Outwitting Trolls Page 11

  Dogs love you, no doubt about it, but they love food best of all.

  Websterville, New Hampshire, was tucked into the southwestern corner of New Hampshire near the Vermont and Massachusetts borders. The little town had just one claim to fame. It was the home of Webster State College, formerly Webster State Teachers College, and before that Webster Normal School. I’d driven through the town many times. It straddled the two-lane east-west state highway through southern New Hampshire that was the most direct route from Boston to a lot of good trout fishing in southern Vermont. I didn’t remember ever actually stopping in Websterville or having any kind of business to transact there, but I did remember the classic nineteenth-century brick buildings and the lovely Victorian houses that lined the street, along with the college’s sterile brick-and-glass dormitories and classroom buildings and its manicured playing fields.

  It took a little over two hours to drive from my parking garage on Charles Street in Boston to Main Street in Websterville, where I stopped at a coffee shop. It was the fish-shaped wooden sign over the door reading daniel webster’s trout that caught my eye. Daniel Webster, for whom, I assumed, Websterville was named, had no interest in dictionaries. That was another Webster. Daniel was a famous and influential New England politician in the first half of the nineteenth century, a native of New Hampshire who served as a United States congressman, a senator, and a secretary of state, and who probably deserved to be president.

  He was once offered the position of vice president, which he turned down, saying, “I do not propose to be buried until I am dead.”

  Webster was even more famous in some circles for the fourteen-and-a-half-pound brook trout he caught on a fly rod from the Carman River on Long Island one Sunday morning in the spring of 1827 when he skipped out of church in the middle of the sermon.

  Some spoilsports dispute the story of Daniel Webster’s monster trout. They call it apocryphal or, even worse, just a damn fish story. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t interest me. If it’s a damn fish story, it’s a damn good one.

  I could hardly resist a place called Daniel Webster’s Trout, and I was overdue for a caffeine fix, so I slipped into a parking slot directly in front. The narrow coffee shop was wedged between a women’s clothing boutique and an art gallery. Across the street were a Cambodian restaurant, a movie house with a marquee advertising a Bergman festival, and a sporting-goods store that, judging from the window display, specialized in mountain biking, cross-country skiing, and whitewater kayaking.

  Websterville, in other words, appeared to be a typical New England college town.

  Inside Daniel Webster’s Trout I sat at a round metal table against the wall, and when the waitress, a slender young blonde who I guessed was a student at the college, came over, I asked for a mug of the “house blend,” which she said was “just sort of your basic coffee” and which I figured was my best chance of avoiding something that tasted more like candy than coffee.

  When she came back a few minutes later, I asked her if she could tell me how to find Chesterfield Road.

  “Sure,” she said. “Easy.” She pointed out the window. “You go that way maybe a hundred yards to the blinking light. Turn right there. You’ll go past the field house and the soccer field, and when you come to the stop sign, that’s Chesterfield Road. If you turn left, it takes you to some freshman dorms and the physics and chem labs and the administration building. On the right, it’s off campus. Mostly student apartments and some faculty housing.”

  I thanked her, and when I finished my coffee, I left an extra-generous tip.

  I followed the waitress’s directions to Chesterfield Road. The address I had for Wayne was number 188. I guessed he didn’t live in a freshman dorm, since he hadn’t been a freshman for a couple of years, and I was fairly confident that he wasn’t living in a science lab or the administration building, so I turned right onto Chesterfield Road.

  Number 188 turned out to be what would’ve been called a triple-decker if it had been located in South Boston instead of Websterville. It was a square three-story wood-frame building with porches spanning the front of each level. The only thing missing was underwear and diapers flapping from clotheslines.

  Triple-deckers flanked number 188, and up and down this stretch of Chesterfield Road were what appeared to be other apartment buildings. There were duplexes, more triple-deckers, and some big rambling farm houses and old Victorians that had been converted into apartments.

  Both sides of the street were lined with vehicles, and more cars were parked in the driveways that separated the buildings. They were mostly aging Hondas and Toyotas, along with some battered old pickup trucks and Jeeps, but there were also a few new-looking BMWs and Porsches and Audis and Lexuses, too. Webster State evidently boasted a heterogeneous mixture of student demographics.

  I tucked my car into an empty space on the side of the road, turned off the ignition, and took out my cell phone. I tried Wayne Nichols’s number. It rang half a dozen times, and then the now-familiar recorded greeting came on.

  I closed my phone without leaving a message, got out of my car, and climbed the half-dozen steps onto the front porch of 188 Chesterfield Road.

  On the outside door frame there were three doorbells, and taped over each bell was a list of two or three names written in ink. None of the names belonged to Wayne Nichols.

  I looked through the glass on the front door into a small, dark foyer. There was a bank of locked mailboxes and two inside doors. Some magazines and envelopes had spilled onto the tiled floor.

  I pressed the bell for apartment 1 and waited, and when no one came to the door, I tried apartment 2. After a minute or two, I heard the echo of feet clomping down some inside stairs, and then one of the inside doors opened.

  A young woman with tangly brown hair blinked at me through the window of the front door. She was wearing a wrinkled blue T-shirt and gray sweatpants.

  I smiled at her through the glass and said, “I’m looking for Wayne Nichols.”

  She frowned and cupped her ear with her hand.

  “Does Wayne Nichols live here?” I asked more loudly.

  She shrugged and opened the door. “Who’re you?” she asked.

  “I’m a lawyer from Boston,” I said. “My name is Brady Coyne. I have business with Wayne Nichols. I believe he lives at this address.” I fished my card out of my pocket and handed it to her.

  She was standing in the half-opened doorway. She squinted at my card, then at me. “I’m Judith,” she said.

  I smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You’re a lawyer?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “You got business with Wayne Nichols, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “I bet,” she said.

  I smiled at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean old Wayne probably could use a lawyer.”

  “You know him?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Webster State’s a small school. Everybody pretty much knows everybody. Wayne Nichols doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “Can you tell me where he does live?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. He used to have the first floor with a couple other degenerates. I wasn’t what you’d call close with any of them. They all moved out at the end of last term, for which I thank God, and I don’t know where they went, though I do see one or the other of them around campus once in a while.”

  “Do you have roommates who might help me find Wayne?”

  “I have roommates,” she said, “but I doubt they could help you. We kind of avoided Wayne and his buddies when they were living here. We travel in different circles, you might say.”

  “What circles does Wayne travel in?”

  “Just not mine,” she said. “Let’s leave it at that. I can’t tell you how happy I was when he moved out of this building.”

  “No idea how I could find him, huh?” I asked.

  “Nope. Sorry.” She glanced meaningfully at her wristwatch. “I g
otta go get ready for classes now,” she said. “Sorry I couldn’t help you.”

  I smiled at her. “I appreciate your talking with me.”

  She waved her hand at me, flashed a quick, shy smile, and stepped back into the foyer. The front-door latch clicked loudly behind her, and then she turned and opened the inside door and climbed back up the stairs to her apartment.

  I went out to my car, turned around, and headed back the way I’d come on Chesterfield Road. On the other side of the intersection I passed a couple of brick dormitories, and then I came to a large square building with a sign out front that read WEBSTER STATE COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION.

  I left my car in a section marked visitors in the side parking lot and went into the building. In the lobby a sign indicated that the registrar’s office was in suite 206, so I climbed a flight of stairs, found the door with 206 painted on it, and went in.

  I was faced with a room-length waist-high counter with four or five people standing on the other side, not unlike bank tellers. There was a line of two or three people—students, I guessed—in front of each of the tellers. I stood at the end of one of the lines, feeling profoundly out of place in my lawyer pinstripe amid these young people in their ripped jeans, baseball caps, and rock-band T-shirts.

  After about ten minutes, it was my turn. A young man who appeared to be a student himself faced me on the other side of the counter. “How can I help you, sir?” he asked. A nameplate on the counter indicated that his name was Matthew Trowbridge and he was an admissions intern.

  “I’m trying to catch up with one of the students,” I said. “The address I have for him appears to be out of date.”

  Matthew Trowbridge said, “Are you on the faculty or staff here?”

  “No. I’m a lawyer. I drove up from Boston today.”

  “I’m not allowed to divulge personal information about our students,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “How personal is an address?”

  He shrugged.

  “So who is?”

  He frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “Who is allowed to divulge information such as where a student is presently living?”

  “I can talk to Mrs. Allen, if you want,” he said. “She’s the assistant registrar.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Who is it you’re looking for?”

  “His name is Wayne Nichols,” I said. “I’m Brady Coyne.” I gave him one of my business cards.

  He glanced at the card, then said, “Hang on. I’ll see if Mrs. Allen’s available.” He turned, walked down to the end of the room, opened a door, and went into another room.

  Matthew Trowbridge was back about five minutes later. “Mrs. Allen can talk with you,” he said. “Just go down there.” He pointed. “It’s the second door on the left.”

  I followed his directions and came to a room with a plaque on the door that read CHARLOTTE ALLEN, ASSISTANT REGISTRAR.

  I rapped on the door, and it opened a moment later. Standing there was a woman—early, maybe middle thirties—wearing what I guessed, judging by how perfectly they fit her slender body, were expensive designer jeans. Several of the top buttons on her bone white silk blouse were opened.

  She had pale blue eyes and straw-colored hair and a generous mouth, and she was smiling at me as though I were just the person she’d been hoping to see.

  “Mr. Coyne,” she said. “Come on in. Let’s sit.”

  Her office walls were lined with bookshelves full of books. A window that spanned the back wall looked out over a baseball diamond. On one side of the room sat a big oak desk with nothing on it except a telephone and a computer, and the other side served as a cozy sitting area, with four comfortable-looking chairs arranged around a square glass-topped coffee table.

  Charlotte Allen pointed to one of those chairs and then sat in one herself. I saw that she had my business card in her hand. “Matthew said you were interested in Wayne Nichols,” she said.

  “I need to talk with him,” I said. “I’m hoping you can tell me where he’s presently living.”

  She smiled and touched her hair with her fingertips. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Mr. Coyne.”

  “You can’t tell me where he’s living?”

  Charlotte Allen was shaking her head. “Our regulations are very clear. It’s all about protecting our students’ privacy. I’m really sorry. I wish I could help you out.”

  “Since you can’t,” I said, “who can?”

  “Nobody will,” she said. “Or at least nobody’s supposed to.”

  “Look,” I said. “Wayne’s father was brutally murdered last Saturday night. His mother has been unable to contact her son to tell him what happened. She’s asked me, as the family’s lawyer, to see what I can do. I’ve tried calling Wayne, but he doesn’t answer his cell phone, which is the only number I have for him. So I drove up here to Websterville in hopes of tracking him down. I just came from the last address his mother has for him, and he doesn’t live there anymore. So now what am I supposed to do? What would you do, Mrs. Allen, if you were in my shoes?”

  “Did you say murdered?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they know…?”

  “The police have made no arrests,” I said.

  “Oh, dear,” she said again.

  “So you can see why I need to talk to Wayne,” I said.

  “He doesn’t know?”

  “No. We don’t want him seeing it first on the news or hearing it as a rumor.”

  “Of course. Understandable.” Charlotte Allen cleared her throat. “You drove all the way up here from Boston to deliver this horrible news to Wayne Nichols?”

  “The victim’s son,” I said. “Yes.”

  “Let me check on something, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Of course.”

  “Just wait here,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She got up and walked out of her office, trailing the faint scent of lilacs behind her.

  She was actually gone for about ten minutes. When she came back, she sat down across from me and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Coyne.”

  “What?”

  “Under the circumstances,” she said, “I was prepared to, um, bend our regulations and find a way to get that information for you. When I checked our records, though, I found that Wayne Nichols withdrew from school just before the end of the fall term. We have no more information about him since then. I can tell you where he was living, but that’s student housing, and he’d’ve had to move somewhere else when he dropped out.”

  “I know where he was living then,” I said. “He’s not there anymore.”

  “Well, then,” said Charlotte Allen.

  “Well, then,” I said.

  She stood up. “Now what will you do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll think of something.”

  She held up my business card. “If I hear anything, I’ll call you. How would that be?”

  “That would be excellent,” I said. I held out my hand to her. “I appreciate your time.”

  Her hand was soft, but her grip was firm. “I wish I could’ve been more helpful.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  I walked out of Charlotte Allen’s office and past the counter where I’d talked with Matthew Trowbridge, and I was halfway down the stairs when a woman’s voice from somewhere behind me said, “Hey, mister. You in the suit.”

  I stopped and turned around, and a young woman came skipping down the steps toward me.

  “You talking to me?” I asked her.

  “You’re the only one in a suit,” she said. She was short and a little pudgy, with big dark eyes and a nice smile. “Did I hear you say you were looking for Wayne Nichols?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you know him?”

  “I overheard you up there.” She jerked her chin up to where I’d talked with Matthew Trowbridge and Charlotte Allen. “I bet n
obody answered your questions. Am I right?”

  “You’re right,” I said. “They’re very conscientious about protecting their students’ privacy.”

  “I’m Lila, by the way,” she said. She held out her hand.

  I took her hand and smiled. “I’m Brady.”

  We resumed walking down the stairs. “Lots of people know where Wayne Nichols lives,” Lila said. “It’s hardly a big secret.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me.” We came to the bottom of the stairs. I opened the front door and held it for her, and we both stepped outside.

  She cocked her head and frowned at me. “You’re not gonna, like, get him in trouble or something? You’re not a cop or something, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m just a lawyer. His family’s lawyer. I need to talk with him is all.”

  She looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “He’s on Blaine Street. That’s over that way.” She waved her hand off to the left.

  “Can you tell me how to get there?” I said.

  “Sure. You go back down that way for maybe two miles?” She pointed down Chesterfield Road in the direction of Wayne’s old apartment building. “You’ll come to an intersection with a white church on the corner on the left and a big cornfield on the right. Go left there by the church, and then Blaine Street is your, um…second or third right. There’s street signs. Wayne’s place is way down the end. There’s all woods after that. It’s like this old neighborhood, a bunch of shitty little ranch houses, excuse my language, where mostly married students live. Wayne’s house is yellow with one of those carports on the side? Except there’s all trash barrels and crap in the carport instead of a car.”

  “Do you know what number his house is?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Sorry. Way down at the end where it turns around in one of those whatchamacallits is the best I can do for you.”

  “Cul-de-sac,” I said.