“Ryan’s, my landlord’s son,” Dylan said. “It was a guy, or two guys, in black suits that attacked those two women, wasn’t it? They had British accents, too.”
“Friends of yours?” The cop moved his hand to his weapon.
“No. Do your friend’s grab your neck hard enough to leave this kind of bruising?” Dylan pointed to his throat, which was red and showing signs of his assault.
“They must be pissed that you aren’t delivering the goods,” the cop said.
“Hey, why don’t you spend just a minute not trying to blame everything on me? What if them killing your friend is a red herring?” Dylan was actually grateful for the opportunity to talk through his idea.
“Yeah, I’ll just forget that a guy I’ve known since kindergarten was shot in the head. Doesn’t really matter that it could have been me working that shift,” the cop shot back, pain in his eyes.
“That’s not what I mean,” Dylan insisted. “Try to get ahead of whoever did it so you can catch them. They vandalized Monson, robbed the library, and attacked the historic society. I bet they stole old books or history books from the library, right? Are you seeing a trend here?” Dylan knew he was painting with a broad brush but maybe there would be something relevant to a local.
The cop nodded but didn’t speak.
Dylan wasn’t sure he wanted to know what the guy was thinking. If the officer told him what he suspected was the next target and he was right, they would think Dylan had relayed information. If he didn’t tell Dylan what he thought, there was the potential that he could stumble across the place and be accused yet again.
“What does the FBI think? Were they surprised to hear that the suits had British accents?”
A puzzled look came across the young cop’s face. “The FBI? I have no idea what they think, but I doubt they care about what’s happening in our little town.”
“If they don’t care, why would they send an agent to question me? Not only question me, but tail me and beat the shit out of me in front of Eliza and Ryan?” Dylan explained angrily.
“I don’t know anything about the FBI,” the officer said. “And once again, the person who could confirm your story is conveniently unavailable. Why don’t you leave the investigation to us? Trust me when I say that if we need your help, we’ll know where to find you.”
The cop walked back to his cruiser and Dylan watched him on the side mirror. When he got to the door of the car, he turned his head and spoke into the radio. Dylan didn’t feel like getting out of the truck.
This wasn’t progress.
Things were getting worse.
Chapter 19
A single bark from Montana eventually pulled Dylan from his catatonic state. He climbed out of the truck and walked to the apartment.
At the door Montana stopped to sniff his master. He seemed to know that Dylan was not doing well, seemed like he could smell the despair. Somewhat reluctantly, the dog trotted across the front lawn to relieve himself in the bushes. In an exhibition of remarkable self-control, he ignored two birds and a squirrel to run back to Dylan’s side.
Dylan stood in the doorway, spinning his keys around a finger.
What was the point in fighting the urge to get high if everything was getting worse while he was sober? In fact, his addict mind rationalized, getting high would make him less of a suspect. It would fix everything.
How could a guy all strung out on drugs orchestrate an international scheme to turn Brookford into a war zone? When he disappeared and the violence continued, they would know it wasn’t him.
Montana barked and curled up at the foot of the recliner. This was where he laid while Dylan played his football video game. He was almost pleading with his owner to sit and not walk back out the door.
“Maybe later, boy. There’s something I gotta do first,” Dylan told his friend coldly.
The dog barked again and hefted his aging body off the floor. He pushed past Dylan and out into the yard. Another bark to make sure Dylan was watching, and Montana walked around the house and up toward the woods.
“Not now, Montana.”
It was getting hard for Dylan to think. Maybe if he weren’t going out with the intention of getting high, it would be okay. He had never lied to Montana before and he didn’t want to start now, but he couldn’t sit in that apartment.
“Let’s go for a ride buddy. I want to get a newspaper.”
Dylan closed the door and shuffled to his truck. Montana whined from the edge of the woods. He knew Dylan’s “thinking about drugs” shuffle and wanted no part of it.
The two stood at a standoff for a long time, Dylan beside the truck with the passenger door open and the golden retriever by the house, sitting and looking sad. Dylan was angry—with Montana, with the world, but mostly with himself. Self-discipline had been instrumental to his success as a football player; where was it now, when he was fighting for his life?
Dylan slammed the door and walked around the hood of the truck. “I don’t care anymore. Stay or come, I’m leaving.”
Montana stood up, walked to the apartment door and looked back. When Dylan climbed into the cab of his truck, the dog bolted. His nose was through the door and nudging Dylan’s leg in the blink of an eye.
“Get in, you old mutt.” Dylan smiled at how committed his dog was to keeping him honest.
Dylan wanted to stay away from town and the potential for conflict. He drove toward the city with the dog’s head resting on his leg. At every traffic light as the truck slowed, Montana would crawl further onto his lap, preparing to use his body weight to prevent his charge from getting into trouble.
At a stoplight downtown a man sat on a bench waiting for the bus. He looked like he fit the scene, but there was something off. His sunglasses were expensive and his watch was not the kind you could buy at a superstore.
Dylan rolled down his window and Montana whined in protest.
Dylan was casual. “Hey, I’m looking for this girl I met last night, Mary or Maggie? Said you worked down here handing out papers.”
“If you mean Molly, she hasn’t been around lately. Her friend Roxie sometimes hangs down at the Gas ‘n’ Sip, but I don’t know if she’s handin’ out papers or nothing.”
“Thanks, man. Can I tell them who sent me?”
“Nah, just tell ’em you heard it at the bus stop.”
The dance was subtle and brought a high of its own.
He’d been looking for a sign or a lucky break but the only thing going his way in the last couple of days was tracking down drugs. As far as signs go, this one was pretty clear: go lose yourself and forget about everything.
Dylan sat in the parking lot of the Gas ‘n’ Sip for more than half an hour. If he scored, could he wait until he got home to use? If he didn’t wait he was putting not only his life, but Montana’s life at risk. He honestly didn’t care about any other people who might be on the road; he worried that as bad as using in front of his dog was, causing his death would be the ultimate betrayal.
Maybe he should score, and go home and flush it. Exhibit some self-control and get at least one hit off the street. He wasn’t buying for himself; he was doing it to keep others safe.
Sliding out from under the dog, he climbed out of the truck and lifted his head high. He walked through the front door of the store and stopped. Was he really going to do this?
It had been a long time since he used. What if it was a drug he couldn’t handle or didn’t know how to use? What if it was something to smoke? Dylan hated smoking. These weren’t concerns if he was going to stick to his plan and flush it. But who was he kidding with that plan?
“Help you?” the man behind the counter asked.
“Um, yeah. I came in here for something but I forget what it was,” Dylan lied.
“Well, we got gas and we got coffee, lotta people stop in for those.”
He decided he liked options and that included the option to use or flush it. “Actually, I was looking for Roxie, guy at the bus stop
said she was here,” Dylan said.
A hint of surprise flashed across the clerk’s face. He smiled knowingly.
“Bus stop knows shit. One for fifteen, two for twenty.”
Dylan shuffled toward the counter. His mind said stop, but his body wouldn’t listen. This need was coming from somewhere physical and beyond his control.
A few steps before the counter his toe hit something and he stumbled. Looking down to make sure whatever it was did not trip him up again, Dylan saw the stack of newspapers.
He bent over and picked one up.
“Historic Document Causes Stir” read the headline.
On the right side of the page, just above the fold, another title caught his eye:, “World’s Longest Leases.”
The story was out. The small town was about to come under a national microscope, and while it would be a hassle for the residents, it would also keep them safe from more violence.
Dylan looked at the clerk. “I only have a twenty, but I was hoping to get a paper, too.”
“So you wanna relax and read the news? Paper’s on the house. Just remember who hooked you up next time you need to take an edge off,” the clerk said.
Dylan tossed the paper on the counter and put a twenty on top of it.
The clerk slid them both off the counter and rung a sale into the register. His fingers moved so smoothly and quickly that Dylan never even saw the drugs slip into the folded newsprint.
“Hope you find some good news in that paper, friend,” the clerk called out as Dylan headed toward the door.
Surely if the media was paying attention, the issue would resolve itself in a few days. It was like he was being rewarded for scoring.
The paper went on the dash and Dylan slid behind the wheel. Montana crawled his large body as far away as he could. They rode home in silence, with Dylan focused on the road and wringing the life out of his steering wheel.
Chapter 20
It was a long night and Dylan did his best to walk a path into the carpet of his small apartment.
Montana had dutifully positioned himself between the kitchen counter, where Dylan had tossed the paper and the drugs, and the living room, where his master paced anxiously. At the slightest hint of Dylan moving into the kitchen, Montana lifted his head and started getting to his feet to block Dylan’s path.
Why was it so cheap and easy to get something that could ruin his life, again? How had he learned the language and culture of drugs so well? He had been an athlete and a leader, the opposite of a loner hiding in a basement in the woods getting high.
Around one in the morning, he grabbed a can of seltzer and drank the whole thing. He flattened a side and pulled out his multi-tool. After a moment, he placed the crude pipe on the mantle next to a box of matches.
Maybe if he tried smoking and hated it he wouldn’t want to keep getting high.
By two o’clock, a match was out and lying across the box.
What was he struggling with? Most of his issues were in the process of being resolved, and he hadn’t really had to do anything. Four anonymous phone calls to the press had set the wheels in motion. His luck was turning around, why get high now?
Why not?
Each time he turned to face the kitchen, his eyes locked onto the newspaper on the counter. When he walked in that direction, he tried to see how much closer he could get before disturbing the sentry dog. As a means of measuring, he kept track of how many words he could read from the lead story.
By four-thirty he had read the first paragraph over one hundred times without Montana so much as raising an eyebrow.
An historic document, that few believe exists, has rocked one small New Hampshire town. The mythical “American Lease,” proving legal ownership over much of the United States’ Eastern seaboard, has been cited by anonymous sources as the cause behind a string of recent crimes and even the death of one dedicated police officer.
His focus fully shifted from the rocks inside the folds to the information inside the article. Dylan wanted to know more, but would Montana trust that he was getting the paper to read? Could he trust himself?
He was tired of being a victim. Running and hiding made him feel gross. Giving in to the vile substance that would ruin his body and fuck up his mind was not what he wanted.
Dylan was ready to get back on the offense; escaping, evading and hiding behind trick plays didn’t win games. Winning happened when you attacked, took charge, and pushed forward.
Stepping over the hulking golden shape on the floor, Dylan entered the kitchen. He flipped the paper open with his right hand and pulled out a drawer with his left. The small baggie with two cloudy crystal rocks inside dropped onto the counter and he swept it into the drawer. He slammed it shut and took the paper to the couch, where he sat for the first time in almost twelve hours.
He read both articles about the American Lease several times. Dylan was disappointed by the lack of facts. His freshman-year journalism professor had made it sound like newspaper articles had to be second only to medical research in their citation of facts and sources. These articles mainly recited legend and folklore.
The legend said that both sides of the American Revolution had seen it coming and worked to come up with a solution other than war. King George III did not want to pay for another war and the industrialists in the colonies did not want to disrupt their very successful businesses. Those facts fit what Dylan had learned about the American Revolution in school.
The departure from the history books came when the article suggested that in 1770 or thereabout the King had agreed to lease the known area of the North American continent to the Continental Congress for a period of two hundred and fifty years.
King George was willing to take this approach because he had felt that eventually the colonists would come around to seeing the benefits of being a part of Great Britain. Plus, he had liked the idea of getting a regular check and having first refusal on the vast natural resources. It was the opposite of fighting a war there.
This approach supposedly made sense to the Continental Congress, because they didn’t really think they could win a war against Great Britain. In fact, they had hoped that by avoiding war, France or Spain would defeat Great Britain and the Colonies could win their freedom by default or at the very least negotiate a better deal with someone other than the British monarch.
None of it sounded as outrageous as aliens or the fountain of youth, but it still seemed unlikely. Dylan’s father had made sure that his studies were not completely forgotten. He had often said that he didn’t expect a Rhodes Scholar, but he never wanted to hear anyone call his son a dumb jock. Unfortunately, high school was a long time ago and he wasn’t sure he could do the research needed to understand the legends, let alone prove if they were real.
People were looking for the document because the leaseholder at the time of expiration had legal ownership of North America east of the Mississippi. Not just the lands either; all the leasehold improvements that had been made would revert to whoever held the document. On the surface, the claim was outrageous. But when the article cited the 99-year British lease of Hong Kong from China, it quickly came into perspective. It was a possibility, and the document would be valid in international law.
To make matters worse, at least one of the sources had a false-flag reference thrown into his comments about the lease. One talking head even declared “The document does exist, but and American already has it. If they lose the next election they’re going to bring out the document and try to form a new country.”
Locker rooms and construction sites always seemed to have at least one guy who believed that America never went to the moon, Obama was not a U.S. citizen, and Bush had ordered the attacks on September 11. It was funny to hear them rant, but they were not the guys you based your worldviews on.
There was also a reference to scholarly research done on the topic. It was a Harvard University Ph.D. thesis, but the work was incomplete. The author was Brookford’s own Abbey Holt, the y
oung woman from the farm stand.
It made sense that someone who grew up in town might have information about, or at least a justified interest in, a local legend.
Did she know something that wasn’t recorded in the history books?
Why did she stop her research?
Abbey Holt had not responded to the reporters’ request for comment. It wouldn’t have surprised Dylan to find out she was out on the tractor all day and simply couldn’t be reached. Still, he thought it was poor judgment to print her name in an article relating her area of expertise to recent events that included a murder and violent assault.
It was possible that the men who had performed these acts of violence already knew about Abbey. After all, they had been able to determine that Eliza and Ryan had gone to New York.
Maybe she had willingly provided everything she knew. If her work had hit a dead end, she may have determined that the document didn’t exist and there was no use in pursuing it or keeping the information private.
Dylan didn’t believe that the young woman from the farm stand would be a partner with men like the men he had dealt with. There was something about her that made him think that no matter how driven she was, her friends and the people in town were more important to her than money or fame. If she knew who these guys were, she would have come forward the instant Officer Farley was killed.
The most likely scenario was that whoever was searching had just missed the information about the farmer. Experts missed things all the time, and it wasn’t like any of the thugs he had dealt with seemed like scholars.
If they had missed it, the information was out there now. The reporter had put Abbey’s life in jeopardy, but it was Dylan who had given the reporter the tip.
If the cop he had spoken with after the historic society break-in had followed his advice, they would be keeping a close eye on Abbey. Surely her friends in town knew that she was an expert on the American Lease. Just because they were her friends didn’t mean they would put two and two together—or that she would accept their help if they offered it.
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