After passing through the army MPs stationed outside the Rockingham Hotel, he went into the lobby crowded with luggage in piles in the corner and shouting men in uniform and out of uniform, pressing in on the overwhelmed staff. The shouts were in a mixture of English and German. Sam skipped the slow-moving elevator for the carpeted stairs. He checked his watch.
He knocked on the door of Room Twelve, waited, staring at the bright brass numerals. Voices came from the other side, but no one answered. He knocked again.
The door swung open. LaCouture stood there, phone to his ear, dressed in white boxer shorts and a dingy white T-shirt. “Yeah?” he said. Behind him, sitting at the table, was Groebke, sipping from a cup of coffee, reading a German magazine called
Sam said, “It’s nine A.M. The time I usually show up.”
LaCouture held the phone receiver to his chest, looked annoyed. “We’re busy now. Come back later.”
“When—”
The door slammed in his face.
Sam went back down to the lobby.
The noise and confusion of the lobby made his head throb. Sam went outside to the granite steps, near the MP guards, took in some deep breaths. He thought about going to the police station, maybe coming back to the hotel in another hour or so.
But… after last night’s raids, the station was probably crawling with friends and relatives of those seized, people desperate for justice or just a sympathetic ear. The thought of trying to explain to some Dutch woman who could barely understand English that her husband was in the custody of the feds and not the city—the thought of doing that all day made him queasy.
What, then?
He looked at the men in uniform, the army trucks rumbling by, the checkpoint just down the street, and it came to him.
What Tony had said.
He would do his job.
His real job, one he had overlooked for the past few days.
He stepped briskly down the steps on his way to his parked car.
The drive to the outskirts of the state’s largest city, Manchester, took almost two hours along a poorly paved two-lane road heading west through small towns—Epping, Raymond, Candia—that looked like they hadn’t changed much since the turn of the century. Little clusters of shops and buildings about the town center, the obligatory churches with white steeples and volunteer fire departments.
Along the way were billboards advertising the latest Ford model or a resort area up in the White Mountains. There were two billboards showing a grinning President Long, clenched fist raised up in the air. One billboard said EVERY MAN A KING and the other said SHARE THE WEALTH. Sam was pleased by the first billboard, for somebody had blacked out the last word and replaced it with another so that it said EVERY MAN A THIEF.
There were hitchhikers on the side of the road, standing either defiantly or in bowed exhaustion, arms and thumbs extended. Plenty of solitary men, faces hooded by battered hats. A few women with children, most of the time the kids hiding their faces in the women’s skirts, as if ashamed to be out there. There were a couple of families slowly moving along, pushing their belongings in metal or wooden carts, heading from God knew where to who knew what.
He passed them all. He couldn’t afford to stop. As he quickly passed through the little communities, he knew that by day’s end, he would be in a lot of trouble, a hell of a lot of trouble. Somehow the thought cheered him.
But he didn’t remain cheered for long. As he entered Manchester, he approached an intersection. There were two men in worn overalls and a woman in a faded yellow dress, staring at something on the ground. And then he saw what they were staring at: a shirtless man stretched out on the ground, facedown, his hands bound behind his back, the rear of his head a bloody mess.
A political, the first he had ever seen. As a sworn peace officer, he knew he should stop—but a political. He was already up to his chin in politics. So Sam kept driving, taking a series of turns he recalled from last year, having visited this location on official business, transporting a prisoner who belonged to the feds. Back then going to this place had been unsettling, like going into the basement of a haunted house, goaded into the shadows by your boyhood chums.
Now it was worse. Last time he had been here on official business. Today he was going into the belly of the beast itself, armed only with half-truths and lies.
Up ahead, a wooden sign, dark brown wood with white painted letters.
