We were no longer in that special time. Nobody said anything as they passed by, but everything was off. Out there in the alleged real world, men and women with decades’ worth of experience in manufacturing, computers, and marketing were desperately snapping up entry-level jobs, leaving nothing behind for the hundreds of thousands of kids graduating each year. And of those graduating, “jobs” sometimes meant unpaid internships, moving back home, and looking with deepening dread at the payment book for their tens of thousands of dollars in student loans.
I’m not sure if I felt pity, or envy, or what. So I just sat there and ran things through my mind, from the note from Detective Renzi telling me to drop the matter, to the Globe story blithely writing about a movie shoot going awry, to those strong men hanging around Aunt Teresa’s apartment in the North End.
A lot to keep me occupied, which was good, because a couple of hours passed before the young woman I was looking for showed up. Her name was Haleigh Miller, and I had met her during the Falconer nuclear power plant demonstrations a few weeks back. She had befriended me when I covered the protests for my previous employer, Shoreline magazine, and she had also managed to hook me up with meeting Curt Chesak back before the violence erupted.
And speaking of violence and friendship, she had also been the girlfriend of Victor Toles, arrested last week for murdering his stepfather, local anti-nuclear activist Bronson Toles, with a skilled sniper shot to the head. Victor didn’t like his stepfather’s plan to sell valuable demo tapes of up-and-coming music acts to support his charitable causes. The stepson and his mom wanted to do something else with the money, like live in luxury for the rest of their lives.
An old and understandable conflict.
I stood up as Haleigh came closer, and she spotted me and stopped on the paved pathway.
“Oh. You.”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said. “I won’t take much of your time. Just need to ask you a couple of quick questions.”
Her face sagged, like the muscles and tendons there had suddenly lost their ability to keep things in place, and for a moment it seemed like she was about to burst into tears. She sniffled some and said, “Shit, okay, can we sit for a second?”
We went back to the stone wall and sat down and I asked, “How are you doing?”
“Stupid question. Ask another.”
“What about Victor?”
A shrug. “Haven’t seen or talked to him since that… since that day.”
Ah, yes, that day, when I’d visited Victor and his mom at their residence, discovering there that Victor was the shooter, and where Haleigh had stood up for her man by slugging me in the head with a softball bat. I had been trapped in a basement for a while, until I managed to escape and overpower Victor, and also managed to burn most of the valuable demo tapes.
“Some day. What news of him?”
“Arrested and charged with Bronson’s murder, and his mom’s trying to get a defense fund going with her old leftie friends.”
“Just the one murder?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Probably,” I said.
“Any more questions? I’ve got a paper due tomorrow and haven’t even started researching it.”
“A week ago, when I asked to meet up with Curt Chesak, you came through. I was probably the only reporter in the area who got an interview with him before the demonstrations went violent.”
“And before he beat the crap out of that Tyler cop.”
“That Tyler cop happens to be my best friend.”
“Oh. Sorry, I guess.”
“So here’s the deal. You had to talk to somebody in the movement to set up the interview. I want to know who he or she is.”
“Why?”
“You’re an intelligent young lady, Haleigh. I’m sure you can figure it out.”
“So you want to find Curt Chesak.”
“That I do.”
“Why not let the cops find him first?”
“Haleigh, you really don’t want to know any more.”
She seemed to consider that. She kicked at some of the colorful leaves on the ground, her head lowered. She lifted her head. “You… you had a choice, last week, to let the Tyler and state police know about me and Victor. You didn’t do it. You said you were doing it for my Air Force dad, so he wouldn’t have to worry about his daughter from the other side of the world.”
I kept quiet. Let her think it through. Haleigh sighed. “Ever since the protests, none of my so-called friends want to have anything to do with me. They think that since I was with Victor when he killed his stepdad, like I should have known, like I should have prevented it. All this talk about fellowship, about togetherness, about standing as one against The Man… so much bullshit. I can’t believe it, Lewis. I still can’t believe it.”
“Sorry you had to find that out.”
“I guess that’s part of growing up, eh?”
“Some would say that.”
“Sure,” she said. “So I say to hell with sticking together. The guy you’re looking for is a college instructor, from the Philosophy department. Name of Ken Marvel. Active in Chesak’s group but real quiet, in the background, almost invisible.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
Haleigh grabbed her knapsack, stood up. “And he’s a real prick. I know about him because he tried to hit on me one night when he was having some beers at the Stone Chapel, trying to bring Bronson Toles over to the dark side of the anti-nuclear movement. I hope you have fun with him, Lewis, I really do.”
It didn’t take much work, but I found out what I could about Ken Marvel. Like Haleigh said, he was an instructor at the school’s Philosophy department, which meant he didn’t have tenure and served semester to semester at the university’s pleasure. I couldn’t find out much about him in the large digital library called the Internet, but I did find that he lived in Lee, a small town adjacent to Durham, which was home to college employees, a few farms, and a mix of locals.
Getting there proved to be a challenge, since my Ford Explorer was still at my home on Tyler Beach and unreachable. But fortunately enough for me, this part of New Hampshire had a transit system consisting of brightly colored buses usually operated by college students looking to help pay for their tuition.
It took me about thirty minutes to get to Lee by finding the right bus to take, and I had a turn of good fortune when it turned out that one of the bus stops in Lee was at a service station that was only about a ten-minute walk to his house, 10 Oakland Road. The road was a typical New Hampshire back country road, single lane with no yellow line painted down the center, and definitely no sidewalk, guard rail, or streetlights. I strolled on the dirt shoulder, checking the mailboxes, until I finally came to number 10, which I found just as the sun was starting to set. The driveway leading into the woods was dirt.
No name on the mailbox. Not unusual. This was, after all, the Live Free or Die state.
I started down the driveway, keeping to the side in case a car or truck came bouncing along the narrow dirt lane. Pine trees and brush grew close to the edge of the road, which allowed me cover in case I was spotted.
But I went down there with no problem, going about a hundred feet to where the road widened to a dirt turnaround before what’s known as a double-wide, a pre-fab trailer, that was dumped here on a concrete slab. Lights were off inside the single-story home with black-shingled roof, and there was a sudden burst of barking. Two dogs emerged from doghouses, secured by long lengths of chain, and they snapped and growled in my direction. I wasn’t sure what breed they were, but they looked thin and mangy. The areas around their doghouses were worn-down dirt, with empty food bowls and water bowls scattered before them.