Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  He trailed his fingers along the weathered cedar shingles of the Stinson's net shed. Perly Stinson was almost eighty, hands knotted up with arthritis, hadn't set a net or trap in years. No sons. Another five years, ten years, heavy snow would cave in the roof or a northeaster would swipe a wave over the dock, and the wreckage would join the driftwood on the cobble beach. Nobody else would use the shed, though. It had been in the Stinson family since God was a baby.

  A "mailbox," Ben had called it, a blind drop just like in the spy movies. One man would leave something, another would come along an hour, a day, a week later and pick it up. They never saw each other. Kept the right hand from knowing what the left hand was doing, or who the left hand was. Couldn't both be caught in the same raid.

  The door was just where it had always been. Jumpy as Gary felt, he wouldn't have been surprised if it had moved or hidden from him. He tapped the switch on his radio, alerting Ben.

  The earphone hissed back at him. "All clear."

  Ben had chosen different radios, UHF bands, on the off chance the Pratts would be listening on the one they'd got from Dad. And he had to keep transmissions short so a scanner couldn't lock on. The terse sentences and voiceless coded signals only added to the whole "nacht und nebel" atmosphere.

  Now was the point where it got interesting, just like seeing if Sue would swat his fingers off the top button of her blouse. Which she hadn't. Instead, she'd started working from the bottom up while he fumbled from the top down, and their hands had met in the middle before parting on separate scouting missions.

  Focus, dingleberry! He pulled out a thin probe of spring steel and slipped it into the padlock, then fitted the flat torque lever into the remaining slot. According to Ben, the main problem with this lock would be age and corrosion. You couldn't really twist harder on picks, like you could with a key. A little spray can of WD-40 had joined the kit, just in case.

  The probe slid in and out of the key slot, riding over the pins. He could feel each one yield a smidgen. Steady pressure on the torque held them down until he could push them further. The gloves made things harder, even as thin as they were. But somebody else had used this lock recently; it didn't turn as hard as he'd feared. It snapped open, and Gary pushed on the door. It swung away from him, silently. They'd oiled the hinges, too.

  The inside of the shed was pitch black. He tapped a code on his radio, updating Ben. A single click came back as an answer. Gary slipped inside and pushed the door nearly shut. Then he pulled out his penlight and looked around. His heart thumped, and the wavering shadows thrown by the flashlight all looked like cops or drug-runners. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry.

  This was the first thing he'd ever done that was flat-out illegal. Nothing like running a stop sign or swiping a throat-burning swallow of Dad's vodka. Illegal entry was a felony. Heck, possession of "burglar's tools" was one, too. So why did he feel like Sue had just slipped her hand inside his pants?

  The net shed looked almost exactly as it should: the dusty, rusty, spider-webbed remains of generations of working watermen. Coils of pot-warp and rough-carved buoys hung from nails, a rotting fyke net mounded one corner, broken traps waited for repairs that would never come. His eyes caught one oddity, though. The floor was clean. No dust, which meant no footprints.

  Now to see if Ben's grapevine knew what it was talking about. "Third bait-bucket on the left," it had said. Gary lifted an old oak-slat lobster pot down, then another. The nets of both parlor and funnel had rotted as thin as cobwebs, and he handled them gently so as to leave no trace. Then he looked into the wooden tub. Three plastic-wrapped foil packages winked back at him in the glow of his flashlight.

  He picked one up and slipped it into another plastic bag, to protect him from any leakage and also avoid contaminating the evidence. It was heavy, over a pound, and hard-soft like an unopened sack of brown sugar. He tucked it into a shoulder bag, replaced the old traps, and tapped another code on the radio: "heading out." The earphone clicked an "all clear" back at him.

  He turned off his flashlight. He stepped through the door and into the dark fog. He pulled the door shut and made sure the lock was set in the hasp and staple. If he got caught now, he was in real trouble.

  So how come it felt as good as that first time out in the quarry with Sue?

  *~*~*

  Gary studied the green lines on the oscilloscope screen. He turned a knob clockwise, then counterclockwise. The square peaks and valleys of the dual traces merged and separated. They matched perfectly. He'd checked it three times now, and they'd matched perfectly every time. Nerves.

  He glanced up at Ben. "It can't be this simple."

  His uncle shrugged. "What's so complicated? You've got a remote control. It transmits. The car receives. The code matches. The system turns off. Those are all simple declarative sentences, no subordinate clauses or conditional wishy-washy ifs, ands, or buts. One of the rules of the game says that what one person transmits, another can intercept and decode."

  "But that isn't a security system."

  "Every security system ever invented has a weak spot. Sometimes it's a physical flaw, sometimes it's a bypass, sometimes it's a human with a taste for something you can offer him. That was true when you had an Australopithecus with a sharp rock guarding his tribe's dead warthog, and it's true with the most sophisticated computer lock ever made. All any security system ever does is raise the cost of admission."

  Gary looked down at the remote control on the workbench. The "cost of admission" in this case just meant buying a duplicate unit from a dealer up in Naskeag Falls and reprogramming it to the frequency and code they'd intercepted. It still seemed too easy.

  Ben must have read his thoughts. "Locks and alarms are aimed at amateurs. Take a step back from the problem and look at it. That car has eight big panes of glass. You want to get into it, all you need is a rock. Sure, the alarm will go off. But you could steal anything inside and be gone in a matter of seconds. It just takes a little planning and nerve. We're going to the trouble of matching the security because we don't want them to know we've been there. Not 'til it's too late."

  Ben had a small circuit board in his right hand, a couple of IC chips and input-output networks on a square of green board about an inch and a half across. He rolled it across the backs of his fingers like a parlor magician doing coin tricks with a quarter, then made it vanish. It reappeared in his other hand. Ben leaned forward, reached over to Gary's ear, and pulled a duplicate out of thin air. "Two for the price of one."

  By now, Gary was getting used to Ben's antics. He just shrugged and passed his uncle another breadboard assembly of chips and dangling wires. It looked more like a bunch of dead bugs soldered to a maze of copper Egyptian hieroglyphics than a working circuit. Ben plugged wires into the board in his right hand, connected up a speaker and battery, and pushed a button.

  "Red Subaru station wagon," the flat tones of synthesized speech repeated. "Maine plate ten-three-five-seven-Victor, Stonefort Commons ten AM. Storage compartment over left rear wheel well."

  Gary frowned. "And that's enough to bring the cops?"

  "Special DEA hotline. They only give the number out to undercover agents and trusted informants. They'll be there, with bells on."

  "Why use the voice circuit?"

  "Every call is recorded, with caller ID logged. Don't want to give them a voiceprint. I'll use a pay phone over in Alder Mills when you give me the signal."

  "Aren't we taking a chance, saying where the car will be?"

  Ben shrugged. "The guy has been there every morning for a week — shows up between 9:15 and 9:45, leaves about 10:30. Cup of coffee and a Danish, sits there and reads the Naskeag Falls paper. If he doesn't show, I'll file an amended flight plan for him."

  Gary still thought it seemed unnecessarily complicated. "Why didn't we just tell the cops where the stuff was?"

  "Three reasons. Nobody would ever believe old Perly Stinson knew anything about it. The stuff didn't belong to the Pr
atts in the first place. And if we work this right, we can get both the cops and the other guys down on Tom Pratt's ass."

  "Who are the other guys?"

  "I don't know. I don't want to know, and neither do you."

  "What's in the package?"

  Ben grinned at him. "Same answer."

  Gary wrinkled his nose. He was curious and had his suspicions about both questions. Like, Ron Pelletier and his French Connection. Heroin. However, those were minor worries.

  "Have you heard anything from Aunt Alice?"

  "No. She asked me not to call — I think she's scared of a tap on her phone. She's supposed to be out of town, rather than hiding in the cellar." Ben didn't look as if he was happy with his own explanation.

  "What about Dad? Have you heard anything from him?"

  Now Ben looked definitely sour. "Not a peep, son. That damned Dragon won't even say 'Good morning' to me. I'd hoped you would have some word."

  Gary fingered the pendant at his chest. It felt dead. Something had happened, a couple of days ago. The Tear had broadcast rage mixed with a pain like burning. Then it fell silent and cold.

  "Nothing." He didn't want to think about what that might mean.

  *~*~*

  The other job had been about as safe a burglary as you could find. Gary knew that, had known that in spite of what his sweaty palms had tried to tell him. It had been a perfect place to start.

  This one was dangerous.

  He stared into the darkness, breathing slowly, working up his nerve. Mom was dead. Drowned. No matter what the police thought, she hadn't killed herself. Gary had pushed himself through the shock and tears and into a quiet, deadly rage. Ben had told him the red Subaru had something to do with her death. The car was tied to the Pratts. And they damn well knew the Pratts were holding Dad. Now Gary could fight back. This might be dangerous, but it was important. He could do it. He switched off the headlights and climbed out of Dad's car.

  The fog had thickened in the past three hours, but it didn't help much when your target sat right under a monster mercury-vapor yard light. It didn't help much when that yard light sat twenty feet off of Highway 178, the closest thing to a main road in the town of Stonefort. Now that same fog was a problem for him rather than for his target. He couldn't see oncoming cars. He couldn't see some dippy insomniac out walking a dog at 3:00 AM. He couldn't see some crazed drug-runner sitting in an upstairs window with an AK-47, just daring somebody to touch that car.

  Walk like that dippy insomniac, he reminded himself. Walk like you don't care who sees you. If you sneak up on the car, you'll look suspicious. Next time, borrow John Thompson's Brittany Spaniel for the night, as camouflage. Or Hillary Denton's brain-dead Newfie hound.

  Just his luck, either one of them would get tangled up with a skunk at the critical moment. Scratch the Newfie, for sure. At least once a month, you could smell that idiot dog's nighttime adventures on Hillary when she got on the school bus the next morning.

  He walked through the shadows toward the buzzing yard light, senses twitching. The air smelled dank and earthy, losing the salt and seaweed this far from the shore. He heard every drip from the trees and bushes, every "greep-greep" from the frogs or toads or whatever the hell made that noise. Maybe bugs. Something feathery touched the side of his neck, and he swatted it.

  The hum of tires rose out of the background. He glanced around, picked a thick tree ten feet off the road, and became a shadow. Keep your face turned away, the white would show up. Don't move — movement catches the eye.

  The car whooshed by, tunneling the fog with its headlights, neither slowing nor flashing its brake lights. Gary found he could breathe again. He studied the retreating trunk and roof. No light bar, no lettering: not a cop. It vanished into the night, pulling the red glow of its taillights in after it.

  He shifted the satchel from his right shoulder to his left. Over a pound, he'd guessed. More likely a kilo. He wondered if it was heroin or cocaine or some recreational wonder-lab nose candy. PCP. Ecstasy. Whatever it was, he was carrying enough to stone all Sunrise County and half of Atlantic Canada. It might be the price of Dad's freedom, if he could ever get through this crazy night.

  He stepped away from the tree, nerves settled enough for him to move again. The tire hum died nearly to silence. Then it blossomed again — fast, insanely fast, driven by the snarl of a high-powered engine. High-beam headlights tore through the fog, with a flashing blue bar above them. A siren blipped a warning, and the cruiser roared past before Gary even saw it. Another siren chased it, and he managed to move back into the woods in time.

  This time the lights flashed red. Stonefort ambulance. Must be another drunken smash-up on Route 1.

  Well, at least now Gary knew where the night deputy was. He swallowed his heart and blinked the flashes of red and blue out of his eyes. That Subaru wagon still lurked under the yard light, fifty yards away. Ben had scouted it out. No dogs, the man rented from a relative of the Pratts and lived alone, he kept regular hours. Whatever he did for the drug-runners, it wasn't pushing dime bags on the street corners.

  Do it!

  He concentrated on each step, striding along like he owned the road. Confidence. At twenty yards, he triggered the remote. The car beeped softly back at him. Either he'd disarmed the security, or the guy hadn't bothered to set it and Gary had just armed the system. He couldn't remember whether a single beep meant "armed" or "disarmed." He felt brain-dead, just like Hillary's Newfie.

  Set the satchel down beside the rear wheel, in the shadow. Crouch down, so your own shadow is just a blur against the back of the car, hidden from the house. Fish out the picks, the different set for a two-sided key. Grit your teeth and touch the lock.

  Nothing happened. The alarm system was off. He slid the pick into the lock, set the torque lever, and started probing. He had to slip two sets of pins for this lock, and he'd never done that well in practice. The gloves bothered him, and he started to pull them off in irritation. Then he remembered what he was carrying. This car was going to get a lot of attention if things went right. Any set of prints would attract unpleasant questions.

  He backed up and started over. Reset the torque, this time from the top because those pins seem easier. Move the probe in and out, keeping steady pressure. Patience.

  The lock clicked and turned. He was in. The latch was under the license-plate holder. He pressed it, and the tailgate lifted. As Ben had predicted, the dome light didn't go on — the driver kept it off, so he wouldn't be seen getting in and out of the car at night. Thank God for small favors. Gary found the built-in storage compartment over the left rear wheel. He flipped the switch on his penlight.

  The compartment was full. Two quarts of oil, a box of flares, battery jumper cables, blankets — this driver didn't trust the back roads in winter. The compartment under the floor held tire chains, a come-along, and towrope. "Be Prepared." Frigging Eagle Scout in the drug trade.

  Gary tried the compartment over the right wheel well. It held spare gloves and a ski hat, but there was enough room for his package. He slipped it out of the satchel and the extra plastic bag, wedged it in carefully, and set the plastic catch holding the cover panel.

  God, he was glad to be rid of that thing. It was probably worth fifty grand wholesale, or twenty years in federal prison — whichever came first. He backed out of the car, lowered the rear gate, and pushed it closed.

  It wouldn't latch. He leaned on it, and it still wouldn't click shut. Every time he let go, the damned gate started to wheeze open. Gary looked around, hands sweating again. Ben had said the guy slept in the front upstairs room, maybe thirty feet away. The sirens had probably woken him up.

  He gritted his teeth, raised the gate, and slammed it shut. It caught. He crouched down in the shadow and waited forever, expecting house lights or a shout, expecting shots or sirens or a cold voice telling him to stand up slowly and keep his hands in view. After a few minutes of pins and needles, he pulled out his picks again to set the lock. It we
nt faster, the first thing that had gone right since he'd left the tower. He slipped back into the shadows, remembered the empty satchel, and returned for it. Then he had to turn back again. He'd forgotten to arm the security system. It beeped at him, a quiet series of three electronic blips.

  Fifty yards down the road, he took a minute to catch up on his breathing. A pickup rolled by in the fog, cruising in no particular hurry, two heads scrunched close together in the cab. That same twitching high flooded through Gary, even better than after the job on the dock.

  I've done it!

  A hundred yards further and he turned off onto the woods road where he'd parked Dad's car. He unlocked it, slid into the seat, and sat shivering for a minute or two. He'd actually done it. Now the cops would have to search the Pratt place.

  Ben was waiting. Gary pulled a microphone from the dash, switched on the radio, and checked the soft green glow of the frequency readout for the third or fourth time. Pulsing the mike switch changed the setting to another frequency, also correct.

  "Done," he transmitted. "Right rear. Repeat, right rear."

  Was that too long? How long did it take for a scanner to lock on?

  "Roger."

  The digital clock said 3:45 AM. And the car even started. Gary pulled out on the highway and headed for home, switching his worries to skunks or deer in the road, hidden by the fog. He wondered when he'd be able to get to sleep, with all the adrenaline flushing through his veins.

  I've done it!

  Chapter Seventeen

  Caroline Haskell shivered and cranked the rental car's heater up another two notches. She fantasized the headlines: Promising Young Ethnologist Found Frozen in Ditch. She reminded herself that this was normal weather for coastal Maine; she'd be lucky to see seventy at high noon on a clear day. The sun wouldn't be up for another hour or so, and the fog added a bone-deep chill she hadn't felt in over a year. Prodigy Ph.D. Candidate Dies of Hypothermia. Two days ago, the temperature in Phoenix had hit a hundred and eight. Arizona did that kind of thing in June.