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  City of Ports

  The Shadow Over Portsmouth Book 1

  Jeff Deck

  Contents

  Also by Jeff Deck

  Prologue

  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

  Coming Christmas 2018 (definitely probably)

  Acknowledgments

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  The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

  Player Choice: Aether Games, Book 1

  About the Author

  Also by Jeff Deck

  The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

  Player Choice

  The Great Typo Hunt:

  Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time

  (with Benjamin D. Herson)

  Short stories featured in:

  Murder Ink 2: Sixteen More Tales of New England Newsroom Crime (Plaidswede Publishing)

  Corporate Cthulhu (Pickman’s Press)

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  City of Ports

  The Shadow Over Portsmouth Book 1

  Jeff Deck

  City of Ports: The Shadow Over Portsmouth Book 1

  by Jeff Deck

  Edition 1.1. Copyright © 2018 Jeff Deck. All rights reserved.

  This story 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 people, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is coincidental.

  Book cover design provided by Damonza.

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  Thank you so much for supporting this work.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Created with Vellum

  For Cassie

  “‘Every City gives a Key to distinguished visitors,’ Mr. Haven said. ‘But the City of Portsmouth does not, because it is known as the City of the Open Door.’ . . .”

  — Portsmouth Porthole, Monday, June 29, 1925

  “Freeze the worm; still the breath

  Rend the belly; join life & death.”

  — Anonymous verse scratched into the attic timbers of Pitt Tavern, Portsmouth, NH

  Prologue

  I was the one to find your body.

  That night I was on patrol in Portsmouth in zone 1, the half of Islington Street farther away from downtown. I pulled alongside Officer Skip Bradley’s cruiser in one of the shopping plazas on Islington, just to check in with him. He was supposed to be patrolling zone 4, downtown, but it was a slow night. No opioid ODs or noise complaints from rich fucks, at least not yet.

  “Hey girl. You need anything from Street?” Skip Bradley asked me from his open window. He unbuckled his seatbelt.

  “Thanks for the offer—but I’m good.” I let the girl comment pass.

  “You sure? They got them curry fries. And ‘schwarma,’ that’s Indian too, right?”

  I sighed. “No. Thanks.” The prickle of anger just under my skin made me add: “You know I grew up here in New Hampshire, right?” I added a smile just to show how cool ol’ Divya Allard was. No humorless battleaxe here, just another comrade in blue. But judging from Bradley’s reaction, the smile must have come out all wrong.

  “Yeah? So?” He’d turned truculent.

  I waved him off. “Enjoy. I’ll radio you if I run into any miscreants or malcontents out here.” And then, just because I don’t know when to shut my mouth, I added, “Shiva’s blessings be upon you!”

  He gave me a confused look and headed into the Street restaurant for his coffee and snack (and perhaps a hey girl for the hostess).

  I told you enough times about the shit I had to deal with as a woman in the department, and a woman of color at that. But I loved my job. I hope you understood that, too. One day soon, I was going to make detective and show meatheads like Bradley where he could shove his hey girl.

  I drove across the street to the opposite plaza, the one with the grocery store, and parked in a lonely spot. I was in the mood for walking. I strolled toward Brewery Lane, a quiet street in back of the plaza. That’s how I happened to be there to see the person emerge from shadows between the old industrial brick buildings.

  A hooded figure. Dusty red winter coat on a warm night. It approached the street from an odd angle—like it just came from the excavation site behind the Brewery Lane buildings. And it didn’t seem excited to see me. It skewed its walking path away from me.

  This wasn’t sufficient reason for me to stop the person, whoever it was. But I did get curious.

  I went the same way it came from. Between the buildings. I glanced behind me, but the figure was still walking away, not running. I kept going until I reached the excavation site. A few earth-movers stood over the hole. No foundations yet, so not much to see.

  I shone my flashlight into the hole. Still, I wouldn’t have spotted you if not for the flash of your engagement ring. The one I gave you, the one that matched my own. The jewel caught the light and winked, just once.

  My radio crackled. “Allard. Sorry about—”

  “Never mind that,” I said. “Got something suspicious here. Excavation pit near the grocery plaza.”

  “Well, don’t leave me out of the action,” Bradley said. “Hold on.”

  I ignored his suggestion and crabwalked down the slope of dirt and rock until I reached where the wink had come from. My flashlight showed me the crumpled figure of a young woman.

  As soon as I saw you, I dropped the flashlight. The lens shattered against a rock, and you and I plunged into darkness again.

  My legs refused to hold me up. I banged my knee on another goddamn rock. But I wouldn’t let the rebellion of my legs keep me from you. I crawled to your side. The meager moonlight showed me you were utterly still.

  I tried mouth to mouth anyway. Your lips were cold.

  I still couldn’t accept that you were gone. I muttered Hannah over and over again, as if saying your name enough times would snatch you from the hereafter. I grabbed you. I shook you.

  You were supposed to be the one to live forever. This just couldn’t be.

  “Oh my God,” Bradley said. He stood at the edge of the excavation, I registered through my fog. A light shone on you and me. “Is that a body?”

  “No,” I said. No, it’s not a fucking lump of flesh, it’s Hannah Ryder, and we’re getting married as soon as we can afford a 20% down payment on a house.

  All I could say out loud was “No.”

  “Sure looks like one,” Bradley said, coming down the slope.

  In the sweep of his flashlight, I noticed the bulge in your wrist. I’d never seen it before, and I’d seen every inch of your skin. Something was not right. Something was—implanted in there. The last I’d seen you, just two days ago, your wrist had been totally normal.

  I frowned at Bradley’s approaching footsteps. I wanted to shield you from the oaf. People like him couldn’t see you like this. Lying in a pit, twisted . . . it was indecent.

  I bolted to my feet and whirled to face my colleague.

  “You call it in yet?” Bradley said. He still had his stupid cup of coffee from Street, which infuriated me. His tone was placid now, as he tried to play it cool with his first real corpse. But he kept trying to shi
ne his light around me to look at it. (At you.)

  “No, I’ll take care of it,” I snapped.

  Bradley read my face. For once. “Oh. Uh. You okay? You know this person?”

  He hadn’t gotten the chance to meet you. Most of my colleagues in the PD hadn’t.

  I hadn’t been hiding you, not really. It was just . . . sometimes the way you talked, I got the feeling you didn’t like most police officers. Or any figure of authority, for that matter. I had counted myself lucky you decided to be with me.

  I was trembling. I struggled to get myself under control.

  “She’s my fiancée,” I said.

  Confusion settled over Bradley’s face. “Like . . . ? Engaged?”

  “Yes, you fucking twit,” I said, calmly.

  “But . . .” I saw Bradley recalculating certain assumptions. However, this was no time to walk him through expanding his worldview.

  I turned away from him. I had to help you. Why hadn’t I called it in? We needed a goddamn ambulance. I fumbled for my CB.

  Bradley grabbed my arm. What he said next wasn’t “I’m so sorry for your loss.” Or “I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now.” No, it was:

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be the one to handle this.”

  I let go of the CB. I rounded on my fellow officer and I socked him in the jaw.

  That was, of course, the beginning of my fall.

  Bradley reeled. I packed a good punch. His hand flew to his face and he spat muffled words at me. Crazy bitch? Hard to tell with his jaw all janked.

  I radioed the incident in. I didn’t refer to you as a “body.” It was an ongoing emergency: you had to still be alive.

  The image of that hooded figure now popped into my head. He or she had come from the direction of this excavation. I gave a vague description to dispatch, a description that would help no one.

  Bradley, still holding his jaw, moved a safe distance away and watched me. I’d have to answer for assaulting a fellow officer. But the anger didn’t go away at the thought of consequences. Instead, it settled over me and clouded my eyes and my brain. I was no longer Divya Allard. I was just anger.

  Time stretched and warped. Those couple of minutes turned into a year of just standing there. When the ambulance arrived and the paramedics scooted down into the pit, I screamed at them for being late. Didn’t they know a life hung in the balance?

  Of course their first sight of you gave them all the information they needed. But they were professionals. They didn’t tell me to fuck off. They went through their duties to determine beyond a doubt that you, Hannah Ryder, were in fact a corpse.

  Then the rest of the cast arrived. Medical examiner; that grizzled reporter from the Portsmouth Porthole, Eric Kuhn; other cops. Plus a special bonus: the chief of police himself, Henry Akerman.

  We exchanged only a few words, and Akerman only took one look at Bradley rubbing his jaw, before he booted me from the scene. I didn’t put up much of a fight—I still had enough reason in my head to recognize that everyone must do the job they’re paid to do.

  However, that didn’t mean I gave up on the case myself.

  Case was the word I needed. The only way to quiet the screaming in my head during my paid “wellness” leave was to think about your death as a puzzle to solve. So I went on my own special investigation into your death.

  At first it was easy. All I had to do was lean on your mom, your co-workers and close friends, your boss, etc. These were people I already had a relationship with, thus I had plenty of cover to speak with them during this “tragic time.”

  Remember how I tried to be the Cool Partner about your frequent and inexplicable little field trips? There was only that one time, four or five beers in at the Coat of Arms, when I joked about slipping a GPS tracker in your pocket. And the way you flipped out in response, I never made a “joke” like that again . . . hey, everyone needs their space. Right? I’d been determined not to be clingy.

  But now I needed to know more. Where had you been those last two days? Who had you been associating with?

  Through those conversations, I glimpsed dimensions of you that I hadn’t known. I’d thought you never even voted; I had no clue you once belonged to the Northeast Federation of Anarchist Communists, or that such a political party even existed. And you never told me about the ghost whose presence you thought you felt on the basement stairs of your Uncle Jacob’s house, or that loony expedition to Sedona, Arizona, that you apparently joined, to seek out an interdimensional gateway among the red rocks (I hope you got a refund). But all of these anecdotes were small threads, nothing I could tug on.

  And had you known anyone with a red winter coat? I got nowhere with that, either.

  People clammed up as I pressed harder. I became fixated on the idea that the mysterious implant in your wrist was important. Especially since nobody else seemed to have noticed it. It wasn’t mentioned in Bradley’s investigation report. Nor did it appear in any of the media coverage of your death.

  Akerman got wind of my questions. That was when he suspended me from active duty and prohibited me from asking any more questions about your case. I sank into isolation.

  But I didn’t stop digging. I just took more caution.

  Nobody could tell me anything about the implant. I asked Kuhn, the Porthole reporter who covered the story, if he saw it. He said that he hadn’t. Lies. How could he not have seen it?

  Even in my grief-stricken madness, I knew better than to ask Akerman or the other brass about the implant. Its total disappearance was too convenient. Someone was hiding something from me.

  Skip Bradley was a different story. Bradley, who’d considered filing an assault and battery lawsuit against me until Akerman convinced him not to embarrass the department, had been there. He must have seen it.

  I tracked Bradley’s address down without much difficulty. Like many of the Portsmouth cops, he couldn’t afford to live in the city. Bradley lived alone in an apartment in Stratham, a one-horse town off Route 33.

  One night I showed up at the apartment. At the second knock, Bradley showed his face.

  “Al . . . Divya,” he said, forcing a smile. “What a pleasure to see you. I was actually about to go to bed, though, so . . .”

  He didn’t shut the door in my face, though it was clear he wanted to. I realized that Skip Bradley was actually afraid of me: his fellow officer, seven inches shorter and at least seventy pounds lighter than him. Little old Allard. I almost laughed.

  “Give me only a moment,” I said. “I’d like to discuss that implant in Hannah’s wrist. Then I’ll be out of your hair. What do you say?”

  Bradley neglected to respond promptly, so I pushed past him and let myself in. I entered a small kitchen. No dirty dishes or spilled food, but a funk hung in the air. Hey girl. I wrinkled my nose.

  “I didn’t invite you in, Allard. This is a bad time.”

  “Hey, it was a bad time for my fiancée to die, now that you mention it,” I said. Bradley flinched, and I pressed on: “Just tell me one thing, Skip. Why didn’t you mention the implant in your report?”

  “What implant?” he said, his eyes flickering. “What the fuck do you keep talking about, what implant?”

  I advanced on him. “In. Her. Wrist. I know you saw it. You were there. Did it mean anything to you?”

  “I didn’t see any implant. It’s time for you to go, Allard. I’m gonna get Akerman on the line.”

  Bradley reached for his cell phone on the kitchen table, but I stepped in the way and slapped the phone into the next room.

  “Oh, what are you gonna do now?” he said, bitterly. “Hit me again? You’re a real fuckin’ hero, you know that? I’m sorry about your friend, but Jesus, show a little respect to a man in his own home.”

  “Fuck you,” I said. I grasped for my control, which was sliding away. I didn’t want to beat on Bradley again. He wasn’t the one who killed you. And he wasn’t the one making decisions about what information belonged in the polic
e report, or at least I thought not. But right then he was in my way. “Did Akerman tell you to leave it out?”

  “I didn’t see no implant,” he said again. His eyes slid away from me. Lying.

  I took him by surprise with a sudden thrust of my foot behind his legs, followed quickly by shoving him hard against the chest. It was the only way for someone my size to reliably knock over someone his size, and it worked. Bradley crashed down.

  “Let me refresh your fucking memory,” I said, and I pulled my gun on him.

  He went flour-faced. Yep, now he was taking me seriously. He raised his hands even though he was on his back on the kitchen floor. “Allard, no! You crazy bitch, put your weapon down!”

  “The implant!” I screamed. “You saw it, didn’t you?!”

  He was looking death down its black barrel. “Yes,” he groaned. “Weird fuckin’ thing. Don’t know what kind of idiot would mess up their own body like that.” His eyes flicked fearfully at me. “Um.”

  “And why did you not mention it in your report?”

  “Chief told me not to.”

  “Why?”

  He stammered. “I-I—”