Idyll Threats (15 page)

Elmore Fenworth's home didn't look as though it belonged to a crazy person. It was a large, gray Victorian boasting a blue plaque that informed me it was on the register of historic places. A colorful garden surrounded his wraparound porch. His lawn would've made my neighbor, Mr. Sands, envious. Elmore sat in a rocker on the porch. I'd expected wild hair, thick glasses, and shabby clothing. He had a close beard and gray eyes. He wore khakis and a white dress shirt. “Good afternoon, Chief Lynch.” He rose from his rocker. “How are you?”

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Fenworth.” I extended my hand. He paused before he grasped it. His hand was dirty. No, not dirty. Stained with newsprint. Newspapers were stacked beside his rocker, a foot-tall pile of them.

“You have a nice home.” Potted flowers were arranged by the front door.

“Thank you. You live up near Hilltop Avenue, don't you?”

“Yes.” I wondered how, and why, he knew that.

“You should get a water filter.” He held the front door open for me.

“Why's that?” Inside, the temperature fell twenty degrees. The hall was lined with photos. There was one of John Paul II and one of John F. Kennedy. So Elmore was a good, old-school Catholic. And then I recalled Nate's warning.
Don't ask him about JFK.

“Used to be a printing press a few miles north of your place, back in the sixties. They dumped toxic stuff up there. People think it's all gone
now, and that their well water's unaffected.” He rotated a finger near his ear. Universal symbol for crazy. “People believe what suits them.”

“What sort of toxic stuff?”

“Toluene, methyl ethyl ketone, tetrachloroethylene, and some others. Buy a filter. Put it on your kitchen tap. Bathroom tap too.”

We'd arrived at the parlor. Built-in bookshelves occupied two of the four walls. Historic landscapes and framed maps hung on the others. The room wouldn't have looked out of place in a furniture catalog. Did Elmore write us letters as a joke? Surely the man who lived here didn't believe in aliens.

“Would you like some iced tea?” he asked.

“Yes, please.”

He left to fetch it, and I began to snoop. I started with the books. Not one on aliens or UFOs or even space travel. Then I looked at the framed photographs. They were of a family, presumably his. There was nothing odd about them.

“Here we are.” He sat and poured a stream of amber liquid into a tall glass filled with crushed ice. “I make my own. It's strong. You can add sugar if you like.”

“Thanks.” I sipped from the cold glass.
Strong
was not the word.
Lethal
was. I reached for the sugar spoon and kept reaching until there was a quarter inch of sugar silt at the bottom of my glass.

“I'm guessing this isn't a social call.” He drank his iced tea straight.

“No. I heard you might be able to help me, with an investigation.” I'd debated coming here. Sure, he might know things about Idyll's gay scene. But was he reliable? And could he be trusted to keep his mouth shut?

“What sort of investigation?” he asked. He picked up a pen and pad of paper.

I breathed in and out. “I have information that two homosexual males—”

He guffawed. “You mean gays? No need for polite cop-speak here, Chief.”

I rotated my shoulders down and back. “They might have witnessed something pertinent. But I'm not familiar with the area's gay scene.”

He said, “Gays 'round here keep to themselves. Idyll's not exactly queer-friendly. People like to talk liberal, but talk's easy. Cheap too.” He finished half of his tea. “That cop of yours, Wright. He ever tell you what happened when he started to work here? The station got calls every day for weeks that a black man had stolen a police cruiser. They had to run a front-page story about him in the
Register
so people would know he was a cop.”

Christ. No wonder Wright had a chip on his shoulder.

“About my problem,” I said. “I don't know where to begin looking.” I held up my hand. “I don't intend to persecute anyone.”

“Of course not. You hardly would, now would you?” What did
that
mean? He set his glass down and stood. “Just a moment.”

He returned with an oversized, leather-bound album. He handed it to me. Heavy. And old. The leather flaked in patches. He said, “Turn to the middle bit.” I turned pages until I'd reached roughly the middle. Found an illustration of a spacecraft. Turned the page. A list of alien-abduction reports, beginning in 1912. Turned the page. In flowery script was a list of names. At the top it read: “Idyll Defense Troops.” I scanned the list.

“This list says ‘Idyll Defense Troops,'” I said.

He chaffed his hands. “So it is! You see, homosexuals will be the first line of defense against an alien attack. Gay men are immune to their pheromone-based persuasion.”

“‘Pheromone-based persuasion'?” I asked.

“You know, chemicals given off to indicate sexual availability and genotype information. That's what they'll use to subdue people. Gay men aren't susceptible to them in the same way as heterosexuals. They've done studies, in Sweden.”

He was crazy as a shit-house rat. “So this is a list of all of the gay people in Idyll?” Maybe he'd made some lucky guesses. But half of the list was probably useless.

“Able-bodied gay men in the local area,” he said. “Quite frankly, gentlemen of Major Allen's age won't be much help to us.”

Major Allen? The tottering WWI vet they'd paraded down Main
Street on Memorial Day? Why did Elmore think he was gay? “How do you know—?”

“That he's gay? Well, he had a longtime friend with whom he used to go birding and fishing every month for nearly thirty years. He never brought back a fish and couldn't tell the difference between a house sparrow and a Carolina wren. Honestly. Plus, he used to order gentlemen's magazines from Europe. They were always marked as academic journals. Lucky goose never got caught. Good thing, too. He's too kind a soul to have survived it.”

“How do you know about the journals?” I asked.

“Mrs. Wilton, who runs the post office, is a close friend.” Wonderful. The postmistress was feeding the local nutter private information.

I said, “This list is of able-bodied men. So, young?”

“Under sixty-five and physically fit. Though Bert Lawrence is on there and he's seventy-two. He makes Jack LaLanne look like a wimp.”

Mrs. Ashworth hadn't guessed the golf-course men's ages. But able-bodied and under sixty-five was a good place to start. I'd exclude Bert Lawrence. Fit or no, I doubted he was up to midnight golf-course exploits.

I scanned the list. Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Evans, the owners of the local candy store. Anyone could've guessed their sexual preference. More names. Some I recognized. Officer Klein was on here. Some I didn't. All these people. A charge ran through me. So many names. It couldn't be right. Elmore was crazy. But if it was…I felt a low hum of delight. I wasn't alone in Idyll. Not by a long shot.

Dr. Saunders was near the bottom of the page. His name had an asterisk after it. A footnote explained that Dr. Saunders wasn't “local.”

“Dr. Saunders?” I said.

“As a medical examiner, he'll be invaluable. He can do alien autopsies.”

I scanned the room again. This time for weapons. Always best to know whether the lunatic across from you might be armed. No guns in sight and no fire pokers, either.

I flipped the page. The list ran to two sheets. My heart stopped
when I reached the bottom of the second one. My name. Thomas Lynch.

“This list,” I said. “Where do you keep it?” Visions of his house being burgled, of this book made public, made my heart race. My printed name grew bolder and darker on the page. Jesus. The damage this list could do.

“In a safe, hidden. It would do me as much harm as you if this got out.”

“How so?”

“People would be angry, and it would utterly ruin my defense plans.”

My chest tightened. Was this what a heart attack felt like? “Why am I on this list?”

He smiled. “You're gay.” He templed his fingers.

“What makes you think that?”

He held up his index finger. “You're forty-four years old. Never been engaged or married. No serious girlfriends, aside from Helen what's-her-name in high school.”

How the hell did he know about Helen Mayes?

He lifted another finger. “You read
Men's Health
, presumably ‘for the articles.'”

He'd been checking me out. Like I was a perp. He raised his hand. “I have more conclusive evidence, but I don't think we need to get into that.”

“You have copies of this evidence?” I set the book down.

He held up his hand. “Chief, you have it all wrong. We're on the same side. I'll make you a copy of the list, for your investigation.” He paused. “But I want something in return.”

“Why should I believe this list is anything more than your imagination run amok?”

“Because you do believe it, don't you?”

I did. Gut feeling. And seeing my name. “What do you want?”

“Tell me about what's stored in the basement of the police station.”

Oh, God, the alien remains. “I've only been down there twice.”
I helped myself to more iced tea. The taste had grown on me. “I was fetching buckets to put throughout the station. The roof leaks.”

“I know.” Of course he did. He probably had the station's floor plans tacked to his bedroom wall. Where he could study them before he fell asleep each night.

“There was a large collection of rusting bicycles, some tools, and a few dog cages. I didn't see much else down there.”

“Any signs?” he said. “Road-works signs?”

“Yes. The kind they put up for emergency detours.”

“Aha!” He wrote a note on his pad of paper. “As I suspected.” He reached for the leather album. “I'll need a tour, of course.”

“A tour?”

“Of the station.”

Mrs. Dunsmore would have a conniption. She thought Elmore was a public nuisance. “But—” I said.

He closed the album. “You want something and I want something.” He reminded me of a boy from grade school who'd made me trade my Ernie Banks baseball card just for the chance to use his Satellite Shoes.

“Okay, but it'll have to be late.” After Mrs. Dunsmore was gone.

He stuck his hand out. The newsprint stains were gone. He must've washed up earlier. I squeezed harder than necessary. He smiled and stood. “I'll bring your copy to the station,” he said. “When shall we meet?”

Crafty fucker. Didn't trust me to do my part. “Ten p.m. Come to the rear of the building.”

He saluted me. “I look forward to it.” He stood. “Might I say you're a vast improvement on the last police chief?”

“Really?” I smoothed my shirt as I rose from my chair.

He snorted. “That one chased every skirt his stubby arms could reach. He'd have been no use at all during an invasion.”

2345 HOURS

I opened my kitchen door and stepped inside. My shoe struck an ant trap. It skittered across the floor and smacked the trashcan. Lately, objects kept appearing where I didn't recall placing them. My badge on the counter, not beside my recliner. Rick's key ring outside my gun safe. This stupid ant trap. Maybe I'd moved it. I didn't know.

I'd never been the smart one, not in my family. But I'd always trusted my gut. Cops respect that. Intuition. Mine was flawed now, suspect to second guesses. It reminded me of those last months with Rick, my eyes on him at crime scenes, checking him for twitches, grabby hands, or speedy talk. My mind divided in half by worry. I couldn't survive that again.

I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. After my tour of the station's basement with Elmore, my well of patience had run dry. He'd insisted I open every cobwebbed door so he could peer inside. He took pages of notes. And we'd seen nothing more exciting than a mouse. But he'd seemed pleased. That made one of us.

For my troubles, I had his list. I sucked down a mouthful of beer. I wouldn't look at it. Not tonight. It made me anxious. But I planned to use it. To see if any of the listed men could've been on the Nipmuc Golf Course the night of August 9th. Figure out if they owned or had access to a Smith & Wesson .45. Put that way, it didn't sound bad. It sounded like police work. So why did I feel like drinking the remaining seven beers now?

I'd locked the list up, once I'd traded my uniform for sweats and a fresh tee. Mine smelled like I'd been running, for days.

My answering machine blinked. I debated hitting the delete button. Curiosity overcame caution.

“Chief Lynch? It's Renee North. I, um, didn't catch you at the station. I hope you don't mind me calling you at home. I, um, I found something. Cecilia wrote the name Gary in her diary. Seems like she'd been seeing him since June. So I was right. She was dating somebody.”

I grabbed a pen and wrote her number as soon as she got to it. It
was late, but her call had come only twenty minutes ago. I dialed the number.