When two murders strain the police force of a remote Alaskan fishing port, veterinarian Maureen McMurtry is tapped by Dutch Harbor’s police chief for forensic assistance. The doctor’s got a past she’d rather not discuss, a gun in her closet, and a retired police dog that hasn’t lost her chops. All come in handy as she deciphers the cause and time of death of a local drug addict washed ashore with dead sea lions and an environmentalist found in a crab pot hauled from the sea in the net of a fishing vessel.
When her romantic relationship with a boat captain is swamped by mounting evidence that he’s the prime suspect in one of the murders, McMurtry struggles with her own doubts to prove his innocence. But can she? McMurtry’s pals, a manager of the Bering Sea crab fishery and another who tends Alaska’s most dangerous bar assist in unraveling the sinister truth.
D. MacNeill Parker and her family are long time participants in the Alaska fishing industry. In addition to fishing for halibut, salmon, crab, and cod, she’s been a journalist, a fisheries specialist for the State of Alaska, and a seafood company executive.
She’s travelled to most ports in Alaska, trekked mountains in the Chugach range, rafted the Chulitna River, worked in hunting camps, and survived a boat that went down off the coast of Kodiak.
Parker’s been to Dutch Harbor many times experiencing her share of white knuckler airplane landings and beer at the Elbow Room, famed as Alaska’s most dangerous bar.
While the characters in this book leapt from her imagination, they thrive in this authentic setting. She loves Alaska, the sea, a good yarn and her amazing family.
Website:
https://www.dmparkerauthor.com/
Author Marketing Experts:
Twitter: @Bookgal
Instagram: @therealbookgal
Amazon: http://amzn.to/46fPtGv
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198615907-death-in-dutch-harbor
Praise:
“From the first scene, she evokes the real Dutch Harbor and the dynamic people who call it home. It’s a roaring mystery that braids together oil rigs, fishing, sea lions and the kind of Russians we love to hate. Death in Dutch Harbor is a must read for anyone who wants to vicariously experience a rugged world on the edge of an unforgiving sea”
— Lori Swanson, Former Director Marine Conservation Alliance, Federal Fishery Observer
“Any fan of the Deadliest Catch television show should reach for this book!”
—Captain Sig Hansen, FV Northwestern and a star of the Deadliest Catch TV series
“Death in Dutch Harbor grabbed me at the outset and did not let go. Right away you can tell Ms. Parker knows the issues facing the fishing industry in the Bering Sea. She weaves them into the tale and uses her characters to draw the reader deeper into the murder mystery.”
— Frank Kelty, Former Mayor of Dutch Harbor/Unalaska
“What a banging beginning for this author. Parker successfully tied together the multiple themes with strong characters, especially the women, with a believable and exciting plot. I recommend this book and look forward to Parker’s next novel.”
— Men Reading Books
By the time Police Chief St. George and his two deputies, Chet and Michele, drove out the gravel road and located them on the beach, the two women had thoroughly examined both sea lions.
Maureen held up the lead slug she’d extracted and offered it to the chief. “I found bullet wounds in both the animals. Looks like it might be a .30-06.”
The chief wore a bulky police parka over jeans. He held out a gloved hand.
She dropped the bullet in his palm and watched him roll it around there.
“Yeah, looks like a .30-06 or maybe a .308. Bag it,” he said, passing it to Chet “And get the GPS readings on the carcass locations before we move them.”
“So, you know something about ballistics?” he said, turning again to Maureen.
“Brothers,” she said. “Dad took us deer hunting.”
“Really?”
Maureen could tell the chief was still trying to size her up. “Nothing worth talking about,” she said, knowing it was nothing she wanted to talk about.
Michele was already down the beach taking photographs of the other corpse. They could see the camera’s flash pop in clusters.
The chief turned back to Maureen, his eyes getting a bead on her from beneath a wide-brimmed western hat. . His mouth was pressed shut. Maureen had learned that meant he was thinking and wanted to get it right before he spoke.
“I’d like you to remove all the bullets and give me an estimate on time of death.” He hadn’t asked her to take a scalpel to anything before, so the query was measured. Sure, she was a vet but the question came anyway. “Can you do it, Maureen?”
The city council had hired Ray St. George as its police chief five months earlier. Like most remote Alaskan communities, the town didn’t have a medical examiner. And unless the community was lucky enough to have an appointed coroner to determine cause of death, the state police expected all evidence, including unexamined corpses, to be sent to Anchorage for forensic analysis. Dutch Harbor didn’t have a coroner, and its lone doctor worked at the hectic clinic. Chief St George had learned quickly that once state police took possession of a body, they also took possession of the investigation, often leaving the local police out of the loop. To Ray St. George, a retired Army investigator, this protocol was unacceptable.
“Can you do it?” he asked again, watching her kneeling in the sand to get her medical kit back in order.
Looking up, she stated the obvious. “The cause of death seems pretty clear, Chief.”
The chief waved it off. “I know these are sea lions, but it’s still a crime I won’t tolerate. I want to know how many shooters were involved. To do that, I need to know if the bullets were fired from the same or multiple weapons. And I can’t begin to investigate properly without knowing if it happened this morning or last week.”
“Well, not this morning.” She lifted the flipper again and let it drop. “They’ve already passed through rigor.”
Maureen closed the kit, stood up, and hung it over her shoulder. “They’re gonna want to do their own necropsies,” she said, nodding down the beach where Kate still knelt, taking notes by the other corpse.
The chief had three inches on Maureen, making him about six feet tall. His face was clean shaven and his graying hair clipped short. His posture made you want to stand up straighter. She could tell by his expectant face that he was waiting for the wheels to turn in her head.
“Let me think about it,” she said.
Chet stood over the corpse, entering its GPS location in his notebook. He looked over at the chief. “What now?” he asked.
The sea edged closer, and the surf shot foam their way. The chief pointed toward the tideline. “Look for shell casings,” he said. “And there may be more animals washed up on the beach. I want to collect as much as we can before the tide takes it away.”
Chet, young and with a gait that showed he was eager to please, pulled a yellow tide book from his pocket. “High tide’s in less than two hours. We could lose them.”
“Don’t worry, Chet, we’ll figure it out.”
Michele offered to call the Northward plant and ask that they send out a flatbed truck to pick up the sea lions. An Aleut native, she’d served as the senior deputy for three years. Among her many duties, she penned the police log. Its droll language made it the favorite section of the town’s weekly paper, The Dutch Harbor News. She’d already keyed in the fish plant’s number and looked to the chief..
“Ask them to send one with a crane,” he said.
Maureen joined Kate, who’d begun to walk the tide line again. They were almost to the river when their roving flashlight beams landed on another mound of seaweed. Kicking away clumps of kelp, a hideous odor rose to scorch their nostrils.
Half buried in the sand lay a sneaker attached to a white foot. It lay turned away from a twisted leg, its bruised skin exposed like a warning. Maureen knelt beside it and began to strip away the seaweed until she uncovered a shoulder. Following its sloping angle, she found strings of long hair that clung to a scalp like seaweed to a rock. The turned head revealed the nose ridge of a man.
Kate moved the flashlight beam to where the nose met the sand. The beam faltered, quaking as if the earth moved beneath it. But it was Kate, unable to quell her shaking hand.
Maureen hollered down the beach. “Chief, over here. Hurry!”
Their flashlights bobbing, the chief, Chet, and Michele loped their way to the spot where Maureen and Kate shined their lights. The chief knelt down. He reached for the man’s shoulder and rolled him over.
Looking up was someone they all recognized.
Giveaway
Death in Dutch Harbor (3 ebooks Worldwide
No comments:
Post a Comment