Nick of Time (A Bug Man Novel)

by Tim Downs

  22

  It was just after dawn when Blake Brenton arrived at Ed Yanuzzi’s cabin. Ed wasn’t kidding; the cabin was in the middle of nowhere—just the right spot for this kind of business.

  Brenton had hidden his car in the woods almost a mile past the side road that led down to the cabin and made his way back on foot. He wanted to get there before sunrise and he wanted to get a feel for the land. The trees that surrounded him were almost exclusively pines. That was good—the rusty brown pine needles that covered the forest floor had altered the alkalinity of the soil and held back the undergrowth—that would give him a clear line of sight. Everywhere he looked enormous slabs of bluestone protruded through the soil. That was good too— there should be no problem finding an elevated vantage point on that hillside.

  He stood on the cabin porch and looked at the lay of the land. The cabin faced due east, so the sun would rise behind him—perfect. That meant he would have the light, but his own position would be concealed by the blinding glare. Brenton drew a mental line perpendicular to the cabin and followed it across the gravel driveway to the bottom of the hillside; he began to pick his way up the hill, stopping every few yards to look back at the cabin and make sure the path he was taking was allowing him an unobstructed view. He had to shift off perpendicular more than once to avoid the trunk of a large hardwood or a concealing clump of brush, but it didn’t really matter—he knew he could make a shot like this one blindfolded.

  He counted his steps as he climbed. He had already measured the horizontal distance on Google Earth, but this was his first chance to see the angle of incline of the hillside, and that would determine the true distance to the target. At 150 yards he stopped; it was a good spot with a clear line of sight, but Brenton just couldn’t stomach the idea of taking a shot from such a pathetically short distance—it was almost insulting, especially when he reminded himself that the official record for a confirmed kill was 2,706 yards. So he continued on up the hill, counting as he went, until he was near the peak, about 250 yards away. The distance still seemed insulting, but he had no choice—another twenty yards and he’d be on the other side of the hill shooting up at the sky. So he slung the canvas drag bag from his shoulder and unzipped it.

  The Remington 700 wasn’t his favorite rifle, but it was good enough for a job like this. Technically it wasn’t a sniper rifle at all; it was a varmint rifle, for sale to the general public—but it had exactly the same barrel and action as the sniper version. That’s what made the Remington a smart choice in a situation like this; in the event of a run-in with authorities, Brenton might find it difficult to explain why he just happened to be traipsing through the woods with a sniper rifle—better to look like an average hunter. Still, he missed his Parker-Hale M85 with the Schmidt & Bender scope—now that rifle was a thing of beauty.

  At a quarter to eight he took his position. He lay prone on an outcropping of rock with his body in perfect alignment with the rifle. He loaded four rounds of Winchester .308 ammunition into the rifle’s internal magazine, then removed the caps from both ends of the scope and dialed in the distance to the target. He looked through the scope and sighted in on the cabin, then closed his eyes . . . When he opened them again, the rifle had drifted slightly to the left—so he repositioned his body and repeated the process until he found the natural point of aim.

  Now he began to relax his muscles one by one until only the alignment of his bones supported the weight of the weapon. Then he shifted his focus to his breathing, tuning in to his natural respiratory pattern and the two- to three-second interval between inhale and exhale. He began to consciously extend that resting interval to eight to ten seconds, relaxing his lungs and diaphragm and slowing the beat of his heart.

  For all intents and purposes Blake Brenton was a dead man, unable to move or even breathe. The tip of his right index finger was the only part of his body still able to contract—but that was enough.

  ***

  Nick knocked again on the cabin door, though the curtains were all drawn and there was no sign of Michelle’s car in the driveway—still no answer. He checked his watch again: eight fifteen. Her message had said to come at eight o’clock, but she didn’t necessarily mean she’d be there waiting for him—maybe she was planning to meet him there. Nick felt frustrated; it was just one more example of women failing to communicate clearly, and at this early hour he was in no mood to be generous about it. Why can’t women just say what they mean? he wondered. Why can’t they mean what they say?

  He turned on the porch and leaned against one of the wooden posts that supported the overhanging roof. In front of the cabin was a gravel-covered clearing, wide enough for a car to turn around without making a three-point turn; beyond the clearing the tree-covered hillside rose into the distance. The ground around the trees was a bed of rust-colored pine straw that constantly rained down from the canopy above, broken by glacial chunks of blue-gray granite that poked up through the earth.

  Nick stared into the trees and wondered what his next move would be if Michelle didn’t show. Nothing was quite making sense. Pete Boudreau was dead, murdered in his own home—that was the only thing Nick knew for certain. Pete had been working on a cold case with Marty Keller, a Pine Summit sheriff’s deputy—but when Nick arrived in Pine Summit he found that the deputy had also been killed—“accidentally,” according to Sheriff Yanuzzi. When Nick asked to see the coldcase evidence, Yanuzzi refused—yet when Nick asked about the deputy’s widow, Yanuzzi freely volunteered the information. But the relationship between Yanuzzi and Michelle Keller clearly cast suspicion on Yanuzzi and even raised awkward questions about Marty Keller’s death. Why would Yanuzzi allow that? It was almost as if Yanuzzi was inviting suspicion . . . But why?

  At least now he understood why Pete Boudreau had wanted his involvement—those puparia he found at the lake house were a dead giveaway. Now he knew how the old man really died, but what did that have to do with Pete’s death? What did it have to do with anything? It was like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle with pieces taken from different boxes; each piece was interesting in its own way, but none of them seemed to fit together to form a coherent whole.

  Nick was hoping this meeting with Michelle Keller might be the breakthrough he had been looking for. In her message she said she hadn’t been completely honest with him—that there were things she needed to tell him. Nick was hoping that one of them might be able to make some sense out of all this mess.

  But what if she doesn’t show?

  Then two things happened simultaneously: Nick heard a faint but distinct crack from somewhere high up on the hillside, and he felt the wooden post he was leaning against shake as if someone had struck it with an ax. An inch from his shoulder he saw splintered wood and a hole the size of a dime.

  Nick dropped to the porch and began crawling toward his car.

  23

  The lake house door was bullet-shaped and pointed at the top, just like the door on Gunner’s church back in Endor. Alena knocked hard, but the wood felt so thick that she wasn’t sure the sound would even make it through to the other side. She decided to knock on the side window panel instead—the sound of knuckles rapping on glass might travel farther and ought to be easier for someone inside to hear.

  She rapped several times, then turned and looked at the driveway; it was shaped like a semicircle and it was made out of some kind of shiny crushed stone with redbrick pavers outlining the edges. The driveway curved around a three-tiered concrete fountain with crystal-clear water flowing from the top and bubbling over the edge of each successive tier. A manicured boxwood hedge encircled the fountain, just like the ones Alena had seen in the magazine photos of those beautiful European gardens.

  She tried to imagine Nick’s crumbling Plymouth Sundance parked on that beautiful driveway, but she couldn’t. Nick just didn’t fit in a place like this—so what was he doing here? She imagined him standing right where she was, dressed as usual in baggy cargo shorts and sandals and a faded old T-shirt
selected for comfort instead of appearance, and a wrinkled buttondown hanging open and untucked on top of it all. The guy was a freaking genius, but he just didn’t care about appearances. But the people who lived in a place like this—they probably cared a lot. Alena wondered what the owners must have thought when they first opened that big door and found Nick staring back at them with eyes the size of Mallomars.

  She smiled—until she thought about her own appearance. Then she turned around and straightened herself, pointing at each of the dogs in turn to remind it to be on its best behavior. She brushed her hair back from her face and waited for the big door to open.

  When it did, Alena found herself eye-to-eye with a man who looked to be in his midfifties. He was bald on top with coarse salt-and-pepper hair on the sides that he kept slicked back but refused to stay down. The skin of his head showed lots of sun, with specks and spots and little dark moles dotting the surface. His eyes were dark and wide-set, overshadowed by bushy black eyebrows the size of caterpillars.

  The man gave her a quick once-over. “You here to fix my wall?” he growled.

  Alena’s mind raced. “Um . . . yeah.”

  “Is that your truck? Got your tools in there?”

  “Yeah, I’m all set.”

  He began to open the door and caught sight of the three dogs. “What’s with the flea circus?”

  “They’re for protection,” she said. “A woman working alone can’t be too careful—you understand. Not everybody’s as nice as you are.”

  “Well, they’re not coming in the house.”

  “Can’t leave them in the truck on a hot day like this—dogs overheat fast. I can come back in a week or two, but that’s up to you. You don’t have to worry about them messing in your house—they’re trained.”

  “Well, if they do, you’re cleaning it up.” The man let the door swing open and nodded for Alena to follow him inside.

  She followed him through the entryway, across a great room with a spectacular view of the lake, and down a hallway into a bedroom at the end. The bedroom was huge but almost empty—just a bed and a nightstand but nothing more. To the left of the bed the carpet was peeled back away from the wall, exposing the flecked green foam padding underneath. On top of the padding Alena saw fragments of splintered baseboard and a black metal prybar lying beside them.

  “I didn’t get your name,” Alena said.

  “They didn’t tell you my name?”

  “It’s on the work order, but that’s out in the truck.”

  “It’s Malone,” he said. “Duncan Malone. Where’s your tools?”

  “Thought I’d look things over first—no sense hauling in stuff I won’t need. What happened here?”

  “That moron from the Pine Summit police, that’s what happened.”

  “A cop did this?”

  “No, some kind of private consultant—said he was a forensic something-or-other. He was an idiot, if you ask me—he just walked in and started tearing up the room. Look at this place!”

  “It’s none of my business, but why are the cops interested in your bedroom?”

  “It’s not my bedroom, okay? I sleep down the hall. The previous owner used to live in here—this is all his stuff.”

  “So what were the cops looking for? Was he into drugs or something?”

  “No, he wasn’t into drugs—he just died of old age.”

  “In here?”

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  “Creepy.”

  “Look, I don’t have time for ghost stories. Can you fix this mess or not?”

  “I can if you’ll get out of my way,” Alena said. “I’ll need to restretch this carpet, and I can’t exactly do that while you’re standing on it. Do you mind?”

  When Malone left the bedroom Alena quietly closed the door behind him. She looked at the torn-up carpet and wall; Nick had obviously been searching for something, and he needed to peel back the carpet to find it. But what was he looking for? The only thing she knew for sure was that Nick was investigating a murder—but why he came to this house and what he was searching for in this room were mysteries. But Alena did know something else: Her fiancé was a forensic entomologist, a man who was interested in all things dead, and if Nick was interested in this room, there was a reason.

  She rolled the carpet out flat again and turned to the three dogs who sat lined up like furry figurines. She snapped her fingers and singled out Trygg; she wiggled her fingers and called the three-legged cadaver dog over to her. Alena opened her shoulder bag and took out a folded red bandanna with a large polka-dot pattern; she opened the bandanna and showed it to the dog, then knelt down, rolled it, and tied it around the dog’s neck.

  Now she stood up with the dog beside her as if they were both saluting a flag. She snapped her fingers once, then made a tossing motion with her right hand. The dog’s nose immediately began to quiver over the carpet, its two hundred million olfactory cells lifting scent molecules from the tightly twisted carpet fibers, testing the air for the slightest hint of one very specific odor—the scent of death.

  When Trygg reached the area to the left of the bed, she lay down.

  Alena called Trygg away from the spot to the far corner of the room. It could have been a false alert—it was possible, though Trygg’s ability to detect the telltale odor of death was almost unerring. She called the dog to attention again and sent her back out into the room; Trygg immediately walked to the same exact spot and lay down again.

  At some point in the past—a week ago, a month ago, ten years ago—something dead had lain on that carpet in that exact location—and if Malone had his facts straight, it was probably the previous owner. There was no way for Alena to know how long ago it had happened, because cadaver dogs are able to detect the lingering scent of human remains even after hundreds of years. But there was no doubt about it: Someone had died there, and the body had lain there long enough to impregnate the carpet with the scent of decomposing flesh.

  But why were the police interested in an old man’s death— and why was Nick? And what in the world did he tear up the room looking for?

  Alena pulled back the carpet again and looked at the padding; nothing seemed unusual about it. Then a thought occurred to her: Maybe Nick didn’t pull back the carpet to expose the floor—maybe he did it to expose the wall. She got down on her hands and knees and peered into the narrow crack between the tack strip and wallboard . . .

  She saw them—dozens of tiny little brown-colored capsules.

  She went to the nightstand and opened the top drawer; it was filled with medical supplies. She needed something long and thin . . . Q-tips—perfect. She took the cotton swabs and returned to the wall and used them to flick the little capsules out of the crevice and onto the carpet pad; when she had dislodged half a dozen she scooped them up in the palm of her hand and deposited them in an empty pill container.

  She held the pill container up to the light. She knew what the little capsules were—the things bugs leave behind when they grow up—but she had no idea what they meant or why they were important. But these things had to be what Nick had been looking for, and if Alena could figure out why they were important, she might know what was keeping her fiancé so distracted.

  Then something caught her attention from the corner of her eye. She turned to the bed and saw Trygg lying on top of the mattress with her head on top of her left paw, looking at her; when their eyes met the dog’s tail began to wag.

  Alena just stared.

  The prone position was the dog’s alert—her signal to Alena that she had detected the scent she was instructed to find. Trygg had been specifically trained never to lie down just to take a break—that would send mixed signals. And the dog would never jump up on a piece of furniture just to be playful—not while she was working. Trygg had the best work ethic of any dog Alena had ever trained; when Trygg was on the job she was all business, and if the dog was lying down, it could only mean one thing.

  Just then the door opened and
the man poked his head into the room.

  Alena made a quick flipping gesture and the dog quietly leaped from the bed.

  Malone looked around the room. “What’s the holdup in here? It’s a simple job—I thought you’d be half finished by now.”

  “I can’t finish it today,” Alena said.

  “What? Why not?”

  “They told me this was just a drywall job. Look at all this— there’s baseboard, and painting, and one of the tack strips has to be replaced. I’ll have to take some measurements and come back later.”

  “Unbelievable,” Malone muttered.

  “Hey, talk to Public Works about it—they fill out the work orders.” Alena took out her cell phone. “I’ll just grab a few pictures to show them what we’re dealing with here. Any idea how to work the camera on this thing?”

  The man grabbed the phone from Alena’s hand. “Can you people possibly get any more incompetent?”

  “Sorry, new phone—I just got the thing.”

  Alena watched as the man demonstrated the phone’s camera function—then she took the phone back and snapped a few photos of the carpet and wall. “There—that oughta do. I’ll get out of your way now.”

  “When are you coming back?” he asked.

  “Soon as I can—I’ll have to check my schedule.”

  “Well, how long is this going to take?”

  “Trust me,” Alena said. “I’m working just as fast as I can.”

  24

  Alena slid the white handkerchief out of the shade and into more direct light; the morning sun was casting long shadows and she wanted to make sure there was plenty of light for the close-up photos. She sorted through the little pile of rice-shaped capsules with her finger and selected one at a time, pushing it away from the others to photograph by itself.

  The vacant lots on either side of the lake house were under development and most of the pines had been cut down and cleared away, leaving plenty of unshaded space and even a few handy tree stumps Alena could choose from to use as a copy stand for her photography. She had pulled her truck over less than a quarter mile from the lake house, just past a long stretch of woods left to provide a visual barrier from the new construction. Thirty yards away from her there was an enormous excavation in the hillside where it sloped down toward the lake; backhoes and bulldozers swarmed in and out of it like termites, scooping up bucketloads of dirt and dumping them into haulers that rumbled past her with blue smoke belching from their tall exhausts. Men and trucks were everywhere, so no one had noticed when one more pickup pulled in among them.