CHAPTER 1

  JUNIOR FERGUSON should've known he was going to have a bad day when his mother caught him spanking the monkey before breakfast. At least, that's what he just told me.

“More information than I need to know,” I said, as I wrote out his summons. I’d caught Junior in possession of undersized fish he’d poached in a restricted area and was citing him for it. That’s because it’s my job. My name is Nikki O’Connor and I’m an environmental police officer. My patrol territory is the southern Rhode Island coast, in particular, a twelve-square-mile hunk of rock in Narragansett Bay called Mystic Island.

Junior scowled, whipped off his Red Sox cap, and threw it down. “You know what? Life sucks!”

            I looked around. Snowy egrets tiptoed through the marsh. With stealth, they combed through eelgrass, spearing baitfish. The smell of sweet honeysuckle hung in the air and a red-winged blackbird rasped out its distinctive cry. A warm morning breeze ruffled the sea oats and from all outward appearances, life did not, in fact, suck.

            Junior continued his tirade: “You clam cops’re always on my case. Worse, I gotta get hassled by a chick clam cop.”

             “Well, Junior, what can I tell you? You’re fishing in a restricted area, catching baby fluke again. When are you going to get it?”

                 “Ever’one’s always on my case,” he growled.  “Ma harpin’ for me to get a job, makin’ me go to summer school so I can graduate, and now this.”

            “Good for your mom. But that doesn’t change the facts.” 

On a small island, you get to know everyone pretty well. I’d known Junior for about a year now. Despite his many fishing violations, I found him to be pretty likeable—even through his façade of bravado. And his attitude didn’t surprise me, probably par for an insecure, eighteen-year-old, death-camp-thin, pothead burnout.

            He shot me a sour look, flipped back his filthy blond tresses, and snorted. “Anyway, don’t you got anythin’ better to do than hassle me? Like, get a life and stuff?”

                “Maybe you should take your own advice, Junior. I see you’re still driving your mom’s minivan.”

            He shuffled his feet and averted his eyes. Not only was his mom’s minivan pastel pink, but it also had Mary Kay Cosmetics decals plastered on both side doors and the tailgate window. A sticker on the back bumper read:  I LOST MY SELF-RESPECT AT WES’ RIB HOUSE

            He clomped off, grumbling and kicking at the ground.

            “Have a nice day,” I called after him. I climbed into my duty SUV and headed for the Seabreeze RV Resort and Campground on the west side of the island. On the radio, a pompous talk show host pontificated about how he thought things ought to be, so I changed stations where Al Green sang about how his love made him feel brand-new. That suited me better.

My cell phone trilled. I turned down my radio and picked up. “Hello?”

“Nikki? It’s Frank.” Frank Anderson was Chief of Police in Benedict’s Landing. We had dated once, way back in high school. Despite the fact that we were both married, he was still trying to hustle me.

“Hello, Frank. What’s up, as if I didn’t know.”

He chuckled. “You’re reading me wrong. This isn’t a social call. Listen, babe, you remember a guy named Marion Hess, Franklin High, our class of ‘75?”

            “Don’t call me ‘babe’. And sure, I remember Hess. The creep followed me around my whole senior year, freaked me out. I think the bastard killed my cat.”

            “Kilt your cat? Whoa! You heard what happened to him after high school?”

            “Just what I saw in the papers. He was suspected of raping and killing three girls out in New Mexico. If I remember right, they only convicted him of one murder, though, and second-degree at that. He’s doing time in the State Penitentiary, right?”

                 “Maybe not. Hess is up for parole.”

                “What?”

            “Yeah, huh? Horrific what he did to those girls, really. Those sexual mutilations? Anyway, I heard there was some damn problem with the evidence¾shades of O.J. Deal is, he did seven years as a model prisoner and now he’s up for parole, can you believe that?”

            I felt light-headed. “How do you know all this?”

“An old army buddy of mine. The guy’s an Albuquerque detective.”

“Anyway, I don’t see how it concerns me.”

            “Probably doesn’t, but I’ll keep you posted.”

“Thanks, Frank. I’d appreciate it. Bye.”

Feeling unsettled, I continued on to the campground. It stood in pretty good shape, considering a Category-5 hurricane had just about demolished it last summer and I’d almost drowned. That was my first year here. I’d been a divorced, single mom for longer than I cared to remember, but in the fall, after the hurricane, I ended up marrying Steve Marshall, one of the campground gatehouse attendants. For the sake of simplicity, I decided to hang on to my maiden name of O’Connor and Steve had no problem with that. He worked part-time at the campground and did a little carpentry but his passion was writing; he’d made a little money from a couple of his articles and had a novel manuscript in the hands of an agent. 

Steve ambled out of his tiny gatehouse hut when I pulled up. “Well,” he said. “If it isn’t my favorite clam cop.”

            Steve always made me laugh and I had no doubt he was the love of my life, especially after the jerk I’d divorced years ago and the few assorted losers I’d dated after that. Handsome in an offhanded sort of way, Steve was the kind of guy who got better looking the more you got to know him: athletic, sexy, thoughtful and romantic―not a bad catch. He also had Mel Gibson eyes and a talent for blowing away my self-doubts and excising me from occasional binges of self-pity.

            I handed him a bag and a cold can of soda. “Here. Since neither of us had time to fix lunches this morning, I picked up sandwiches from the deli.”

            “Great,” he said. “I’m starving. No wonder I married you—you’re so thoughtful.”

            “Well, Junior Ferguson probably doesn’t think so. I just busted him.”

            “No surprise there. Illegal fishing again?”

            “Yep. Anyway, I’m going to make my rounds and then head back to the station. See you at home around four?”  

            Steve shook his head. “I have to meet someone in Bristol after work. Probably won’t make it back until six or so.”

            “Okay, see you then.” I blew him a kiss and headed into the camping area.

            Several campers were out and about and as I drove around, I could smell the tantalizing aroma of bacon and coffee. Combined with the wood smoke and salt air, the atmosphere was euphoric. Even though a chill hung in the air, most of the 140 RV sites had already been filled and a few hardy souls even occupied the tent area. I drove down to the recently repaired, two-hundred-foot dock that jutted out into Narragansett Bay. The wind had picked up. High tide slapped at the pilings.

After parking, I got out, took a deep breath, and appreciate my surroundings. I strolled out on the dock to where small clusters of Asian Americans were fishing for scup. Nearby, a few of the town locals cast plugs for striped bass. Feet shuffled and heads turned away as I passed, and I couldn’t help but notice the overt body language.

I headed for a guy I knew well, a jug-eared little troll named Petey Fottler. Petey worked the second shift at the campground gatehouse, a job he’d taken up since retiring from a career at a fortune cookie factory in Brockton, Mass. Being half-Chinese on his mother’s side and in deference to that heritage, he liked to speak in the language of fortune cookie sayings: Fortunese.

            I glanced into Petey’s empty bucket. “No luck?”

            “Luck finds those who seek it least.”

            I laughed. “You’re a jewel, Petey.”

            His brow furrowed. “Riches and jewels are not always what they seem.”

“Whatever that means,” I said, shaking my head.

Moving on down the line of fishermen, I checked their catches. One of them overturned his bucket and, with the help of his toe, what looked to be a dozen or so undersized fluke slithered off the dock and into the water. Grinning like a lotto winner, he tipped his cap to me, saying, “Oops.”

            I felt the color seeping into my face.

After checking a few more buckets, I walked out to the end of the dock. Even though lead-colored, mackerel clouds were forming up in the west, sunlight was winking in magical sparkles off dancing waves and a soulful buoy cling-clanged in the distance.

Yeah, from all outward appearances and despite Junior Ferguson’s opinion or Marion Hess’s parole status—life did not, in fact, suck.

            Of course, I’d been wrong before.