Let's just say… Haven's a little superstitious.

Audrey Parker


Jack Pistone considered the gutted road in front of him and reflected that it had already been a somewhat… unusual day. He and Don had been forced to take the red eye and had then had their first dose of small-town weirdness when the car hire places in Bangor had refused to rent them a vehicle unless they paid a special Haven insurance premium. Then they'd met the most laconic small-town cops since laconic small-town cops first become a trope. And now they were looking at a large crack in the ground.

"It's a large crack in the ground," he ventured, although he wasn't entirely sure why he was stating the obvious. Some sleep-deprived part of his brain wondered if perhaps they were looking at it because the Detective hadn't worked that out yet.

Parker crouched down beside the crack and then gave them a thoughtful look.

"This is how Max Hansen died. Shouldn't still be here of course. Town's having some fight with somebody about fixing it. But there it is."

"So, you're saying that… Max Hansen was swallowed by a crack in a ground?" Jack said incredulously.

"Just opened up beneath him. Boom. Goodbye, Max Hansen."

"So, what caused it?" asked Jack.

Parker shrugged, "Witnesses say ground just cracked open."

"But how?" Jack persisted. "Was it an earthquake? Some other natural phenomenon? Earth...shifting... or something?

"Not according to the geologists. And they talked to the seismologists."

"A bomb?"

Parker nodded slowly, "Yes, it was a bomb. Duke Crocker dug up the road, planted a bomb, and then resurfaced the road so no one would notice."

"I'm not appreciating the sarcasm, Agent Parker," Don said sternly.

"Also, the fire department ruled it out," she added and then stood up and stretched out her legs. "Witnesses didn't say there was an explosion. Just... crack...splat."

"So why interview Duke at all?" asked Jack.

Parker simply shrugged. "We had a mysterious death and, until we got all the specialist reports, we had to treat it as such. Duke and Hansen had had a run-in earlier that day. And no one is suggesting Duke wasn't glad to see Hansen dead. Not even Duke. Of course... that's not the big question, Agent Cooper."

"And what's the big question, Detective Parker?"

"What any of this has to do with the Feds. Nathan queried it. Apparently, you have jurisdiction although I'm damned if I can tell why. Max Hansen was an ordinary run-of-the-mill murderer; not a federal prisoner. And he was on parole. I have no idea why the Federal coroner even cared about his autopsy. You want to tell me why you're really here."

"No."

She paused and gave him a reflective look. "Fair enough."

She gestured to the truck. "Come on, I'll take you to Crocker's boat."

They piled into the old blue truck that Jack was beginning to suspect doubled as a rather unusual police vehicle and backed up to a side street that took them around the damage.

The quaint old buildings of the main town rolled past them for a minute or two until they turned one last corner and saw the dazzle of the ocean glimmer in front of them.

"I have to say, this is a beautiful part of the world," Jack noted. "Certainly beats Boston."

Don just grunted. "It smells like fish."

"It's a fishing town," argued Parker, with a short laugh. She smiled at him suddenly, revealing an attractive and relatively-young woman under the facade of cop.

"Fishing's the number one employer after tourism, in one form or another. Fishing is akin to godliness and poaching is the work of the devil."

"Well, we promise not to steal any lobsters," Jake joked and was rewarded when the smile veered to the back seat.

"So, did Duke have many friends in town," he asked her, hoping the small moment of rapport would help improve things.

"Friends? Not many. Duke was the town's resident rakish bad boy. Most people kind of liked him – small town, you know, and he's lived here most of his life – but he was too self-interested to make many friends. There are one or two though. Bill McShaw. Randall Sawyer."

"Can we see them today?"

"Don't see why not. Not even midday and both of them are easily found."

The truck pulled up to stop in a carpark near a jetty where two older men were fishing off the end.

"Strange time of day to be fishing, isn't it boys?" Parker called out to them as she jumped out of the truck.

The two men, one small and dapper in a bowtie and jumper, and the other tall and vaguely dreamy put down their rods and hurried up the pier towards them.

"Oh, we're not trying to catch anything, Detective Parker," said the shorter one, "we're seeing who can cast the furthest. Vince is convinced that he has the best technique..."

"...and Dave seems to think that yelling at the line makes all the difference," the taller one finished. He gave her a hopeful look. "What do you think? You can watch us cast."

Don shot a glance at Jack and whispered, "Fantastic. First the territorial local cops and now we get quirky residents as well. I've seen this show... never did stick around long enough to find out who killed Laura Palmer though."

"Oh, it was..."

"Agents," Parker interrupted them, "this is Dave and Vince Teague. They're the local newspaper guys and they want to ask you a few questions."

"No comment," they both said automatically.

"Oh, that's a shame," said Dave, "it's not often we get FBI agents in Haven. Nothing much exciting happens here. Apart from Max Hansen's death, of course. That was a little bit exciting. Of course, that was obviously a simple act of God."

"God?" said Vince disdainfully. "That was Haven. She didn't want him here. I don't blame her."

Dave rolled his eyes are what was obviously his brother and turned back to Audrey expectantly.

"Ok boys, you go back to your... casting now. If I have time, I'll come back later and adjudicate, ok."

"Thank you, Audrey," Dave thanked her and the two men turned around and headed back up the pier.

"Such a nice girl," floated to them on the wind as they headed down the other end of the marina.

"Sorry about that," Parker said, "a lot of the locals think Max was killed by the town."

"The town?" said Don, obviously having decided the conversation was veering in the wrong direction.

"Well, let's just say… Haven's a little superstitious. And Max was swallowed by a crack in the ground."

"Haven may be superstitious but I'm not, Detective Parker. Main streets don't just crack open and even the Max Hansen's of this world don't just die little more than a day after they're released from prison."

"Fine, fine. I'm just warning you. This is a small town. You might want to take that into account... and here we are. The Cape Rouge."

"Wow," exclaimed Jack, "that is a... big boat."

"Yep. Well, if you're a smuggler I guess you need the room."

She hoisted herself on board and gestured broadly.

"Do you want to search the whole thing or...?"

"Your guys already did a thorough search, didn't you?"

"Yeah. We turned up a few items of questionable ownership but that's about all."

"Well, we'll just look at the living quarters then. Bunk. Stateroom. Give us some idea of who he is. Maybe some clues as to where he went."

Parker looked away and then back with a somewhat rueful smile.

"Where he went? Look, I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm telling you how to do your job but Duke obviously left town before the roadblock got put in place. Haven's not that large and if he was still here we'd have found him by now. He's a criminal and a loner who has no family and very few friends. Nothing you find in there is going to help you to work out where he went."

"Humour us, Detective Parker."

"Right." She walked up to the stairway leading to the bridge and hoisted herself up underneath it. "Just give me a minute. He keeps spare keys taped to the bottom of these stairs somewhere. Less messy than breaking in. Ah, here they are."

She dropped back to the ground again. "Knew finding them would come in handy one day. Although not for this. More for the, you know, illegal importation of stolen goods."

She unlocked the door and they moved through and into the bedroom.

"Wow, this place is actually... really nice," Jack remarked, surprised. "It looks like such a rust bucket from the outside."

"Well, Duke did like the finer things in life."

"Definitely been tossed over in a hurry though," Don noted, taking in the unmade bed, open, bare cupboards and drawers, and the odd items of clothing tossed around the wooden-panelled room. "He must have known."

"That's what I was thinking," Jake agreed. "The question is how."

Parker's radio buzzed. "Hey, Audrey honey. You there?"

She picked it up and pressed to talk, gesturing to them to start searching without her.

Jack and Don began to turn over the room; the illuminating verbal insight into small-town policing happening behind them impossible to ignore.

"Yeah, Laverne, I'm here."

"Got tourists up by the old lighthouse again. Someone's called in to say they've moved the hazard signs. If they're not careful, someone's gonna fall in."

"By the time I get up there, Laverne, they'll be long gone." She paused and gave the two agents a quick look, "I'll go up and put the signs back though."

"Thanks hon. Oh, and Dave said to tell you he's done those groceries for you."

"Dave?" Parker asked with an expression of confusion on her face.

"Um... Tony?"

"Oh right, thank him for me. And tell him to just drop them by my place."

"He already has. See you when you get back."

She turned back to the agents and saw Jake leaning over to pick something up that had fallen behind the bed.

"Found anything?"

"I have actually. It's a book. It's um..."

"Moby Dick," Parker finished for him.

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"It means Duke left in an even bigger hurry than we thought. He's had that since he was a kid. Doesn't go anywhere without it. Must have dropped behind there and he couldn't find it in time."

Jack opened the battered paperback and looked at the flyleaf.

Duke,

I may have to leave but, no matter what happens, I'll always be here for you and I'll always find a way to protect you.

Lucy, 1983.

"Lucy?"

Parker shrugged. "Never heard him mention a Lucy."

"Not a local?"

"Not that I know of. But I was born end of '83 so I was a little young to know. Duke would have only been about six."

"Do you think he could have gone to find this Lucy?"

"I guess. I'll see if I can find a record of a Lucy around that time. But it's a longshot without a last name. And it was a long time ago."

"We appreciate any help, Detective Parker," Cooper said curtly.

"Yeah, I can tell. So, you finished up here? Stateroom's this way."

"Pshew," whistled Jack as they walked into the stateroom, "this place is larger than my apartment. Guess there's money in smuggling."

"What on Earth is this?" Don called out from the other side of the room.

Jack and Audrey strode across the room to a blackboard set up around the corner from the kitchen.

"A... blackboard," Audrey ventured.

"A blackboard that recently had photos or something stuck to it. And it looks like something's been rubbed out."

Cooper picked up a piece of chalk.

"Let's see if we can find anything," he muttered under his breath as he and rubbed it lightly across the top of the board.

"And bingo," he said as he moved away to let both Jack and Parker see the words 'Max Hansen' writ large on the dark background.

"Isn't that interesting."