Primary Storm

by Brendan DuBois

"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."

  From beneath the counter he pulled out a framed photograph, a black-and-white picture of a young man in a sailor's uniform standing on a ship. He said, "My dad. Was a quartermaster aboard the USS Converse in World War II. A hundred years from now, this photo will still look like this. Same thing with my wedding day picture of me and Cathy. But there's color pictures of me, taken in the 1980s aboard my own ships, that have already faded and will be blank in fifty years. And don't get me going on digital cameras. All these wonderful photos, and who knows if they can still be viewed in ten or twenty years when new operating systems are being introduced."

  I nodded. "Read something similar to that about authors and their books. Used to be, researchers could look in the papers of a writer from fifty or a hundred years ago. Could look at the various drafts, see the handwritten notes, the sections that were crossed out, the inserts that were made, and could see the process of how a writer reached the final version of a novel. But now ... so many authors edit on-screen, and make changes right up to when the book is finished, so all that's in the records are the final versions. There's no record of how the author got there."

  "Exactly," Mert said, and he gestured to the computer screen. "So that's what we do in our little volunteer group. Digital information can be manipulated, can be changed, can disappear. So what we do, we make hard copies, as much as we can, so that future generations can have an idea of who we were and what we did. And not have to worry about the final record being cleaned up and edited."

  From the back room came a ding as a kitchen timer sounded, and Mert got off his stool and went to the rear of the store and came back with three tapes. He handed them to me and I thanked him and said, "How much?"

  "Oh, let's say five bucks for the cost of the tapes. Sound fair?" "More than fair. Sounds pretty damn generous."

  I handed him a five-dollar bill and he said, "Well, there was a discount. For two things."

  "What's that?"

  "For not laughing at me, and for listening to me." I picked up the tapes. "My pleasure."

  Mert smiled and sat down next to his busy printer. "Just remember what I said, Lewis. Digital information is wonderful. But it can be manipulated."

  "Just like people," I said.

  He nodded in agreement. "Just like people."

  A quick stop back at the Lafayette House, and I walked quickly up into the lobby and to the gift shop. Stephanie was using a label gun to put price labels on Tyler Beach sweatshirts, and I went over to her and handed back a copy of that day's New York Times, wrapped around the original surveillance tape and held again by a rubber band.

  "Sorry," I said. "You must have given me an extra paper this morning, Steph."

  Her smile looked relieved. "Thanks for taking the time to bring it back."

  I looked at her, a smile on my face as well. "l owe you one." She put the paper and surveillance tape under the counter.

  "No, no debt, Lewis. It's all taken care of. I hope it helped."

  "More than you know," I said, and I got out of there as quickly as I got in.

  A phone call later and I was in the office of Detective Sergeant Diane Woods, south of the Lafayette House, and I said to her, 'Well, I'm pleased that I can get you on a Saturday, but I'm not sure how pleased you are."

  She shook her head, leaned back in her chair. "Not very, and neither is my sweetie Kara, but primary season will be over in three short days, and that will be just fine. I love making detail money but

  you know what? It's a nice little bundle that's going to pay for a vacation to Cozumel next winter for the both of us, but I'm getting sick of all the candidates and their precious little staffs. 'Why can't the traffic go there instead of here?' 'Can't you do something about the news helicopter overhead?' 'Can't you put the protesters over there behind a fence?' Bah. Four years from now, let Vermont have this little circus."

  Diane's office is in the rear of the one-story concrete cube that is the Tyler Police Station, and her desk was reasonably clear. I always told her that a live camera feed depicting her desktop could tell an alien species what season it was in New Hampshire: a clean desk meant it was winter, and an overflowing desk of papers and files meant it was summer. Diane had told me at the time that any aliens that existed no doubt spent their summer at Tyler Beach, and they could all go to hell, and that was that.

  She was dressed in civvies today, heavy brown turtleneck sweater and well-worn blue jeans, and as she leaned back she had her hands behind her head, like a prisoner giving up, except I don't think Diane has ever given up anything for anybody.

  "What's going on with you?" she asked. "The Secret Service treating you well?"

  "I don't think they're treating me like anything, and for that I'm thankful."

  Her face looked a bit somber and she said, "I hope you don't have bad feelings about that day I took you in to meet Agent Reynolds. I was doing you a favor, Lewis, though I'm sure as hell it didn't seem like it at the time. I wanted to bring you in nice and quiet, without them charging into your house and knocking things over and slapping your wrists in handcuffs or something like that. What I did seemed to be the best alternative."

  I sm
iled to show her there were no hard feelings, and I said, "If one has to be arrested by the Secret Service, getting there through the actions of a friend is as good a way as any."

  "Why, thank you, Mr. Cole. Nicest thing anybody's said to me today. And besides the Secret Service, how are the chattering classes of the fourth estate doing? Leaving your ass alone?"

  "Ass is very much alone and belonging to me."

  "Good. So. Now that we're all caught up and everything, what's going on?"

  I took a breath. "Audrey Whittaker."

  She tilted her head a bit. "Audrey Whittaker. Socialite lady for whatever passes as society on the New Hampshire seacoast. Very wealthy, working on her second husband, quite active in political affairs. Believe she's supporting Senator Hale from Georgia. Why the curiosity?"

  "What else can you tell me about her?"

  Diane dropped her hands and let the chair move forward some. "What else do you want to know?"

  "Has she ... has she ever been the subject of interest from law enforcement circles?"

  Diane now stared at me for long seconds, and I knew exactly then how she got suspects to talk, with that firm gaze and clear eyes. "That's a hell of a question, Lewis. Especially the way you just put it. Mind telling me what's gotten your attention?"

  "Something involving a column I'm working on," I said.

  "Oh, That makes it clear then. One of your famous columns that never seems to make its way into print. All right. I can tell you from my own personal experience that Audrey Whittaker, to the best of my knowledge, has never been ---- as you so delicately put it --- the subject of interest from law enforcement circles. But ... "

  My ears got quite sensitive at that last word. "Yes?"

  She said, "Like I said, from my own personal experience, nothing. But it doesn't mean that something hasn't gone on that I don't know about. Which means a records check could reveal something. But there's something you've got to know before you ask me to do that."