The Lightning Stones

by Jack Du Brul

  He would never grace the cover of a magazine, but he had been able to win the affections of Alice Holmes, a childless widow only a couple years his senior. She worked for a lawyer in Iowa City but lived only a few miles from his home near the library in West Branch. He had been looking forward to cooking her dinner tonight, but with all this rain there were flood warnings for eastern Iowa, especially along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. She had opted to stay with a friend in the city rather than chance driving out into the storm.

  As a native Hawkeye, he didn’t think the flooding was any worse now than when he was a boy, but Alice, a transplant from Chicago, was convinced that each storm was getting worse and that something had to be done about it. He thought she should brave it out so they could have spent a cozy weekend trapped in his house by the rain with some nice wine and Trivial Pursuit, Genus Edition.

  He stepped into his overheated house and sneezed.

  Maybe it was best she didn’t come over. The living room was gloomy, the light coming in through the windows somehow menacing, and the rain cascading off the eaves made it impossible to see more than a few feet into the back or side yards. Smithson reached to flip on the light switch, when a hand clamped over his wrist and he was yanked into his house and tossed bodily to the floor. The front door closed with a solid thunk. He tried to scramble to his feet, his hands coming up in a defensive stance like he’d seen in movies, but an unseen foot kicked out and connected with the side of his knee. He yelped at the stabbing agony and collapsed, clutching the joint and whimpering.

  “Eh, enough of that,” a voice said in a guttural accent, something foreign—likely European. “If I wanted to break it, I would have.”

  A light finally went on. Smithson saw two men. Both wore black leather jackets, like bikers, but without any patches or insignia. They wore dark shirts and jeans with work boots, not Western styled. But what held his attention and weakened his resolve were the black ski masks both men wore over their faces. All he saw were eyes that bulged from the holes in the knitted wool, and mouths that looked too large and too red. Meant just to hide their features, the masks made them look all the more terrifying. Neither man had a visible weapon, but at this point they didn’t need them.

  The leader of the two, the man who had tossed him so casually to the floor, hunkered down so he could look Smithson in the eye. “We have a couple of questions and we’ll leave you alone. Okay?” He slurped as though his mouth was filled with saliva.

  Smithson could only nod. He was grateful he had urinated before leaving the library because the small trickle that just ran down his leg was the entire contents of his bladder. The masked man seemed not to notice.

  “I couldn’t ask you outright, okay, so we had to do it this way. See? I am not a bad sort, really. It’s just that I’m asked to do some rough stuff sometimes. Hell, man, I started out as one of the good guys. I used to protect workers in Angola from terrorists. There are a lot of kiddies out in the world today who still have their daddies ’cause of me. I’m telling you so you aren’t so scared, okay. Tell me what I need to know and we go. I’ll need to tie you up, you understand, but we won’t hurt you.”

  “Nik?” the other man prompted.

  “Nee! There’s no need for more killing.”

  “What do you want?” Sherman Smithson asked through gritted teeth. His knee felt hot and swollen. He stayed sitting on the floor, the joint cradled in his hands.

  “The same thing your friend Philip Mercer wanted. We found that Sample 681 was once owned by your President Hoover, from a file in Ohio that gave the location where it was discovered. Mercer learned all that from you, ja?”

  “Yes. No. He knew President Hoover was once in possession of it but not the location. That I gave him from our archives.”

  “That’s what we need to talk about, you and me. What else is in your archives? Because someone went back to Afghanistan a long time ago and mined the rest of the crystals. We need to know who, and where they are now.”

  “Mike Dillman,” Smithson blurted. “He retrieved the rest of the stones. Mercer confirmed that to me in a phone call yesterday.”

  “And what else did he confirm?” the masked man asked. He was not being overly aggressive, but Smithson could not stop trembling.

  “There was a cave, and a grotto he said was a natural geode, and that all the crystals were gone, but he found Mike Dillman’s initials written in blood on a wall.”

  “What did Dillman do with the crystals he took out of those mountains? Did he give them to Hoover?”

  Smithson suddenly looked like he was going to throw up. Sweat erupted across his face and ran in rivulets into his already rain-soaked shirt collar. “I don’t know,” he whimpered. “There was no record of Dillman ever going back to the cave. Not in the official archives anyway.”

  The second intruder strode across the room and kicked Smithson in the ribs. The archivist gasped and fell onto his side, curling into a ball and trying to reinflate his lung. “He’s lying,” the man sneered.

  The leader stood and backhanded his subaltern so fast and so hard the masked man spun into the Sheetrock wall and almost fell to the floor. He snarled in Afrikaans, “Interfere with my interrogation again, and I will cut off your ball sack and use it to carry biltong.”

  He switched back to English when addressing Smithson. “Sorry about my young companion. He gets a little carried away, ja?” The intruder sucked at saliva that had soaked one corner of his mask. “Now, mate, you just made a bad mistake, and it’s going to cost you unless you tell me the whole truth. See, I’ve been doing this a lot of years and I know things about how people talk and act when they lie. You didn’t lie just now, but you didn’t give the whole truth.”

  Smithson looked around, his eyes wild and wide, like a feral animal about to be cornered. It couldn’t have been more obvious had he written “guilty” across his shining forehead.

  “You said there was no record in the official archive,” the masked man said, adding quickly, “and I believe you. But what about the unofficial archive, eh? What’s in there about Dillman going back to empty out the cave?”

  “I don’t know what’s in any unofficial archive,” Smithson said so unconvincingly that the mercenary didn’t bother hitting him.

  “Try again, Sherman, or my partner here’s really going to get busy on those ribs of yours. And he’s still learning the trade, so to speak, so he could very easily puncture a lung by mistake and then we’re all jolly fooked, ja?”

  To his credit, Sherman Smithson lasted thirty minutes. The team leader didn’t think the mild librarian had the strength, but he had seen stronger men crack in a tenth that time, so anything was possible. And to the mercenary’s credit, he had made certain that Smithson’s injuries weren’t life threatening, and used two full rolls of duct tape but left enough slack to truss him up and bury him under a mountain of clothes in a closet. In a day or two he’d be recovered enough from the beating to force his way out and eventually get to the neighbor’s house.

  The two masked men planned on being long gone by then, and the stolen car they were currently driving burned beyond recognition.

  17

  Judging by the volume of rain sheeting from the plumbic sky, Mercer half expected to see pairs of exotic animals trudging along the side of the road in search of an ark. The deluge reminded him of a tropical cyclone he’d sat through in a small hotel in the Philippines, overlooking a fishing village that was all but wiped out by the time the storm abated. Though the wind now wasn’t as strong, the rain forced him to slow the SUV to a crawl. Midwesterners, knowing that this weather could spawn tornadoes, wisely stayed indoors or stopped their cars under overpasses. He had little traffic to contend with as he made his way south and east toward the Mississippi River, and a woman who potentially had another piece of the puzzle—hopefully the last piece to solving why Abe and the others had been murdered.

  Mercer had made arrangements while still in Kabul for the shard of cr
ystal. First he’d had a guy in Sykes’s motor pool hammer out a copper envelope to sheathe the stone. Not trusting the Afghan postal service, he’d flown it to New Delhi and express-shipped it from there to an acquaintance at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies who was salivating at the prospect of getting his lab equipment on something as fantastical as had been described. Mercer promised him equal authorship of any paper that came out of the discovery.

  The woman Mercer was en route to visit was Veronica Butler, and for the last few years of Herbert Hoover’s life, she was his personal secretary while he lived in New York’s famous Park Avenue Waldorf Astoria. After his death in 1964, Butler had returned to her native Iowa and worked at the presidential library until her retirement a decade ago. In a call from Kabul following their extraction back to the Afghan capital, Sherman Smithson promised Mercer that if there were any secrets pertaining to the late president’s life, especially his link to Mike Dillman, then Roni Butler would be the only person to know. Smithson had promised to inform the woman about his interest, and make sure she was up to seeing him.

  Mercer had tried to verify with Smithson when he’d landed in Des Moines that the elderly woman knew he was coming, but the library had closed early because of the weather and the archivist wasn’t answering his cell. He hit redial as he traveled on through the downpour, but now he wasn’t getting any cell coverage.

  Mercer tried the radio, and after scanning the frequencies finally found an emergency broadcast alert that discussed the flooding all along the Mississippi River Valley. The monotone announcer rattled off a number of towns’ names that Mercer was unfamiliar with that were under mandatory evacuation. Fortunately the one where Veronica Butler lived wasn’t mentioned, at least not yet.

  Two hours later than the satnav promised he should arrive, Mercer pulled up short of his destination at a police checkpoint near a large complex of buildings that served as the middle and high schools for an entire county. Yellow buses were parked along its front like elephants performing a nose-to-tail parade. A couple of police cars were pulled across the road with enough room to squeeze through if necessary. A cop wearing a poncho and a plastic cover over his wide-brimmed hat levered himself out of one of the black-and-whites and approached Mercer’s door.

  Mercer lowered his window a crack. The sound of the storm wasn’t the sizzle of bacon like a normal rain but the roar of a waterfall. Drops splattered against the glass and pattered his face, so he had to wipe it after just a few seconds.

  “Sorry, sir.” The cop had to shout over the storm. “Can’t let you pass. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Has everyone been evacuated?”

  “Near as we can tell. There’s about two thousand people packed into the schools.”

  “Do you know a Mrs. Veronica Butler?”

  “No, sir. I’m sorry. I’m from Urbandale, here to help with the flooding. Whoever you’re looking for will be in one of the school’s gyms. There are people inside to help folks locate loved ones. They’ll be able to help you out.”

  He turned away before Mercer could thank him and strode back to the warm, dry interior of his cruiser. Mercer wheeled through the barrier and turned into the high school’s parking lot, which was full. He noted the majority of the vehicles were pickups, and not one of them was foreign built. He found a space near a baseball dugout and ran through the storm to the nearest school entrance. A couple of men stood in the doorway watching the rain and parted so Mercer could dash inside. Just a few seconds outside left his jeans soaked to the skin.

  “Mighty brave,” one said. He was big and wrinkled but with a light in his blue eyes.

  “Just a little rain,” Mercer replied.

  “Talking ’bout the hat.” He pointed a finger to his own black-and-gold baseball cap. “Folks in these parts are Hawkeyes. You’re wearing Iowa State.”

  Despite his gruff tone, the man was obviously teasing. Mercer acted as if he were having a sudden epiphany. “I knew there was something wrong with it. It only keeps a little of the rain off my face.”

  The big farmer laughed. “That got you a pass. Head on down this hallway and take a left. That’s the gym. There are towels, doughnuts, and coffee.”

  “Thanks.”

  A moment later, Mercer had a tepid coffee in hand and was explaining to an overworked volunteer coordinator that he was looking for Veronica Butler. The din in the echoing gymnasium was a beehivelike buzz, punctuated by children’s shouts and infants’ wails. He would have much rather listened to Harry singing falsetto than endure this cacophony for a moment longer than necessary. The air was heavy and smelled of wet dog.

  “I’m sorry, she isn’t here,” the woman said without needing to consult the binders she and the others had compiled of the storm’s temporary refugees.

  “She’s in the middle school gym, then?” he asked hopefully.

  “Obviously you don’t know Roni too well. She won’t leave her home no matter how hard the police try to get her to evacuate. She’s as stubborn as a mule, and ten times as tough.” There was a trace of civic pride in her voice at how the old woman defied the authorities despite the danger.

  “So I’ll find her on Water Street?”

  “She’ll be there all right, but I wouldn’t go looking for her just yet or she might mistake you for a deputy and fire off a few potshots.”

  “Is she…” Mercer tried to find words that wouldn’t insult the old woman. “All there?”

  “Oh yes. She’s as sane as they come, just ornery. Her grandfather built the original house where her place is now, and she claims in over a hundred and twenty years that spot has never flooded, no matter what the Mississippi does.”

  “And she knows that since then there have been hundreds of miles of levees built that change the game entirely?”

  “Don’t matter to her none. She’s sticking by her place come hell or high water.” She chuckled at her own unintended pun. Just then some more people came in, a young couple with two children and an infant in the woman’s arms. The baby was thankfully quiet but the younger boy sniveled with his face buried in his mother’s jeans. “Crystal, Johnnie, how you two holdin’ up?” The volunteer produced a lollipop from a bag at her feet, and the crying boy’s tears suddenly dried when he reached for it.

  Mercer nodded his thanks to the woman, who was already too busy to notice and made his way back to the door he’d entered a few minutes earlier.

  “They’re chasing you out, eh?” the comedian-farmer asked. “Should have pocketed that cap, boy.”

  “At least I didn’t wear one from my real alma mater,” Mercer replied, paused for effect, and told the Hawkeye, “I’m a Nittany Lion.”

  He was back out into the storm before the older man computed that Mercer had gone to one of the University of Iowa’s Big Ten rivals, Penn State.

  The cops at the roadblock were busy helping guide a semitruck with a trailer-load of new farm equipment through a tight U-turn so the driver could head back to wait out the storm in a hotel someplace. Mercer ran back to his rental and drove along the verge to get past the preoccupied cops. If they noticed him, they didn’t bother to give chase.

  The rain continued to pound the earth and rattle off the truck’s bodywork like it was taking small-arms fire. The wipers could only keep the windshield clear for half a cycle, leaving Mercer to drive on faith as much as his vision. Fortunately, the GPS was still pinging off the satellites even if his cell showed zero bars.

  He passed through a deserted town with roads awash like flat black streams. The power was off, either by accident or design, and it gave the place a haunted feel. There was no one around, no motion other than the downward streak of rain and the froth of water boiling down from the hills. It was barely noon, but the storm cast the buildings in twilight gray that shrouded them like a layer of decay.

  He spotted two men with a trailered Zodiac boat standing under a gas station canopy next to their pickup. They were dressed in waders and rain jackets and appeared to be part
of a volunteer rescue team. The truck had a modified suspension so it could be jacked up on massive tires and had a magnetic red strobe attached to his roof. The pair pointed at his truck and made waving gestures with their arms as if to warn him off. Mercer tooted his horn in acknowledgment but kept on going.

  Beyond the town and through some trees he could see a long grass-covered levee that stretched from north to south in an unending wall of compacted dirt. He knew on the other side raged the Mississippi River, one of the world’s greats, and one that hated to be contained the way a wild animal fought its captivity. Give it just a chance to escape and the waters would run until the whole miles-long system of earthworks collapsed into so much mud and sludge and this little town was wiped off the map.

  Mercer turned right, tracking south out of town. He crossed a spindly steel through-truss bridge whose surfaces were more rust than green paint. Eight feet below the road deck, a once lazy stream coming from a valley ahead of him was now a brown seething mass that raced past like a locomotive. Swirling on the raging water were tree trunks and other unidentifiable flotsam caught in its inexorable grip.

  The road to Veronica Butler’s home paralleled the stream. It was like a river in its own right and was well over its banks and at various points sluicing across the road itself. Driving in conditions like this was not the smartest thing he’d ever done. Despite the SUV’s size and the shallowness of the water careening across the road, the torrent could easily lift his truck and hurl it into the main channel so fast he’d never have time to react.