Killer Waves (2 page)

Sure enough, by the time I got to the parking lot, both cops were on me, the one on the left yelling out, "Hold it right there! Hands up! Right now!"

I did exactly as I was told, flashlight still in my hand, and the cop on the right circled around to come at me. Not a bad job. He did that so his partner had a clear shot in case I did something stupid, but I wasn't feeling stupid at this hour, so I just stood there. The cop came up to me, shining the light in my face.

"Who the hell are you? And what are you doing here?”

I guess I could have asked the cop to get the light out of my face, but I didn’t want to push the matter.  “The name is Lewis Cole.  I’m a writer for
Shoreline
magazine.  I live over on the beach, just south of the park I saw all the lights and thought something was going on."

"Uh-huh," he said. "Outside at one in the morning. You do that all the time?"

Only when spaceships fly overhead, I thought, and I struggled to come up with an explanation that wouldn't make them even more suspicious, when the other cop said, "Cole? Lewis Cole?"

"That's right," I said.

He lowered his flashlight and came over to us, and said, "Yeah, Tom, I know this guy. He spoke to my son's class last fall, about writing for magazines. Tyler cops know him well. He's okay."

I could sense the tension ease away with those last two magic words. When one cop says to another that somebody's "okay," you've made it. The first cop just nodded and lowered his light, and then I looked at the guy who had pronounced me okay, and after reading his nametag I said, "North Tyler Elementary, right?

"That's right. The kids said you did a good job."

Hurray for kids, I thought. My rescuer's nametag said REMICK and his partner's said CALHOUN. Both had on leather jackets and looked to be regular patrol officers, and knowing how small North Tyler is, I was probably looking at the entire on-duty police force. I couldn't make out their features well in the poor light, but it looked like Remick was younger than Calhoun. I motioned with my flashlight and said, "What do you have over there?"

They started walking back and I joined them, and Officer Remick said, "What we got is a dead guy in a rental car, that's what. Tom here was on patrol and stopped by, saw the gate was open. We've had complaints of kids using the lot to drink and raise hell, and he spotted--"

"Greg," came the other cop's voice, "you talk too much."

"All, hell, that'll be in all the papers tomorrow. What's the difference?”

We came up on the cruisers and the ambulance, and the two EMTs looked my way and then continued talking to each other.  I wasn't in handcuffs and I wasn't bleeding, so I didn't count. The car was a white GMC, one of those clones that look like a half dozen other models. There was a slumped shape in the front seat, barely illuminated from the sole streetlight for this part of the parking lot. Off to the east, where the waves rolled in, were a couple of park administration and visitors' buildings, and beyond the buildings a hill rose up, and nearly hidden in the trees at the top of the hill was another concrete bunker.

I said, "Mind if I take a peek through the windshield?"

"Knock yourself out," Officer Remick said. "But stay a couple of feet away and don't touch anything."

"Greg ... " came the other cop's voice, and his partner said, "So what? Besides, we can't do anything until the State Police get here, and you know it."

I left them there talking and went over to the car holding my flashlight. From my dealings with my best friend, the Tyler police detective, I knew Officer Remick was right. In cases of suspicious death, the State Police always responded with their Major Crime Unit and essentially took control of the investigation. So I probably had a couple of minutes to look things over before the very large and very polite and very insistent State Police detectives arrived and told me to get the hell out.

I switched on the flashlight, and felt myself take a quick breath. There was a man in the driver's seat, dead. His head lolled to the left, up against the closed driver's-side window. The right side of his head was smeared with blood. His skin was dark brown and he had a mustache, and he wore a black suit and a white shirt and no necktie. Blood had also stained the right side of his coat, smearing over a small lapel pin that he was wearing. I tried to step closer, but the first officer called out: "Hey! Remember what we said!"

I nodded and kept on looking from a bit of a distance. The pin appeared to be yellow and what I could see past the bloodstain looked like a thick black exclamation point, standing on its head.  I moved the light around, saw nothing in the rear seat, and nothing in the front seat as well, nor on the floorboards. Just a dead man.  An apparently murdered man, right in my neighborhood. I switched off the light and looked around. Save for this car and the vehicles from the town of North Tyler, the large parking lot was empty. Lots of acreage out there to lose yourself in, and I felt a shiver, thinking that maybe when I was on my back deck, watching the shuttle go overhead, someone put a bullet in this man's head. Just a number of yards from my home someone had been murdered.

I didn't like the feeling.

The two cops were talking and I made a production of walking around in a big arc, and when I could make out the rear license plate I took my reporter's notebook out and quickly scribbled down the number. Putting the notebook away, I walked over to Officers Remick and Calhoun.

"Any ID yet? You said it's a rental car; they must know who it was rented to."

The older cop just grunted and Officer Remick said, "Yeah, rented out today at the Manchester Airport. By a guy named Smith. Doesn't sound too promising, does it?"

"No, it doesn't," I said. "Guess you poor guys will have to start doing a canvass of the motels and hotels once the State Police get here."

Officer Calhoun said sourly, "Yeah, if they don't make us go on coffee or doughnut runs in the meantime, that's what they ---- hold on, looks like they're arriving."

I turned and looked over at the park entrance, which was a simple wooden gate and guard shack, and which opened out onto Route 1-A, also known as Atlantic Avenue. Route 1-A runs the entire eighteen-mile length of the New Hampshire coastline, and on this particular few yards, three cars came barreling into the parking lot at high speed. They braked to a halt and doors flew open, and they were all dark blue Ford LTDs with New Hampshire license plates. Officer Calhoun said, "You know what, those guys sure don't look like the State Police."

His partner agreed, saying, "Tom, I don't particularly like the look of this."

Neither did I, but I kept my mouth shut.

I counted six individuals getting out of the LTDs, five men and and one woman. She talked to the crowd for a moment, and then three of the guys switched on their own flashlights and began fanning out across the open fields of the park. Two of the guys and the woman came over. All of them had on business suits and dark blue or black raincoats, and they surely did not look as if they received their paychecks from the state of New Hampshire. The woman had on dark slacks, flat shoes and a white turtleneck, and her fine black hair was cut shoulder-length. As she came over, she got right to the point.

"Who's the officer in charge here?" she asked, looking at the three of us. The EMTs had slunk against their ambulance, as if trying to gain some shelter there, and then Officer Calhoun spoke up and said, "I'm the senior officer, until the State Police show up. Name's Calhoun."

"Goody for you," she said, "and just so you know, the State Police aren't showing up for a long while. Officer Calhoun, a moment, if you will."

She took him by the arm and walked him away from us, leaving behind two of her male companions. The one on the left had a crew cut of red hair and a merry little smile, as if he couldn't think of anything else he'd rather be doing than being in a nearly deserted parking lot at two in the morning. His companion was about a foot shorter and a foot wider, and he wasn't smiling, not at all. His eyes bounced between me and the other North Tyler officer, as if he were hoping one of us would reach for a gun or knife so he could snap a few finger bones.

Officer Remick cleared his throat. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

'Tm no cop, but I'm guessing these gentlemen and that lady belong to the federal government."

"My thoughts exactly," he said, and then he spoke up. "Hey, can anyone of you tell us what the hell's going on?"

The squat man said nothing, but the taller guy with red hair said, "Your partner's getting the whole deal. Just relax, all right?”

I looked over at Officer Calhoun and the woman, who were standing near a wooden guardrail that bounded the parking lot.

Officer Calhoun was saying something with dramatic effect, hands waving, jaw moving, and all the while the woman was standing there with arms crossed, not moving at all. It looked as if she had done this a number of times, coming into a crime scene and taking control from the locals, and she looked bored. She said something and walked back to us, Officer Calhoun following, not looking happy at all.

She stood and looked us over. "Officer Remick, is it?"

He stepped forward. "Yep."

She smiled, a tired-looking expression. "Would you please accompany Mr. Turner here and give him your statement of what's transpired? It shouldn't take too long, should it?"

The crew-cut guy came over, still grinning. "Nope, not at all."

Officer Remick then walked away, and I was there by myself. Officer Calhoun was standing behind the woman, hands in pockets, face now quite red, looking seriously pissed off. I looked at the woman and she managed a tired smile again. "And you're Mr. Cole, correct?"

"You have me at a disadvantage," I said. "I don't know your name."

"So you don't," she said. "I understand that you're a magazine writer, live down the road a bit. Officer Calhoun said you came upon this scene just a while ago. That you didn't notice anything else. Is that correct?"

"That's true."

She nodded. "Good. As of now, we've taken control of this area, Mr. Cole, and I'd appreciate it if you'd leave."

"And who might 'we' be, if I can ask?"

Even though she looked tired, there seemed to be a bit of a sparkle about her eyes. "You may ask.  And I'll say again, would you please leave?"

I looked around. Officer Remick was talking to the guy identified as Mr. Turner.  Officer Calhoun just stood there, his angry expression having not changed one bit.  I saw that one of the three guys who had gone out across the fields and come back and was talking to the two EMTs from the North Tyler Fire Department. And the wide and burly man with the woman was still staring at me with distaste.

"Well, there's a problem with that," I said. "And what's that?"

"This happens to be a state park. Public property. Perhaps I like it here."

"Perhaps you do. And perhaps if you don't leave, I'll ask my associate here to escort you off."

Now the burly man had a little smile on his face, as if he had finally been told he could do something he liked. I looked at him and then at the woman. I said, "Your associate may find it might be harder to escort me than he thinks."

She said, "Oh, I doubt that. Tell you what. Would you please leave then as a personal favor to me? Please?"

I looked over the scene again and then felt tired. There are times to fight and times to call it quits and go home. By now a stiff breeze had come up and my face and hands were getting cold. Maybe I was wrong, but I could tell by their attitude and self-confidence that these people were in fact the feds, maybe the FBI or something. A long time ago I had been in the middle of their little world, and I didn't want to go back. The woman wanted to play games. Good for her. I had seen all that I was going to see this early morning, and now I wanted to go to bed.

I shifted, managed a smile. "Oh, all right then. As a personal favor to you, and your smile. How's that?"

I think I embarrassed her, if only for a moment. "That would be fine. Thank you, Mr. Cole. I trust we won't see you again, will we?"

"Not tonight, that's for sure."

Then she nodded crisply and said something to the bulky man, and I turned and started walking away from the parking lot. I went back onto the field and up the slight hill, and then I looked back. It was a busy scene, with the dead man's rental and the three Ford LTDs and the ambulance and two cruisers. I walked up the hill and when I noted a large boulder, I squatted down so that I couldn't be seen by the sharp people back down at the parking lot.

With the small flashlight held in my mouth, I opened up my reporter's notebook and quickly wrote down three license plate numbers I had memorized when the LTDs had come barreling into the parking lot.

She had said something about not seeing me again. Maybe she was right. But maybe I had other ideas.

I shut off the flashlight and put the reporter's notebook back in my coat, and when I emerged from my little hiding place I looked down to the lot.

One by one, the blue and red lights that had brought me to this place were being switched off.

I shivered again and headed home.