Chapter 5

Six of One…

Will you follow

If I but call your name?

And if you follow

Will I be the same?

When winter's snows are over

And morning dew dries the sun

Will you follow when I but call

Your name?

Joe leaned back on the sofa in his living room, listening to the gentle melody of Storiawr and her tin whistle; and remembering Vanessa.

He'd called her that morning again, but Paul had answered. Joe had asked for Vanessa, and as usual, Paul had had other ideas.

"Stay away from Vanessa, you hear?" Paul had hissed in his throaty voice. I don't want your kind around."

"Paul, it's not like that," Joe had attempted to explain. "It's my brother, Frank—"

"Oh, the detective that was killed a couple days ago?" Paul commented. "Serves him right. Never did like your kind anyway."

"He's not dead," Joe said quickly, before Paul could slam the phone back into its cradle. "He's still alive, but Nancy and I need help finding him. Will you tell Vanessa for me? She'll know what I mean."

"Yeah," Paul growled, "and she won't, unless Elen's out of the way."

"Elen's my daughter!" Joe protested. "And she's the only one who can help us right now. Just tell Vanessa for me? Please? She will know."

But Paul had hung up with no further comments, and it was now seven-fifteen. Nancy, Chet Morton, Biff Hooper, Phil Cohen, Tony Prito, and Jerry Gilroy were due here any minute. Joe had even called Callie Shaw, Frank's old flame from high school, but he doubted she'd show up- she was in Washington State, studying anthropology. But as his father, Fenton, used to say, it never hurt to try. Besides, during a case like this there was always safety in numbers.

If it were the other way

Would you stop for me

On the street?

Would you comfort me

Were I to weep?

But leave these be,

For I am yours,

And you are mine.

But when winter's snows

Are over and morning dew dries the sun,

Will you follow

When I but call

Your name?

Joe remembered, with a slight pang of—what was it? Guilt? Sadness? —that that song had been Vanessa's favourite.

"Hi, Joe, how've you been?" Phil Cohen asked, shaking the rain out of his hair much the way an Australian Shepherd might, and spraying water all over Joe and the foyer.

"I've been better," Joe replied, taking Phil's soaked rain jacket and throwing it over a nearby peg. "What's in the bag?"

Phil hefted his lumpy garbage bag and somehow got it into the living room and on the coffee table. "Some stuff I thought might be useful for the case." He rummaged through it and pulled out a pair of chunky sunglasses. "I got this idea from a spy series my mom was a big fan of. See, the camera's in the earpiece, and this dealy here allows us to communicate with whoever's on the other end."

"Let me guess," Joe said, grinning. "La Femme Nikita, right?"

Phil didn't answer; he just put the sunglasses back in the garbage bag with the rest of whatever else he'd brought along.

"Anybody home?" a deep voice called.

Joe stiffened. "Great," he muttered. "Just what I need."

"Who's that?" Phil asked, seeing the look on his friend's face. "An enemy of yours?"

Joe shrugged. "You could say that," he said. "It's Paul Laskry."

"Paul who?"

"Vanessa Bender's husband."

"I see…a green dome. Some who live there say it's the center of that Village." Elen's breathing was quickly becoming ragged with effort. "Frank's in there, with another man, whom he is associated with. Perhaps two; it's difficult to tell."

"Where is it?" Joe pressed.

"I don't know. Wait…it's on the edge of a large body of water…the Mediterranean, perhaps?" She swallowed with some difficulty and opened her eyes. Sweat glistened on her forehead. "Sorry, guys. That's the best I can do."

"Imagination. All of it," Vanessa Bender muttered. "I don't believe it."

"Believe it, Mom," Elen retorted. "It's the truth. It's happening right now."

"Yeah it is," Paul Laskry, with the typical temper of a redhead,snapped back sarcastically; "But that sort of evidence will never be admissible in court. Assuming, of course, that this case would even get there. Face it, Joe: you're brother's dead and no amount of hunches or psychics or what have you will bring him back!"

"I didn't ask your opinion!" Joe said loudly. "You know of our…familiarity; why did you even come?"

"I seem to remember Van saying something about safety being in numbers," the other man replied. "And let me tell you something else, Joe Hardy. I will not stand for this kind of nonsense! Besides, Van needed a ride. Her car's—"

"In the garage? After sliding off the road into a tree to avoid a deer this afternoon when she came home from work?" Elen suggested.

Paul stared at her. "How did you know that?" he demanded. "It's not even gonna be on the news, and neither Vanessa nor I sure as hell haven't told you anything lately."

"Get used to it," Elen said sharply. "That's the way I do things around here."

"Whoa, enough with the bickering already!" Callie Shaw broke in, coming into the living room.

"Callie! You got my message, I see," Joe exclaimed, grateful for the interruption. He strode quickly across the room to join her in the doorway.

"I got on the next flight home as soon as I heard about Frank," Callie explained, shedding off her rain jacket. It was, if possible, even wetter than Phil had been when he came. "Is he really—?"

"No." Elen answered for all of them. "He's not. But we aretrying to figure out where he is."

"You know, I just remembered something I read a while back, when we were still kids," Jerry Gilroy spoke up. "It was about The Village, a place where retired government agents went—usually against their will—when they resigned. Think Frank could be there?"

Nancy nodded slowly. "The night before we were told he died, Frank did seem pretty uptight about something," she commented. "He kept muttering to himself."

"Did you hear anything?" Joe asked eagerly.

"A few words here and there," Nancy replied. "Nothing much; just some stuff out of context that didn't make any sense then. 'I need to resign—it's for their own good,' he said. 'I can't live like this, not knowing who I have to kill next—' that sort of thing. Like he was debating with himself."

"And look where it's got him," Biff Hooper said to the room at large, forcing a sad smile. "A place for retired Network agents, only neither they nor anyone else knows where it is."

The doorbell interrupted them. "I'll get it," Joe said, getting up. And to his not-so-great surprise, it was the Grey Man.

A/N: Well, there's the fifth chapter. I have no idea how many more there will be...however many it takes to get Frank out of The Village, I guess. Btw, if you're thinking about yelling about my using lyrics here, don't bother. The lyrics--and musical notations that go with them--are of my own invention.