The Lupin Project

by Allan Leverone

  “You’ll get on it right now. You’ll drive up to New Quebec and start immediately, is that clear?”

  “Whatever you want,” Matt said. “You’re the boss.”

  Toler seemed satisfied with the answer and handed a note card across the table upon which an address had been handwritten. “I want regular updates. Keep me in the loop.”

  “Will do,” Matt said, reaching for his coffee.

  Toler stared, his gaze flat and hard. “Well?” he said. “What are you waiting for? Get moving.”

  Matt returned the coffee mug to the table and walked out of the Denny’s. He waited until he had dropped into his front seat and pulled the door closed before answering, “Fuck you.”

  ***

  He’d been watching the home at the specified address since shortly after his arrival in New Quebec. There had been plenty of activity inside the house—it was a raised ranch, and he could see agitated people walking back and forth behind the front picture window almost constantly—but no high-school-aged girls had as yet come or gone.

  About ten a.m., a young man driving a Jeep showed up, moving much too fast for a residential neighborhood. He climbed out of the vehicle and trotted up the walkway, disappearing into the house.

  Was this the kid the young girl was supposedly working with to cause problems for Toler? Possibly. He looked slightly older than high-school age—college, maybe?—but as far down the street as Matt had parked it was hard to say, even though he’d peered through his binocs at the Jeep’s arrival in an attempt to get a close-up view.

  After the kid disappeared into the house, activity quieted again, and now Matt was fading. It was midafternoon and the lack of stimulation had begun to take its toll. Snacks and junk food and coffee had left him buzzing from caffeine and hungry for a real meal.

  He perked up, however, when the front door opened and the same young man who had gone in several hours ago came out again, moving even more quickly than he had before. The kid bounced down the steps and climbed into his Jeep. He fired up the engine and backed down the driveway, and Matt was left with a decision: follow the kid or continue watching the house?

  On the surface, the choice was easy. The guy paying the bill had said to keep the house under constant surveillance until a young girl appeared. But assignments were seldom cut-and-dried. Sooner or later there usually came a time when the investigator had to trust his instincts and go off-script.

  This was one of those times. Toler had said the girl would show up at this house because she was working with a young man, and here was a young man leaving the house in an obvious hurry and driving away.

  Matt made his decision. He turned the key and started up his little Kia Rio. Allowed the kid in the Jeep to put sufficient distance between them, and then pulled onto the road and followed discreetly. It was worth taking a shot.

  The worst-case scenario would be that Matt struck out. If that happened he would return to the house and start over.

  ***

  The kid drove straight to a Dunkin’ Donuts. He walked inside and sat at a booth in front of the window like he was waiting for someone.

  This might get interesting.

  Ten minutes later, that someone drove up to the shop and joined him in the booth.

  It was a young girl.

  Now we’re cooking.

  12

  Alicia’s concern about running into her mother had apparently been unfounded. She was either still in bed or pacing her own room the way Alicia had been pacing hers. The thought that she was as anxious to avoid her daughter as Alicia was to avoid her was nearly as depressing as last night’s ugly scene inside the police station.

  She didn’t bother asking for permission to use the car. Her mother was planning a weekend trip to visit Alicia’s aunt in Paskagankee, Maine later this afternoon, but there was plenty of time for a quick trip to Dunkin’s and back before then. She grabbed the car keys off the hook in the kitchen and left, closing the front door quietly behind her. Maybe she’d be back before Mom even realized she was gone.

  It hadn’t occurred to her while talking with Rob Senna to ask what he looked like and he hadn’t thought to volunteer the information. But it didn’t matter. He was Eddie’s brother, and the minute she entered New Quebec’s only coffee shop she recognized him immediately thanks to their resemblance. Besides, it wasn’t like the place was overflowing with college-age young men.

  The intensity of his stare as she entered was startling. It was obvious he wasn’t sitting in the dingy restaurant to pass the time.

  Alicia moved straight to the booth and offered an uncertain smile. “Rob?”

  He stood and extended his hand. “You must be Alicia.”

  She nodded and took his hand before sliding into the booth, but Eddie’s brother remained standing. “How do you like your coffee?”

  “You don’t have to buy me a coffee.”

  “Please. It’s the least I can do to thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

  She smiled and gave him her order and waited until he returned with a pair of Styrofoam cups. He handed her one and placed the other across the booth and then eased into the seat.

  The silence was awkward. Alicia had no idea where to start.

  Finally Rob said, “I can see why Eddie was so excited to be going out with you.”

  Alicia felt her face redden as he continued. “What I don’t understand is why he would take off afterward.”

  She blew on the steam rising off the coffee cup, more to buy time as she tried to figure out how to proceed than because she wanted to cool off the coffee. “You’re certain the police didn’t say anything else about last night to your parents?”

  “I was sitting right next to my dad when he made the call. It was short and sweet and I’m pretty confident he didn’t leave anything out when he related the conversation to my mom and me.”

  He frowned. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned the police and their reaction to our phone call. Why do you keep asking about that? It’s obvious something’s bothering you.”

  “It…it doesn’t make sense.” She shook her head. She expected him to urge her to continue, but he waited patiently while she gathered her thoughts.

  “I was at the police station last night,” she said quietly.

  “You didn’t go out with Eddie?”

  “No, I did. I was with Eddie.”

  “But you ended up at the police station.”

  She nodded miserably. The tears once again threatened to break free.

  “Something happened to Eddie last night, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me, Alicia.”

  She took a shaky breath and started talking. It was the hardest conversation of her life.

  ***

  “So Eddie’s dead.” Rob Senna spoke calmly, but his voice was thick with emotion.

  “I’m sorry,” Alicia said. “But there’s no way he survived the attack.”

  He reached out absently and took her hand, eyes narrowed as he considered everything she had just told him. She waited for the expression of disbelief, the accusation that she was lying, or exaggerating, or making up wild stories, but it never came.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said eventually. “But I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t the cops take any action?”

  “Well,” she said, “the chief did send an officer out to the logging road, but he claimed not to have found any evidence to back up my story.”

  “That’s not surprising, based on what you saw and heard last night before you took off running. A ‘cleanup crew’ can only mean one thing—the people you saw wanted to destroy any proof of what had happened.”

  “Because they believe they were responsible.”

  Rob nodded. “Exactly. Because they were responsible. And they worked quickly enough that my little brother’s body”—his voice cracked as he said the words, and he took a moment to get himself under control before continuing—“my little brother’s bod
y was gone by the time the patrol officer drove out there.”

  “And so was Eddie’s car, and the trailer with the wolves. Everything was gone. It had to have been.”

  Rob nodded. “Maybe. But that wasn’t what I meant when I asked why the cops did nothing. I was talking about when my father called them this morning. Why wouldn’t they mention you had come into the station last night claiming to have seen something happen to Eddie? Why wouldn’t those have been the first words out of their mouths this morning when his parents called to report him missing?”

  She looked into his eyes. They were red-rimmed from grief, but also hard and angry. Her stomach roiled and her head pounded and she felt a sense of fear creeping through her insides. It was different from the fear she felt last night, which had been adrenaline-fueled and white-hot. This was black and cold, a blanket of dread that made her question everything she had ever known about good and bad, and right and wrong.

  “There’s only one reason I can think of,” she whispered.

  Rob sipped his coffee. His gaze wandered around the restaurant and then out the window before returning to her. “The cops are involved in whatever is going on here.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Alicia said unconvincingly, but the blanket of dread wrapped itself a little more tightly around her insides.

  13

  “What do we do now?” Alicia wasn’t sure she really wanted to know, but it was the obvious next question and she couldn’t very well avoid asking it.

  Silence hung over the table as Rob considered his answer. Alicia couldn’t imagine what he was going through. She had only dated Eddie Senna for a short while, and she felt as though her heart had been ripped from her chest and torn to shreds every time she thought about the fate he had suffered. His brother’s grief must be off the charts.

  He sighed and shook his head. “There is no ‘we.’ Something’s very wrong here, and until things sort themselves out a little, you’re going to go home and keep your head down. One high school senior has died already, there’s no reason to make it two.”

  “I’m a junior,” Alicia said without thinking, and then kicked herself mentally. That answer certainly wouldn’t help her case.

  Rob spread his hands in a “see what I mean?” gesture. “All the more reason for you not to get involved.”

  A flash of anger ripped through her, and in a weird way she was thankful for it. Almost anything would be better than that awful dread that had settled in the pit of her stomach.

  “I’m already involved,” she said. “I was with Eddie when he died, I was the one who saw the army guys round up the wolves and discuss the cleanup crew, I was the one who reported what I saw to the police last night. Rob, I couldn’t be more involved.”

  He nodded and then grimaced. “I’m going to have to break the news about Eddie to my folks. This is going to kill them. But before I go home, I want to see the spot where he died with my own two eyes. I suppose it couldn’t hurt for you to take a ride out there with me, make sure I turn onto the right logging trail.”

  “Let’s go,” she said quickly. She didn’t want to give him time to change his mind. “We have to drive past my house to get there, would you mind if I drop my mother’s car off and go the rest of the way in yours? I never asked her for permission to use it before I left to meet you and she has somewhere to go later.”

  “No problem,” he said. He rose from the booth and waited for her to join him. The pain in his eyes had receded a bit now that he could focus on something other than Alicia’s horrific news, and for that she was glad. It was still in there, though, and she knew it would return soon enough.

  ***

  Rob offered to come inside with her when they got to her house, but she insisted he stay in his Jeep. While it would be nice to prove to her mother that something really had happened to Eddie, that she hadn’t just been making up stories last night, she wasn’t about to put Rob through what would be an awkward scene at best, and potentially an ugly one at worst.

  Besides, the damage had been done. Her mother had demonstrated her total lack of trust in Alicia last night. That was when she’d needed the support most, and that was when it had been withheld. Nothing that happened today, good or bad, would change that.

  She entered the front door to find her mother sitting on the couch staring at something on the television. “Where were you?” She didn’t bother looking up when she spoke.

  “Out.” Alicia walked to the hook and dropped the car keys onto it, then turned toward the door.

  “Obviously you were out,” her mother snapped. “Where were you?”

  “I wasn’t getting into any trouble, if that’s what you’re asking. The police didn’t call, did they?”

  “Don’t wise-mouth me, young lady. I want to know where you were and what you were doing.”

  She reached the front door in five steps and yanked it open, and finally her mother tore her eyes from the TV screen. “Where are you going now?”

  Alicia stopped and met her mother’s gaze. “Out,” she repeated, and then walked through the door. She closed it harder than was necessary and walked away as a barrage of angry words followed, floating through the door muffled and unintelligible.

  She kept going.

  “Are you all right?” The tone of Rob’s voice and the look on his face revealed his concern the moment she climbed into the Jeep, and Alicia realized she had done a lousy job of concealing how upset she was at this latest confrontation with her mother.

  Shame washed over her. Less than an hour ago, Rob Senna had learned of his brother’s death, and here he was, asking her if she was okay.

  She should be concerned about him, not the other way around.

  She forced a smile onto her face. “I’m fine. Parent problems. I’m sure you understand.”

  “I know it’s hard to believe right now, but things will improve,” he said as he backed out of the driveway and pointed his car out of town. “My relationship with my parents was total crap by the time I left home for college. It’s a lot better now. After a certain age, a little distance between parents and their kids is a good thing.”

  “It can’t happen soon enough for me.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t about to burden Rob with her problems. He had enough of his own.

  Instead, she busied herself giving directions to the old logging trail, and even though he undoubtedly knew its location—hell, he had probably taken dates there himself back when he was in high school—he let her do it.

  ***

  When the kids left the coffee shop it was once again decision time for Matt. They had arrived separately, which meant, obviously, that there were two cars involved. They walked out of Dunkin’s and he had to choose immediately: should he follow the girl or the boy?

  It had to be the girl. After all, the only reason he had been staked outside the boy’s house was to get a line on a high-school-age girl, and here was a high-school-age girl. He wasn’t one hundred percent convinced yet that it was the right girl, and if it wasn’t, then he was making a mistake by not tailing the boy in the Jeep.

  But he was close enough to one hundred percent that he felt comfortable following his instincts. Still, he decided that call to Toler could wait a little longer.

  He scribbled the girl’s New Hampshire license plate number down on a small notepad before falling in behind the pair, who turned in the same direction out of the lot. The girl led the way and the slightly older boy stayed on her rear bumper, and Matt began to suspect he hadn’t needed to pick which one to follow, because they were going to the same place.

  His suspicions were confirmed when the girl’s blinker came on and she turned into a driveway. Matt eased to the side of the road as the boy pulled in behind her. She climbed out of her car and spoke to him briefly, and then entered the house while the kid waited outside.

  Moments later, she came back out and slid into the passenger side of the kid’s Jeep
. He backed out of the driveway and they took off again.

  Matt smiled. Now he had not just make/model of her car and her license plate number to report to Toler, he had learned her last name and home address as well. The family had very thoughtfully placed HAVENS in gold stick-on lettering on the side of the mailbox standing sentry duty at the end of the driveway.

  The way things were going, maybe the colonel would consider including a performance bonus to the cash payment of Matt’s fee.

  Following the kids became a little more problematic as they left “downtown” New Quebec—a contradiction in terms if ever there was one—behind. The village was a tiny backwater shithole, but to this point there at least had been enough traffic that Matt felt comfortable in his ability to keep them in sight without being observed by the Jeep driver. Now he was forced to back off, to allow the kid enough room that he was often invisible for long stretches on the serpentine country roads.

  Matt’s pulse quickened as he began to suspect he had dropped too far back and lost them. It had been at least two miles since he caught a glimpse of the Jeep up ahead. He eased down on the gas, determined to close the gap.

  After a few tense moments spent careening along the road at a speed that would likely get his ass hauled immediately to jail should a cop happen along in the other direction, he breathed a sigh of relief. Far off in the distance, he caught a flash of taillights disappearing into the forest. He’d picked up his pace just in time; if he’d hung back any longer he would never have seen them make the turn.

  And what an interesting development.

  The Jeep had left the pavement and was going off-road. This would explain the girl dropping her car off and joining the boy: snow had begun to fall lightly, and judging by the darkening skies, more was on the way. Without a four-wheel-drive vehicle, tackling the rutted trail they had entered would be a fool’s enterprise.