The boat was white fiberglass, with a single diesel engine, and narrow with barely a 12-foot beam.  It was 45 feet long with a low trunk cabin and a standing shelter. It bore witness to a springy sheerline. The rails sloped downward from bow to stern. It was equipped with a CB radio, VHF marine telephone, a depth sounder, and radar. It was as good as it got for harvesting inshore lobsters.

   Louise knew enough boats to be able to start it and steer it. She didn’t give a damn about the hydraulic trap hauler or anything else about the boat that wasn’t part of her last-minute plan of action for getting off the Atlantic Canada island and back to the island of Montreal. The boat had a high bow the better to shoulder aside the sea. That suited her fine. The sooner she was a gone girl the better.

   She flinched when she heard Conor Murphy’s voice but didn’t turn her head and kept her hands on the wheel. “Stay where you are,” Conor said in a loud voice. “Keep your hands where I can see them. Don’t do anything stupid.”

   Louise had stuck her semi-automatic Beretta 9mm in the back pocket of her pants. She could get it fast enough and wheel on the cop but thought better of it for the moment. If he was behind her with a gun in hand, she could do better picking a better moment. She decided on the spur of the moment to make the moment right now. She twisted the wheel to the right and the boat went up in the air and slammed back down, hit sideways by a wave that rocked it.

  Conor had been on plenty of boats in rough weather and stood his ground although he was thrown slightly off balance. Louise snatched for her gun and swung it towards Conor emptying the new 15-round box magazine she had hurriedly jammed into the grip after the fiasco at those sons-of-bitch’s house. She meant to kill him for sure, whoever he was. When she saw it was Conor and not a policeman, she kept shooting. It didn’t matter who he was. Conor threw himself flat and rolled away from the bullets. He brought his Beaumont-Adams revolver to bear and pulled the trigger. The bullet leapt out of the barrel and made a straight line for Louise. It plowed into her chest as she was squeezing off more shots. Her last shot went skyward as she was knocked backward. The bullet went straight up into the air and then straight down. When it came down it plunked her in the forehead where she had collapsed prone on the deck. She lay there, whatever milk of human kindness still left in her leaking out of her left breast. A bullet was stuck dead center in her heart. As soon as it stopped beating it started getting colder than it had ever been.

   The boat spun in a crazy circle. Conor hurried to the wheel and got it back on an even keel. When he looked at Louise to see if there was anything he could do for her, he saw there wasn’t anything to do. She was dead as a doornail. He stuck a wrench through the wheel to keep the boat on course and lifted Louse off the platform, draping her over the rail. He tied cement bricks to each of her feet. He got a grip on her legs and heaved her over the side. She sank like a stone in two seconds. Conor threw her Beretta 9mm into the ocean after her. 

   “Remember me?” William Murphy asked the sinking Louise from a century away, watching his chip off the old block tuck the Beaumont-Adams back into his waistband. “I’ve got better things to do than remember you,” she spit out. There was lots of trouble in her part of the world just then, between the devil and the deep blue sea.

   The lobsters will get her, Conor thought. They are probably right under the boat. They are nocturnal and eat everything dead or alive. If the lobsters didn’t get her, eels would. There wouldn’t be anything left to identify her. She would be a skeleton soon enough. After that she would be nothing. He eased the boat back in the direction of land and chugged into the North Rustico Harbor. He managed to tie the boat up, walked to his Buick GNX, and drove back to Murphy’s Cove. He pulled in as his brother Flynn, who had been driving around in circles, was pulling back in.

   “Are you OK?” Flynn asked.

   “Yeah, I’m OK,” Conor said. “Hey, let’s get in out of this rain.”

   “What happened?”

   “It’s a long story,” Conor said. “I’ll tell you later.” They walked up to the house as Sandy was coming down the stairs from his bedroom.

   “What was that racket that woke me up earlier?” he asked rubbing sand out of his eyes.