Third Strike

by Philip R. Craig

  Zee was in the kitchen loading up a picnic basket with sandwiches and pickles and potato chips and cookies. A cooler was stuffed with ice and cans of lemonade and iced tea and soft drinks. “We’re hitting the beach,” she said. “You guys want to come?”

  J.W. shook his head. “Maybe we’ll meet you there later.”

  She shrugged as if she expected that answer. “Gloria Alvarez and Mary are swinging by to pick us up. I wasn’t sure if you’d be back in time with my car, and you know how I feel about driving that clunky old Land Cruiser of yours.”

  “You can take the Wrangler,” he said. “We’re back.”

  I poked J.W.’s shoulder. He turned to me with his eyebrows arched. I gave my head a quick shake.

  He frowned at me for a moment, then I saw understanding spark in his eyes.

  He nodded and turned to Zee. “Actually,” he said to her, “you’d better not take the Jeep. On the way home just now it developed a funny clanking noise under the hood. We probably ought to get it looked at before we drive it anymore.”

  She cocked her head at him. “Clanking noise, huh?”

  “Like a handful of spoons and forks got loose under the hood,” he said. “It’s good that Gloria’s driving.”

  “Spoons and forks,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Something’s loose. You don’t want to get stuck at the beach with a car that won’t run. I’ll drop it off at Paulie’s.”

  Zee smiled, and it was hard to tell whether she saw through J.W.’s story. “I’ll let Gloria drive.”

  The toot of an automobile horn came from out front. “That’s Gloria,” Zee said. She brushed J.W.’s cheek with a kiss, did the same to mine, then picked up the picnic basket and cooler and headed for the front porch.

  “Have fun,” J.W. called after her.

  “Stay out of trouble, you two,” she said.

  After she left, J.W. sat on a kitchen stool. “That was fast thinking,” he said.

  “You thought pretty fast, too,” I said. “Spoons and forks. That was good.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure Zee believed me.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “She and the kids aren’t in the red Jeep, and that’s the point. Bad enough we took it to church this morning, and then to Frazier’s house. But don’t forget that I left it parked in plain sight in front of Larry Bucyck’s house the night before he got executed.”

  J.W. had a faraway look in his eyes that I didn’t interpret as concern for me. I thought I knew what he was thinking. He didn’t want his wife and kids in a car that killers would connect to a couple of troublemakers like us.

  “I don’t think the thugs with Uzis saw the Land Cruiser last night,” he said.

  I smiled. “Let’s hope not.”

  “I think we need to do some touring.”

  “The places on the map.”

  He nodded. “Let’s eat something first.”

  “And get out of these church clothes,” I added.

  I changed into my jeans and sneakers while J.W. made us some chicken salad sandwiches. When I got back to the kitchen, I saw that he’d also started a fresh pot of coffee brewing. He knew me well.

  We ate at the kitchen table. J.W. had his map of Martha’s Vineyard spread out in front of him, and he was frowning at it with narrowed eyes. Now and then he’d push his face closer to it and make a kind of grunting sound, as if he was having a conversation with himself.

  I didn’t interrupt. If he was drawing some inferences and making some deductions, he’d fill me in when he was ready.

  When we finished eating, I filled a big travel mug with coffee, and we went outside. “I’ll take the Land Cruiser,” he said. “You climb into the Wrangler and follow me.”

  “What about the spoons and forks?” I said.

  “Ha, ha,” he said.

  “I thought we didn’t want to be seen in the Jeep.”

  “We don’t,” he said. “Just follow me.”

  At the end of his road, we turned right onto the Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road, took another right on County Road heading into Oak Bluffs, and a few minutes later we pulled into a gas station. I stopped the Jeep behind the Land Cruiser while J.W. went inside. I could see him talking with somebody, and a minute later he came out accompanied by a gangly teenage boy who didn’t look old enough to drive.

  The kid came over to the driver’s side of the Jeep. “You can pull around back,” he said to me. “Leave it between the Ford pickup and the Mercedes. Lock up and bring me the keys.”

  I did as I was told. When I delivered the keys to the boy, he looked at J.W. “Call Paulie tomorrow, tell him what’s going on, okay?” he said.

  J.W. nodded. “I’ll call Paulie.”

  “We’re wicked backed up,” he said. “But maybe Paulie—”

  “It’s okay,” J.W. said. “Thanks for finding a spot for it.”

  J.W. and I got into the Land Cruiser and pulled out onto the road. “That was smart,” I said. “Get the car away from the house.”

  “That kid Billy,” he said, “told me their mechanics are backed up about two weeks. All the vehicles that came over on the last ferries before the strike are still here, breaking down, needing new mufflers, new tires, oil changes, and the rental cars and taxis have been on the go all summer. I had to bribe him just to let me leave the Jeep there, and it cost me extra to put it out back where you can’t see it from the road.”

  “A sound peace-of-mind investment,” I said.

  We headed away from Oak Bluffs on County Road and turned back onto the Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road heading westerly. A bike trail followed alongside. Pretty soon J.W. slowed down and turned left over the bike trail onto a dirt road. We drove slowly past a couple of shingled houses, and a hundred yards or so later the road ended in a little turnaround. J.W. stopped there and got out of the Land Cruiser.

  I got out, too. “What’s here?” I said.

  He shrugged and waved his hand at the scrubby woods. “One of the places that was circled on Dr. Lundsberg’s map is in there somewhere.”

  “Where are we?”

  He spread his arms, encompassing the whole area past the end of the dirt road. “State forest,” he said. He was walking slowly around the rim of the turnaround, peering into the woods. After a minute, he said, “Here we go. Come on.”

  He’d found a narrow pathway leading into the woods. We started following it. It was unmarked and unofficial, just a beaten-down trail that might’ve been made by deer, not people—except for the occasional discarded Marlboro pack and Miller Lite can along the way.

  We’d gone maybe fifty yards when J.W. stopped. “Hm,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The trail goes that way,” he said, pointing straight ahead, “but somebody recently went that way.” He pointed to the right. “See?”

  I looked, and I saw that a bush was broken. The cracked wood looked fresh. Then I saw that some weeds had been stepped on.

  “The Great White Hunter,” I said.

  “The Great Indian Tracker,” said J.W. “Please.”

  I followed J.W., and he tried to follow the track of whoever had veered off the trail, but pretty soon he stopped and blew out a breath. “Lost it,” he said.

  “Where would they be going?”

  He looked around, then pointed. Ahead of us was a gentle rise in the land. “That,” he said, “is about as close to a hill as we have here on the Vineyard.”

  “Let’s go up there,” I said.

  We did. The hill didn’t amount to much. It was topped with some scrubby oak and pine and a few big boulders. There was evidence that people had been there. Cigarette butts, a couple of Coke cans, a circle of blackened rocks where somebody had built a little campfire. Kids, probably, finding an isolated place to smoke dope and make out. As low as the elevation was, it was enough to give a long view of the flat Vineyard landscape looking toward the south. You could see all the way to the airport and beyond it to the shimmering ribbon of ocean at the ho
rizon.

  J.W. had visored his eyes with his hand, and he was peering around like a sea captain looking for land. “Left the damn binoculars in the car,” he muttered.

  “What’re you looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I thought I’d know it when I saw it. Now I’m not so sure. I’m not even sure if this is the place Lundsberg was pointing out on his map.”

  “Maybe if we check out some of those other spots on the map we can make a connection.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  We hiked back to the Land Cruiser. J.W. studied his map for a few minutes, then turned around and drove back out to the Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road. He went a short distance further, in the direction of Tisbury, and then took a left onto Airport Road.

  “This cuts north to south, straight through the state forest near the airport,” he muttered, as if he was talking to himself, not me. “I’m looking…somewhere along here…”

  He crept along with the Land Cruiser in first gear, peering out his window at the roadside, and after a minute or two he pulled over and stopped the car.

  We got out. J.W. stood there, shaking his head. A meadow of brown grass and low-growing shrubs rolled away to some woods a hundred yards or so from the road. A stone wall demarcated the meadow from the woods. The meadow was open. The woods were dense.

  “I don’t know,” said J.W. “Any thoughts?”

  “Me?” I said. “Nope. So far, about all I would surmise is that Lundsberg was not focusing on buildings or population centers. These two places are the opposite of that.”

  J.W. nodded. “Remote. Or as remote as you can find on the Vineyard. Places to go to get away from people. You could walk across that meadow and disappear into those woods.”

  He nodded. “Let’s keep looking.”

  We got back into the car. J.W. spread his map across both of our laps and pointed to one of the circles he’d drawn. The state forest was marked in green, and along its northern edge there was a jog in the outline. J.W. had circled that area. “There’s nothing there,” he said, jabbing at the circle. “No roads go in. No hiking trails, even. It’s just woods and fields. We could poke around in there for a week, and even if there was something to be seen, we might not see it. Let’s skip that one and head over here.” He pointed to his next circle.

  On J.W.’s map, it was located inside the green state forest area off Old County Road in West Tisbury.

  As he drove, I followed along on the map. We took a dirt road into the western part of the state forest, and pretty soon J.W. turned onto a pair of ruts that weren’t on his map.

  The ruts ended abruptly at a line of boulders that somebody had rolled there to keep vehicles from proceeding any farther. J.W. stopped, and we got out.

  On the other side of the boulders a pair of ruts disappeared into the woods.

  “Aha,” said J.W.

  “Quoting Sherlock Holmes?” I said.

  “Quoting Kermit the Frog,” he said, “who also said, The game is afoot.”

  “I don’t think Kermit said that,” I said. “Kermit said, When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

  “That was Yogi Berra,” said J.W.

  “Well,” I said, “this appears to be a fork with just a single tine on it, so shall we take it?”

  “We shall.”

  “Lead on, MacDuff.”

  “Now you’re quoting Casey Stengel,” said J.W.

  The old ruts headed east, back toward the middle of the state forest. The deeper we went into the woods, the narrower was the old roadway, until we found ourselves walking single file along a barely discernible trail.

  After ten minutes or so, I said, “You sure this is right?”

  “From what I remember on Lundsberg’s map,” said J.W., “he was pinpointing an area that would be about a mile down this trail. We should be getting to it, whatever it is.”

  “Are you seeing footprints or anything?”

  He chuckled. “I’ve got my hands full just following the trail.”

  A minute later he stopped and pointed. “Somebody went up there recently,” he said.

  The ground sloped upward, and I saw where some weeds had been crushed down as if they’d been stepped on.

  J.W. got down on his hands and knees, and after a minute he looked up at me. “There’s a heel print here where the ground is soft. It’s not that old, either. Look.”

  I looked, and I saw what he saw. “Looks like a boot,” I said. “The edges are pretty distinct. Made within the past couple of days, I bet. You can sort of see the rest of the print. It sinks pretty deep. A heavy person with a good-sized foot made it.”

  J.W. grinned at me. “Bwana,” he said.

  We were able to follow the trail of stepped-on weeds, occasional boot prints, and here and there a broken branch, to the top of a little brushy knoll. Through the bushes we could see the ocean off to our right. Straight in front of us, maybe a quarter of a mile away, was the Vineyard airport.

  As we stood there on the knoll, a plane suddenly came from behind us, so low that I instinctively ducked. It was a two-engine prop plane, the kind that would carry twelve passengers.

  It touched down on a runway and taxied directly away from us.

  I turned to J.W. and patted my heart. “Scared me,” I said.

  He nodded, but his frown told me he wasn’t paying much attention to me.

  “What is it?” I said to him.

  “Look here.” He showed me some places where tree branches and bushes had been cut off. They created the opening in the foliage through which we had been looking toward the airport.

  “All these other places we’ve been exploring,” I said.

  He nodded. “There are a couple we haven’t checked out yet, but from where they are on the map, I already know what we’ll find.”

  “Vantage points overlooking the airport,” I said. “What do you make of it?”

  J.W. shook his head. “Ex-Prez Callahan is flying in tonight, right?”

  “That’s the rumor.”

  He spread his hands open, suggesting that the conclusion was obvious.

  “You think…?”

  “I’d like to know what was in those crates that Larry Bucyck saw them unloading on Lundsberg’s dock the other night.” He turned and headed back down the trail. “Come on.”

  I followed him back to the Land Cruiser. We climbed in and J.W. started it up.

  “I assume we’re going straight to state-police headquarters without passing Go,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Why?” I said. “To tell them what we know. To report it to the authorities.”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, why do you assume that?”

  “Because it’s the prudent and responsible thing to do?”

  “And what exactly do we know that we should report?” he said. “That we found some broken twigs in the woods?”

  “Well, yeah, that,” I said, “plus there was Lundsberg’s map, and there is what Frazier told us, and there’s what happened to Larry Bucyck, and there’s Doyle and Mortison, and…” I shook my head.

  He turned and looked at me. “And?”

  “That’s not enough?”

  He smiled. “You don’t know Olive Otero and Dom Agganis the way I do. They’re good cops, all right. But they’re cautious. By the book. Plus, I’ve had some, um, run-ins with them over the years. This morning, that fiasco at Lundsberg’s place, that was the worst.”

  I nodded. “That was bad. On the other hand, yesterday we did produce Larry Bucyck’s dead body for them.”

  “Big difference,” he said, “a dead body, a few broken branches in the woods.”

  “I guess when you put it that way,” I said, “Olive and Dom are probably fed up with our stories. They probably think you and I have been crying wolf a lot lately. To me it adds up. But without some kind of proof, or somebody who’s actually in on it to explain it, it just sounds like…supposition.”r />
  “That’s not what it sounds like,” he said. “It’s what it is. Supposition. At best. We don’t know anything. We’ve got proof of nothing.” J.W. put the Land Cruiser in gear and headed back toward Old County Road. “I got an idea,” he said.

  “I bet you do,” I said. “See if we can find somebody with Uzis to shoot at us.”

  “That’s a good idea, too,” he said, “and maybe it’ll work out that way. But if we can’t make that happen, the least we can do is come up with some concrete evidence we can hand over to Agganis. That’ll show him that we weren’t hallucinating about what we saw at Dr. Lundsberg’s place last night. Then maybe he’ll listen to us.”

  “Good plan,” I said, “except where are we going to find concrete evidence?”

  “Stick with me,” he said.

  “Is the game afoot?”

  “The game is definitely afoot,” he said, “and an arm and a leg.”

  “Zounds,” I said.

  He turned right onto Old County Road, heading north toward Vineyard Haven.

  “Back to the church?” I said.

  He nodded. “I got my lock picks with me.”

  “As a lawyer and an officer of the court,” I said, “I am compelled to tell you that any evidence gained by an illegal search, plus all evidence that results from that evidence, is tainted. Fruit of the poisoned tree and inadmissible in a court of law.”

  “Thank you, Clarence Darrow,” said J.W. “Right now the admissibility of evidence is the least of my concerns.”

  I shrugged. “Me, too.”

  Fifteen or twenty minutes later we were on the road that went past Father Zapata’s church. When we came to the sandy driveway that angled into the parking lot beside the church building, J.W. slowed down enough for us to see that no vehicles appeared to be parked there. But he kept going, driving slowly past the scrubby woods and an occasional shingled house, and he didn’t stop for about a quarter of a mile, where we came upon a low white ranch-style building with swings and seesaws and jungle gyms in the side lot and a sign reading HAPPY TOT DAY CARE out front.

  No vehicles were parked in that lot, either. Day-care centers were evidently closed on Sundays.