Primary Storm (26 page)

Funny thing about decisions. The simplest ones sometimes can have the most deadly and far-reaching consequences, for if I had skipped getting the papers that morning, my, how things would have turned out differently.

So differently.

The gift shop was crowded and Stephanie had to wait on a practically UN General Assembly of guests-I heard German, French, and something that might have been Korean-before she came to me. She looked around the store and smiled and said, "Tell you something, if you've got time."

"Sure, I've got time."

"Ever tell you where I grew up?"

I thought for a moment. "Someplace in Pennsylvania, I believe."

"That's one way of putting it. Yes, someplace in Pennsylvania. Foley's Corners. Tiny little place that shouldn't have existed, except there was coal in the hills, coal that was easy to get to. But by the time I came around, the coal was gone, the coal company was gone, and there wasn't much left for the people there."

Truth is, I didn't have that much time to talk to her --- I hadn't called Annie yet and there was still that damn magazine column to finish, along with other pressing issues --- but this was the most Stephanie had ever said about her past, so I stood there, polite, and nodded in all the right places.

She went on. "Those people included my dad, whose own father and grandfather had managed to support a pretty big family on a coal company's salary. But by the time he got married and had me and two other daughters, well, jobs were mostly part time work, stitched together here and there. Some fathers adjusted, some fathers rolled with the punches. My dad wasn't one of them."

She took a breath and I saw that her hands were trembling.

"My dad ... well, I don't know if it would have been different, if the coal were still there ... but all I remember are the shouts, the slaps, the broken dishes and the empty beer bottles, piled up in the rear yard by the toolshed. Lots and lots of empty beer bottles."

"Must have been rough," I said. "I'm sorry."

She nodded, bit her lip. "I'm sorry, too. Sorry that I'm going on so long, telling you this. But there's a point, Lewis, if you just give me a few more seconds."

"Absolutely."

"Point being ... Dad was a bully. And when he wasn't hitting my mom, he was hitting me, or hitting my sisters. The hitting went on right up until I joined the air force, and when I came back from Texas, after basic training, that night ... it stopped. I dragged him out to the rear yard and I ... well, I made it stop. I know it sounds pathetic, a daughter beating up on her old, drunken father in the family's backyard, but I don't care. He never hit my mom or my sisters again. Not ever."

With that, she reached under the counter, pulled out my morning newspapers. This morning, unlike any other morning, they were folded over and held together by a rubber band. I left the money on the counter. She handed them over to me and I almost dropped them, from the unexpected weight.

I looked into her face, now content, now relaxed. "Lewis, I've always hated bullies, especially bullies who pick on women. And what you did yesterday for that college girl ... it was special. And I had to pay you back for it. Just so you know."

I hefted the weighted newspaper, my hand tingling with anticipation, knowing exactly what was in there. "Stephanie ... thanks. Thank you very much."

She shook her head quickly. "It's nothing. I should have done it for you earlier. I really should have ... but I was scared. Scared like I was when I was a girl, before leaving home. And I don't like being scared like that."

I started out of the gift shop. "I'll get it back to you, soon as I can."

Stephanie smiled. "I know you will."

Chapter Fifteen

If it wasn't for the snow and ice still on the ground, I would have trotted back to my house, but cracking my skull or losing the videotape in a snowdrift wouldn't have been too bright. So I took my time and I got into my home safely, dumped my coat on the floor, and was unsnapping the rubber band from the newspapers as I entered the living room. The newspapers fell away and there it was, a standard black VHS tape. I turned it over and there was a white label with neat printing --- PARKING LOT SURVEILLANCE -- followed by beginning and end dates. I turned on my television and VCR and got to work.

I was surprised at how easy it was. The view was of the parking lot, all right, in shiny black and white. There was a fishbowl effect with the lens, skewing the view at the edge of the screen. At the lower right hand side of the screen was a time and date stamp, which was helpful since it wasn't a continuous video. It was more like a series of snapshots, one every few seconds. But after a few minutes of rewinding and playing, I got it down to the moment that morning when Spenser Harris had made his last visit to my home.

I leaned forward on the couch, to get a better view, I suppose, and I let the tape play through that special morning. Everything looked quiet. Two sedans and an SUV were parked at the south end of the lot. Very normal. Very quiet.

There. Movement to the left of the screen, the north end of  the lot, near my driveway, and I froze the tape.  And shivered.

Sure. I recognized that figure, all right.

It was me, heading up to the Lafayette House to get my morning newspapers.

I don't know why, but seeing myself on the television screen, in not-so-living black and white, creeped me out. The little form there, in electrons and bits and bytes, that was me. Innocently going up to a hotel to get reading material, not knowing, not even imagining what was ahead of me. It was like a time machine, glimpsing back into the past. Almost as weird as seeing that tape of myself the other day, vomiting so magnificently in the parking lot of the Tyler Conference Center.

I shivered again, let the tape play through.

The electronic Lewis Cole left the screen. Another car parked. Then a white panel truck came in, parked at an angle at the north end of the lot, where my driveway was. A guy came out carrying a large leather bag. I remembered the truck. An electrician's truck, if I was right. Yeah. Some guy named Jimmy. Could Spenser and his killer have gotten to my house that way?

A few more frames clicked through. Nope.

A black car appeared, maneuvered its way to the north end of the lot. The car had black tinted windows. The way it was parked, the driver's side was obscured by the panel truck, but the passenger's side was clear enough. The door opened up.

And a living, breathing, talking Spenser Harris got out.

"I'll be damned," I whispered, leaning even the television. I reversed and played the tape again. A black luxury car, and Spenser Harris, stepping out.

So far, so good.

I let the tape play on.

Spenser leaned into the open passenger door, talking to the driver, it looked like, and then he stood up. The door was slammed shut. Spenser moved off to the left, disappeared from view.

I waited.

The phone rang, making me jump. I let it ring and ring and went back to the television, my own little time machine.

Even though it was partially blocked by the panel truck, the driver's side door then opened up. Somebody got out. A figure in a coat. That's all I saw. Couldn't tell if it was male or female. But the driver went to the left, too, following Spenser.

I waited.

Then the figure came back, opened the driver's door, leaned in and-

Got in, closed the door.

But there was something there. I stopped, rewound, played. Stopped, rewound, played. And again.

The driver and no-doubt shooter was wearing a white trench coat of some sorts, the belt tied at the waist, and black gloves.

I rubbed my chin.

Couldn't see a face, couldn't see a head. Was there anything else?

I let the tape play again.

Oh yes, there was something else. Stopped, rewound, played.

And saw the car maneuver its way out of the spot by backing up, going forward, backing up, and then leaving the lot.

The car was now recognizable. It was a black luxury car, made in Great Britain, the latest model of the Jaguar XJ8, and I could see that the front license plate was New Hampshire, that it was vanity, and though I couldn't make out all of the letters, I was positive what the front plate said.

WHTKER.

I shut off the television, ejected the tape, and got the hell out.

With tapes in hand, I drove south about ten minutes to the Tyler post office, where I mailed something out and then checked my incoming mail. My box was chock-full when I pulled it out, and I went over to one of the counters and sorted through everything. I had fourteen pieces of mail.

One was my checking account statement from the Tyler Co operative Bank, and another was a mailing from the National Space Society. The rest of the mail was brightly colored flyers divided as so: pro-Hale, pro-Grayson, pro-Hale, anti-Hale, anti-Nash, anti-tax, pro-tax, anti-gun, pro-Grayson, pro-Wallace, pro-gay marriage, and anti-Grayson.

I gathered them up and tossed them in an overflowing trash can, also filled with similar messages of democracy.

Just another day in the land of the first-in-the-nation primary.

North of the center of Tyler, Route 1 widens some, allowing a depressing series of mini-malls and strip stores to fester and take growth. Paula Quinn of the
Chronicle
once told me that it was like the malignancy that had grasped so many of Massachusetts's North Shore communities had infected Tyler, and who was I to disagree?

Stuck between an auto parts supply store and a sub shop was a tiny place called Mert's Electronics, about a hundred yards north of Tyler center. Parking wasn't a problem so early in the morning and so early in the year, and inside the store, I breathed in for a moment, taking in the view and the scent. The scent was of burned wire and dusty radio tubes and old ways of communicating, and the view ... old television sets piled up next to CB radio gear next to cardboard boxes of circuit boards and radio tubes, and shelves and shelves of dusty gear that looked old when Marconi had retired.

At the rear of the store was a waist-high counter, and an older man was sitting back there, eyeing some papers as they came out of a computer printer, and he nodded at me as I approached.

"Lewis," he said.

"Mert."

Mert Hinderline was retired navy after thirty years in the service, with mermaids tattooed on his forearms as a constant reminder, and a ready smile and dapper little mustache that wouldn't look out of place on a 1940s film star. He was smart and affable and knew electronics, and his store wouldn't last anywhere else, I guess, except for Tyler and its collection of eccentrics. Like me.

"What can I do for you?" he said, putting another piece of paper down.

I held up the tape. "Need something duped. Two copies, if that's all right."

"The whole tape?"

"Just ten minutes' worth. Got it cued up right where I want it to start."

He held out a beefy hand. "Pass it over. Can do it right now and you can stick around as it dupes, if you'd like."

"Sure," I said, dragging over a metal stool. "I can wait."

He went to the rear of the store and out of view, and I heard movement and switches being thrown, and I looked to the printer, to see what he was doing. Next to the printer was an old Apple computer, and displayed on its monitor was a page of a Web site dedicated to a political action committee opposed to the current administration that used the words "storm trooper" and "fascist" and "book burner" a lot. The printer still ground along, and I saw what Mert was doing: He was printing off screen shots of the Web page.

Seemed like a waste of time and paper, and when Mert came back and said, "All right, ten minutes and we'll be through," I asked him about the printing.

"Looks interesting," I said, pointing to the stack, "but I never thought of you being interested in politics that much. Especially fringe politics."

"Oh. That." He scratched his ear and said, "I'll tell you, but you've got to promise that you're not going to laugh at me."

"That's not a problem, Mert," I said. "Last summer, when my VCR croaked, the manufacturer said dump it and buy a new one. You got it up and running again in fifteen minutes with a fifty-cent part. So, no, I'm not going to laugh at you."

Mert grinned and picked up another sheet from the printer tray, and put it in a separate pile. "I'm a volunteer. Belong to something called the Gutenberg Society. We're preserving our historical record for future generations."

"Oh."

Mert said, "I know what you mean by that. What does that have to do with printing off Web site pages and e-mails and other electronic stuff? Quick answer is, everything. You see, in this wonderful and wild electronic age we're in, it's actually easier to do research on the Eisenhower administration than this administration and its immediate predecessors. Too many documents are now in an electronic format. The older presidents, they did everything on paper. Stored properly, paper can last hundreds of years. Electronic files? Who knows? There are gigabytes of information stored on electronic files that can no longer be read, because computers and their operating systems have surged ahead, leaving older files useless."