Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

We are lucky here. While the rest of the coast freezes up, Bunkport bay and harbor, and the sea around Bitch, Little Bitch, Shanigan, Squid, Snutty Nose, and Evergreen islands stays fairly liquid. There must be quite a few sea-bottom wells here, spouting hot water. I came close to one while diving for scallops and nearly got burned. And tell you what: I was sure that I was seeing big pink toothy worms down there, twisting toward me. The fear made me come up fast, contracting a case of the bends on the way, a diver’s affliction that can be fatal. Doc “Fastbuck Freddie” Shanigan flew me to Bangor and the treatment out there cost me a handful in copay, in spite of my veteran’s insurance.

Bad days, good days. The day I took Elizabeth out was perfect. Good-tempered harbor seals grunted at us from their rocks and herring gulls swished their wings as they came down behind us, assuming we were out fishing and wanting to share our catch.

Elizabeth kept pointing at the top of the buoy.

We were looking up at a giant marker, a channel buoy just off Bitch Island, a steel monster painted in garish colors. It comes with radar reflectors, a gong, lights that switch on at sunset — an impressive gadget at all times — and it was carrying a big easy chair, securely fastened by thin lobster-trap lines. Getting the chair up on a twenty-foot-tall buoy must have taken some doing. Elizabeth climbed the structure and shouted down that the chair appeared to be riddled by what could only be bullets. Bullets that hit their mark, for each hole was red-ringed.

Elizabeth, who usually doesn’t use language, shouting down at me now, used language.

“Beeping blood.” She tweaked her nostrils to keep the smell out. “Beeping feces.”

She was right. Beeping human fluids, for sure.

She climbed down, her silk bodysuit showing off her long legs, slender torso, and rippling muscles (she likes rock-wall climbing, and yoga, and that Chinese movement deal where you don’t move much but it generates lack of interest in selfish worries). She jumped into my boat, the You Too, and blew the stench out of her nose. She reported.

Whoever had sat in that chair, and got drilled by bullets, was tied down with strong ropes, bits and pieces of which were still there. Most likely the ropes were cut, when subject was dead, to allow the corpse to slide into the Atlantic. A human corpse, Elizabeth guessed. She didn’t think anybody, using block and tackle (for only apes and Tarzans could have lifted the object that high), had hauled a porpoise or a seal up there.

Like you, the puzzling reader, we tried to recreate a situation. We weren’t sure. We weren’t there when it happened.

“We” was me and my stern man. The stern man, this time, was a woman, but we don’t use the term “stern person” down here. We don’t talk politically correct much, either. “Stern man” it is, whatever the gender. Regular good-old-boys, gay people, a beautiful city-lady like Elizabeth, a teener going out on a first try, your grandpa, you; stern men they all are if they back up the captain. I, for as long as I am in charge of the vessel, am known as Skip.

Now who the hell would tie a live target to an easy chair, somehow get the load on top of a floating giant channel marker, and then shoot that body dead, and subsequently cut it loose, leaving chair, blood — and waste-stains — for visiting Elizabeth to discover?

Sadistic pirates?

Sure, we have pirates here (crime story # 2). Not flying the skull-and-bones flag no more, not using swords or muskets. Those wonderful days are gone, except on screen with Johnny Depp leading. Today’s pirates are sly. They became sly because of technology. Nowadays most vessels communicate via cell phones and radio. Any suspicious event will be promptly reported to law enforcement that, since 9/11, has become fast and nosy. Our part of the coast is patrolled by Coast Guard cutters; Sheriff, and his deputies Dog and Sycophant, are out too sometimes, using a confiscated speedboat. There are also military choppers and airplanes peering down. It won’t take long to catch pirates entering a vessel by force.

Give up adventuring on the high seas?

Hey, this is America. Now we have friendly young boating types who offer their services to the mega rich about to sail their multimillion-dollar — it’s only shareholders’ money — yachts out for a spell. Our betters know about embezzling, helping themselves to other people’s money, but they don’t know about sailing. If they go out on their own they’re accident-prone, which could make them look foolish.