A Death at Deer Harbor: Gabes Law Revised Edition (Sheriff Gabe Salazar)

by Jerry Pipes

It was a short run from Port Townsend to Smallpox Bay on San Juan Island, but The Sailor knew that he was delusional and he hoped that rest might restore him. He dropped his sea anchor, tied off the tiller, and struggled below to reach his bunk and restore his strength and a degree of mental clarity. He dozed in his bunk for a while and dreamed that he was being sucked into a whirlpool of nonsensical goings-on. He swore that Judas was on the boat telling him to jump overboard. "No" he told himself, "I will make it to shore somehow! You poisoned me, you bastard, but I will live to kill you." Back under power, The Sailor struggled to seize a shred of reality. The Sailor knew that he did not have much time left. He increased power to the engine and trimmed the sail to hasten his arrival at Smallpox Bay. But the nausea and vomiting soon returned and he became increasingly delirious. Judas was chasing him around his cabin and poking him with that damned umbrella. Still, he pushed relentlessly toward what he believed to be his safe haven. In his confusion, he labored to set his Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system for Smallpox Bay. But by now, his vision and his mind would not cooperate. "Surely, The Viking will see my boat from the house and collect my treasures even if I have perished."Awakened in the wee hours from the replay of a familiar dream from Desert Storm, San Juan County Washington Sheriff Gabe Salazar put the phone back in the cradle and struggled to get out of bed, almost tripping on his twisted bedding as he grabbed his cane and limped off to the bathroom. "Damn it all! Why do so many people insist on dying in the middle of the night?"With that, he brushed his teeth, washed his face, toweled down, climbed into his flight suit and pulled his fifty-mission cap down over his uncontrolled morning mop of hair before limping painfully down to the nearby floatplane dock.Ten minutes later, his co-pilot, Sergeant Lars Anderson, was doing the initial flight check and engine warmup when he saw Gabe shuffling toward the floatplane. Gabe was wearing his flight suit over his pajamas (a wonderful invention, the flight suit) and he still looked half asleep.San Juan County has a total area of 621 square miles (1,610 km2), of which 174 square miles (450 km2) is land and 447 square miles (1,160 km2) (72%) is water. San Juan is the smallest county in Washington by land area and fourth-smallest by total area. The county boasts more than 400 islands and rocks with elevations above mean high tide. Only 128 of islands and rocks are named. Access to the islands is by the Washington State Ferry System, privately owned boats and by air. The Straits of Georgia and Rosario Strait separate the San Juans from Washington State on the East and Vancouver Island British Columbia to the west. Only Lopez Island, Shaw Island, Orcas Island and San Juan Island are served by ferry and during most of the year the ferry is available from 6:00 in the morning roughly 9:00 at night. Gabe's floatplane Yellow Bird allows the Sheriff to respond to all of the inhabited islands 24/7.For Lars and Gabe, it was a short, nearly wordless hop over the San Juan Channel to Deer Harbor on Orcas Island. Minutes after liftoff, Gabe announced, "I see the flashing lights of a police cruiser at ten o'clock." Seconds later, he announced, "There's a beached sailboat and an EMT ambulance directly below us."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1532877293
• ISBN13: 9781532877292
• Release Date: April 2016
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 286 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"