Edge

Chapter 20

AT 11:00 P.M., after making rounds inside the house, I stepped outside and settled into a nest of fallen leaves. I began scanning the property with a Xenonics SuperVision 100 night vision monocular. They’re very expensive but the best on the market. We could afford only three in the department and I’d checked out the last one earlier today.

This was normally the work done by a clone but I believed that even we shepherds should get our hands dirty on the job regularly. Abe’s philosophy, of course-a belief, you could say, that killed him.

I was concentrating on looking for anything that seemed out of the ordinary. I found my shoulders in a knot. I was breathing hard. I began reciting silently to myself: rock, paper, scissors… rock, paper, scissors…

Lulled by the flow of moon shadows from the slowly moving clouds, I began to relax. After forty minutes, my fingers numb and arm muscles shivering from the chill, I headed inside.

In the shepherd bedroom I unsnapped my Royal Guard holster and took a bottle of Draw-EZ from my gym bag. I massaged some of the gel into the natural-colored leather, now tanned as a beloved baseball glove. The smooth side fit against my skin, the rough facing outward. I didn’t really need to work on the leather-I’ve timed my draws and they’re acceptable-but I found it relaxing.

When I was through, I took care of business in the bathroom and then rolled into the lumpy old bed, blinds drawn, of course, though the odds of a shooter emerging from the glorious line of old oaks to pump a round into the room were pretty slim.

The window, though, was open a crack and I could hear the faint unfurling sound of the wind and the softer rustle of the water over the falls a half mile away.

I’m lucky because I can sleep almost anywhere, nearly on command. Which I’ve learned is particularly rare in my job. Not surprisingly, my principals suffer from insomnia. I knew I’d doze off soon but at the moment I was pleased to lie in bed, fully clothed, though minus shoes, and stare at the ceiling. I was thinking: Who’d lived in this house originally?

It had been built around 1850. I supposed it had been a farmhouse, with much of the land devoted to oats, corn, barley-staples, not the designer crops you see nowadays. I had an amusing image of a working-class nineteenth-century family kicking off supper with an arugula and spinach salad.

Though the property hosted ten thousand trees now, I knew the vista back then from Mathew Brady’s and others’ photographs. Much of what was now woods in Northern Virginia had been open agricultural land around the time of the Civil War.

Great Falls had been occupied early by the Union Army. This area wasn’t the scene of any major battles, though nearly four thousand troops met briefly at what was now Route 7 and Georgetown Pike, in December 1861, resulting in about fifty dead and two hundred wounded. It was considered a Union victory, though most likely because the Confederates saw no strategic point in occupying an area where they weren’t greatly supported, and they simply walked away.

More than any other area in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Great Falls had been a place of mixed sympathies. Those favoring the Union and those the Confederacy were often neighbors. Here, “brother against brother” was not a cliché.

I knew this from reading history-another one of my degrees-though I’ve also learned a lot about world affairs and conflict from playing board games. I enjoy those games that re-create famous battles, which are almost exclusively of American design. The Europeans prefer economic and socially productive games, the Asians abstract. But Americans love their combat. Among the games I have are Battle of the Bulge, Gettysburg, D-Day, the Battle of Britain, the Siege of Stalingrad, Rome.

Some people I’ve met through the gaming community shunned them, claiming they were disrespectful. But I believed the opposite was true: that we honor those who died in the service of their country by remembering them however we can.

Besides, who wouldn’t admit that rewriting the past has a deep appeal? I once utterly defeated the Japanese military at a game based on Pearl Harbor. In my world, the Pacific campaign never happened.

My thoughts kept returning to the family who’d lived here when the house was new. It had been a large clan, I assumed; many children were the rule then. The seven bedrooms could easily have accommodated the offspring plus an older generation or two.

That always appealed to me: generations living together.

An image from the past: of Peggy and her mother and father.

I realized now that in appearance, and because of her quirky side, Maree reminded me of Peggy. None of Maree’s darkness, of course, or the irritations and unsteady nature.

Mr. Tour Guide…

Peggy had once called me a bad boy but it happened after I realized we’d been given a large order of fries at McDonald’s instead of the regular and I said, “Let’s sneak out without telling them.”

More memories I didn’t want.

I stretched, feeling the pain in my calves and joints from the pursuit of Henry Loving at the flytrap and in my back from the retreat at the hotel. I forced myself to play a few mental rounds of the Chinese game Wei-Chi against an invisible opponent I sometimes imagine to help me banish unwanted thought.

Then I decided it was time to sleep and rolled over on my side. In two minutes I was out.