LCole 07 - Deadly Cove (10 page)

Denise said, “Spare me the history lesson. Just add it in and send it along, all right?”

“Sure,” I said. “Added and sent. No problem.”

“Good,” she said. “I just saw something come over the wires. The wife and stepson of Bronson Toles plan a special kind of demonstration tomorrow at five. Make sure you're there.”

She hung up abruptly, and so did I, and I spent a few minutes on the computer keyboard, despising every syllable, and then I sent the little bits of data along to another computer in Boston and sat back again, listening to the creak of my chair.

*   *   *

In a while I dialed a local number, and a male answered. “Hello?”

“Mark? Mark Spencer?”

“Yes,” he said. “Who's this?”

“Mark, this is Lewis Cole,” I said. “Just calling to check in on Paula.”

The barest hesitation, and I was sure he was wondering about me, Paula's former lover, checking in on her. “She's doing okay,” he said.

“Really?”

Again that hesitation. A lawyer checking his opponent? “Really, Lewis. She's doing fine.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“Um, not really. She's lying down. Know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “Look, will you tell her I called?”

“Certainly,” he said. “Sorry, I need to go now.”

He hung up the phone, and so did I, thinking that Mark's voice, as he talked about his girlfriend, Paula Quinn, had the same blankness of tone that I had heard in Diane's talking about her Kara.

*   *   *

After sleeping in the next day and having a cup of tea for breakfast, I puttered around the house and caught up on paying some bills and reading a stack of newspapers. Soon it was time to eat and get back to work. I grabbed my pen, notebook, and jacket, went outside and got into my Ford Explorer, and made my way up the rocky driveway and off to Atlantic Avenue. A few minutes of northbound driving later, I pulled off at a small seafood restaurant called Sally's Clam Shack. It's on a tiny strip of land between Atlantic Avenue and the beach, in a weather-beaten building that looks like it had once washed ashore, and serves the best seafood in the area. Sally's been dead for years, but her two sons—Neil and Patrick—keep it going.

Inside I was greeted with the scents of fried food, which got my saliva glands into action. Most of the service is takeout, and during the height of the summer season, the line can curl outside for more than fifty feet. There are a handful of booths in the rear, and I saw that all were filled, save one. There were a couple of guys ahead of me, waiting, wearing blue jeans, hooded gray sweatshirts, and backward Red Sox baseball caps, and I was thinking maybe I'd do a takeout order when one of the co-owners, Neil Winwood, stepped out and nodded at me and said, “Right this way, Lewis.”

I felt embarrassed, but my hunger pangs were outweighing any slight twinge of shame. I followed Neil, who was limping hard on each hip and knee, having come ashore to help his mom with the restaurant some years ago when his old joints and bones couldn't take lobstering anymore. He had on black-and-white-checked pants, a white T-shirt, and an apron stained with water and flour. As I went to the booth, one of the two guys back there called out, “Hey, we were next!”

Neil shrugged, handing me a menu. “He called ahead. Reservation.”

The other guy pointed to a hand-printed sign underneath the cash register that read:
NO RESERVATIONS ACCEPTED
. “That sign says you don't take no reservations.”

Neil made a point of looking around at the sign and looking surprised. “That old thing is still up? I'll be damned. I'll have to do something about that. You guys will just have to wait a bit longer.”

I know I shouldn't have smiled, but I couldn't help myself. Some time ago I had written an article about some of the famed seafood places up and down the New Hampshire seacoast, and I had mentioned this place in passing. Well, one would have thought that I was a Michelin Guide reviewer and had given them three stars, for that brief mention was framed and up on the far wall, and I never had to wait long for an order, ever.

Sure enough, it took only a few minutes before my fried shrimp and onion rings arrived, and some time later, when I was done and had left money for the check, Neil came back, wiping his hands on a towel. “Everything okay?”

“It was fine, Neil, as always,” I said. Around me the place was now nearly deserted, except for two glum-looking guys with hoodies who were sitting in a booth on the other side of the restaurant. “You getting much business from the protesters?”

He sat down across from me. “You kidding? Most of those kids are packing lunches and granola. Nope, we don't get any of their business … but still, I do wish them success.” I think Neil saw the look on my face, because he said, “Did I startle you or something?”

“A little,” I said. “I mean, most of the polling I've read says the bulk of the business community in this region supports the power plant because of the reliability and relatively competitive power costs.”

He shook his head. “Those pollsters, they've never called me.”

I gathered up my jacket. “Never thought of you as an antinuker, Neil.”

“I'm not,” he said simply.

I kept my hand still. “Sorry, you've lost me there.”

“No, I'm not antinuke. I'm antistupid. Look, nuclear power is fine, it serves a purpose, it serves a need. But you know what? When it got developed, it got an evacuation plan attached to it like a goddamn ball and chain. Up the coast in Lewington, there are coal-fired and oil-fired plants, probably just as safe as Falconer and owned by the same utilities, but there ain't no evacuation plans for them, are there?”

“Not sure I'm seeing your point, Neil.”

He said, “Look out there, down the road.”

I swiveled in my booth, looked out the nearest window. There was a two-space parking area, a Dumpster, and then the rock and dirt berm that made up this part of the coast, bordering Atlantic Avenue. A couple of hundred feet away was a single utility pole, and on top of that pole was a large, boxy object.

I turned back to Neil. “Evacuation siren.”

“Yeah, you got that. One of fifty-six around the power plant, and if that puppy sounded off right now, in October, no big deal, right? All the tourists are gone. In the summertime, though, when you got one single two-lane road running up and down the coast, with just a handful of roads leading out of the coastline and nearly a hundred thousand people jammed here on a hot August weekend, well, it wouldn't be a pretty sight if the sirens started wailing.”

“The evacuation plans get tested every year, don't they? And some sirens get tested once a month.”

Neil smiled. “Lewis, you're a well-read man, and I know you've got education and have traveled some. So having said that, you're home one Sunday July afternoon having a beer on your rear deck, and you hear the nearest siren to your beachfront house kick in. What are you supposed to do next?”

My jacket was still in my hand. “I guess I'd get in my Ford and drive north, up to Maine if I had to.”

Neil's smile got wider. “You'd be wrong.”

“Would I?”

“Yep,” he said. He motioned to the kitchen. “Hanging up there is a calendar issued each year by the New Hampshire Office of Emergency Management. Everybody within a ten-mile radius gets the same calendar, year after year. That includes you, Lewis. You know what it says if you hear a siren kick off? Mmm? You're not supposed to do a damn thing except turn on the radio to one of the designated emergency broadcast stations, and on those stations would be official information about what to do. The radio might tell you to sit still and do nothing. Or it might tell you to drive out, and give you directions. Or any one of several different scenarios. So that's what's supposed to happen.”

He gestured down to the south. “So if it's a hot summer weekend, and the beaches are crowded, and those sirens start to wail … how many of those tourists are going to sit there and say, ‘Gee, I guess we should find a radio somewhere'? No, they're going to panic, they're going to bundle up their families, get into their cars, and try to get the hell out. It'll make Hurricane Katrina look like the Rose Bowl Parade in comparison.”

I stood up. “So what do we do? Shut her down?”

Neil grabbed the check and my money. “Sorry, Lewis. That's above my pay grade—but that still means I don't like the place.”

*   *   *

In my drive to the Falconer nuclear power plant, I made a detour about a mile and a half before the plant gates, at the Seaside Campground. Unlike a couple of days ago, the way toward the main campsite was fairly open, with only a few vehicles off to the side, and the little cottage that served as an office was still closed. I pulled up near the wooden stage and felt cold. I looked at the plain wood, engine running, and then switched off the engine and got outside.

In front of the stage a few young men and women stood just staring at it, as if they were some old Christian sect from the early centuries looking down at the Coliseum. Flowers had been placed on the wood, and from where I stood, I was sure that I saw stains. In addition to the flowers there were stubs of burned-out candles.

There were also signs, bumper stickers, and such, all proclaiming the same thing: the end of the Falconer nuclear power plant and the start of something else safer and cleaner.

I was ignored, which was fine.

I turned around and was going to go back to my Ford when I spotted a couple of vehicles parked on the other side of the open grove. Two state police cruisers, a Falconer police cruiser, and a large dark green vehicle that announced with bright gold letters on the side that it was a Major Crime Unit response van for the state police. From inside my jacket I pulled out my state-issued press pass, hung it around my neck, and went into the woods. About fifty yards in, following a bit of a trail, I came to the usual yellow crime scene tape and a state police trooper and a Falconer police officer. I showed them my press pass and we had a brief and not very productive conversation in which I was advised that all public statements would be coming through the agency that runs the state police, the Department of Safety, and all inquiries should be directed to their Concord office.

And by the way, have a nice day.

I persisted nevertheless, and after a while, the Falconer cop gave up and walked into the woods. A little while later, he returned, followed by a thickset man with light olive skin and wearing a dark blue jumpsuit and black boots and a seriously irritated expression. His black hair was cut short in a buzz cut, and he said, “You the reporter from Tyler bugging us?”

“I guess I am,” I said. “Just looking to ask a few questions and—”

“Tyler,” he said. “You know Diane Woods?”

“I do,” I said. “She's a good friend of mine.”

That seemed to get his attention, and he lifted up the yellow crime scene tape and said, “Come into my temporary office, such as it is.”

I followed him a few yards, and he turned, yawned, and leaned against an oak tree. “The name's Renzi, Pete Renzi. Detective with the state police Major Crime Unit, and you can ask a couple of questions—but if I find out that Diane Woods doesn't know you, then you better make sure you don't speed on state roads. Got it?”

“All of it,” I said. “Thanks for the time.”

“So don't waste it,” he said. “What do you want?”

“What can you tell me?”

He yawned again. “Not much. One Mr. Bronson Toles, shot and killed by a single round to his head. That round hasn't been found yet, though we're looking out beyond that stage with metal detectors.”

“Any sign where the shooter had been hiding?”

He gestured to the surrounding woods. “Pick a tree. Lots of trees around here have a good view of the stage. Trick is to find the right tree, and we haven't had the luck. Though we're still looking.”

“Any suspects?”

He frowned. “A friend of Diane Woods and you ask such a stupid question?”

I felt warm and moved on. “A motive, then. Why he was shot.”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn't random, that's for sure. So someone took the time and trouble to set up a spot to shoot at Bronson Toles, arrange an escape route, and know when he was going to talk.”

“A professional hit?”

“No comment,” he said, “and sorry, Mr. Cole, that's all the time I have for you today.” He pointed to the yellow crime scene tape. “I trust you know your way out?”

“I do,” I said.

“Glad to hear it.”

*   *   *

When I got to my Explorer, I saw a familiar face: Haleigh Miller, talking to some of her fellow activists. She spotted me and waved, and I waved back. She came up to me and said, “Lewis, so good to see you. How are you doing?”

“Out working. You?”

She smiled though she still looked tired. “We're getting ready for the special event this afternoon.”

“The one at five o'clock, with Bronson Toles's wife?”

Haleigh nodded. “Yes. Make sure you don't miss it. It's going to be … it's going to be something different.”

“All right, I won't.”

Some of her friends hung back, as if they didn't want to be despoiled by being so close to a member of the oppressor class, one who worked for the Man. Or the Woman, as was my case. “You doing all right back here?”

Haleigh said, “Oh, I'm doing fine. Sleeping outdoors and eating cold food—not as nice as it was back at your place, but I'm doing it for a greater cause, so I don't mind. Much.” She laughed and said, “I really want to thank you again for helping me out the other day. I needed … I needed a break, and you provided it. I owe you one.”

I was ashamed to admit it, but a thought came to me, one I instantly brought up. “Look, can I ask you for a favor?”