The Edge

He got out of the car and drew close enough to see.

BERTIE’S BOAT.

Named after his dead wife.

Behind the house was a small building with curtained windows that he hadn’t noticed on his previous night’s recon.

He stepped up to the porch and was about to knock when the door opened and he was staring at the business end of an over-and-under shotgun.

Earl Palmer stood there in a red thermal underwear shirt and soiled dungarees, white socks on shoeless feet. He had about an inch in height on Devine and looked ruggedly strong with a barrel chest and long arms that tapered to slender hips and thin, bowed legs. Not bad for a man in his latter seventies, thought Devine. But lobster fishing demanded a lot of physical strength, he reckoned.

Up close he looked like a taller, broader Robert Frost, thought Devine, who had read the man’s poetry at West Point. His comrades at the Point had teased him about this, until some pretty local girls they had gone into town to see had told them that they found an interest in poetry incredibly attractive in a man. All the way back to West Point the guys had pestered him for details on some of Frost’s best-known lines that they could use for their own pickup efforts.

“‘Two roads diverged in the woods and I, I took the one less traveled,’” he had told them. He had learned that the line was often misinterpreted because Frost had regrets in his life and had not actually taken that road. When his buddies asked him what it meant he said, with all sincerity, “We chose a path almost no one else does. We’re going to risk our lives to protect our country and way of life. We chose the most honorable journey and also the most dangerous. It’s a selfless act of sacrifice in a country that routinely worships individualism over the collective.”

None of them had expected that response, he could tell. Hell, he still didn’t know exactly from where inside him those words had come. They had ridden the rest of the way back in silence, each man seemingly lost in thought over what Devine had said.

Devine had lost four of his classmates to war, including one in their group from that night, and three more to suicide after tours of duty that had forced them to see and do things that people should not have to ever see or do.

“Who are you?” Palmer said in a steady, calm voice that put Devine more on edge than if the man had been screaming. “I don’t know you. What are you doing on my property?”

“Travis Devine. I’m with Homeland Security. I’m here investigating Jenny Silkwell’s murder. I wanted to ask you a few questions, if I may.”

“Let me see some ID. Slow,” Palmer added.

Devine tentatively reached into his coat pocket and produced his identification.

“Hold it up high so I can see it.”

Devine did so and Palmer studied it at eye level before reluctantly lowering his weapon.

“What do you want to know?”

“Can we do this inside?” said Devine as the rain started up again. The porch had no roof, so he was getting the full effect.

Palmer stepped aside and motioned him in with the gun muzzle. Then he closed the door and pointed Devine into the room overlooking the front yard.

It was small and minimally furnished, but as neat and organized as, well, a ship’s cabin, concluded Devine. There was a woodstove that was generating considerable and welcome warmth. On a wooden shelf bolted to the wall were pictures of various people. Devine saw a younger Annie and what were probably her parents. And hugging Earl Palmer was, no doubt, his wife, Alberta. They looked about as much in love as a couple could be. And that picture was fairly recent, he could tell.

Palmer broke the breech on his gun and carefully set it on a table by the window. Devine sat in an old, rumpled chair by the woodstove. A stiff-moving Palmer opened the stove door and threw in some more pellets. Then he moved over to a new-looking recliner and picked up a remote. The chair lifted up so that he barely had to bend his knees to sit down. When he did, he hit another button and the chair lowered.

“Nifty,” said Devine.

“Damn body’s useless. Feel like an infant. Be wearing a diaper before long.”

Palmer set the remote aside and clenched the chair’s arms with his thick, gnarled hands. His eyes were a soft gray, and his disheveled silky white hair provided a sharp contrast to the reddened weather-beaten face lying just below it. “What do you want to know? I found her, that’s it. I don’t know any more than that.”

“Can you walk me through the time you left your house that night and when you found the body?”

“Why?”

“Because it might make you remember something new. Please,” he added. “Anything to help me find out who killed her.”

“I thought the chief and Wendy—”

Devine said, “Jenny Silkwell worked for the federal government. That makes it our concern. I’m sure you can understand. But I am working with the local police on the case.”

Palmer slowly nodded. “There always was scuttlebutt about what Jenny did. Top-secret stuff, I guess. Why you’re here, ain’t it?”