Dead Sand

by Brendan DuBois

  “Really,” I said. Okay, the notebook was gone, but I was certain I could re-create most of my conversation with Mr. Chesak with a fair degree of accuracy. If not, well, what was he going to do? Take off his cheesy disguise and show up at the Shoreline offices to complain?

  “When can I have it?”

  “Sometime tomorrow,” I said.

  “Why can’t I have it today?”

  “Because I’m taking today as a sick day, that’s why,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “How sick are you?”

  “Sick enough,” I said, and hung up the phone. Annie giggled and said, “My God, the women just won’t leave you alone, will they.”

  “The burden of being popular,” I said.

  “Your boss?”

  “As much as I hate to admit it, yes, my editor at Shoreline.”

  “She sounds like a real pistol,” Annie said.

  “More like a howitzer,” I said.

  That earned me another intimate snuggle, and I checked the time. Less than ten minutes to go, and Annie saw me look at the clock and said, “God, my stomach is about ready to declare war on the rest of me. This had better be good.”

  “It will,” I said. “Promise.”

  As if the ghost of Alexander Graham Bell were cursing me for some long-forgotten Scottish joke on my part, the phone chimed again, and as I reached for it, Annie pushed me aside and said, “Unh-unh, this time, it’s my turn.” She grabbed the phone and smiled at me and said, “Mr. Cole’s personal assistant speaking. How may I assist you?”

  It was a funny bit, but then her face paled and she passed the receiver over to me without a word. I took the phone and heard a familiar muffled male voice on the other end.

  “So you made it, asshole,” the voice said.

  “Apparently so.”

  “Guarantee, you won’t be so lucky next time,” he went on. “I missed you, but pal, I rarely miss—and never on the second try. Got that?”

  “Bold talk for a loser who likes to take shots at a guy who’s got cuffed arms and is knee-deep in mud,” I said, and I hung up the phone.

  Annie’s eyes were very wide. “That him?”

  “Yeah. What did he say to you?”

  “He said, ‘If that fucker Lewis Cole is next to you, let me talk to him.’”

  I said, “Sorry. I wish I had taken the call instead.”

  “I don’t care about the language,” she said. “I hear worse in the span of ten seconds in my job. Cops?”

  “Not worth it,” I said.

  “The call could be traced and—”

  “He sounds sharp,” I said. “Which means a disposable cell phone. Which means no tracing. Beside, a call to the cops … in a matter of days, I’d be back in the news, and so would your candidate. Not going to happen.”

  “So what’s going to happen, then?”

  I got up from the couch, rearranged the comforter around her, and then traced the phone line to the jack in the nearby wall. I pulled the phone line free, held it up so she could see it.

  “No more phone calls. No more interruptions. Just you and me.”

  Then there was a pounding on the door.

  * * *

  I dropped the phone line and looked at my heavy door with the dead bolt, and tried to keep my voice cheery. “Looks like our meal’s here. Stay on the couch and I’ll take care of it.”

  I raced upstairs, the bottom of my robe fluttering, and went into the bedroom, which smelled of soap, exertion, and the pleasing scent that Annie wears. I got to my wallet on the nightstand, pulled out five twenties, paused, and then pulled something else out. From the nightstand drawer, I took out my loaded 9 mm Beretta. I didn’t check to see if it was loaded. It was. I know I’m breaking a half dozen rules and commonsense approaches, but all of my weapons are loaded. When somebody is breaking in at 2:00 A.M. is no time to fumble around looking for ammunition. There are no inquisitive children in the house, and none visiting anytime soon, so I was comfortable with my arrangement.

  I switched off the safety, dropped the pistol in the large right pocket of my robe, and went back downstairs.

  * * *

  On the television screen, a sword fight was ensuing, and I went to the front door and hesitated for just a second before using the peephole. No, I didn’t like being exposed like that, so I moved over and looked out the near window. I saw a young man dressed in jeans, windbreaker, and a Red Sox baseball cap worn backward, looking miserable in the rain, holding two large white plastic bags in his hands.

  “You Mr. Cole?” he asked, his face splotchy with a red and white complexion.

  “Yep,” I said, and he sighed and passed over the packages to me.

  “Here ya go,” he said, and I passed over the five twenties, which brought a smile. “Christ,” he said, deftly pulling one twenty out and shoving it into his jeans. “I thought Ramon was dicking with me, that somebody would actually pay for a home delivery. Thanks, bud.”

  “No problem,” I said, ducking back into the house, locking the door, and heading off to the kitchen. As I spread out our feast—and told Annie to stay still—I slipped the Beretta out of my robe and put it in the silverware drawer, next to the remote. It was getting crowded in there, but I would put up with it.

  * * *

  Some time later, after a dinner of grilled lobster tails over rice, with a side of salad and grilled veggies, and a bottle of a French Bordeaux that I had been saving for a special occasion, Annie put another chunk of firewood in the fireplace, retired back to the couch, and stretched out. I cleaned up and restored everything to the kitchen, and Annie called out, “Mr. Cole?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “You know what my mama said about rainy fall days like this?”

  I folded up a dish towel. “Nope. What did your mama say?”

  “She said, ‘Days like these, you’d want to spend in bed with a good book, or someone who’s read one.’”

  I went back out to the living room. “Feel like exploring my library?”

  She said, “I feel like something. Let’s go upstairs and find out.”

  * * *

  I awoke with a start, dreaming that I was mucking around in the salt marsh while bullets zipped over my head. I shifted in the warm bed and looked at the bright red numerals of the nearby clock radio. It was 2:10 in the morning. I moved a hand across to the other side of the bed.

  It was empty.

  I lay still for a few moments, then heard the furtive noise of someone working at a keyboard. I sat up and looked out the bedroom door. A small glow of light was coming from my office. I threw on my robe and went out to my office and saw Annie sitting at my desk, working on my Apple computer.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey yourself,” she said, still looking at the computer screen.

  I leaned against the doorjamb. “Thought you were taking a day off.”

  Her gaze didn’t move away. “I did, sweetie. If you check the time, you’ll see it’s a new day—and in a few hours, I’m going to ask you to take me to the airport. I was having a bout of insomnia, and thought I’d get up and check my in-box. It’s a creepy feeling to have been away for a day and to have one hundred and nine unread e-mail messages waiting for me. Ugh.”

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  Her hands hesitated for a moment, and then she turned to me, her face wan in the light from my computer. “Can you?”

  “I think I can,” I said.

  “Then you have a better grasp of things than I do, Lewis,” she said. “Because I can’t imagine being in your shoes. I can’t imagine being assaulted, getting a threatening phone call, and then going to answer the door with a loaded pistol in your robe pocket. All without contacting the police.”

  “Like I said,” I pointed out. “Going to the cops means some publicity, and I don’t think publicity is what you or your campaign needs right now.”

  A brief nod. “Sounds good. Sometimes, though … I get the feeling you don’t mind bein
g on the outside, doing your own thing, maybe making your own rules.”

  “True enough,” I said.

  “Well, that’s outside my world, my friend,” she said. “My world is of rules, broken and bent, but still, rules—and of the law. Being a member of the Massachusetts Bar, I have a respect for the law. Not a healthy respect, but still, respect. Your world … I’m afraid our worlds will collide in one hell of a bang one of these days.”

  I made a point of looking at the digital clock in my office. “Not this day, I hope.”

  She shook her head, smiled. “No, not today. Also not today is something else we’re eventually going to discuss.”

  “Which is what?”

  “What I wanted to talk about yesterday, for a bit. About when the election is over. About when you and I recover here. Lewis…”

  I said, “Things in politics aren’t going to end because of the election, are they.”

  “No.”

  “Even if Senator Hale loses?”

  “Even if he loses. Win or lose, I’ve been promised—in writing—either a position in the new administration, or in Senator Hale’s office in Washington.”

  “You’ve done a hell of a job for him.”

  “You’re damn right I have,” she said, “and I deserve it.”

  “Going back to Boston and working on wills and probate … doesn’t seem as attractive, does it.”

  “God, no.”

  “So what, then?”

  She turned back to the keyboard. “This was something I wanted to think about on my day off. Buddy, I am no longer on my day off, and I’ve got scores of e-mails to get through.”

  I went in, kissed the top of her head, and put my hands on her soft shoulders. “Then we’ll talk about it later.”

  “Only if I get through these e-mails. You’re a dear man, but having you here is a distraction. Lovely as you might be.”

  Another kiss to the top of her head. “Message received and understood.”

  I went back to bed and eventually fell asleep to the sound of Annie’s fingers tapping on my keyboard.

  * * *

  A few hours later I took Annie back to the Manchester airport, and in the hour or so drive to the west, she used her BlackBerry to make phone call after phone call and to text the scores of people she owed messages to. She had taken a shower, begged off breakfast, and was dressed in a sharp black outfit that said serious woman on a serious mission.

  When we got to the airport and I pulled up to the single large building that served as the terminal, the serious woman left for a moment and the tender woman appeared. She touched my cheek and said, “Thanks for the day and night of sanity, Lewis.”

  “My pleasure,” I said. “At least three times.”

  She giggled and we kissed, and I got out and retrieved her luggage, and she said, “I hope I didn’t scare you earlier this morning.”

  “By taking over my computer without asking permission and looking for my hidden porn collection?”

  She gently kicked me in the shin. “Cad. No. About what happens after the election. About me. About you.”

  “No,” I said. “Not scared. I know we’ll do well, whatever happens. That’s for later. You’ve got a man to elect president.”

  Annie hugged me, and I felt her hand run up my side, where I was wearing a Bianchi shoulder holster and my Beretta, and she whispered, “Armed, are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve got a man to catch.”

  “I do.”

  “Then do it,” she whispered, “and don’t get yourself killed. Because I’ll be so pissed you’ll run scared, even if you’re dead.”

  I rubbed her back. “Deal.”

  We broke apart, and she grabbed her luggage and started walking into the terminal, talking again to her BlackBerry, towing her wheeled bag behind her. I waited and waited as she approached the sliding glass doors.

  Waited some more.

  The doors slid open.

  Annie walked through.

  Stopped.

  Turned. Smiled and threw me a kiss.

  I threw one back.

  It had been worth the wait.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  After spending an hour in my office writing a story for Shoreline about my oddball interview with Mr. Chesak of the Nuclear Freedom Front—and doing a fairly good job, if I do say so myself, with my reporter’s notebook turning into sludge somewhere in the Falconer salt marsh—I got into my Ford and started driving south to Falconer for the big demonstration due for later that morning.

  I took out my cell phone and made a call to Ron Shelton of the Falconer nuclear power plant, and got my first big surprise of the day.

  “Say that again?” I asked, sitting still at a traffic light on Route 1 in Tyler.

  “Sorry, Lewis,” he said. “I’ve been told not to allow you on the plant property, and before you ask me why, you know the answer.”

  “No, I don’t. Do tell.”

  He sighed. “That story the other day. About the unnamed utility executive who said, quote, ‘those fucking Russians.’ Well, that came back and bit me in the ass, big-time.”

  “I didn’t identify you by name, Ron,” I pointed out, “and you cleared the quote. So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that a real executive at the plant saw a reporter depart the visitors’ center, and then read a story you filed, about twelve hours later, with that pungent quote. Two and two were put together, and I was called into the executive’s office for a grilling. So when I was put on the spot about what reporter was in a power plant’s offices … sorry, I had to give you up, Lewis.”

  “And you? What happened to you?”

  “Some sort of half-assed investigation is going on, and I’m in the center of it. To calm things down, I had to ban you. Sorry again.”

  The light ahead of me changed. There was the honk of a horn behind me. I started driving.

  “Gee, thanks a lot, Ron,” I said. “So how long am I banned from the plant site?”

  Another sigh. “Don’t know. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “The big demo is taking place in about an hour,” I said. “Don’t do me any more favors.”

  I clicked off and resumed driving.

  * * *

  The U.S. Marine Corps—an organization I’ve long admired and had dealings with in a previous life—has a saying that marines improvise, adapt, and overcome when faced with challenges. This challenge was one that I was certain any marine could handle before his or her first cup of coffee in the morning, but it was one I still had to address. So I kept on moving south along Route 1 until traffic started backing up and slowing down, and I luckily found a space at the Laughing Bee doughnut shop and, despite my history of parking there, dropped off my Ford. I had a small knapsack that I slung over my shoulder—to go along with my 9 mm Beretta in my shoulder holster—and I made a quick stop at a nearby 7-Eleven, where I picked up a couple of bottles of water and a ham and cheese sandwich of uncertain provenance. Then I went back outside and started walking.

  Getting to the demonstration proved to be fairly easy. I followed some stragglers, and then more protesters joined us, and then we started moving through the woods. Trails had been cleared, with splotches of white paint on tree trunks marking the way, and soon enough, more and more people were joining us. I had my press pass outside my coat, and for the most part, I was ignored. The protesters formed into clusters, marking affinity groups that worked among themselves, and each carried flags or banners naming the particular group. I saw one that was from the University of New Hampshire, but I didn’t see Haleigh Miller among its members. When we emerged onto the salt marsh, cheers went up, getting louder as more and more people streamed out.

  I stood for a moment on a hummock of grass and dirt, watching the marchers. Once they came out of the woods, they fanned out across the marsh, some banging drums or cymbals, others waving banners and flags. I saw two protesters—in their late twenties, both male—pose f
or a photograph, holding up a large pair of wire cutters in their arms, gas masks poised on top of their heads. Cheers erupted from the nearby demonstrators as they did that.

  Next to me was a news photographer, and identification marking him as being from the Associated Press hung around his neck. He was tall and wore khaki slacks, a black turtleneck, and a mesh, camera equipment vest, and around his neck a number of cameras and lenses hung like odd Christmas decorations. He nodded in my direction and said, “Lots more people than I thought.”

  “Impressive,” I said.

  He raised a camera and said, “Makes you wonder if they can actually do it.”

  I looked out at the hundreds and hundreds of protesters moving like a multicolored river across the flat salt marsh. “If they have any organization, they’ll go over that fence like Sherman through Atlanta.”

  The photographer laughed. “Now that’d be some pix. See you around.”

  I stood there for a bit longer and then joined the masses. More chanting, more drumbeats, and a few papier-mâché puppets bounding along. Helicopters were buzzing overhead, and I recognized one as being from the New Hampshire State Police, and two from Boston television stations.

  The going was tricky, with flat areas of marshland cut open here and there by streambeds. The first demonstrators across the marsh had prebuilt wooden spans that they dropped across the deep streambeds, and I was impressed. Maybe they would do it, after all.

  The lines of people moved along, and then they spread out. I stood a little apart and scribbled notes, noting the number of people, the colors of their clothes, their signs protesting nuclear power plants and supporting green power, and there were more cheers as round weather balloons went up in the air, each trailing a thin rope holding flickering bits of ribbon. The helicopters seemed to note the new arrivals, and they moved away, and again I was impressed. This was more of an organization than I’d thought.

  I looked to a small rise of dirt, brush, and crushed rocks, the foundation of the chain-link fence and barbed wire marking the southern boundary of the Falconer nuclear plant. On the other side of the fence was a long line of police officers in dark jumpsuits, with batons and helmets. They looked pretty organized, as well.