“I know,” Blake said. “I know that, but I at least got to be able to tell myself I tried to tell somebody the truth and then let it all go.”
James Bradley nodded, but said nothing. Outside shadows were falling across the Berkshire Hills, deepening the long pine-filled crevices into soft purple hollows. “It’s beautiful here,” Blake said finally, breaking the silence. “Hills like velvet.”
“Yeah, sure is.” James Bradley replied. “You wanna stay the night?”
“Nah. I’ll come back in the morning. I’m gonna go back into Pittsfield and get some real sleep. I stay with you and I’m up half the night.”
James Bradley nodded and followed Blake to the door. They stood together, Blake still tall and straight and James Bradley leaning on a silver cane, looking out at the twilight and the purple hills for several long moments.
“The captain, guy who saved your life that day, name of Gleason, he never made it out whole. Stepped on a land mine two, three weeks later, blew both legs off. Lived in Oregon for 10 years or so after that and then just got up one day and shot himself. Had a wife, no kids. Just ran out of space to keep forgetting in.”
“I know,” Blake said. “I used to see his face all the time. Still do, a bit. At night, when I wake up. See his face right next to mine. Eyes all popping with anger. Like I said, I’m not looking to get anybody in trouble all these years later, make a big report out of this. I just want somebody to admit that this stuff happened and that Kevin Flanagan got it from his own guys.”
“I’ll think it over,” James Bradley said. “Maybe come with you to confront this Lester Carlson character. Maybe not.”
Blake had nodded. “Either way James. Either way brother.”
“You want to bury your buddy proper, that’s what it really comes down to,” James Bradley said.
Blake nodded. “Bury him and say goodbye and get on with my life.”
Blake fired up his Harley and rode off down the long dirt driveway. As he turned left to enter the highway, a car crawling up the road caught his motorcycle in its high beams. The car slowed and the driver peered at the road as if looking for a street sign. Blake flashed on past the turning car and rode toward Pittsfield. He saw almost no traffic the rest of the way until he reached the outskirts of Pittsfield, 20 miles away.
* * *
Chapter 16
He sat there in his pickup truck, lights out on the dark road, and watched the trailer for an hour. As he arrived, a motorcyclist left, wheeling off into the night. The road and the trailer were now dark and quiet. Behind the trailer, on a sloping rocky hillside populated by thin white pines, a blue light floated chest high in the dark skimming in and out of the trees. He had seen the light before. He knew what to do. The entity was with him and guiding him, and things never went wrong when the entity was with him.
There was a large rock in the front yard of the old trailer. The large rock had given him an idea and after an hour he acted--using a long, steel pry bar that he kept in the bed of the pickup, he pried the rock out of the ground near an old oak tree. And then he jammed the pry bar underneath the rock and rolled it forward several feet. Again and again he fitted the pry bar under the rock and rolled it forward until he reached the front door. There were no steps to the trailer--the front door simply opened out onto a small concrete platform that was level with the ground and the door. No problem. No problem at all. This was going to be simple. He levered the rock onto the concrete step and then up tight against the front door.
The rest had been easy--a big splash of gasoline against the front door; a generous dollop of gas around the rest of the trailer, and then lights, action, and goodbye old fellow inside.
Now he was heading west from Massachusetts into the night. When he drove he liked to think of his past successes, his greatest hits--no irony intended. The housewife in the red bikini had been his most recent though before her there had been lovely Lisa the jogger, but tonight as he drove toward Ohio he was thinking of the waitress at the phone booth--an early one, but one of his most satisfying.
He had found her late one night on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River. Cruising. Just cruising, and looking, and checking for possibilities--waiting for something to happen; waiting for the entity to join him and guide him.
He had seen the waitress at a pay phone in the darkened parking lot of a restaurant that had closed hours ago. It was several months after he had killed the hitchhiker. The waitress was no fool. When she had seen his pickup truck turn around and circle back to the restaurant parking lot, she had ended her phone call. But it was too late for her. He had driven around back, turned, and come up behind the waitress, who was just starting her car. A short struggle; the trusty Buck knife against her throat, and then she was captured, hands bound with electrical tape, tossed into the front seat of his pickup.
The waitress had been on the phone with her sister—at least that’s what the newspapers later reported. But she had hesitated. “Wait a second. Something weird here,” she had said into the telephone to her sister that night. “I guess I’d better go.”
“What’s happening?” her sister had demanded.
“I’ve got to go.”
“Is there something the matter?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Tell me.”
“No. I’m all set.”
“You’re sure.”
“I guess so.”
He had read the newspapers reconstruction of the dialog with delight. The waitress had wasted 15 or 20 precious seconds talking while he was swinging around the back of the deserted restaurant and she was breathing a sigh of relief thinking he was gone. And then when he had come up from behind on her car, surprised her, and jammed his truck right up against her front fender on the driver’s side, she had looked indignant. Pissed off. He was out of the truck and over to her driver’s side door in just four or five seconds, in time to see her expression change from indignation to fear. If she had scampered out the passenger side door the moment he had pulled up on the driver’s side, she’d be alive today. He couldn’t have outrun her. Timing was everything.
And timing was most definitely the key to his work for the entity. The entity had plans that could not be changed, disturbed, or delayed in any way.
He now understood. He’d read the old Quabbin histories, and knew the old legends. There would be a moment in time for the entity; the door cracked open for an instant, but barely more than that. And it was his job to clear a path for the entity--to run interference and remove obstacles--to be sure that when that brief moment in time arrived, the entity could come blasting back through space unimpeded. There was much to do. He would need to stand by and be ready.
* * *
Chapter 17
Blake saw the smoke piling up into ragged gray pillows on the horizon miles before he reached the cutoff road that led to James Bradley’s house. The smoke floating across the soft blue morning sky brought back all sorts of memories. Smoke had a signature of its own.
This smoke reminded him of Vietnam. Mornings after a bombing strike, he would fly over dying fires and stick buildings still puffing out gusts of gray smoke. Target destroyed.
Blake twisted the Harley’s accelerator and roared up Windsor Mountain, retracing his route from the night before.
“Guy never had a chance,” he heard a burly volunteer firefighter say as he parked his Harley close to the police and fire lines marked with bright yellow tape that had been thrown up around James Bradley’s trailer. Blake pushed forward and stopped. The trailer was now a crumpled gauzy brown cylinder that looked like a big plastic soda bottle, collapsed and sucked free of air. Smoke funneled out either end.
“Some fucker put that boulder there,” another fireman chimed in. “Probably sometime early this morning. Guy like this, up half the night drinking, would be done in by then. And this fire wasn’t set but a few hours ago.”
“Why the Christ anyone would want to hurt that poor sod is beyond me,” so
meone else said. “Lived alone, never bothered no one. Vietnam vet. Drank a bit. So what.”
Several Massachusetts State Police troopers in starched blue uniforms and high black boots stood by the front door of the burnt out trailer jotting notes into small black notebooks as they looked over what had been James Bradley’s home.
Blake leaned against his bike--for support, he realized. His breath was gone. He heard himself wheezing as he looked at James Bradley’s trailer—turned into a charnel house, smoke blackened and charcoal hot. Propped against the front door sat the object of the State Trooper’s attention: a large jagged boulder. It had been jammed hard against the door to prevent a quick exit.
Blake took deep breaths to steady himself. A crowd had gathered. People whispered. Blake stared and then turned to watch four firemen exiting the trailer home carrying a body on a stretcher. They moved slowly and methodically, without the ant-like bustle of rescue personnel carrying a living person. The sheet covering the body flapped open and Blake saw the lower half of a leg. Below the knee it was the pale yellow-white of a prosthetics device--James Bradley’s artificial leg that had carried him through life for the past 25 years since that day in the jungles of Vietnam when he had lost it, shot by his own men.
“Gasoline,” a firefighter said, while another firefighter nodded.
“Poured it all around the place.”
“You’re asleep, had a few, don’t realize you got a fire until it’s cooking.”
“That rock did him in, though. Probably tried to get out. Crawled over to the door, but couldn’t budge it.”
“The perp musta used a big pry bar to roll that sucker over to the door.”
Blake sat for many moments on his motorcycle listening to the firefighters, and to the crowd that had gathered on the road outside the trailer. At some point he stopped listening and simply sat thinking of James Bradley.
* * *
“You guys,” James Bradley had said at one point last night, “you fucking cowboys in your choppers. You loved fucking action but were never good at figuring it all out. But hell. I could never figure it all out either.”
The phone rang three times before Katherine picked it up. “Hi,” Blake said. “It’s me.” He sat on the edge of the bed in a small motel in Amherst, Massachusetts. “Were you sleeping late?”
“Just getting out of the shower. How are you, Honey? And where are you?” Katherine said, and Blake smiled at the sound of her voice.
“Place called Amherst. In Massachusetts. Came up to visit James Bradley.” Blake heard his voice breaking. “Somebody killed him, Kath. Somebody torched his crummy old trailer right after I visited him last night” Blake’s voice broke and he sobbed into the phone.
Katherine gasped. “But what happened?”
“I don’t know,” Blake said. “I came up to visit him. Talked last night about maybe having him back me up if and when I go public with that massacre I told you about way back when in ‘Nam, and then this morning when I come by to say hi again, he’s dead. His place torched. Big boulder jammed against the front door so he couldn’t get out.”
“I can come up there, Honey. I’m not sure what you want to do, though.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll stay,” Blake said. “I want to talk to this Lester Carlson, guy who was once in charge of lots of things in ‘Nam, but I don’t know what to say.”
“Just talk,” Katherine said. “Don’t get in any trouble. There’s no way he could have anything to do with James Bradley’s death.”
“No way, I guess,” Blake agreed. “But I want tell him about that massacre. It’s the only way I can let it go.”
“I almost forgot,” Katherine said. “Somebody called for you this morning. Early. He said he was an old Marine buddy.”
Blake listened, puzzled. “I don’t have any old friends. I don’t have any old Marine buddies. What did he want?”
“Just to find you and say hi. He wanted to know if you’d be home tonight.”
Blake tensed. “What did you tell him?” he asked, his voice rising.
“Nothing, Honey. Just that you were gone for the day and to leave a message and I’d get you the message.”
Blake took a deep breath. “It’s OK, but now that person knows I’m not there.”
“Why is that a problem?”
“Probably nothing,” Blake said. “I just don’t get it, though. Somebody looking for me. The thing is there were only three of us that day. Now James Bradley is dead, and Kevin Flanagan got zapped 25 years ago. I don’t have any old friends. I don’t want anybody looking for me.”
* * *
Chapter 18
Deep in the night in Columbus, Ohio, Katherine awoke with the absolute certainty that somebody was in the house with her.
Blake had called early that morning with the bad news that his old Vietnam buddy, James Bradley, was dead in a house fire—under mysterious circumstances. But she couldn’t be sure of that. James Bradley had been an alcoholic and a heavy user of painkillers.
Jimmy Bradley with the wispy mustache. She called him Jimmy. Blake had introduced them years ago. Jimmy from ‘Nam’, Blake said. She’d liked him from the start. Liked him in the same way you feel for a dog that has been run over on the highway and now limps about on its life’s business on three legs instead of four. But a real sweet guy.
But Blake was upset now. Somebody had killed his old marine buddy. Katherine had tried to sort it out over the phone, but realized she couldn’t. Jimmy from ‘Nam’ was gone and it might take forever or even longer to figure it all out.
Katherine looked at the bright green light of the digital clock on the nearby oak bureau—2:29 a.m. She lay still for perhaps 10 seconds and held her breath. Something was not right. Something had awoken her. Her body tensed with listening. In the bathroom off the master bedroom, a faucet dripped and she heard a single drop of water splash into the porcelain sink. She exhaled softly and slid out of bed.
She disliked being alone at night in this big, rambling house. In a single fluid motion, she gathered the can of mace, the flashlight, and the remote phone that she kept near the bed when alone. She glided in the dark to the open bedroom door and listened. Still total silence in the house. Outside, several streets over, a truck engine huffed and grunted its way up a hill. But otherwise, thick, enveloping silence.
She stood still for perhaps 30 seconds, poised in the bedroom doorway, and then she heard it--the subtle sound that had slipped behind the barrier of sleep to warn her awake. It came again--softly. A carefully placed foot on the carpet that covered the lower stairs, followed by a soft susurrant sigh as the floorboards under the carpet groaned lightly under the weight. She froze. Her skin tingled and turned ice cold. Drawing a deep breath, she willed herself into motion.
Stepping slowly and avoiding the noisy floorboard just outside the bedroom door, she slipped into the hallway. To her left, the stairs led down to the first floor and the intruder, but she could bypass the stairs and go to the far-left corner of the house where three bedrooms with good, sturdy wooden doors and heavy locks were located. Or she could go to her right where there was a bathroom and an alcove that led out to a second-story porch.
It was dark in the hallway with only a dull light from the outdoor streetlights poking through the 12-paned Victorian windows that sat high on either side of the stair. She glided to the right and into the alcove, pressing numbers on her phone as she moved.
Bobby Doyle’s wife, Alice, answered almost immediately.
“Alice, it’s me. There’s somebody in my house.” Her voice was low, and even to her, sounded frightened and shaky.
“Kathy? It’s you? What did you say? Hold on. Bobby, Bobby, Bobby.”
She pictured Alice shaking Bobby awake in the house next door, and heard her voice in the background. “Get up. Quick. Somebody’s in Kathy’s house. She’s on the phone.”
Katherine heard the floorboards creaking now as the footsteps moved up two or three stairs and then paused. T
he intruder had heard her whispered voice drifting down from the dark at the top of the stairs, but was unsure what to do. She could hear Bobby Doyle’s sleepy voice in the background as she pressed the phone to her ear.
“Kathy. Stay right there. Bobby’s on his way.” Alice’s voice was reassuring. “Don’t hang up, stay on with me, but don’t say another word.”
“OK”, she replied, and froze into silence. Looking through the stained glass door that separated the alcove from the outdoor porch, she saw a light come on in the upper rooms of the Doyle’s house.
The footsteps were now moving up her stairs with the firm and determined tread of person who knows where he is going.
Bobby would do one of two things, she thought--throw on all the lights of his house to scare away the intruder, or come silently and try to catch the person, and that would take longer. She pictured Bobby now out of bed, pulling on his pants, groping for a pair of running shoes, a tee shirt now on over his head, grabbing his police service revolver and a flashlight, racing down the stairs. Would he turn the lights on?
Katherine moved closer to the alcove door that led out to the porch. The footsteps stopped and then started up again and now they were near the top of the stairs. She turned to look back at her empty bedroom and stifled a gasp. A shadow darkened the top of the stairs and even as she fought to control her fright, a thin pencil beam of a flashlight scanned quickly inside the bedroom, searching for her. The shadow slid forward and materialized into a dark figure poised at the top of the stairs. The thin beam of the flashlight circled to the left and then to the right of the stairs and briefly flickered over the entrance to the alcove.
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