Third Strike

by Philip R. Craig

  J.W. turned onto the Happy Tot driveway and drove around behind the building. He nosed the Land Cruiser up to the back of the building beside a Dumpster and turned off the ignition.

  He opened the glove compartment and withdrew a black leather case.

  I pointed at it. “Your lock-picking implements?”

  He nodded and slipped the lock-picking kit into his shirt pocket.

  “They teach you to pick locks in the army?”

  “Self-taught,” he said. He rummaged around in the glove compartment again and came out with a cell phone. He turned it on and looked at it. “Still got some battery. You got your cell with you?”

  I patted my pocket. “Yes.”

  “Got my number on your speed dial?”

  “All I’ve got is Zee’s number from last summer when I called you from the ferry landing.”

  “That’s what I meant,” he said. “This is her phone.”

  We got out of the Land Cruiser. J.W. held up the ignition key for me to see, then bent down and shoved it into the dirt under the right front tire. He smoothed over the dirt, then looked up at me with his eyebrows arched.

  I nodded.

  We began moving through the woods parallel to the road, heading back to the church. We stayed close enough to the road that we could see passing vehicles, but far enough from it that nobody driving a passing vehicle would see us. When we came to a house, we went around it, keeping trees and bushes between us and the yard. The last thing we needed was to be reported as Peeping Toms or vagrants.

  We approached the church from the woods behind it. We moved slowly to the edge, crouched behind some bushes, and verified that no cars had arrived in the lot since we’d driven past. The doors and windows of the building were shut and presumably locked. The place looked deserted.

  “I’m going to go in and see what’s in that padlocked room,” J.W. whispered. “You stand watch out here. I got the phone set on vibrate. You do the same. If anything happens, anybody shows up, friend or foe, hit my cell number, let it buzz twice, then disconnect and get the hell out of here. Slip into the woods and head back to the Land Cruiser. I’ll meet you there. If I don’t show up in some reasonable amount of time, don’t hesitate to just drive away.”

  “Why are you whispering?” I whispered.

  He smiled. “Because we are being furtive and clandestine.”

  “If you want me to come inside,” I said, “vibrate me.”

  We took another look around, then scooted to the back of the building. J.W. went to the back door. It would open directly on to the front-to-back corridor where the locked room was located.

  I crouched behind an azalea bush at the rear corner of the building. From there I could see the road and the driveway and most of the parking lot. If anybody drove in, I’d spot him in time to warn J.W. and give him a chance to get out.

  It seemed to take him forever to get the back door unlocked, but when I looked at my watch, it had been only about five minutes. I didn’t know whether that was efficient or bumbling lock-picking, but I was impressed that he’d done it at all.

  He looked over at me, gave me a thumbs-up, and slipped inside, where another lock-picking challenge faced him.

  I waited there behind the azalea, alternating my attention between my watch and the entry to the church parking lot. I didn’t know whether padlocks were more or less challenging than door locks, but another ten or fifteen minutes came and went and J.W. neither reappeared nor sent me a cell-phone signal.

  Then a van turned into the driveway.

  I didn’t hesitate. I hit Zee’s speed-dial number on my cell, let it vibrate a couple times, and disconnected.

  The van turned its side to me at the front of the building, and I saw that it was Father Zapata’s landscaping truck. It reminded me that Larry had seen a van at Dr. Lundsberg’s, and men were loading crates into it. I was willing to bet it was the same van.

  The van kept going, and in an instant it was out of sight from my spot at the rear corner of the church, presumably stopped directly outside the front door.

  I heard the murmur of men’s voices. Then two car doors slammed.

  More voices.

  Somebody came around the corner, heading for the rear of the building. He was coming directly toward me.

  I looked at him only long enough to see that he was a big man wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a ball cap with the visor pulled low over his forehead. The cap had the New York Yankees logo on it.

  Then I slipped into the woods.

  I hid behind the trunk of a big oak tree and watched the big man saunter along the side of the church. He kept moving his head around, as if he expected to see something, or somebody.

  I noticed that his left hand was holding a handgun against the side of his leg.

  Where the hell was J.W.?

  I had the terrible thought that there was no cell-phone reception on this part of the Vineyard, or inside the church building. J.W. was merrily picking away at the padlock on the storeroom door, and a man with a gun was about to catch him in the act.

  The man was barely ten feet from turning the corner to the rear of the building when the back door opened and J.W. slipped out. He looked around quickly, then darted into the woods a bare instant before the man with the handgun would have seen him.

  J.W. was about thirty feet from me. I stared at him, willing him to look my way. But he kept his eyes on the man behind the church.

  When I looked back, I saw that the rear door from which J.W. had just exited had not shut tight. I wondered if the man knew the door had been closed and locked.

  This man’s job seemed to be to walk around the outside of the church, keeping watch while his compatriots presumably went inside. At one point he seemed to stare directly into my eyes, and it took a powerful act of will not to crouch lower behind my tree. But I knew any slight movement would catch his eyes.

  He walked past the back door, paying more attention to the woods than to the building. Then he stopped and turned. He looked at the door, then went up to it. He pulled it, and it came open.

  He pulled some kind of walkie-talkie from a holster on his belt and spoke into it. His voice was a rumble, but I could hear urgency in it.

  I glanced at J.W. He’d spotted me and was moving his fingers at me.

  I jerked my thumb over my shoulder.

  He nodded and slipped deeper into the woods.

  I did the same, scooting in a crouched-over position through the bushes and between the trees, half expecting shots to ring out behind me.

  But none did.

  I angled in the direction of the Happy Tot Day Care Center where the Land Cruiser waited for us. I was trotting through the woods, trying to hold back the panic. I found myself panting and sweating hard, and finally I stopped and bent over at the waist to catch my middle-aged breath.

  “That was close.” J.W.’s sudden voice behind me, practically in my ear.

  “Jesus,” I said. “You shouldn’t sneak up on a man like that. You trying to give me a heart attack?”

  “Did he spot us, do you think?”

  I shook my head. “I think we’re clear. But the back door didn’t latch. They’ll know somebody was there.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Then he looked at me and said, “Christ. I didn’t have time to lock the padlock. They’ll know we got into that storeroom, too.”

  “Well,” I said, “at least they don’t know it was us. We got away, and they didn’t see us. So what was in there?”

  “I only got a quick look inside. There was plywood covering the window, so it was pretty dark, but I could see that there were some wooden crates piled up against the wall, just like the ones that you said Larry Bucyck described.”

  “Crates,” I said. “What kind of crates?”

  “They had United States Army and some kind of serial numbers stenciled on them.”

  “You think—?”

  He nodded. “If I’m not mistaken, those crates contain military weapons.”
>
  Chapter Thirteen

  J.W.

  “We’ve got to talk to Dom Agganis,” said Brady. “Now we’ve definitely seen enough to make him listen to us. Crates of military weapons? He’ll have to take us seriously.”

  He got no argument from me. We trotted to the old Land Cruiser and got out of there. I thought the Happy Tot Day Care Center was probably glad to see us gone.

  As we headed down State Road, Brady said, “Tell me again exactly what you saw in there.”

  “I’d have seen more if I’d been keeping up with my lock-picking practice,” I said. “I should have been inside in a couple of minutes, but it took me too long, and that didn’t leave me much time inside. There were those six crates, and I thought I saw a couple of battery packs, and there was other stuff in there like you’d expect to see in a storeroom. A couple of folding tables, some folding chairs, like that. I was just about to try to figure out what was in the crates when the phone went off, and I had to get out of there.”

  “Were any of the crates open?” said Brady. “Did you see what they held?”

  “One had been kind of pried open. Looked like it held a metal tube of some kind. I couldn’t tell what it was. Like I said, I’m betting they’re weapons of some kind.”

  “You said the crates were stenciled with the words United States Army,” said Brady. “Anything else? Any other markings that might tell us what they held?”

  I coaxed an image of the room into my mind as I drove. There wasn’t much that was new, but I did remember some printing on the crates. “F-I-M-9-2 was stenciled on the sides,” I said. “There was more, but that’s all I can remember. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  I switched gears. “Did you recognize the guy with the gun?”

  “No. A big guy with a Yankee cap and a pistol.”

  “Two reasons to be scared of him.”

  “I’d have been scared,” Brady said, “even if he’d been wearing a Red Sox cap.”

  “Tell me about the car.”

  “It was a van with the Zapata Landscaping logo on the door.”

  I felt my eyebrows rise. “Was Zapata there, too?”

  It was Brady’s turn to look inward and try to conjure up an image from his memory. He frowned and shook his head. “The van had tinted windows, so I don’t know how many people were in there or who they were. The only guy I saw was the Yankee fan.”

  We came to Vineyard Haven and drove on toward Oak Bluffs. The road was full of summer cars, and we crawled over the drawbridge not much faster than we could walk.

  “Where do all these people come from?” asked Brady.

  “Pilgrims who came seeking the Promised Land, found it, and now can’t leave because of the strike. The gods are jesters. What do you think the van was doing there?”

  “I bet they were there to clean out that room,” said Brady. “Those crates don’t hold stuff you normally find in the storage room of a meeting hall. The van was there to haul off the crates.”

  “If you’re right,” I said, “by the time we tell Dom what we saw, the evidence will be gone. Just like up at Lundsberg’s. If he actually does go to the meetinghouse, he’ll probably find a bunch of nuns having tea.”

  But Dom didn’t toss us out of his office, and he didn’t go find the coven of tea-drinking nuns, because when we walked into the state-police office on Temahigan Avenue, we found a fresh-faced young police officer sitting behind the desk. He looked about twelve years old, and I knew immediately that he was one of the summer cops who come down for the season to help out, and who live in the barracks above the office while they’re here. His name, according to a silver plaque on his shirt, was Olaf Nordman.

  “May I help you?” he asked. His face was as pink and round as the fabled baby’s ass, and he looked as innocent.

  “Yes,” I said. “I need to talk with Dom Agganis, and I need to do it now.”

  His baby face became less angelic. “What’s the problem? Maybe I can help you.”

  I instantly knew that he couldn’t. I gave him my name and introduced Brady. “We talked with Sergeant Agganis and Officer Otero earlier,” I said, “and we’re here to give them more of the same story. It’s important that we see them right away.”

  “Sergeant Agganis and Officer Otero are out of the office and won’t be back until later,” said Olaf. “What’s this story about?”

  I pointed to the right side of the desk. “There’s a tape recorder in there. If you’ll get it out, I’ll go over everything, old and new. There’s a lot of detail, so I think the tape will help.”

  Olaf made no motion toward the drawer. “Why don’t you just tell me your story? If we need a tape of it we can get it later.” His voice suggested both patience and repressed irritation.

  “We don’t have time for this,” said Brady, speaking as much to me as to the young officer.

  “We’ll have to make it,” I said. I leaned toward the desk. “All right, from the beginning, here’s what’s happened.” I started to talk, speaking fast and sticking strictly to the facts. After perhaps two minutes of my rapid-fire speech, the young policeman held up his hand.

  “All right,” he said. “Let me get the tape recorder.” He did that, turned on the machine, and spoke into a mike, giving his name and ours and noting the time and place. Then he handed me the mike and said, “Start again.”

  I did, and with Brady’s additions and clarifications, we put the whole tale into the tape, including almost everything we’d seen, done, and heard since we’d last talked with the police. The only things we omitted from our report were our own illegal acts.

  When we were through, Olaf turned off the tape recorder and reached for the radio transmitter on the desk.

  “We’re shorthanded,” he said as he pulled the mike toward him, “but I’ll see if the Tisbury police can check the meetinghouse.”

  “Tell them to be careful,” said Brady. “There was a guy with a gun up there.”

  “I’ll tell them,” said Olaf, and he picked up the phone and did. When he finished making his request, he hung up and turned back to us. “You two had better stick around. Sergeant Agganis will want to talk with you.”

  “Dom and Olive know us and can find us if they need to,” I said. I scribbled our cell-phone numbers on a slip of paper and gave it to the young police officer. “They can contact us at these numbers.”

  “I suppose I could arrest you,” said Olaf.

  Brady shook his head. “You have no charges.”

  “I can probably think of one.”

  “Don’t waste your time,” said Brady. “Instead, get hold of Dom and tell him what we just told you. Come on, J.W.”

  Brady turned and walked out, and I followed him.

  “Maybe you should start a religious cult,” I said, as we went to the truck. “You’re a born leader, fearless in the face of authority, charismatic, and gifted with a golden tongue. Look how easily you got me to follow you.”

  “Leaders are people who jump in front of crowds that are already moving,” said Brady. “I didn’t think you planned to hang around waiting for Dom to show up, so I led the way out. I want to get back to your computer.”

  “Fine. I want to go there anyway to spread out that map again and to collect some hardware. I’m tired of being the only guy in town without a gun. What do you want to do on the computer?”

  “I want to get on the Internet,” said Brady. “Everything is on the Web if you look long enough and hard enough. We’ve been running into trouble ever since I came down here, but we don’t know what we’re dealing with. The bad guys have already killed two people, and the pace seems to be picking up. Things are happening. I feel like I’m in a movie that’s being fast-forwarded.”

  It was barely mid-afternoon, and it seemed as if I’d already put in a couple of days without sleep, but I was also filled with the same sense of accelerating conspiracy of which Brady spoke. I drove home faster than the old Land Cruiser was used to
going.

  When we parked in the yard and went into the house, I was glad to find that Zee and the children weren’t there. My coldest reasoning told me that they were in no danger, but my hottest emotions said that they were. Jung would have considered that conflict normal, but I didn’t like it. My feelings are never totally under control, but I’m happier when my mind is running things.

  “You know where the computer is,” I said to Brady.

  He nodded and went there.

  I went to the gun cabinet, got out the old .38 Smith and Wesson that I’d carried long before, when I’d been on the Boston PD. I loaded it and stuck it in my belt, and then I loaded the little Beretta P80 that Zee had used before she’d graduated to her Colt .45 and become a competitive target shooter.

  I put the Beretta on the kitchen table and unrolled my map. I studied it, taking particular note of the circled areas we’d visited earlier. I almost immediately felt my eyes widen.

  It is a curiosity to me that I often don’t see things that are right in front of my nose. If you move the orange juice six inches from where it normally rests in the fridge, I may think we don’t have any. If my car keys aren’t in their normal pocket, I ask Zee if she’s seen them.

  Now I looked at the map and the circled areas marked on it and saw it as if for the first time. I got out my pencil and drew a line joining the areas to one another.

  The line became an irregular circle at the center of which was the airport, and the marked areas were each at the end of a runway, set back a short distance in more or less uninhabited spots.

  They were all under flight paths for takeoffs and landings.

  I looked at the weather gauge on our wall. The wind was southwest, which is the prevailing wind direction on the island.

  I heard a soft whistle from the guest room and then the sound of the printer. A moment later Brady came into the kitchen.

  “Take this,” I said, handing him the Beretta. “And look at this.” I pointed at the map.

  “You look at this,” he said, accepting the pistol with one hand and giving me some printed pages with the other. “I did a search for F-I-M-9-2. This is what came up.” He put the pistol in his pocket.