Chapter 17: The Marina

Emmett told his father he would run the docks through the winter, and that he'd sign nothing until he knew what he was signing.

The old man said that was the first sensible thing a Dettmer had said at that table in a decade.

At 6:40 on Monday morning, a sheriff's cruiser pulled into the marina lot with its lights off.

I was there with two coffees, because Emmett opened the docks at seven, and I had decided I liked watching him do it.

The bait shop at the head of the marina road was already open.

Pete stood in the doorway in a rubber apron, holding a minnow bucket in one hand and his phone in the other.

I knew him now by his thumbs.

【Pete: Cruiser at the Marina. 6:41 a.m. Brock Dettmer is in the passenger seat. He is wearing yesterday's shirt.】

【Sue: Source for "yesterday's shirt"?】

【Pete: It has pot roast on it, Sue.】

A deputy got out of the driver's side, a heavyset man with a tired mustache and a clipboard.

Brock climbed out after him, unshaven, red-eyed, with whiskey riding on him from ten feet away.

Emmett was coiling a line on the gas dock.

He saw the cruiser, put the line down, and walked up the ramp with his hands loose at his sides.

The crew was coming in for the morning shift, two kids in marina hoodies and the gas-dock guy.

They stopped on the gravel.

"That's him," Brock said, pointing. "That's my brother. I want to make a report."

"Brock," Emmett said.

"He took marina lumber. Six hundred dollars of cedar and pine, in a marina truck, with no authorization."

"He built a dock at a private property on Pine Point, and he's been parking at that house overnight."

He turned to the deputy.

"That's trespassing. It's theft. I want it on paper."

The deputy sighed through his mustache.

"Mr. Dettmer," he said, to Emmett. "Did you take the lumber?"

"I bought it."

"Where?"

"Lakeland Hardware. Friday. Cash."

Emmett reached into his shirt pocket, took out a folded slip of paper, and handed it over.

The deputy read it.

"You keep your receipts?"

"I fight fires for a living," Emmett said. "The government doesn't pay me back without one."