Glass Eels, Shattered Sea

by Charlene D'Avanzo

  The schoolhouse clock on the wall clicked one, two, three, four minutes. Connor paced while I stared at the phone and Ted looked out the window.

  Finally, Dunn was back. “Hello? Are you all there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Message from Shu. They know they’ve got Harvey and not Mara, but don’t seem to care. They want us to work with the Marine Patrol folks who have Shu’s son and arrange a swap in a town called Carlisle.”

  “That’s about ten miles north of here,” Connor said.

  “Yes,” Dunn agreed. “I see it on the map. Look, I’ve got to convince Marine Patrol to agree to this. Be back in touch soon as I possibly can.”

  And with that the lieutenant was gone once more.

  The rate at which the minutes ticked by was painfully slow, and my repeated glances at the clock made no difference at all.

  Suddenly, Dunn’s voice filled the empty lab. “They’ve identified a large empty parking lot next to a church on a street that runs perpendicular to Route One.”

  “Name of the church?” Connor asked.

  “Yes, I have that,” Dunn said. “Saint Mary’s.”

  “I know it. Buddy of mine got married there a while back,” Connor said.

  “Can you describe the church, parking lot, and what’s around?” Dunn asked.

  Thinking, Connor looked to the side. “Let’s see. That church is old, traditional, and large. Made of granite, I think. The parking lot’s pretty big. There’s a good-sized graveyard too. What’s around, I don’t remember so well. Maybe just the neighborhood?”

  “My sergeant’s just handed me an aerial photo of the church,” Dunn said. “You’re right, the parking lot is very large. I see the graveyard. There seems to be a playing field of some sort. No houses close by.”

  “So they can see everything that goes on and so can we,” I said.

  “Right,” Dunn agreed. “That, apparently, is the idea.”

  “Lieutenant, I assume you’re doing this straight,” Connor said. “Do the swap and get out.”

  “Correct,” Dunn said. “Soon as we get Harvey, we leave.”

  “And I want to be there,” Connor said.

  Dunn hesitated for a moment, and I thought he was going to disagree. Instead he said, “That’s a good idea. You’re a cop who has actually visited this church, and you know Harvey.”

  I waited until Connor and Dunn had finished working out the logistics before speaking. “Lieutenant Dunn, horrible as this situation is, I feel a lot better knowing Connor is working with you.”

  “Good,” Dunn said. “There’s one more thing. I asked about your car, and they said they left it in a supermarket parking lot at the north end of Spruce Harbor.”

  “That was surprisingly nice of them.”

  “They’re not being nice, Mara. The hostage swap hasn’t happened yet, and they want to keep things on an even keel.”

  “Right,” I said. “Ted and I can pick up my car while Connor gets Harvey. That’d be a lot better than hanging around here waiting for news.”

  45

  My car was easy to find, but learning the situation with Harvey was not. Ted parked his truck next to my abandoned Subaru in the supermarket lot. Seated in the truck, cell phones in hand, we stared at the screens of our respective phones and willed the frustratingly quiet devices to come to life.

  “How long it is now?” I asked.

  Rubbing his eyes, Ted said, “Five minutes since I last told you.”

  “Connor left an hour ago. We should’ve heard something by now.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Mara. Connor or Dunn will call as soon as they can. They’ve got a lot on their plate right now.”

  Ted was right, of course. Lieutenant Dunn and Connor were focused on Harvey’s safety, not telling us what was going on. They would communicate as soon as they could.

  Hoping for a little moral support, I stared out the window and said, “This shouldn’t have happened to Harvey. They were looking for me, and I feel really guilty.”

  “Come on, Mara,” Ted said. “You’re a scientist and that doesn’t make sense. It’s not logical.”

  I twirled around to face him and spat out my reply. “Logic! My closest friend was kidnapped by dangerous criminals when it should’ve been me. She’s terrified and doesn’t know what’s going on. Of course I feel guilty!”

  Pulling back, Ted frowned. “Take it easy, Mara. I was just making a point about scientists.”

  Given the situation, arguing with Ted about my feelings seemed petty. Annoyed nonetheless, I let it go and continued to stare out the window at nothing.

  Minutes, a half hour, an hour, then two hours went by. Ted got out of the car, walked around the parking lot, came back, did it again. He asked if I wanted to join him, but I held on to my irrational belief that staying in the car would hasten Harvey’s rescue.

  My cell phone’s buzzing startled me, and I nearly dropped it. “Lieutenant Dunn? How’s Harvey? What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got her,” Dunn said. “Less than an hour with us to answer some questions, and she and Connor will be on their way home.” The phone clicked and Dunn was gone.

  Half-laughing, half-crying, I grabbed Ted’s arm. “Harvey is safe. She and Connor can go home after Dunn speaks with them. Let’s get food for dinner at this supermarket and meet them there. I know where she hides a key.”

  We had just unloaded the grocery bags in the kitchen when Connor and Harvey rolled into the driveway. Ted and I ran out to meet them, and I pounced on Harvey as she climbed down from Connor’s truck. The words tumbled out. “Oh my god, are you okay? I’m so sorry it wasn’t me. Did they hurt you? What happened?”

  Harvey took both my hands in hers. “Slow down, Mara. I’m fine. Nothing bad happened. I’ll tell you about it, but all I want to do right now is sit down in my living room with a glass of wine.”

  On our way to the front door, Harvey and I walked past the guys. Squeezing Connor’s arm, Ted said, “Good man, good man.”

  “Connor,” I said over my shoulder, “I owe you one huge Irish kiss.”

  Grinning to beat the band, Connor winked.

  Holding hands, Connor and Harvey sat hip to hip on the living room couch. Understanding his need to keep her close, she used her other hand to lift the wine glass off the coffee table.

  “Harvey, start at the beginning,” I said. “We want to hear it all. Assuming you’re up for that, of course.”

  “It’s okay, but Dunn grilled me and you’ll get the condensed version,” she said. “I’ll start from when I left the building though the back door. It was raining pretty hard, and I was happy to have your raincoat, Mara. I got into the Subaru, drove through the lot, and turned onto the road. Not far out of Spruce Harbor, a tan van passed me. A mile or so down the road, the van was on the side of the road. There was a guy leaning back against it, holding a map. He looked lost and kind of pathetic in the rain so I pulled over and rolled down the window. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and I couldn’t see his face very well, but he struck me as foreign. The guy pointed to a supermarket parking lot maybe thirty feet ahead. It was much safer than the roadside, so I drove into the lot and the van pulled up next to me.”

  She took a sip of wine before continuing.

  “The side door opened, and two guys stepped out. They had me in that van before I knew what was happening. The door slid shut, and the van took off.”

  “Wow,” I said. “As easy as that. It’s terrifying.”

  Harvey continued with her story. “Actually, I was too surprised to be scared, at least at first. One of the guys who grabbed me—I sat between him and the other one—kept repeating your name, Mara. He had a strong accent that sounded Mandarin. It was a minute before I understood what he saying.”

  Harvey reached for her wine, finished it, and replaced the glass. “I realized right away what had happened and repeated, ‘No. My name is not Mara,’ several times. That’s when the driver and
the guy seated next to him up front began to argue with each other. Again, it sounded like Mandarin to me. I never did see either of their faces.”

  “Seems like they realized right away they’d grabbed the wrong woman,” I said. “Then they had to figure out what to do.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Harvey said. “But instead of stopping and letting me go, they kept driving. After the two guys up front went back and forth rapid-fire for a while, the one not driving used his cell phone to call someone.”

  “That must’ve been when they called Tommy Shu,” I said.

  “Lieutenant Dunn told me a little about Shu,” Harvey said. “A well-known eel trafficker, apparently.”

  “Whose son was arrested on Little Moose Island by Marine Patrol,” I said.

  “After he nearly succeeded in drowning a female oceanographer who had a red raincoat,” Ted added.

  “Good lord,” Connor said. “This is beginning to sound like a tangled Celtic story.”

  “Except,” I said, “Nobody died, thank goodness.”

  Connor finished the narrative with a description of the swap. “If I do say so myself, it came off beautifully. Like you see in the movies.”

  “Naturally, I’m glad of that,” Ted said. “But it’s surprising Marine Patrol would give up this Shu character so easily. After all, he made Mara jump into freezing water so she’d drown.”

  Wiggling his eyebrows, Connor said, “Well, there’s something none of you know.”

  Harvey turned to look at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Marine Patrol is using a GPS tracker of some sort to follow Shu’s movements. I don’t know any details, only that they’ve planted a device on the guy.” Connor held up his hands. “Truthfully, that’s all I the information I have.”

  46

  After the day’s drama, the simple act of making dinner together in Harvey’s kitchen was the everyday balm we all needed. Between trips to the refrigerator and cupboards, we chopped, mixed, and stirred—and talked about everything but police, traffickers, hostage swaps, and tracking devices. Even raincoats were off the table.

  After a dessert of ice cream and strawberries, I said, “What a terrific ending to an, um, extraordinary day. If it’s good with Ted, I think we should take off. We’re all pretty tired.”

  “Absolutely,” Ted said. “Harvey and Connor probably want some time to themselves.”

  Yawning, Harvey said, “Actually, all I want right now is a hot shower and my bed.”

  I had followed Ted to Harvey’s house in my Subaru, so he and I drove to my house in our respective vehicles. Lying next to me in bed a while later, Ted pulled me close and said, “When I think what could’ve happened…”

  I placed my finger on his lips. “No thinking right now. Maybe something else?”

  The next morning after breakfast I described Dunn’s concern for my safety. “Lieutenant Dunn believes Shu is worried that I know something—that Jack or Nelson gave me some damaging information.”

  Frowning, Ted asked, “What kind of information?”

  I shrugged. “That’s part of the problem. I have no idea, but it’s something Shu wants to keep from Dunn. In any case, the lieutenant is happy you’re staying here.”

  Sitting back in his chair, Ted crossed his arms and shook his head.

  “What?” I asked.

  “This Shu character is obviously very dangerous, Mara. Surely you know that. I can’t be a twenty-four-hour bodyguard for you.”

  Standing, I knocked my mug of coffee off the table. It shattered onto the floor. “Goddamn it, Ted. Nobody said anything about a bodyguard.”

  Ted stood and carried his cereal bowl to the sink. “I’ve got another conference call this morning, Mara, and a visiting scientist to show around this afternoon. We can talk about this later when you’ve calmed down.” He grabbed his coat from the clothes tree, stepped out the kitchen door, and was gone.

  Muttering to myself, I swept the shattered crockery into a dustpan. “When I’ve calmed down? Ted, you’re the one who got all hot and bothered about this Shu character.”

  The rest of the day didn’t go particularly well. My email inbox included a reminder from the journal Oceanography Letters about a paper I had promised to review. I tried to concentrate on the paper, to say something intelligent, but gave up after the third failed attempt. Such was the fate of two student research proposals I had offered to critique, as well. MOI’s lunchtime talk, “Chemosensitivity of the Walking Legs of the American Lobster,” was a snooze—even Homer would have been bored. Hoping to connect with Ted, I worked in the lab sorting seaweed samples, but he never showed up. Too late, I remembered the scientist he volunteered to take care of.

  By late afternoon I gave up, left a “See You Around Six” note on Ted’s door, and drove home. Bumping down the road to the house, I decided to go kayaking.

  “It’s a perfect day for a paddle,” I said aloud. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

  I unstrapped and lowered my seventeen-foot-long, two-foot-wide sea kayak from the rack where I store it during kayak season. There, just below the dunes on my beach, the boat was beyond the reaches of the highest tide but easy to carry down to the water. Inside the cockpit was a Greenland-style wooden paddle on loan from another Spruce Harbor sea kayaker who had left for a month-long vacation weeks earlier. Balancing the sleek cedar paddle in both hands, I was amazed how light it was. Many kayakers swore by Greenland “sticks,” but I had never given one a try.

  I realized that this might be my last opportunity to do so before the owner claimed her paddle and secured it on the deck behind my seat with bungee cords. Using my usual carbon-fiber paddle, I headed out for open water. As tension left my neck and shoulders, I raised my arms, held the paddle high overhead, and let out a loud, “Whoop!”

  Sea kayaking does that to me.

  It was a perfect day to go sea kayaking. Although the seawater was still a chilly forty-five or so degrees, with the bright sun and light breeze it felt much warmer. Of course, I was cocooned in the kayak cockpit by my spray skirt. The paddle jacket, wetsuit, booties, and life jacket I always wore also kept me snug and toasty.

  When the weather and ocean state cooperate, even handling a sea kayak as long and narrow as mine doesn’t require much attention. Left, right, left, right, I dipped the paddle on one side of the boat and then the other. Such repetition frees the mind for other matters, such as the state of the world, what’s for dinner, or unfamiliar challenges of living with one’s lover.

  Deciding not to dwell on my domestic challenges, I chose instead to pay attention to Mother Nature’s marvels. There was much to see and wonder about. Did that splash on the sea surface mean striped bass had finally come up from the south? How deep could I see down into the water? Twenty feet, thirty feet, more? A seal stuck its snout out of the water to my right and then slipped down into the water. Where did it go?

  47

  Gliding past a good-sized square mussel raft that had suddenly appeared offshore a couple of months earlier, I considered stopping to take a look but quickly rejected the idea. The last time my kayak and I slid beneath a mussel raft’s platform, a dead body had popped up out of the water among the dangling lines and scared the bejesus out of me.

  Understandably, after that I eschewed exploring aquaculture rafts like it.

  Just past the raft, it dawned on me that I had forgotten to check the weather or bring my weather radio. Glancing overhead at the sky, I frowned at cumulus clouds to the west that had pushed their way high into the atmosphere.

  “Probably nothing to worry about,” I said aloud. “But better keep an eye on it.”

  Sliding to a stop for a moment, I scanned the seascape in front of me. Although low in the water, we sea kayakers can see floating objects ahead we might need to avoid, such as lobster buoys or drifting pieces of wood and other debris. Fast-moving motorboats are also easy to spot as they bounce along on the waves—unless, of course, the boat is racing toward the pad
dler from behind at fifty-plus mph and the wind is in the kayaker’s face.

  Such was the case with the speedboat aimed right at me. The boat was about a half mile away when the whine of its motor finally wormed its way into my brain. Since the powerboat that jetted from one wave crest to the next was probably doing sixty, I figured it could overtake me in roughly a minute.

  I could guess, but wasn’t sure, who was in the boat that arrowed toward me, but waiting to find out seemed like a lousy idea. Quickly abandoning escape as an option, my mind ran through avoidance maneuvers. Rolling the kayak was one idea, but my underwater time was limited by how long I could hold my breath.

  Glancing behind me, I saw the mussel raft riding up and down with the swells. It was big enough for me to hide behind—or under in a pinch.

  I immediately abandoned my decision to avoid aquaculture rafts, paddled flat-out for the platform, circled around it, and stopped below a blue wooden box on the platform, labeled “SCUBA” in red. Leaning to the side to see around the box, I watched the speedboat glide by, a hundred feet away. Against the backdrop of an ink-black sky on the horizon, the boat was ghostly white. Flashes of light in the distance foretold the coming storm.

  I flattened my body across the kayak’s bow, slid beneath the raft, grabbed a few lines to pull myself toward the center, and came to a stop, surrounded by dangling ropes covered with little mussels.

  The speedboat circled the raft, its powerful motors gurgling. Suddenly the boat went still. Peering through the murk, I watched the ghostly hull slowly slide to a stop. Decked out with the latest satellite and GPS receivers on top of the cabin, it looked like an expensive craft.

  The voice, foreign and harsh, echoed beneath the platform. The man speaking through the megaphone had a strong accent, which I guessed was Chinese.

  “Come out so I can talk wis you.”

  Sure, I thought to myself. I’ll just float out in my skinny little kayak to talk to an animal trafficker who had been on my trail for weeks.