Dead Silence df-16

by Randy Wayne White

  To the moneyed class, and their staffs, utility workers are an invisible essential, like plumbing.

  An hour earlier, Tomlinson had dropped me in South Hampton where I’d rented a white pickup truck and bought a few things, coveralls included. Because there were tools and a ladder in the family’s machine shop, I didn’t need much else. On my way to the Myles estate, I had completed my costume by stealing two orange highway cones from a restaurant closed for the winter.

  It was now 10:45 a.m. The truck was parked along the road, near a utility terminal. One cone was behind the truck, another next to a miniature green silo that was a connecting block for area telephones.

  There couldn’t be many. Along this section of coastline, mansions had been built on dunes, far off the highway, with acres of space between. The Tomlinson estate was on the point of the peninsula, two miles down the road.

  “Nelson was practically our neighbor,” Tomlinson had told me, explaining why it seemed commonplace when his brother and Myles were both tapped by Skull and Bones.

  In an area this wealthy, maybe it was.

  The Myles mansion lived up to the billing. It was a medieval-looking four-story that resembled “country houses” on England’s North Sea coast, because that’s where it had come from, shipped over in the nineteenth century, and reconstructed block by block. It was sandstone and slate, with turrets and roofed porticos that would have been hidden by hedges and a forest of hardwoods if it hadn’t been January.

  Even now, it wasn’t easy to see. That’s why I had been on the ridge. A stone wall, head-high, surrounded the place, interrupted by iron gates at several entrances. The main gate and the service gate opened on electronic tracks. On the seaward side, wrought-iron gates exited onto the beach.

  To each gate was affixed a brass placard that read SHELTER HOUSE.

  Shelter House was a castle, not a fortress. Breaking into the place wouldn’t have been difficult after midnight, but it was before noon on a bright winter Saturday. At the staff entrance, two economy cars were parked near a Dumpster: resident caretakers. There was electronic security, including cameras at each gate, but the guard station at the main entrance was empty.

  Getting into the house undetected should be easy. Spending ten or twenty minutes searching the place without interruption would be more difficult. Local police knew me now. If I didn’t play it right, I would add to Barbara’s embarrassment by calling her from jail.

  I walked to the truck, pretended to put something on the front seat just so I could slam the door, then knelt by the terminal. I loosed the nut and slipped off the silo cover. Inside were dozens of brass connection strips, a maze of candy-colored wires and heavier rubber-coated wires. The candy-colored wires came from the main cable. The rubber-coated wires were for local use. Spend your life on the water, working with boats, either you learn basic wiring or you find a job inland.

  Only four of the connector blocks were in use. An installer had used tape and a Sharpie to ID each of the four wires running underground to the mansion. I checked them, one by one. Two had phone numbers written on the tape. Two were DSL lines for Internet access.

  I copied the numbers into a notebook, then put on gloves. Telephone systems use low voltage, but no one likes getting shocked. No normal person anyway.

  Using a crescent wrench, I loosened a nut and removed a green wire. With a needle-nosed pliers, I stripped several inches of insulation, then bent the wire so it made loose contact with the positive side of the strip. All four rows were now partially grounded. Phones inside the mansion might still be usable, but there would be a lot of static.

  Finally, I crossed the two DSL lines. No more Internet.

  There.

  I covered the terminal and crossed the road to the main gate. I pressed the intercom button and waited. Pressed it twice more before someone answered.

  “Shelter House, can I help you?” A woman’s voice.

  I said, “I think you’ve got trouble on the line, ma’am.”

  “What line?”

  Above me, a motor whirred, and I smiled up at a security camera. “Check your phone, ma’am. I’ll wait.”

  When the woman returned, she said, “Could what’s wrong cause my computer to go screwy, too? A couple minutes ago, the screen went blank and the whole system froze. I was on the Internet.”

  I had the notebook out, not looking at the camera, as I leafed through pages. “We’re not supposed to give computer advice. It’s some kind of liability deal. Let me make sure I’m at the right place before I say anything.” I read off the phone numbers I had just copied.

  “That’s us. They’re both unlisted, so we hardly ever get calls. It could’ve been out for days.”

  “Could’ve been,” I replied.

  “The kitchen phone sort of works, but the important thing is my computer. I was right in the middle of a project, using the cable instead of using the Wi-Fi. Damn it! Please tell me it’s the phone. I just spent three hundred bucks for a new hard drive.”

  “I don’t know…”

  The woman said, “I’ve got a term paper due and I’m screwed if the Internet doesn’t work.”

  Not a woman, a high school student, I decided, until she added, “I just made coffee. I can have it waiting.”

  No, a college student. High school girls didn’t offer coffee.

  I said, “There’s no reason for me to come inside if it’s your fuse box.”

  “Just for a minute, as a favor?”

  I said, “Well… if I’ve got your permission, I guess it’s okay,” picturing myself at the police station answering questions. One of life’s simple rules: Never, ever lie to a cop. Speak even a benign untruth and he will suspect you of murder.

  “Thank you!”

  I stepped back as the gate opened, adding, “It’s not that I don’t want to help,” wanting her to understand that phone men could be nice but we weren’t easy.

  21

  Through the window of Nelson Myles’s third-floor office, I could sit at his desk and look inland at the ridge where I’d hidden in the trees or stand by the elliptical machine and face the ocean. Bathroom, dressing room and spa all had views.

  Wind gusted off the Atlantic, west to northwest. The beach was silver, deserted for miles, an unfriendly corridor where salt foam tumbled like tumbleweed and sand blew in veils heavy as snow.

  There was a loft. I went up the steps and found a bed covered with a Yale comforter, a Yale throw rug on the floor, Yale pennants and a Yale varsity jacket hanging on a hat stand. Big yellow Y s everywhere but on the bay windows. I was standing near the window when I saw a police car slow as it passed my rental truck. I watched the vehicle stop, back up, then the officer on the passenger side opened his widow. He was checking the truck’s license plate. Smart cop.

  I had been inspecting the jacket. Nelson Myles had lettered in golf-the man had to have been pretty good-but I let the sleeve swing free, concentrating on the squad car. Now the officer was getting out, hand on his sidearm but using it more as a support. A young guy who had hurt his back. A hockey player, I guessed… or maybe he’d moved furniture into a new apartment.

  I was taking out my cell phone as the cop looked into the truck’s bed, then put a hand on the bumper to read the license. Watching the man’s reaction, I switched on my cell phone, thought for a moment, then dialed 911.

  I needed more time.

  Until the squad car, things had gone smoothly. I’d had only a minute or two to look around the rich man’s office, with its pecky walnut library, its marble floors and fireplace, walls checkered with mementos, photos of horses competing with Geronimo statuettes and Yale for space.

  Stop there and I could have allowed myself to be believe that Nelson A. Myles was incapable of kidnapping a child. On the mantle were pictures of a son and a daughter, along with swimming medals and soccer trophies they had won.

  I could have gone away convinced the man was a rock of stability: civic awards, photos of Myles with two presiden
ts, plaques of recognition from charities. I’m sure other visitors had been won over.

  But the office also contained hints of discontent that, when viewed in context, provided a more powerful lens.

  There were no golf clubs or any golf accoutrements, yet mementos from Skull and Bones and his years at Yale dominated the decor. Why had the collegiate golfer given up golf?

  Out of the dozens of photos, there was only one of the children’s mother, Connie Myles, a recent shot, but the woman was part of the background, a vague presence. Drunken eyes, a lost expression on a face that had been stretched and glossed by cosmetic surgery. And there were no photos of a new significant other, a secret lover, the cliched confidante who was “just a friend.”

  The absence of golf clubs could be explained: a bad back, like the cop. But the absence of a girlfriend told me he was probably involved with the woman who had let me into the house, Roxanne Sofvia, the off-season manager. She was a thirty-four-year-old college student, working on her master’s via the Internet when she wasn’t overseeing this twenty-acre estate and its fifty-eight-room castle.

  “You have no idea, the upkeep,” Roxanne had told me as she steered me into the kitchen, and handed me a mug of coffee. “It makes me tired to talk about it.”

  She preferred discussing her computer problems or her field of study.

  “Marine biology,” she’d said. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. But it’s not all playing with dolphins and saving the planet, like some people think. And there’s zero money.”

  I’d replied, “Oh? No kidding?”

  “You’re surprised. Everyone is.”

  She resembled a woman I knew. No, a woman I had recently met. The Tomlinson caretaker, Greta Finnmark. Milkmaid breasts beneath a wool sweater, blond hair tied back, Nordic cheeks and chin and glacial Nordic eyes. She had a vague sensuality that confused the pheromone responders, a slow-acting chemistry that invited a second look, then a third. The kitchen had smelled of tea and baking bread, the room too warm because of a clanking radiator. They became catalysts as the woman’s face took form, a solemn angularity on a body that swelled, then retreated, in curvature beneath wool and denim.

  “Sofvia,” I’d asked her, “isn’t that Slavic? Or Jewish, I suppose,” which was a clumsy attempt to find out her maiden name.

  “You’re not allowed to talk about computers but you’re allowed to discuss race?” she’d replied. I could sense her mind working. Either I was a Zionphobe or too inquisitive to be a telephone repairman. I got the impression a Ph. D. could have asked the same thing, though, and it would have been okay. As cultures mix, an affected sensitivity has replaced racial swagger. Ethnic posing-twenty-first-century mimicry and probably a healthy precursor as we evolve into an American race.

  “I have a friend,” I told her. “Her last name was Pettish until she married a pharmacist. A guy with a name that sounded a little like Sofvia. He arrived four years ago from the Czech Republic and already owns a couple of stores.”

  “I see,” Roxanne said, giving me a chance to squirm as she stared. If she saw anything, she saw the truth because it was the truth.

  There were a couple of other things that I believed were true: Roxanne Sofvia was Greta’s daughter. She had inherited a full dose of maternal genes. The similarities were striking. Roxanne, I felt confident, was having an affair with Nelson Myles, lord of this castle and also her boss.

  “We need to restore the coach house,” she had told me. “We need to change the entire landscape theme,” she’d said. “When I finally find the right person to run this place,” she had confided, “I’ll be able to concentrate on what I should be doing. Getting my master’s degree. A full-time staff, that’s what we need-”

  Roxanne, the master’s mistress, was already talking as if she was mistress of the house. Her confidence, though, was forced. I got the impression the relationship had banged a rock or two.

  Because the woman followed me every step I took, I had to find a way to get rid of her. It wasn’t just because I needed time alone to gather information, though I did. Roxanne’s physical presence was distracting. It wasn’t because she wasn’t beautiful, although she was attractive in a bony, sleepy sort of way. She was even pretty by Hollywood standards. But Roxanne had a… scent, that was the word, an odorless scent that was atomized by her eyes, the pitch of her voice, her attitude, and by her body, too.

  Mostly, by her body. It was key to her slow-acting chemistry. First look: bland face, vague shape. Second look: interesting eyes, bony hips, and- Hmm -the inference of a bulky sweater that wasn’t bulky. Now when I looked at the woman, I saw an ovular symmetry, breasts and hips, and skin that was translucent as lingerie. The effects were cumulative.

  The few women-very few-who are born with that chemistry don’t lose it. Doesn’t matter their age. Greta was an example. Symptoms are a twitching, internal awareness that, ultimately, disconnects the brain as the body shunts blood to a less sophisticated command center.

  Distracting? You bet. I needed space.

  Roxanne had discovered a useful female finesse: Accidentally touch her breasts to a man’s arm and she would get what she wanted. Turn my back to her and there she was, her body pliant, communicating with mine.

  “Are you too warm? It’s that damn radiator system. We need to completely remodel this place.”

  No, I’d told her. In fact, I wanted my coat back. “Fixing your computer just moved to the top of the list. How’s that sound?”

  She had smiled. “Are you serious? I would be so damn thankful.”

  Me, too. After a few minutes alone with Greta’s daughter, I felt shaky. So I had returned to my truck and switched the DSL wires. But I didn’t fix the partial ground.

  “Check the phone,” I said when I returned to the kitchen.

  “The static’s worse than ever,” Roxanne had replied, her tone impatient.

  “What about your computer?”

  “The phone’s still screwed up, why bother trying?”

  I lied. “I rigged an experimental thing, just to get the computer working. You mind?”

  She sat at a desk and I watched her fingers parachute over the keys, attempting a dialogue with the Internet. It took a few seconds for her to smile. The glacial eyes brightened. “You did it! I think it’s even faster than before.”

  I grumbled, “Well, we’re getting there,” and headed up the stairs.

  Two minutes later-just enough time to orient myself in the rich man’s office-I saw the police cruiser slow and the cop with the bad back step out. He was peering through my

  driver’s window as I dialed 911.

  “What’s your emergency?” Beep.

  I didn’t try to disguise my voice. “It’s not an emergency. Maybe I’m imagining things but is there a women’s group in the area-nudists-who do the polar-bear thing? You know, jump in the water when it’s cold?”

  “Excuse me?”

  I said, “I’m no prude, but I’m thinking women shouldn’t be parading around naked on the beach behind mansion row. One girl, maybe, but four or five-it’s too much. Not at eleven in the morning.”

  “You mean South Hampton?”

  I said, “Right on the beach. The cheapest place would cost me, what? Ten million? For ten million, a family expects protection. There’s gotta be some kind of law against public nudity.”

  “Sir, are you serious?”

  Watching the cop test the door to my truck, I said, “I’ve never been more serious in my life. Even if it’s a sorority party or some sort of initiation-whatever-the girls should be wearing bikini bottoms. Or towels. It’s January!”

  “You are serious.”

  I said, “More serious by the second,” watching the cop try the passenger door.

  “What did you say, five college girls? I need your name, please.”

  I lowered my voice to tell the woman, “My wife’s upset, that’s the only reason I’m calling. But I don’t want to make the girls mad if th
ey’re my new neighbors. See what I mean?”

  I turned off the phone and watched. It wasn’t long before the squad car became animated with blue strobes. The officer with the bad back jumped in, moving faster than he had before.

  Some people can’t let go of the good old days. Maybe Nelson Myles was one. His emotional attachments to Yale and his fraternity were reaffirmed by every wall. Inside his office desk, too. I had pried the lock and was going through drawers.

  The man’s picture was in front of me. A recent shot, Myles and a former governor standing near a Learjet, the same as the model Learjet on the desk.

  Myles was a disappointment. I expected square-jawed ascendance. Wealth, breeding, confidence. Instead, Nelson looked dour in his Wall Street suit and European glasses. His face sagged as if he’d sprung a leak. Maybe he had-many people do after college. The grinning fraternity boy I had seen in the Skull and Bones photo had lost his smile, along with his hair, a lot of muscle and some of his vision. But the man’s loyalty to his alma mater was intact.

  I could picture Myles on autumn weekends, wearing his varsity jacket and a yellow tie, watching his Bulldogs on cable. Or maybe he took the ferry to Connecticut and joined fellow Bonesmen at the stadium.

  Yes, he had tickets in the file drawer. I found the invoice for season box seats. Expensive for the average man but not for a man who had a hefty stock portfolio, accounts with three banks, several million dollars in savings and more than half a million in a checking account. To a man like Myles, having ready cash was more important than a decent interest rate.

  In recent weeks, there had been three sizable withdrawals, each for seventy-five thousand dollars, and each had been converted into euros. Cash. So… he had bought more horses or part interest in another jet.

  Interesting, but I was looking for something that connected him to an intelligence agency or the Cuban Program. Or some indicator of mental instability. Fear or insanity: It had to be one or the other if Myles was involved with the kidnappers.