Hatteras Wind: A Ned Doyle Mystery

Friday

May 24, 1942

Abandon Ship! Abandon Sh...And then the sound died along with the lights. The American merchant ship, Pride of Annapolis, off the Diamond Shoals, was fatally hit amidships by a German torpedo.

Ship’s Doctor, Henry Ballard, and machinists’ mate Jim Fielding were frantically gathering supplies in the dispensary.

We gotta go, Doc! Fielding shouted over the clamor of secondary explosions, grinding steel, rushing water and the screams of wounded sailors. We gotta go now!

I know, Jim. We’ll need these supplies. Got a lot of wounded. We make it to Hatteras, they won’t be equipped to treat them.

Funny we should be in sight of my home. What else can I do?

Good man, Jimmy. Grab all the bandages and antiseptic stuff you can carry. Get yourself topside. Get in one of the lifeboats. I’ll be along as soon as I can get the narcotics out of the Captain’s safe.

Fielding did as he was told. He struggled against the incline of the listing ship to get topside. After loading the supplies into a lifeboat he hesitated. His mates urged him to get on board. Instead he waited for the doctor. When Ballard did not appear, Fielding ran once again into the dark ship to find him. He had a flashlight but it didn’t help much. It was disorienting. He was frightened. He struggled to keep his wits about him. He made his way past a pile of debris that he couldn’t readily identify. He wondered if the Doctor had been overcome by the dense smoke that was filling the sinking ship. When he arrived at the Captain’s cabin he was shocked to see Ballard standing stock still in front of the open safe. He was being held at gunpoint by the Captain. Each man held a flashlight that provided the only illumination.

There’s nothing there of interest to you. the captain said.

The hell there’s not! All of our narcotics are in there. Something else in there you don’t want me to see? Something about you and your Nazi friends?

The Captain just stared at Doc.

Ah! I thought so. Your face tells the story.

Fielding stood silently behind the captain, unsure what to do. Everything had gone sideways at once.

Clever, Doctor. How’d you figure that out?

I overheard you one night in the radio shack talking to some of your associates. Odd. An American Captain, on an American ship speaking German. I figured out the rest. All I want right now is the medicine.

All you’ll get is your name listed as among those lost at sea.

The captain cocked his revolver and leveled it at Ballard.

I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Nazi scum! Fielding shouted, taking a step toward the captain.

Surprised, the captain spun around to face Fielding, and fired point blank. Ballard lunged at him from behind. Fielding was dead before he hit the deck. The Captain started to get to his feet. Ballard hauled him back by his ankles and then jumped on top of him. A wrestling match followed which only ended when the gun went off again and the captain lay dying.

Ballard rushed to Jimmy’s side but it was clearly too late.

The doctor grabbed all of the narcotics out of the safe and turned to leave.

Looking down on the dying captain Ballard snarled, This locked briefcase might have some very interesting information in it. I’ll take it too. I’ll see that it gets to the authorities. God willing!

Present day, Friday

The wind always blows on Hatteras Island. On those rare days when it does not I often have a nagging feeling that something is wrong. Everything is out of sorts.

There wasn’t even a light breeze this morning.

My friend Sam Faulkner called me at the ungodly hour of seven. He was off to a late start. I was still in bed.

Sam runs a charter boat out of Hatteras Village.

Ned. Got time for lunch? He asked, abruptly.

Uncharacteristically, here was Sam on the phone getting straight to the point. Not all that big a deal, you might think, but he has this habit of calling you up, even first thing in the morning, and then putting the burden of carrying the conversation on you. What do you hear? he’d usually say. What do I hear about what? What do you hear Sam? You called me.

Well, being direct just isn’t his way. His mind is always several moves ahead of his mouth. By the time the conversation is over you can play it back in your head and figure out why he called, but you have to work at it. I think he’s afraid he might overwhelm folks if he hit them with everything that goes on in his head. Or maybe he’s just feeling a little lonely. Whatever. It might have been really annoying if I hadn’t known him forever. He’s a chess player. That’s just Sam. I deal with it. But today, he cut right to the chase. Odd.

He told me that he was fogged in. He would hold his fishing party on the dock until ten or eleven and if the fog didn’t clear off by then he’d be free. The reports he was getting from NOAA led him to believe that on this windless day the murkiness would stay with us for a while.

Sam called back around 9:30 to tell me that his folks had given up and he was free for the day. He said he’d come by my place around 11. He’d bring lunch.

Sam’s usually a pretty upbeat guy. But when he gets pushed his customary good humor starts to fade. The short choppy cadence and subdued tone of his voice told me this might be one of those occasions.

There it was, that veiled hint of something being not quite as it should be that hits you when the wind doesn’t blow. I had the feeling that something was starting to slither up the back of my neck. What’s up with him? I wondered.

It was a few minutes before 11 when I concluded that it was about time for Sam to show up. There was nothing to do now but get some bowls and spoons out and try not to think about my nagging hunger. I could taste the chowder he would certainly be bringing from our favorite place.

By 11:30 I was beginning to get a bit miffed. Sam gets me up at the crack of dawn and then he’s late. What the hell?

The phone rang. It was Sam’s lady, Toni. She owns Toni Lee’s Bistro in Avon. On Hatteras Island where Hatteras Clam Chowder is obliged to be on just about every menu none could top Toni’s. Best damn clam chowder on the island, hands down. Significantly, she was also the love of Sam’s life off and on since we were all in high school.

Is he there with you? Put him on, I want to ring his neck. She was on fire!

He’s not here. He was supposed to be a half hour ago. He was going to stop by for some chowder. He said he had something to talk about.

Toni has a slow fuse but it had clearly burned down to the flash point. I reached two obvious conclusions: Sam had done something really stupid and there would be hell to pay.

Well, she said. There was ice in her voice. He was here a few minutes before 11. He was rude to my waitress, snatched the order out of her hands, yelled at her for being slow, and stormed out.

She told me that when he showed up to have him call her. I was glad she wasn’t mad at me. Toni is generally unflappable. But she has a wild child hidden deep within her. It isn’t a quality you want to encounter.

I waited even more impatiently. I wondered what was going on. As anyone who has ever been to Avon knows it takes no minutes to get from any given place in town to another. I wasn’t really worried but I was growing perplexed, and hungrier.

Finally about ten minutes later Sam showed up.

My wife, Nora, had gone to have lunch with an old friend in Kill Devil Hills. So, it was only a perfunctory single bark from our ‘Hatteras’ Lab that let me know Sam had arrived. Sam and old Shark Bait are good friends so there was no reason for the dog to rouse himself from his morning nap long enough to make a full blown fuss.

I was sitting on the deck overlooking what I think of as my canal. It’s one of the many canals that make the sound side of Avon seem like the Venice of the Carolinas to me. I was set on trying to stay nonchalant, if for no other reason than I didn’t want to step into the middle of whatever was going on between Sam and Toni. I kept my eyes on the mist shrouded sound and the laughing gulls frolicking on the pylons. I said, as casually as I could, Hey, what’s up? What took you so long?

He didn’t reply. I turned around and was surprised to see him looking shell shocked. His eyes were vacant. There he stood; holding our bag of lunch unconsciously down by his side, lost in thought, staring at the horizon, his curly salt and pepper hair, akimbo. He looked numb or furious. I couldn’t tell which. I asked him if he was OK.

After some skirting around the bush, aimlessly talking about the fog and his canceled charter, he told me that he had had a strange experience earlier. He explained that first thing this morning he had been taking care of maintenance around his boat, Second Chance, when he heard two men walking on the dock.

Sam said these two guy’s conversation caught his attention.

Slow down, I said. Back up. I don’t know where to start. Let’s go with what took you so long to get here from Toni’s?

That’s just the point. Sam snapped. These guys had my hackles up. They spent the morning going around the marina talking to people. Then I saw them driving into the parking lot at Toni’s just after I did. They had followed me from the dock. At the restaurant, they just sat in the parking lot eyeballing me. They watched me go in. It was eerie. It pissed me off. I went in, got our order, and when I left they followed me again. I drove all over Avon trying to get rid of them. No luck. Finally I went up to the north end of town. The lots aren’t so squared off up there. Some of those places sit caddy corner or on two lots. You know what I’m talking about. Anyway I got a little confused myself and ended up in a cul- de -sac.

He said that the two men were driving some kind of sedan, a Honda maybe. So he had dropped his Jeep into four wheel drive, and powered through a few yards much to the surprise of the good folks in North Avon. Sam chuckled. They tried to follow. It was a dangerous thing for me to do. Stupid, really. I shouldn’t have done it. There are kids around. People don’t expect a car in their yard, but things were getting ridicules.

He said, "They didn’t get far before they were buried in the sand up to their axel. Idiots. Not from here, that’s for sure."

Sam was really upset. I suggested that this may call for something a little stronger than iced tea to accompany our soup. Sam had been carrying our soup around like an old bait bucket. Time to serve it up. I went into the kitchen to make a drink for him and get a beer for myself. Sam followed me. He’s not much of a drinker but he agreed. I made him a Captain Morgan’s rum and Coke.

I have to say. I’m not much for rum and the thought of any drink with Coke is enough to make me gag, but its Sam’s thing. I’m Southerner enough to think that soda is an OK substitute for coffee in a morning pinch, but with booze? Never.

So, Sam sat down at the kitchen table as I handed him his drink. He was regaining his composure. He took a hefty sip of the disgusting mixture.

I just sat there dumbfounded. After a moment of shocked silence I finally said, "I guess you’d better go back to the beginning. Who are these guys? What do they want