Jack as the bell on the shop's front jangled. A customer entered: a tanned, muscular guy with short blond hair.
'Looks like a weekend warrior,' Jack said.
Abe returned Parabellum to his cage. 'I'll get rid of him.'
'Don't bother. I've got to go.'
With obvious reluctance, Abe slid off the stool and left his sanctum behind the counter. He sounded bored as he approached the customer.
'What overpriced recreational nonsense can I sell you today?'
Jack headed for the door, holding up the truck keys as he passed Abe.
Abe waved, then turned back to his customer. 'Water skis? You want to spend your free time sliding on top of water? What on earth for? It's dangerous. And besides, you could hit a fish. Imagine the headache you'd cause the poor thing. A migraine should be half so bad…'
5
The Incorporated Village of Shoreham sits on the north shore of Long Island a bit west of Rocky Point. All Jack knew about Shoreham was that it was the home of a multibillion-dollar nuclear power plant that had never ignited its reactor—one of the greatest boondoggles in the state's long history of boondoggles.
And no doubt the subject of a number of conspiracy theories, Jack figured.
After asking at a 7-Eleven along 25A, he found Lewis Ehler's street. Briarwood Road led north, twisting and turning into the hills bordering the Long Island Sound. Poorly paved and bouncy, but he guessed the residents liked it that way because the houses were big and well kept. All the lots were wooded, and the homes to his right perched on a rise overlooking the water. Between the houses and through the trees, Jack caught glimpses of the Sound. Connecticut was a darker line atop the horizon.
He found the Ehler place and pulled into the gravel drive of an oversized ranch. The dark cedar shake siding and white trim and shutters blended with the budding oaks, maples, and birches surrounding the house. The landscaper had gone for a low-maintenance yard, substituting mulch and wood chips for grass. Perfectly trimmed rhodos and azaleas hugged the foundation; nothing ostentatious, but Jack knew from his teenage days as a landscaper's helper that everything here was first quality. A lot of money had been invested into this yard's 'natural' look.
Lew met him at the door and scanned the road running past the house.
'Did you see anyone following you?'
'No.' Jack hadn't been looking, but he hadn't noticed anyone. 'How about you?'
'I thought I saw a black sedan a few times but…' He shrugged and ushered Jack inside where he gave him an envelope stuffed with cash. Jack didn't count it.
The interior had a lot of nautical touches—hurricane lamps, a big brass compass, fishnets and floats on the walls, all looking very staged.
'I didn't particularly want to live way out here,' Lew said as he showed Jack through the house. 'It means a longer commute for me, but Mel said this was the place she really wanted to live, so…this is where we live.'
The only non-decorator touches about the house were the paintings—dark, brooding abstractions on all the walls.
'Really something, aren't they,' Lew said.
Jack nodded. 'Who's the artist?'
'Mel. She did them when she was a teenager.'
She must have been a real fun date, he thought, but said: 'Impressive.'
'Aren't they? She's been getting back into it again, when she can steal time from her research.'
'And where does she do that?'
'In her study. I'll show you,' he said, leading Jack toward a spiral staircase. 'She used the second bedroom for a while but all her reference materials pretty quickly outgrew that, so we converted the attic for her.'
Lew's short leg made for slow progress on the narrow treads, but finally they reached the top. Jack found himself in a long, low-ceilinged room running the length of the house; a beige computer desk near the staircase, a window at each end—an easel by the far window—four filing cabinets clustered in the center, and all the rest an enormous collection of paper—a Strandesque array of books, magazines, pamphlets, article excerpts and reprints, tear sheets, and flyers. The shelves lining every spare inch of wall space were crammed full; the tops of the filing cabinets were stacked at least a foot deep, and the rest was scattered in piles on the carpeted floor.
'Her reference materials,' Jack said softly, awed.
He sniffed the air, heavy with the scent of aging paper. He loved that smell.
'Yeah.' Lew walked past one of the shelves, running a finger along the book spines. 'Everything you could ever want to know about UFOs, alien abductions, the Bermuda Triangle, Satanism, telepathy, remote viewing, mind control, the CIA, the NSA, HAARP, the Illuminati, astral projection, channeling, levitation, clairvoyance, seances, tarot, reincarnation, astrology, the Loch Ness monster, the Bible, Kaballah, Velikovsky, crop circles, Tunguska —'
'I get the picture,' Jack said when Lew stopped for a breath. 'All for her Grand Unification Theory.'
'Yes. You might say she's obsessed.'
Jack noted Lew's use of the present tense when he referred to his wife. A good sign.
'I guess so. I was going to ask you what else she did with her time, but I guess we can skip that.'
'She was also into real estate for a while. Not that we needed the money, but she got her license and did a few deals.'
'I doubt that has anything to do with her disappearance.'
'Well, it might. She didn't do real estate the way most people do. She never gave me the details, but she did tell me her activities were related to her research.'
'Such as?'
'Well, she'd buy a place herself—always in the developments along Randall Road on the south side of the highway. Then she'd hire some men to dig here and there around the yard, then resell it.'
'Did she tell you what she was looking for?'
'She just said it was part of her research. And I couldn't complain much, because she usually resold the properties at a profit.'
One weird lady, Jack thought, looking around. And part pack rat, to boot. I'm supposed to find a clue to her whereabouts in this Library of Congress of the weird? Fat chance.
Jack wandered down toward the far window. The Sound was visible through the bare branches of the trees. As he turned he caught a glimpse of the canvas on the easel, and it stopped him cold. This one made the grim paintings downstairs seem bright and cheery. He couldn't say why the seemingly random swirls of black and deep purple bothered him. The longer he stared at it, the more heightened the feeling that
He pulled back. 'It feels wet.'
'Yes,' Lew said. 'Some new paint Mel started using. Supposedly it never dries.'
'Never?' He checked his fingertips—no pigment on them, even though they still felt wet. 'Never's an awful long time.'
He touched the surface again, in a different spot. Yes…cold, wet, and—
'Damn!' he said, jerking his hand away.
'What's wrong?'
'Must be something sharp in there,' Jack said as he stared at the tips of his index and middle fingers.
He didn't want to say that he'd felt sharp little points digging into them, like tiny teeth snapping at his flesh. But the skin was unbroken. Still felt wet, though.
'Let me show you something on her computer,' Lew said, heading for the desk.
With a final glance into the hungry depths of the painting, Jack shook off a chill and followed Lew, still rubbing his moist fingertips.
At the deck, Jack noticed a green and blue image of the earth spinning on the monitor screen; and as it spun, chunks began disappearing from its surface, as if some invisible being were gnawing at it. After the globe was completely devoured, the sequence looped back to the beginning.
