officer and now a murder victim.

  Devine ran his gaze down the woman’s body. He thought for a moment of the woman’s sister standing unclothed at the window. There the similarity ended. Alex Silkwell did not have a large exit wound in the back of her head that had removed a chunk of her brain along with her life. The small, blackened, and crusty entry wound dead center of the forehead didn’t seem lethal enough to have killed her. Devine had seen far worse mortal injuries, but looking at the remains of the woman affected him more than he thought it would.

  He steeled himself to forget about the person and focus on the crime. But it was never easy, not as a soldier and not now.

  CHAPTER

  8

  JENNY SILKWELL HAD SIMILAR FEATURES to her younger sister: a long, slender nose, broad smooth forehead, classic jawline. He couldn’t see the color of her eyes because they were closed. In response to Devine’s query Guillaume said they were light blue, bordering on gray.

  She said, “This was a distant gunshot wound. The abrasion collar was typical, meaning there was no deformity of the bullet before entry into the body. A contact wound would look much different, with triangular-shaped tears in the skin and evidence of searing along with soot deposits. And there was no indication of soot, seared skin, or gunpowder tattooing on the body. You’ll usually get soot with close-range wounds of half a foot or less. Now, tattooing of the skin with powder grains is pathognomonic of intermediate-range gunshot wounds. It’s burned into the skin so it can’t be removed. That’s why I ruled out an intermediate-range gunshot. There was no bullet wipe on her clothing since the bullet did not pass through any of that.” She looked up at Devine. “That’s residue from the surface of the bullet itself that ends up on the clothing.”

  “I understand she was immersed in salt water,” commented Devine. “Even if there was bullet wipe it probably would not have survived. Along with any soot.”

  “But there wouldn’t have been soot with a distant gunshot wound, and water would not have impacted any tattooing.” Guillaume pointed to Silkwell’s forehead. ”There you can see what’s referred to as the ‘comet tail.’ It usually shows the direction of the bullet’s flight, from left to right. The minimal presence of the tail here demonstrates the entry was pretty much straight-on.” She turned Jenny’s head to the side to show the exit wound. “People assume the exit wound is always larger than the entry,” she said. “But it’s a fallacy to determine entry and exit wounds based on the sizes of the holes. And abrasion collars, soot, and tattooing are not associated with exit wounds. As you can see, her abrasion collar clearly shows the entry came in the front. The exit wound is gaping, which speaks to the transfer of energy through the frontal bone of the skull, then passing through the soft brain tissue, and exiting out the occipital bone. Skull fragments were propelled through the wound track, which also widened the exit wound. Her death would have been instantaneous,” she added in a less professorial tone. “She would have been dead before she knew it.”

  Death would have been instantaneous. She would have been dead before she knew it.

  Devine had heard those phrases many times, and though he knew the physiology behind it, he had never really believed it. He had come close to death several times, and each time, it was like the brain sped up as though not to miss a second of its imminent demise.

  Even for a millisecond or less, I think you know that it’s over. That it’s the end of you.

  He said, “I suppose the tox screens haven’t come back yet?”

  “Good Lord, no. And they won’t for a while, along with the blood workup. I know how fast they do it on TV. Get a tox and DNA report back by the second commercial break. But the real world moves a lot slower. I guess we don’t have the budget Hollywood does.”

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “Her stomach was empty and the prelim blood work and examination of her tissue suggested nothing unusual in her system. But the tox screens will be far more definitive. All tox screens in Maine go to a private accredited lab in Pennsylvania for analysis, but I understand these are going to a federal lab for testing. So the turnaround might be faster.”

  “We also had two MDIs over from the medical examiner’s office to help in the investigation,” volunteered Harper. “They’ve gone back to Augusta now.”

  “MDI?” said Devine.

  “Medicolegal Death Investigator,” replied Guillaume. “They’re part of the OCME. There are only three in the entire state, but this case was important enough to get two of them here.”

  “But all in all we didn’t make much progress,” said Harper. He glanced at Devine, and his look was not friendly. “Guess that’s why they sent you in.”

  “I think it’ll take more than one person to solve this,” said Devine diplomatically.

  Harper said, “Hell, we have fewer than thirty homicides a year in the whole damn state. And now I got two of ’em in a short period of time.”

  “Two?” said Devine.

  “Hit-and-run,” interjected Fuss. “Not connected to this.”

  “Did you autopsy that one, too?” asked Devine, looking at Guillaume.

  “The deputy ME did the actual workup, but I assisted. It was a suspicious death, and Chief Harper immediately reported it to the OCME. There was no question a full autopsy would be done under the circumstances.”

  “Don’t they autopsy all of them?” asked Devine.

  “Hardly. Around fifteen thousand Mainers die every year. The vast majority by accident. We’re an outdoorsy, independent people, and that comes with risks. Next-highest cause of death is natural, then suicide, underdetermined, and homicide is in last place, thank God. But the autopsy rates are going up. Six percent in 2000, eleven percent the next year, and fifteen percent of total deaths last year received the full workup.”

  “What’s driving the increase?” asked Devine.