Prayers For Rain Part 98

Angie turned from the map, spoke to Himbo. "We're interested in purchasing parcel eight-sixty-five. Could you tell us who owns it?"

Himbo gave her a brilliant smile of the whitest teeth I'd seen on a man this side of David Ha.s.selhoff. Caps, I decided. Bet the b.a.s.t.a.r.d wears caps.

"Sure." His fingers zipped over his computer keyboard. "That was eight-sixty-five. Correct?"

"You got it," Angie said.

I peered up at the parcel. Nothing around it. No eight-six-six or eight-six-four. Nothing for at least twenty acres, maybe more.

"Spooky Land," Himbo said softly, his eyes on the computer screen.

"What's that?"

He looked up, startled to realize, I think, that he'd spoken aloud. "Oh, well..." He gave us an embarra.s.sed smile. "When we were kids, we used to call that area Spooky Land. We'd dare each other to walk through it."

"Why?"

"It's a long story." He looked down at his keyboard. "See, no one's supposed to know..."

"But...?" Angie leaned into the counter.

Himbo shrugged. "Hey, it's been over thirty years. Heck, I wasn't even born then."

"Sure," I said. "Thirty years."

He leaned into the counter, lowered his voice, and his eyes glinted like a born gossip about to dish some dirt. "Back in the fifties, the army supposedly kept a kinda research facility there. Nothing big, my parents said, just a few stories tall, but real hush-hush."

"What kind of research?"

"People." He stifled a nervous laugh with his fist. "Supposedly mental patients and the r.e.t.a.r.ded. See, that's what scared us as kids-you know, that the ghosts running around Spooky Land were the ghosts of lunatics." He held up his hands, took one step back. "It could all have been a ghost story used by our parents to keep us away from the bog."

Angie gave him her most lascivious smile. "But you know different, don't you?"

His ivory skin flushed. "Well, I did do some checking once."

"And?"

"And there was was a structure on that land until 1964, when it was either razed or burned, and the land a structure on that land until 1964, when it was either razed or burned, and the land was was owned by the government until '95, when it sold at auction." owned by the government until '95, when it sold at auction."

"To?" I asked.

He looked at the computer screen. "Bourne is the owner of record of parcel eight-sixty-five. Diane Bourne."

The Plymouth Library had an aerial map of the entire town. It was relatively current, too, the photo taken just a year ago on a cloudless day. We spread the map across a large table in the reference room, used a magnifying gla.s.s we'd b.u.mmed from the librarian, and after about ten minutes, we found the cranberry bog, then moved a tenth of an inch to the right across the map.

"There's nothing there," Angie said.

I moved the gla.s.s in micro-increments over the blurry patch of green and brown. I couldn't see anything that looked like a roof.

I raised the magnifying gla.s.s slightly, considered the whole area. "We got the right bog?"

Angie's finger appeared under the magnifying gla.s.s. "Yeah. There's the access road. That looks like the equipment shed. There's Myles Standish forest. That's it. So much for your psychic dream."

"Diane Bourne owns this land," I said. "You telling me that means nothing?"

"I'm telling you," she said, "that there's no house in there."

"There's something," I said. "There has to be."

The bugs were angry. It was another hot, humid day, the heat steaming the surface of the bog, the cranberries smelling sharp and spoiled in the heat. The sun beat down like the flat of a razor blade, and the mosquitoes smelled our flesh and went nuts.

Angie slapped the backs of her legs and neck so much that pretty soon I couldn't tell which red welts were from the bloodsuckers and which were from her hands.

For a while I tried the Zen trick of ignoring them, willing my body to seem unattractive. After a few hundred bites or so, though, I thought, f.u.c.k Zen. Confucius never lived in ninety-eight percent humidity on a ninety-two-degree day. If he had, he'd have hacked off a few heads and told the emperor he was fresh out of peppy bromides until someone outfitted the palace with AC.

We crouched along the tree line on the eastern side of the bog and peered through binoculars. If Scott Pea.r.s.e of the Special Forces and Panamanian brothel ma.s.sacre did hide out back in these woods, I was pretty sure there'd be trip wires, defenses I couldn't see, Bouncing Betties waiting to make any possibility of v.i.a.g.r.a in my future a moot point.

But all I could see from here were woods, parched brambles grown brittle with heat, withered birches and knotty pines, crumbling moss the texture of asbestos. It was one ugly plot of land, fetid and irritable in the heat.

I scoped everything within range of the binoculars Bubba had picked up from a navy SEAL, and even with all that power and clarity, I didn't see a house.

Angie slapped another mosquito. "I'm dying here."

"You see anything?"

"Nothing."

"Focus on the ground."

"Why?"

"It could be underground."

She slapped her flesh again. "Fine."

Another five minutes, and we'd lost blood from every pore and still found nothing but forest floor, pine needles, squirrels, and moss.

"It's in there," I said as we walked back across the bogs.

"I'm not staking it out," she said.

"Not asking you to."

We climbed in the Porsche, and I took one long look across the bog at the stand of trees.

"That's where he hides," I said.