Bad Men

The ferry docked and Macy shouldered her bag. Erin Harris was the first to disembark. Her brother was waiting for his machine parts beside a red Dodge truck. She could see the family resemblance, since they were both ugly and both looked like men. He glanced once at Macy, recalling her from his efforts to bail his sister out, but there was no hostility in his look. After all, it was his sister she had maced, not him, and it didn’t look as if he was too fond of her anyway. She spotted the two cops, Barker and Lockwood, and exchanged some words of greeting. They wished her luck, she thanked them, and then headed up to the Explorer.

The door of the vehicle opened and a man climbed out. Her first instinct was to wonder how he had managed to get into the Explorer to begin with. His great frame unfolded like that of some huge dark insect, until he towered almost two feet over her. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of shades and he wore no cap. He extended a hand the size of a shovel blade.

“Joe Dupree,” he said.

She allowed her own hand to be briefly engulfed in his, like a little fish being swallowed up by an eel.

“Sharon Macy.”

He released her hand. “Put your stuff in the back. You want the tour?”

“Sure. Do we get to stop and take pictures?”

He laughed briefly. It sounded, she thought, like tectonic plates might sound as they rubbed against one another beneath the earth.

“I think you can safely leave your camera in your bag.”

They did a U-turn, then headed up the short road that led from the jetty to the main intersection. Dupree hung a left.

“You always meet the ferry?”

“Try to. It’s more important in summer than winter. We get a lot of people through here in July and August. I was only kidding about the pictures. This place is beautiful in summer and there are some pretty expensive summer homes dotted around the island. Mantle, the guy who runs the Fable computer company? He has a house here. Big Time Warner executive named Sandra Morgan owns a cottage out by Beech Cove, and there are a couple of others too. They’d be real pissed if someone trashed their houses.”

He pulled in at the redbrick municipal building.

“We do it all out here. There’s a doctor comes out from the mainland two afternoons a week, and Doc Bruder is still here, although he’s officially retired, but we’re the first point of contact. We’re also the fire department, game wardens, school patrol, crossing guards, and dogcatchers.”

He left the Explorer. Macy followed. The sliding garage doors were open, revealing four vehicles parked inside. “Medcu Fourteen,” said Dupree, pointing at the ambulance inside the door. “If an emergency arises, we go out in this, do what we can to get the patient comfortable, then get them to the ferry landing or, in a really urgent case, out to the baseball diamond for a chopper pickup.”

He moved on to the red fire trucks, and patted the first.

“This is Engine Fourteen. We use it mostly to pump water. Over there is Ladder Fourteen, the primary attack vehicle. That’s what we take out to fires while we’re waiting for the local volunteers to get organized. That smaller truck in the corner is Tank Fourteen. Basically, it’s just a big bucket on wheels. We take it out to those places on the island that don’t have hydrants.”

“Are there many of those?”

“A couple,” he said, in a tone of voice suggesting that half the island was probably without hydrants. He carried on into the station house. There was an open area with a table and two chairs, some books and magazines on the table. To the left was the communications center: a radio, a computer, a bulletin board pasted with notices, reminders and scribbled notes. A large map of the island dominated one wall.

“We have a secretary?”

“Nope. All nine-one-one calls go through the dispatch center in Portland, but most people just call us direct. Paperwork, filing, well, we do that ourselves.”

Across the main reception area was a second room, housing an emergency generator, various pieces of equipment, and a locker containing a single shotgun.

“This is it for weapons?” said Macy.

“We don’t have too much call for SWAT teams out here,” said Dupree. “Last time I used this was to kill a rabid raccoon. It had been so long since I’d fired it, I was just grateful that it didn’t blow up in my face.”

Macy took the Mossberg pump-action from his hands. It had been cleaned recently, she noticed.

“Doesn’t look so bad,” she said.

“I gave it a pretty good cleaning a day or two back,” said Dupree.

She glanced at him, alerted by his tone.

“Why, something happen?”

“No,” he said. “But you never know.”

He wasn’t smiling.

“Guess not,” she said.

Upstairs was a sofa bed, a TV, some chairs, a small kitchen area, and a bathroom with a shower stall and toilet.

“No cells,” she said.

“Nope. If we make an arrest, we call Portland. They send out a boat and take the prisoner back. Until then, there are two steel loops in the main reception area. I’ve had to use them a handful of times.”

“We’ve only got one patrol vehicle?”