COFFIN COVE a gripping murder mystery full of twists (Coffin Cove Mysteries Book 1) by JACKIE ELLIOTT (books for new readers .TXT) 📕

The department emptied promptly at five every evening. Nobody paid attention to Gerry. He sat at his desk, sweating slightly, waiting until he was sure that nobody would rush back to pick up a forgotten phone or car keys.

He must have waited for half an hour, he thought, before he could muster the courage to push open the door to one of the few open-plan offices in the building. The bullpen, as the department called it, was a maze of cubicles, divided by flimsy partition panels. The office was noisy during the day and Gerry avoided entering unless he really had to.

Now it was silent and dark except for the blue glow of desktop monitors.

At the far end of the bullpen was a bank of filing cabinets. Gerry hurried over and rummaged in his pocket for a set of keys. He’d had the keys for years. Nobody had bothered to check or ask for them back when he went to rehab. They kept all the active investigation files in the last cabinet. They’d had this system for years. Occasionally, the department hired a new manager who got fired up about replacing the paper files with a software program. But this was a government agency, and after a flurry of meetings, the proposals usually died in the face of overwhelming disinterest, leaving operations personnel to complain about the constant paperwork.

Gerry was relieved that his key still fit, and his hand trembled as he unlocked the cabinets and pulled open the top drawer. Hilstead had only given him the name of the vessel he thought was under surveillance.

Gerry cursed when he saw the contents of the drawer. It was divided up by species and types of violations, not by vessel. There were thousands of manila files, and without more information, he could take hours or days to find the right file.

Gerry smacked his hand on the top of the cabinet in frustration. He couldn’t fail, he couldn’t.

His instructions were clear. Find the file. Make a copy. Leave it on the front seat of his unlocked car, parked a block from his apartment, no later than 7 p.m. Walk away from the car and pick it up an hour later.

He tried to think logically. For Hilstead to call and sound so desperate, he must be involved in something big. If the Fisheries officers spied small violations like fishing in a closed area or out of season, they acted immediately. To spend some of the precious department budget on a full-scale surveillance operation, this must be major.

Gerry’s hands moved over the files. He pulled them out one by one, checking and shoving them back, until finally his fingers found a thick file. He flicked through the documents. This was it. In line with protocol, the file didn’t mention names of individuals. But it had the vessel name he was looking for printed at the top of one page. Gerry whistled to himself as he leafed through the rest of the file. Photographs, details of dates and times and multiple vessels. No wonder Hilstead was worried. He was poaching abalone. There had been a complete moratorium on fishing abalone in Canadian waters since 1990. The sea snails were an endangered species, but highly prized by Asian consumers. Gerry had eaten them once or twice and couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about. But there was a thriving black market for the rare shellfish. With the promise of large sums of cash, there were people, like Hilstead, prepared to gamble in that high-risk arena.

And it looked like his gamble would not pay off. This was a thorough investigation, Gerry realized. The department would gather enough evidence to be certain of a conviction. They would seize assets, including boats, Hilstead’s truck and fishing gear, and impose fines. There was even the possibility of jail time.

He didn’t have time to read it all. Gerry quickly took the file over to the photocopier, praying that it wasn’t out of toner. It was working fine, so he carefully copied each document, making sure the file was in the same order when he finished. He dropped the file back into the drawer, locked up and walked back to his office.

With his heart pounding, he placed the copies in a large envelope, grabbed his jacket, car keys and phone, and left the office.

Gerry hung around in the coffee area more than usual the next day. He listened for snippets of gossip. He had collected his car at 8 p.m. and found an envelope stuffed with cash. It had been a long time since his last payment, and he was nervous. He pushed it under his mattress, thinking he would leave it for a few days. See what happened.

He jumped every time his cell phone rang, but Hilstead didn’t call.

A week later and Gerry was beginning to think maybe Hilstead and his cronies had had the good sense to lie low. If the surveillance didn’t produce any results, sometimes the department would drop the investigation. They were short-staffed and underfunded, so they needed quick conclusions. He began to breathe a little easier.

But he was wrong.

“Have you heard?” his new secretary said, plonking his coffee on his desk, causing some of it to slop and run down the side of the mug and pool on some documents.

“Heard what?” he said, irritated, scrabbling around his desk for a tissue.

“Those guys in there,” she said, nodding her head in the bullpen’s direction, “they got a result. Arrested some gang diving for shellfish or something. Something banned, anyway.”

“Abalone?” Gerry asked, holding his breath.

“Yep, that’s it. Do you want a cloth?” she said, looking at Gerry, who had become very still.

Gerry heard nothing from Hilstead. He followed the case as much as he could. Finally, it went to court. The gossip was that the lawyers expected it to be a slam dunk. So Gerry