True believer - Nicholas Sparks [12]
Had to do this right, after all. Ghostbusting wasn’t for amateurs.
As might be expected, his editor had complained about the cost of the most recently purchased gizmos, which always seemed to be required in investigations like this. Technology was moving fast, and yesterday’s gizmos were the equivalent of stone tools and flint, Jeremy had explained to his editor, fantasizing about expensing the laser-beam-backpack thing that Bill Murray and Harold Ramis had used in Ghostbusters. He would love to have seen his editor’s expression with that one. As it was, the guy mowed through celery like a rabbit on amphetamines before finally signing off on the items. He sure would be pissed if the story ended up on television and not in the column.
Grinning at the memory of his editor’s expression, Jeremy flipped through various stations—rock, hip-hop, country, gospel—before settling on a local talk show that was interviewing two flounder fishermen who spoke passionately about the need to decrease the weight at which the fish could be harvested. The announcer, who seemed inordinately interested in the topic, spoke with a heavy twang. Commercials advertised the gun and coin show at the Masonic Lodge in Grifton and the latest team changes in NASCAR.
The traffic picked up near Greenville, and he looped around the downtown area near the campus of East Carolina University. He crossed the wide, brackish waters of the Pamlico River and turned onto a rural highway. The blacktop narrowed as it wound through the country, squeezed on both sides by barren winter fields, denser thickets of trees, and the occasional farmhouse. About thirty minutes later, he found himself approaching Boone Creek.
After the first and only stoplight, the speed limit dropped to twenty-five miles an hour, and slowing the car, Jeremy took in the scene with dismay. In addition to the half dozen mobile homes perched haphazardly off the road and a couple of cross streets, the stretch of blacktop was dominated by two run-down gas stations and Leroy’s Tires. Leroy advertised his business with a sign atop a tower of used tires that would be considered a fire hazard in any other jurisdiction. Jeremy reached the other end of town in a minute, at which point the speed limit picked up again. He pulled the car over to the side of the road.
Either the Chamber of Commerce had used photographs of some other town on its Web site or he’d missed something. He pulled over to check the map again, and according to this version of Rand McNally, he was in Boone Creek. He glanced in the rearview mirror wondering where on earth it was. The quiet, treelined streets. The blooming azaleas. The pretty women in dresses.
As he was trying to figure it out, he saw a white church steeple peeking out above the tree line and decided to make his way down one of the cross streets he’d passed. After a serpentine curve, the surroundings suddenly changed, and he soon found himself driving through a town that may once have been gracious and picturesque, but now seemed to be dying of old age. Wraparound porches decorated with hanging flower pots and American flags couldn’t hide the peeling paint and mold just below the eaves. Yards were shaded by massive magnolia trees, but the neatly trimmed rhododendron bushes only partially hid cracked foundations. Still, it seemed friendly enough. A few elderly couples in sweaters who were sitting in rocking chairs on their porches waved at him as he passed by.
It took more than a few waves before he realized they weren’t waving because they thought they’d recognized him, but because people here waved to everyone who drove by. Meandering from one road to the next, he eventually found the waterfront, recalling that the town had been developed at the confluence of Boone Creek and the Pamlico River. As he passed through the downtown area, which no doubt once constituted a thriving business district, he noted how the town seemed to be dying out. Dispersed among the vacant spaces and boarded-up windows were two antique shops, an old-fashioned