Killer Waves Read Free

part of the parking lot. Off to the east, where the waves rolled in, were a couple of park administration and visitors' buildings, and beyond the buildings a hill rose up, and nearly hidden in the trees at the top of the hill was another concrete bunker.
    I said, "Mind if I take a peek through the windshield?"
    "Knock yourself out," Officer Remick said. "But stay a couple of feet away and don't touch anything."
    "Greg ... " came the other cop's voice, and his partner said, "So what? Besides, we can't do anything until the State Police get here, and you know it."
    I left them there talking and went over to the car holding my flashlight. From my dealings with my best friend, the Tyler police detective, I knew Officer Remick was right. In cases of suspicious death, the State Police always responded with their Major Crime Unit and essentially took control of the investigation. So I probably had a couple of minutes to look things over before the very large and very polite and very insistent State Police detectives arrived and told me to get the hell out.
    I switched on the flashlight, and felt myself take a quick breath. There was a man in the driver's seat, dead. His head lolled to the left, up against the closed driver's-side window. The right side of his head was smeared with blood. His skin was dark brown and he had a mustache, and he wore a black suit and a white shirt and no necktie. Blood had also stained the right side of his coat, smearing over a small lapel pin that he was wearing. I tried to step closer, but the first officer called out: "Hey! Remember what we said!"
    I nodded and kept on looking from a bit of a distance. The pin appeared to be yellow and what I could see past the bloodstain looked like a thick black exclamation point, standing on its head.  I moved the light around, saw nothing in the rear seat, and nothing in the front seat as well, nor on the floorboards. Just a dead man.  An apparently murdered man, right in my neighborhood. I switched off the light and looked around. Save for this car and the vehicles from the town of North Tyler, the large parking lot was empty. Lots of acreage out there to lose yourself in, and I felt a shiver, thinking that maybe when I was on my back deck, watching the shuttle go overhead, someone put a bullet in this man's head. Just a number of yards from my home someone had been murdered.
    I didn't like the feeling.
    The two cops were talking and I made a production of walking around in a big arc, and when I could make out the rear license plate I took my reporter's notebook out and quickly scribbled down the number. Putting the notebook away, I walked over to Officers Remick and Calhoun.
    "Any ID yet? You said it's a rental car; they must know who it was rented to."
    The older cop just grunted and Officer Remick said, "Yeah, rented out today at the Manchester Airport. By a guy named Smith. Doesn't sound too promising, does it?"
    "No, it doesn't," I said. "Guess you poor guys will have to start doing a canvass of the motels and hotels once the State Police get here."
    Officer Calhoun said sourly, "Yeah, if they don't make us go on coffee or doughnut runs in the meantime, that's what they ---- hold on, looks like they're arriving."
    I turned and looked over at the park entrance, which was a simple wooden gate and guard shack, and which opened out onto Route 1-A, also known as Atlantic Avenue. Route 1-A runs the entire eighteen-mile length of the New Hampshire coastline, and on this particular few yards, three cars came barreling into the parking lot at high speed. They braked to a halt and doors flew open, and they were all dark blue Ford LTDs with New Hampshire license plates. Officer Calhoun said, "You know what, those guys sure don't look like the State Police."
    His partner agreed, saying, "Tom, I don't particularly like the look of this."
    Neither did I, but I kept my mouth shut.
    I counted six individuals getting out of the LTDs, five men and and one woman. She talked