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Floyd Arsenault’s bones creaked with the expectation of another ten-hour day spent in a twenty-year-old boat clad in rubber boots, yellow rain slicker, thick-cabled wool sweater, canvas pants and elbow-high rubber gloves. The gloves were the foulest part of the getup--worn, smelly from the cotton lining absorbing months of salt water mixed with his own sweat, and plenty rough against his leathery skin. His skin had been smooth once, years ago, maybe even decades, when young girls stood on the banks and smiled at him when he brought the fishing boat in every afternoon. He would stand up tall, all six feet of him in tanned skin, blue eyes and straight white teeth and offer a partial wave in their general direction without making eye contact with anyone specific. He knew that this behavior, a coy albeit false exhibit of careless disregard, made them come back to the salty dunes and banks day after day waiting to smile at him and wave and caring deeply whether he waved back at them or not. This manner, as the other fisherman on the island had told him, was irresistible to women. And so he provided this dismissive attitude every day to these strangers, these women he had never really known. "Want breakfast?" Floyd turned from the closet and regarded his wife closely, still in bed under the covers. Her only partially gray hair spread out on her pillow made him feel warm in the part of his chest that typically got that way when he looked at her. "Not today. Go back to sleep. It’s early." Jean Arsenault rolled on her back, glanced at Floyd and pulled her pillow against the headboard and sat up. "You’re giving up food altogether then?" "I said I’m not hungry, woman." "No," she corrected, "you said not today." "Fine then, I’m not hungry. And could I make it to six o’clock without being interrogated?" Jean Arsenault scrunched her knees up to her chest and yawned and smiled. "The interrogation’s why you married me, Floyd. Don’t you know that?" "I didn’t know." He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on a bristly pair of pure wool socks and then rubbed down his feet for a minute, as was his custom. Half to get the blood circulating and half out of habit like everything else he did. Jean crawled beside him and touched his hair. "See, it’s our daily dose of loving banter disguised as contempt that’s kept the spice in our marriage all these years. To the outside world, you’d think we were plotting to kill each other." "Maybe we are," he said fully dressed and standing anxiously at the door now. "It’s gonna snow today. I’ll bring in some more wood before I go." Jean looked out the south window at the blue streaked sky with occasional strands of gray. "How do you know that?" "Cause the ghosts of all my broken bones told me, that’s how." "Take your big sweater and scarf then. They’re on the furnace." Jean slid back down into her place under the goose-down duvet cover and rolled to her side. "Today’s Tuesday," she said. "So?" Floyd replied, glancing at the picture on top of the dresser. It had always been his favorite--a vacation snapshot from Greece of Jean, himself, and his older brother standing on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. "We owe Abe forty dollars. It’s in the coffee can. Will you drop it off on your way back?" Floyd groaned and stretched the muscles in his back as he lumbered down the stairs into a pair of boots on the rug by the back door. "You’re married to a fisherman. Tell me why we need to pay the damned butcher every week." "Because you can’t eat lobster every day, that’s why." So ungrateful, Floyd thought and stepped out into the twenty-degree salt air of a February morning. All winter mornings began like this, he thought starting down the street on his daily third of a mile walk. Between late October and mid-April, the gloomy sky turned from black to gray to mostly blue as he woke and made coffee, darkened slightly as he made his way to the boat dock and by the time he got Jonah out to the fourth buoy, it was mostly gray. He liked summer the best of all, when he could wear sneakers and a stretched-out T-shirt and look up any time of day and see blue. He fantasized sometimes, when the water was still with no ambient sounds detected from shore, about doing something different, about defying fate and his own genealogy. About going into law enforcement like he originally planned. Of course, he knew that lobster fishing ran through his veins and had been in his family for hundreds of years before him and, therefore, was as indelibly etched in his psyche as was the body’s need for fresh water. But no one could take away a man’s dreams. Sometimes, he knew, dreams were all you had. As he untied Jonah from Pier 3 at Lobster Cove on Monhegan Island, he remembered what day it was. He had already purchased the bait and bait bags two days ago and was therefore set for the week. Only a few hours of boat maintenance would be necessary tomorrow, which he knew would be snowy and miserable. And if he had been smart and bought Hank Worley’s fiberglass boat when he had the chance, there would be no maintenance necessary. He glumly narrated his to do list while inspecting the boat - controls, radio, fuel reserve, engine, deck and hull. Bring catch to the lobster car, bank deposit, stop at butcher shop to pay bill and stop at Farmer’s Market to buy fruit and bouquet of marigolds wrapped in newspaper to take to the wife, the same wife he’d slept next to for forty-two years, a wife whose warm arms and plump bosom he hoped to God he’d die in instead of the sea’s unforgiving icy fingers. He looked down at the water now, stared into its gaping mouth and long, slippery blue teeth and felt a trembling start at the core of his body. His hands tingled, probably more from chronic arthritis and carpel tunnel syndrome than fear. Though this was where fear usually started with Floyd. Hands, fingers, wrists, radiating up to his shoulders. He felt fear in his fingers as he started the hydraulic hauler to bring up the traps lying in wait below the eerie surface of Lobster Cove. But today the cables didn’t move. He tried again but this time heard the engine groan, saw smoke circle above the craft and smelled the familiar odor of an electrical motor burning out. Pushing on the crank, he went through every conceivable scenario in his mind to try to explain the hitch in the hauler and the stirring in the pit of his belly. The traps are empty and someone or something stole his bait. The traps are full, but too full and each one contains more than the legal limit of lobsters that can be trapped in a pot this size and Marine Patrol is on the way. Or worse, the tags were cut off the traps and they’re full of V-notched females, which would surely result in a fine if not jail time. The cable hardly moved now in response to his tugging on the winch handle. Deciding he would have to haul up the traps by hand, the thought occurred to him that the engine was trying to haul more weight than its capacity. Had he accidentally snagged an old cutaway anchor, or someone’s old fishing net? He balanced himself firmly on deck with his body leaning against the hull and resumed the pushing motion. Still, it barely moved. The sky had already warned him that there was no time for dilly-dallying this morning. So he had two, no three choices. Leave the traps there and come back later when the weather passed. Disconnect the cable from the winch apparatus and haul them up by hand, one string at a time. With his back too bent over to haul anything up from the bottom, it was a dangerous decision. The sky was darker each time he looked up. He should have fixed the hauler when it first went out three months ago instead of waiting until now which would inevitably cost twice as much, probably in more ways than one. A combination of both methods seemed the only way. By loosening a bolt on the hand-winch and creating some slack in the cabling, he used his entire weight instead of just his arms to push on the thick metal handle. It began to move a few inches at a time. Within one minute, he was panting and sweating. He felt a familiar creak in his lower spine and knew right then that he would pay for this later. After two minutes, he could see the edge of one of the larger pots peeking its head up over the water’s calm surface. His heart nearly beat out of his chest as he squinted to make out the contents. Lord Jesus, he thought staring at the folded bluish figure in the largest pot. Don’t drop it, he told himself. Stay steady. Steady, Floyd. Holding onto the edge of the hull with one hand, he carefully turned his body to the right, which let him brace against the hull for traction. Now with just a half turn left, Floyd pushed one last time on the handle and pulled the pots above the water’s surface to swing them near the deck. Before allowing his gaze to rest on the last pot, he accounted for all of them first. All the smaller ones contained no bait and about four lobsters each. In heavy boots, Floyd stepped over the braided cables and sunk to his knees. He felt the freezing water seep through the fabric of his canvas pants to his skin as he kneeled down and craned his neck to see the contents of what lie before him. Like his eyes had betrayed earlier and like his body had tried to warn him, a form, folded and bluish-gray in color, lay crumpled like an old tarp within the tight confines of the 23,000 cubic inch wooden lobster trap. Except that this tarp had a face. And two arms, two legs and the rest of the physiological components that typically make up a human being. Feeling like a character out of a Jules Verne story suddenly, he spun around a hundred and eighty degrees to the right and almost fell overboard in the process. Shaky and nauseous, Floyd breathed deeply to steady himself and sat on the rear seat to summarize his thoughts. There was a small face surrounded by a mass of black hair mashed against the loosely woven wire mesh of the trap, both arms wrapped around the body and crossed over each other, legs crossed and folded unnaturally behind the body so that the bare feet were bent up toward the head with the heels facing inward. Oddly, in the past five minutes or so, Floyd had unconsciously wrapped his arms around his own body in response to the figure before him. He rubbed his stubbled chin, an action that started an anxious scratching frenzy on his whole face. His entire head felt hot and irritated, his hair oily, his eyes beginning to water. Jesus. Was he going crazy now? Angling his head up toward the complicated patterns in the sky, Floyd Arsenault shuddered against the horrific possibility that he knew the killer in a close and personal way. Stomach roiling and breathing shallow, he went through it all in his mind just to be absolutely sure. There was no sense informing the proper authorities about a serial killer victim unless he was certain. He had worked peripherally in law enforcement before. He knew the consequences of getting your hopes up on nothing more than a hunch and then enduring the requisite period of waiting while all the details were substantiated and coming up flat empty. It was an agonizing process for anyone who had ever investigated wrongful death, for anyone who had ever watched a killer kill once and then keep killing without leaving more than scant trace evidence at the scene. Okay. Victim appears to be a young female, he narrated aloud. Caucasian, brown hair and undressed except for a collared shirt and wool sweater worn on her top half. He craned his neck to see her hands. No rings or other jewelry, dark polish on both her fingernails and toenails. This was evident because she wore nothing at all below the waist. Skin almost pure white, dark pubic hair, no shoes or socks and a small tattoo on her left ankle. Though clearly no time for behavior analysis, some truths began to come clear to him. Whoever did this knew about fishing and scuba diving, and also knew how to modify an old wooden lobster trap, as the wire mesh funnels where the lobsters entered had been removed. And they had the kind of scuba gear required for diving in thirty-degree Atlantic waters, not to mention a ghoulish sense of melodrama – enough so that the process of molding a human body unnaturally into a lobster trap would be possible. The front of the body was against the bottom of the trap, so he had to crouch down on all fours to get a glimpse of the face. This was the part he had been dreading most--ascertaining whether he knew the victim or not. Sinking his bony knees into the muddy, smelly water at the bottom of the boat for the second time today, Floyd bent all the way down and held his breath while he looked up into the blank, lifeless face. The eyes were half open and barely showed a hint of what had once been hazel. The mouth was partially open as well, but gaping more on the right side as if a damp pea coat had been hanging on a coat hanger from the right side of it. Stomach clenched again, he swallowed, nearly gagged at the sight of the first external injury he had seen so far -- a long even slit across the throat. It looked deep and had probably been made, he guessed, with a large, very sharp blade. Maybe a brand new Swiss Army knife. There were so many like that these days. The dock and the marina were deserted this morning. With Jonah temporarily docked and two black tarps covering up the largest trap and its gruesome contents, he trudged up the angled walkway of the marina, reached a leathery hand into his front pocket and pulled out a handful of change. A minute after pushing change into the pay phone slot, a female voice came on the line. "Federal Bureau of Investigation?" she declared as a question. "Good morning," Floyd said and quickly cleared his throat. "I need to leave a message for CID Director Ned Malloy." There was a short pause on the other end of the line, followed by the sound of clicking buttons on a computer keyboard. "Can I say who’s calling, sir?" "Tell him that Floyd called. Floyd Arsenault." "Did you want me to connect you to his direct line, sir?" "No." "And your message, sir?" "Tell him there’s another one." The woman asked for clarification, but by then… the line was dead. Want to read more? Buy the book online or at any retail bookseller.
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