The Priority Unit (Maine Justice Book 1)

by Davis, Susan Page

  “Thanks, Mike.”

  “Maybe you should sit down.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “All right, the boys will be here any second with the warrants.”

  Harvey nodded. “I suggest we make sure Rainey and Channing don’t slip out the back door in the meantime.”

  “And Macomber would know where we can lay our hands on the special software?”

  “If they haven’t moved it out of the building yet. There should still be a copy here, at least.”

  The door opened, and Eddie came in. “We’re all set. I’ve got six men around the perimeter and four for in here.”

  Mike nodded. “Extreme caution, Eddie.” His phone whirred, and Mike flipped it open while Eddie and Harvey waited. Mike’s eyes flicked to Harvey. “Okay. Got it. Thanks.”

  He put the phone in his pocket, frowning with regret. “Harvey, I’m sorry.”

  “What is it?”

  “Jennifer’s car has been involved in an accident on Brighton Avenue. The 1200 block. Go. We’ve got things covered here.”

  *****

  The ambulance pulled away as Harvey arrived. Three black and white city patrol cars were lined up to one side with their blue lights flashing. Harvey double-parked his Explorer and hurried past the patrolman directing traffic. He recognized the officer who stood next to the first marked car.

  “Detective Larson,” he said, waving his badge. “What happened?”

  The uniformed officer blinked at him. “Hey, Larson. One car. Side-swiped that utility pole pretty hard. They took the guy to Maine Medical.”

  “Guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wasn’t there a woman in the car?”

  “Yeah, she was driving. She’s shook up, but she’ll be okay.”

  “Where is she?”

  The officer nodded toward the next car. Harvey walked toward it, half afraid he would find Tessa Comeau there.

  Jennifer looked very small, sitting in the squad car. Her face was streaked with tears. Harvey opened the door, and she caught her breath and stared up at him.

  “Hey, gorgeous.”

  Very slowly, she lifted her arms.

  “Are you okay?” He pulled her to her feet and put his arms around her. She clung to him with all the tenacity he could have hoped for.

  “I hit the telephone pole,” she whispered, burrowing her face into his collar. “They think I’m a dumb blonde.”

  “You’re not.”

  She gulped. “He wasn’t wearing his seat belt, and I was. I figured it was worth a shot.”

  “It was perfect.” He ran his hand the length of her braid, from the ridiculous red bow at her neck to the elastic at the back of her waist.

  “I think Massal’s hurt bad, Harvey. And Jane’s rice is all over the place.”

  He smiled and patted her shoulders. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”

  Still she didn’t loosen her hold around his neck. He turned around and leaned against the squad car, holding her. One of the patrolmen came toward them, but stopped a few paces away.

  “Where’s Tessa?” Harvey asked.

  Jennifer pushed away and looked up at him, her big gray eyes rimmed in red. “I don’t know. She got out when Massal got in. You know about Tessa?”

  “I’m putting it together.”

  “She threw my phone out the window. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, that was me. Couldn’t stand to go a whole shift without talking to you.”

  She pulled in a ragged breath, and he hauled her in close again. Deep, wrenching sobs started low in her chest and wracked through her. Harvey held her, stroking her head and shoulders. “It’s okay.”

  “God was with me,” she choked.

  “Yes, God was with you.”

  *****

  Beth and Harvey babied her that night. After the shock wore off, Jennifer discovered that her nose hurt and her cheeks felt as though she was sunburned. The airbag had left its mark. She couldn’t think about food without feeling nauseous, and Beth made a pot of peppermint tea in their kitchen. Beth pampered Harvey, too, and fed him supper, not letting him do anything to help.

  “You’re still healing,” she insisted.

  Mike called and talked to Harvey for a long time, then Harvey sat on the couch with Jennifer with his arms around her and told her the CIA was very happy with her and the Portland P.D. Priority Unit. The CIA’s best computer man had cracked the secret program with the passwords Jennifer gave them, and they were turning it over to the Pentagon.

  “The bits you knew were enough, and they got through the rest. They’re not done analyzing it, but they think the program would have let the Iranians access our most confidential military files.”

  “What happened at work?” she asked.

  “Mike and Eddie rounded up the partners and Tom Henderson. We’ll be looking closely at all the employees. Owen was picked up in Boston, but they don’t think he was in on Dunham’s murder.”

  “No? I’m glad. He was nice to me.”

  Harvey nodded. “Mike’s thinking all three partners went into the deal with Massal, but when Nick learned what they were doing, Rainey and Channing made the decision to have him killed. They’re claiming Massal insisted.”

  Jennifer sobbed, and he held her closer.

  When she was calm again, he wiped the tears gently from her cheeks and said, “Jane told them Tessa wouldn’t leave town without her daughter, and she was right. They picked Tessa up at the daycare when she went for the little girl.”

  “She wasn’t the one who shot Nick,” Jennifer said with certainty.

  “No, she was just the decoy. But they were paying her well to be convincing.”

  “I didn’t suspect a thing.”

  Harvey shrugged. “The up side is that you don’t have to go back to work there again. Coastal Technology is dissolved, and a court will decide what’s going to happen to the company’s assets.”

  “So what do I do now?”

  “Just rest until your new job starts.” He stroked her hair as her head came down gently on his shoulder. “You know, I almost bought stock in Coastal last week.”

  “What about Hamad, the translator?” Jennifer asked. “Is he going to be charged, too?”

  Harvey looked over at the Van Gogh print. “He, uh—” He looked down into her persistent gray eyes. “He’s dead.”

  She took a deep breath, but she didn’t ask him what happened. Instead, she whispered, “They were going to kill you. Massal said in the car that they sent someone to shoot you today. He told me you were probably already dead.”

  “I’m not.” He held her head against his shoulder.

  Beth came in from the kitchen and shook her head at the sight of them.

  “You both need some recovery time, Harvey. You’d better go home and get some sleep. I’ll get Jennifer to bed.”

  “Guess you’re right.” He tipped Jennifer’s face up and kissed her tenderly.

  “I’m sorry I fell apart.” She sniffed.

  “Jenny, Jenny. You were terrific.”

  *****

  Harvey drove with Jennifer up to Rockland in his Explorer that Saturday. Jennifer had been home to Skowhegan for two days, and her mother and sisters had fussed over her and made her rest. Harvey had worked with the CIA unit all week, helping them check other programs they found in Coastal’s vault, looking for other illegal operations, and acting as liaison for the Portland P.D. Every day the press wanted more information on the spy case.

  They walked out to the lighthouse on the breakwater. Harvey kept Jennifer’s hand in his as they stepped over the cracks between the uneven granite blocks. It was a long walk out the causeway, nearly a mile, and when they got to the lighthouse they were ready to sit for a while. Beyond the house that supported the square beacon tower, they commandeered a rock part way down the drop toward the water.

  Other people were standing and sitting on the rocks, looking out over the harbor. Harvey sat with his arm around Je
nnifer for a long time, facing out to sea.

  A schooner put out from Rockland, and it came quite close to the lighthouse. Tourists who had paid handsomely for the cruise worked the rigging, and the sails went up as the ship passed. They watched in silence as it moved past the breakwater and out toward the bay. Seagulls landed on the rocks below them and picked at the seaweed.

  “How could I not have known they were making spy programs?” she asked at last. “I feel so stupid.”

  “Most of the programs were legit.”

  “I should have—”

  “Stop, Jenny. That building was full of smart people, and you were one of the few to pick up on it. Don’t make it your fault. It isn’t.” He squeezed her a little, and got just a twinge from his sore ribs.

  They sat a few minutes more. She asked a woman they didn’t know to take a picture with her phone. “To show Eddie and Sarah,” she said. They were adding to the catalog of happy memories. Harvey liked that.

  When they started the long walk back, the wind came up, whipping Jennifer’s hair all over. Harvey took a picture of her on the causeway, with boats in the background and her hair swirling. Then he kissed her, and she protested because it was a public place, but not too much. On the seaward side of the breakwater, gentle waves began to wash over the tumbled granite slabs that dashed them into foam, and the spray splashed up toward them.

  They stopped for lobsters at a shorefront restaurant, then headed home, down Route 1. Harvey spotted a used book shop, and the Explorer seemed to turn in at the drive of its own accord.

  Classical music was playing when they walked in. “What is that?” Harvey asked, jerking his head toward the speaker over the counter.

  “Handel’s Water Music,” said Jennifer.

  The bookstore was perfect, all short hallways and little rooms by topic, and shelves from floor to ceiling packed with used books, thousands upon thousands. The store was bigger than it had looked from outside, with alcoves and crannies and dead ends everywhere. Larger rooms led into one another. Harvey got sidetracked in Aviation, and Jennifer wandered on down the aisle. He saw her disappear into History. He went looking for her and stopped a few minutes in Criminal Justice, which filled a nook about the size of a phone booth. It took him a while to find her. He went through Biography and Cookbooks and into Fiction. Then it was genre fiction, and he meandered through Westerns, Sci-Fi, and Suspense. He had thought he would find her there.

  She was way back in Romance, which surprised him, with a paperback in her hand. He was sure there was nobody within three crannies, so he put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. She looked up at him and smiled. “Hi!”

  “It’s so romantic in here. Whatcha reading?”

  “Elizabeth Cadell.” She held up the book and he read the title, The Toy Sword.

  “I don’t know this author.”

  “You’d like her. She’s an older author. A lot of her books have mysteries in them.”

  He kissed her again, finding her lips this time. Elizabeth Cadell fell to the floor with a thump.

  “Harvey, you can’t do that in a bookstore,” she said softly.

  “But Romance is all around us.” She cuddled down against his chest, and he held her. “Jennifer, I love you. Will you marry me?”

  She sighed.

  The music coming softly over a speaker changed to Pachelbel’s Canon in D. That he recognized.

  “I love that piece,” said Jennifer.

  “Come down the aisle to it.”

  “If you want.”

  His arms tightened. “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes.”

  He kissed her again, thoroughly this time, amid the floor-to-ceiling Romance. She pushed him away. “You can’t do—”

  “Yes, I can. Marry me soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  She laughed. “Can’t. It’s too soon.”

  “Next week, then.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It wouldn’t be fair to my family.”

  “They can be there.”

  “Yes, but I’m the first child getting married. We have to have the church, and engraved invitations, and my sisters in formal gowns, and you and Eddie in tuxedoes.”

  “We do?”

  “Definitely.” She snuggled in again.

  “Okay. Two weeks.”

  She laughed again.

  “How soon, minimum?” Harvey asked.

  “Three months.”

  “One month,” he countered.

  “Three.”

  He kissed her.

  “One month,” he said.

  “Two.”

  “One.” He kissed her again, both his hands in her hair.

  “Six weeks, and that’s my limit,” she said, close to his ear.

  “Six weeks, then.” Footsteps approached the doorway of the Romance room. He stooped to pick up the book she had dropped. “Come on,” he said. “You promised me you’d help pick out a sofa.”

  THE END

  The Maine Justice Series Continues. . .

  In Book 2, Fort Point, one of Maine’s most famous authors is murdered the night after his class reunion. Harvey and his partner, Eddie Thibodeau, must solve the crime. Meanwhile, Jennifer plans the wedding but manages to hand the detectives some important clues, and the Priority Unit learns the police chief has had a tragic accident.

  In Book 3, Found Art, Harvey and Jennifer become fine art aficionados to help solve Harvey’s case concerning a ring of art thieves. The Larsons settle into their idyllic home life, but things take a terrifying turn when they dig too deep. Meanwhile, Jennifer’s sister Abby comes to stay, and Harvey finds himself sorting out her suitors. Should he lift his ban on Eddie when it comes to dating his sisters-in-law? Worst of all, can Harvey put aside his longing for vengeance when Jennifer’s old boyfriend crosses his radar?

  Watch for Eddie’s Story and more books in this series!

  For a sneak peek at the second book, Fort Point, turn the page.

  Chapter 1

  Monday, June 21

  As much as he enjoyed the challenge of a new case, Detective Harvey Larson loathed investigating celebrity deaths. His partner, Eddie Thibodeau, and two patrolmen who had been the first responders stood beside him at the edge of the Fore River, looking down at the body of a middle-aged man.

  “As soon as we read his name, we looked at him and figured it was really him,” said Officer Hal Downey. “When I called it in, the sergeant said he’d call the chief.”

  “So you’re the one responsible for rousting us out at 5 a.m.,” Eddie muttered, staring down at the bedraggled corpse.

  “You did the right thing,” Harvey said, wishing he’d had coffee and another hour of sleep. “Is this where you found him?”

  “No, the tide was starting to come in, and we had to move him,” Downey said. “Didn’t want him to wash out to sea.”

  “So where was he?”

  Patrolman Joe Clifford pointed. “Out there. The spot’s under water now.”

  Harvey scowled. Who knew what evidence they’d lost?

  “We looked around, but there was nothing else.” Downey’s jaw had a stubborn set. “His wallet was in his pocket.”

  “Okay, thanks. You got the info on the guy who called it in?”

  “That’s him.” Clifford pointed to the nearest house, where a man stood on the back deck, overlooking the estuary.

  Harvey nodded. He’d had the perfect view when the tide was lowest and the mud flats were exposed. The longest day of the year. Any other day, and the sun might not have been up when the man strolled out on his deck with his early morning coffee.

  Harvey looked upstream to where Route 9 crossed the water on a bridge near the airport entrance. The place was known as Stroudwater Crossing. A lot of traffic passed over that bridge day and night.

  He exhaled slowly. With internationally acclaimed author Martin Blake lying dead at his feet, he could bank on a long
day.

  “I guess they sent you guys instead of Homicide because of who he is,” Downey said.

  “You got that right,” Eddie told him. The chief of police had assigned the case to their elite Priority Unit, and it was the captain, Mike Crowley, who had called Harvey and torn him from his dreams.

  He glanced at Downey, who had taken the initial statement of the homeowner who spotted the body. “M.E. on the way?”

  “Yeah.”

  Harvey nodded and knelt beside the muddy corpse. His initial examination revealed a wound high in Blake’s abdomen. It looked like a knife wound; the medical examiner would tell them for sure later. He didn’t think Blake had been in the water long. The body was fully clothed in a brown tweed sport coat, striped shirt, dark brown pants, and white sneakers. Very ordinary clothes for such a rich guy.

  He searched Blake’s pockets and dropped each item into a bag Eddie held: a key ring with a dozen keys, a waterlogged pocket notebook, three pens, a dollar twenty-two in change, a pocketknife, and a soaked business card.

  He took the soggy wallet from Clifford. It held Blake’s driver’s license, three credit cards, a medical insurance card, four library cards, eighty-seven dollars in bills, three photos, and a year-old-fishing license.

  “Not a robbery,” Eddie said.

  Harvey studied the driver’s license, effortlessly memorizing the address and vital statistics. Blake was 53, and his house was half a mile away. Harvey glanced toward the street. A couple of cars had stopped, and several people now watched from the lawn of the nearest house.

  “Keep the spectators away,” he said, and the two patrolmen headed toward the bystanders. Harvey called for a mobile crime unit.

  The medical examiner arrived within minutes. Harvey sent Eddie to have a word with the homeowner, to make sure the patrolmen hadn’t missed anything, while he talked to the M.E. After making his preliminary exam, the doctor prepared the body to be taken to the morgue for the autopsy. Harvey took Blake’s watch and wedding ring. The clothes would be sent over to the police station later. No cell phone. Had he left it home, or was it in the river?