Final Settlement Read online

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  Final Settlement © 2013 Vicki Doudera

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First e-book edition © 2013

  E-book ISBN: 978-0-7387-3438-5

  Book design by Donna Burch

  Cover design by Lisa Novak

  Cover illustration by Dominick Finelle/The July Group

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  DEDICATION

  For Matthew, Nathan, and Alexandra,

  with warm memories of Maine winters.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m thankful for the assistance of many who helped with Final Settlement.

  First, a big thank you to my faithful manuscript readers Lynda Chilton and Ed Doudera, whose comments and careful edits are so appreciated, and to Jane LaFleur and Jane Babbitt for proofreading.

  Thank you to Nick Kava and Toby Wincklhofer for their advice on lobster fishing, as well as the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine at Orono.

  I’m grateful for the support of the real Alison Dyer, a Darby Fan and Habitat Volunteer Extraordinaire, as well as all the volunteers who work to keep the Rockland Breakwater safe and beautiful.

  Thank you to the Professor and Chair of the University of Maine’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, David Batuski, for his assistance.

  Once again, the experience of Aikido expert Sensei Gordon Muller of the New Jersey Police Academy has been very helpful, as has the assistance of the Public Affairs Office at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Much appreciation to my fellow real estate agents around the country and in Maine, above all, Scott Horty and the team at Camden Real Estate Company, including the trio always willing to lend a hand: Christopher Brown, Jeanne Fullilove, and Brenda Stearns.

  Thank you to my literary agent, Tris Coburn, and to all the good people at Midnight Ink, including editors Terri Bischoff and Connie Hill; publicists Marissa Pederson and Courtney Colton; and book designers Donna Burch and Lisa Novak. Thanks to illustrator Dominick Finelle for a chillingly beautiful cover.

  Finally, nothing I do would be possible without the support of my husband, Ed. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

  PROLOGUE

  LORRAINE DELVECCHIO SMELLED THE carcass before she saw it.

  The dusky stench of decaying marine life, mingled with seaweed, rotting mussels, and kelp—there was no mistaking the odor of death on the beach. She scanned the sand, quickly spotting the source: a seal the size of a toddler, with mottled brown fur and black, staring eyes. The dead mammal’s whiskers stood stiffly at attention, coated in ice like pine boughs after a bout of freezing rain.

  Lorraine gave the poor thing wide berth. This was the fifth seal washed up on the little beach, along with an assortment of lifeless gulls, flaccid fish, and once, a rare thresher shark. She never knew what she’d find when she made her daily walk to the Manatuck lighthouse and back, but so far, nothing, no matter how gruesome, had been enough to stop her.

  Lorraine fumbled in her thick gloves, turning up her parka’s collar against the cold north wind. She crossed the pebbly beach and approached the rough granite blocks of the Manatuck Breakwater, a man-made promontory jutting into the wide mouth of Manatuck Harbor. The blocks were covered in a thin sheen of ice, but even that could not deter the determined walker. Her fur-lined hiking boots with their Italian-made soles would grip the slick surface perfectly, and without hesitation she hoisted herself onto the glistening blocks and began her brisk pace toward the lighthouse.

  A weak sun struggled against scudding gray clouds, its rays powerless against the single-digit temperatures, but Lorraine was prepared for the bone-chilling cold. A thick fleece scarf wound around her neck and up over her nostrils, and her fur cap, purchased on a Christmas visit to Montreal, fit snugly over her head and ears. Swaddled in her fleeces and a long down parka, she was as comfortable as possible on a bleak February day on the coast of Maine.

  A few gulls circled overhead, eyeing the solitary figure before winging off to more promising parts of the harbor. Lorraine watched the birds, white as alabaster against the dull pewter sky, hearing their shrieks over the crashing waves. She shivered as a brutal blast of wind hit her full on, chilling her lungs as she struggled to breathe. Lorraine coughed into the fleece scarf. Cold did not begin to describe the temperatures. Grimly she began pumping her arms in a swinging motion, determined to warm her muscles with her own exertion.

  Last year, on this same day, it had been snowing. She recalled a thick, relentless snowfall that began at 11:15 that morning and did not let up until the middle of the night. The year before had been sunny and mild—a January thaw that had hit the coast in February. Lorraine gave a quick grin underneath her fleece. There certainly was neither rhyme nor reason to the weather patterns for February 11ths, although if she went back far enough, she doubtless could make some sort of correlation.

  She glanced back down the Breakwater, toward the parking lot and her car. Not a soul in sight. Lorraine felt a pang of excitement. How many times had she taken this walk and been completely alone? Her mind sifted through the data. Sixty-two times. Sixty-two times in three years of walking.

  By now, Lorraine was feeling warm enough to peel her scarf down from her nose. Her heart was pumping, her feet moving briskly over the granite blocks, and her mind slowly clearing of the endless data that cluttered it like knicknacks on a table. She took a deep breath, savoring the tang of the sea air, and smiled. Dr. Hotchkiss would approve. Her former employer, an elderly physician who’d practiced for years on the nearby island of Hurricane Harbor, was fond of prescribing a good, brisk walk for just about any ailment. Lorraine stooped to pick up a mussel shell that had washed onto the rocks. She held it up with a gloved hand, admiring the iridescent purple of the shiny interior, and stuffed it in her coat pocket. Perhaps the old man had been right.

  A small cairn on her left indicated the midway point of the Breakwater. Lorraine herself had constructed it, both to give herself a reference and to provide one for the tourists, many of whom stopped her to inquire whether they were nearly finished. Lorraine always found this puzzling since the Breakwater stretched off without an obstacle, and they could easily see where they
were headed, but she’d learned to reply cheerfully that the stone cairn (sometimes she had to explain what a cairn was) marked the midway, or half a mile.

  There were rarely any tourists in January or February, unless it was a sparkling, sunny day with higher than normal temperatures. Before she could stop herself, Lorraine computed the number of January and February days when she’d encountered people whom she’d judged to be tourists. Twenty-five. She paused. And the number of them who’d asked her a question? Seventeen.

  She shook her head and tried to make her thoughts clear once more. It was a challenge, taming this monster that was her mind, but she found it necessary to try to disconnect once a day if she was going to keep what she called the screaming jeebies away. She’d sampled meditation and yoga, but found what worked best was walking the mile-long Breakwater, every day, rain or shine, at exactly the same time. The predictability of it was soothing, and the pace seemed to make it easier to relax. Was there a connection between the daily exercise and her sanity? She didn’t know, but she knew the discipline worked. It makes me more human, she thought.

  She had a sudden memory of a time before she’d started her ritual walks. She was lying on her living room couch, curled in a fetal position, with Wheel of Fortune playing on the television. She remembered the contestant, a chunky car salesman from St. Louis, winning one hundred thousand dollars, only to land on bankrupt with his next spin. His wife, sitting in the audience, gasped and covered her face with her hands.

  Lorraine saw herself, a motionless figure on the couch, wearing a ripped flannel shirt and stretched-out exercise pants, the kind they used to call a track suit. There was a blister on her right thumb. The date was March 23, 2003.

  She licked her lips, tasting salt water from the spray. Her mind flipped back to the twenty-third of every month before that, presenting image after image in excruciating detail, filling her head with memory after memory, until she stopped, dead in her tracks.

  Enough! She picked up a small rock and tossed it into the waves, watching the splash. She imagined taking all of the disjointed millions of memories, and heaving them into the water, just as she had the stone. Please God, enough …

  She took a deep breath and looked toward the lighthouse. Calm was replacing the recollections, spreading across her in a soothing puddle, much like maple syrup down a stack of pancakes. I can control this, she thought. I can be just like other people. Normal people. She took another deep breath of cold winter air, rubbed her gloved hands together, and resumed walking.

  Lorraine strode the Manatuck Breakwater in every season, but winter was the time she considered the most special. She was almost always alone, for one. Out of habit she glanced back toward the shore and her silver Subaru, noting that her vehicle was still the sole car in the lot. Along with the solitude, winter brought a kind of frozen tableau in which she was one of the few creatures alive. Outside of a gull or the occasional duck, Lorraine was the only living thing for what seemed like miles.

  She stepped resolutely over the thick granite blocks. Quarried from the city of Manatuck, as well as Hurricane Harbor and some of the surrounding islands, the speckled stone seawall was assembled in the late 1800s to afford some protection to the harbor. Lorraine knew that the Breakwater had been an instant tourist destination. She’d seen photos of men and women coming to the jetty to picnic, dressed in old-fashioned garb, the women sporting bonnets and carrying parasols and wicker baskets. How quaint it all seemed, and yet, here she was, more than a century later, enjoying the same view and activity.

  She paused for a moment to readjust her scarf. The wind was calmer now, and Lorraine was feeling quite comfortable with all her layers. She pulled a tube of lip balm out of her parka’s pocket and coated her lips with a quick swipe. She shoved it back in her pocket and looked up.

  The lighthouse loomed ahead. In the last few decades, the structure had fallen into disrepair; the paint sloughing off the weathered clapboards in great flakes, like a burn victim’s blistered skin. Complaints reached the Manatuck Police Station of teens partying in the wood-framed “keeper’s house,” leaving beer cans, cigarette butts, and busted windows in their wake. Lorraine leaned close to one of the windows now, her breath frosty on the jagged glass. The charred remains of a small fire scarred the old wooden planks.

  Lorraine left the window and turned toward the attached tower, craning upward to see all twenty-five feet. Once the brick structure had cradled an expensive Fresnel lens, but now it was crumbling. She thought about the Coast Guard’s plans to demolish the tower, and the resulting outcry from local residents. A small sign tacked on the brick announced the formation of “Friends of the Mana-tuck Breakwater,” as well as a campaign to rehabilitate the historic 1903 lighthouse.

  That’s all well and good, thought Lorraine. There were certainly plenty of people in the area with enough money to save the lighthouse. They were really preserving a symbol: a beacon of hope and of safety, a welcome glow on a stormy night to sailors lost at sea. Of course, she knew that a lighthouse could also represent danger, giving a vessel no time to change course, until the flashing light became synonymous with certain death …

  Lorraine shivered and pulled her fleece scarf back over her mouth. The air was becoming colder, and her heated body was beginning

  to cool down. She shivered again, stomping her boots against the rough granite. It was too cold to contemplate anything. Time to finish up and walk back to the warmth of the car.

  It was also growing darker. A storm was not predicted until the weekend, but quick snow squalls could crop up without much notice. She sighed. There was just one thing to do, one thing to complete her ritual, before turning around.

  Lorraine clutched the iron railing of the lighthouse tower and hoisted herself up onto the large boulder at the jetty’s very end. Gingerly, she tested it for slipperiness. Her boots gripped the slick rocks, giving her assurance that she was in no danger of falling.

  Slowly she eased herself out to the edge of the rock where it met the sea. The raw power of the ocean threatened to wash her away, and yet she felt completely safe. She took a deep cleansing breath, closing her eyes, waiting only seconds for the familiar calming sensation. She opened her eyes, took in the slate gray water, the pewter sky, and the clean, crisp air. This is my peace, she thought. Thank you, thank you. She turned slowly and carefully around, ready to depart.

  A bulky figure stood before her, wearing a black ski mask, puffy black jacket, and sunglasses.

  Lorraine screamed.

  The person—for she couldn’t discern whether it was male or female—raised a black gloved finger to its mouth, as if to say they shared a secret, and took a step forward.

  Lorraine jerked her head to the right and the left. There was no space on the boulder for her to maneuver past. “Back up,” she yelled. “There’s not enough room!”

  The bulky figure said nothing. Slowly it took another step closer.

  “Back up!” Lorraine screeched, glancing behind her. There were only inches between her body and the boulder’s edge. What was this maniac doing?

  “Let me get past you!”

  An instant after yelling the words, her mind flashed to the possibility that she was in danger. She lunged to the figure’s left, grazing the side of the puffy black parka with her shoulder. In the air, leaping, Lorraine was a creature in flight, hoping to propel herself beyond the person and to safety.

  She felt a hard shove. She flailed her arms, grabbed at emptiness, and then spun toward the water.

  The sole of her hiking boot grazed, and then caught, on a rock. Somehow she used the strength of her leg muscles to hold on. She craned her neck and met the sunglass-covered eyes of the bulky figure, imploring him or her to reach out and help as she dangled over the edge.

  The figure came forward and held out a hand.

  Lorraine felt a rush of gratitude as she struggled to stretch. Just an inch or two, she thought … and then she felt another shove. She hurtled backward, her bod
y sailing through space. A second later, she slammed into the ocean.

  Dark, icy seawater engulfed her entirely. A moment passed and she bobbed back to the surface, the water streaming over her hat and down her face. Lorraine gasped, her lungs already seeming to freeze with the shock of inhalation. She thrust her arms upward in a survival position, feeling the current surging her toward the jetty.

  Lorraine’s weakened limbs groped for something, anything. Her body was heavy, heavy, a sodden mass of wet winter clothing, but somehow she managed to hit the edge of a boulder and grab on.

  A wheezing sound broke the silence as Lorraine gulped for air. Her extremities were numb, as was her face, and she sensed that extreme hypothermia would soon set in. Already her thoughts bobbed about, unmoored and dangerously cloudy. The shiny black parka and the threat it represented was a distant memory—she focused only on survival.

  Get out of the water, she told herself. Her torso convulsed and her grip on the rock nearly slipped. Using her last remaining ounce of strength, she pushed up with pulsing arms until her hips were level with the boulder, and then wriggled onto the jetty, gasping with pain.

  A siren wailed in the distance, growing more insistent as the seconds passed. Lorraine lifted her head, the effort sending shoots of pain up her spine. A feeling of fatigue was poised to swamp her like a rogue wave, and she was nearly ready to surrender.

  Out of the corner of her eye a black shape moved toward her head. Before she could react, the object connected with her skull, thrusting her whole body back toward the frigid bay as if she were a rag doll. She was airborne, and then she hit the ocean, the momentum of the blow driving her down, down, into the inky depths.

  Lorraine gasped for air. Her lungs filled with icy water, and she gasped again, tasting brine and bile. So this will be my last memory Darkness swirled inside her brain, then all was black as she descended toward the rock-strewn bottom and her death.

  ONE