LCole 07 - Deadly Cove (7 page)

My heart rate picked up a bit. “For real?”

“For real. How does Monday sound?”

“Sounds like a date,” I said. “No matter what nonsense is going on down in Falconer.”

She paused, and I could hear the murmur of voices in the background, and there was a sigh and she said, “The demands of democracy are chomping at my ankles, wanting me back in the conference room. I'll let you know later the particulars of my trip to your fair state. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Sweet,” she said. “Miss you.”

I said the same in return, but by then, she had switched off.

I hung up the phone, thought about the first message of the night, and decided one phone call to a female per night was going to be enough.

*   *   *

It being the top of the hour, I turned on the television and got an update from the local cable all-news channel. Not surprisingly, Toles's death was the lead story of the hour, and there wasn't much footage of the actual shooting. The television cameras were under the burden of taking their footage from ground level, so what one saw on the screen was a mass of people, heads and shoulders mostly blocking everything, and the upper torso and head of Bronson Toles, speaking as he did, and then the first chaos when the NFF youths jumped up and hijacked the proceedings, and then I made out Paula Quinn coming into view, followed by—

Gunshot. The camera tilted and there was lots of movement, shouts, and cries, and then a stand-up from a reporter outside the Exonia Hospital, stating the obvious, that Bronson Toles had died from a single gunshot wound to the head. Then that was followed by a quick interview with a bulky detective from the New Hampshire State Police, who didn't have much to say, and then by a couple of antinuke protesters, who promised to redouble their efforts to close down Falconer Unit 1 and prevent the construction of Falconer Unit 2.

No report was made of an assistant editor from the Tyler
Chronicle
who had also been injured during the shooting.

There were footsteps coming down from upstairs. I switched the television to the History Channel and got up to greet my guest.

*   *   *

Haleigh Miller came down, smiling shyly, looking about five years younger than when she went upstairs. I got up and headed to the kitchen, and she intercepted me, and after a few moments of polite give-and-take, I let her take charge in my kitchen. About a half hour later, we were eating an egg-and-cheese dish that had a number of vegetables in it and was pretty good, considering most vegetables and I aren't on speaking terms.

Eventually she said, “I haven't properly thanked you, you know.”

“For what? Shelter and a shower were pretty easy, and though I supplied the ingredients, you made the meal.”

“That's not what I meant. Back at the campground, after the shooting … I was trapped, Lewis. Trapped against the stage when all those people were pressing in against us, and I thought for sure that my throat was going to be crushed. You saved me.”

“Easy enough to do.”

She shook her head. “No … no, it wasn't. I get the feeling that some of my buds from UNH, if they were there, would've stood there, shocked, but you didn't. You moved. You took action. So thank you.”

“You're welcome,” I said, “and it's my turn to thank you. Where did you learn to cook so well?”

She dabbed at her lips with a paper napkin. “The Stone Chapel. I started working there a couple of years ago as a waitress, when I was in high school in Dover, and then I learned to do some short-order cooking, and then became sort of an assistant manager, helping out where I could. That's when I got to know Bronson Toles, and later, his wife and his stepson, Victor. It's … it's a special place. Hard to believe it'll be the same with Bronson gone.”

“What made it so special?”

A gust of rain hammered at the sliding glass doors that led to the rear deck. “Oh, it was a job, but it was more than that. Bronson made it feel like you were part of a family, part of a movement. I mean, we worked hard, especially when we had group nights, when musicians came in to play. We even had a softball team that played restaurants in the area during the summer. When we worked, it could get very, very busy … but other times, Bronson would just talk and we'd listen, and argue, and learn from each other.”

“What kind of things did you learn?”

She smiled. “It sounds strange, telling you here, and not at the Stone Chapel. It just sounds … pretentious, I suppose, to say such things in your house, but not at the chapel. Anyway, we learned about resistance, nonviolent disobedience, the teachings of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mandela—and Bronson made the connection, you know? That small, safe, renewable energy is the key to changing our society. Once we're not held hostage to large corporations, large utilities, large government, we can take control of our lives and our communities, and, well, I guess I've talked too much, hunh?”

I finished off the last bit of our dinner. “No, not at all. So opposing Falconer and the new reactor—what do you hope to achieve?”

A shy smile. “By taking over Falconer, by doing what we can to convert it to something else safer and more reliable, we hope to start a change, a revolution in the way we think and the way we make electricity. Something so simple but so right.”

I took a sip of ice water and said, “So no nukes, right?”

A firm nod. “Right.”

“What, then?”

“Mmm?”

With my fork I pointed to the lights overhead. “Those lights, that stove, and the hot water you just used for your shower, that's all powered by electricity, and that electricity comes from the power plant in Falconer. So does about twenty percent of this country's electricity, produced by the splitting of atoms. So you shut down Falconer, what then? I'm sure you're not in favor of oil, natural gas, or coal. All produce greenhouse gases.”

“There are other sources … like wind, solar, hydro.” Her voice was hesitant.

“Absolutely,” I said, “but there was a proposal to build a wind farm off of Cape Cod, wasn't there? Give the Cape about two-thirds of its electricity, but the local landowners and politicians didn't want the windmills spoiling their view—and it's still being challenged in court. Solar is fine in some parts of the country, but look at the weather out there—not much solar can do if you have this kind of rainy and cloudy weather off and on. As for hydro, that means dams, and do you think anybody will be building any more dams down the road, disrupting the free flow of rivers?”

Her face seemed a bit flushed. “So nuclear is the answer, then?”

I wiped my hands with a napkin. “Depends on the question, I guess. On the plus side, the safety record in the States is pretty good, it doesn't contribute any greenhouse gases to the environment, and—”

She leaned over the counter. “That's just the surface, Lewis! There's the destruction of the ecosystem when the nuclear power plants get built, the degradation when uranium is mined and milled and processed, the cost of the steel, iron, and concrete, the fuel from all the construction vehicles … you've got to look below the surface, Lewis. That's one of the things Bronson taught all of us, that there's more to what goes on than what we see. And—” Haleigh suddenly got quiet. “I get the feeling you're mocking me.”

“Not at all.”

“You think you have all the answers, do you?”

“Not for a second. I know I just have most of the questions.”

She said, “I know I'm young, I know I think I know it all—but when you were my age, weren't you committed to something? Didn't something worry you so much that you devoted your time and life to it? Something that you were passionate about?”

Something cold and tasteless seemed to tickle at the back of my throat. “It was a long time ago.”

“Okay, but it was something, wasn't it? What was it?”

I sighed. “Something that was in this world for just over seventy years. A place that some called the evil empire.”

Her face was a mix of curiosity and puzzlement. I went on. “The Soviet Union.”

“Oh. So, what did you do, then?”

“Right after college I went to work for the Man, otherwise known as the Department of Defense. As a research analyst.”

Then she smirked, and I suppose I shouldn't have taken offense, but I did.

“Something funny?”

She shook her head. “No, no, no. It's just that the Soviet Union … for me and everyone else I know, that's just ancient history, that's all. It's just that it's hard to believe that so much energy and billions of dollars were spent on a threat that turned out to be no threat at all. Bronson once spent an evening telling us the truth about that, how the threat from the Russians was just made up by the military-industrial complex to seek bigger budgets for the Defense Department and defense companies. No offense.”

“None taken.” There was a pause, and then I said, “You ever read
The Great Terror
by Robert Conquest?”

“No.”

“
The Gulag Archipelago
by Solzhenitsyn?”

“No.”

“
Darkness at Noon
by Arthur Koestler?
1984
by Orwell? Have you even heard of any of those books, Haleigh?”

Her face was red, and she looked like she was about to step away from the counter, and I shook my head. “Sorry. My turn to apologize. It's just that … well, for decades, no matter what the Bronson Toleses of the world have to say in their coffee shops and music halls, there was a group of hard, dangerous men who killed millions and spread an ideology devoted to tyranny and murder—and to this day, we're still dealing with the toxicity of what they stood for.”

“But Russia's evolved, it's—”

“They're still an imperial power threatening to turn off natural gas supplies to the Europeans if they don't vote the right way in the UN—and when the, quote, evil empire, unquote, was at its height, it spent billions spreading hate and discontent among a number of ethnic groups and terrorist organizations, some of which are still raising merry hell. Including the merry hell that came from their 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.”

I got up and picked up both of our plates. “My apologies again. I was lecturing. Not a good habit for a host, especially when the guest attends the local university. I'd guess you get lectured there enough without having it shoved at you after dinner.”

She smiled, picking up the glassware and silverware. “No problem. I think you'd like my dad. He's in the air force.” I started washing, and she started drying. “Oh, he's not a pilot or anything. A senior master sergeant in maintenance.”

“What does he think of his counterculture daughter?”

She placed one dry plate upon another. “He tells me to keep on raising hell. That maybe whatever hell me and the others raise will cause people to change their minds and the way they do business. Because the status quo won't work.”

I rinsed off the glassware. “What status quo is that?”

She sighed. “The one that keeps him on deployments, year after year, from Iraq to Afghanistan and points in between. One of the reasons why my mom and him broke up.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

Haleigh focused on drying off the silverware. “It happens, Lewis. It happens.”

*   *   *

Later the rain was coming down even harder, with the wind whipping off the ocean, splattering rain against the windows and the sliding glass doors. I made a small fire in the fireplace to lighten up the living room and cut some of the dampness, and I opened up the couch, put down some sheets and blankets, and came back from upstairs with a simple blue-and-white-checked cotton nightgown.

“For you, if you'd like,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said, and then she teased me. “You always have women's clothing stashed away for unexpected visitors?”

“Only for one,” I said.

“Your girlfriend?”

“I suppose so, although saying that makes me feel like I'm back in high school.”

Haleigh said, “I take it you've been out of high school for a while.”

“College, too,” I said. “If you must know, I'm ancient.”

“How ancient is that?”

I said, “I only wear baseball caps with the bill facing forward.”

She smiled at what I said, unfolded the nightgown, and laid it out on the couch. “Where is she?”

“In Virginia.”

“Doing what?”

“Working on the presidential campaign of one Senator Jackson Hale.”

Haleigh yawned. “You know, the next time you talk to your woman friend, maybe you could tell her that the senator should really change his position on high-level nuclear waste disposal and—”

I gently touched the side of her cheek, just for a moment. “The time for debate, protests, and counterpoints is over, Miss Miller. Time to go to bed.”

She blushed, and I went upstairs.

*   *   *

I slid into my own bed, switched on the light, and read for a while, a hardcover edition of John Keegan's latest military history. I read a couple of chapters and then switched off the light, even though I wasn't particularly tired. It had been a long, long day.

In the darkness I listened to the rain and the wind slapping its way around my century-old house. There was something special and satisfying about being in a warm and dry bed in the dark and listening to the wind and rain, knowing that I would be comfortable and safe for the next several hours. I thought of my guest downstairs, hoping that she felt a bit safer and happier in a dry foldout couch instead of a damp sleeping bag and wet tent. And my Annie? Not much sleep for her, I was sure, in whatever strange hotel or motel room she was residing in, down there in Virginia.

Then there was Paula. A scared, traumatized Paula Quinn, alone in a hospital room, no doubt shuddering and dreaming through the night of nearly being killed, of being splattered with the bloody bits of what had been a living, breathing, and thinking man.