Fatal Harbor

CHAPTER SEVEN

At the parking lot of the Lafayette House on Tyler Beach, I easily found an empty parking spot and maneuvered Kara’s Subaru to a halt. It was mid-morning and clouds had roared in from the west, making the day both look and feel gray and cold. The Lafayette House is one of the few surviving New Hampshire grand hotels from the end of the nineteenth century, multi-story with a number of Victorian-style turrets and a long wrap-around porch, and a perfect lawn with a view of the slate-colored churning Atlantic.

I sat for a long while, staring out at the ocean, thinking and juggling things. Before me was Atlantic Avenue, also known as U.S. Route 1-A, and on the other side of the road was a large yet narrow parking lot. Being off-season, the lot was mostly empty. I considered that a good sign. I swung around and saw no one on the porch, no one sitting in the white Adirondack chairs on the perfect lawn.

I got out of the car, zipped up my coat. The wind was steady, biting. I walked briskly down the driveway, jogged across Atlantic Avenue, and then started walking north, on a very narrow sidewalk. I looked to my left and then my right, like I was a tourist from Omaha seeing the ocean for the very first time. After striding about fifty yards or so, I made a quick descent to the right, stepping onto the Lafayette House parking lot. At this end, there were a number of large boulders, blocking the end of the lot, save for one area where a rough dirt lane was visible.

My own driveway.

I walked down the bumpy, not-very-well-maintained road, as my home came into view. It was about a hundred and fifty years old, and it started out as a lifeboat station for the U.S. Lifesaving Service, then junior officers’ quarters for the Samson Point Artillery Station — now a state park — and, before it came into my possession, belonged for a number of years to the Department of the Interior.

For the past several years, the old house with the weathered siding and nearby sagging garage had been more than a home to me: it’d been my safe harbor, and I was so very, very happy to be back.

This wonderful feeling would last about another thirty seconds.

When I unlocked the sturdy front door and stepped in, it was all wrong. Hard to describe, but walking into my house quickly reminded me of a movie I had seen last summer with Diane Woods. At first the movie had seemed fine, but after just a few seconds, it was quickly obvious that the projectionist needed to slightly focus the film.

That’s what was going on here. When I stopped and looked around, everything seemed to be in its correct place, but no, everything was just slightly askew. The old Oriental rug in the center of my living room. The position of the couch, two chairs, and the coffee table. All had been moved and put back in their places, but not exactly.

My house had been tossed, and tossed by experts.

I trotted upstairs to my office and my bedroom, saw the same evidence of my safe harbor being violated. I quickly gathered up a few things and ran downstairs. I ran outside, closed and locked the door, glanced back at my home, and started up the driveway.

Then I stopped.

The driveway was the quick and safe way back up to the parking lot and Atlantic Avenue.

Instead, I turned around, started scrambling over boulders the size of a Mini Cooper, taking the long and rough way back.

It was a good choice.

Walking back toward the Lafayette House but from a different direction, I saw one and then two dark-blue Chevrolet Suburbans roar up Atlantic Avenue and then turn into the once-empty parking lot of the Lafayette House. One Suburban went bounding down my driveway, and the other one veered and blocked the driveway entrance. I kept on walking, head down, hands in pockets, trying to look like some guy out for a mid-morning walk, not having much of a care in the world.

I came up to Kara’s rusting Subaru, once again smiling inside at the peace signs, anti-nuclear stickers, and one sticker that said something like IT WILL BE A GREAT DAY WHEN SCHOOLS HAVE ALL THE FUNDS THEY NEED AND THE AIR FORCE HAS A BAKE SALE TO BUY A BOMBER. Sure. Tell that to Air Force pilots working lumbering bombers on patrol to defend their nation, said bombers having been built when their grandparents had been dating.

I got in the Subaru, calmly put the key into the ignition, started it up after three tries, and then exited the parking lot, heading south.

The condo unit that Diane and Kara lived in was about fifteen minutes away.

I took thirty minutes.

Those thirty minutes weren’t wasted. I spent them driving, backtracking, and sitting for a few minutes in parking lots, looking about me. Nobody seemed to be following me; but then again, nobody had been in my house, but my presence had obviously alerted a ready-response team that came roaring in about ten minutes after I had unlocked my door.

That meant staffing, that meant money, and, above all, that meant a lot of patience.

And smarts.

So the lack of cars following me meant nothing. A GPS unit of some sort could have been tagged on the Subaru’s bumper, or some sort of stealth platform made up to look like a seagull was now floating above me, taking real-time photos and data acquisition.

Maybe I was being paranoid, but so far it had been paying off.

I made one more stop at a tiny grocery store, picked up a copy of that day’s Tyler Chronicle and Boston Globe, and got to Diane and Kara’s place.

They resided in Tyler Meadows, a set of condominium units built right up to Tyler Harbor. I parked the Subaru and took in the view, and my chest ached at seeing the concrete structures and lights of the Falconer nuclear power plant on the other side of the harbor and a wide expanse of marshes. That’s where it had all started, less than a week ago.

And something else bothered me. Out in the harbor were some fishing vessels, and one lonely sailboat, sail furled, at anchor. The fishing boats belonged. They would go out any time they could, all fall and winter, to make their catch. But the sailing boat didn’t belong. The name of the sailing craft was the Miranda, it belonged to Diane Woods, and it should have been hauled out by now.

Lots of things were being left undone.

I walked over to the entrance to the condo unit where I had spent lots of time over the years, for brunch or a quick lunch or some lengthy dinners. I unlocked the door, closed it behind me, and went up the short staircase to the first floor. It opened up into a living room that had an adjacent kitchen and dining area with a grand view of Tyler Harbor. I sat down at the round oak kitchen table and sat there for a bit, just thinking, brooding.

So many memories here, of lots of laughter and long conversations and the occasional cross word, as Diane’s professional life sometimes got mixed up in my oddball personal life. But through it all, our friendship had deepened, had grown, and had gotten to this point.

I unfolded the papers but could not read them. I looked over at the living room and saw the photos of Diane and Kara, sharing their moments together, and photos were up on the refrigerator, some curling over magnets holding them up. The place was musty and smelled of old cooking scents and soap and perfume.

I looked around again, stood up and folded the papers together, put them under my arm. My original goal had been to stay here for a while, lie low, think things through and try to figure out what the hell to do next.

But I didn’t belong here. It belonged to Diane and Kara. Though I was sure they wouldn’t think so, I felt like an intruder, a stranger.

I looked once more at all the photos, seeing the smiling faces, wanting to see them in my mind’s eye instead of the drawn face of Kara and the unconscious face of Diane.

Then I left, making sure the door was locked behind me.

After a couple of quick errands, I drove back to the Tyler Inn and Suites in Exonia and, still having the upset spouse look on my face, I managed to get my room for another night while paying just cash. In my room I stretched out on the bed, started going through that day’s Boston Globe.

I went through the first section.

Then the second section.

And the last section, the sports pages.

I shook my head. Went back to work.

And then I found it, in a tiny paragraph buried deep within the Metro section.

Unbelievable.

I had to read the story three times before it sank in.

The shootings on Bay State Street near buildings belonging to the Boston University campus were officially reported as a student filmmaking project gone awry. Two BU students were being held in custody, names not yet made public. Quotes from witnesses about how realistic the entire episode had been, with shot-out windows, two people being shot, blood everywhere. “Even though they should have gotten the right permits and made the right notifications, whoever did this deserves an Oscar,” said Harry McDermott, twenty, a BU student.

I folded the paper shut. Went to the other side of the room, went through a plastic bag with the cheery blue Wal-Mart logo on its side. I removed a disposable cell phone, read the directions, powered it up, and made a phone call to Massachusetts. It was answered after one ring.

“Yeah?”

“Looking for Tinios.”

“Yeah?”

“Give him this number, all right?”

The man hung up on me. I put the phone down and paced the room, thinking things through. I looked at the Tyler Chronicle, which had a recap of last week’s bloody events at the Falconer nuclear power plant. There were four photos on the front page. The largest showed Curt Chesak, face masked, among a group of protesters, holding up a police helmet in celebration after ripping it off Diane’s beaten face. Three smaller photos, with a headline over them saying: THE DEAD AT FALCONER. Two were of an older man and woman, who had been shot and killed by persons unknown at about the same time Diane Woods was being beaten nearly to death. The third was of someone I had met a couple of days prior, a John Todd Thomas, who had been a student at Colby College up in Maine. John had brought me to an encampment belonging to the Nuclear Freedom Front to meet Curt Chesak, and he then disappeared, his body being found later in the nearby marshes, a gunshot wound to his head.

The other two were a man and a woman, both active in the NFF, one from Massachusetts, the other from Pennsylvania. He ran an organic food store. She worked in a knitting collective. And John Todd Thomas originally came from Arlington, Virginia, a place I once had known extremely well.

The ringing of my new phone startled me. I looked at the incoming number, saw the ID was being blocked. I answered it by saying “Hello,” and a man on the other end said, “What’s up?”

I sat in one of the two chairs in the room in relief. Among the numerous things Felix and I had gone over before embarking on this little adventure in justice was setting up a procedure to contact each other, using a middleman that Felix trusted and had used many times before. Even though the phone number I used said it was in Massachusetts, there was no guarantee the man lived there. Felix said he was a genius with the intricacies of the phone system, and when he was eleven or twelve he’d had a pitch-perfect whistling ability that enabled him to fool the phone system, to make free long-distance phone calls.

“You okay?”

“Hanging in there.”

“How’s your relative?”

Felix said, “No change, thankfully. But she’s off to Florida for a while. Good for her bones and other things.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“And you?”

“Things are getting more interesting.”

“Do tell.”

“Did you read the Boston Globe today?”

“Haven’t gotten to it,” Felix said.

“Check out the Metro section. Seems a couple of students were filming a movie near the Boston University campus. Lots of gunfire, bullets flying, bodies on the street.”

“The hell you say,” Felix said, both surprise and admiration in his voice.

“Page B-2, News Briefs,” I said. “Check it out. You know what this means, don’t you?”

“I’ve been around, I don’t need a picture drawn.”

Felix’s tone was pretty calm, a feeling I didn’t share. “All right, no drawn picture, but Felix, we’ve just entered the world of my former employer.”

No answer from the other end. I knew Felix was considering what I had just said; and to emphasize my point, I added: “Just so there’s no confusion, I don’t mean Shoreline magazine and my crazy editor, Denise Pichette-Volk. I mean before that.”

“Before that” being as a research analyst for an obscure section of the Department of Defense, which I had left years ago after the people in my section were all killed — except for me — in a training accident that could have embarrassed many a corrupt soul in our government.

I could hear Felix breathe. It was a damn fine cell phone.

“Well, how about that,” he finally said.

“Remember our little discussion back at the diner? About the number of men we’ve run up against since we went to Boston?”

“How could I forget? You put ketchup on eggs, remember?”

I pressed on. “You add the logistics and financing that you need to support that effort, and then you add on the ability to fake a news story about the shooting back at BU… we’re talking government agencies here.”

“Ours or theirs?”

“Somebody’s, that’s for damn sure.”

Outside my room, I could hear someone vacuuming the hallway. Any other time, I would find that incredibly irritating. Right now, I found it incredibly soothing.

Felix said, “You be extra careful, then.”

“What? No warning from you about stepping away, backing down, letting everything just settle out?”

Felix said, “They hurt your friend. I wasn’t going to insult your intelligence.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m going to be tied up for another day or three, getting Aunt Teresa out and down to Florida. You going to need anything?”

“You beat me to it,” I said. “Yeah, I’m going to be doing some out-of-state traveling. I need a photo ID and a credit card to match. Plus some cash. Can it be done?”

“How long do you need it for?”

“Just a couple of days.”

“Yeah, it can be done. Where are you now?”

I told him where and my room number, and he said, “Okay, it’ll be arranged. But what do you have planned?”

“You said something earlier about going back to the beginning.”

“Yeah. I remember.”

“I’m going back to the beginning, and then some.”

I brought Kara’s Subaru back to the Exonia Hospital parking lot and then took the elevator up to the ICU. At the entrance to Diane’s room, a muscular-looking young man was reading a copy of the Union-Leader newspaper out of Manchester, the state’s largest city. He had on jeans and a flannel shirt, and on display at his right hip was a holster with an automatic pistol.

Despite all that had gone on earlier, I felt happy at seeing him. I slowly approached him and he quickly folded his newspaper and put it in his lap.

“Help with you something?”

“I’m looking for Kara Miles.”

“And you are?”

“Lewis Cole. I’m a friend of hers and the detective sergeant.”

He stared me up and down and said, “You got ID?”

“Sure do. Let me get it.”

I moved slowly, went to my wallet, slipped out my New Hampshire driver’s license. I suppose I could have also passed over my press card, issued by the N.H. Department of Safety, but since I was no longer employed by Shoreline, I didn’t want to be accused of doing something illegal.

The police officer gave my license a quick scan, grunted, handed it back. “So it is you, and you’re one lucky fella. There’s four names on a list of people allowed to visit who don’t work at the hospital, and you’re one of them.” He motioned with his left shoulder. “Kara’s in there with the detective sergeant. You want I should get her?”

To do what? To tell her about the faint outlines of something dark and monstrous that had been stirred up out there, that was after me and her and Diane and no doubt others?

I passed over the keys to Kara’s car and condo. “Give these to her, if you don’t mind. Tell her thanks, that I’ve made other arrangements.”

“Fair enough. Anything else you’d like to say?”

“Officer, I’d love to, but I just don’t have the time.”

Sometimes in my off moments I like to think that maybe the Greek or Roman gods of old are still at work up there, sort of like a little immigrant grocery store going up against the current Walmart Supercenters of organized religion. Their activities by nature get drowned out, but every now and then they poke up, like they did tonight when the God of Irony — whoever she or he was — sent me a signal with the arrival at the Tyler Inn and Suites of a cab the front desk had called for me. Like before, it was a dark blue sedan with the yellow letters EXONIA CAB stuck on the side.

The window rolled down. The same cloud of cigarette smoke. The same driver from the other night.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said.

“Try to contain your enthusiasm.”

She took a hefty drag from her cigarette. “What, you need to get over to the train station again? Why the hell don’t you just walk it? Couldn’t be more than a mile.”

I reached for the door handle. “Maybe I just like your company.”

“Hah.”

I opened the door, said, “A different place this time. How does Durham sound?”

Her tone brightened. “Mister, Durham sounds just fine.”

To get to Durham from Exonia meant traveling through two small New Hampshire towns, and my new best friend kept up an entertaining chatter as we proceeded. Even in this day and age, there were dairy farmlands and wide-open fields, and it was good to look at the red, gold, and yellow of the fall foliage as we approached Durham. My personal driver talked about the weather, about the snotty prep-school kids in Exonia, her aching hips, and how her husband George was adjusting to his new artificial knee—“and thank Christ the V.A. eventually said it was a service-related injury, otherwise my grandkids would be paying off that bill when we’re both dead and gone.”

Downtown Durham consisted of the post office, a couple of beer-and-pizza places, and a tidy downtown with two-story brick buildings. The UNH buildings were mostly brick and marble, and when I was dropped off near a main intersection with lots of college students walking briskly along, my driver asked, “You need a ride back?”

“I do, but I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

She passed over a creased business card. “Call me.”

I glanced at the card. “Maggie, I appreciate it, but like I said, I don’t know when I’ll be done.”

Maggie shrugged, put the car into drive. “What, you think my dance card is full for the rest of the day? No worries, pal, okay?”

She drove off, and I thought: no worries.

I wondered what that felt like.