Prologue  

August 8, 1901, Wallingford Docks, Wallingford Heights, Massachusetts

   Delmer Johnson should never have been working by himself. The night air hung thick with summer humidity as he worked alone on the docks along the Wallingford River. A Chinese cargo vessel, Huángdì de Xìngyùn, had arrived with an exotic array of goods under the cover of darkness. Unlike most evenings, the docks were quiet, disturbed only by creaking timbers and water lapping against the hull.

   Delmer wiped the sweat from his brow, his strong hands moving with practiced efficiency as he unloaded crates stamped with foreign characters.

   His colleagues, usually reliable despite their rough manners, had succumbed to a spiked generosity at the local tavern. It wasn’t like Joe and Henry to miss a shift without a word, and irritation knitted Delmer’s features as he worked doubly hard in their absence.

   The dock was lined with lanterns that cast long shadows across the planks. Delmer lowered himself onto a stack of wooden crates, his back aching. The odor of fish, salt water, hemp rope, and creosote drifted across the wharf.

   Delmer sat to catch the breeze off the river. He lifted a canteen from a nearby crate and took a long drink. Facing him, the weathered warehouse wall bore a faded warning: NO LOITERING ON THE WHARF.

   A dull thunk sounded behind him, startling Delmer an instant before he felt an excruciating impact against his back. His eyes widened in shock as he looked down to see the shaft of a harpoon protruding grotesquely from his abdomen at an upward angle. The weapon was barbed.  Four feet of its shaft extended out, and the point was driven into the warehouse wall in front of Delmer.

   Delmer was unable to stand, move or take a breath. The pain was blinding and unimaginable. Delmer’s hand reached out instinctively, touching the cold metal, his mind struggling to comprehend the steel that had pierced him. The canteen fell from his grasp, water spilling and mingling with a growing pool of his blood.

   As Delmer slumped forward, held upright only by the harpoon, his thoughts flickered to his family, to the simple joys of laughter and warmth, so sharply stolen in this final moment. “I hate for Cherise to see me this way,” he thought dimly, the edges of his vision darkening into the encroaching shadows of eternity.

   With the gentle lapping of river water as a final lullaby, Delmer Johnson’s eyes closed for the last time, his life ending as silently as the night had fallen on Wallingford Heights. Once a place of bustling activity and crude camaraderie, the docks bore silent witness to a tragedy that would ripple through the small community, stirring whispers of mystery and vengeance.

   A lone, darkly clad figure eased the small steam launch away from the dock. Within moments, the darkness swallowed both boat and killer.

                                                                                                         ❦