Fatal Harbor Read online

  I shook my head. “That’s not good enough.”

  “Lewis, it’s going to have to be good enough.”

  “Or what? Going to threaten me with arrest? For doing what, exactly?”

  “No, no threats. Nothing bad is going to come to you from the New Hampshire State Police. That I can promise.”

  “But that leaves a lot of other interested people out there who might want to do me harm. So what’s going on?”

  He shook his head. “That’s the best I can do.”

  “The best? Really? Detective, one of your fellow members of the thin blue line is in a coma, not more than fifteen feet away from us, and you’re giving up? Just like that?”

  Renzi’s face colored. “I’m not giving up. Not for a moment.”

  “The hell you aren’t. Otherwise you’d be here telling me to keep at it, no matter what.”

  “Keeping at what? Being the lone knight, the Don Quixote, chasing a goddamn windmill? Let it slide. Help Diane and her partner. I know justice will happen. One way or another, justice will happen.”

  “What? Curt Chesak will get his hands slapped? Sent away somewhere? Get Gitmoed? Is that what someone told you, or told the Colonel of the State Police to tell you? ‘Don’t worry your pretty little head over the Chesak case, Detective. Higher-ups will resolve this matter so you don’t have to dirty your hands.’ Is that what happened?”

  He stood up. “When the time comes, you’ll remember this talk.”

  “I hope not.”

  Renzi slammed the door open and went out into the area by the nurses’ station. Kara was sipping a cup of coffee with Captain Nickerson of the Tyler Police Department and another cop, and as I was going over to see what was new, my cell phone rang.

  I picked it up. No caller ID. One of the nurses glared at me, and I ducked back into the family room, answering the phone as I closed the door behind myself.

  “Yes?”

  “Cole,” came Curt Chesak’s voice, low and chilly. “Remember our last call?”

  “How could I forget someone so charming and sociopathic?”

  He said: “You didn’t agree to stop with your actions. So I did what I had to do. So if you don’t stop now, at this moment, it’ll be a bullet to the back of the head. Got it?”

  I looked at the closed door, the ICU and Diane Woods just beyond it.

  “What the hell have you done?”

  “You were warned. Next time will be a visit from Mister Remington.”

  He hung up. I thought for a moment.

  Chesak said he had just done something.

  What?

  I started frantically dialing a number on my phone, willing my fingers to be accurate and not to fumble.

  The phone rang and rang and rang.

  Each ringing of the tone cut into me.

  A voice answered. I nearly slid out of the chair in relief.

  “Yeah?” It was Felix.

  “You okay down there?”

  “As well as could be expected. And you?”

  “Hanging in there.”

  “Would love to chat but it’s not going to happen. Sorry. Okay?”

  “You got it.”

  I hung up the phone, almost dizzy with what had gone on these past few minutes.

  “Lewis, old boy,” I said to myself, getting up, “when this is all done and over with, you’re going to spend a month doing absolutely nothing.”

  I stepped back into the ICU area. Kara was moving to me, away from Captain Nickerson, who had a cell phone pushed against her right ear. Kara stopped in front of me, lip trembling, tears in her eyes.

  I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do much of anything.

  “Oh, Lewis, I’m so sorry.”

  “What is it? Is it Diane? Is it?”

  A sharp shake of her head. “No, nothing’s changed with Diane.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Oh, Lewis, I’m so very, very sorry.” She caught her breath. “Captain Nickerson just got the news. Your house is on fire.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Not much of a memory of getting to Tyler Beach from Exonia. Remembered borrowing Kara’s Subaru again. Remembered a short length of time on the highway to the beach, Route 101.

  There was a traffic jam on Route 1-A, also known as Atlantic Avenue, up by where most of the hotels and cottages thinned out. It was one lane of traffic and, after putting up with the long crawl, I pulled into the parking lot of the Lafayette House, trembling with fearful anticipation of what I was going to see next.

  From the parking lot of the Lafayette House, I first noticed the smell of wood burning, then the low rumble of the pumper trucks from the Tyler Fire Department at work. There was a lawn in front of the old Victorian hotel, and in the summer white lawn chairs and wicker furniture were spread out so guests could sip their expensive drinks and watch the ocean at play.

  Not much furniture today, just a few guests huddled in small groups watching the smoke billow up. Not much of a view, just the smoke billowing up, so I went down the lawn and dodged through the traffic. A fire hose had been stretched from the Lafayette House across the road, with lengths of lumber on either side so vehicles could slowly drive over the hose without damaging it.

  I went into the hotel parking lot, the smell of smoke stronger, the engine noises louder. A fire truck from the Tyler Fire Department was parked at the top of my dirt driveway, another fire hose snaking its way down to the fire. Smoke was rising up hard from my house. Two Tyler cops were keeping the onlookers at bay, and I went to the left, scrambled up on some rocks, looked down, and, for the third time in my life, my heart was broken.

  The shed to the right of the house was gone, a pile of burned timber and roof collapsed on top of my destroyed Ford Explorer. Flames were billowing up from the center of my house, going through the near windows. A trio of firefighters pushed ahead, spraying hard with a hose. Smoke and steam rose up. They backed away. Two firefighters rushed forward, axes in hand, and broke open the front door. With oxygen to feed on, the flames and smoke grew wider and larger. But now the firefighters had access, and hunkered down, they blasted in with their fire hose. I thought of my television and fireplace and collection of books and old Oriental rugs on the first floor, how the smoke and fire and water were burning, staining, and soaking everything.

  My hands were shaking. I put them together. A crashing sound as the sliding glass door on the second floor, where my bedroom and a small deck were located, blew out. Flames roared out like a torch.

  The second floor. My office. My books. My computer. The few mementoes I had from my parents, my high school and college years, even my years of service at the Department of Defense. Prized photos of my parents, the memory of the first time my heart had broken, when I got news one late night at a college dorm that their iced-over commuter plane had rolled over at night and plunged into a cornfield in Indiana.

  And another few prized photos, of Cissy Manning, my co-worker from the DoD, a woman who had agreed to share her life with me years back, and who had been dead for such a long time, killed with the other members of my intelligence section, where I had been the sole survivor.

  The second time my heart had broken.

  All now gone.

  More smoke and steam rushing out of my bedroom.

  Nothing more to see here.

  I got off the rock, back to the ground, and walked away from the smoke and fire and memories.

  I took a room at the Lafayette House, as far away as I could get from the fire scene. Down there were police and firefighters and arson investigators, but I wasn’t going to talk to them, not at all. I was able to get a room without using my credit cards, through a sympathetic desk clerk who recognized me as a regular customer of the hotel’s little gift shop, where I occasionally purchased my daily newspapers.

  The room was tidy and small, and it overlooked the rear parking lot and a wide expanse of salt marsh.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, conscious that wha
tever I had left for baggage was in Kara’s Subaru, and that my clothes reeked of smoke, the molecules of the smoke having begun their life in my clothes or books or memories. I supposed a shower was in order, and maybe the hotel’s laundry, but that all could wait. From my coat pocket I took out two cell phones, put them both on the bed. The one on the left was the one Felix had given me, and the second was from Lawrence Todd Thomas.

  I picked up the second one, pressed the send button. As before, it was picked up on the second ring.

  “Thomas.”

  “It’s Lewis Cole.”

  He got right into it. “I’m waiting to see if my . . . contacts can do a better refinement of their current analysis, but I’m not hopeful. So far we know he’s in your state, in Belknap County.”

  “A good start, I guess. That leaves out nine other counties. But I need to tell you, I just got another call from Curt Chesak.”

  “When?”

  “About a half hour ago.”

  “A half . . . thirty minutes? You’ve waited thirty minutes to call me? What the hell are you doing up there in New Hampshire, Cole?”

  A lot of things, I wanted to shout back at him, especially watching the home I loved, filled with memories and possessions, burning to the ground.

  But I caught myself before I said it.

  For how could I balance my loss of a home with his loss of a son?

  “No excuse,” I said. “Got to you as soon as I could.”

  He took a breath. “All right. I’ll see what I can do. The technology is above my pay grade, but I’m sure one more call from Mister Chesak will help narrow the search.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “And once I get you that information, what then?”

  “Then it’s done.”

  I waited for a reply, and he said, his voice now concerned, “You okay, Lewis?”

  “No worries,” I said. “I’ll be waiting for you to get back to me.”

  This time, I hung up on him.

  I woke up startled, the sound of a phone ringing. I had fallen asleep on the bed, clothes still on, and I fumbled on the nightstand, picking up the phone, groggy from the short night’s sleep. Dial tone.

  I had answered Lawrence’s special cell phone. No word, then.

  Only one phone left. I grabbed it by the fourth or fifth ring, dread in my heart, wondering if it was Curt Chesak.

  “Hey,” a male voice said.

  But it was someone else.

  “Hey yourself.”

  It was Felix Tinios.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  Such an open-ended message. “Lots, but it can wait.”

  “Up for a meal?”

  I sat up. “Sure.”

  “You know that place you took me for my birthday last year? I mean, not that place. The other place.”

  “Sure, I remember. What time?”

  “That time, minus seven.”

  “See you.”

  “Great.”

  I got up, stripped off my clothes and opened a window. I draped my clothes over the window, hoping the air would remove the worst of the smoky stench. Then I took a long shower and thought through a number of things.

  Once I was dressed, the phone rang yet again, and this time it was the room’s phone. I picked it up, and the sympathetic desk clerk from earlier said, “Lewis? There’s someone down here who wants to see you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “She says she’s a reporter from the Tyler Chronicle.”

  Paula Quinn. A lover from some time ago, a sweet friend, and someone who had nearly gotten killed the day Bronson Toles was shot. She had been standing next to him when the shot blew off his head, and later, the same shooter—Victor Toles—had tried a second time to kill her.

  A rough couple of weeks, ending up with her pledging her undying love for me, and then going on a trip with her boyfriend out West.

  This rotten day was going places I hadn’t even imagined.

  “Tell her I’ll be right down.”

  Paula was waiting for me in the lobby area of the Lafayette House. Her blond hair had been layered short in an attempt to hide her ears, which didn’t quite work, and it also managed to highlight her pug nose. She had on a knee-length black coat and she looked troubled, reporter’s notebook in her slim hands as I came over to her, a digital camera hanging from her shoulder.

  “Oh, Lewis,” she said, and she came into my arms for a very long and warm hug. When we stepped apart, she said, “Your poor, poor house. . . .”

  I could only nod. She touched my cheek. “How are you doing? I see you haven’t shaved in a while.”

  “Not that great. At some point I’m going to have to go across the street and survey what’s left . . . if anything. Guess I should have packed a razor before I left.”

  “Do you know what happened? How it started?”

  “Not a thing. I was in Exonia, visiting Diane Woods, when I heard about the fire.”

  “I just saw a guy arrive from the State Fire Marshal’s office before I came in here,” she said. “You want to go over and see him?”

  “Not right now.”

  Her eyebrows raised at that. “Not right now? Why not?”

  “I’ve got something else going on. Look, what’s across the street isn’t going to leave any time soon.”

  “But don’t you want to know if they think it was arson or accidental?”

  I didn’t say anything. She eyed me. “You already know, don’t you?”

  “Paula, you look great. How was your trip with the town counsel, Mister Sullivan?”

  A flickering smile. “Did me lots of good. And please, his name’s Mark. You’re allowed to say his name.”

  “Gee, thanks, I’ll remember that.”

  “I tell you, we had a great, great time. Both of us. Him away from the town hall, me away from the newspaper. It was good to just be out there in Colorado, the two of us, with all those mountains. Did some skiing, visited some ghost towns, just relaxed. Now, good job on changing the subject, Lewis, but your house. You already know what happened, don’t you. Was it arson? Who could it be? I mean . . . oh.”

  I glanced around the lobby to see if we were being watched. The lobby was covered with a colorful rug with comfortable chairs and settees, and a fireplace on the other side had a cheery little flame. Yeah, nice little trapped cheery flame, right where it belonged.

  Paula said: “Before I left on my trip, you said you had something to do. Something about finding the guy who beat up Diane Woods. That’s what’s going on, isn’t it?”

  “Is this Paula Quinn my friend asking me, or Paula Quinn assistant editor of the Chronicle?”

  “By asking that,” she said, voice sharp, “you’re making an assumption that I’m not here as your friend.”

  “I’m asking that,” I replied, “because I need to do something, and I don’t need the publicity, and Paula, I cherish you and what we have and all that, but my house is burning down at this moment, and I’m not in the best of moods.”

  She slowly nodded. “Sorry.”

  “No apologies needed. So you’re doing better?”

  She smiled, lifted up her left hand, wiggled the fingers. I spotted the ring.

  Something both sweet and sour went through me. “Congratulations, Paula. When’s the blessed event?”

  “Next June.”

  “Am I invited?”

  “Stupid question. Of course.”

  “Well, I’m thinking about the town counsel, I mean, Mark. I don’t think he cares that much for me.”

  She leaned over, kissed me on the cheek. “I do, and that’s what counts.” There was a pause, and she said: “I need to tell you something. The day the sniper tried to shoot me at my condo, and when I hid out at your house, I said some things.”

  Paula certainly had, I recalled, telling me that she had always loved me, and that she was my true love, and she was saying those things right up to when her boyfriend—now fiancé—had come to my house to pick
her up.

  “You were scared. You were in shock. I understand.”

  She seemed relieved. “You okay?”

  I shook my head. “About that, yes. About my house and everything else, no.”

  That earned me another kiss on the cheek, and I went back up to my room, and she went back outside to the story.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When I finally left the Lafayette House, I drove out of the parking lot and did my best to avoid the scene across the street. People were still gathered around the rock knoll, looking down, and there was still some smoke drifting up, but I tried to keep my eyes on the road. I next made my way to Manchester, and the usually fifty-minute trip took nearly an hour and a half, because I went along some back roads and state roads, avoiding the major east-west highway that runs from Tyler to Manchester. The good thing was that I was driving Kara’s rattling Subaru, which meant it probably wasn’t carrying a tracking device. The bad thing was that with all the political bumper stickers attached to the rear, I was about as visible as an NRA member at a vegan convention.

  In Manchester, the state’s largest city, I pulled into a neighborhood along the banks of the Amoskeag River, where huge brick mill buildings more than a century old had been converted into artists’ lofts, condos, office space, and restaurants. I checked my watch. Exactly noon. I parked at the far end of one long mill building, where the end unit hosted Fratello’s Restaurant, a grand Italian place that attracted a lot of the professionals who worked in the nearby renovated office spaces.

  Last year, Felix and I had ended up here for a promised birthday dinner that had taken an odd turn. We were supposed to go to a small Italian eatery down the road in Bedford that had gotten rave reviews in the local newspapers, and when we got to the place, it was closed with a sign outside saying the owner/chef had unexpectedly become ill. Later, the owner/chef of that tiny Italian eatery was found at Logan Airport. In his car. In the trunk.

  Felix had just shrugged his shoulders at the news and said, “Some people take their olive oil very seriously.”

  So that day we had gone up to Manchester, and that dinner at Fratello’s had been a good one, with lots of delicious food, wine, laughter, and memories, but I had no illusion that today’s lunch would be as much fun or as memorable.