Buried Dreams

by Brendan DuBois

  "I will."

  Felix sighed, sat back in the chair. "No, you won't. But when that black dog comes visiting, give me a call. I'll get you out."

  "You will?"

  "I will."

  “Thanks," I said.

  "Don't mention it," Felix said.

  "I'll try not to," I said, and then we both changed the subject, and talked about the World Series and Halloween and what kind of winter we might have, all the time up to when the nice people from the hospital came to my room and sent me on my way.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The day of the accident, I found myself thinking not only of what Felix had told me, but one of the stories Jon had passed along during the short time I had known him. "History doesn't just live in books and old documents," he had said one night over beers. "It lives around us. Just look at what's about you, and look at it through their eyes. Not your eyes."

  Sure. I had thought about that during the nights I had been home alone, in my old house. I thought of all the ghosts that had lived in these timbers, wondered about their lives and their deaths, and I guess I was focused on the death aspect, for as Felix had predicted, the dark dog was now square on my back, jaws and paws firmly clenched. I was still limping some, the stitches pulling and tugging, and the days were long and dark, filled with reading books I didn't care to read, and watching television I didn't want to see. The nights had been restless ones, filled with dreams where an old determined lady with a pistol was a better or a quicker shot. Those usually woke me up, breathing hard, the sheets soaked through with sweat. There had been phone calls here and there from my friends, checking up on me, but no visitors came, none at all. For the past several days it had been just me, alone, wounded and in my old house.

  The accident wasn't much. I was washing the dishes from a meager lunch, and a slippery drinking glass flew out of my hand and to the floor. The glass shattered into pieces that seemed to fly into every corner of the kitchen, and in cleaning up the mess, I twice banged my wounded leg on a table --- leading to some quite colorful and profane language --- and once got a shard of glass stuck in my skin, a shard the size of a rice grain, and it hurt like hell. And when the broken glass had been swept up and put into a paper bag, I opened up the counter under the sink, noted that the trash can there was overflowing. Time for a dump run today, and if I was lucky, I'd get rained on while unloading my car. I looked out my kitchen window, at the gathering storm clouds, and wished it was summer. If it was summer, I could open the window and in a very non-PC way, just toss the damn bag out there.

  Why not? I was sure that the people who had lived here once had - --

  Once had done what? Well.

  I'll be damned.

  I carefully put the broken glass on top of the trash, and then hobbled out to the front door, where my homemade archaeological gear was waiting. I picked up the bucket and spoon and colander, and went outside, not even bothering with a coat, though I started shivering by the time I had rounded the house and was on the rocky shoreline. Near the support timbers of my outside deck, I stretched out on the rocks and dirt, gauged the distance underneath my kitchen window, and started to dig.

  And it didn't take long. By God and by Jon, it didn't take long. After just a handful of minutes, I uncovered a brown piece of glass. And another. And then the neck to an old bottle, a light, translucent green. I lined all of the pieces up on a large flat stone, and continued to dig, ignoring the pain in my leg, ignoring the shivering in my arms and legs. Then pieces of pottery came up, some of them glazed white and with blue flowers on them. Then two old clay pipes, their stems broken, and my hands were shaking and I was breathing with excitement. Was this it, I thought, as I widened the hole, was this how it was like, Jon, just over a week ago, when you finally held those Viking treasures in your hands? After all those years of dreaming and waiting and digging? This sweet taste of joy and victory in your mouth, the weight of the old treasure in your hands? Was this what it was like?

  The digging went on for a while longer, until raindrops started splattering the back of my hand, and then there was an odd scrape as my spoon struck metal. I dug around and at first thought I had found a coin, but the object didn't seem to be the right size or shape. I made careful scrapings around the round piece of metal, and then popped it out. I held it my hands and gently rubbed the dirt free, using some of my own saliva, and then it was exposed. A metal button, with an eagle and U.S. inscribed in the center.

  An old army uniform button, from when this place had been home to a coastal artillery unit.

  I carefully put the button in my pocket, winced again as I stood up, and I got into the house before the heavy rain started.

  But I didn't let the rain hold me back. I had a place to go.

  Back at the High Street Cemetery I went, driving slow through the narrow lanes, and it was easy to spot the fresh grave. The dirt still looked fresh and the headstone looked new and shiny. I got out of my Explorer and slowly limped across the slick grass to Jon's final resting place, and I stood there in the cold and the rain, just looking at the simple headstone, with his name and his birth and death dates inscribed.

  I wondered what to say over the grave and over the dirt, and all I could say was, "Good job, Jon. You did it. You really did it."

  And then I took the old army button, placed it gently on top of his headstone, and went home.

  At home the October rains were coming down, even heavier than before, and I was in my office, staring at the computer screen, knowing I had exactly twelve hours to put together a column for Shoreline magazine, and knowing I had exactly squat. My fingers seemed fat and numb over the keyboard, and as I wrote, erased, and wrote again, for some reason, the telephone next to my computer seemed to be beckoning to me.

  And I remembered the earlier invitation. Call. Anytime.

  And I remembered, too, what Paula had said. About sometimes leaving the past behind.

  I picked up the phone, looked at something on my cluttered desk, and dialed the number. It was answered on the third ring.

  "Hello?"

  I cleared my throat. "Annie Wynn, ex-au pair and law student?"

  The laughter in her voice was nice. "That's right. Who's this?"

  "Lewis Cole, from Tyler Beach."

  "Oh, of course. How are you, Lewis?"

  "I'm hanging in there. And you?"

  "The same."

  I looked outside at the rain and said, "This may sound forward, Annie, but would you like to have dinner with me tonight?"

  Not a hesitation. "That would be lovely."

  "Great," I said. "Now this is the part where I'm going to get myself into trouble, because I have a request."

  "A request? Sure."

  "Would you mind driving up to Tyler to meet me?"

  She laughed again. "You better have a good excuse."

  I looked down at my leg, stretched out to one side. "Does a bullet wound to one's leg count as a good excuse?"

  "Sure does," she said. "Just so long as you're not lying."

  "I'm not."

  Annie said, "I might demand an on-site inspection, when I get there."

  "And you'll get it."

  And after a few more cheerful moments of conversation, I hung up the phone and looked around my office, and the old timbers holding up my house, and then outside, at the cloudy day.

  I had a good feeling the rain wasn't going to last long.

  Afterward

  Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed BURIED DREAMS. Did the Vikings ever come to New Hampshire? Possible, but there’s real no evidence that they ever came to my native state… but who knows.

  Among the fun things about being an author is letting your creativity go a little wild, and I certainly did so in this book. There are plenty of little in-jokes and references, particularly in the sense involving North Conway. For example, the fact that Lewis visited North Conway occurred because during a book signing for the previous work, KILLER WAVES, I was asked why Lewis never ca
me north. So I said, all right, next book, he will.

  And he did. And where was this book group meeting? At White Birch Books in North Conway, where Lewis goes to purchase a history book. Oh, and the scene at Horsefeathers Restaurant? There really is a Horsefeathers Restaurant, and all of the customers and folks in the restaurant were friends and neighbors of mine.

  One last in-joke. In the scene where Lewis meets William Bear Gagnon in Porter, there’s a brief discussion of an Irish monk that some folks claim was the first to discover North America. Lewis asks for the name of this monk, which Gagnon says he can’t remember.

  But there was really such an Irish monk, and his name was St. Brendan the Navigator, for whom I was named.

  One other note. So many fans and friends said that Lewis had mourned for long enough, and it was now time to move beyond Paula Quinn and find female companionship. As the end of BURIED DREAMS indicates, it looks like Lewis might be finding such a woman.

  Does anything happen? That’s answered in the next Lewis Cole mystery, PRIMARY STORM.

  Oh, an explanation of the book’s dedication, as well. As a teenage boy (and still today, hah) I was a huge fan of fantasy and science fiction, reading everything I could get my hands on, and dreaming that perhaps one of these days, I could be a published author. In February 1977, I attended a science fiction convention in Boston called Boskone, put on by the New England Science Fiction Association. There, I somehow ended up in conversation with SF author David Gerrold, who later invited me out to dinner with his friend, SF author Larry Niven, and his wife Marilyn, a/k/a Fuzzy Pink.

  It was a memorable evening, being with adults who treated me with respect and as a peer, and when I left that dinner that Friday night in Boston, I knew I would do everything and anything to become an author.

  And I did.

  Next up… as an extra treat, a complete short story set in Tyler Beach and featuring Detective Diane Woods. I was asked to submit a short story to an anthology about mysteries and forensics, and thought, well, why not Diane? And why not another famed character as well? This story appeared in 2008 in a collection called “At the Scene of the Crime,” edited by famed mystery author Dana Stabenow.

  A Trace of A Trace

  I was trying to get the damn flue open on my condo fireplace when the doorbell rang. I stepped back from the fireplace, wiped my black-stained hands with a soiled rag, and went to the front door. I spared a glance out the picture window, which offered a nice view of the Atlantic Ocean and a very empty beach. It being the middle of January, the empty beach made sense, but a visitor to my second-story condo didn't.

  I opened the door and a woman in her late thirties stood there, a hesitant smile on her face. Her brown hair was trimmed short, just above her collar, and she had brown eyes and a faint scar on her chin. She wore a long black winter coat with tan slacks, and over her shoulder was a leather case. She looked at me expectantly and I said, "Detective Diane Woods. Would you like to come in?"

  "Please, if I'm not interrupting anything."

  "Just trying to figure out how to open the flue of this damn fireplace, that's all, without breaking the lever or my hand."

  She followed me into the living room, past the cardboard boxes that had yet to be unpacked. In the living room she took a couch and I took the solitary chair and I waited.

  She looked around. "Still getting unpacked."

  "Yes."

  She shook her head, smiled. "Still find it hard to believe you came all the way east, after spending so much time in the desert. Must be a shock to the system, especially New Hampshire in January."

  I tilted my head just a bit as I replied. "We have snow up in the mountains. And the desert can be very cold at night, cold enough to kill people. About the only change is the view of the ocean. And that doesn't take too long to get used to."

  "I'm sure."

  There was a few seconds of silence, and I said, "Detective?"

  "Yes?"

  "You're here because you want me to assist you. Correct?"

  She looked slightly embarrassed. "It's very irregular, I know. And you're retired and you're from a different law enforcement jurisdiction. It's just that... well, when I met you a few weeks ago, when I found out that you had moved to our town, we had a nice conversation and you didn't seem opposed to lending a hand if the opportunity ever presented itself, and --"

  "Detective," I said.

  She stopped talking. Another pause. "Okay, then."

  "Look. You had me when you opened the door. Any much longer, I might say no. So now I'll say yes, I'll look at your case, and we'll go from there. Is that acceptable?"

  The detective stood up, leather case in her hand. "Very acceptable. Can I show you the crime scene?"

  I looked around at the crowded room. "Detective, it's either that or stay here and try to open the flue, or unpack some more boxes, or hang a print or two on these walls, or go through my insect collection to see what got damaged during the move. Looking at a crime scene suddenly sounds very attractive. Is it far?"

  "Not far at all."

  "Good. Let me get my coat."

  Ten minutes later, I was in the front seat of her unmarked police cruiser, a dark blue Ford LTD with a whip antenna at the rear trunk, and lots of radio gear slung under the dashboard. There was no radar gun mounted on the dashboard. Detectives don't care who speeds and who doesn't. They are after much more important things.

  We were parked on a large fishing dock that jutted into an expanse of water called Tyler Harbor. To the left was a channel that led out to the Atlantic Ocean. A small drawbridge spanned the channel, leading into New Hampshire's southernmost community on its ridiculously short shoreline, called Falconer. Before us, at the end of the dock, was a two-story wooden structure, with a sign hanging over double doors, leading inside. The sign was white, with painted blue lettering that spelled out, TYLER HARBOR FISHING COOPERATIVE. There were four small hoists, set in a row, off to the right of the building. The lot was plowed and mounds of snow ringed it on all sides. Fishing craft of various sizes bobbed at their moorings, as the wind whipped up little spurts of whitecaps.

  "Where's the crime scene?" I asked.

  "You're looking at it."

  "Where?"

  "Right in front of you. The fishing co-op building."

  I looked again. The building seemed deserted. The doors were unattended. The parking lot behind us was empty. I sighed.

  "Take me home, then," I said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Take me home. We're going to be wasting each other's time. This place isn't sealed. It isn't secure. This entire crime scene has been compromised, hasn't been protected, and anything I'll do here will be a waste of time, and won't be useful to you."

  Her face seemed to flush. "You can determine that it's a waste of time or not. But no matter what you think, the site's secure, it's been professionally examined, over and over again, and we're now at a dead end. We've had the best from our department, from the State Police Major Crimes Unit, and the county coroner's office. We've gotten squat."

  "Which is why you've asked me," I said.

  "Of course."

  I stared out the windshield of the cruiser, examined the exterior of the building, and I said, "Do you have the case file with you?"

  "Yes," she said, reaching into the leather bag. "Do you want to read it?"

  "No," I said. "Not yet. Give me the particulars, will you? Before we go into the building."

  "Sure."

  From the leather case she took out a manila folder, which she put in her lap. She didn't bother opening the case but started talking. I was impressed. She obviously knew this case cold, and obviously wanted to show off.

  "Our suspect is one Samuel Kosten. Age twenty-nine, resident of Tyler Beach. Lobster fisherman. Part of the Tyler Harbor Fishing Cooperative. High school drop-out."

  "Any previous record?"

  "Some speeding tickets. One operating under the influence. Two assaults from bar fights, years a
go. Nothing else."

  "Victim?"

  "Victim is Cassandra Malone. Also known as Cassie. Had been dating Samuel for nearly a year. A rocky relationship, according to friends and family. Usual fights and threats, all coming from the male part of the relationship. Lately she told some close friends that she was determined to dump Samuel, once and for all. But she was afraid of his temper."

  "Aren't they all," I said. "What else?"

  "A local. Employed by Public Service of New Hampshire at the Falconer Nuclear Power Plant, over there on the left."

  I followed her lead. The power plant was easy to spot. Concrete containment dome, cube concrete buildings, large high-tension power lines issuing out from one of the main buildings. It looked to be a couple of miles away, across the harbor and low salt marsh and fields.

  "Time of death?"

  "We believe it was about two weeks ago," she said.

  "Long time ago, detective."

  "Sure is."

  "How and where did it happen?"

  "Where it happened... we're positive it happened in there, in the co-op building. We have a witness that places both Samuel and Cassie in the building. Same witness says Samuel left on his own, a couple of hours after they arrived and went in. Since that night, Cassie has been missing. Never reported to work, never returned phone calls from her mom and friends, and her apartment is neat and tidy. Clothes left behind, luggage left behind, no activity from credit cards, bank accounts untouched."

  "I see." I looked around the expanse of the parking lot. It looked cold. It had to be very cold indeed.