Misery Bay Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Chris Angus

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Yucca Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Jacket design by Karis Drake

  Jacket photo by Tomasz Zajda and Dollar Photo Club

  Print ISBN: 978–1-63158–083-3

  Ebook ISBN: 978–1-63158–090-1

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Jim

  1

  GARRETT STAMPED HIS FEET IN a vain attempt to create some warmth in his toes. The last time he’d been in Point Pleasant Park, it had been a sweltering ninety-five degrees and he’d been tossing back bottles of Keith’s Ale with Lonnie following a Saturday afternoon baseball game. That was the first time it had struck him that the park swelled out into Halifax harbor like a woman’s breast, the point a perfect nipple. Of course, it could have been the beer.

  He could see the breakwater through the steady rain pelting his jacket and dripping off the brim of his Calgary Stampeders cap. During working hours, the area was a busy port. Behind a chain-link fence, hundreds of railcar-sized containers rose five and six high against a backdrop of enormous orange and white cranes that towered a hundred feet into the sky, their tops disappearing into the fog. They stood like mute, alien sentinels, something out of H. G. Wells.

  A freighter, engines pounding, moved stolidly through the gloom, past George’s Island, heading for the North Atlantic. He could just make out the name on her bow, Ward of the North, cribbed from a famous book about the city of Halifax.

  The fog-softened lights of Dartmouth, Halifax’s poor twin city, floated on the opposite shore like army helicopters preparing to land and take on the cranes. Streaks of rain emerged from a stainless-steel sky, as devoid of depth as the inside of an aluminum pot. The pockmarked surface of the bay gave the entire scene the look of a pointillist painting crafted by an artist with just a single color on his palette.

  Alvin, all five foot seven inches of him, stood hunched against the rain, a cigarette glowing in his mouth. “Shit for weather,” he said. “Whole summer’s been nothing but one hurricane after another. Never seen anything like it.” He took the smoke out of his mouth, hocked up an enormous green gob, and spat it on the ground. “Shouldn’t be long now,” he said.

  “Provided your tip was accurate,” said Garrett. He had his doubts. Alvin was enthusiastic for a rookie barely two years on the force, almost gullible, though no one would say that to his face. He had a fuse as short as his stature and, for a little guy, threw a wallop of a punch.

  Instead of answering, Alvin grabbed his forearm. A black sedan was entering the park. They watched it pull up to the breakwater a hundred feet away and flash its lights twice.

  “That’s it,” said Alvin. He spoke softly into his radio. “All units move in.”

  Garrett started forward, but Alvin grabbed his arm again. “No one’s responding. Christ! The radio won’t work. It’s too damn wet.”

  They stood uncertainly, staring at the car. Out on the water, the engines of a fishing boat started to rumble. Then the vessel appeared out of the gloom, moving toward shore.

  “Guess it’s just you and me.” Garrett sensed Alvin’s tension in the dark. He was wired like a radio tower. “Take it easy, okay?”

  “No problem,” Alvin replied.

  “Wait till the boat makes contact. We want to establish the rendezvous.”

  Crouching low, they began to duck-walk across the open lot. There was no cover except for the gloom, but it was enough. The boat continued to angle in, its engines starting to churn, reversing to slow down. A line flew out to one of the men on shore and a moment later, the second man opened the car door.

  They were halfway to the black sedan. Suddenly, the entire parking lot was bathed in brilliant light from several high-powered floodlights on the boat, catching them frozen, like Br’er Rabbit stuck in Tar Baby.

  In an instant, pandemonium split the night. A man cried out, the craft’s powerful engines roared, and the water began to roil fiercely. The man who had opened the car door had hold of a child. He hesitated in indecision, then picked the girl up and threw her onto the deck of the boat like a sack of potatoes before leaping back into the sedan. The car’s tires screeched as it reversed away from the water.

  “They’re getting away!” Garrett yelled. He crouched on one knee and fired at the vehicle’s tires. One shot, a second, then Alvin was in his line of fire, racing toward the car.

  “Damn it, Alvin. I can’t shoot! Get out of the way!”

  But the young Mountie was already near the car as it spun in the gravel. The driver shifted into forward, then hit the gas hard. The vehicle spun 360 degrees, coughed once, and the engine died.

  They were on it in an instant. As the driver struggled to restart the engine, Garrett fired two precise shots into the rear tires, deflating them instantly. A moment later, he and Alvin stood on either side of the car, pistols pointed at the driver.

  “Get out, now!” Alvin yelled.

  Garrett could see the driver looking at them. He was a heavyset, sallow-faced fellow. He said something to the man sitting in the passenger seat. Garrett couldn’t tell if anyone else was in the car, because the windows were tinted.

  Alvin yelled again and brought his pistol right up against the car’s window, which was a mistake. If he fired, the glass would shatter and likely injure him. Fortunately, the fellow raised his hands and Alvin opened the door, grabbed him by the arm, and yanked him out. He sprawled onto the ground.

  Garrett did the same to the other man. Three police cars roared into the park, screeching to a halt around the vehicle. Officers swarmed over the men, the entire scene lit up again, this time by police car headlights and floods.

  Garrett poked his head into the car and looked in the back. Five girls in their early teens stared at him with wide eyes. They were dressed as though planning a midnight beach party in the Caribbean, with lacy, see-through tops over short shorts and high heels. He held up his police badge.

  Instantly, the girls started to chatter. They piled out of the back of the car, all jabbering at once in a language he’d never heard, holding onto him for dear life.

  “Alvin, help me out here.”

  His partner put his gun away and came forward, still puffed up and excited at the biggest arrest of his career. He listened to the girls for a moment, then held up his hand and shouted, “SHUT UP!” at the top of his voice.

  The girls went instantly silent, staring at this new menace with open fear on their faces.

  “Take it easy,” said Garrett. “They’re spooked enough. Any of you speak English?”

  The girl who looked to be the oldest, maybe fourteen, raised her hand like a schoolgirl. “I speak,” she s
aid.

  “Where were they taking you?’

  She shrugged. “We do not know. We go where they send us and do what they say. There was party on private boat in harbor.”

  Garrett wiped his forehead and stared sadly at the girls. Alvin’s tip had suggested a transfer of illegal immigrants coming into the country. But these young women had clearly been employed for some time already, probably by the escort service they’d had under surveillance.

  “What nationality are you?” he asked.

  “We are all Ukrainian girls,” she answered, proudly. “They told us we would have good jobs and be able to send money home to our families.”

  “Same old story,” said Alvin.

  “All right,” Garrett said “We’ll take you to headquarters. You won’t be charged. What’s going on here isn’t your fault. We’ll try to put you in touch with your families.” He reached out a hand and gently touched the smallest girl’s head. “You’re going home,” he said.

  He turned to an officer. “Get them into a car pronto. They’re not dressed for this weather.” Several of the girls were visibly shivering. “And tell the Harbor Police to board and search any craft in the area that looks likely.” He stared out at the disappearing fishing boat and swore.

  Without a word, he jumped into the sedan and turned the key. This time, thank god, it started.

  Alvin stared at him through the window. “What are you doing, Garrett?”

  But there was no time to answer. The car leaped forward, forcing two officers to jump out of the way. The vehicle made an awful sound and was hard to control as the deflated tires shredded. Garrett knew the channel here. The boat would pass around the end of the breakwater, just feet from one of the towering cranes. If he got there in time, he might pull it off. All he could think of was the small child who’d been thrown onto the deck.

  The car was powerful and flew across the parking lot, tires spraying bits of hot rubber into the night. It crashed through a padlocked gate and careened out onto the breakwater. Twilight had given way to blackness. Garrett prayed that the men on the boat would be concentrating on the narrow passage they had to negotiate. The car ground to a halt, fishtailing, in front of three huge boulders that blocked further progress. He was still thirty yards from the end.

  He could see the boat beginning to change its tack, concentrating on the narrow channel, edging in closer to shore. There just might be time. Sprinting the remaining distance, he timed his leap and crashed onto the deck, rolling and coming up hard against a metal bulwark that took his breath away.

  Groaning, he looked up to see two men in the wheelhouse. They were concentrating on their course maneuvers and hadn’t seen his little melodrama in the dark. But another man had. A depressingly large fellow stood on the open deck, one hand holding onto the girl as though she were a doll, the other grasping an ugly-looking steel hook at least three feet long. He tossed the girl to one side and advanced on the intruder.

  Garrett barely had time to stand up and take a painful breath before the man was on him, swinging the hook down in an evil arc. It missed by inches, struck the side of the boat, and flew down the deck.

  Garrett reached for his gun, only to discover it was gone, lost somewhere in his tumble. Then the big man was on him, landing a crushing blow that glanced off his shoulder as he ducked at the last instant. His entire arm went numb.

  The man turned away and went after his hook. Garrett looked around desperately for some sort of weapon. There was a pole with what appeared to be a weight on one end. Some sort of fishing implement. It looked like a perfect club. He grabbed it and almost fell over backward. The thing must have been a float of some kind, probably made of cork. It wouldn’t knock the foam off a latte.

  His adversary retrieved the hook and advanced once again, pausing long enough to glance at the wheelhouse. He yelled as loudly as he could, but the men inside were insulated by the enclosure and the noise of the engines. They couldn’t hear him.

  There was nothing Garrett could use as a weapon. In desperation, he picked up a coil of rope and flung it. Miraculously, the coils ensnared the man, catching on the hook and tangling his arms.

  In an instant, Garrett was on him. He looped one end of the rope around the man’s middle and used it to fling him off the boat into the water. Maybe he could swim, maybe not. He couldn’t care less.

  He stood, staggering slightly, still feeling the numbness in his arm where the man had clubbed him. The girl huddled on the deck. She might have been eleven years old. He approached her slowly, trying to speak in soothing tones, because he was certain she couldn’t understand English. She said something unintelligible and shrank away from him. Men had never meant anything but pain and suffering in her brief life. Garrett was simply one more.

  He stopped and made a gesture for her to stay where she was. Whether she understood or not was unclear. He turned his attention to the wheelhouse where the two men were still oblivious to the events on deck.

  They were now exiting Halifax harbor. Garrett could see the black silhouette of McNabs Island, home to many World War II installations, where heavy submarine cables and nets had once stretched to Chebucto Head. Only one Nazi U-boat had ever made it through the netting, by following in the wake of a ship. It had then proceeded to torpedo a Canadian warship before making its escape.

  The harbor entrance faced south, and Garrett could feel the boat turning northeast, heading straight for Ireland. He knew Alvin must have contacted the harbor patrol, so at least someone would be looking for them. What he had to decide was whether it made more sense to hunker down and wait for help or try to overpower the two men by himself. The decision wasn’t all that difficult. He was sore all over from the leap onto the boat and the blow from the man on deck. He couldn’t find his weapon in the dark. The men could wait.

  He eased over to the girl, who stared at him cautiously like a wounded animal. He avoided touching her and sat a few feet away. “Well, darlin’, it’s you and me. Let’s hang out for a while and see what develops, okay?”

  She started to cry and his heart melted for the poor creature. He shuffled over to her and put out one arm. After a moment, she moved in, and he hugged her tightly, talking to her in a low voice. “We’re going to be just fine … just fine,” he said over and over.

  Twenty minutes later, a Coast Guard cutter and a harbor patrol boat loomed out of the darkness. Simultaneously, a helicopter appeared and hovered overhead, bathing the scene in light. Alvin had called in the cavalry.

  The fishing boat slowed, her captain aware there was nothing he could do against such a force. Twenty minutes later, Garrett and the girl were wrapped in blankets and sitting in the warm cutter, drinking hot chocolate and smiling at one another.

  2

  “DEPUTY COMMISSIONER’S LOOKING FOR YOU,” said Martha, her eyes avoiding him.

  Garrett stopped in front of her desk. “As you can clearly see, I’m not here.”

  “He said to be sure to tell you that you were here and that you should get your F-ing blank the F up to his office.” There was a smile at the corner of her mouth.

  “I assume he did not actually say, ‘F-ing.’”

  “He was more colorful, but a demure, overeducated, highly trained personal assistant is not aware of the meaning of such language.”

  “You are all of those things except the first, Martha.” He sighed. “Thanks.”

  He took the stairs two at a time, satisfied that the effort produced no discernible limp, nodded at two officers, and presented himself at his boss’s door.

  Alton Tuttle had been Deputy Commissioner for six years. He was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commanding Officer in Nova Scotia, known as “H” division. In Halifax, as in many municipalities outside of Ontario and Quebec, the RCMP was hired on a contract basis to provide police services in rural areas. Recently, local police commissioners had been considering ending the relationship, giving local RCMP officers the option of transferring to the municipal force. The
business had been controversial and was one reason Garrett had decided to retire. He despised the bureaucratic runaround.

  Tuttle sat at his desk, unlit cigar in his mouth, head buried behind a stack of files. He was in his mid-fifties and wore a navy dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, the shirt tight across his bulging abdomen. He’d been a muscular high school wrestling champion three years running. But the years sitting at a desk had taken a toll.

  “Nice of you to drop by,” he said.

  “Martha said you wanted to see me … in somewhat more colorful terms. I figured you wanted to rehash things again,” Garrett replied in a tired voice. “Frankly, it’s all been said. I’m on my way out, Alton. You know that. Twenty years on the Halifax force is enough. I’m tired of people who can do this sort of stuff to young girls. I’m tired of people who can do this sort of stuff to me. My retirement, my garden, and my boat await me.”

  Tuttle scowled at him. “Damned if I can understand young officers these days. You’re forty-two years old, for Christ’s sake. Most experienced sex crimes officer I’ve got and you want to hang it up while you’re still in diapers.” He spat the cigar onto the desk, where it spun around, stuck to a piece of paper, and slowly began to spread a brown stain. “The guy who invented pensions ought to be shot. What the hell are you going to do with yourself—grow pansies all day?”

  It was an old conversation, one Garrett had no interest in rehashing. Besides, he didn’t much care for pansies. He also wasn’t a young officer. His title was Special Constable with expertise in prostitution. The nature of the job allowed him to go without uniform, working primarily undercover.

  Seeing there would be no reply, the Deputy Commissioner sat back in his chair. “I’m going to make one more effort with you, Barkhouse,” he said. “What you need is a break from the big city. Get back to the hinterlands—use your damn boat too, if you want.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Misery Bay.” Tuttle scratched himself.

  Something clicked in the back of Garrett’s head. He’d grown up outside the little coastal village. The memories that flooded back were good, but he hadn’t returned since his parents had died six years ago. He kept up by reading the Eastern Shore Chronicle—who died, who got married, who was lost at sea. Lately, the papers had taken on a more sinister tone—coastal smuggling, illegal immigrants funneled into prostitution, bales of drugs washing up on the shore and in fishermen’s nets.