The Boathouse, Sparta Township, NJ
It was steaming hot, a perfect night for a naked swim in the lake with Cynthia. Maybe someday they’d be able to do that, providing he survived the murder charge and the whole FBI mess.
From the windows, the thick woods around the boathouse blocked a full view of the sky, but Teagarden had a good straight-on view of the lake through the sliding glass doors. There was no moonlight reflecting on the lake. The water surface and shadows of the distant shore seemed laden with the full weight of muggy summer darkness. He didn’t know if there was a new moon in the sky and considered going online to check the lunar phase, then decided against it.
Whether the moon was dark or the sky merely cloudy, it wasn’t like he had a choice. In a few minutes, he’d be out there paddling toward his only ally. Though he did hope for a dark sky.
The last thing I need is to get on that lake in a canoe and have the clouds open up to cast a full moon spotlight on me. If that happened I’d be—well, I’d be a sitting duck. Cynthia warned that locals have binoculars and telescopes. Even if the police and FBI had stopped monitoring the lake, the locals would spot me and call 9-1-1.
He pulled together his few possessions, taking care to wrap the thirty-four pages, now almost completely decoded, into a protective plastic bag taken from the galley kitchen. It seemed a reasonable precaution since he was about to go canoeing in the dark.
He knew the pages would be historic if made public. It would be a mean revelation that many would prefer to leave hidden, to keep the past cloaked in beguiling innocence.
He opened the sliding glass door just wide enough to slip out. Once outside, he stooped low and pushed it closed with a foot.
Crouching low, there was a strong smell of freshly cut grass and chemical fertilizer. He moved slowly, going as easy on his still-healing knees as he could while maneuvering down the embankment of the neighboring yard, Ernest Blair’s yard. He paused every few feet, cocking his head, first to one side, then the other, listening for any sound that might be out of place with the night. The most prominent noise was the lapping of tiny waves at the shore’s edge caused by a light breeze. Beyond that, the night was still.
He army-crawled down the narrow pier where the lights of many houses lining the waterfront came into view. Some were glamorous mansions that basked in their own spotlights; others were older and smaller with only a humble jelly jar porch light to illuminate the door. To the right, the island stood out as a large shadow.
It was here that he could see the moon phase. It was a waning crescent, showing itself only briefly behind what looked like high altitude altostratus coverage.
He slowly rose above the pier planking to look left where he could see the town center about a mile away with the lights of stores, streets, and traffic signals just beyond a short bridge. He remembered passing over that bridge when Cynthia drove through town Monday night. Was it possible that was only three days ago? He didn’t remember seeing a German beer hall, but knew it would be there, just as she said.
He was about to scoot the full length of the narrow pier when a dark movement on the lake caught his eye. It was a mere shade cast against a darker shade at the water’s middle, closer to his girlfriend’s small chalet.
Teagarden froze. Squinting in the dark, he tried to focus on the spot where he detected movement. He considered what natural phenomenon could have caused it. A log or tree branch? The lake had no current except the wake when fast boats roared past, so it was possible for a log to remain perfectly immobile. But this seemed too large for a log. And it was certainly no fish, unless the lake had dolphins.
The water made faint slapping sounds at the pier supports below him. For the first time, he heard animal life. Birds perched somewhere on the water’s surface, probably ducks, maybe geese. Their distant vocalizations carried to him as soft murmurs by the unique acoustics of the overcast night and contours of the shore.
Then it moved again.
With another quick flicker of moonlight, Teagarden caught the outline of a man sitting in a stationary rowboat. In the dark and from a distance, he could see that it was not a movement of alarm. He wasn’t fishing in the dark. Therefore, he had to be law enforcement. Teagarden wondered: FBI (Harry or Durgan), state trooper, local police, sheriff, sheriff’s deputy?
Whoever he was, he’d drawn the short straw for solitary night surveillance on the lake, in a direct line between Cynthia’s small chalet and her ex-husband’s large colonial. And he was bored. That shadowy movement in the dark was a shifting of his weight to stretch. Having just endured thirty-six hours in a cramped storage loft, Teagarden easily recognized that for what it was.
Now what do I do?
If they posted a night watch on the lake, it was a certainty they’d be monitoring the fronts of both houses. That was Cynthia’s “pox on both houses” warning. She likely had no idea that there was also someone on the lake, probably watching the island. Cops were worried about the island because it was large and wooded and not heavily populated, creating plenty of hiding places in the darkness. After a thorough search, they probably still had concerns and wanted to know if any boats might slip away from it during the night.
I carry on—that’s what now. There’s no alternative. Cynthia’s canoe plan is the best hope, though it means risk of being seen by this night watchman on the lake.
He silently crawled the remaining length of the planking which occasionally creaked with mild objection the way old wood and loose nails often do. At the end, he saw the outlines of two vessels floating in the water just off the pylons, a small canoe and a rowboat, each secured by short ropes.
The idea came to him in a flash. It meant going all the way back to the yard, but he saw no alternative. Teagarden turned and army-crawled back to the yard’s edge, where he felt along the ground for a good sized rock. He selected two that nicely fit in his hand, each about the size of a tennis ball, and tucked them into the backpack.
After returning to the pier’s end, he eased over the side using ladder rungs nailed to the pylons to slip into the water. Poised on the bottom rung to prevent his laptop from getting wet, he pulled the canoe close. He lowered the backpack into it, unzipped the main compartment and removed the sports coat. He felt for the oar, and placed it beside the backpack where he could easily find it again in the dark when the time came, which he hoped would be soon. He let go of the moored canoe and fully slipped into the water. At that proximity to the shore, it was chest deep. The water was warm and felt good.
Getting wet isn’t that bad in muggy weather. Under better circumstances, it would actually be enjoyable.
Standing between canoe and rowboat, he felt inside the rowboat for the oars. It was an old aluminum boat that he knew would make a great clattering noise should it bump anything. He carefully raised each of the two oars, crisscrossed them, and stood them at the back of the boat, propped against the rear bench. For the next part, he had to pull the rowboat toward the pier’s rungs so he could work above the water line. There, he unfolded and draped his sports coat over the upright oars so that each shoulder of the coat hung perfectly on the crisscrossing paddles. He reached to the jacket front and managed to secure one button to hold it in place.
It was eerie how well it looked. From just a few feet away, it was a headless man, a ghostly boater, adrift on a black lake under a starless sky.
Now he could only hope the officer on the nightshift would see it, and think the same when the moment was right.
He reached up to the pylons above the pier planking and undid the two ropes securing the rowboat and canoe before again slipping into the water. He turned the rowboat to the right, toward the large island, and pushed it has hard as he dared.
His next task was to force the distraction.
He dug into the backpack for one of the rocks. Before the shadowy outline of the drifting rowboat disappeared in the darkness, he held the rock in a knuckle ball grip and lobbed it at the h
eadless oarsman.
It landed squarely in the hull and rattled about on the aluminum flooring, making a startling ruckus in the otherwise quite night.
Perfect. Just call me Mariano Rivera.
Teagarden didn’t wait to see if it accomplished the desired results. He leaned into the canoe, gave himself a hearty leg thrust from the pier, and paddled as hard and quietly as he could.
First right, then left. Right, left. Right, left.
He was easily fifty feet in the opposite direction when the first floodlight beamed to life, followed by the squawk of a two-way radio. It was the watchman on the lake.
“Boat…boat…southwest of island…toward main boat ramp…two hundred yards.”
“Roger. Copy that,” came the audible response on the two-way. The second and third beams of light shot across the lake’s surface, one from each shore. It wasn’t difficult to know when the lights found the target.
“There it is…rowboat…single occupant…stop…heave to.”
The watchman on the water cranked his boat engine and motored toward Teagarden’s contrivance.
“Stop or I’ll shoot…stop…heave to…last warning…stop or I will shoot you.”
Teagarden continued paddling toward the town, using rapid strokes, away from the noisy action.
Right, left. Right, left.
Blam! Kah-chuck. Blam! Kah-chuck. Blam! Kah-chuck. Blam! Kah-chuck.
He knew what that was. It was a pump action shotgun, probably twelve-gauge. The engine of a second motorboat roared to life along with a second voice.
“Klumm anything? Am on way. Hold those light beams steady.”
Blam! Kah-chuck. Blam! Kah-chuck. Blam! Kah-chuck. Blam! Kah-chuck.
Momentary silence followed the second round of shotgun blasts. The lights held on the rowboat, never sweeping toward him. He kept paddling.
Right, left. Right, left.
When the ruse was discovered, the distant voices sounded like echoes from a deep canyon.
“Shit!”
“What is it? Klumm, you okay?”
“Deception!”
“What?”
“Goddammit, Blaubach, listen to me. It’s a deception. There’s nothing in this boat except an empty coat.”
The two-way radio again squawked to life, sounding like an electronic duck. “This is Klumm. He’s broken through. All points, abandon lake surveillance. He’s on foot. Initiate road blocks. And pick up that lawyer woman. I told those feds. They didn’t believe me. Now this proves she’s involved. Pick her up for aiding and abetting.”
Teagarden stole a quick glance to the rear. There were three small boats, the middle one was the aluminum rowboat. The other two held one man each. They were training a powerful light onto the surrounding waters, sweeping the immediate surface between them and the colonial in search of evidence.
Teagarden kept paddling.
So, it wasn’t the FBI. It wasn’t Harry or Durgan. It was Sheriff Klumm from Bethel, New York, and he’d brought along at least one New York State Trooper across state lines to New Jersey.
Is that even legal?
The man named Blaubach was the trooper the 9-1-1 dispatcher promised would soon be on his way to the original crime scene at his house.
That’s interesting. The FBI was here and backed off, but Klumm stuck around. That sheriff is smart, and his heart is in the right place; he thinks he’s after a child killer, while the FBI thinks they’re after a whistle-blower that’ll embarrass the crap out of them.
Right, left. Right, left.
He paddled under the short traffic bridge bordering the town center and veered left under the boardwalk near a controlled waterfall that fed the lake. The flickering signal he was looking for came from a platform above a rocky embankment on the right, near a concrete flood wall. He hoisted his backpack, stepped from the canoe and gave it a push back on the water. He worked his way up the rocky embankment as rapidly as his knees would permit. Near the top, he saw that the flickering signal was not being made by a cigarette lighter, but a foot-long device used to ignite charcoal briquettes.
“Sounded like trouble,” she said.
“It was, and there’s more to come.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Let’s go.”
They walked behind the flood wall and across the top of a narrow dam that controlled the slow-flowing waterfall he’d seen a moment before. On the other side of the dam, they stepped over a banister onto a shallow balcony and walked through French doors leading to an empty party room in the basement of the beer hall, Östreicher Haus. The triangular bar in the corner looked as if it hadn’t been used in years. She set her purse on the billiards table and withdrew a windbreaker bearing the logo for the fiftieth anniversary of the Woodstock festival and a matching cap.
“Put this on,” she said. “Pull the cap down over your eyes, but don’t be too obvious about it. We’re going upstairs. Walk past the bathrooms on the first landing, then continue up another flight, through the pub, and out the front door to the sidewalk. Don’t stop for anything. Any questions?”
“What happens outside?”
“We get into a silver Jeep Cherokee that belongs to my son’s girlfriend.”
“Right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Interstate 95, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland
“Where’s the girlfriend?”
“I said it belonged to my son’s girlfriend. I didn’t say she was driving it.”
Before reaching the New Jersey Turnpike, they could see the drones hovering at the main interchange in the distance. They hovered and busily spun about like a disturbed nest of large, angry hornets as they checked license plates on passing vehicles.
“I figured on them,” she said. “It’s why I borrowed a car with no connection to me. They’re probably using facial recognition. They didn’t know I was involved until tonight. So I’m hoping they haven’t programed my image yet. You, however, better climb over and hide on the floor in the back,” she said.
“Right. I’m accustomed to hiding in tight spaces by now. And I hit the Dear John jackpot while hiding in the boathouse loft.”
“Tell me about it.”
There was a blanket on the back seat. He rolled to the floor and curled up where he could see the outlines of her feet under the driver’s seat.
“Cynthia,” he said, “that file, I can’t believe it, it’s—well, I can’t tell you how important it is. If it’s ever published it’ll be the American version of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. It’ll transform the way Americans see their country, maybe even transform America itself. It proves the FBI did things like…”
“I know,” she interrupted, “organized libel, mass disinformation, spying on the private sex lives of national figures, blackmailing presidents, smearing political candidates as homosexual, and—yes—assassination. Some suspected it all along. Your file proves it.”
It was a strange pause. He wasn’t certain he’d heard correctly.
“But how…”
“Sam, I know we spoke about my darling ex-husband who is now openly gay and happily spending the summer in Switzerland, but did I tell you about my son? Did I say what he does for a living?”
“I don’t believe you did.”
“Lawyer. Like me”
“Okay. So?”
“So he works for Justice. He’s a junior defense attorney in the NSD, National Security Division. Boring as hell and pays no money. He works on lawsuits and complaints related to the old Patriot Act. His office is actually in the Justice Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, directly across from the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building. By the way, Congress has funded a new FBI building to be constructed in the burbs.”
“Okay, so how—”
“So he tells me there’s a long-lived rumor within the FBI and Justice Department about something called the Dear John File. Been an underground joke for decades. They’ve
nicknamed it ‘QB69,’ as in Queen Bitches. You know, two old closet queens leaving nasty clues about each other’s libido, and threatening to go public on each other. All that old-school George and Martha stuff. He says it’s ancient legend, like ghosts in the White House, secret messages concealed in the Declaration, and space aliens at Area 51. No reasonable person believes it. At least, if anyone in Justice really does believe it, they tend to keep their mouth shut.”
“I believe it,” he said from the rear floor.
“Me, too,” she agreed.
Careful to maintain a proper speed, she drove south on the New Jersey Turnpike where more drones hovered at every toll gate. On her advice, he pulled the blanket tight around his body.
Teagarden added this experience onto the growing coincidences allowing him to survive and, he hoped, eventually prevail. Had Bruce Kasarian introduced him to anyone other than Cynthia, had he not had that one-night encounter with her at The Argonaut Hotel, things would be different. And now there is the coincidence that her son works at Justice—and that he has actually heard of the Dear John File.
More and more I’m wondering if somehow I wasn’t hand-picked for this job by some higher power. Once this is over, if I survive, I will look into finding a church and a minister to speak with.
Looking at her feet, he related details of the last three days in the boathouse. He included Wednesday morning’s search, hiding in the loft for hours, discovering the code-breaker while glancing through cereal ads in an antiquated boy’s magazine, and researching each decoder ring online to nearly complete translation of the entire file.
She did the same for her side of the story, which took longer because there was more to tell. The agents knocked at the door of her chalet just minutes after she arrived home Wednesday morning from their night of lovemaking in the boathouse. They thought she was lying during the Q-and-A, which led them to a full search of the entire area, including the lake.
“They read me like a book,” she said. “The search boss was a wimpy guy in an oversized FBI windbreaker who stood in a corner and stared at me while others lobbed questions. When I said I had to go to the bathroom, he practically sprouted antennae. He wagged a finger at a female agent to go with me.”
Flight of the Fox Page 17