I squeezed my hands tighter. Earlier Billy Gagnon had said he had never heard of Jon Ericson, had only met him that one time. Perhaps. But he had been at Warren with Jon's brother, the one who had been on the run since Jon's murder. A coincidence, maybe, but I hated coincidences.
I waited. Over the years, I had read lots of detective novels in which the hero went out and conducted surveillance on somebody.
Interesting tales, but one thing authors usually left out was the sheer boredom of sitting on one's behind, keeping watch on a building or a doorway. The seconds and minutes dragged by, like staring at a shadow on the ground and keeping track of its travel as the sun moved overhead, and distractions like a radio or music couldn't be risked.
So there I sat. Waiting. Alone with my thoughts and the sound of traffic. I moved my hands up to the steering wheel, kept an eye on the movements inside the lit storefront. A door opened up and I saw two high school students --- both young girls --- head out and start walking away. I picked up the binoculars but the view inside the building was terrible. I could only make out movements, shapes. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir could have been in there giving a free concert for the cause, and while I might have heard them, I certainly could not have seen them.
I kept waiting. It was getting darker. Before racing up here from home I had spent a few unsatisfactory minutes, going on-line and flipping through a couple of local phone books, and if William Bear Gagnon had an address or phone number in his name that was local, then he was doing a pretty fair job of hiding it.
And why was I here? Because I wanted to see what he was like outside of his storefront, outside of his little office. I wanted to see where he went, what he did, and where he slept at night.
Something happened. The lights went off at the storefront.
I turned the key and got the Explorer's engine running, just as a tractor trailer truck grumbled by, obscuring my view. I was too keyed up even to curse properly, but when the truck finally gave way, the pickup truck was on the move. I eased out onto Stark Street and was right behind the pickup truck. It came to a stop sign, made a very legal and complete stop, and then made a left turn. I followed, noticing that there were two people in the truck. I could see that Gagnon was driving, and his passenger appeared to be female.
Well, whaddya know.
The truck went slowly through downtown Porter, and I managed to keep pace with him. He headed east, toward Maine, but then made a right from Congress Street, to the oldest section of Porter, Strawbery Banke, where the first settlers came here in 1623. I had a brief thought that perhaps Gagnon was here to burn down some of the historic homes, in some way righting a historic wrong, but he didn't slow as he drove through the narrow streets, lined with homes that are older than most nations in the world.
Then, another left. Past a sign that said PEAVEY ISLAND CITY PARK CLOSED AT DUSK.
It was way past dusk, but in the charming way that New Hampshire communities sometimes run their parks and government, there was no gate or chain blocking the entrance. I followed them into the park, being careful to stay a few car lengths behind. The roadway entered onto a narrow causeway, spanning Porter Harbor. Off to the right were the lights of Foss Island, a larger island and town to the south of Porter, and to the left, were the buildings and cranes and bright illumination of the Porter Naval Shipyard. On the small island the road curved to the left, and then to a dirt parking lot. There were swing sets and picnic tables and benches off beyond the dirt lot, but Gagnon pulled his vehicle over, to the farthest side of the lot.
I switched off the lights to the Explorer and rolled in past him, and then parked where I got a good view. I kept the engine running, looked about. There were just two other cars in the lot, which made sense. No doubt the serious visitors and partiers came in as the night grew longer.
I looked over at Gagnon's pickup truck, picked up my binoculars. The lights from the shipyard illuminated the interior of his truck cabin fairly well. He seemed to be talking to his female companion, who was nodding a lot. Maybe he was explaining the centuries of oppression that had led the New England Indian tribes to their current fate. Maybe he was explaining how Peavey Island rightly belonged to his people. And maybe he was explaining what was going to be eventually built on this piece of property, from a casino to a museum to a cultural center.
Or maybe not.
He was over her, kissing her it seemed, and that went on for a while, until he leaned back on the driver's door and the young lady's head dropped from view. Gagnon seemed to rest his head back, and even though the light was poor and the viewing through the rear of the truck cabin wasn't the greatest, I could detect the smile on his face, as the high school girl performed upon him.
I put the binoculars back on the passenger's seat, waited.
A convicted felon and a high school girl. Though I'm not that familiar with the laws of the state of New Hampshire, I'm sure there was a crime going on over there in that pickup truck.
I kept on waiting. Then the brake lights came on as the truck roared into life, backing up and then speeding out toward the causeway. I left the lot as well, followed them out back to Strawbery Banke, where Gagnon headed back into the downtown, and as I was catching up to him on Congress Street, he blew through a red light.
I almost skidded to a halt, as traffic from the cross street went its way, one vehicle blowing its horn at Gagnon's departing truck.
Damn.
I waited through the light cycle, wondering if Gagnon was in a hurry to get his young charge home to wherever she lived, or if he had noticed me following him and was in a hurry to get away.
Either way, my goal for the evening, to see where Gagnon rested his head at night, had been blown.
It was time to go home.
Back to Tyler Beach I went, for the second time that evening, and as I went into the Lafayette House parking lot, I saw a man standing by the plumbing and heating van. I slowed down and saw that it was my two guardians, the two cousins. Tom and Frank Duffy. Tom, the younger of the two, was standing outside and ambled his way over to me.
"Everything all right, Mr. Cole?" he asked. "Things are fine. How are you two doing?"
"Getting ready for shift change. Frank's giving me grief about being ten minutes late. He's looking forward to some room service food and an adult movie on the pay-per-view."
"Sounds like a good night to me."
"Yeah, well, he's gonna have to get his ass back here in four hours anyway."
I nodded and said, "You hear anything from Felix?"
He shook his head. "Not a word. You expecting anything?"
"Something, sometime, but I didn't know if he had contacted you at all."
Another shake of the head. "Mr. Cole, Felix just put us here and told us what to do, and how to do it, and we're supposed to stay here until he comes back and tells us to our face that it's done and we can go home."
"Yeah, that sounds like Felix," I said.
"Don't it. Now, if you excuse me, I've got to get back and get my ass in the van, 'fore Frank has a freakin' heart attack or something."
I drove the Explorer down the rough dirt road, parked her in the open garage and walked over to the front door. I had left a couple of the lights on inside and I could make out the spot where I had been digging earlier in the day. Nothing. Not a damn thing. It was hard to believe that generations of people trooping in and out of my house wouldn't have dropped anything in the process, but either they had sticky fingers in this home's earlier life, or somebody with better luck than I had gone through here earlier, digging on his or her own.
Inside, I dropped my coat and pistol and binoculars and unread newspaper in a chair, and went to the answering machine, which had a little red numeral that said 4. Four new messages. I hit the play button as I got a pen and small pad of paper, but I was just wasting time, for the message was the same, each and everyone.
A hiss of static, and a hang-up. That's it. Four hang-up calls.
Solicitors, upset that I hadn't been home? Or who else?
I lifted the phone and did what those little phone company ads always push, for those who can't live without thinking of who might have been behind that missed phone call, so I pressed the star key and then the numerals six-nine, and got a polite recorded message that the incoming number had been blocked. Well, how about that. If this had been any other time, I might have called up Diane Woods and asked her to perform some kind of police magic, but this wasn't one of those times. I had heard her earlier message ---a bout keeping away for a while --- loud and clear.
And no doubt Diane was with Kara at this very moment, adjusting to their new lives together. As I put the phone receiver back down, a bleak little thought traipsed through my mind. The two cousins up at the parking lot, arguing and talking with each other. Diane with Kara this cold October evening, and Paula Quinn was well, with her lawyer friend, Mark Spencer. Felix down south, vying for the attention of two bikini-clad sisters.
And me?
I went out to the small living room, turned on the television set quite loud, and went into the kitchen to find something to do, something to make for dinner.
About four hours after dinner the ringing phone in my bedroom shot me up like somebody had just drilled a load of adrenaline into my spine.
I fumbled in the darkness and the voice on the other end said, "Mr. Cole? Don't turn on any lights."
"Don't turn on --- who the hell is this?"
"It's me, Tom Duffy. I'm in the hotel across the street. Don't turn on your lights. We got movement on the north side of your house. Frank's going over to check it out."
I rolled out of bed and in the darkness grabbed my 9mm Beretta from the nightstand. I shivered in the cool air, threw on a terry-cloth bathrobe that had been tossed on the bed. I kept the phone to my ear as I moved through the bedroom in the darkness.
"What time is it?" I asked.
"Two a.m."
"What kind of movement?"
"One person, out by the rocks. Moving slow, heading your way. I spotted it about ten minutes ago. We're both on night-vision scopes, old Russian stuff that's still pretty good."
I was on the stairway, moving slowly downstairs, the hand holding the pistol gently tracing the wall for guidance. At the bottom of the stairs I went over, made sure the front door was locked.
"What's he doing?"
"Who? Frank or the guy?"
"Frank."
"Frank's coming down your driveway."
"And the guy?"
"Looks like he stopped for a second. Okay. I think he's checking things out with a pair of binoculars. Hold on."
The phone was put down on a table or something, and I could hear a murmur of voices. Tom came back on the line and said, "Okay, Mr. Cole. You stay put. It's gonna be busy here for a sec. Where are you?"
"Right by the front door."
"All right," Tom said. “I’Il make sure Frank doesn't come into your house. Anybody coming into your house, he's a bad guy, all right?"
I sat on the bottom of the stairs, pistol in hand. "Sure. Anybody comes through the front door, I'll blow his ass away."
Tom chuckled. "That's a good attitude. You stay on the line, all right? I'm gonna lead Frank right in on the target, but you be careful. There might be other guys out there."
The phone went down again, and I put my own receiver between my ear and my shoulder. The murmur of voices in the background continued. I took a series of deep breaths, trying to ease the jackhammer in my chest that was threatening to punch a hole into my aorta. There was something strange and terrifying and even comforting, being in my warm and locked-down house, pistol in hand, while two strangers outside on my land danced and moved toward each other. The murmur of the voices was a little drone inside my head, as I imagined Frank out there, with earphone and throat mike, perhaps, being told by his cousin where to go and what to do.
And the guy out there, with the binoculars? Ray Ericson, maybe?
Here to check things out for his buddy William Gagnon? Or somebody else connected with Jon's murder and the disappearance of the Viking artifacts? I strained to hear anything from outside, like somebody walking or coughing or talking, but there was nothing. Just the constant murmur of the waves. At least that sound would give Frank some cover, as he crept up on my trespasser.
The voice from the phone made me jump for the second time that night. "Mister Cole?"
"Yeah?"
"Okay, the guy's gone."
I let a breath out. "Where did he go?"
Tom said, "I don't know if he got spooked or something, but when Frank got to your house, he just turned around and started climbing back up the rocks, up to Atlantic Avenue. He moved slow and Frank did his best to follow him up, but by the time he got to the road, there was nobody. Just some taillights, heading north."
I let the pistol drop into my lap, shifted the phone to another hand. "Did the car have one or more in it?"