The Edge

Chapter 9

A light drizzle was falling as Devine followed the pair in the muddy cruiser with a bent front ram bar. Devine knew they would learn little at the crime scene in the darkness. But he needed to get a feel for its structures, its parameters and possibilities.

He had been right in telling Campbell that he was not a trained investigator, but the old general had also been correct in informing Devine not to sell himself short in that regard. He had solved the mystery in New York. But he’d had help, and he’d also allowed himself to get shot. With his own gun! That still hurt his pride.

In the Middle East he had done countless battlefield assessments. The Army documented everything. Battle assessment methodologies, collateral damage assessment, munitions effectiveness, reattack recommendation methodologies, post — campaign operations actions. In this regard they were looking for the smallest clues and telltale signs as to why a combat operation had not gone according to plan or why damage was above expectations. Or how an IED had been able to get close enough to kill its intended target. So his mind was trained to see certain things.

Sometimes things went sideways just due to shitty luck, Devine knew. When many people were gathered in close quarters trying their best to kill one another, there wasn’t a report or methodology in the world that could cover all the possible contingencies or outcomes. Humans under threat of death were just too unpredictable; some turned into cowards, and others into heroes, and still others into both.

Devine had, on numerous occasions, successfully interrogated people he thought were allies and those he knew to be enemies, and found out vital information in most of those cases. He had not done it with brute force, though on occasion he had wanted to as he stared into smug expressions projecting unearned superiority. They were the hardened countenances of people who would do absolutely nothing to help you and absolutely anything to do the opposite to you. He hoped whatever talent he possessed for this sort of work was enough for this case. Campbell seemed to have faith in him, justified or not.

He looked over, and there stood Jocelyn Point like a lighthouse on the coast, only with very little light to offer. Offshore a collection of blackened clouds was gathering and perhaps pondering whether to come onto land and pummel the puny scattering of humans who dwelled there.

A few minutes later the cruiser pulled off to the side of the road, rubber gripping mud, and stopped. Devine slipped his Tahoe in behind and got out.

So she died not that far from her old homestead.

The wind seemed fiercer at this point. He didn’t know if it was due to the approaching storm or some weird topographical feature at this spot. But as he walked up to join the two officers of the law, Devine thought this was a perfectly macabre backdrop for violent death. It was essentially Edgar Allan Poe — esque in its deep sense of potentially sinister intrigue.

He stood there for a few moments and gave a sweeping gaze across the landscape, taking in all points that seemed to him of interest. Fuss held one powerful light, and she produced another from the cruiser and handed it to Devine. He used it to illuminate a stand of scrub pines off to the left. There was also an open field of grass and wild plants that seemed to thrive even in the stark chill. Another stand of deciduous trees was off to the far right, their trunks and naked branches registering as shadows in the dark. Thick, burly bushes were everywhere, with many of them also bereft of leaves.

Devine had been to Maine before on training exercises with the Rangers. He knew it held the highest percentage of wooded land of any state, at nearly ninety percent. And he had become something of an amateur horticulturist, so as to determine the types of trees and bushes for suitable concealment while being shot at or attempting to sneak up on an enemy, as well as what one could safely eat when one’s own food ran out. And which bark and herbs and flowers were viable for treating wounds when there was no more medicine at hand. Thus, he knew the Maine state tree was the eastern white pine, several of which he could see here now. The state flower was the white pinecone.

He eyed his two companions, who were staring resolutely at him.

Time to turn from botany to homicide.

“Where was she found?” he asked.

They led him along a broad, rutted path through the trees and kept going until they reached the end of land.

More than a dozen feet below there was nothing except a shelf of blackened and eroded rocks and boulders that acted as a natural sea wall against the pounding surf. It was close to high tide now, and hard spray from the incoming water meeting this immovable boundary of stone nearly reached them where they stood.

Fuss shone her light on one spot and held it.

“Right about there,” she said.

“The body had fallen from here to there after Jenny was shot,” explained Harper.

Devine looked at where they were all standing and then down at the rocks. “You’re sure that’s what happened? She was shot and then fell down there?”

“Pretty damn sure, yeah. I mean, what else?” said Harper.

“How was the body facing?”

Harper looked at Fuss, who said, “Best as I can remember, head to land and feet out to the ocean. She could’ve flipped over on her way down, since she was shot from the front.”

“Best as you can remember? Didn’t somebody take pictures? Didn’t the feds go over it before the body was moved?”

Fuss barked, “Hell, we couldn’t leave her there. Tide was coming in and there was a storm. She would have been washed out to sea if we waited another minute.”

“But you have pictures, before she was moved?”

“Look, Devine, you weren’t here, okay?” said Fuss. “The water was all over Jenny when we got here. You heard Doc Guillaume. Time of death was between nine and eleven. We didn’t get here until after two in the morning. We had to move fast, real fast. And we’re not CSI. We got one ambulance and two volunteer EMTs in Putnam. I called in everybody I could, including some men I knew from the county with climbing experience to go down there and help bring her up. Before they got here we put a rope around Jenny to keep her from getting swept out. We all got soaked to the skin, and the water was so cold it damn well burned. We had to use a truck with a winch to bring her up, but we did our best to make sure we did as little damage to the body as possible. We didn’t have hours or days to plan this out, we had minutes,” she ended with a bark, her posture all defensive and annoyed.

“Okay, okay,” said Devine. “I get it. Where was the casing found?”

They led him back to a spot that lined up with where Jenny had been shot and gone over the edge. Devine gauged it to be a little over three hundred or so yards from where Jenny had purportedly been shot. There was a cleft in the tree line here with an unobstructed sight line to the edge of the bluff.

On his voicing this opinion on the distance, Fuss told him, “It’s three hundred and twenty-one yards. I measured it myself.”

Devine worked the sight line and trajectory in his head. While officers could not become snipers in the Army, Devine had supervised several teams of snipers and spotters. He was intimately familiar with the weapons and ammo used, the physiological processes involved, and the ballistic calculations that went into ending the life of another human being over substantial distances using a long-barreled rifle and scope. And he came away with the conclusion that things were not making sense. “You’re sure this is the spot?” he asked.

Fuss said angrily, “I marked it myself! We did have the time to work the scene up here. That was where the casing was found and I’ll swear to that in court.”

Devine knew they were upset that the feds were looking over their shoulders and controlling the investigation and the processing of the evidence. But was there something else behind Fuss’s look of vitriol?

“Any evidence of robbery?”

“None. She had two rings and a necklace and a fancy watch, a Breitling,” said Fuss, her tone less aggressive now. “We got it all back in the evidence room along with her other things.”

“Purse, wallet?”

“I imagine they’re back in her room. If you give the okay we can search it finally,” said Harper.

“Tomorrow morning work for you?” said Devine. “Nine o’clock? I’ll bring the coffee. Saw a place close to the inn. Maine Brew. How’s that sound?”

“Sure, that works,” said Harper in a friendlier tone, acknowledging this olive branch offered by Devine. “We both take it black.”

“I suppose with the weather there were no footprints, tire tracks?”

“We looked,” said Fuss. “But it was a quagmire by then. Truck we used to winch her up got stuck. Had to get a tow truck to pull it out. We weren’t getting any trace from that mess.”

Devine looked back at the cliff where Jenny had allegedly gone over. “So, how did Palmer find her body? He would have had to go right up to the edge and then look down.”

Harper said, “Earl told me he was out walking late that night. He couldn’t sleep.”

“Out walking, in the pouring rain?”

Fuss interjected, “Earl Palmer had nothing to do with what happened to Jenny.”

Devine kept his gaze on Harper. “Never said he did. I’m just trying to understand the situation. I have superiors I have to report to, and they’ll be asking me very pointed questions, like I’m asking you.”

Harper and Fuss exchanged a glance, a worried one.

Harper said, “He was a lobsterman. Foul weather means nothing to him. And I told you he lost his wife. He probably didn’t even know what he was doing. Just wandering aimlessly.”

“Did he walk from his house, or drive?”

“He walked. And he happened to come over to this spot and just stared out at the ocean. A place he spent most of his life. And then he looked down and saw her. And called 911.”

“So it was just a coincidence that he picked this spot out of all the others around here to go and take a look at the water and happen to glance down and find a body?” Each word that came out of Devine’s mouth sounded more unbelievable to him than the previous one.

“Coincidences like that do happen, Devine,” said Fuss.

Maybe in novels, thought Devine. But not ever in real life.

They parted company with the agreement to meet up at the inn the following morning.

As Devine drove back into town he stopped and quickly pulled over to the curb.

Dak Silkwell, whom he recognized from the photo in his briefing book, had just walked into a bar called The Hops.