Fatal Harbor Read online

  Felix paused. “You really want to do this?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Felix shrugged, shifted into first and let out the clutch. “No, you’ve made that pretty clear.”

  He expertly drove us through the side and back streets of Cambridge, where we then passed over to Brookline. My feet were finally feeling like they were attached to a human, and after a couple more minutes of driving Felix got us to Professor Knowlton’s neighborhood.

  “Damn,” Felix said.

  “You said it.”

  We were definitely late.

  Up ahead on the street, the place was lit up by flashing strobe lights from three fire trucks and two police cruisers. Rigid hose lines snaked their way across the road, and firefighters and police officers were doing their job as Professor Heywood Knowlton’s house burned to the ground.

  There was an all-night diner outside Brookline, on Route 2, where we stopped to have a meal. Not sure what kind of meal it could be called because of the time, but it made sense to refuel. We both had cups of coffee and Felix had an omelet stuffed with veggies, while I had scrambled eggs and bacon and hash browns. Felix looked at me with disdain and said, “Ketchup on eggs? Really?”

  “Why not? Better than spoiling eggs with vegetables. Vegetables don’t belong in eggs. They belong in salads or side dishes.”

  “Barbarian,” Felix said.

  “Just know what I like.”

  We ate in silence for a while, the other booths filled with late-night students, early-bird truckers, and a fair mix of whoever else was out and about at this hour of the night. When the plates had been cleared and the check dropped off, I said, “Your Aunt Teresa going to be okay?”

  “Oh, cripes yeah,” Felix said. “First of all, her neighbors will keep a good eye on her. Second, I really don’t think someone’s gonna pick up a lady her age and try to bring her in. And if they do, she’ll start yapping at them in Italian, and if they get an Italian speaker in, then she’ll start going at it with some sort of Sicilian dialect.”

  “Plus she’s deadly with a kitchen knife.”

  “Only with relatives,” Felix pointed out.

  I picked up the check, thought for a moment, put it back down. “So what the hell is going on?”

  “I’ll remind you that I’m here as—”

  “Yeah, advice and technical assistance.” There was a sprinkling of toast crumbs by the end of the counter. For some reason it disturbed me, so I took a moist napkin and wiped it clean.

  “So this what I think,” I began. “Curt Chesak and the Nuclear Freedom Front . . . he’s incredibly connected, or there are some serious types after his ass. But neither makes much sense. If he’s connected, then who’s pulling the strings? Anti-nukers and their friends? They don’t have deep pockets, and the vast majority of them are peaceful. Their idea of being violent is writing snotty letters to the editor, or leaving anonymous postings on conservative Web sites. So that doesn’t make much sense, that everything that’s been thrown up against us has been from close friends of Curt Chesak. Unfortunately for us, and for him, Professor Knowlton was our only real connection to Chesak. With his house burning down around his ears, I don’t think he’s going to be seen anytime soon. Don’t know if he was in that house or not, but he’s certainly ticked someone off.”

  Felix picked up his coffee cup. “All right. Considering the reception I got at BU, then I’d say there are some serious types after his ass. Any theories?”

  I wiped again at the countertop. “There were two guys with fake IDs at BU. I saw two other guys hanging out at your Aunt Teresa’s place. Then you have the crew that burned down Professor Knowlton’s house. That means at least six fellows with dark arts out there in the shadows, and they all need to be paid, to have logistical support, and to have backup. That’s a lot of money, a lot of expertise.”

  “Maybe there are others out there like you, seeking revenge.”

  I made a face. “One person seeking revenge is a cliché. Two or more is just an incredible coincidence. I just don’t know.”

  I made for the check again and Felix beat me to it. And as a man who knew his tradecraft, Felix paid the bill with a twenty and a five. No credit cards, no records.

  “So what do you want to do now?”

  “Beats me. You got any ideas?”

  Felix said, “I want to check on my aunt.”

  “All right.”

  “And you?”

  “Still planning to chase down Curt Chesak.”

  “Don’t remember you having a boat called the Pequod,” Felix said.

  “That’s a hell of a literary reference. Maybe you should be on Jeopardy or something.”

  He frowned. “Wouldn’t pass the background check. So, while I’m checking in on Aunt Teresa, how are you going to find Chesak?”

  “You got any suggestions?”

  A shrug. “Whenever I’ve been stuck, sometimes going back to the beginning pays off.”

  “That’s a hell of a suggestion, and I like it.” I looked into my wallet. “But only if you can spot me some money.”

  Felix reached into his own wallet. “Have I ever said no?”

  Several hours later, I emerged from a train in Exonia, the town directly next door to Tyler. I was tired, dirty, and hungry, the meal from the Brookline diner only a distant memory. From that diner, Felix took me to North Station in Boston, and with a cash advance, I got a one-way ticket on the Amtrak Downeaster to Exonia, home of the famed prep school, an obscene number of writers, and the hospital where Diane was. Felix had also slipped me my 9mm Beretta and said, “Be thankful there’s no metal detectors on Amtrak.”

  It was well after midnight when I stepped into Exonia station, which was just a roofed-over portion of the platform. There was a parking area, a number of buildings, and a closed diner. A few cars were parked at the end of the lot. Two other passengers got out and quickly got in their cars and drove off.

  Then a dark blue Ford sedan rattled into the lot, with EXONIA CAB on the side in yellow letters. I walked over and a woman driver peered out at me. She was smoking a cigarette and rolled down the window. “Where to?”

  “The hotel near the hospital.”

  “Tyler Inn and Suites?”

  “That’s the one.”

  She frowned, and I said, “I know it’s not much of a fare. Make you a deal: take me there and I’ll pay double.”

  “And double the tip, too?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mister, you got a deal.”

  I got in the back of the car and settled down in the seat. It was clean and smelled of Lysol and tobacco. She shifted and we left the parking lot, went up past a school and Catholic church, and made a left-hand turn. Within seconds we were passing through the old and impressive buildings of Phillips Exonia Academy, a prep school that’s been teaching since 1765. There were a few lit Halloween decorations along the way. Usually Halloween is my favorite holiday, but not this year. I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate anything fun or special about death or the spectral arts.

  The driver had an all-news radio station on, which was broadcasting the latest poll numbers for the upcoming election between Senator Jackson Hale from Georgia and the current incumbent. The driver snorted at the news and said, “You follow this political shit?”

  “Not as much as I used to.”

  “Then you’re a smart fella, you are.”

  “Some nights, not tonight.”

  I had a pang of guilt. Annie Wynn. With my cell phone destroyed so whoever was out there couldn’t trace my signal, I had no way to contact her, and my home number wasn’t being answered either.

  Through the center of Exonia, past a delightful bandshell that had two town hall buildings on opposite sides—an oddity, I know, but this was New Hampshire—and two traffic lights and turns later, we were at the Tyler Inn and Suites. After paying my driver, I wandered into the lobby, which was empty. I rang a bell on the counter and a yawning male clerk came out from beh
ind, with a black goatee and slicked-back hair, and tattoos on the backs of his hands.

  We had a bit of to and fro with me not wanting to use my credit card to pay or to guarantee the room. But I managed to give him the impression that my, quote, old lady, unquote, had kicked me to the curb—which explained my lack of luggage—and after slipping him a twenty, he slid across a keycard and said, “You take care, bro.”

  “You can count on it.”

  I went up to my room, got inside, and stripped and took a shower, and then collapsed in bed. Considering the noise level of the past few nights, I fell asleep within seconds.

  CHAPTER SIX

  After getting dressed the next morning, I went down Porter Avenue and visited a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts. Once upon a time, Dunkin’ Donuts used to make and sell quite a variety of doughnuts; nowadays, they focus on specialty coffees, oddball sandwiches, muffins, and the random tasteless doughnut that gets shipped in from some secretly located bakery. Once upon a time I heard they used to make delicious crullers, but that might just be an urban legend. I got a black coffee with two sugars and a blueberry muffin and went up Alumni Drive to Exonia Hospital. The morning was crisp and bright, and I sat on a park bench, had my breakfast, and watched the stream of people coming to work. Most of them looked happy to be out and about.

  Good for them.

  When I was finished, I joined the good folks going inside and took the elevator up to the fourth floor, where the ICU and my best friend resided.

  I breezed past the nurses’ station at the entrance to the ICU, taking a left down the wide corridors. The rooms were large, with sliding glass doors and drapes. Nurses bustled about, and in front of Diane Woods’s room her fiancée, Kara Miles, was standing, talking to a woman dressed in nurses’ scrubs. Kara was shorter than me, with short dark hair and lots of piercings in her ears. She and Diane had had a semi-secret relationship until last year, when my quirky home state had legalized gay marriage. The two of them had a slight falling out during the anti-nuclear demonstrations at Falconer—Kara had been active in one of the peaceful protest groups, while Diane was doing her job and earning OT as one of the scores of cops at the scene—but engagement rings had been exchanged the day before the last protest.

  The last protest, when Diane had been beaten by a steel-pipe-wielding Curt Chesak.

  Kara spotted me approaching, excused herself from the nurse, and came my way. She had on jeans and a multi-colored knitted top, and I gave her a big hug as she kissed me on the cheek. “Oh, Lewis, so damn glad to see you.”

  I kissed her back. “How’s she doing?”

  “Not much has changed, which I guess could be called good news. At least she’s stable.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Not for a bit. They’re giving her a sponge bath, checking her dressings, stuff like that. Hey, let’s talk.”

  Kara took my hand and led me to a tiny conference room. She moved with the self-confidence of a family member and patient advocate who knew her way around the ward, the staff, and the bureaucracy. The room had a small settee, a phone, and two chairs, and she left the door open as we sat down.

  She took a breath. “She’s been stable, and the swelling in her brain has gone down. She’s still in a coma, but . . . but we’re hopeful. What else can we be, Lewis? Doctor Hanratty said that if the swelling decrease continues, and there are other signs of improvement, you know. . . .”

  Kara choked up, looked away. I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed my hand back. “I’m the first visitor of the day?”

  She grabbed a tissue from a nearby box, wiped at her eyes. “You sure are. There’s been a constant stream of cops coming in, day after day. Just to spend a few minutes, of course, but damn, it’s something to see all those cops line up to visit her, even if she doesn’t know they’re in the room.”

  “I’ve read that some coma studies say patients can hear what’s going on, no matter how deep the coma.”

  “That’d be great.” Then she giggled. “Then Diane heard something naughty the other day.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, two days ago, this woman came in, just before the end of visiting hours. Real pushy woman, had on a dark blue power suit, leather briefcase, took control of the room. Know what I mean?”

  “I’ve both met and worked for the type.”

  “She said she was from some law enforcement support council, wanted to come in and introduce herself, evaluate Diane. I asked her what for, and she said that her group had financial resources to support Diane once she was either discharged or transferred to another facility. Something to supplement her regular insurance and disability. I said that was great. She said she had some paperwork that needed to be filled out, and would I be a dear and go down to the first-floor cafeteria to retrieve it, since she left it on one of the tables.”

  “Really?”

  “Truly. You can imagine what I said to that. Then she got huffy and said, well, if the proper paperwork wasn’t filled out, then Diane wouldn’t be eligible for compensation under the plan. And I told her what she could do with the paperwork, and where she could shove it, and then she stalked off. I remember her stiletto heels making a hell of a racket on the tile floor when she left.”

  I didn’t like what I was hearing. “Did she tell you her name?”

  “Dickerson. Yeah, a Miss Dickerson. Don’t remember her first name.”

  “She leave a business card?”

  “No.”

  “Remember the name of the charity?”

  She slowly shook her head, frowning. “No, it was a mouthful. Something like the Blue Line Support Council for Police, or the Badge of Blue Support Agency . . . Lewis, is something wrong?”

  I took a breath. “Did she come back the next day with the paperwork? Or call you to set up an appointment?”

  “No. Hey, what’s wrong?”

  I was glad that with the open door, I could see the entrance to Diane’s ICU unit. “Tell me, Kara, how friendly are you with the Tyler cops?”

  “Those that know me and Diane, pretty good. What’s going on?”

  “Bear with me, just for another moment. Who’s the highest ranking cop you know?”

  “That’d be Captain Kate Nickerson.”

  “All right, this is what I want you to do. When we’re done here, you call Captain Nickerson, and you tell her that you believe somebody came by the other day who wanted to do Diane harm.”

  “Shit. . . .”

  “You ask the Captain if she could set up some off-duty Tyler cops to provide guard service for Diane. They’ll have to work with hospital security. But from now on, no more visitors to Diane unless you or a staff member can vouch for his or her identity. Okay?”

  Kara leaned out, to also look at Diane’s room. Her voice quavered. “You mean that woman that came in, she was going to . . . she was going to do something bad to Diane?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps she came in to do what she said she was there for, to get some paperwork signed. Maybe she got ticked off by you, stormed out, and got in a car accident, so she never came back.”

  Kara looked back at me. “Or maybe she was here to pull Diane’s plug.”

  “Or maybe I’m being paranoid.”

  “But why? Why would someone want to kill Diane?”

  “Somebody tried to do it at the protest a couple of days ago.”

  “But that was part of the protest, random, with all those people coming in and fighting the cops.”

  “Surely was,” I said. “But let’s just play along with my paranoia. Make the call, and have Captain Nickerson work with hospital security.”

  The door to ICU slid open, and two nurses emerged. Kara stood up and both nurses smiled to Kara, like they were telling her it was all right to go in.

  “Won’t that kind of protection . . . won’t that cost a lot of money?”

  “I imagine the Tyler cops will do it for free,” I said. “If not, send the bill to me.”

  Kara let me go in
to Diane’s room first, a courtesy I’m sure so that I could look and react at seeing Diane without being watched by Kara. Something deep and cold burrowed inside of me when I saw her still form on the bed. A white cotton blanket was pulled up almost to her chin. IV tubes ran into her wrists. A tube was taped about her mouth, and a ventilator raised her chest up and down. Her short brown hair was a tangled mess, and her eyes were shut. The wounds on her face were covered with bandages, and the bruises were turning yellow and green. Her face was swollen, like it had been injected with some sort of fluid.

  Kara came up behind me, slid her arm into mine. “Hard to believe, but she’s actually looking better.”

  “Glad to hear that.”

  “Doctor Hanratty said sometime tomorrow they’re going to take the tube out, see if she can breathe on her own.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

  “Please do.”

  We stood there quietly, listening to the hiss and whir of the ventilation system doing its work, the beeps and buzzes coming from a number of monitors. Kara said, “What are you up to, Lewis?”

  “Just visiting a friend, that’s all.”

  She squeezed my arm. “You don’t think Diane has told me tales about you over the years? And this is the first time you’ve been by in days? Which means you’ve been busy. And if you’ve been busy, you’ve been up to something.”

  “I’ve been working.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “The work that leads me to Curt Chesak, who did this to Diane.”

  She squeezed my arm again. “Hold on. I’ve got something to give you. I’ll be right back.”

  Kara bustled her way out, and I was alone with Diane. I stepped forward and rubbed the top of her hand, took in her injuries, her medical support, the whole dreary mess.

  I bent over, kissed her cool and dry forehead, then I moved my mouth down to her right ear. “Diane . . . I’m doing everything I can to make it right. You can count on me. And whatever happens . . .” and something dry and hard seemed to catch in my throat “. . . I’ll look after Kara. I promise.”

  I stood there, wiped at my eyes, and turned around as Kara came back into the room. We both walked out into the hallway.