Thomas Prescott Superpack (3 page)

There were three people in the group. A short, fat, balding man who’d obviously gotten the short end of the stick. Todd Gregory, who had a stick up his ass. And a blonde bombshell, who looked in desperate need of a stick.

Glease and I nudged our way into the circle and it turned out the bald man was not George Costanza, but a Canadian Mountie named Francis. Francis was wearing a neatly pressed red suit a couple sizes too small and the three hairs left on his scalp had somehow formed themselves into a cowlick. We shook hands and he didn’t say, “Eh,” or “Hoser,” and I was skeptical if he was really Canadian.

The blonde bombshell was more like a blond nuclear bombshell. She was gorgeous, her eyes the same cobalt blue as the sky, set in a soft, angelic face. She had on a white V-neck blouse, a tan blazer, a matching knee length skirt, and black stilettos. She looked like she’d just stepped off Wall Street and I was shocked to learn she was the Fed’s contact at the Bangor Police Department. The delectable Dr. Caitlin Dodds.

We were all introduced and I was hoping Dr. Caitlin was thinking, Dr. Caitlin Prescott, not bad, not bad at all, but she looked more like the type to make me adopt her last name.

There wasn’t much for small talk and after each of us signed a form, we broke huddle and headed back to the cars. I hesitated for a couple seconds, gazing across the Atlantic trying to make out where the thin bridge ended and this so-called island began. There was an ulterior motive for my hesitation, which paid off when I fell into stride behind the good doctor. To say the view was spectacular would be an understatement; her professional skirt unable to shroud the well-maintained, grade-A caboose, housed beneath the fabric.

Thomas Dodds, I could deal with that.

No one
 was allowed at the crime scene until the Feds arrived, which is a terribly stupid policy and everyone was pissed off. Well except the Feds. And me. And Francis, the quasi-Canadian Mountie, didn’t seem all that upset. So, I guess that left Caitlin. Dr. Caitlin Dodds was pissed off.

I made a point to get in the same car as Dr. Dodds who greeted me with a grunt when I had her slide over in the backseat. No one else filed in, and within ten seconds it was clear why; Dr. Caitlin Dodds was a monstrous bitch.

The car started onto the bridge and after staring at me for a couple awkward seconds, the doctress barked, “What? Your suit get lost at the cleaners?”

I’ve always had the uncanny ability to give off the impression I’m lying whenever I’m telling the truth, and vice versa, so I said, “I’m not FBI.”

“Yeah right, you’re not FBI like I’m not on my fricking period.” She rummaged through her purse and extracted what I can only assume was a tampon.

I attempted to roll out of the car and plunge myself into the Atlantic, but my door wouldn’t open. Blasted federal perks. I turned around and saw what I’d thought was a tampon was in actuality a pack of Mentos. Now, there would be
 a good commercial—The Freshmaker.

After popping a Mentos—she neglected to offer me one—Dr. Dodds unbuttoned her blazer and revealed she’d been concealing three deadly weapons. While all were respective thirty-eights and all were equally special, only one was a Smith & Wesson.

I made my way up the eighteen inches to her eyes and she said, “Sorry, I’ll try to de-bitch. I’m just a little wound up right now. I thought these killings were over, then this morning I get word they found another woman. Then to top it off, they tell me I’m not allowed to do anything because she was found in Canada and the case was being turned over to you imbeciles.”

I liked this girl, she hated the Feds almost as much as I did. I cocked my head at the car speeding alongside ours and said, “You mean those imbeciles.”

Caitlin sat quietly, no doubt trying to get a read on the asshole, with the lavender shirt and tan tweed jacket sitting beside her. Finally she asked, “What are you?”

I repositioned myself on the black leather, “I’m the government’s idea of a safety net.”

“Safety net? Please explain.”

“If I break this case my name is never mentioned and the FBI gets another slot on the bedpost. However, if the case breaks them, my name shows up all over the place and I get slaughtered on the bedpost.”

She began buttoning her blazer and said, “It’snotch on the bedpost, no
t
slot on the bedpost. Maybe you would have gotten it right if you hadn’t been using my tits as a teleprompter.”

I knew I’d stared at them one second too long. “Sorry, won’t happen again. But, you have to admit,
it’s one hell of a teleprompter.”

She tried to look offended but it’s hard when the sides of your mouth are turned up in a grin. I guess she thought it was in her best interest to change the subject and said, “Why’d you agree to come up here if you knew this in the first place?”

Making a concerted effort not to let my eyes drift to her boobies, I said, “I could care less if they pin all the blame on me. Hell, I’d take the blame for the JFK assassination if it’d keep these FBI types from bringing it up after one Sex on the Beach. I’m here for one reason, and one reason only—I kill killers.”

I think the last three words hit deep because she turned her gaze to the window. A suffering thirty seconds passed, each rivet in the bridge rumbling louder than the last, when Caitlin turned and said, “Let me get this straight. You had drinks with an FBI guy and he ordered a Sex on the Beach. What a bunch of fricking pansies.”

Be still my heart.

Chapter 4

I finished off the bottom third of a now warm beer and lifted my one hundred sixty pound frame from the captain’s chair. I still hadn’t regained the weight I’d lost and I could actually see the egg salad and bologna vying for position at the gates to my large intestine.

I cranked the steering wheel to the left as I approached the Bayside Harbor, making sure to stay clear of the large ten foot tires deviating the marina entrance. Funny story, about two months ago I’d taken to high seas, making sure to pack enough food and beer to last a week (just in case I repeated my
Maine Catch
disaster.) But you know what, sailing is boring. Let me rephrase that, sailing looks like a blast,
not-sailing
, the term I came up with for what I do on the water, is boring. Next thing I knew, a week’s supply of food and drink were gone, I was five pounds heavier, and drunk as a skunk.

When I woke up, I was naked except for a pair of socks, which still baffles me because I started the day in bare feet and sandals, and my boat was in the middle of a marsh swamp. Lucky for me, some acne-faced fifteen-year-old was fishing nearby and agreed to sail the boat back to the Bayside Harbor if I gave him a cool hundred up front. When we were about a hundred yards from the harbor, the little shit had the balls to ask me for another hundred. I told him to go jump off a bridge, whereby, he jumped off the boat.

Long story short, I cut a check for two grand to the owner of a 22-foot Whaler. After the quote, “Whaler incident,” it’d been common practice for the local kids to line up on the pier each Saturday waiting for my boat to enter the marina. The kids would dive in the water and try to be the first to climb aboard, thus receiving a crisp five dollar bill from the marina manager on the successful dockage of my vessel.

As I passed through the tire entrance roughly at three miles per hour, I made out close to fifteen kids meandering on the small wooden pier. There was one runt who I rooted for each time whose name was Kellon. He was a foot smaller than the other boys and looked like he still belonged on his momma’s tit.

Kellon was the only one to notice my boat penetrate the harbor and stealthily entered the water. He had about a twenty second head start before any of the other kids took notice and dove in. He was within ten feet, splashing up so much water he was hardly visible, when he was overtaken by a couple of the elder boys.

I ran to the edge of the boat and shouted, “Come on Kellon. Come on buddy. You can do it. Show these kids who owns this friggin’ town.”

The elders were pulling themselves over the side when they kept
accidentally
falling back in. When Kellon finally reached the hull, I leaned over the edge and snatched him from the surf. Then I stood him on the railing and whispered in his ear, “Tell the big kids who owns this town.”

He took a deep breath and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Kellon owes dis fwiggin’ town.”

Now, I didn’t like kids much, but if I said I wasn’t looking for a place to stow him, I’d be lying. He was about three beer bottles tall, with brown eyes the size of a half dollar, and missing his four front teeth. With him on the railing, I was only a couple inches taller than him and before I knew it, the guy was wrapped around my neck like a koala.

From previous conversations, I knew Kellon was seven, had a bit of a lisp, and boats were his favorite thing in the, “Wool-wide-wuld.”

I let him go to work and watched in silence as he jimmied the sails and expertly navigated the boat to my designated slip. It was common knowledge slot 23B belonged to Thomas Prescott, aka, Captain Dipshit.

The marina manager was Kellon’s dad, and instead of giving him a Franklin, he gave him a Dr. Pepper. What a lame-o. Plus, the kid needed Ritalin, not caffeine.

I took out my wallet to pay him, but unless Kellon took plastic, he was shit out of luck.

I hauled the cooler and chair out of the boat and Kellon insisted on carrying the cooler to the car for me. When everything was tucked away in the trunk of my Range Rover I asked him, “What’s your second favorite thing in the whole wide world?”

He stared at the ground deep in thought, then brown eyes bulging, yelled, “kwytes.”

Then a kite it was.

I screeched out of the dirt parking lot and onto a long expanse of leaf-checkered road: Maine once again impressing me with the wide spectrum of colors at its disposal.

I’d grown up near the Puget Sound, which is beautiful in its own right, but couldn’t compete with the majesty of Maine. The road in front of me wrapped around a jutting mountain before straightening out and I floored the gas, putting all 320 of the Range Rover’s horses to work.

There was a front coming in over the Atlantic and the ocean and sky were beginning to mesh of gray. I squealed around an inlet and thanked God I was off the water. If I were inept when the conditions were perfect, I could only imagine how quickly I would find a way to die if the waves reached two feet. Speaking of the waves, they were beginning to pick up in their intensity, smashing against the rock banks, turning frothy milk white, then vanishing between the cracks.

I grabbed my cell phone from the glove compartment and the display screen showed I had three new messages. The first message was from my sister’s boyfriend, Conner, reminding me of our rowing engagement the following morning. The second was Lacy relaying she wasn’t, “Hip to cooking,” and for me to pick up  on the way home. The final message blindsided me and I slammed on the brakes, the Range Rover fishtailing twice before coming to rest courtesy of Maine’s many miles of coastal guardrail.

I replayed the message, it was Caitlin. She was wondering how I was doing and wanted to get together for dinner. I hadn’t talked to Caitlin in over a month. I wonder what had prompted the call. Possibly the anniversary of the first murder. Perhaps my sitting in my car outside her house last night for close to five hours. It could be any number of things.

Unable to banish Caitlin’s message from thought, I nearly missed the exit for the town of Belfast. I navigated through the small coastal town and saw the bustling of September coming to an end. People were packing up for the winter and businesses were liquidating merchandise. The 25% OFF signs of a week ago had been swapped out for 50% OFF, and in another week those would be replaced with, YOU NAME THE PRICE.

I stopped at an Italian restaurant called Angelini’s and read the sign in the window: Last day October 10th, see you in May. (Maine literally closed down from mid-October to late May. Technically speaking the population of Maine plummeted from 537 to somewhere around 300.)

I ordered two meatball sandwiches from Angelina and inquired if there were any bookstores nearby. He directed me to a store in the same complex and said he could have two fresh sandwiches ready for me in about ten minutes if I wanted to check out the store.

The Bookrack was owned by a fifty-something gal named Margery. Margery had coke bottle lenses held within light pink frames and her white hair was styled soft serve vanilla, making her look closer to eighty than sixty. Margery told me she didn’t have any copies of
Eight in October
at the, “Pres-ant mom-ant,” but was expecting another shipment in the next couple days.

These mom and pop stores are all the same and I told Margery if she could somehow find it in her heart to rummage up a copy of
Eight in October
, I would buy at least two other hardback novels. Five minutes later, I left the Bookrack with a bag containing Michael Crichton’s latest novel,
I got a 1550 on my SAT’s! What’d you get stupid
;
Sailing for Idiots
; and
Eight in October
.

Back in the car, I took Route 1 northbound to the town of Surry. I passed the legendary Lighthouse Museum (Historical side note: The Lighthouse Museum houses the largest collection of lighthouse lenses in the world), and turned onto a small street leading to the Surry Woods. The houses in Surry Woods are separated by miles of oaks, maples, and firs, and if you’re going out to your mailbox, you should think about packing a lunch.

I drove for a half mile, went down a steep hill, found the dirt entrance to 14 Surry Woods Drive, wound eastward for a short par three, and parked in an immense leaf-strewn yard.

My sister and I moved into the large three story Colonial about ten months ago, Christmas Eve to be exact. The house was built in the late 1950s, but was completely restored in the last couple years. The majority of the house was comprised of copper brick and the trim was a ghastly pea green I’d had on my to-do list for, well, the last ten months. I’d had a run in with the house a year ago and fallen in love with the location. Ten miles of woods to the north, south, and west. Three thousand miles of ocean directly east. 14 Surry Woods Drive was literally one of the few places in the world where dense woods visibly met white sandy beach.

The previous owners gave me a good deal on the house for bringing their daughter’s killer to justice. Who was I to argue?

Walking around the car, I took a gander at my front bumper. The collision with the guardrail was more serious than I’d let on and the bumper looked a little loose. Okay, it was hanging on by a thread.

I marched the seven stones to the front door and was reaching for the doorknob when the flap to the doggie door flew open and something shot through my legs. Unless Baxter stood still it was impossible to distinguish if he was a dog, a cat, a hamster, or a racquetball. I mean I love
dogs, but not dogs that are smaller than cats, that goes against everything God intended. I once saw Baxter get beat up by a rabbit. I’m not kidding you, a little white rabbit beat the piss out of him. He wouldn’t leave the house for a month.

I walked through the front door and set the cooler on the kitchen counter, then remembered the sandwiches. I went back out to the car and grabbed the Angelini’s off the passenger seat and noticed, at some point, Baxter had jumped into the car and was fast asleep on the driver’s seat.

Did I mention Baxter was narcoleptic?

He could fall into the deepest of sleeps at a whim. It took the vet four visits before they diagnosed him with the sleeping disorder.

I nestled the pug with my hand, watched him stir, then vanish in a puff of smoke. I’d come to the conclusion Baxter was half pug, half poltergeist. He was a
pugtergeist
.

When I walked back into the kitchen, Lacy was emptying the contents of my cooler into the refrigerator, her dark brown hair visible over the top of the refrigerator door. Her voice boomed from behind the stainless steel, “How were the sandwiches?”

“Great. I ate the egg salad and the bologna.”

“You didn’t eat the turkey?” Lacy was world famous for her turkey sandwiches and she stood up, her right hand heavy on her hip. She smiled, “Good. We can eat them tomorrow when you take me painting.”

Painting? Oh, right. “What time do you want to get going?”

“I want to see the sunset.” She laughed. “Well not see, literally.”

I laughed with her. Lacy was taking her blindness in stride. If you weren’t the wiser, you’d never suspect Lacy’s almost teal eyes served only for decoration. Lacy had Multiple Sclerosis and her current acute exacerbation, better known as an attack, relapse, or flare, was temporary blindness. According to the doctor, Lacy’s condition was due to an inflammation of her optic nerve. He said this usually clears in four to twelve weeks. It’d been eight weeks since the lights went out for Lace. I prayed every night she would open her eyes and the world would be staring back.

I replied to her painting question, “Sounds good. By the way I’m rowing with your boy-toy in the morning.”

“That’s what I heard. I’m glad you and Conner still hang out even though you and Caitlin broke up.”

Conner was Caitlin’s little brother. Caitlin and I had been the ones to hook-up the two of them. “Speaking of Caitlin, she left a message on my phone this afternoon. She wants to get together for dinner. I’ve been brainstorming excuses for the last hour.”

“Tell her you went blind, it always works for me.” She snickered at her own wit and said, “Just kidding, I was the one who told her to call you.”

“What do you mean, ‘You told her to call me?’”

“I had lunch with her this afternoon and we talked about you guys. It’s usually an off limit topic, but I could see how lonely she was. She really misses you. And God knows you’re too stubborn to call her, even though you’re just as lonely, I might add. The two of you were good. Don’t let another one get away because you’re an idiot.”

Speaking of which, I wondered if they had
Relationships for Idiots
. I made a mental note to ask Margery next time I was at The Bookrack.

Lacy and I grabbed our sandwiches and retired to the living room. The Italian leather couches, wall extended oak entertainment center and plate glass coffee table came with the house for an extra ten grand. Lacy flopped down on one of the tan couches and picked up the remote. If I were a Mariners’ fan, Lacy was a diehard. She’d forced me to buy some digital cable package where you get every baseball game on the planet. (There was even a channel where you could watch little Asian boys play pickle.)