Fatal Harbor (21 page)

All of the roads were built the same. A single-lane paved country road, with no sidewalk, no center yellow line, not much of anything except asphalt and drainage ditches on each side. Just like the roads back in Lee, where I’d had that wonderful encounter with Mister Marvel, philosophy expert. As I took my time going up and down the various roads, I made it a point to slow some as I went by the properties. There were a couple of working farms, with wide pastures, barns, with cows, sheep, and horses, and a couple of access lanes blocked by metal gates. Most of the other homes were single-family residences, up close to the road. There were kids at play, tossing balls around, riding bicycles or horses. It was a fine fall day. Halloween decorations were out on porches and at mailboxes, from skeletons to ghosts to witches to bundles of corn stalks.

And on the mailboxes were names from O’Halloran to Finch to Dupuis.

Nothing that said Chesak.

Nothing shouting out that Curt Chesak resided here.

Nothing.

Driveways and homes and everything so innocent and up-front. Hard to believe that a killer was out there somewhere, and as the hours slipped away, my frustration started to build. Maybe he wasn’t out here. Maybe he’d just happened to be in the area when he had made those phone calls.

Maybe.

The last house had the name Smith. In other circumstances, I would have found it hilarious. It was a nice-looking two-story home, on a slight rise, and in the front yard mom and dad and two young girls bounced around with a soccer ball while a white German Shepherd barked along and played with them.

No evil there.

I turned around and left.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

B
ack to the little lane where I’d hidden out before. The Peak’s Paradise motel once again beckoned to me, with the siren song of a hot shower, soft bed, and free HBO, but I manned up and decided to continue on my own. After the truck was backed in, I lit up a small gas lantern that I had purchased from EMS earlier today and, with flashlight in hand, I strolled down to the country road. I turned around and was pleased to see no light escaping out to the road.

Back to the truck, I unrolled a mattress pad and sleeping bag. I sure hoped it wasn’t going to rain tonight. Huddling in the cab wasn’t my idea of fine sleeping.

With sleeping arrangements set, I started up a gas stove and, working carefully and following directions, I heated up a freeze-dried meal of beef stew. If I hadn’t eaten in a week, it probably would have tasted pretty good. I washed up, went into the woods to do my business, and then took the tax cards and crawled into my sleeping bag. With a headlamp perilously balanced on my forehead, I examined each one and looked again, to see what I was missing. The numbers were all there, and they weren’t adding up.

They weren’t adding up.

I was getting sleepy.

In a little bag near my head, I took out my cell phone. Dialed the number for Kara Miles. It rang and rang.

No answer. Didn’t even go to voicemail.

Hung up. Put the phone back in the bag.

It was getting colder. I put my hands in the sleeping bag, stared up at the sky. Looked for stars. Didn’t see a single one. Thought a lot about Diane, over there in Exonia. Wondered if she dreamed in her coma. And if so, what did she dream about? Her long years at the Tyler Police Department? The bad guys and girls she had put away? Me? Kara Miles and the other loved ones in her life? Or did she dream, over and over again, of those last few minutes of the violence, when Curt Chesak and the others were coming at her, pipes and lumber in their hands, rising up, knowing that it was too late to reach for her weapon, the blows falling and falling. . . .

The rain started about an hour later.

I was just about a foot longer than the truck cabin’s width, which meant a long night of being curled up on my side, legs knocking around, and I dozed here and there, and when the light finally started streaming into the windshield and directly into my face, I got up, stretched, and walked around the truck. I was cold, stiff, sore, and my unanswered phone call to Kara Miles was on my mind.

No more.

No more phone calls to Kara. What was done was done. I was going to do my job. That’s it. No more dialing and re-dialing that memorized phone number. . . .

Numbers.

The numbers didn’t add up.

The rain had stopped a while ago. Dead leaves from oak and maple trees were all around me. I shuffled around, packed up my stuff, and went back into the truck. Started up the engine, let the heat roll over my legs as I unfolded the topographical map of Osgood I had gotten at EMS. I let my cold fingers trace the lines of the roads and streets in that magic triangle where Curt’s cell phone had been located.

On the topo map, little squares marked each residence along the roads. I spent a good amount of time in the morning, matching the little squares with the roads. I did it once, twice, three times.

Tucker Road.

There was a little square, a distance away from the road, that wasn’t listed on the tax cards.

On the north side of this little square was a property listed for Swinson. On the south side was a property listed for Keller.

But nobody was listed for the mystery square on Tucker Road.

Nobody.

But the topo map didn’t lie.

Something was there.

I put the map aside, put the truck in drive, and left my little refuge.

On the outskirts of Osgood I stopped at an Irving gas station, one of the many outposts of the Canadian oil company archipelago. Fueled up the truck, got a coffee and a pretty good cinnamon Danish. I drove out to the far end of the parking lot, had my breakfast, thought things through.

My own past dribbled through my mind. Code words. For some reason, code words were bouncing around. In my little corner of the DoD universe, missions were never called missions. They were called pizza deliveries. We might have had pre-op planning sessions that took months, that involved air and naval assets, that inserted extraordinarily dangerous, highly trained and dedicated service members (Navy, Army, Air Force, Marines, or—yes—Coast Guard, take your pick) that resulted in death, destruction, and general mayhem.

But they were called pizza deliveries. For a joke, I guess, but also to insulate us poor civilians in the rear from what was actually going on in the front line.

My turn, though, to go into the front line.

Pizza delivery.

I went back to Osgood Finest Pizza and ordered a large cheese pizza. I got back into my truck, drove off to Tucker Road. The Swinson place was a gorgeous new home that, if it were a bit bigger and on a lot a bit smaller, would be called a McMansion. Brickwork and shrubbery and finely trimmed lawn, nice paved curved driveway. The number on the mailbox said 10. I went past the nice home and stopped for a quick moment. A scraggly dirt road with a metal gate blocking the entrance. The gate was rusted, leaning to one side, weeds growing at the base. It looked pretty old and beaten up.

Except for a metal post, with a keypad that controlled the lock.

I kept on driving.

The Keller home was an old Cape Cod that sometime in the past had had a porch constructed on the front. The driveway was dirt. In the rear part of the yard, part of it was fenced off and chickens moved around. The number on the mailbox said 14. I pulled up in front of the house, deftly stepped out and went up to the porch with the pizza in my hands. The floorboards creaked loudly as I stepped to the door and knocked on it hard and firm.

The door swung open and a white-bearded man peered at me. He had on patched blue jeans, work boots, and a green cardigan sweater. His eyes were a twinkling blue, and he said, “Sorry, bud, didn’t order that.”

“Yes, sir, I know you didn’t,” I answered with a sheepish tone. “Thing is, I’m supposed to deliver this to 12 Tucker Road. But I can’t find 12 Tucker Road.”

The guy opened the door wider. “Sorry, bud, there ain’t no 12 Tucker Road. There’s me and then there’s the Swinsons, next butt-ugly house over, which is number 10. But no number 12.”

“Damn,” I said, moving the pizza box from one hand to another. “I thought for sure that dirt road and gate over there was number 12.”

“Well-l-l,” he said, drawing out the last letter. “It should be, but there’s some sort of non-profit or conservation easement over there, don’t get taxed. Plus you take that dirt road up about a half-mile, you’ll find a christly big hunting lodge, belongs to some outfit from away.”

Found you again
, I thought,
found you again
.

“Funny to have a hunting cabin up there, it being conservation land.”

He shrugged. “People from away. Go figure. Got money to piss away, they do. Sometimes they don’t even bother driving up the road. They take a helicopter in and out. But sometimes you can hear ’em shooting away. I don’t mind, but Mister Swinson, the asshole, ’scuse my French, he’s originally from New York and don’t like the sound. But it’s their land, right? They can do what they want.”

“Good for them,” I said, holding up the pizza box. “But it still means someone’s pulling a prank, and I’m gonna get hit for this.”

The guy eyed me, and I said, “Look, you want this? Free? No charge? Otherwise it’s just gonna go to waste.”

“What kind is it?”

“Plain cheese.”

“Hah, I’ll take it,” he said, holding his hands out for it. “Wish it was pepperoni, but we all can’t get what we want, am I right?”

“Right as you can be,” I said, handing the pizza over to him.

I took my time that afternoon, prepping for my second pizza delivery of the day. I repacked and rearranged my sleeping bag, food, stove, and extra clothing, along with my weapons and a few other items. I drove along Tucker Road again until I found another overgrown wide trail that led somewhere deep into the dark woods. I carefully backed the truck up the lane until I couldn’t see the road anymore. I switched off the engine. Thought some. It had been a relatively short drive from Manchester to here, but in a lot of ways it was the longest trip I had ever taken. On the seat beside me were my personal cell phone and the special cell phone I had gotten from Lawrence Thomas. I picked them both up and put them in the side pockets of my knapsack.

I juggled the truck keys for a moment, and then lowered the visor, put the keys there, and put the visor back up. On the back of a takeout menu from Osgood Finest Pizza, I scribbled a note:

Please contact Felix Tinios of North Tyler to ensure the return of this truck. Thank you.

Underneath the note I scribbled Felix’s phone number, and I slid the menu into the visor.

I got out of the truck and shouldered my knapsack, which felt pretty damn heavy. I patted the side of the truck, said, “Thanks,” and walked away.

Most people who get lost in the woods think their cell phone is a magic mystery tool that will lead them in and out with no difficulty—and if there
is
difficulty, well, that’s why there are cops and Fish & Game officers. Obviously they’re just sitting around, eagerly anticipating yet another phone call from a lost hiker. Yet a topo map and a compass will always mean you will never, ever get lost. From what my first and only pizza customer of the day had told me, the hunting camp was at the end of that dirt lane, both lane and little rectangle marked on the map.

Using the compass, I determined how many degrees I had to set to make a fairly straight line to a ridge that overlooked the hunting camp. From where I was, all I did was to sight in the compass to a landmark ahead of me, like a boulder or wide pine tree or a stand of birches. Once I got to that point, I found another landmark. Repeat as necessary.

Which I did, until I got to the ridgeline and saw the hunting camp beneath me.

Some camp.

I took out a pair of binoculars, scoped the place out. It was a house, a pretty good-sized home that wouldn’t look out of place along the pricier parts of North Tyler and Wallis. Wooden and two-story, it looked like it had been here for quite a while. The shingles appeared to be cedar, and the yard was a few acres and mowed. At the rear of the house was a concrete landing pad, with an enormous H painted in the center. A post with an orange windsock was some distance away from the concrete. There were two satellite dishes on the roof, along with a set of very tall antennas. Bushes were scattered around the yard.

At the front of the house, I could just make out a dark green Hummer, the civilian version of the famed Humvee.

Only the best for Curt Chesak and his friends.

But how many friends?

It was tempting to stroll down and start the job, but that was stupid. No need to rush.

I slipped off the ridgeline and worked my way down to the rear of the yard.

Dusk was falling by the time I got to where I wanted to be. Like most areas of the state, there are ghost stone walls that travel through wooded areas that had once been farmland. Hard to believe, but there was a time when more than ninety percent of my state was clear-cut for farms. Now, just a hundred or so years later, the ratio has reversed: most of the state is now forested, having reclaimed the farms, the descendants of the original owners now living in Ohio or Indiana or any other place where the land was cheaper and richer.

What worked for me was that the edge of the home’s landscape butted right up against a stone wall, which gave me great cover to watch things. With my knapsack and most of my weapons left behind, I crawled up to the stone wall and waited. I was now wearing the favorite outfit of snipers and Scottish game men, called the ghillie. It’s a suit one wears that has leaves, twigs, and branches placed all over, so when you stop, if you do it well, you blend in with the scenery. Years and years ago, some old-timers with leathery skin and sun-squint wrinkles around their eyes had told me what it took for good surveillance and tracking, which was three things: patience, patience, and patience.

Which meant it took me over a half hour to slowly crawl along the forest floor until I reached the stone wall. And another fifteen minutes or so to take out my binoculars and position myself just right.