Kill Tide Read online

  Kill Tide

  Timothy Fagan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 Timothy Fagan

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Fireclay Books,

  Winchester, Massachusetts.

  www.fireclaybooks.com

  Cover design by damonza.com.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7324596-4-9 (paperback)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7324596-5-6 (ebook)

  First Edition

  To Karen.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Thank You

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Timothy Fagan

  Chapter One

  It was on a wet July afternoon that Pepper Ryan became a hero to pretty much everyone on Cape Cod, except himself.

  Pepper was driving through warm rain to the apartment of a woman he thought maybe he loved. He was going there to answer an epic question she’d asked him two days earlier. His hands were shaking, just thinking about it.

  His hands were also shaky because he was driving a police SUV which he’d basically stolen a few minutes earlier from the New Albion police station, where he was working that summer as a police cadet.

  Pepper was beyond pissed off at his dad, the chief of police, and it had felt like rough justice when he’d swiped the keys. So he hadn’t cared that a marked police vehicle was completely off-limits to a lowly cadet. Especially the department’s only brand-new Ford Explorer SUV Police Interceptor, with all its bells and whistles.

  Including one hell of a sound system.

  To drown out the mess of thoughts filling his mind, Pepper cranked up a Kings of Leon song, “Use Somebody,” on the SUV’s radio. Pepper was only twenty years old back then. He hadn’t yet heard that song ten billion times. He sang along, really getting into it. As he neared the woman’s apartment, his heart was banging louder than the song’s crazy drumbeat. And faster.

  So Pepper was cruising a bit too hot-headed and singing a bit too loud as he came down the hill on Rogers Folly Road late on Thursday afternoon. Especially since it had been lightly raining for the past couple of hours—the windshield wipers were squeaking back and forth and the road was shiny black.

  He was about a hundred yards short of the intersection with Lower County Road when he saw a brown Chevy cargo van pull onto the road from the grassy strip to the sidewalk. It approached the four-way stop, to Pepper’s right, at almost exactly the same time as Pepper.

  The cargo van was a dull brown that the rain had darkened to exactly the color of dog poop. Pepper also saw what looked like a white garbage bag in the high grass near where it’d been parked. Had the van driver dumped that trash? But the object was smaller than a kitchen garbage bag. A grocery bag?

  The van’s right-turn signal was flashing as it approached the stop sign. Pepper saw the driver—a white guy in a green trucker’s cap—look left and their eyes crossed for half a moment. The brown van rolled into the intersection and stopped about five feet beyond the little white stop line.

  Pepper stopped at his sign a split second later. No turn signal because he was continuing on Rogers Folly Road.

  The man looked at Pepper again, spat out his open window, then grinned and drove away straight, despite still having his turn signal on. What an idiot!

  And that was the moment Pepper got his inspiration. A crazy solution to all his problems that summer. A perfect way out.

  Again, Pepper was not a cop. A cadet was half a level up from a boy scout, minus the merit badges and knot-making skills. He had absolutely no authority to do what he was contemplating. He mentally flipped a coin.

  Go straight? Or turn left?

  The coin came up tails and Pepper didn’t think he’d cheated. He turned left to follow the brown van. But as he turned, he thought, Pepper, you’re nuts. He was about a hundred yards behind the van, which was moving at a slowish pace, probably five miles under the thirty miles per hour speed limit.

  Pepper caught up to the van and settled in twenty yards back. Brown paper covered the inside of the van’s twin small rear windows. It looked the same as thousands of other work vans all over the Cape. And not really at all like the white van that Pepper’s dad and law enforcement had been hunting on Cape Cod that week, in connection with the most notorious crimes on the Cape in many years.

  Kings of Leon reached the bitter end of their song and a decent Black Keys tune started up, but Pepper killed the music. Then he turned on the police radio and lifted the mic. First time ever, but he’d seen his dad and others do it for most of his life. Still, he fumbled around, too jacked up with energy.

  Then he hit the talk button. “Hello, ah, Dispatch?” he asked.

  Pepper’s stomach was suddenly in his throat. It was one thing to get a crazy idea. The way people standing near a ledge getting a momentary impulse to jump, which they quickly dismiss, leaving their toes tingling while staying alive. That self-preservation instinct…

  The voice of Barbara Buckley, one of New Albion’s police dispatchers, crackled over the radio, acknowledging.

  Shit. What should he do? It wasn’t too late yet to bail out on his idea.

  And then it was. “Ah, Dispatch, this is Car Two-Two,” said Pepper. “Please send units for, ah, backup. Lower County Road, east of Rogers Folly.”

  Long silence, then: “Is that you, Pepper? Repeat that—”

  Instead, Pepper hung up the mic. He fumbled around the dashboard and eventually found the switch to activate the roof lights and siren. His heart jumped as he flipped it. Pepper, now you’re fucked. Congrats, you’re fired for sure. His right foot didn’t belong to him…he barely could feel it, heavy and strange, as it floored the gas. His siren screamed in his ears.

  Thirteen minutes later…

  Pepper felt a strong hand reach down and shake his shoulder.

  It belonged to Lieutenant Donald Eisenhower—his dad’s second-in-command on the New Albion police force. And his dad’s longtime best friend from way back in their army days. Pepper had never seen Eisenhower’s African-American face so pale. Or so close. It was ridiculous.

  It registered with Pepper that he was lying on
a wet road, looking up at Eisenhower, and his left side from his shoulder down to his hip felt like it was on fire. His hand too. He tried to sit up but couldn’t.

  “Hey man, what’s up?” Pepper asked. He didn’t recognize his own voice. Thick. Slurred. Pepper gingerly raised his hand in greeting and saw it was stained blood red.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  “Hey…you hear that?” asked Pepper.

  Lieutenant Eisenhower was bent over at his side and answered him. But Pepper couldn’t follow his words very well, because the lieutenant’s head was lazily splitting into a mosaic of Eisenhowers. Like Pepper was looking through one of those kaleido-thingamabobs he’d played with as a kid… What was Eisenhower saying?

  Pepper tried to wipe the blood off his hand on the wet road. But the blood only smeared. He was in a ton of pain and his hand looked wrong now. Why wasn’t the rain washing it clean?

  He saw a small group of fuzzy people behind Eisenhower, gawking down at him. The evening sky behind them was a broken shade of gray. Were they civilians? Like what, this was all a goddamn show?

  Pepper tried to push himself to a seated position, but his hand landed on someone else. He saw it was a man who was covered in blood too. This man was deathly still. A wet green baseball cap lay in the street at his side.

  Eisenhower slapped his cheek, as if to make him focus. But the slaps felt way too feeble. What was wrong with the lieutenant? Was he hurt too?

  “What happened, Pepper? What the holy hell did you do?” Lieutenant Eisenhower asked.

  Pepper could barely hear him over the thump, thump, thump. He tried to clear his head and answer. I can explain…just give me a second. Please!

  Pepper really tried. But no words came out. And now the many faces above him looked wicked scared. And way too close.

  Then Pepper had a thought that gripped him like an icy hand on his neck.

  If I die, I’ll never get to explain…

  Then his world slid to darkness.

  Chapter Two

  Six days earlier

  Pepper Ryan was full of beans as he drove Brad St. John’s van homeward from their band’s first-ever gig. The lead singer, Delaney Lynn, sat next to him. And their bass player and fearless leader Brad was semi-passed out against the front passenger window, snoring. Brad was a lanky white guy with café au lait–colored dreadlocks and a tightly manicured beard which emphasized the angles of his face. He’d drunk too much Wild Turkey bourbon tonight to numb his stage fright. That’s why Pepper was driving.

  Pepper’s best buddy, Angel Cavada, the band’s drummer, was crammed in back with the gear. He’d lost the rocks-paper-scissors.

  Their band—Brad and the Pitts—had played the Beachcomber Bar on a rowdy Thursday night out in Wellfleet. And they had killed it. The Beachcomber crowd had loved their classic rock cover tunes, especially the drunks. Delaney had been a fireball on stage, strutting around and belting out song after song, whipping the crowd into a party. They were a brand-new group, but you wouldn’t know it if you’d seen them up there on stage.

  Pepper thought Brad and the Pitts was a goofy band name, but Brad St. John was the oldest member of the band at twenty-six and he owned the rusty white Dodge van and most of the gig equipment, so he was their self-proclaimed leader. But who cared about that right now? Could life be any better?

  Pepper had felt exhilarated and free on stage. So alive. He remembered the end of their first song, with fear in his throat during the moment of silence when the song ended. But when the applause of the crowd hit him, Pepper had said to himself, “I’ve got to do more of this.”

  Pepper noticed Delaney definitely seemed to have slid across the bench seat a little nearer to him. Delaney was a worldly twenty-three with a hint of a southern accent, and Pepper had a hard crush on her. He worried it was too obvious—that his desperation was wafting around the van’s cab, invisible but pervasive, like Brad’s whiskey breath.

  Would Pepper have the guts to ask Delaney out before he dropped her off at her apartment in New Albion? That’d take his night from amazing to perfect.

  Pepper snuck a side-eyed peek at Delaney. Her shoulder-length brown hair with blue streaks was now up in a scrunchie. She’d kicked off her low-rise Converses, and her legs were under her and sticking out to the left on the van’s bench seat. Her leather skirt was lead-singer short and made her long legs appear even longer. An optical delusion, Angel would have called it. Her toes brushed against Pepper’s thigh, tickling him and sending a shiver of electricity up his leg.

  Pepper had only known Delaney since joining the band three weeks ago, but he found her pretty and cool and funny, in a sarcastic, street-smart way. Her eyes fascinated him: one blue, one dark hazel. He’d never seen eyes like that before.

  And he knew she had words tattooed down her lower back. From a poem or a song, it looked like, from the peekaboo glances Pepper had snuck without looking like a pervert, when she wore a cutoff t-shirt onstage. He hadn’t seen enough of the tattoo to make out the words and hadn’t worked up the guts to ask her.

  So far Pepper had been too intimidated to make a move on her. He was three years younger than Delaney. He couldn’t even take her to a bar without a fake ID.

  And he was going off to Harvard in less than two months, which no one in the band knew except Angel. He’d soon be a twenty-year-old freshman, which was weird for most students but typical for hockey players (who had to pay their dues for two years in junior hockey before a college coach would give them a spot). If Delaney learned he was underage and disappearing to college, she’d never give him a chance. So how would he navigate that?

  Pepper was debating the perfect opening line to charm Delaney without completely embarrassing himself as he exited Route 6 onto Route 28 at the Eastham rotary. He hadn’t thought of anything particularly clever, but he promised himself he’d ask her out before they reached the other side of the sleepy little town of Orleans. Which was fast approaching.

  Then he rounded a curve and saw the dancing red and blue lights of police cars blocking the road ahead.

  Pepper stopped the van at the end of the line of waiting cars as the police lights bounced around inside the van’s cab.

  “Uh-oh,” said Delaney, breaking the silence. “What’s up?”

  “Maybe an accident?” guessed Pepper. “Or a DUI roadblock?” More likely an accident.

  Their van was seven vehicles from the front of the line. A county deputy—looked like a woman—was at the window of the lead car, a little Toyota. She asked them something, looked into the back with a flashlight, then got the driver to pop the trunk. She flashed her light around the Toyota’s trunk, then shut the lid and waved the Toyota through.

  “You must be exhausted from the gig,” Pepper said to Delaney. “I’ve never seen you this quiet.”

  Brad was making little snoring noises over against the door. So Pepper kind of felt alone with Delaney.

  She laughed. “I am a bit,” she admitted. “But I was just thinking about the original song you did: ‘Try Me’? That was wild!”

  “Hey, sorry about that,” he said, attempting to sound casual. “The manager was giving us the stink eye, and Brad was still outside smoking or puking or whatever. I thought we had to get going with the second set.”

  Delaney looked over at Brad to make sure he was still snoozing, then answered. “No, it was beautiful. You took a chance and killed it.”

  It’d happened around eleven, at the end of their only break. Brad was in the parking lot by the sand cliff overlooking the beach, chain-smoking like a good rocker should, holding court for a few other smokers. But they really needed to start playing again.

  Pepper enjoyed playing cover songs, but he’d also spent a ton of time writing songs that summer. He’d finished a song earlier in the week that he believed was by far his best ever. It was about a guy wanting to kiss the girl of his dreams and her torturing him every step of the way. A simple song, like Eric Clapton did simple…with a touch of John Mayer
’s playfulness. Wicked romantic. No one had heard him sing it until the Beachcomber crowd that night.

  “But you were awesome, the way you jumped in,” he said to her. Delaney had listened to the chorus the first time through and then she joined in the second time, harmonizing with Pepper. She’d never listened to the song before, but made it sound easy and practiced. And the song was way better as a duet.

  Delaney laughed. “I loved it, Pepper! It was the sexiest thing!”

  The Beachcomber crowd had eaten it up, gave them a nice loud round of applause even though it wasn’t a Journey or Tom Petty cover.

  But for Pepper the highlight had come after the song. “Thank you,” he’d said into the mic, trying to sound older and cooler than he was. “That’s an original song I wrote myself. It’s called ‘Try Me.’”

  And Delaney smiled at him and said into her mic with her southern drawl, “Anytime.”

  The magical moment broke when Pepper saw poor old Brad swaying by the edge of the stage, his mouth flapping open and closed like a skinny tuna. He thumped up on stage, with raw fury on his face (and a little speck of what might be puke). Brad gave Pepper a glare like he’d really fucked up.