There were more chuckles, a few of the tipsier attendees apparently assuming it was another joke, but generally there was applause all round, and the evening broke up in the traditional spirit of Sherlockian congeniality, with the usual ad hoc swap meet at the cloak room until everyone was fairly certain they had the correct Inverness cape and deerstalker cap.
Matthew gathered up his plaque and other mementos, but of course he and Les had to wait a few minutes while Chantal and Marian paid a last visit to the Ladies’ Room. And that gave Richard St. Vincent the opportunity to bring over a bearded compatriot from the state university.
“Matthew: You know Professor Challenger?”
“From URI? I do. You spoke last year on the other missing piece of Doyle’s canon, ‘The Inca’s Eye.’”
The professor beamed broadly to have his efforts remembered. Matthew shook his hand.
“I know where it is,” said the senior professor of English Literature, without undue preliminaries.
“‘The Inca’s Eye’?”
“No, no. The secure facility that wasn’t there two months ago. And it does emit a hum, at least some of the time.”
“Where?”
“A lot of people prefer the sea beaches, of course. But I find them crowded and obnoxious, this time of year, all transistor radios and suntan oil. So I take the kids to Blue Beach on Quonset Point, or Rome Point to watch the seals. But there’s also a little beach a lot of people don’t know about, a little further north, north of the state airport. It’s called Spink’s Neck Beach.”
“In Warwick?”
“No, not by Green Airport. Just north of what they call the state airport, now, the old Navy strip on Quonset Point. The town has developed an industrial park there, some of the projects have made it but there’s one building that sat abandoned for quite awhile, just to the right and across the railroad tracks off Davisville Road as you head out to the Davisville Piers, which is also the way to Spink’s Neck Beach. I would say it was almost two months ago that we noticed that building is in use again. And it doesn’t exactly look very friendly. Barbed wire along the top of the fence, now, and an armed guard at a new guardhouse by the main gate.”
“On Quonset Point.”
“Yes. You’re after the Cthulhians, aren’t you?”
“Why would you say that?”
“Everything Lovecraft wrote is sacred scripture to that bunch, and you mentioned this project is based on ‘From Beyond.’ I had a distant connection to the founding of the church, as it turns out.”
“How’s that?”
“For a brief time in my younger years I was faculty advisor to Aaron Scheckler, when he first moved here from Storrs. There was brilliance in the man, though trying to get him to finish anything was like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. Always dashing off after something new. Hunting for the resonator would have been just the kind of rabbit trail he would have loved. I’d look on Quonset Point, Matthew.”
And then Matthew remembered little Brittany Watson and her silly report about the sea monster.
“The TV news is reporting some disturbances off Hope Island,” he said. “Is that anywhere near Quonset Point?”
Professor Challenger looked at Richard St. Vincent, as though to ask whether Matthew was drunk, or joking, or both. Professor St. Vincent looked at the ceiling.
The bearded English professor decided Matthew was just a geographic idiot, turned back and patiently explained “Hope Island sits just off Quonset Point, Matthew. Saying something is ‘off Hope Island’ and saying it’s ‘off Quonset Point’ are two ways of saying the same thing.”
* * *
“He’s right,” laughed Captain Jack, next-door neighbor to Books on Benefit, when Matthew and Chantal finally found him the next afternoon. Captain Jack was rarely available mornings, generally being out on the Bay before dawn. “Sayin’ somethin’ is off Hope Island and sayin’ it’s off Quonset Point is two ways of sayin’ the same thing. No wonder he looked puzzled. You’ll never make a sailorman, Matthew.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Matthew admitted. “How far?”
“Halfway down the Bay, near enough. Not likely you’ll find anything on the island itself, it’s a bird sanctuary. Any traffic there would stand out like a sore thumb. But there’s good deep water right in close to the point, 20 feet or more, we can likely get in within a hunnert yards or so, give ’er a look.”
“Can you land us?”
“Not much of a beach right at the airfield. Navy put in a lot of fill, a lot of retainin’ walls. The big harbor’s at the south side of the point, Quonset Pier where the high-speed Block Island ferry pulls in. Deep water all the way in, there. But it sounds like you want to go in further north, anyway. We could get you in close to Calf Pasture or Spink’s Neck Beach, you could paddle in in the dinghy, but I don’t see why you’d want to get your feet wet, except for the adventure and all.
“In a smaller craft we could dock at Little Allen’s Harbor or the North Kingstown Marina, or if you’re takin’ a bigger party and we use the bigger boat we could likely tie up at one of the Davisville piers without a lot of hassle, especially if you’re goin’ in after dark. There’s some security south of there, at the airport, ’cause the National Guard fly out of there and you’ve got their planes all lined up waitin’ to be strafed, the military always bein’ great for arrangin’ things in handy straight lines, but there’s not much of a watch on the piers, and if there is, the Idle Times is known there. We’ll just say somebody took sick and we’re pullin’ in to get them ashore. How big a party?”
Chantal looked at Matthew.
“Three of us. We’ll just take Skeezix, for his ears.”
“Then we’ll just take the little boat into Little Allen’s Harbor, that’s the simplest thing.”
“Tonight?”
“If you’ve a mind, and providin’ you can buy the fuel. Couple hours cruise down past Warrick Point, assumin’ you don’t wanna go down there with a bone in your nose, look like you’re late to the clambake.…”
Matthew looked puzzled.
“ … Then we just hold west of Patience and Prudence.”
“Which are islands.”
“And without even lookin’ it up on the chart, Matthew, you’re a wonder. Do he have any trouble findin’ his way home, miss?”
“Frequently, yes. When a boat has a bone in its nose, dear, that refers to a bow wave,” Chantal explained.
“I can get some sleep this afternoon,” Captain Jack offered. “If you want to leave early in the evenin’, I can have you down there by ten, eleven o’clock, easy.”
* * *
Worthy had made it very clear Tony Waranowicz was under no obligation to undertake the special Launch Day assignment. There were plenty of younger volunteers, and members of the Council of Elders were going to be used very sparingly for any front-line work. Since they had no cut-outs, it was unwise to put any of the church elders in a position where they had direct, first-hand knowledge of Launch Day operations, should they be arrested and questioned.
But he knew their little New Jersey Outreach operation was custom-made for him. And Tony was impressed by the kind of detailed plans Worthy was making, his insistence that every plan allow for multiple contingencies, based on confirmed intelligence. Worthy had a sense of the kind of resources the Drug Warriors would unleash, during the months before public opinion would inevitably turn against them and their police-state excesses. So he was determined that his first blows had to come in a flurry, capable of stunning an adversary that had never faced an organized attack. Worthy was not the kind of captain to fritter away his resources, piecemeal.
And Tony had his own, very personal, reasons to want to strike a blow, as Worthy well knew. He also had the feeling this could easily be his last chance to do anything but lecture and talk and endlessly bloviate about the cause, that to miss this main chance now would mean gradually fading away into old-man-hood, waking up with bad dreams about a lifetime of oppo
rtunities missed.
He was too old to think there’d be anything romantic about “making his bones,” like in the old gangster movies. Hell, once he’d come down off the adrenalin rush he’d probably barf, or pee his pants, or something equally dashing. But Tony no longer had any close family to worry about — thanks to the Drug War — and this was a task that required concentration, steady nerves, a confident manner, an ability to seize the opportunity when it presented itself. He simply knew that logically he was the right person for the job. And he knew that if he succeeded — while there would be no parades or fanfare this year or this decade — it would cement his position. Someday, his name would be listed among those who had struck the first blows.
Handling media relations for the church had been a full-court press since Windsor’s trial. Only now were things starting to slow down. But Tony had kept up his habit of working an extra hour or two after everyone else left the office. He usually grocery shopped around 7:30 or 8 p.m., by which time the meat and deli counters were closing and the customer volume at the Stop & Shop had dwindled. It was hard to believe the fanfare with which the Cranston store had opened as the state’s first 24-hour supermarket, back in the ’80s. In the permanent regulatory recession that marked the early 21st Century, they now closed at midnight, 10 o’clock on Sundays, like everybody else.
“Getting your holiday shopping done early?” asked the cashier as he rolled his half-empty cart up to her register; no waiting.
“Turkey isn’t just for Thanksgiving any more,” Tony smiled.
“I guess not,” she smiled back. Small talk for the bored and exhausted. “No coupons?”
As an afterthought, he’d thrown a couple cans of whole-berry cranberry sauce and a package of cornbread stuffing into the cart with the two frozen turkeys, so his purchase wouldn’t look too weird, along with a few odds and ends he actually needed at home — milk, dishwashing detergent.
She rang him up and bagged his meager selections. The turkeys actually came with their own ready-made plastic carry handles. He paid cash and was on his way.
Turkeys. Nothing suspicious about a couple of frozen turkeys.
* * *
The Marina had been reasonably quiet this time of night, though a number of small craft displayed soft yellow lights, while an occasional burst of subdued laughter gave evidence of people planning to spend the night aboard. Walking south along the road, then angling southeast toward the sound of the lapping waves, the three of them had fairly easy going along Spink’s Neck beach. They avoided the sand, keeping to the large rocks above the high tide line. But the fog was continuing to thicken out over the Bay, meaning for the most part all they could hear were the low-frequency fog horns out over the water, as well as the occasional clanging of a bell buoy.
Now the fog began to swirl ashore, as well, causing the reassuring warmth of the scattered lights of the marina behind them to take on haloes, to grow dim, and finally to flicker out of view.
Distant noises occasionally came through in clear snatches, a trick of the fog. A laugh or snatch of a popular tune on a radio aboard one of the small craft back at the marina, the barking of a dog at one of the houses on the grounds of the former SeaBee base in Davisville to the northwest, now mostly preserved as a park and memorial.
It was hard not to consider just how alone and isolated they were, with no proverbial cavalry on call for a rescue, should they run into trouble. Yes, they’d left letters, and Captain Jack had been given a couple of names and numbers of people to notify should they fail to return by morning. But that felt like a cold and clammy comfort.
Now they started passing red-on-white “No Trespassing” signs. Skeezix guided them at an angle away from the beach, climbing over uneven dunes anchored with unkempt clumps of coarse sea grass. In the darkness it was hard to judge your footing, Matthew slipped and had to scramble to keep from falling a couple of times, the problem exacerbated by the awkward long-handled pair of bolt cutters he carried, until he relented and let Chantal take them in charge.
They must have covered a couple hundred yards, gaining a good thirty feet in elevation from the beach, before the ground finally leveled off. And there was the chain-link fence, seven feet high and topped by a couple strands of barbed wire.
“No insulators,” Skeezix said after a quick scan. “Not electric, no alarm. Chain link is climbable, if someone holds me up so I can cut the barb-wire up top.”
“Climbable for you, Skeezer, but I’m an old-timer,” Matthew sighed. “And even if I got over the first time with some help, could I do it again on the way back if we’re on the run? Maybe with someone hurt? Without a tree or a ladder, that’s a bad bet.”
“No trees here,” Skeeezix said. “Take a lot of cuts to get through that chain link.”
“Then let’s work our way along the fence,” Matthew replied. “It’s unusual to fence more than an acre without putting in a couple of gates. You want emergency access in case of fire, and maintenance guys don’t want to walk their mowers a mile back to the front gate after trimming the weeds.”
“Gates could be chained,” Skeezix replied.
“And chains are easier to cut.”
Sure enough, only another 70 yards to the west, away from the water, a kind of dirt maintenance road ran up to the fence, where there was a gate big enough to admit a jeep or a tractor, securely chained and padlocked.
“Bingo,” Chantal nodded.
Matthew took back the big bolt cutters, tried to cut the chain, and failed.
“Strong chain,” Skeezix said.
“Yes it is. You want to try?”
“I’m not as strong as you,” Skeezix answered, sensibly. “Cut the fence.”
“What?”
Although the barbed wire along the top might be new, the fence itself was at least 40 years old. Skeezix pointed out that the vertical post of the gate had come loose from the horizontal bottom crossbar to which it was supposed to be welded.
“See if you can cut the fence link right under where the chain goes through.”
Matthew did.
“Now eight or ten more cuts in a line, straight down, then do the same inside the gate, right under where the chain goes through, there.”
It took a few more than twenty cuts, but five minutes later the chain and lock, still firmly locked up, lay on the ground. They were still firmly attached to the fence, but free of the broken gate, leaving the gate to swing open freely.
“You do this for a living, Skeezix?”
“We don’t like fences and gates. To us, it’s like a dare.”
“Can you hear the resonator, now?”
“No, it’s not on. But I heard it as we were tying up. It was coming from the direction of that building.”
They headed directly for the huge corrugated steel structure. As they drew nearer, they could see a thin vertical sliver of yellow light near the middle of the closest wall. It turned out to be a rear security door, its handle firmly locked. But someone had propped it open an inch or two with a wedge-shaped wooden doorstop, so there was no need to turn the handle.
“A little too easy,” Chantal suggested, her hand firmly back inside her purse.
“Smoker’s door,” Matthew replied. “Look.”
The ground was covered with cigarette butts.
“You really ready for this?” she asked.
“We came this far. Don’t know what we’re going to accomplish standing out here, shivering.”
Propping his bolt cutters against the outside wall in case they might be needed again later, Matthew slipped the door open.
The big old warehouse was cavernous, with pools of light where the main activities were going on. The dull background roar was probably an air conditioner system, cooling the place by a few more degrees than necessary, especially this late at night.
Other than that, their first impression was of thirty-odd engineers in shirtsleeves sitting at rows of tables or consoles, working busily at computer screens, forming a rough h
alf circle around a piece of steel equipment about the size of one of those big rectangular garbage containers they drop in front of buildings that are being gutted for remodeling, except that this one had rows of four-foot tuning forks jutting from the top — Henry Annesley’s resonator, polished up and ready to go.
There was a kind of cloth-covered laundry hamper on wheels and a couple of ladders they could have lurked behind, but Matthew somehow couldn’t see them being caught spying like little kids. After a quick look around, he just walked right in.
A number of men — mostly men — at the consoles turned to look at the new arrivals. One of those men, set apart at a larger desk with several monitor screens, distinctive for his size and his trademark shock of red-blonde hair, was Worthy Annesley.
“Hi, Worthy.”
“Matthew?”
“We were in the neighborhood, thought we’d stop by.”
Worthington turned in his chair to look at a big brute in camouflage fatigues, a wide-handled pistol tied down low on his thigh, who was standing nearby, staring at Matthew and Chantal and little Skeezix, bent forward and dancing from one foot to another.
“I’ll take care of this, Mr. Annesley,” frowned the gorilla, sticking out his lower lip and reaching for his piece.
“Keep your hands away from that pistol, Buster.”
“This is a problem for security!” the gorilla insisted, petulantly.
“We surely will have a chat about security, Buster, a little later on. Right now you might want to observe the way the lady’s right hand is stuck inside her purse, and where that purse is pointed. It could be that all she has leveled at you is her lipstick, but the lady doesn’t appear to be wearing any lipstick. So let’s not roll the dice, hey? For now, maybe you and a couple of your boys can go outside and make sure the East Greenwich High School band isn’t forming up for a parade in the side yard, OK Buster? I know Matthew and … Chantal, isn’t it? I don’t think they or their companion mean us any harm. Though I do wonder to what we owe the honor.”
The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) Page 13