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Category:
Mystery/Suspense
Publisher: Gypsy Shadow Publishing
ISBN-10: 161950278X
Type: Fiction
Pages: 314
Copyright: October 22, 2015
ISBN-13: 9781619502789
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Did more Nazis escape Germany than history reveals? Did Hitler really commit suicide the day after his wedding?
The twenty-nine year-round inhabitants of Fawn Island located off the coast of Cape Cod shrink to twenty-eight as a local handyman is found dead in mid-winter off season. Murdered? Maybe. But the area DA goes out of his way to keep the Cape Cod and island reputation as clean as possible, especially since it is the home of the famous Kennedy family. He hires a local reporter to interview all the remaining residents and prove that the death was an accident.
Excerpt
Until I experienced it, I couldn’t have imagined the sheer terror of being in pitch-black darkness, knowing that I had only so much air to breathe, and not daring to call out for fear of using up my final supply of oxygen. I shared a decaying wooden coffin with the rotting forty-year-old bones of a murdered woman—identity unknown. My pounding head needed at least a bottle of aspirin, and I could feel a bloody, wet bump on the back of my skull where someone had conked me with a shovel. I didn’t know how long I’d been out—maybe five or ten minutes. Maybe an hour.
My cheap crystal watch didn’t glow in the dark.
I stretched my cramped arms to explore the limits of my confinement, about twelve inches in front of me, and I recalled that the grave was quite shallow—maybe three feet deep. All my fear-fed, adrenaline-energized strength might have been able to push open the dilapidated coffin-cover, assuming that whoever covered me over hurried away before piling on too much heavy soil. Then again, if I failed, how much oxygen would that effort use up?
My fingers found a familiar shape. Cell phone to the rescue, I thought and sighed relief.
The top flipped open easily and I located the ON button. It sent a haze of light into my tomb. With numb fingers, I felt small coffin-cover cracks in the wood above my head.
Bad news: Dirt particles began to sift onto my face.
Good news: I could easily click on the contact I needed, my lovely newspaper associate Patty in Hyannis. I wasn’t really up to date with the techy world yet; only five names were speed-dialed into my cell phone.
Real bad news: The screen announced dimly, BATTERY LOW. My worst fear had been realized. Shame on me. I should have recharged it. I’m not ever that organized. One of my many faults.
I suppose there are worse fears, like being stuck in a crowded elevator on the fiftieth floor of the Prudential Tower, or being stalled in the middle of the George Washington Bridge when you hear the concrete cracking, or sitting on an airplane when the captain’s panicked voice says, “Fasten your seatbelts, we’re going down.” But this fear was certainly enough for me.
Stephen Hall, Hyannis newspaper reporter, had been buried alive.
By the way, I’m Stephen Hall.
Chapter One
March, 2015
“It’s a waste of time, me going back to that little island,” Edgartown Police Captain George insisted. He was fat, close to 65, and less than a Rhodes Scholar. “No one knows nuthin’. You think you guys on the mainland had it bad; Fawn Island Winter weather was damned lousy—most snow in recorded history. No human being could’ve boated, or even flown to or from that place twenty-four hours either side of the guy’s death. That leaves us with those few who live there year-round.”
“How many?” the barely five-foot-tall DA asked.
Captain George counted on his fingers. “Not many more than these,” he said, throwing his open hand out a few times. “Twenty-nine natives to be exact. One dead. Over three hundred in the summer. Besides, no one’s even come forth to claim the body. What does that tell ya?” The police official lit up a filtered Chesterfield, the last one he ever planned to smoke—took a deep puff, and coughed.
Cape and Island’s District Attorney Patrick Neil frowned and said, “The coroner, Doctor O’Dell will consent to write a complete report only after you’ve consummated your job. Ever since he became a member of the AAFS, he’s been impossible to reason with.” Neil was lean, immaculately dressed, with flawless speech, and maybe five years younger than George.
“What the hell’s the AAFS?” Captain George asked. Smoke swirled around his full head of silver hair like a halo.
The DA winced at George’s ignorance. “The American Academy of Forensic Sciences is to medical examiners and coroners what the American Bar Association is to lawyers, or the American Medical Association is to physicians.”
George frowned. “So what?”
“So now he perceives himself as seriously important. He’s driven to perform his duties by the proverbial book. In the old days, he’d scribble his name and move on.”
George shrugged and snuffed out his cigarette. “I’m finally quittin’, by the way.”
“The force?”
“No. Smokin’.”
“Sure you are. You’ve been quitting ever since the day we met.”
The DA perused a few papers on his orderly desk, and then peered into desolate Wood’s Hole Harbor through his salt-water-stained picture window, where a few hardy lobster boats headed out for a late Winter daily catch. The sun had finally peeked through a few days before, but it was still snowing heavily every week. When it rained, everything froze. Miserable.
George fumbled in his pockets for another cigarette. “So that prick O’Dell says he’ll sign off on the Fawn Island death if and when I get a statement from all the inhabitants?”
“It sounds easy. The census says that only twenty-nine people live there year-round. Three of them are kids. That leaves—ahh, wait a minute while I do the math. Yup. That’s twenty-six, and one is dead, so that leaves twenty-five suspects, if it turns out to be a murder.”
“I had a hellava time gettin’ any of them to talk to me about the death. And I know most of them personally.”
Captain George dug a squashed cigarette out of his back pocket. “Most of Fawn Island’s inhabitants are simply odd. I mean, why the hell would anyone live like a hermit out there in the first place?”
The DA straightened his silk tie. “Possibly they migrated there to get away from people like you,” he said and chuckled.
“Screw you, too.”
DA O’Neil’s features remained impassive. He glanced over George’s head to the far pine-paneled wall carrying several framed pictures—a college graduate diploma from Yale, a law degree from Harvard Law School, and a photo of himself with the late Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy seated in a small sailboat, both smiling and holding cans of beer.
Neil waved a crooked finger at the police captain. “Don’t be a naive asshole all your life, George. I know that you need two more years ’til retirement with full pension. So, how would you like to retire tomorrow?”
George closed his mouth and dropped his chin onto his chest like a child who had just been scolded. “They just won’t talk to cops,” he muttered. “I tried, and they won’t talk to me. Some won’t even open the door when I knock. I really don’t blame them. Why the hell do you think they live there year round in the first place? They all want to get away from something or someone, and they don’t want any publicity. Does that make sense?”
“How about that reporter kid, Stephen Hall? He’s got charm—if nothing else. Amazing psychological factoid, but sometimes people spill their guts to reporters when they really should keep their stupid mouths shut. Hey, all he’s got to do is get each one of them to utter one sentence or two. Then the coroner will have to sign off. That’s all I need.”
George smiled. “I’m way ahead of you, boss, and Hall ain’t no kid anymore. He’s almost fifty, and I already approached him to take the job. I even offered to pay a few extra bucks out of my own pocket, if he’d help me with the interviews.”
“And what happened?”
“He told me to go fuck myself.”
“Why? Doesn’t he need the dough? Sounds easy enough to me. Had he been drinking?”
Captain George withheld a punch. He’d always been a tough cop, one who quite often got in trouble for punching first and asking questions later. The town loved him, and he always somehow avoided punishment. “He’s been around the block a few times and said I couldn’t pay him enough to investigate a murder. His life is too precious—risked already one more time than most people. I’m sure you know his Gulf War story. Do you blame him?”
“This isn’t a murder, and we don’t want anyone thinking so. No big deal. I remember his dad. An honest cop and a good guy. And I remember Stephen when he was a kid—a real good high school athlete, president of his class with a great future. What the hell did happen to him?”
“The poor kid signed up for a two year stint when there were no wars in sight,” Captain George said. “I even encouraged him to do it. Serve two years and you qualify for the GI Bill—lots of college tuition help. Who knew Saddam would invade little Kuwait for their oil? Who the fuck had ever even heard of Saddam? The kid got shot up pretty bad, but survived, came home, drank at lot, and failed at several jobs before being hired as a reporter for the local newspaper.”
“So maybe he’s our guy. It’ll make a good story for his newspaper.”
“I already told you that he refused. After getting his ass shot off in Kuwait, he’s shy of anything dangerous. And you have to admit that murder is dangerous.”
The DA scowled. “Every fucking human being has a price,” he said. “The fuckin’ Golden Rule. He who has the gold, rules. I have a special hidden bank account to cover things like this. How much do you think he’d take to do the job? ”
George blew a crooked smoke ring. “If he’d take anything, I’d guess two hundred a day for five days. My guess is that his base pay at the Hyannis Gazette is probably half that.”
“How about I offer a flat five grand? It’s worth it to me to clean this thing up real quiet. The Clintons still vacation at the Vineyard, and Obama visits every year. What do you think would happen if someone found out some bum got murdered on one of our perfect islands?”
George smiled. “I’m sure I can get Hall to go for that price. I’d kill my wife for that amount.”
“You aren’t married, George.”
“Figure of speech, sir. I’ll talk to Hall. Wars fuck a lot of people up, you know. But he seems to be getting better lately. We play tennis and racquetball every week to stay in shape. And he’s in a hellava lot better shape than me. He could pass for forty, and I know he’s almost fifty.”
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