Fatal Harbor

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

As we passed through Newburyport with our next stop Exonia, I cursed myself for being as stupid as those recommending back in 1960 that we nuke the Russkies and get it over with, and I fumbled around in my luggage. I took out the special cell phone that Lawrence Thomas had given me, a day and several hundred miles earlier. I pressed the SEND button and waited.

It was picked up on the second ring. “Thomas.”

“Lawrence, this is Lewis Cole.”

“Yes?”

Even with the provenance of the phone, I still wanted to be careful. “Recall that person we were talking about? The one with the mutual interest?”

“Of course.”

“He talked to me some time ago.”

His voice was sharp. “In person?”

“No. Via cell phone.”

“Did you get anything actionable?” His voice was still sharp.

I had to flash back to my previous career, wasting precious seconds. Actionable intelligence: a piece of information that could be used to break a code, identify a covert site, or locate a suspect.

“No,” I said. “But you need to tell me something.”

“Proceed.”

“When you gave me this cell phone, you talked about being able to track and trace a call. Can you track where Curt Chesak was when he made that call?”

“Do you have his incoming number?”

“No. It was blocked.”

“I don’t think so.”

I pressed on. “You don’t think? Does that mean there’s a possibility? Is there some way you can trace a phone call that came in to my cell phone, even without knowing the source number?”

A slight hissing of static. The woman across the aisle was giving me a look, like she was wishing me to choke on a free-range cheeseburger or something.

Lawrence said, with hesitation, “I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t been retired that long, but so much can change so quickly when it comes to technology.”

“Can you find out?”

“I damn well will. I’ll call you as quick as I can. Where are you now?”

“About ten minutes away from Exonia, New Hampshire.”

“What’s up there?”

“Someone I’m trying to save.”

“Then get off the phone and go do it, Lewis.”

Good advice. I hung up.

At Exonia I didn’t have a lucky arrival. My friendly taxi driver Maggie was nowhere to be seen. I fumbled through my receipts and such and found her business card, but the phone rang and rang with no answer. My aislemate who had a longing for cell-phone-free train cars strode by me and got into a Prius. I wasn’t about to ask her for a ride, because I didn’t want to be hectored for the next several minutes or, worse, be made to apologize for what I had done.

At the far end of the parking lot, I saw a woman approach her parked Volvo, and then looked away. Wasn’t about to work, not with night approaching. I went over to the diner and inside, where two young men were working at a small island counter. Magazine racks stretched off to the right, and there was a small grocery aisle to the left, and seating for the diner was behind the two young men, both bearded, wearing T-shirts commemorating musicians I had never heard of.

“Excuse me, guys,” I said. “I need a ride to the hospital.”

One head snapped up. “You sick or something?”

“No, I just need to get there.”

The guy on the right said, “Exonia cab can pick you up. Payphone’s out back.”

“No one’s answering the phone.”

The other guy laughed. “Bet Eric’s on duty right now, and he’s sleeping something off. Poor bastard’s working three jobs, trying to keep his house.”

From my wallet, I took out a ten-dollar bill. “The hospital’s only a couple of miles away. Any chance one of you can give me a ride?”

They were quiet at seeing the ten-dollar bill, and I put another down on top of it. “Twenty bucks. Less than ten minutes. What do you say?”

The one on the right slipped the money away. “Sounds like you’ve got an emergency.”

I said, “You know it.”

The guy’s name was Peter, a decent sort who drove a Toyota pickup truck and who blasted through a changing traffic light near the hospital so I wouldn’t have to wait. He drove right up to the entrance and surprised me by offering his hand, which I shook. “Hate going to the hospital,” Peter said. “Either you’re dying, or they’re doing their best to kill you.”

I got out of the truck. “And I’m trying to make sure they don’t do both.”

A quick stride through the lobby, and then an elevator took me to the ICU floor. I could hear a jumble of voices as I went through the wide double doors. There was a gaggle of men and women clustered around the nurses’ station. I saw two uniformed security officers, a cop from Exonia, another cop from Tyler, and a few others in civilian clothes. Lots of raised voices. I spotted a very tired-looking Kara Miles, and she saw me. I put a finger to my lips and motioned her over. She nodded in understanding and went past the crowd and into the family room we had used before.

I went in, closed the door, gave her a quick hug. We sat down across from each other. “How are things? What’s going on?”

“You were right,” she said. “That cop wasn’t a cop.”

“Diane?”

“He never got into her room.”

My chest felt a lot lighter. “Tell me more.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know how he knew that I was suspicious of him. After I made those phone calls when I got off with you, I went out and tried chatting with him, just to pass the time until the other cops arrived. But… he noticed. Somehow he noticed. He just smiled, got up, said he had to get a cup of coffee. Then he left. The Exonia police showed up about two minutes later, followed by some additional Tyler cops.”

“What did you tell them? Did you tell them you got a call from me?”

She rubbed her hands together. “No. No, I didn’t want to bring you into it. So I just told them I felt uncomfortable about the officer keeping watch on Diane’s room, and they didn’t ask many questions.”

“Do you know what happened to the cop who was supposed to be here?”

“Captain Nickerson said he was found in his apartment. Unconscious and bound. He’s en route to the Porter Hospital. Lewis, how did the fake cop know that something was up?”

“The good ones make excellent poker players. They can sense your emotions, your fear, what’s going on with your expression. Don’t beat yourself up. Just be happy he’s not here.”

She slowly nodded, her hands still rubbing.

“Diane,” I said. “How’s Diane?”

“They took her breathing tube out. She’s breathing on her own.”

I almost broke out into a wide smile, but stopped while keeping a look on Kara. “What’s wrong, then?”

“She’s got pneumonia. They’re hopeful they caught it in time… but with someone in her shape, it can be very, very serious.” Kara wiped at her eyes. “Oh, shit, Lewis, what am I going to do?”

“What you’ve been doing, day after day,” I said. “Staying here. Keeping witness. Talking to her.”

After we talked for a few more minutes, she wanted to get a drink, and I followed her out of the small family room. The crowd of people around the nurses’ station had gotten smaller, but a man in a dark gray suit emerged from the group and crooked his finger at me.

New Hampshire State Police Detective Pete Renzi. He had been the lead detective on the Bronson Toles murder case a number of days ago, and he was also the one who had left me a note that told me to “leave it alone.”

I suppose I could have left him alone and scurried out of the hospital. But he had helped me during that chaotic time, when demonstrators were clogging the streets of Falconer, when violence was in the air, and when the Falconer police had arrested me and had planned to charge me with the murder of young John Todd Thomas.

Renzi had gotten me freed, had helped me.

I owed him that.

So I walked right over.

“Can I help you, Detective?”

“I doubt it,” Renzi said. “But you can try.”

We went back into the same family room that Kara and I had just used, and he closed the door. We sat down opposite each other. He looked me up and down and said, “No offense, Lewis, but you look like crap.”

“None taken. Ask you a question?”

“Sure, I’ll give you first crack.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I was in the area, heard there was a fracas involving Detective Woods. So here I am.”

“And here I am,” I pointed out. “A hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

A slight grimace. “What, you think I came here because I was sure you’d show up?”

“Sure. A good opportunity to remind me of that sweet letter you sent my way a few days ago, the one where you said, quote, Lewis, trust me on this, leave it alone, unquote. Care to elaborate?”

Renzi carefully said, “You’re a reasonably smart fellow. Do I need to spell it out?”

“You said a minute ago that I look like crap. For the sake of argument, let’s say I’m feeling like crap and thinking like crap. So yeah, spell it out, Detective. What’s the ‘this’ I should stay away from? Seeking justice for Diane?”

He squirmed some in his seat. “Justice will be done.”

“Really? How far along are you in arresting and prosecuting Curt Chesak?”

“The case is still under active investigation.”

“Again, how far along are you in arresting him?”

He let out a breath. “The case is still under active investigation. That’s all I can say.”

I shook my head. “That’s not good enough.”

“Lewis, it’s going to have to be good enough.”

“Or what? Going to threaten me with arrest? For doing what, exactly?”

“No, no threats. Nothing bad is going to come to you from the New Hampshire State Police. That I can promise.”

“But that leaves a lot of other interested people out there who might want to do me harm. So what’s going on?”

He shook his head. “That’s the best I can do.”

“The best? Really? Detective, one of your fellow members of the thin blue line is in a coma, not more than fifteen feet away from us, and you’re giving up? Just like that?”

Renzi’s face colored. “I’m not giving up. Not for a moment.”

“The hell you aren’t. Otherwise you’d be here telling me to keep at it, no matter what.”

“Keeping at what? Being the lone knight, the Don Quixote, chasing a goddamn windmill? Let it slide. Help Diane and her partner. I know justice will happen. One way or another, justice will happen.”

“What? Curt Chesak will get his hands slapped? Sent away somewhere? Get Gitmoed? Is that what someone told you, or told the Colonel of the State Police to tell you? ‘Don’t worry your pretty little head over the Chesak case, Detective. Higher-ups will resolve this matter so you don’t have to dirty your hands.’ Is that what happened?”

He stood up. “When the time comes, you’ll remember this talk.”

“I hope not.”

Renzi slammed the door open and went out into the area by the nurses’ station. Kara was sipping a cup of coffee with Captain Nickerson of the Tyler Police Department and another cop, and as I was going over to see what was new, my cell phone rang.

I picked it up. No caller ID. One of the nurses glared at me, and I ducked back into the family room, answering the phone as I closed the door behind myself.

“Yes?”

“Cole,” came Curt Chesak’s voice, low and chilly. “Remember our last call?”

“How could I forget someone so charming and sociopathic?”

He said: “You didn’t agree to stop with your actions. So I did what I had to do. So if you don’t stop now, at this moment, it’ll be a bullet to the back of the head. Got it?”

I looked at the closed door, the ICU and Diane Woods just beyond it.

“What the hell have you done?”

“You were warned. Next time will be a visit from Mister Remington.”

He hung up. I thought for a moment.

Chesak said he had just done something.

What?

I started frantically dialing a number on my phone, willing my fingers to be accurate and not to fumble.

The phone rang and rang and rang.

Each ringing of the tone cut into me.

A voice answered. I nearly slid out of the chair in relief.

“Yeah?” It was Felix.

“You okay down there?”

“As well as could be expected. And you?”

“Hanging in there.”

“Would love to chat but it’s not going to happen. Sorry. Okay?”

“You got it.”

I hung up the phone, almost dizzy with what had gone on these past few minutes.

“Lewis, old boy,” I said to myself, getting up, “when this is all done and over with, you’re going to spend a month doing absolutely nothing.”

I stepped back into the ICU area. Kara was moving to me, away from Captain Nickerson, who had a cell phone pushed against her right ear. Kara stopped in front of me, lip trembling, tears in her eyes.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do much of anything.

“Oh, Lewis, I’m so sorry.”

“What is it? Is it Diane? Is it?”

A sharp shake of her head. “No, nothing’s changed with Diane.”

“Then what is it?”

“Oh, Lewis, I’m so very, very sorry.” She caught her breath. “Captain Nickerson just got the news. Your house is on fire.”