Third Strike (14 page)

“Why not,” I said. “Doing something always beats sitting around thinking unpleasant thoughts.” I turned to Zee. “Okay with you?”

She shrugged. “Doesn't matter. I'd much rather know what you were really up to than have you pretend you're going fishing because you think I'd worry if I knew you were sleuthing.”

“Who?” said J.W. “Us?”

Zee rolled her eyes.

He turned to me. “We could go fishing.”

“Let's go sleuthing,” I said.

“Okay, then,” he said. “Come with me.”

We went inside, and I followed J.W. through the house to his office.

I sat on the sofa. He looked through some stuff in one of the bookshelves, said “Aha,” and came over and sat beside me. He unfolded a road map of Martha's Vineyard on the coffee table.

“This is where Larry lived,” he said, jabbing at the map with a pencil. “Show me exactly where he said he saw that boat.”

He handed me the pencil, and I used the eraser end to trace the general path that Larry and I had taken from his house through the woods to Menemsha Pond. “We walked along the shoreline here—it's all reedy and muddy—and hid behind some rhododendrons right about here. There's a point of land maybe fifty yards off to the right, and just inside it is a cottage where he said that boat docked. About here.” I pointed with the pencil. “Mumford. That's who Larry said owns the place. Some doctor who Larry said only comes down in the summer.”

“Mumford,” mumbled J.W. “Don't know him.” He stood up and went over to a closet, rummaged around for a while, then emerged with an armload of stuff, which he dumped onto the sofa beside me. “Dark windbreaker for you, dark windbreaker for me,” he said, sorting through it. “Dark Red Sox cap for you, one for me.”

He draped a pair of binoculars around his neck and stuck a flashlight in his pocket. He gave me a flashlight, too. Then he handed me a big Leatherman tool, which had heavy wire cutters and pliers and a knife blade, not to mention screwdrivers and bottle openers and other useful implements that all folded together cleverly.

“Don't know what good the binocs are going to do,” I said. “It's nighttime, you know.”

“The binoculars are infrared,” he said. “Got 'em at the Army-Navy store.”

“Cool,” I said.

I put the flashlight and Leatherman in my pants pockets.

“What else do we need?” he said.

“Depends on how many weeks we plan to stay,” I said. “Stove? Tent?”

“Yeah,” he said without smiling. “Funny.” He glanced at his watch. “Ready to go?”

It was around nine-thirty. “Larry said the boat came in around midnight.”

“A midnight rendezvous with the van at the dock,” said J.W. “Sounds about right to me.”

“I didn't really believe him,” I said.

“Larry?”

I nodded.

“Why would he make up something like that?”

“I just figured he saw something and sort of expanded and distorted it,” I said. “Larry lived alone for a long time. I didn't really trust his grasp of reality.”

“It was enough for him to call you in Boston and ask you down here,” said J.W. “And apparently it was convincing enough for you to agree.”

“His fear was convincing,” I said.

“I'd say a bullet in the head is pretty convincing, wouldn't you?”

I nodded. “I don't doubt his story anymore. I just feel bad that I doubted him. Maybe if I'd taken him more seriously, if…”

“Don't blame yourself,” said J.W. “It's not your fault.”

“Nice try,” I said. “Thanks.” J.W. stood up. “Let's figure out who killed him. That'll make you feel better.”

We went in J.W.'s Land Cruiser. He followed South Road to Menemsha, and when we came to the intersection with Middle Road, he went left. A short way later he took a right turn onto a narrow secondary road that ended at the pond.

We got out, pushed through some bushes, and found a spot on a little rise about fifty feet from the shoreline. Dr. Mumford's place was a hundred yards or so off to our right.

We crouched there behind the bushes. J.W. lifted his binoculars, panned along the shoreline, then grunted. “Look there.” His voice was a soft whisper. He pointed. “See?”

“Yes. There's a boat docked there. And a light in the house.”

He handed me the binoculars.

I raised them to my eyes. In the greenish night-vision light, I could see the boat and the dock and the house quite clearly. Lights glowed from the house's windows.

I panned the length of the boat, which was moored against the dock.

“I can't make out the boat's name,” I said. “The transom's facing the wrong way. Looks like an ordinary boat to me. It's where Larry and I were looking the other night. But he said the boat he saw was a sixty-, sixty-five-footer. That one's maybe forty.”

“Larry probably exaggerated,” said J.W. “Or he wasn't a very good judge of boat lengths. Or maybe he saw a different boat. What else do you see?”

“Nothing. I—wait.” I squinted through the binoculars. Things were pretty shadowy and dim, even with the night-vision binoculars, but after a minute I spotted a figure standing on the dock. He was wearing dark clothing, and he was holding something.

“There's someone on the dock,” I said. “It's hard to see…I'm not sure, but…” I handed the binoculars to him. He peered through the binoculars. “If I'm not mistaken, that's a weapon in that guy's hands. It looks like an Uzi.”

“Jesus,” I whispered.

“You nervous?”

“Shouldn't I be?”

“Of course,” said J.W. “It'd be stupid not to be.”

“I guess I'm pretty smart, then,” I said. “Time to leave?”

“Nah,” J.W. said. “Not yet.”

T
he house was on a point of land thrusting out from the east shore of Menemsha Pond. A boat was tied to a dock on the outermost part of the point of land, giving the armed man on the dock a good view of all the pond and the shore to the north and south.

He couldn't see through underbrush, though, so we kept that between us and him as we crept toward the house beside its starlit driveway. It was possible, even probable, that he wasn't the only guard on duty, so we moved slowly and noiselessly, stopping often.

This paid off when, during one of our stops, a light flared briefly ahead of us as a man lit a cigarette. The red dot at the end of the cigarette lingered after the flare of his lighter went out. I didn't think his boss would be pleased by his carelessness, but it's been said that it's harder to give up nicotine than heroin. Could be.

I thought about our options. There were three: sneak past the guard, disable the guard, or go home.

I felt Brady touch my shoulder and heard his whispered voice in my ear. “I have a nice-sized rock in my hand. If you can get him looking the other way I may be able to smash him on the head. I almost never hit people with rocks unless they try to hit me first, but I can make an exception in this case.”

I wished I had a fishing rod. If I had one, I could walk along the driveway pretending to be looking for a good spot to cast and, when challenged, could act startled and then embarrassed about being on private land and hope that the smoker would keep his gun pointed at the ground and turn his back to Brady just long enough to get himself whacked with Brady's rock.

But I didn't have a fishing rod, so I decided to be a half-drunk stranger looking for my rented but misplaced house. After whispering this plan to Brady, I retreated a few yards, stepped out onto the starlit driveway, and started shuffling toward the house, mumbling and staggering as I went.

Ahead of me, the red dot of the cigarette dropped straight down and disappeared, presumably ground out by a shod foot. I pretended to trip and muttered a curse, then staggered on. Suddenly a light was in my face. I blinked at it and put up a hand to hide my eyes.

“Hold it right there,” said a voice from behind the light.

But I lurched on a few more steps, then said with a slur, “Is that you, George? Where the hell is the house?”

My steps took me past the torch, so that its holder had to turn to grab my arm. “I said to hold it, buddy. I mean it. Not another step.”

I swayed and peered at the light. “George?”

“I'm not George, buddy,” said the guy, “and you're walking down the wrong road. This is a private driveway. Let me see some ID.”

“ID, ID.” I patted various pockets. “Don't be mad, George. You know me. Whatcha want ID for? Where is it? I know I got it somewhere. Maybe I lost it. Damn.”

“You just stand right there,” said the voice. “I'm gonna call somebody to come and get you.”

I put confusion into my own voice. “You don't have to call anybody, George. All you got to do is tell me where my damned house is.”

“You're too drunk to know what you're doing, buddy,” said the voice. “And I'm not George.”

As he spoke those words, I heard a thud, and then the flashlight fell to the ground, rapidly followed by a body. Brady's shoes stepped into the light of the fallen flashlight, and his hand reached down and covered most of the lens, creating a dimmer, smaller light. This he used to look at the guard.

“Well, well,” he whispered. “Old George here has himself an Uzi and a radio.”

“Thanks to you, he didn't use either one,” I whispered back.

I put my ear to the sentry's chest and heard his heart thumping steadily.

He moaned, then, and moved a hand. I looked at his head and saw no blood. “I don't think you damaged him too much,” I said, “so let's wrap him up and gag him before he comes to.”

Using his belt and bootlaces, we trussed him up, gagged him with his own handkerchief, and dragged him into the bushes. Then I put his radio into my pocket and gave the Uzi to Brady, who slung it over his shoulder and doused the flashlight.

Ahead of us was the front yard of the house, and parked there were a dozen cars. Conscious of the fact that where there were two guards, there might be three or four or more, we moved very carefully to the edge of the yard. Above us, the summer stars glittered in the sky and cast a silver sheen over the scene before us.

We crouched in the shadow of an oak and watched and listened but spied no other guard.

“You want to sneak up to the house and look in a window?” asked Brady in a whisper. “Maybe you'll recognize somebody.”

It wasn't my idea of a splendid thought, but we'd come a long way, and going just a little farther didn't seem any more irrational than anything we'd already done.

“All right,” I whispered back. “While I'm doing that, you stand guard. If somebody spots you, yell ‘Police,' then cut and run. I'll be right on your heels.”

“And what if somebody spots you?”

“I'll be out of here like a greyhound. You'll have to run fast to get in front of me.”

“What I'll do,” said Brady, patting his Uzi, “is cut loose into the air with this thing. Then, while the guards are scrambling for cover, we can get away.”

I hoped it wouldn't come to that. I wanted to get away without causing any more excitement than we already had.

I slid away from him and moved toward the house. It was a big summer place with porches on all four sides and balconies above the porches. Two big chimneys were dark against the sky.

I thought that if I wanted to conduct a well-guarded meeting, I'd post a man or two on the porches and balconies, and I'd have some others circulating to make sure no one intruded on the company inside. So I crouched beside a hydrangea bush and watched, but saw nothing. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the host thought a couple of guards, one on the dock by the boat and one on the driveway, were enough.

I waited a few minutes longer, then slipped across the lawn, up onto the porch, and over to a lighted window. I could feel my heart beating, and my breathing sounded loud enough to wake the gods. I inhaled deeply and peered in the window.

I was looking at a large, comfortable room with a fireplace at the far end. There were a dozen men seated in chairs facing a large map of the Vineyard that was mounted in front of a book-lined wall. Save for one man who was using a laser pointer to illustrate something on the map, and whose face was turned in my direction, the others all had their backs toward me.

The man with the pointer was unknown to me. No surprise there. There are 100,000 people on Martha's Vineyard in the summertime, and I don't know almost all of them. It was Dr. Mumford's house, so maybe it was Dr. Mumford. I didn't know what kind of a doctor Dr. Mumford was, but judging by his house and his boat, he was a rich one. The man's hair was white and he wore old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses. His clothes were Vineyard casual chic. I couldn't see his feet, but I was willing to bet that he wore boat shoes or sandals without socks, just like me.

I know a woman who, in St. Paul, Minnesota, had once had a stranger come up to her and say, “Weren't you in Nottingham, England, a year ago? I thought I recognized the back of your head.” The woman with the identifiable head had been surprised by the stranger's identification talents.

I could have used that stranger's genius now, because as I looked at the backs of the heads facing the speaker, I didn't recognize a single one. Then one head turned slightly, and I caught a brief glimpse of a face that was somehow familiar. But the face turned away before I could attach a name to it, and I had one of those lightning fast psychological moments wherein countless images and recollections whip through your mind so fast that fact and fiction, art and reality, become inseparable and indistinguishable, and I wasn't sure whether I'd seen the face in fact or in some photograph or film.

The man with the pointer was pointing first here, then there, on the map. Was he some sort of real estate tycoon, indicating choice locations for development? If so, it was an odd hour for an investors' conference. The pointer lingered down near Deep Bottom Road, then here and there in the state forest—at the end of Otis Bassett Road, I noticed, and out by the forest headquarters. It danced for a while on the airport business park and then near the road to Scrubby Neck Farm.

So much for the real estate theory. Two of the spots of interest to the man with the pointer were on state land that was beyond the reach of even the most wealthy and connected developers.

Pointer Man tapped the map again and made a sweeping circle that touched the various areas of interest to him. I wished I had one of those gadgets that allow you to hear what's going on inside a room. This one was well insulated, and I couldn't hear a thing.

Then I heard the scrape of footsteps coming around the pond-side corner of the house, and a voice said, “Hey! What the hell are you doing there?”

I straightened, pointed a finger at him, and said, “Police. Hold it right there. Don't say a word. Put your hands on your head. You're under arrest.” I pulled George's radio from my pocket, looked out into the dark shrubbery beyond the lawn and waved my imaginary officers toward the house. “All right, men,” I said into the radio, “I've been spotted. Come on in.” I looked back at the man who had discovered me. “You stay right where you are.”

I turned and walked to the front of the house and brayed, “Johnson, call in the cruisers. Block the driveway. Don't let anyone leave.”

I stepped around the corner, jumped off the porch, and ran across the front lawn past the parked cars.

Brady was there, a dim shape in the starlight. Behind me, I heard the thud of running feet on the porch.

“Run!” I said to Brady, showing him how to do it as I passed him and raced away along the driveway.

A shout came from the house, and I heard Brady's feet pounding along behind me. My hundred-yard-dash days were far behind me, and it wasn't long before my chest was heaving. From the direction of the house, floodlights suddenly went on, and then my shadow was racing along in front of me. The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor. Good grief, what was Alfred Noyes doing in my mind at a time like this?

How far to the Land Cruiser?

My breath was coming in great heaves.

Then, just as I rounded a bend in the driveway and left the white house lights behind me, I heard a car engine roar into life. They were coming after us in a vehicle and were sure to catch us. I ran on anyway, because there didn't seem to be enough undergrowth to hide in beside the driveway.

Brady's feet matched the rhythm of my own, and we weren't far from the Land Cruiser, but behind us the car was coming fast, and I knew we'd never outrun it.

Then I no longer heard Brady's pounding footsteps. I threw a backward glance and saw him kneeling in the center of the driveway just as the lights from the pursuing car swung around the bend behind us. He had the Uzi in both hands, and as the car lights centered upon him, he pulled the trigger, sending a stream of bullets low into the front of the car, shattering the headlights and flattening tires. The car swerved and plowed into some bushes, and I wondered if he'd killed anybody. Then, before I could move, Brady was up and running past me.

“Run!” he said, showing me how to do it.

I followed him away from the shouts and curses behind us until we reached the Land Cruiser. Brady threw the Uzi into the bushes and piled into the car. I got in behind the wheel, fumbled the ignition key into its slot, and finally got it started, and a minute later we were on our way back down-island, headed toward Chilmark center.

When I got my breathing back more or less to normal, I said, “I didn't know you were a machine gunner.”

“It was a required course at Yale Law School,” said Brady. “Court Options 101.”

“Were you aiming at the driver?”

“No. At the lights and tires. What do you think? If I aimed at the driver, I'd've hit the driver. But if those guys were the ones who murdered Larry Bucyck—and I bet they were—I wouldn't weep if a stray bullet did hit one or two of them.”

“The trouble is, we don't know if they were.”

I felt his glance. “Who do you think they were? Sunday School teachers holding a midnight prayer meeting? Larry spotted a boat here, complete with an armed guard who saw him, too. And you know what happened to Larry. And these guards had guns, too. Do you think that's just a coincidence?”

No, I didn't think that and said so. I looked in the rearview mirror. There'd been a lot of cars in that yard, and Brady had only stopped one of them. I saw no lights behind me, but that could change.

We passed the Chilmark police station, where no lights shone in the windows. Ahead was the intersection at Beetlebung Corner, giving us three road options: South Road, Middle Road, and Menemsha Cross Road. Ordinarily I'd have felt fairly confident about shaking a tail there, because normally nobody can follow you three ways at the same time, but in this case there were enough bad guys to follow every road, so instead of taking any of them, I drove up Menemsha Cross Road for a few hundred yards, then turned around and parked, facing the intersection again.