Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II (Last Policeman Trilogy) by Winters Ben H

Author:Winters, Ben H. [Winters, Ben H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781594746277
Publisher: Quirk Books
Published: 2013-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

1.

Route 4 meanders eastward from Durham and then north-northeast along the line of the Piscataqua River, offering me a wide rolling view of Portsmouth Harbor: rusting lobster traps bobbing unattended; boats listing in their abandonment, paint peeling, hulls jutting out of the shallows.

It’s just me this time, bright and early and out on my mission. Detective Palace, retired, on his ten-speed with the dog hitched to the back in the little red wagon.

Cutts Neck—Raynes Neck—the long span of Memorial Bridge reaching high over the harbor. Then the series of roundabouts that spit you out onto 103 East. I know this route by pure sense memory from our handful of summers at York Beach, before the bottom fell out of my childhood. I roll past the big blue donut that had marked Louie’s Roadside Diner, now torn from its mooring by weather or vandals and lolling across the parking lot like a giant’s abandoned toy.

The sun is almost all the way up now, it’s close to nine, and I’m leaning into the curve of the third roundabout, navigating around the pits and gashes in the asphalt, speeding past the gates of Portsmouth Naval Station on the seaward side. I’m coming. The woods huddle in close against the road as 103 crosses the border and cuts into southeastern Maine, gives up its last pretense of being a highway and settles down into a crooked little two-lane road with a faded yellow line down the middle.

Here I come.

* * *

Fort Riley, when I find it, sits on the northern lip of Portsmouth Harbor, a castle keep built on a cliff wall, staring out at the sea. For a couple hundred years it was an active United States Army fort, minding the coast during the Revolution, the War of 1812, all the way up to World War II, when civil reserves in green helmets would sit in seaside redoubts like this one, up and down the coast, peering out at the northern Atlantic for U-boats. For half a century Riley was a state park and historical site; now it’s where Brett Cavatone, my missing man, has come to make camp. I turn off the highway into the parking lot, a long narrow spit of gravel with dense woods to the left and, to the right, the high tumbling stone wall of the old fort itself.

I get off the bike and lift Houdini from the wagon and set him down in the gravel. My chest is thick with anticipation. The air smells like the sea. He’s here, I’m thinking. This is it. Hello, sir. My name is Henry Palace.

I walk slowly down the length of the parking lot, hands out of my pockets and slightly raised, a picture of harmlessness, in case anyone is watching—anyone with a pair of sniper rifles and reason to be wary of visitors. There’s one car in the lot, a gray Buick LeSabre with Quebec plates and all four tires shot out. In the backseat, a teddy bear and an Uno deck.

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