Blood Foam: A Lewis Cole Mystery (Lewis Cole series) Page 4

  “Me too. But I checked out the missing-persons report Paula filed with the Tyler cops. Supposedly he was born in Vermont, went to school in Massachusetts, ended up here in New Hampshire. But his Social Security number begins with the numerals five-two-zero.”

  That really got Felix’s attention. “New England Social Security numbers don’t begin with five. They begin with zero.”

  “That’s right. They don’t.”

  “And he spent his entire life in New England?”

  “In Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. According to his records. But a Social Security number that begins with five-two-zero means it was assigned in Wyoming.”

  Felix said, “His records are wrong. Or they’ve been messed with. Or a combination thereof. What are you thinking?”

  Our salads were placed in front of us by the attentive Corey. Correction: I received about twenty percent of the attention; Felix received the other eighty percent.

  “I was thinking of WITSEC,” I said. “Witness protection. But that doesn’t make sense. He’s too young, to begin with. Most WITSEC are people who’ve been doing criminal things for a long time. Secondly, he’s in too public a position. WITSEC likes to relocate their people to remote areas. Tyler and Tyler Beach aren’t Long Beach, but you still get tens of thousands of people rolling in every summer weekend. And his job . . . a lawyer? Counsel for the town? His name and photo get in the newspaper about once a week because of his job.”

  Felix picked up his fork. “Isn’t he the same fellow you told me a few weeks ago was planning a run for state senate?”

  “True,” I said. “That doesn’t mean C-SPAN is going to start doing live feeds of debates from up in Concord; but if he was in WITSEC for real, there’s no way his handlers would have put him here, with that job, with that exposure.”

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. Felix picked up Mark Spencer’s photo, glanced at it, put it back. He put his fork down, gently wiped his fingers with his napkin, and from his own coat pocket withdrew a handheld that could have been an iPhone or an Android or a Terminator, for all I knew.

  “This your only photo of him?”

  “Yes.”

  He took a few photos with his handheld, slid the photo back to me, where it went back into my coat pocket. “You really should consider joining the twenty-first century, Lewis. They have phones that take photos, little tablets that let you surf porn wherever you like, and units that can tell you your exact longitude and latitude down to a single meter.”

  “I like my phone just as it is. For making and receiving phone calls.”

  “You know it can send and receive a text, right?”

  “Hypothetically, I suppose you’re right. But I’ve never dug that deep into the instruction manual.”

  “You know all the cool kids laugh at you for using a phone with a flip-top.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He made a point of shaking his head and said, “Something has scared your girlfriend’s boy, that’s for sure.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “So says you. Anyway, I’ll see what I can find out. If there’s a person or crew looking for this lawyer, they’ll be making little ripples out there. Some of my former associates and customers might have gotten wind of something. But those who might be looking for Mark Spencer, to scare him so much that he’s bailed out like this, those folks are going to be careful. Going against a lawyer and a town official, unless they do it very quietly and under cover of darkness, is eventually going to raise a lot of hell, a lot of attention.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But a word of advice, and a word of warning. Which do you want first?”

  “Advice.”

  “You’ve started poking at something that wants to remain un-poked. So prepare yourself.”

  “Got it. What’s the warning?”

  Felix picked up his fork again. “I might be able to find out who’s chasing after Mark Spencer. But as to why, and to where he is . . . that’s probably going to be your job. Just make sure you want to take it that far.”

  Paula, I thought.

  “I’ll make sure.”

  When dinner, dessert, and coffee were consumed and then paid for by Felix, and the hefty bill and bundle of twenty-dollar bills taken away by a very grateful Corey, he once again offered me a couch or spare bedroom at his place, or the choice of any hotel room within a ten-mile radius. I gently declined; but as I backed my Pilot into my spot at the Lafayette Hotel’s parking lot, I was already beginning to regret my stubbornness. I felt full and warm and fuzzy from a good meal and a shared bottle of wine, and after parking my rental Pilot, I stepped out into the cold November air.

  The sharp wind off the ocean cut right through me as I got out of the driver’s side and went to the rear, where I opened the hatchback. The lights from the Lafayette House looked even more inviting than ever before. Before me was the clammy sleeping bag and my meager provisions. Across the street was comfort and warmth and safety.

  All it would take would be a simple slide of a plastic card, and comfort would be mine tonight.

  I looked once more at the lights, climbed in, and closed the hatchback behind me.

  Later in the night, I woke up with a start. Something had disturbed me. I wasn’t sure what it had been, but my heart was thumping and my skin was moist. A bad dream? Some indigestion?

  A thump of some sort, coming from the direction of my house. It must have been loud for me to hear it. I rolled out of my sleeping bag, reached for my headlamp, and then thought better of that. Even with the newspapers covering the rear windows, lighting up the interior would just show anybody out there that I was up and about.

  Instead, I rummaged around and found my 9mm Beretta and a flashlight and, after some struggling, managed to slip on a pair of boots. I reached up, disabled the rear interior lights, and opened up the rear passenger door, the one farther away from my home. I stepped outside. The stars were so hard and bright, on any other night I would have paused and admired the view.

  Not tonight.

  Another thump.

  I skirted around the rear of my rental, ducked down so I wasn’t backlit by any lights from the parking lot, and made my way down the rutted path of my driveway. With the starlight and ambient light from the hotel across the street, I had a pretty good view of the situation as I descended to where I once had lived. The wind shifted and I caught again that nasty smell of wet and burnt wood.

  When I got fairly close to my house, I had my Beretta in my right hand and my flashlight in my left. Unlike what you see in the movies or television—with cops or robbers who approach the darkness bracing their wrists against each other, weapon and flashlight side-by-side up to their chests—Diane Woods had taught me a different approach. I held out my left hand high up and switched on the light. “That way,” Diane had explained, “if somebody sees the light and takes a shot at it, chances are it’ll miss you.”

  The light flared out and everything snapped into view. My rocky front yard, my crumpled home, the destroyed outbuilding, and the flapping blue tarpaulin nailed to what was left of the roof and walls.

  But nobody seemed to be there.

  I took my time walking around the house, flashing the light here and there, catching only rocks and the waves coming into my private little cove. I flashed the light at the door and the windows, didn’t see anything ajar or burst open.

  I looked up at the blue tarpaulin again.

  The wind caught a side and made it flap, and the nails held fast.

  Was that what I had heard? After the events of the past few weeks, had paranoia taken permanent residence in my mind?

  “Back to bed,” I said aloud, and went back up to the parking lot.

  Inside the Pilot, I didn’t feel like reading and lighting up the interior, so I fumbled around and finally found my shortwave radio, stuck in a little storage compartment on the left. I settled into my clammy sleeping bag, put in a set of earphones, and started c
rawling through the radio ether, finding WBZ-AM, the powerful radio station out of Boston. I listened to a late-night talk-show host and then the news at the top of the hour, and it took me a long, long while to fall asleep, because of two reasons.

  The first being that the tropical depression off the eastern coast of Florida had become Tropical Storm Toni.

  And the second being that I was positive that I had earlier placed my radio in a storage compartment on the right.

  Not the left.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After a lousy night of sleeping, I got up the next morning and drove into Tyler proper and splurged for breakfast at a small brick building called the Common Grill & Grill, set near the town common where the Tyler Chronicle was located. Many years ago it used to be called the Common Bar & Grill, until the owner lost his liquor license, and the new owner decided to drop the “Bar” and replace it with a spare “Grill.” I had a satisfying and fortifying breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, and coffee, and then strolled across the street to a stretch of white clapboard office buildings that held a jewelry store, a card shop, a hardware store, and the law offices of Adams & Lessard.

  Said offices were located up on the second floor, and there was a small but pleasant waiting area with three chairs and a young male sitting behind a wooden desk. The desk supported a computer terminal and keyboard, and the cliché of the IN and OUT baskets. The nameplate on the desk said KENNETH SHEEN, and he had on a white shirt and blue bow tie with little red dots, and his black hair was cut short and neatly.

  “Can I help you, sir?” he asked as I entered the office. Behind him was a closed door with frosted glass and gold letters that said PRIVATE, and I said “I’d like to see either Mister Lessard or Ms. Adams.”

  He glanced down at a calendar on his desk. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “I do not.”

  “Oh. Well, would you like to make an appointment? I might be able to fit you in later in the week, if you tell me what this is concerning.”

  “No, I would not like to make an appointment,” I said, sitting down in one of the empty chairs. “I’d like to see either Mister Lessard or Ms. Adams, at their earliest convenience.”

  “Oh.” It seemed to be his favorite word. He picked up a pen. “Your name, sir?”

  “Lewis Cole.”

  “And this is in reference to . . .”

  “Mark Spencer.”

  “Oh.” He got up from behind his desk. “Let me see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.”

  He opened the PRIVATE door and closed it behind him, and I waited and picked up a copy of that day’s Union Leader newspaper, which is our only statewide paper. I caught up on the latest news from Concord—the governor wanted to cut the budget, the legislature wanted to cut it even more, and it was a charming debate on who would blink first—and then Kenneth came back in.

  “So sorry, Mister Cole,” he said, holding a legal pad up to his chest like it was providing some form of defense. “Neither Mister Lessard or Ms. Adams is available.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, turning a page of the paper. “I don’t mind waiting.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “They can’t see you today.”

  I lifted up the paper. “Mister Sheen, is there another exit from this office?”

  He looked confused. “No, there isn’t.”

  I rattled the paper for emphasis. “Then unless your law firm intends to crawl out the windows, I intend to stay right here until they walk by me.”

  A half hour passed, and his phone rang; he answered it and disappeared behind the door once more. When he emerged, his face was flushed, like he had been chewed out or something, and he said, “I’m sorry to say, Mister Cole, but I’ve been informed to tell you that unless you depart the premises, the Tyler police will have to be called.”

  “Unh-hunh,” I said, working through that day’s crossword puzzle. “Tell you what: my best friend in the world is the senior detective on the force, and I have at least a nodding acquaintance with every officer in the department. Do you?”

  “Ah, no.”

  “Then call the police. And after you call them, I’ll call my other best friend, the assistant editor of the Chronicle, to see why a local law firm is so insistent on tossing out a peaceable citizen who just wants to see someone. We’ll see who ends up having a better day.”

  He started toward the PRIVATE door again, and I said, “Oh, a question before you leave?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Do you know what’s the capital of Outer Mongolia?”

  “Ah, no, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Pity,” I said.

  He walked out, closed the door, and I murmured “Ulan Bator,” and scribbled it in.

  He returned about ten minutes later, his face bright and smiling. “Mister Cole, I’m happy to tell you that Ms. Adams can see you now.”

  “Outstanding.”

  I carefully folded up the newspaper, put it on a coffee table in front of me, and followed young Kenneth beyond the PRIVATE door into a narrow hallway. There was an office at the end of the hallway, and two others on either side, and he led me to the near one. Attorney Hannah Adams was sitting behind a big desk, with piles of papers and folders neatly arranged across the polished top. There were framed certificates announcing that she was admitted to the bar in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York, and two crowded bookcases. Before her desk were two comfortable-looking leather chairs, and I took the near one.

  A large window overlooked Route 1 and the Tyler downtown, and the town common, and the Common Grill & Grill. If she had been looking out this window at the right time a while ago, she would have seen me stroll across the street to get here. Lucky for me, I guess she hadn’t seen me, because she could have dropped one of those thick law volumes on my head pretty easily.

  Hannah Adams seemed to be in her early sixties, professionally groomed and dressed in a light gray pantsuit, ivory blouse, and simple gold jewelry on her wrists. Her eyes were cold blue, and her hair was a light blonde, tightly coiffed.

  “Let’s make this quick,” she said. “You’re wasting my time and the firm’s time. What are you looking for?”

  “A polite conversation, if you don’t mind.”

  “Can’t guarantee how polite it’ll be,” she said. “All up to you.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of shared responsibility?” I asked. “I understand it’s all the rage in negotiations nowadays.”

  Her lips pursed. “Why are you here?”

  “To see you face to face,” I said. “To see why you don’t seem too concerned about Mark Spencer. Who hasn’t been seen by friends and acquaintances in at least four days.”

  “And you determined that because . . . ?”

  “Because of our last conversation.”

  “I see,” she said, gently tapping an index finger on her desk. “Because I was brusque with you? Because I wouldn’t answer your questions?”

  “Among other things,” I said. “I’m looking for answers as a favor for a friend. You know he’s been gone for a few days. Do you have any idea of where he might be?”

  “No.”

  “And you’re not concerned?”

  “My feelings don’t matter.”

  “Have you contacted the police? The State Police?”

  “Go ask them,” she said. “As a taxpayer, you pay for their services.”

  I felt like I was wrestling with someone who had four arms and heavy experience in using all of them. “Was there anything Mark Spencer was involved with that concerned you? Or Mister Lessard?”

  “Please.”

  “His employment . . . was he—”

  Adams interrupted me. “He was the perfect lawyer. No problems, no issues, no drama. First one in in the morning, last one to leave in the evening.”

  “He was from Vermont, correct?”

  “True.”

  “Even though his Social Security number was issued in Wyoming?�
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  A shrug. “Not my department, now, is it. Are we done?”

  “One more thing,” I said. “Why the attitude? Why the pushback? I’m just trying to find someone who works here with you. I would think you’d like to cooperate. We both want the same thing: Mark Spencer safely located.”

  “Gosh, I guess I really hurt your feelings,” she said. “So let me go a little further. Leave now, and we’re even. You keep on harassing me, hanging out in my office, making future phone calls, you can’t believe the trouble I can cause you, including but not limited to seizure of assets.”

  I got up, gave her a friendly smile. “Do your best. You do a credit report or background check on me . . . you’ll be surprised what you don’t find.”

  I left the office and walked back across the street, ducked into the Tyler Chronicle to see if Paula was available, but the boy with the lip stud told me she was at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon. I then retrieved my Pilot—sniffing in distaste at the ripe smells coming from inside—and drove a short distance to the Tyler Memorial Public Library.

  Inside the library, I was fortunate enough to locate an empty computer terminal, and I sat down and got to work. My own computer was melted plastic and metal back on Tyler Beach, and I was fortunate—or smart enough—to have backed up a lot of my files and photographs to that amazing Cloud out there.

  First I had to go through the Town of Tyler’s home page, which included meeting listings for the week and exciting news about the delivery of new trash recycle bins, and then I went to the all-knowing and all-seeing Google to get to work. I spent about an hour checking out the cyberspace records of Mark Spencer, and I was puzzled at what I found.

  Which was a lot, which didn’t make sense. I located a couple of old stories and photographs of Mark Spencer as a Little League player and then a debate-team member while going to schools in Trenton, Vermont. Then he was off to the New England School of Law, where he was fairly active in school activities.

  So my initial theory, that a young Mark Spencer had done something deep and dark earlier in his life and was in the Witness Protection Program, had gone the way of the theory of a hollow earth.