“It’s like a movie set without the actors,” she commented.

His pleasure was unabated. “Right. Right,” he agreed, craning his neck as he drove. “I’ve never been here during a hurricane, but can you imagine? It’s got to be so eerie.”

“This is strange enough,” she said quietly, pulling her thoughts back to the task at hand. “And Kalfus kept his storage unit here?”

“Not really,” Lester admitted. “The warrant says Seabrook. But since you’d never been here, I had to show you Hampton Beach, especially looking like this.” He returned them to Ashworth, continued south across the Hampton Bridge, eventually to the 286 intersection, and drove inland a few miles to Route 1 North which turned out to be no more unique to Seabrook than any other stretch of miracle mile anywhere in the United States.

“Now, this,” he announced as they progressed through a series of stoplights marking a string of bland shopping plazas, “is the perfect place to have a rental facility. Anonymous, nondescript, and within easy reach of three states.”

This time, because of their outsider status, along with the political sensitivities of a number of turf-conscious local police agencies, Les and Sam had requested a state trooper to meet them at Ocean Storage Rentals. As FTOs, they had a loose rein, jurisdictionally, but they knew from experience the benefits of at least a show of political correctness.

In this instance, it turned out to be a meeting of similarly uninterested minds. The trooper, an old-timer, met them at the storage yard entrance, exchanged greetings and information, participated in a unified show of force presenting the facility’s owner with the warrant, and casually returned to his cruiser while Sam and Les moved on to investigate unit 48.

There was a pause as Lester fit Kalfus’s key into the padlock securing the overhead tambour door. They were seasoned enough cops to know that surprises awaited the unwary, including booby traps, and that merely throwing open a wide portal like this didn’t allow for much time to move aside fast if necessary.

Nevertheless, it had to be done. With a quick nod, Les snapped open the lock and wrenched up on the door handle in one smooth move, while Sam rested her hand on her holstered weapon.

The result was blessedly anticlimactic. Like the mouth of a yawning whale, the storage unit opened wide, revealing only darkness, a slight mustiness, and a mundane stacking of ordinary belongings.

“Your guy was a busy boy,” said the trooper from behind, having surreptitiously returned like a curious tourist.

Lester turned and cocked an eyebrow, replying, “He won’t be the only one. Once we go through it all to see if anything relates to our case, it’ll have to be cataloged, identified, and parceled out to whoever reported it stolen in the first place. That’s likely to be a ton of fun.”

“For somebody else,” the man said, laughing. “Thank God I don’t get tapped for jobs like that.”

Having satisfied his curiosity—and perhaps warned off by Lester’s comment—their partner once more faded away.