West Stewartstown, New Hampshire
Ron Desmond’s black pickup was tucked into a derelict skidder trail just off Bishop Brook Road. He was a few hundred yards from the driveway to the duplex where Nicole was sleeping. He stretched and yawned, then poured coffee from his camo thermos. After rubbing his red eyes, he took a slow sip and reviewed his plan.
The evening before Greg Delp had begun watching the duplex from the edge of the woods and reported nothing suspicious. Nicole had been in the living room getting ready to leave and didn’t seem to have any interest in her telephone. Twenty minutes later she stepped out the front door. Delp disconnected her phone line at the back of the house as she started her car. Then he raced through the woods to his truck just in time to pick up her trail which ten minutes later led to the Riverbend Inn across the Connecticut River in Beecher Falls. Once Delp knew where Nicole would be, he called his boss.
Desmond had taken over and nursed a few beers at a corner table while watching Nicole and Danny Beauregard joking and arguing. Then at about eleven Beauregard lingered while Nicole returned to her duplex. Desmond went home for a few hours of sleep, then returned.
Ironically, Nicole had arranged her own downfall. That Friday she had told her coworkers about her plan to fish Back Pond and Desmond was one of many listeners. This allowed him to prepare John Ford for his mission. Desmond was confident of the outcome provided there were no witnesses.
At 8:30 AM Saturday Nicole drove by the logging road. Desmond could see her empty roof rack and knew she was going to Wiswell Road to get her brother’s canoe. Desmond’s CB radio crackled to life as he called John Ford. The disguised conversation gave Ford Nicole’s approximate time of arrival at the pond. Desmond signed off and smiled as George Benoit and his wife Lois drove past heading toward town. They rented the opposite side of the duplex.
Desmond walked cross lots through the woods while putting on latex gloves. Nicole’s front door was unlocked. As he entered he reminded himself that his search must be totally invisible. After twenty minutes he found no sign of the missing report. He went out the back door, reconnected the telephone wires, and disappeared into the woods. He returned to his truck, checked his watch, then sat impatiently waiting for Ford’s signal.
While Desmond waited, an unruly nine-year-old named Louella Petri made ready for her Saturday morning cartoon extravaganza. She stepped into the living room dressed in a dirty T-shirt and faded jeans. She turned on the TV while brushing her scraggly brown hair, then adjusted the volume to drown out her parents’ argument in the kitchen.
“Turn down the fuckin’ volume,” her mother bellowed.
Louella had heard a special education teacher at her school say that all kids are gifted, but they get to unwrap their gifts at different times. Louella already had her gift. It was irritating adults. To practice this talent, she turned the volume down to a whisper and moved her chair close to the TV. Then after a few minutes she began to gradually raise the volume. Within five minute she had returned the set to full volume. When her parents realized they couldn’t hear one another, they screeched at Louella who promptly moved closer to the TV and squelched the volume.
After three rounds of this torture, her parents reached a consensus: Louella could watch her cartoons at Grandma’s house or not at all. A few minutes later Louella was bouncing rocks off the telephone pole at the edge of their front yard. Then she took the Walkman she had lifted from her sister’s bedroom and slipped on the headphones. She defiantly looked back, cranked the volume, and walked down the middle of Back Pond Road.
Louella was perfecting a hardscrabble personality that was already contributing to local humor. This started with a joke her uncle, Haskill Cabot, spread throughout the county. It was based on an exchange he witnessed between Louella and the Canaan Priest Father Xavier. In his joke Haskill disguised the pair as a local lad and the village priest.
