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  North Harbor

  Murder, Mayhem and Smuggling

  on the Maine Coast

  A Novel by Kennedy Hudner

  Copyright © 2019 Kennedy Hudner

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover art by Jarmila Takac

  Editing by Donald Kray

  Disclaimer

  This is entirely a work of fiction. There is no Town of North Harbor in Maine, and certainly no North Harbor Police Department. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication-

  To Jennifer – Who would have believed 43 years? Not bad for two skinny kids who started out with twelve dollars in the bank and a lot of dreams.

  Other books by Kennedy Hudner:

  Alarm of War

  Alarm of War, Book II – The Other Side of Fear

  Alarm of War, Book III – Desperate Measures

  Riddle Me a Death

  “The wind always blows a little colder in North Harbor.”

  --Luc Dumas, sculptor of Last Charge of the Warrior

  Chapter 1

  Fate of a Poacher

  They had the anchor chain wrapped halfway around his body when he suddenly woke up and screamed. Scared the hell out of Jacques and Guy, who both backed up so fast that Guy lost his balance and sat down on a mound of baitfish.

  “Jesus Fucking Christ!” Jacques screamed, which was a funny thing to say, since he’d been the one to shoot Mitchell with the AR-15, after all. It had been a tough shot, fired from the Celeste some two hundred yards across the moving Atlantic to Mitchell’s lobster boat. In fact, Jacques had fired four shots and only hit Mitchell once, but that shot had grooved the top of Mitchell’s head, smashing him to the deck.

  A good shot.

  They had thought he was dead.

  Not quite, apparently.

  Mitchell somehow struggled to his feet, screaming and tearing at the chain. Still in his frenzy, he saw the man at the pilot’s wheel.

  “For the love of God, Jean-Philippe!” Mitchell screamed in terror. “Don’t let them kill me!” he implored. “It’s just a lobster trap! Jean-Philippe! A fucking lobster trap! I’m begging you.” He lurched to the side then, crashing up against the ship’s low side rail, throwing out his arms to avoid falling overboard.

  For any lobsterman in Maine, falling into the frigid Atlantic was the ultimate horror. Even a lobsterman who’d been shot in the head.

  Jean-Philippe LeBlanc paused for a fleeting moment. Mitchell was the very worst thing a lobsterman could ever be: a poacher, but he had known him since grade school. They’d been altar boys together. But if Mitchell knew, if he knew… Fuck it. He glared at his younger brothers. “Don’t just stand there, you morons, throw him over!” But Jacques and Guy stood frozen, repulsed and terrified at the sight in front of them.

  Then there was a “BANG,” followed by two more, and Mitchell’s face blossomed into rose petals of gore. He toppled backwards over the railing and, with a last wail, vanished into the cold ocean depths, his body tumbling and turning as he sank. The end of the chain, still loosely wrapped around him, followed him over the side with a splash. Then there was an abrupt silence while the lobstermen looked at each other in shock at what they had done.

  Bruno Banderas lowered his pistol. He looked at Jacques and Guy and spat contemptuously. “Están pero si bien pendejos!” he snarled. You are fucking idiots. Banderas was a barrel-chested, ugly bulldog of a man, with a jutting, pugnacious jaw and an angry expression that told everyone in sight he was just looking for an excuse to punch them.

  He turned to Jean-Philippe. “Is it here?” he asked urgently. “Is it here?”

  Jean-Philippe scanned the rear of Mitchell’s boat, where the working deck was cluttered with lobster traps, buoys, coils of rope and buckets of baitfish. At one end stood a lobster trap that held a large waterproof sack, the size of a bag of fertilizer you might buy at Home Depot. Jean-Philippe sighed in relief. If it hadn’t been here, he did not know what would happen. His brothers and he could hold their own in a bar fight, but Banderas…Banderas was a killer. More importantly, Banderas was the man sent by the Sinaloa Cartel to oversee drug smuggling through North Harbor into the rest of northern New England. He was not a Mexican, but was the leader of the Dominican gang in Massachusetts that worked with the Cartel. The gang’s job was to make the “last mile” delivery of heroin produced in Mexico and smuggled into the United States.

  Banderas was not a man to be trifled with. Or crossed.

  “Right there,” LeBlanc said, pointing. He worked to keep his voice steady. “I told you that he’d keep it.”

  Banderas opened the trap, pulled the bag out and cut it open with a knife, inspecting what was inside. He nodded once, looking relieved. He turned back to Jean-Philippe. He had very cold eyes. “Don’t let this happen again, LeBlanc,” he warned harshly.

  “Me?” LeBlanc protested. “Shit, I didn’t let anything happen. Mitchell stole one of my traps. It wasn’t my fault, for Christ’s sake.”

  Banderas shook his head in wonder. Could the man really be that stupid? “This is the Cartel you’re dealing with. Fault does not matter, only failure. And if you fail, there is a price.”

  “What the…” But Jean-Philippe’s voice trailed off as Banderas glared at him. And for the first time, Jean-Philippe LeBlanc understood, really understood, what he had gotten involved in.

  They quickly set fires in the engine compartment and the main cabin of Mitchell’s boat. Then, carrying the sack, they crossed back over to LeBlanc’s lobster boat, the Celeste. Banderas clambered down the steps into the small cabin. He cut off the waterproof wrapping and took out two thick, plastic bags, which he placed next to a small scale. First, he weighed the larger bag, then the smaller, carefully noting their weight in a pocket notebook. Satisfied, he nodded. Thirteen kilos of some of the purest heroin in the world. About thirty pounds. The little bag had four kilos of fentanyl, just a bit under nine pounds. He took out a small, compact satellite phone and punched in a number. When the call connected, he spoke in rapid Spanish, nodding while he spoke. After a moment he held the receiver against his chest and looked at Jean-Philippe.

  “They want to know when we’ll arrive.”

  LeBlanc looked at his GPS unit, typing in a course that would not be a straight line from the scene of either Mitchell’s murder or the pickup. He held up two fingers.

  “Dos horas,” Banderas said into the Sat phone. Two hours. He thumbed the phone off and packed it away. Folding his arms, he turned back to the table and the two bags. “We’re payin’ you twenty-five thousand dollars to get this to shore; good money for a few hours work.” He looked LeBlanc in the eye. “So, you don’t want to fuck this up, you understand?”

  The Celeste motored westward towards the afternoon sun. Behind them, Mitchell’s lobster boat was fully engulfed, with flames leaping twenty feet into the air, fanned by a wind that pushed it farther and farther out to sea.

  There would be no evidence of who had been on board, or why.

  ______________

  Already a mile behind them, and one hundred feet deep, the body of Henry Mitchell came to rest on a large rock outcropping. He landed on the side of a steep boulder and gently slid down its side, coming to a stop almost standing up. The chain had unwrapped and slid down his body until it just rested across his foot, still enough weight to keep him from floating up to the surface.

  For now.

  Chapter 2

  North Harbor – Calvin

  Calvin Finley quietly rolled out of bed. Across the room his older brother, Jacob, slept with the covers pulled over his head t
o ward off the morning chill. Calvin felt around until he found his swim trunks and pulled them on, then padded downstairs to the small kitchen.

  Sunrise was still an hour away, but already the eastern sky glowed a warm blue, with long tendrils of gold caressing the sky. It was going to be a glorious sunrise. He put on a pot of coffee and began making a bowl of hot oatmeal, careful not to make any noise that would wake his parents in the bedroom above the kitchen. Then he pulled on a flannel shirt and a pair of sweatpants and stood in the large window that looked south across the mouth of North Harbor, which gave the town its name. To the east, Sheep Island sat a little more than half a mile out. Ten miles to the Northeast was Acadia National Park and the city of Bar Harbor, where the tourists flocked in the summer, eating ice cream and gawking at the seals. Just under five miles to the southeast – and a world away – was the Town of Stonington, famous for its lobster fleet, quaint stores and the rich folks who owned second homes there.

  Calvin snorted under his breath. No rich folks in North Harbor. North Harbor was a hard-scrabble sort of town that made its living from the sea. It was as quaint as a Walmart parking lot. There was a mix of lobster and fishing boats, the Cadot Fishery, and the North Harbor Ship Yard that offered maintenance and repairs to the commercial boats that plied its waters, and the nets, traps, rope, fittings and spare parts they’d need in the normal course. North Harbor had two Catholic churches, an Episcopal church and a Baptist church.

  The churches were thriving.

  There were four bars, three small restaurants, a surprisingly good Hannaford’s grocery store with a huge section that sold ships’ supplies, Zedek’s Funeral Home, Baxter’s Drug Store and Goldsmith’s Department Store, which sold bits and pieces of everything the other stores didn’t.

  The coffee was ready and he poured a mug, spooning in three sugars and topping it off with condensed milk. He was tall, lanky and dark haired like his mother, but with hard-earned swimmer’s shoulders. He had a dreamer’s smile and a toddler’s belly laugh, which constantly embarrassed him. He sipped the coffee absently while he stirred the oatmeal, thinking about the physics exam he had to take that afternoon. It was his last year of high school and he still hadn’t decided what he was going to do next year, lobstering or college, despite all the pressure from his parents to go to college and “stay on track.” He had his eye on a twenty-four-foot Novi with a 4-stroke Suzuki 150 outboard. If he borrowed some money from Grandpa Dumas and sold his little boat, he could maybe buy the Novi. The owner wanted $30,000 for it, but Calvin figured he could get that down some. Calvin had $3,000 that he’d saved from part-time jobs and his lobstering, plus with luck he might get another $1,000 for his lobster skiff. With the Novi, he could carry more traps and could fish the coastal waters with no problem, though he’d be a fool to take it out to the deeper waters offshore. Once the lobsters migrated offshore in late fall, he could get a job as a sternsman on one of the big highliners and earn some pretty good money there. Two or three years and he could sell the Novi and get a bigger boat.

  If the lobstering was good. If he didn’t need any big repairs. If the price of lobsters didn’t crash.

  He sighed. Seemed like a lot of “ifs” and “maybes.”

  His oatmeal was ready. He took the hot pot to the table and put it on a trivet, then poured in raisins and sprinkled it with brown sugar. Outside the sky and the water were both creeping towards the “golden hour” that he loved so much. If his mother was awake, she’d be outside with her old Nikon, snapping pictures that she’d frame and sell in art shops in Ellsworth or Rockland. He glanced at his watch; he had to eat and get going. He wolfed down the hot oatmeal, put the dishes in the sink and checked the water temperature on his phone app: 53 F. Still pretty damn cold out there for the end of April, but he’d swum in cold ocean water almost every day for two years now, and he had the right gear. He went down to the basement, found his 7-mm wetsuit and began the laborious process of pulling it on. Suit, boots and hood, then gloves. He belted on an inflatable life belt and tested the strobe light he wore on the back of his hood. His grandfather had suggested the strobe light. “Won’t keep you from drownin’,” he’d said in his Down East accent, “but might make it easier to find the body. Be nice to give you a good Christian burial.”

  Lastly, he slipped a pair of goggles over his head, letting them rest on his forehead for the moment, then went out the back door and walked down the path past his Grandpa’s house to the beach. No sandy beach here, it was a steep rock embankment that dropped thirty feet to a stone shingle. He walked down the stairs to the dock he’d built with his father and grandfather, keeping an eye out for any broken or sagging steps, then out onto the dock itself.

  A cold northerly wind buffeted him as he walked out to the end of the dock, stirring up the waves. The water and the sky were golden now, shimmering and glowing with the approaching sun. Sunrise was no more than ten minutes away. Here in the local waters, thousands of lobster buoys bobbed in the morning breeze. In the distance he could hear the diesel rumble of the big lobster boats – the highliners – chugging their way past Grog Island and Bold Island, then past the rocky spire called The Shivers, and from there out into Jericho Bay itself.

  It was all so beautiful. The sun, the salt tang in the air, the breeze in his face, the sound of the living ocean, and the golden glow of the morning. It filled him with a sudden, fierce exultation.

  He nodded once, then lowered himself into the frigid, glimmering water, let his breathing settle, then took a deep breath and began to swim. Sheep Island, desolate and boggy, good for nothing except breeding prodigious quantities of mosquitoes and black flies, beckoned in the morning light of the day.

  Calvin Finley swam towards it, like he always did, embracing the sea like a lover.

  ______________

  Frank Finley opened his eyes at 5:30 a.m. sharp and slipped from the bed. The floor was cold under his bare feet. He pulled on a heavy shirt and work pants, found a pair of wool socks and carried them downstairs to the kitchen. The light was on, as usual. An empty bowl of oatmeal, a partially empty cooking pot and a used coffee mug sat in the sink.

  Finley grabbed the binoculars and walked out on the porch, which offered a clear view of the expanse between their little dock and Sheep Island. No fog this morning and the island stood out in dark silhouette to the rising sun. Focusing the binoculars, he first saw the strobe light Calvin wore, then located the fluorescent orange wetsuit Calvin used when the water was really cold, which was most of the time this far north. Calvin’s mother, Danielle, was a nurse in the local clinic and ever mindful of simple, practical things that can be done to enhance safety. She’d insisted on the bright color, much to Calvin’s dismay, but it made the boy stick out like a sore thumb. Which was the idea. He was swimming strongly, already reaching Sheep Island. Some days he turned around and just swam back, others he swam all the way around the island. He watched for another two minutes as Calvin rolled over and waved in his general direction, then began to swim back.

  Finley checked his watch, then walked quietly back upstairs and shook Jacob awake. “You’ve got to get going or you’ll be late again,” he warned softly. “I’ll get you some coffee you can drink on the way.” Jacob muttered under his breath, but sat up and rubbed his face vigorously with his hands. “Why the hell did I take this job?” he groaned.

  “But you did,” his father replied, “and now you’re going to do it well. Get going.”

  When he got back to the kitchen, Danielle was already there. She had brushed out her hair and it hung well below her shoulders, raven black against her pale skin. She was wrapped in a shawl over her nightgown to ward off the chill and her hands cupped a large bowl of steaming coffee.

  She gestured to the binoculars that Finley still carried. “Where’s our baby seal?”

  “Just reached Sheep Island and is heading back. Should be here in fifteen minutes or so, depending on the current.” He grinned. “That orange wetsuit does make him easier
to spot.”

  She sipped her coffee and sighed. “I wish he wouldn’t swim when the water is so cold.” She didn’t say it, but she recalled a boy in her high school class who had been swept off a fishing boat one winter day and died from exposure. The ocean was not forgiving.

  Finley grinned ruefully. “So do I, but I’d rather have him swim where I can see him than sneak off somewhere. And he knows these waters now. Safer here than elsewhere.”

  “He’s so pigheaded,” she complained. She arched her eyebrows. “I wonder where he got that from?” she asked innocently.

  “I think he’ll be okay,” Finley replied, ignoring her jibe. “With all the cold-water swimming he’s been doing, he’s put on a nice layer of subcutaneous fat that should protect him. Plus the wetsuit, of course.”

  Danielle giggled. “I shouldn’t laugh, but he does look like a baby seal, all smooth and sleek.”

  A moment later Jacob shuffled into the kitchen, still half asleep. Danielle wordlessly handed him a cup of coffee while Finley buttered him some toast. She looked at him fondly, always struck by the attributes he inherited: his father’s short stature, stolid features and innate wariness, broad chest and surprisingly broad shoulders – perhaps from lobstering for the last two years – and light brown hair that must have come from some ancestor on Frank’s side of the family. Jacob lacked Calvin’s spontaneous laughter and often seemed hesitant, as if waiting for something unpleasant to jump out of the closet. It always triggered Danielle’s protective instincts. She sighed inwardly; how could the same parents have such different children?

  “Don’t get comfortable,” Frank warned Jacob. “I’ll run you down to the docks in just a minute. You’ll just be in time.”

  Jacob grunted something unintelligible. Then Calvin came through the door, salt water dripping everywhere. His lips were blue, but he was smiling. Danielle shook her head and handed him a large mug of steaming hot chocolate. “You’re pushing your luck, Calvin Finley,” she scolded. “One of these days you’re going to turn to ice out there and that will be that.”