"You're good friends, I guess." Jag poured a glass of wine.
"He gets a little strange when he's off his meds, but he's got a good heart. He had a strange afternoon, I guess."
"You can tell me about it, if you want. I'm a cop, so I'm always happy to keep track of anything strange in this town."
Laura told him about the flight of the Daniels.
"Bizarre," Jag said. "Let's hope we don't have to send a search party for your neighbours. That bay can get rough." He struggled with the next part. "Is there any way I can phone him?"
Laura looked puzzled. "He's got a cell phone, but when he's in his nutso mood, he thinks the government's spying on him. Probably thinks the guys next door are secret agents." She laughed. "Although that's as good an explanation as any."
"He might be right," Jag said. "You know that guy I was with this afternoon at the harbour?"
"Okay."
"Cope. An old friend. A CSIS agent."
A pause. "And now you have to kill me, I guess."
Jag ignored that. "He was sent to Brighton, supposedly to see if anything unusual was going on around here. They didn't tell him any more than that. Or so he says."
"And is anything unusual going on around here?"
"Well, just before you came, Cope spotted a guy he says is working undercover for the Americans. More strange stuff. Can you phone your cousin for me?"
She gave him a strange look. "I'll try." She got no answer to Tom's cell phone, but the cottage phone was picked up at once. "Tom?" Laura asked, "this is your cousin."
"You were right about the window," Tom said. "Thanks."
"Ah…. Tom, my friend here wants to ask you something."
"Hi, Tom," Jag said.
"They killed a deer with a strange gun and took it inside!" Tom shouted.
"Okay, but can I ask you a question?"
"I guess." But Tom sounded tense.
"My name's Jag. Can you tell me what kind of car's over at the cottage next door. Without getting caught?"
"I already know that. Blue Cobalt. Ohio plates. Don't remember the number." He laughed. "Us nutcases keep track of such things, you know. Secret agents from the states, I'd guess." He laughed again, then turned serious.
"I don't know," Jag said. "For all I know you might just be right. I'll call you back later if I find anything out." Jag disconnected, and thought a bit. Then he called Cope. "Those guys from the harbour," he told Cope. I think they're in the cottage next to the one Laura's staying at, and watching for her." He told Cope about the escape of the Daniels brothers in a boat.
"This whole thing is getting stranger and stranger," Cope admitted. "Tell Tom I'm coming over."
But there was no answer on the cottage phone. As soon as Jag hung up the phone, Cope called back. "Get an answer?"
"Nope."
"Can I drop by and pick up Laura's key?"
"Sure."
"I won't be long."
"Okay."
"You don't have a dog I could borrow, do you?"
"A dog?"
"A dog."
Jag thought a bit. "Old lady Metcalfe got moved into a retirement home a couple of days ago. She left behind a couple of old dogs that nobody knows what to do with. The neighbour's got them."
"One key; two dogs. I'll be right by.
"This going to be dangerous?"
"I doubt it, but I'll leave a number for you to contact if I disappear."
"Sure."
****
Brighton
Along Popham Bay
Day after Button Day
Tom watched the last shadows of the Ulysses trees lengthen and disappear into the gloom. The Blue Cobalt had returned shortly after he’d got into Laura’s cottage. He’d watched the two guys inspect the Daniels cottage for the missing brothers, then go in, carrying a bucket of Dixie Lee chicken.
The kitchen light, which had been on when the Daniels took to their boat, stayed on, but none of the other lights had been turned on.
The guy who called himself Peter had dropped him off, and then gone into town to find a room, declining Tom’s offer to spend the night at the cottage. That was fine; Tom had lots of experience being alone. He sat by one window in the darkened cottage, trying to separate truth from fantasy, knowing getting off his prescribed anti-psychotic pills was going to give him some real feelings of persecution. Still, it was getting harder and harder not to get suspicious of the events in the two cottages.
Was there any possibility, he wondered, that Laura had got involved in something governmental and secret? “It’s probably not about me. It’s probably not about me.” He’d memorized the phrase in the last few months, but it didn’t take too much psychosis to figure that Laura had joined the police and the government in keeping an eye on him, for reasons that only they knew. After all, the moment he’d showed up in Brighton, she’d joined up with a cop, and left him alone in the cottage. The cottage next to the one from which two normal-looking brothers had just fled, the cottage now inhabited by two guys who walked very carefully and always looked around.
I used to do that, Tom thought. I used to look around and see everything because I didn't trust anything. I'm trying to trust now, but it's hard. For all I know, these guys are CSIS agents who chased the Daniels brothers out because they were space aliens like the guy in the park or ex-Soviet moles. That didn't make sense, he realized. Why then were they keeping tabs on the cottage Laura rented? He slipped out the bathroom window then circled around the Daniels cottage in the dark. On the far side of their cottage, he waited in the deep shadows, sitting on a stump.
He watched as Sammy came out the door in the darkness. He watched as Sammy opened the Cobalt's trunk and the trunk light came on. Sammy had green shoes, and Tom remembered the turtle's warning, so he slid down behind a boulder. He watched Sammy take out both night-vision goggles, which Tom recognized, and two bizarre guns, which he didn't recognize. Sammy put on the night-vision goggles and looked around carefully. He fired twice into the darkness with the gun, then walked into shadow. He came back a minute later dragging a small deer.
After Sammy was safely inside, Tom went carefully back to Laura's cabin. He looked through the cottage till he found a flashlight, then, keeping most of the lens covered, he located a sleeping bag. He stuffed it with supplies and a plastic table cloth to use as a ground sheet or tent, depending on the weather. Then he slipped back out the window. Fifteen minutes later, behind a clump of swamp cedar, on the other side of the road, he made camp. Within an hour he'd eaten half a loaf of bread and a can of tuna, then rolled over and gone to sleep.
He woke once, when he heard someone walking down the road with dogs. There was a moment of panic – no one had ever hunted him with dogs before – but they didn't seem to be interested in him, although one of the dogs sniffed in his direction. Then he went back to sleep, waking briefly to watch Cope and the dogs come back down the road and go into Laura's cottage.
****
Brighton
Along Popham Bay
Day after Button Day
After leaving Tom at the cottage, Clyde Books had left parked his car on the road, then walked down the laneway of a darkened place to the beach. Here, too, it was mostly rocks with some sand, although not as rough as in front of the Daniels' cottage. He walked as far as Laura's cottage, and found the skid marks with his flashlight, where the Daniels had launched their boat. Then he walked back past his start point in the darkness, and found no marks that would indicate the Daniels had dragged a boat onshore. When he got to the fence that marked the limits to the provincial park, he peered into the darkness. The Daniels had either gone ashore along the park beach somewhere, or perhaps had cut across to the island. Clyde couldn't imagine them rounding the island in that small boat and going out into Lake Ontario in the dark.
When he turned to go back, he saw a figure standing not ten feet away, silent and dark.
"Hello," Clyde said. "Nice night for a walk." There was no respons
e, nor movement from the other.
When the silence lengthened, Clyde coughed and said, "I've got to be getting back," but the figure stood there. Clyde figured it might be one of the guys who'd scared the Daniels away, and from the speed of their exit, he didn't like the thought. In the darkness, he eyed a possible getaway through a cottage lot.
"Well," Clyde said, then pointed the flashlight at the figure's head and turned it on.
He looked into the stony face of Casey Szczedziwoj.
It wasn't as if it hit him instantly; there was a complete stoppage of thought. Then he screamed like a little kid, tossed the flashlight at the figure and ran, not concerned that the flashlight had gone right through the dark figure and had fallen onto the beach, shining towards the dark water.
He got to his car, eventually, got out his keys, jammed them into the lock correctly, more by chance than anything else, and kicked a long string of gravel into the bush as he left the area. He was still shaking as he stopped in the empty parking lot of the lumber store, under one of the floodlights. He left almost at once when Szczedziwoj's ghost ambled out of the darkness towards him, the spirit's face still blank.
Half an hour later he stopped outside Trenton at a hotel beside the highway. The clerk at the front desk ignored the scratches on Clyde's face and the torn clothing. and the room was just fine, since not once during the night did the ghost appear. Clyde spent hours wishing Darkh had been there; Darkh's specialty was ghosts and he might have thought up something to say to Szczedziwoj.
****
Brighton
Along Popham Bay
Day after Button Day
Cope decided that the SEALs would probably have night-vision equipment, and probably thermal-vision stuff, too, although he couldn't imagine how they'd explain that at the border, if their car was inspected. But he figured they probably weren't heavily armed, since guns would be too dangerous to bring into Canada.
It was the sort of equipment he'd like himself, but there wasn't a chance he could get any from headquarters in the next day or two, no matter what Ottawa thought of his mission. Not that he knew what he was supposed to do, but his best option was stirring up the local ant's nest and seeing if he could capture Lester or Sammy. Or convince them to talk, at least.
He figured there was a good chance the SEALs would see him go into Laura's cabin, so he prepared as best he could. He had a standing opposition to attacking a place possibly defended by professionals. Much better, he knew, to let them come to your defended position. He'd see if he could team up with Tom in the wonderful Canadian habit of seal hunting.
Set up your alerts (hence, the dogs), set up your traps, and wait. Win some, lose some, but this gives you the best odds.
Cory, a large yellowish dog, seemed to be the stupid one; Jag said she’d bark at squirrels and grouse, not to mention grasshoppers if she were in the mood, although she seemed quiet enough as they walked along the road in the darkness. Cope left her outside. He’d originally thought of putting her into the cabin with him, but figured her imagination would be more of a handicap than her judgment and she might bark at imaginary sounds when she was inside. In a cabin in the woods, there were always scratching sounds, from branches or squirrels on the roof to mice under the floor.
So Cory had gone outside, tied to a tree between the two cottages.
Potto, according to Jag, was considerably more sensible. He was older, experienced, and, for a Labrador, almost smart, so Cope took him inside after tapping on the door and getting no answer.
Closing the door behind him, Cope did a quick but thorough search of the cabin with a small flashlight. There was no sign of Tom and no one answered Cope's quiet calls. Since the bathroom window was open, he assumed that Tom had done as Laura suggested he would. "He'll hide from suspicious people," she'd said, "and he's comfortable out in the bush. He might walk back into Brighton, or hide in the park for a day or two. I'll leave messages on his phone, so maybe we can find him eventually – if he doesn't decide I'm working for some international conspiracy."
Then he turned, and a stranger was there. He was about to meet Tom, Cope decided.
****
Brighton: Tom's Diary
Along Popham Bay.
Day after Button Day
He’s still waiting for me to make the first move. THAT’S NOT HARD TO FIGURE!!!
Ever since Laura left, I’ve been wondering if they’d send someone to take her place. They thought I’d be fooled by some middle-aged guy who looks harmless. Him and his two dogs. Harmless, noisy dogs and a harmless, quiet man. Who’s to figure that one out?
Well it doesn’t take much physique to be a spy, I guess. But I can see the way he moves, like his life depends on it. He probably knows I'm here. I learned to move quietly in the woods sneaking up on partridges, but I'm no professional.
It cheers me up, in a way. You can’t have a paradise a garden of Eden without a snake. And it’s better the one you know where he is than always looking over your shoulder.
I wrote a canku about snakes in paradise.
**
I walked right past his place.
You think I’m nuts for doing that? No way, Jose. They know where I am and they could have killed me a long time ago if they wanted to. So they’re just watching me.
Last year I put on a tinfoil shirt under my jacket and tinfoil under my hat. Big deal; probably just amplifies the signal. Or maybe the bug’s buried in my neck or teeth; I didn’t cover that.
My teeth all look pretty normal, but that doesn’t mean anything.
There was a guy named Gopher Jim, back in Omaha. He said they put it into shoulder muscle and scanned it from posts along the highways. I don’t know if that’s right. I do know he had a bunch of X-rays and tried for years for a CAT scan. And he did a lot of digging and poking with a needle and local anesthetic. All he got was sore arms. He figured it was close to the bone, but I’d have to see one before I’d try poking around like that!
I just wanted him to know I was there. That’s why I went to his place.
If I had the money I’d find a way to discourage people from coming around. Just make it uncomfortable for them. Maybe get a bunch more guns and do stupid things to make them think I was crazy and probably going to kill someone and they’d be scared to go into the woods around here.
Got them nervous enough, anyway. Probably think I’m crazy anyway. But I figure it’s better to know who’s a True Hunter and True Hiker and who’s just another goddamn spy for the Big Boys that run the government.
Laura probably told them everything anyway. Goddamn I trusted her. My Paradise, I called the place yesterday. Well, Adam was doing okay until Eve fucked it up, according to that piece of crap bible.
Screw them all; I can live freer being watched than most people can in the city.
**
I went to talk to him in the cabin.
I prepared myself by washing myself in the lake. That took me most of an hour. Would have been longer, but a plane came by in the dark and sprayed some Stupid Gas and I had wet my socks and use them as a gas mask.
Anyway, I stood on his little deck for a couple of minutes and then the outside dog he tied to a tree started barking. Another dog inside the house barked a couple of times. I knocked. and saw him watching me from a window. He turned on the outside light, then invited me in. Don’t know if he had a gun or not, but if he was going to do anything he didn’t have to wait for me to come. Unless he was going to say I was trying to shoot him and fake it so there’d be a reason to kill me, but why cover things up when you have no reason to?
He came to the door and asked if I was Tom, and I said ya, that’s the name I’ve been giving out, so he invited me in for tea.
Christ In A Hammock! He had a dummy hanging from the ceiling with its feet just touching the floor. Just inside the door. He didn’t say anything about it and I didn’t ask. Let him think what he wants to think about that.
He set two cups on the tabl
e and heated some water in a kettle. When it was boiling he poured it into the cups and put a teabag out. I dunked it in my cup till it was strong enough the tea I mean, then I took it out with the spoon and he put it in his cup. He took it out and put in some milk from a can and some sugar, or at least it looked like that, so I did too, in case one was an antidote.
I let him drink first, and figured what the heck, which is unusual for me since I came to Paradise, but it’s been a day and nothing seems to have happened to me, although I had a bit of a headache. Maybe I should have turned down the tea and cookies. He opened a new bag of President’s Choice chocolate chip cookies and put a bunch on a plate and let me choose. Russian roulette or just cookies; I’ll never know.
I was looking for something to say when a jet came over. You could hear the sound of the engine change as it came over the cabin. So I said, “You hear that? They do that right over top of these woods. I’d like to know what they’re doing.”
And he said he was told we were on the England to Toronto flight path and the planes were just gearing back for landing in Toronto. Then he said he didn’t know if that was true; it was just what he was told and for all he knew they could be dropping boxes of DDT and that could be the sound of the back door opening.
Jesus! That set me back, but some of them are bound to be good, you know, and it’s hard to tell. I said, “I’ve been told when you see contrails in the sky, they’re adding some sort of gas to make people stupid.” I didn’t say I believed it or anything, just told him the story.
And he said he’d been a lot of places that didn’t have airplanes going over them and people were just as stupid there. He said to let him think about it a bit, so I just petted Potto for a minute, then he said he’d compared places with lots of planes and places with hardly any and there didn’t seem to be much difference in stupidity levels. Just as many stupid people and just as many assholes no matter where you went. Look at the governments they elect, he said, and I had to agree with that.
Don’t you think it would be a good idea on their part, I asked him, and he thought no; too hard to control. And besides the surest sign of intelligence was not believing what the government tells you, and most of the people who don’t trust the government live in the cities and not out in the country. And I asked him if people who escaped to the bush got stuff sprayed on them.