My flashlight was a good one, not one of those five-buck jobs you pick up at a gas station or hardware store. It lit up half of the front of the house, the door, and the man and woman attempting to break in.
Dave Hudson and his wife, Marjorie, amateur genealogists from Albany, and now attempted burglars.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They were shocked, both standing up, mouths open, and I took advantage of that by yelling, “I’m armed! So point your flashlights on the ground and stay put!”
Their arms moved as ordered; I switched my light off and moved a few feet, just in case one of them was armed as well. We were all struggling to see after my flashlight went out, but as our night vision recovered, being able to see their own lights would give me an advantage.
“Hey, Mr. Cole,” Dave started, and I said, “Shut it, right now.”
I settled myself in another position among the jumble of rocks and boulders, and as my vision improved, it was easy to make out the shapes of Dave and Marjorie. “Just for the benefit of you two folks from away, you’re trespassing on private property. Police departments and juries in this state tend to take a very dim look at that, so whatever happens, I’ve got the locals and the law on my side. Clear?”
Dave didn’t answer, but his discouraged wife did. “We understand,” she said, her voice sullen.
“Outstanding,” I said. “So what the hell are the two of you doing on my property?”
“We were concerned about you,” Dave said.
“Say again?”
“We were worried about you,” he said. “We’ve been staying up at the Lafayette House while we’ve been doing our research, and we were going to take a drive into Porter to see a movie, and then we saw the lights go out at your house.”
“Just a couple of good Samaritans, right?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “We saw the lights go off, and then we went back to the Lafayette House, found out what utility provides power for you, and then we put in a call. Then I told Marjorie we should just come down and check on you, to make sure you were all right.”
“Did you pass any unicorns along the way?”
“What?”
“You really think I’ll believe that nonsense?”
Marjorie said something sharp and nasty, and her husband sounded hurt. “Mr. Cole … I know we’ve been pressuring you, and I’m sorry. I tend to let these things control me. But we know you’ve been in the hospital. We know you’ve had some serious surgeries, and when we saw you lost all your power, we wanted to make sure you were okay. Honest. That’s all we were doing.”
I was beginning to feel less comfortable. “And when nobody answered the door, you decided to break in?”
“No, nothing like that,” he protested. “There were no lights on at your house. No lanterns. No candles. After we knocked a few times, Marjorie was worried that maybe you had fallen, that you had hurt yourself.”
“And how were you going to get in?”
He kept silent for a moment and said, “Not proud … but when I was a juvie, back in New York, I did some time for breaking and entering. My uncle … a locksmith. He taught me some things.”
I was going to ask him if he was so concerned about my safety, why didn’t he just call the police? But I was getting cold, tired, and I wasn’t having fun anymore, and this interrogation wasn’t going where I expected.
“Go away, then, all right?”
“Why are you over there in the rocks?”
“They looked lonely,” I said. “Now, please. Go away.”
He whispered to his wife, she whispered something louder back to him, and he turned back to me. “You know, it would only take a few minutes and—”
“Dave, don’t push it,” I said. “Don’t.”
His wife grabbed him by the arm and hauled him off my steps; they started back up the driveway, and he called out, “We were just trying to help! That’s all! Just trying to help!”
Back in my house, I didn’t feel like doing much of anything, but the drains demanded release. I got upstairs and into the bathroom, and managed to spray around only a little blood before I got things squared away. The blood was cleaned up pretty easily from all the practice I’d had. I worked with the flashlight on the counter, pointed at the mirror, and when I was done, I said to the odd man looking back at me, “I’m so sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Then I went to bed, but not before putting my pistol down on the nightstand.
Two hours and one minute later according to my watch, the power in my house came back on. I turned the little clock around so I wouldn’t see the flashing red numerals, and I knew that lights were on downstairs, but I didn’t care. I rolled over and went back to sleep, and kept on sleeping until a beautiful woman appeared in my bedroom.
And this one was real.
Paula looked down at me and said, “Rough night?”
“You know it,” I said, sitting up. She sat at the foot of the bed and passed over a plate with a Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast sandwich on it.
“Me, too,” she said. “Damn selectmen went on yapping until past midnight. Then I got to work this morning and found out that one of my freelancers who’s supposed to cover a criminal trial over at the county courthouse in Bretton called in sick. So that’s why we’re feasting on takeout this morning.”
“I don’t mind, not at all,” I said, and we went through our sandwiches, Paula beating me with her impressive appetite. Then she helped me get up and get washed, and emptied my morning output, which was still too high.
“Where now, sport?” she asked.
“Back to bed for a while,” I said. “And why did you stay until
