The Death in the Willows

by Forrest, Richard;

  The shock wave from the explosion was sufficiently powerful to rock the heavy car.

  “What in hell was that!” The trooper driver fought the wheel and glared into the rearview mirror.

  A plume of black smoke had mushroomed skyward. A second explosion shattered it into long streamers.

  “Get back there fast!” Rocco yelled at the driver.

  “Yes, sir!” Without further instruction, the driver swerved onto the grass, bumped across the median divider, and swiveled into the far lane. He accelerated toward the burning wreckage.

  Bea put her hands to her face. “Good Lord, it’s the bus!”

  4

  The bus straddled the highway with flames lapping from its shattered windows and its interior a smoking mass. The state car made a sweeping skid back across the dividing median and screeched to a stop thirty yards from the inferno. Miraculously other cars had been far enough behind the explosion to remain untouched by fire, but they were now splayed and stalled in odd positions across the road.

  Rocco and Lyon slammed from the car and sprinted toward the wreckage. A final scream issued from the bus and then abruptly died.

  Rocco had snatched a small fire extinguisher from under the dashboard and held an arm protectively across his face as he fought to work his way toward the door. Intense heat drove him back, and the large chief stood helplessly with the extinguisher dangling uselessly from his hand.

  The cause of the explosion seemed to be a 38-ton propylene truck that had pulled from the nearby service area directly into the side of the bus. The single tank had ruptured, and within seconds of the collision the explosion had occurred.

  Their driver was speaking frantically into the car’s two-way radio, while Bea had discovered a first aid kit in the car trunk.

  “Is there anything we can do?” she asked.

  Rocco’s response went unheard as another explosion rocked the wreckage and nearly knocked them over. He turned toward the gathering crowd and waved his arms. “Get back! Back!”

  A lone siren could be heard in the distance as Bea walked away from the bus toward the side of the road.

  A strangled groan came from a shallow gully a dozen feet from the edge of the pavement.

  She stumbled across the grass and found him where he’d been thrown, face down in the gully. His feet were bare and white in contrast to his blackened back and arms. She stooped and turned him over. He groaned again.

  She recoiled back from the contorted face and sightless eyes. What remained of his clothing hung in scorched tatters, and yet, unaccountably, an arm sling was untouched. She ripped the cover from the first aid kit and searched through the meager contents for something useful. What she needed was morphine, but that would have to wait until the ambulances arrived.

  The charred caricature of a man groaned again as an arm reached toward her. “Mother, is that you?”

  “Yes.” She felt his fingers brush against hers and close over her hand.

  “It’s me. Bobby. Bobby, Mother.”

  “Only a little while now, Bobby.” Her free hand still searched frantically through the first aid kit.

  He mumbled something and she bent closer to his mouth to catch the rasping words. A strong wind swept from the north and the words were lost as his hand fell limply from hers.

  Bea Wentworth stood slowly. She looked at the thin vial of burn cream clutched in her hand and then down at the body shriveled in the gully. A tear peaked at the corner of her eye and started a slow course down her face, and then her shoulders heaved and she cried in silent sobs.

  Vehicles converged on the now smoldering bus: three ambulances, fire equipment, and state police cruisers swiveled in concentric patterns around the wreckage. Ambulance doors slammed open and stretchers were wheeled across the pavement. Firemen ran toward the bus. They ended their dash by joining the others as silent spectators. A fireman in an asbestos suit and face mask entered the bus. They saw his dim figure through the smoke as he moved awkwardly down the aisle and then back out.

  The suited fireman pulled off the hood, shook his head at the others, and then turned to retch in the grass.

  Lyon walked to the tanker that had rammed into the bus. The tank had ruptured violently, and flames had moved across the cab and onto the bus. He looked at the present position of the two vehicles, mentally aligned them back to the moment of impact, and backtracked the trajectory of the tanker as it left the service area.

  It didn’t make sense.

  The tanker driver had a clear view of the highway, and yet had to accelerate to the maximum speed his lower range of gears would allow in order to ram the bus at that angle. Unless the driver had a heart attack at the wheel when he was leaving the service area—but in that instance, the tanker would not have run the course it had.

  He climbed the tanker’s step and peered into the still smoldering cab, the metal hot to his touch. The burned body of the driver lay on the floorboards half under the well and over the accelerator.

  He turned from the tanker and walked through the onlookers now being pushed back toward the service area by newly arrived state troopers. The men he wanted to speak to were standing under a high lamp post. They were young, both acne-faced, and wore service station coveralls with their names inscribed over a breast pocket.

  “Do you two work at the gas station in the service area?”

  They looked at him blankly a moment. “You a cop, huh?”

  “You work here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see it happen?”

  “Heard it.”

  “What about before the explosion?”

  “Nothing much. I pumped him fifty gallons of diesel and he left.”

  “Did he look all right, the driver I mean?”

  “Sure. Looked like everybody else, but musta’ been crazy as a loon to pull out like that.”

  “Did he pull directly onto the highway, or did he stop at all?”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “I think he did,” the other attendant said. “He stopped by the post up there and talked to a guy for a couple of minutes. I figured it was his bookie.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Hell, we get lotsa cars backed up in here, can’t stand gawking at every tanker driver that pulls out.”

  A state police captain had arrived and was giving directions through a bullhorn. A large wrecker had jackknifed the bus away from the tanker and was attempting to wedge it over onto the median. Traffic had begun to flow slowly along one lane of traffic.

  “I hope they have pictures of the relative positions of the two vehicles before they moved them,” Lyon said to Rocco who stood next to Captain Norbert of the state police.

  “Of course we have pictures,” the captain snapped. “This is going to be one hell of a lawsuit.”

  “Good. You’re going to need them for more than lawsuits.”

  “Wentworth! How in hell did you manage to get here?”

  Rocco Herbert glared at his brother-in-law. “Leave him be, Norbie.”

  “Do we have pictures? Of course we have pictures. We always take pictures at accidents—even bad ones like this.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not an accident, Captain. More like multiple murder.”

  The Wentworth home, Nutmeg Hill, perched on a promontory overlooking the Connecticut River. Over the years, Lyon had cut a small path with switchbacks into the side of the hill that wound its way through the pine forest studding the side of the mountain down to the river. They walked hand in hand, letting the sun brush lightly against their faces as it cut intermittent swathes through the dense foliage.

  At the bottom they stopped near a rock grouping where the river gently lapped. Lyon sat on the ground with his back against a tree trunk, while Bea sat a few feet in front of him on a rock with her bare feet dangling in the water.

  The apposition between the serenity of this quiet place on the river and the scene they had witnessed a short time ago numbed them. Bea looked down at h
er wavering reflection in the water, her rippling image appearing as a skewered tragic mask—a face drawn in the reflection of horror. She had seen people die before. A few years before, within a year of each other, her parents had died. They had died in a quiet room filled with solicitous people and the beep of nearby machinery, their discomfort stilled with painkilling drugs—not unexpectedly in an inescapable oven. She ran her fingers along the contours of her face.

  “Is there ever a why? Is it possible that today was just some crazy coincidence?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “The young man in the ditch that I saw die … did you know him?”

  “His name was Robert Hannon. He was to be a junior at Wesleyan this fall.”

  “The one who was shot by the hijacker?”

  “Yes.” He walked to the water’s edge and stood near his wife’s shoulder. “Those people, all who died this afternoon, had an unusual feeling toward me, as if I were their talisman or protector, and in one woman’s case, her Rada. And yet, I somehow have the feeling that I was the instrument of their destruction. If the hijacking had continued until stopped by the police, today might not have happened.”

  “That’s not true. You had nothing to do with the bus fire.”

  “Last night I held an old woman and promised her she was safe.”

  “You can’t assume guilt like that.”

  “What did Donne say? ‘And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.’”

  She buried her head in his shoulder so that he would not see her cry. “Stop, stop, stop …”

  Their wavering images reflected in the river swells merged.

  Bea’s martini was too large and she talked too quickly and too intensely for her actions to be anything but a nervous attempt to remove the guilt Lyon voiced. Rocco Herbert listened, stared at the ice in his vodka, and occasionally nodded.

  “It was an accident, Rocco. The tanker driver had a heart attack. It happens all the time. He pulled onto the highway, blacked out, and his truck went out of control and collided with the bus.”

  “The medical examiner took a look as soon as we got the body of the driver to the medical center.”

  “A stroke …?”

  Rocco shook his head. “If Lyon hadn’t alerted us, we might have missed it, considering the condition of the deceased. It was a small-caliber bullet with an entrance wound above the hairline at the back of the head.”

  “Someone at the service area would have heard the shot.”

  Rocco shook his head again. “The discharge of a small weapon near the truck stop would have gone unnoticed.”

  “Damn! Damn! Damn!” Bea went to the bar cart to freshen her drink, and Lyon noticed that her fingers shook.

  “Any trace of an explosive device?”

  “The bomb squad picked up a small residue of thermite.”

  “It’s becoming as common as ordinary dynamite.”

  “They reconstruct that it was placed directly under the tank. And now there are seventeen dead.”

  “Seventeen?”

  “Fourteen passengers and the driver, the tanker driver, and the hostess.”

  “Someone’s missing?”

  “You! Thank God!” Bea said.

  “No, another one of the passengers. I wonder who it is?”

  “It’ll take a while to make a positive ID here. Let me put in a call to Nesbitt in the city and see what he knows.”

  As Rocco went to use the phone in the kitchen, Kimberly Ward called from the foyer. “Anybody home?”

  “In the study,” Bea called back and hiccuped.

  Kim came into the room and immediately put her arms around Bea. “The commissioner came to the office and told me about it. Oh, Bea. How horrible.”

  As the two women talked in low tones, Lyon leaned back in the leather recliner and let the sherry warm between his palms. Gold-orange streaks of sun were visible through the window overlooking the river, and the approaching twilight seemed to accentuate the greenery outside. The drinks must have helped, but the serenity of the house and the presence of their two closest friends seemed to suspend them temporarily in a protective cocoon.

  Rocco and Kim were studies in contrast. The bearlike police officer had been a working friend in Korea, a natural arrangement between Ranger and intelligence officer. Their friendship had grown to one of mutual respect and ease in each other’s company. He had seen Rocco disarm a man and, on one necessary occasion, beat another into insensibility, just as he had watched him read to a small daughter with a kitten perched on his shoulder.

  Several years ago Kim had confronted Bea on a protest march. They had argued violently, still did, and the trim black woman had reluctantly left her revolutionary battlements to become Bea’s aide and now Deputy Secretary of the State. If they won the primary and general elections, she would be his wife’s congressional aide.

  Rocco returned from the kitchen. “One of the passengers left the hotel early this morning.”

  “Who?”

  “They identify him as Major Collins.”

  “He just walked away?”

  “That’s what the cop on duty said. They had no reason to detain him.”

  “We shared a room last night. During our talk he admitted that he lied about his army rank. I wonder if Collins is even his name.”

  “Nesbitt’s men would have taken down ID on all the passengers when they took their statements.”

  “I wonder if his can be verified?”

  “What are you driving at?”

  “I have the feeling we ought to look further into Collins.”

  The door chime hadn’t finished its short two-note sequence before the impatient caller began to pound on the door.

  “Only fuzz pounds like that,” Kim said. “And since we got local fuzz already here, that’s state fuzz.”

  “My brother-in-law,” Rocco said. “Come in, Norbie.”

  Captain Norbert did not enter rooms, he conquered them. In contrast to his earlier appearance at the death scene when he wore knife-creased trousers, tailored jacket, and the wide trooper hat exactly two fingers from the bridge of his nose; he now wore plaid Bermuda shorts, a green sport shirt with a large yellow alligator over the pocket, and a flat madras hat.

  “My God!” Rocco said. “Where’d you get that costume?”

  “Why in hell aren’t you where you’re supposed to be, Chief? And when did you move the police station?”

  “Last month.”

  “I passed it three times and thought it was a Reform synagogue.”

  “That’s modern architecture.”

  “Thank God I don’t live in this town. Musta’ shot all hell out of the mill rate.”

  “Federal funds, Norbie. All in knowing how to apply. In fact, I’m thinking of getting a helicopter next.”

  “A helicopter? In Murphysville?”

  Rocco shrugged. “Well, we might have a forest fire sometime. What are you doing in that getup?”

  “I was on the golf course with the major when I had a thought.”

  “One of the biggest crimes in our history and you’re out on the golf course?”

  “My men had their assignments.”

  “I know my assignment,” Bea said as she mixed a pitcher of martinis. “Good evening, Captain.”

  Norbert immediately pulled off his cap and made a bow toward Bea. “Madam Secretary.”

  “Not that. Please not that.” She took the martinis in one hand and led Kim by the other to the kitchen.

  “I know,” Rocco said. “You need us to complete your foursome.”

  “Hardly. The major and I were at the seventh hole. That’s the one with the dogleg to the right.”

  “I know it,” Lyon said. “Had to land my balloon there once. There was a fifteen-mile-an-hour wind from the north, and that’s bad for a balloon. When I pulled the ripping panel …”

  “You two aren’t for real!” Rocco exploded. “Golf and balloons after murder?”

&n
bsp; “Terrorists, Rocco. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The major and I conjecture that the hijacker Lyon shot was part of a larger group that was going to make political demands at a later time. They never got the chance, and for that they want revenge. That’s how we read their motive in going after the bus.”

  “And didn’t the passengers say he mentioned the Freedom Army—whoever they are?”

  “Yes, but what sort of terrorists are they?” Lyon asked mildly.

  “Who the hell knows these days? Look at the groups we know about: frogs in Canada, Brittany wants out of France, the Moluccans, whoever the hell they are, want something. Croatians want to be cut away—those Italian groups and Irish. Well, you know how they are.”

  “Since I’m half Irish and half Italian,” Rocco said, “how about Panthers or Muslims?”

  “Could be.”

  “Right-wing Republicans,” Lyon added.

  Norbert vented his anger directly at Lyon. “Don’t smart ass me, Wentworth. You know, it’s citizens like you who think tragedies are funny that make our jobs more difficult.”

  “You know, Norbie, you are a horse’s ass,” Rocco said.

  “I expect that from you. Wentworth here would still be in hot water in New York if I hadn’t vouched for him.”

  “What now?”

  “We’re directing all our energies on the terrorist angle.”

  “I’d like to know more about the passengers who weren’t on the bus.”

  “You’re sitting right here.”

  “There’s another one,” Rocco said. “I ran it through NYPD. One didn’t take the bus this morning. What else do you have?”

  “You know about the pathology report on the driver. We’ve also interviewed people at the service island. One of the attendants thinks someone was talking to the tanker driver, but no real description. That’s all, period. Senseless, which is why we lean toward terrorists.”

  “What about the passengers that were killed?”

  “Of course we’ll run checks on all of them to see if anyone had insurance in large amounts, unhappy relatives, or lovers. All that sort of thing to dig for other motives. But they came from all over New England; it will take time.”