Buried Dreams (12 page)

Chapter Seven

It started as a vibration in the steering wheel, a vibration that made me think, damn, was it time for an alignment again, so soon after the last one, and while I was trying to remember which month the Explorer had gone in for a checkup, the trembling in the steering wheel escalated into a major shaking, like the damn thing was tearing itself apart. My hands popped off and I slammed on the brakes, and the next few seconds were a confusing mix of screeching brakes, the harsh sound of metal on pavement, and a topsy-turvy feeling in my stomach as I realized I had lost control of the Ford, and it was going where it wanted to go.

Which was across the oncoming lane of traffic.

I think I closed my eyes, as the horns blared and other brakes screeched. The Explorer slewed to the left, hit the down slope of the dirt embankment, and like it was in some damn special effect for an action movie, did a magnificent one-and-a-half roll, my head bouncing off the roof, just as the air bag exploded and punched me in the face.

Somehow I got out, and then I was sitting on dirt and grass, as people gathered around me, asking the same questions, over and over again, sometimes asking them in a loud voice, like I had gone deaf back there. Are you okay? Are you hurt? What happened? Are you okay? Are you hurt? What happened?

And to each series of questions, I said the same thing: yep, nope, I have no idea.

Before me the Explorer was on its side, the driver's side door yawning open, and even from here, I could see the deflated air bag, which had caused a spectacular nosebleed down my face and the front of my jacket. The dirt around the front end of the Explorer was torn up, like a tank had rolled through, which made a bit of sense, for when I had clambered out and went around my wounded vehicle, I counted three tires, not four.

The right front tire was missing.

The police and the Durham Fire Department and the volunteer Durham ambulance corps made their arrival shortly. The fire department hosed down whatever gasoline had been spilled during my Explorer's imitation of a figure skater going down hard. A man and woman EMT fussed over me for a few minutes, asking me the usual questions, flashing a tiny light into my eyes, checking me over for anything broken. With an icepack at the bridge of my nose, the bleeding stopped pretty quickly, and the young lady --- who told me she was a nursing student at UNH --- gently wiped down my face with a moist towel. They offered to take me to Wentworth-Douglas Hospital in Dover for a checkup, but I refused. I was stiff and I knew I would be sore in the morning, but I was also slightly embarrassed, with all the rubberneckers slowing down on Route 4, watching the free show taking place just yards away from their own safe and functional vehicles. I felt like somebody going to a Broadway play and then being pulled from the audience moments before the curtain rises to play the leading role. The EMTs went back to their equipment, and then a Durham police officer strolled over, face clean-shaven save for a tidy black mustache. His nameplate said SCOTT, and he had a clipboard with him and said, "You doing all right, Mr. Cole?"

"I've had better mornings," I said.

"That I can see. Care to sit for a bit in the cruiser, tell me what happened?"

“Sure." I stood up and the ground seemed to sway under my feet for a moment, and I was hoping that the two EMTs hadn't spotted me. I had plenty of things to do, and spending the rest of the day in an emergency room up in Dover wasn't one of them. Inside, the cushioned seat of the cruiser seemed like the softest pillow in the world after the ground I had been sitting on, and I politely answered Officer Scott's questions as he started with my name, address, date of birth, social security number, occupation, and right up to what had just happened about twenty minutes ago.

"So," he said. "You were heading east, getting ready to get back on the Interstate and head south. Right after your interview with Professor Hendricks."

"That's correct."

"And then the steering wheel started vibrating?"

"Yes, it did."

"Did you hit anything before the vibration? Any debris in the road? A pothole, anything to cause damage to your front wheel?"

"Nope."

"Hmmm," he said. "Okay. What then?"

"The vibration got worse, so much that I couldn't hold on to the steering wheel. I punched the brakes and we went into a spin, and then into this field."

He turned the accident report over and I helped him sketch out what had occurred, and he looked over at me and said, "You're a lucky guy."

"Tell me about it."

"Okay, I will. After you lost the right front tire, Mister Cole, you went across an oncoming lane of traffic. You were probably about a few seconds away from a head-on collision. And another minute or two of driving, you would have been near a bay off the Oyster River. You got out pretty good on dry land. I don't know if you would have been so lucky, trying to get out while you're in a dozen feet or so of water."

I nodded, my hands clasped firmly in my lap, for I was certain that if I let them go, they would start shaking, and I didn't want this young cop to see that. He made another notation on the report and said, "Anybody you'd like to call?"

“Yes, but I don't have a cell phone."

From the center console he opened a tiny drawer, pulled out an even tinier cell phone. "Here. I'm feeling generous today. Maybe some of your luck will rub off on me. You make your call and I'm going outside, take a few pictures."

"Thanks."

With the cell phone, I lucked out again, for I managed to catch Felix Tinios at home, and when I told him what happened and where it had happened, he interrupted me and said, "You going to the hospital?"

"Nope."

"You with a cop?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, I'm on my way. You sit tight and in public. Don't take any rides from any Good Samaritans, all right? You just sit there and wait."

"Thanks," I said, but I think I said it to empty air, for Felix had already disconnected his end of the conversation and like he said, he was on his way.·

I liked the way that sounded.

After a few minutes more of sitting, Officer Scott came over and rapped on the window, and I stepped out. "You have any preferred tow company in the area?"

"No, I don't."

"All right, we'll just work down our call list," and he turned his head and keyed a microphone clipped to a shirt lapel and asked dispatch to send along a tow truck. When that was done, he looked at me strangely and said, "Come with me for a moment, will you?"

"Sure."

We walked back down Route 4 for a short distance, the air crisp and cold, the traffic still moving along slowly. We didn't have far to go, for I noticed a gouge in the asphalt, where the exposed wheel drum of the Explorer had struck hard. Nearby, resting by itself in the short grass, was the offending right front tire. Officer Scott bent down and picked up the tire and said in a slightly amusing tone, "I'm no detective, Mister Cole, but I imagine that the accident happened right about here. What do you think?"

"I agree."

He let the tire flop to the ground, and then his mood changed a bit. "But this is when I want to be a detective, Mr. Cole. You want to know why?"

"I sure do."

Officer Scott reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a small piece of metal, and held it out for my inspection. A lug nut.

"Now here's the problem, Mr. Cole. I've gone up and down a good stretch of this roadway, and this is the only lug nut I could find. There should be six. And this one is in good shape, which means it didn't break or shatter. No, it means that it fell off, and that the other five are probably on the side of the road from here to the center of town. Are you following me, Mr. Cole?"

"That I am," I said, my feet getting cold again. "This was no accident. The lug nuts were loosened on purpose."

For a moment he juggled the lug nut in his hand, before putting it back into his pocket. "That's right. You have any enemies, Mr. Cole?"

"Some people who aren't particularly friendly toward me, but no, nobody who comes to mind that would do something like this. Maybe somebody mistook my Ford for somebody else's. A college prank, maybe?"

"Like a fraternity prank, something from a sorority house?" "That's what I was thinking."

"Unh-hunh," he said. "Problem is, Mr. Cole, we are intimately familiar with college pranks on our force, as you can imagine. Pledges stealing college trophies, pledges being dumped on the football field, naked and painted blue and white. That kind of stuff we're used to. But this mess... No, this is way beyond a prank. This was someone trying to cause you intentional harm. And going about it in a particularly nasty way. Do you hear what I'm saying?"

"I do."

"And you still don't think there's anybody out there who would cause you such harm?"

A quick memory, of Ray Ericson, drunk and pissed off on Jon's front lawn, tossing a punch my way, and I pushed the memory aside. "No, officer. I truly don't."

He slowly nodded, like he knew I was lying, and that the both of us knew what was going on, but he let it go. He handed over his business card and said, "Well, I'm going to write this up and give it to one of our detectives. It's serious business, and we don't intend to let it slide on by. You understand?"

"Perfectly."

"Good."

"All right, let's head back."

When a flatbed tow truck from Circle H towing arrived and I worked through the paperwork of showing my AAA card and filling out yet more forms, I took a break and sat against an old stone wall, positioning myself so that I had some mid-October sun in my face. Officer Scott had left, and it was just me and an enthusiastic young man from the tow company, who wanted to show me how this latest rig worked, with its computerized system and intricate hydraulics. Instead, I begged off and sat down and thought for a while. Orange and red leaves from a nearby maple tree blew across the dying grass while I watched the tow truck operator do his thing. For a moment I wished I smoked, for it would have been nice to have something to do, something to calm me down. Ray Ericson. Missing, and the prime suspect in the murder of his brother. I had a feeling that he wasn't much missing, but was in the area. Mainly, my area. I rubbed my hands and watched as the young man worked some cables about the framework of my wounded Explorer. Traffic was still slowing down some, and I was eagerly awaiting the chance to stop being the latest tourist attraction on Route 4.

I rubbed my cold hands together and looked off to the left, where traffic would be coming down from the Interstate, and there I spotted some stones in a row, by the wall. I got up and went over and looked at them. Tombstones, most of them canted to one side or the other, grass thick around their base. All of the stones had the same last name: NUTE. And the latest date I could spot was 1898. There were about ten of them, a family plot no doubt, and I looked around the stone walls and imagined what had once been here before, a large farm, struggling to make a go of it, until the males left the farm and went to find work in the mills in Manchester and Lawrence. The passage of time. Flesh and bones to dust, barns and homes to rotten wood, and the trees and brush taking back the plowed land.

There was a sharp bang that made me flinch, and I quickly turned around, to see the Explorer was now up on its four wheels, sagging to the right where the tire was missing. The tow truck operator waved at me and I waved back, and then he went back to the truck, where the flatbed was now raised up. A low-pitched whining noise started up, and I looked back at the tombstones and said to them, "I hope you don't mind that I don't plan to join you for a long, long while."

A car horn honked. I looked over to the road, suddenly felt bettor. Felix had arrived, his Mercedes Benz convertible parked to the side. He got out of his car and started coming toward me, wearing blue jeans and a long leather coat. In his right hand he held a small paper bag, and as he got closer he looked over at me and said, "Your nose okay?"

I touched it reflexively. "Still sore, but doing better than it was an hour ago."

A crisp nod, as he looked around, and I felt that little sense of electricity coming from him, like the quiet hum from a power station.

Felix was on the job, on alert, and I was glad he was on my side. "Cops come and do the usual?"

"That they did."

"What happened? Besides the front tire of your car flying off."

I took a breath. "Looks like somebody undid the lug nuts. On purpose."

"Okay. That answers that."

"Excuse me?" I asked.

"Here." He handed over the bag. "This is yours, am I right?"

I opened up the paper bag, looked inside. My 9mm Beretta semiautomatic pistol, in its leather holster. "I'm pretty sure I locked the front door before I left this morning."

"Yeah, you did. But I thought you might want this. So I was a little creative, like I was at Seacoast Antiques the other night. Hope you don't mind."

I minded a hell of a lot, but coming from Felix, this was about as thoughtful and affectionate a gesture as one could expect. The paper hag seemed to grow heavier in my grasp. I knew what that Italian piece of metalwork represented, but I still didn't like it.