With a backpack full of cash in hand, he crossed the street and entered the office of the Calais Lodge. It was a small place, designed decades ago in the image of an Alpine lodge, three stories of siding that had once probably been white, and an A-frame roof capped by weathered shingles. He found a neat front desk, and behind it a woman in her fifties who wasn’t wearing any kind of uniform. She smiled in a familiar small-town way.
“Do you have any vacancies?” he asked, having already seen the empty parking lot.
“Nothing but vacancies,” she said. “How many nights?”
“Two,” he replied.
She situated herself behind a keyboard and screen. “It’ll be ninety a night.”
DeBolt was naturally frugal, having grown up in a home with limited means, and later making ends meet on an enlisted-ranks paycheck in the service. That being the case, there was a brief hesitation, belying the fact that his pocket was stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. “That’ll be fine,” he finally said.
“I’ll need a credit card and driver’s license,” she said, her fingers hovering over the keyboard.
“That could be a problem,” he said. “My girlfriend has my wallet, so I don’t have any ID right now. She was supposed to meet me here, but her car broke down and she won’t arrive until later.” The woman looked crestfallen until DeBolt added, “But I can give you cash up front.”
She eyed him more closely, a clear risk-benefit analysis. DeBolt had not shaved in forty-eight hours, and after a long day on the run he probably looked as weary as he felt. He apparently passed the inspection. “Name?” she asked.
DeBolt was prepared. He gave her the name Trent Hall, an old high school friend, along with a fictional Colorado address. He followed that with two hundred-dollar bills. She faltered in providing change, and was forced to go to her purse for a twenty to complete the transaction — who paid cash for hotel rooms anymore? Minutes later DeBolt had a key in hand.
“We don’t serve dinner this time of year, but the Melodee next door is good. We offer breakfast from seven to nine, a buffet if we have enough guests.”
“Thanks.”
DeBolt found the room near the second-floor landing. Outside his door was a knee wall in need of paint, and on the abutting stair rail he saw a loose post that had fallen free. Happily, things inside the room seemed in better shape. The first thing he did was look out the window. He saw the Caddy across the street, and had a good view of the pharmacy and the Melodee restaurant. There was little traffic, and the few cars he did see moved at a distinctly local pace. On the distant river a small boat plowed seaward leaving a chevron wake behind. The extended dusk reminded him of Alaska, and he wondered how much farther south Calais was than Kodiak. Unnervingly, DeBolt realized an answer might come, and he pushed the question away. There were advantages to having all the world’s information for the asking, but at that moment it seemed heavy and onerous.
This is going to take some getting used to.
Feeling dog-tired, he closed the curtains, which brought the room to near darkness. He lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. The last twenty-four hours began rewinding in his mind. He fell distracted by the empty screen in his vision — blank now, but waiting with unending patience, ready to blink to life with facts and figures. Was there any way to ignore it? Would it ever go away? He hoped there was some command he had not yet imagined, a mental switch he could throw to suspend operations.
He thought: Power off. Disable.
Nothing changed.
He wondered what would happen while he slept. There was a fine line between sleep and consciousness: who hadn’t startled awake with arms outstretched to avoid an imaginary fall, or talked in their sleep? In that limbo would his dreams interact with his personal supercomputer? Network into his nightmares?
Or was none of it real at all?
For the first time DeBolt considered an alternate scenario: Was he simply going mad, his “connection” no more than the psychotic imaginings of a brain-damaged crash survivor? No, he decided. Part of him wished it was so simple, but the evidence was incontrovertible: the car outside, the money in the backpack, all made possible by his strange new aptitudes.
A few weeks ago DeBolt had been at the crest of life, no worry beyond the next mission, the next round of Natty Light at the Golden Anchor. He’d had friends and college and a job with a mission. Now he was hunted, wandering, alone. He had all the world’s information in his head, but no idea what to do with it.
Minutes later DeBolt was fast asleep.
As he drifted off, not fifty yards from where he lay, a dark blue Toyota SUV cruised slowly past in the long New England dusk. Its brake lights blinked once in front of the pharmacy parking lot.
Lund hit a wall trying to find out where the Learjet had gone. She had no FAA contacts in the upper Midwest, and didn’t feel like there was enough evidence to launch a formal inquiry on the issue of where Trey DeBolt had been taken. She simply needed more.
She was at her desk, contemplating how to proceed, when her work cell rang. The number didn’t register as a contact.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is this Agent Lund?” The voice was male, bass-toned, and made her think of New England.
“Yes, this is Shannon Lund.”
“My name is LaSalle. I work for the sheriff’s department in Washington County, Maine. Something has come up in an investigation, and I was hoping you might be able to help.”
“I’d be happy to try, but you realize I’m in Kodiak, Alaska — not exactly your neck of the woods.”
“Yes, I know. But you’re with the Coast Guard there, right?”
“Coast Guard Investigative Service — I’m a civilian employee.” There was a pause, and she imagined LaSalle trying to wrap his mind around the idea of a civilian serving as a detective in a branch of the service. If the man had ever served, it must have been before the age of outsourcing. “What can I do for you?” she prompted.
“Well, we had an accident out here recently — although we’re beginning to think it wasn’t actually an accident. A cottage in a remote corner of the county blew sky high from a gas leak. It was owned by a local woman, and she was killed, but we’ve found a few signs of tampering and multiple ignition sources.”
“So you think the blast was an intentional act?”
“Could be — the FBI is looking into it.”
“Okay, but what does that have to do with Air Station Kodiak?”
“Ever heard the name Trey DeBolt?”
Lund went rigid in her chair. “Yes … I have. He was a Coast Guardsman who died recently in the line of duty.”
“Right — I found out that much from the official records. But the thing is, we found a doorknob about two hundred yards from ground zero here, and we were able to pull two solid prints from it, right-hand thumb and index. Mr. DeBolt, being a service member and all, had his prints on file in the national database — we made a match right away.”
“Are you sure about this? The match?”
“As sure as you can be about that kind of thing. Now since Mr. DeBolt predeceased this accident, we know he wasn’t involved, but the prints are fairly recent — we know because they overlay some others. What’s bothering me is that I can’t make any connection. DeBolt is originally from Colorado, and nobody around here seems to know him. I’m trying to figure out what he was doing out our way.”