HARD AGROUND
A LEWIS COLE MYSTERY
BRENDAN DUBOIS
This novel is dedicated to my older brother
Neil DuBois
Raconteur, bon vivant, entrepreneur, and deep ocean sailor
May you always have fair winds and following seas.
CHAPTER ONE
From the vantage point of my bed, I looked out the near window to a cluster of rocks and boulders, which had been tossed and turned over the years by storms and long-ago glaciers. The view had been the same for nearly two centuries and for the past two hours. I gritted my teeth and rolled over, wincing from the pain of my recent surgeries.
From this side, the view was quite different, as I looked through a glass door that led to a small second-floor deck facing the Atlantic Ocean. Not a bad view—and one that’s been with me since I moved some years ago into this house on Tyler Beach after being pensioned off from my short and not-so-brilliant career in the Department of Defense. The ocean was always just there in the background, something to look at while getting up in the morning or preparing to go to bed at night.
Since coming home from the hospital a few days ago pretty much bedridden, with another couple of dreary weeks of recovery waiting ahead for me, this view had become my new best friend. I had to lie mostly on my left side, trying to breathe easy, because my right shoulder and back were a mess, with scores of stitches and two drains coming out of my cut-up skin. Even lying on my back to stare up at the ceiling wasn’t an option.
So what to do? I love to read, but the pain and discomfort of what was going on with my back and shoulder made it hard to focus on the printed page, and, what’s more, it was hard even to hold a book or newspaper in my weak hands. I know there are e-book readers out there, but I’m terribly old-fashioned and can only read the real deal, with real paper and cardboard.
My friend Felix Tinios had brought in a television set that now dominated the corner of my bedroom, but there were only so many movies and History Channel programs one could watch before becoming bored to death. (And when did reality programs about lumberjacks and hunting Bigfoot equal history?) My taste in music was about twenty years off, and listening to what passes for talk radio made me wish we were still governed by the British Crown.
That left the ocean. In the two weeks since my surgeries, I had grown to like watching the way the light played upon the moving waters, seeing the boats working out there, the different types of birds that floated in and out of view. Most days, the view helped pass the time.
But not today. I was facing two problems—one immediate, and one not so immediate.
The immediate issue was the status of the two drains in my back, intended to drain out blood and fluid into little plastic bladders. They were held in place by an elastic bandage wrapped around my upper torso, and they needed to be emptied twice a day, with the output measured so my doctors would know to remove them when the output dropped far enough.
But there was something wrong. I could feel it. There was a cool moistness on my skin that didn’t belong.
That meant I had to get off the bed and go to the bathroom. It was only about twenty feet away, but for the past few days that twenty feet had seemed as challenging as twenty miles.
I shifted some in the bed and, damn, now it felt as if I was sopping wet back there. If I didn’t do something soon, I was going to soak the bedding, and at this rate it wouldn’t be long before the leak soaked right through to the mattress.
If I had been at the hospital, I would have just needed to press the call button. If I had a health aide at home, I could have just called out. But the hospital, insurance company, and the home health aide company were currently feuding over who was supposed to pay what and for what services, so I was home alone. Nice name for a cute movie, but not so cute when I was the one alone, my back and shoulder wounds ready to burst with blood and fluid.
“Okay, partner,” I whispered to myself. “Time to man up. Let’s do this thing.”
I scooted to the side of my bed, took a deep breath, and swung my legs out and—
I nearly screamed as pain rippled up and down my back. But at least my feet were on the wooden floor. I took a series of deep breaths, but it felt like a blowtorch set on low was sweeping along my back and right shoulder. Two weeks ago, Paula Quinn, assistant editor of the Tyler Chronicle and now an intimate friend, had been giving me a back rub when she found a lump near my right shoulder blade. The lump turned out to be the latest souvenir of my time in the Department of Defense, and when the surgeons at Mass General started cutting to take it out, they found two more tumors down closer to my spine. A number of years ago I was a research analyst for an obscure intelligence group within the DoD, and one day my little group was out in the Nevada high desert on a training mission. During the mission, we stumbled into a highly secret and highly illegal biowarfare experiment that killed everyone—including a woman I loved—save for me.
Many times over the years, as the biowarfare exposure caused an occasional tumor to appear, I was told how lucky I was that I was still alive.
Yeah. Lucky me.
I was still waiting to hear the report on whether or not the tumors were malignant. Several times in the past, after similar surgeries, I’ve lucked out and gotten the report that they were benign.
I guess that should
