We all took off on the run, trying to cover as much territory as possible without missing anything. Having seen the other abandoned shaft, I knew this one was large enough that someone would realize it if they came upon it.
And Julie did.
“LUCAS! OVER HERE! I THINK I FOUND IT!”
I was the closest to her, so I got there first. She was leaning over, trying futilely to pull on the enormous metal covering. A hundred of her, a hundred Emmits, would not have been able to do it.
But one Emmit proved to be enough. On the other side of the cover from where Julie was standing, he found a small door cut out of it. It was made of metal as well, and as I ran towards him I saw him take out his gun and shoot at the padlock that was on the handle.
He shot four times, and by the time I got there with the other officers he was pulling the door open. He lifted the door and I looked in; there was a long, fairly steep staircase down at least twenty feet.
I headed down; it was so steep that I did it backwards, treating it more like a ladder than a staircase. I was looking down as I did so, but I could hear the others above me, coming down.
The first thing I noticed, even before I got down there, was the sound of the television. When I got to the bottom I could see that it was a small apartment. I was about to call out Bryan’s name, and was already panicked that he hadn’t called out mine, when I saw him lying next to the table.
Emmit and two officers had made it down, and approached as I leaned over Bryan. One of the officers, who seemed to know what he was doing, felt for a pulse, but didn’t say whether or not he detected one. All he said was, “We need to get him to fresh air.”
When I stood up, I noticed the two pills sitting next to a glass of water on a table. He hadn’t taken them.
I was already feeling light-headed from the lack of air in the room, though some was certainly coming in from the stairwell. Whatever was affecting me didn’t seem to bother Emmit, though. This man who had nearly died from a bullet wound, and gotten out of a hospital bed to help, picked Bryan up, and put him over his shoulder.
One of the officers yelled into the shaft, “We’re coming up!” and then stepped out of the way for Emmit, who carried Bryan up the stairs with apparent ease. I was feeling so weak that I almost hoped Emmit would come back and carry me, but I followed along.
When I got to the top I saw Bryan lying facedown on his back, with one of the officers over him, doing CPR.
Before I had a chance to ask what his status was, Julie came over to me.
“He’s alive,” she said, and started to cry.
We sat in the hospital waiting room for three hours.
Dr. Arthur Lansing came out once to talk to us, somewhere around the one-hour mark. Lansing looked to be no more than thirty-five and was tall, at least six foot six. He would have been taller if he had a single hair on his head, but it was shaven clean. I had absolutely no idea what to make of that.
He spoke with authority and confidence, conveying a feeling that he was in control of the situation. “Mr. Somers is in a coma, but his condition has stabilized.”
“So that means he’ll … he’ll survive?” Julie asked.
Lansing nodded. “Absent any unforeseen circumstances.”
Julie closed her eyes in a silent thanks, and Emmit exhaled about four tanks’ worth of carbon dioxide.
I was focused on getting more information. “Why is he in a coma?” I asked.
“His brain was deprived of oxygen for an unspecified period of time. It shut down, partially as a defense mechanism. When it kicks back into full operation, he’ll hopefully come out of the coma, and we’ll know more about potential damage.”
“What’s your guess?” I asked.
He smiled patiently. “I’m afraid I don’t do guesses very often. If I knew how long he was without sufficient oxygen, I could give you an informed opinion. But I don’t, so I won’t. Sorry.”
“Can we see him?” Julie asked.
“Yes, but give it a little time. He’s going to be moved to a private room in Intensive Care; the nurse will come out to get you in a bit.”
So we waited. Captain Barone came in to see how things were going. He hugged all three of us, even Emmit. Barone was far more emotionally involved in this than I had realized.
After we had told him what little we knew about Bryan’s condition, he said, “So when the hell are you coming back to work?”
“I’m thinking vacation,” I said.
“Think again. We’ve got a murder case to solve.”
“Which one?”
“Judge Brennan,” he said. “When word gets out that Steven Gallagher didn’t do it, the Feds will be all over it. I want to beat them to it.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said, but the comment stung me. I hadn’t thought in a while about Steven Gallagher in that apartment, and the three bullets I pumped into him.
When Barone left, Emmit asked, “If Gallagher didn’t do it, who did?”
I was irritated that with all I had learned, I couldn’t come close to answering that question with any certainty. “If you’re asking who held the knife, my best guess would be Kagan. He possessed the necessary skills. I would have thought Carlton hired him.”
“Why?”
“Because he got half the money from Hanson, and Brennan could have been seen as a threat to that.”
“But somebody did Carlton, and Rhodes,” Emmit said, accurately. “And Rodriguez said Carlton was alive when Gallagher left the house that night.”
“Maybe it was William,” I said. “The butler did it.”
It was a bad joke, and Emmit correctly disregarded it. “Why would he kill his boss? Carlton already had the money; why would William have wanted him dead? Unless it’s Carlton’s wife; she was dumping him anyway.”
I didn’t believe that was likely, and said so. She was going to get a fortune in the divorce; it seemed unlikely that she would have engineered something like this, especially the Brennan killing. But anything was possible, and I would certainly investigate it.
We dropped the conversation and resumed staring at the door through which the nurse would allegedly come, inviting us in to see Bryan. I knew she hadn’t forgotten us, since I had gone to the desk at least a dozen times to remind them.
There were other things about the Brennan case, especially the situation in Brayton, that still bothered me. There were the items that Gallagher found in Rhodes’s hotel room, that he left with me. But even more troubling were the items he didn’t find. There were far more explosives missing than had been used, and the timers were not there as well. They could have been set by Rhodes before he died.
There was the Michael Oliver killing. I still couldn’t understand why he had been singled out to die; he was no longer a player once he submitted his report, and even before that had labored in anonymity.
But above all, it still made no sense that the violence was coming from different directions. Carlton and his partners had the motive for Brennan to be eliminated, yet all the rest of the violence was directed against Carlton’s side.
But sometimes things that don’t make sense suddenly do, all at once.
“I’ll be damned,” I said. “That has to be it.”
“Excuse me?”
I looked up, and there was the nurse. Julie and Emmit were already standing, but I had been so lost in thought that I was oblivious.
“Nothing,” I said. “Sorry.”
“You can see Mr. Somers now,” she said.
“You guys go ahead,” said Emmit. “I’ll wait here.”
Julie and I followed the nurse through the double doors, and down a corridor to the intensive-care area. She led us to a room, and opened the door for us. “Just for a few minutes,” she said, and we went in.
Bryan was lying in bed, tubes leading into his arm, looking better than I would have guessed. He had his eyes open, but didn’t seem to acknowledge us in any way. I reached him first, and gently bent down to give him a slight
hug.
“Hey, Brother, it is damn good to see you,” I said.
I pulled back slightly, and thought I detected a slight smile, though I couldn’t be sure. I looked at him, and then Julie, and felt a tightening in my throat. Humans I have spoken to who are in touch with their emotions have told me that’s a precursor to crying, but I can’t speak from personal experience. I certainly wasn’t going to hang around there and find out.
Fortunately, I had something else to do. “I gotta go to work,” I said, and turned and left.
“We have fought the good fight,” Edward Holland said as media cameras rolled,
“and we are still fighting. We are not going to let the water our children drink, the very air that they breathe, become instruments of harm. Not on my watch.”
They cheered him, all eight thousand of them. It was by far the largest crowd ever assembled in Brayton, and Holland had them eating out of his hand. But he knew that was about to change and the cameras would capture that as well.
“But we are going to do it the right way, the Brayton way. Yes, we have lost the battle in the courts, but there are many more to be waged, and we will win more than our share. That I promise you.”
The cheers became louder, raining down on him. Alex Hutchinson stood behind him on the podium, smiling and nodding in agreement, though she had no idea what was going to happen next. Holland had debated whether to tell her in advance, but decided she might choose to sabotage it.
“There has been far too much violence, and our side is being blamed for much of it. I know they are false accusations, and you know it as well. But perception is reality, and we must not do anything that feeds that perception.
“I am also concerned for your safety. No, change that. I am responsible for your safety. It’s a responsibility I will not shirk and I will not delegate. I will do what is necessary, what is consistent with the oath I swore when I took this office, to protect you, the citizens of Brayton.”
Holland looked towards the outskirts of the crowd, and saw Chief Brus and his men standing there, waiting. They seemed ludicrously undermanned to get this crowd to do anything, and Holland silently cursed the decision of the Governor not to send in the state police, and the courts to delay issuing the evacuation order.
“We must be law-abiding. We must not trespass on someone else’s land, just as we must prevent them from polluting our air and water. We will get our justice, but we will do so lawfully, and safely.”
There was a murmuring at that, as the crowd was not sure where he was going but concerned by what they heard.
“To that end, I am directing Chief Tony Brus to help you conduct an organized and peaceful evacuation of this property.”
In an instant, the cheers had turned to grumbling and booing. Alex, surprised by what she had heard, was shaking her head no.
“I ask your cooperation in doing this.” He motioned to the media cameras. “Let’s show the world what Brayton is all about.”
Brus and his men slowly advanced into the crowd. They were not wearing riot gear, nor carrying weapons. There would be time to regroup and get all that later, if the situation called for it.
It didn’t take long for them to feel the pulse of the crowd, and know that much stronger measures were going to be required.
Holland had lost them, and all hell was going to break loose.
The drive to Brayton should take an hour and a half,
so I told Emmit he needed to make it in an hour. Along the way I tried to reach Alex Hutchinson, Edward Holland, and the Brayton Chief of Police, to no avail. They were all at the rally on the disputed land.
If I was right, it was Ground Zero.
When I finally gave up on the phone, Emmit asked, “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
“The truth? I don’t know, not for sure. But I know what I’m afraid of.”
“What’s that?”
“The explosives and timers that Gallagher did not find in Rhodes’s room. According to Gallagher, it was way more than Rhodes could have needed for blowing up guesthouses or cars.
“And I think there’s a good chance that the detonations are going to be tonight. Rhodes was supposed to be on a plane out of here at nine o’clock. I’m thinking that he was waiting to make sure that everything went the way it was supposed to and then he’d leave.”
“Then what’s the target?”
“The land where the drilling was going to take place.”
“Why there?”
“I don’t know that, but I do know that there are a hell of a lot of people on that land right now.”
Emmit thought for a few moments and shook his head. “It doesn’t ring true for me,” he said. “What would the companies gain by killing a lot of people? They just want the natural gas.”
I nodded. “You’re right about that, but just because we don’t see the reason doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Very little of this has made sense from the start.”
“Then why do you think that’s the target?”
“Well, I couldn’t understand why Rhodes would have diagrams of the land; there seemed no reason for him to need them. But do you remember when we showed the diagrams to Frank Lassenger?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“He knew exactly what he was looking at, but one thing didn’t seem right. There were markings on the map to show where the drilling should take place, and Lassenger thought they were in the wrong place. That he would never drill where those markings were.”
“Damn…,” Emmit said, realizing.
“Exactly. If I’m right, those markings weren’t showing anyone where to drill. They were showing Rhodes where to place the explosives.”
Emmit stepped harder on the gas, and we went faster than I would have thought possible.
As evacuations go, this one was a loser.
With Alex Hutchinson exhorting the people from the podium to disregard Holland’s plea, and to resist the police efforts, Brus was having no success in getting the bulk of the people to leave.
After twenty minutes of cajoling by the police, perhaps eighty percent of the crowd remained, and showed no inclination to depart. Most of those who did leave were parents with children, uncomfortable about the turn things had taken.
Holland directed Brus to take stronger measures, but Brus was trying to talk him out of it. “These people are not being violent,” he said. “You want me to teargas them?”
“I want you to do whatever is necessary. Once they see we’re serious, they’ll leave.”
“These are not the LA riots, Mayor. We don’t have a court order, and there is no reason to risk injury, to the people or to my officers.”
“That is your opinion, but mine is the one that matters. I am giving you a direct order,” Holland said.
“And I am refusing it. You want to move them out, do it yourself.”
With that he turned and walked away. The conversation between them was caught on camera, and not by accident. Brus had orchestrated it; he wanted the voters of Brayton to see exactly what the Mayor wanted to do, and especially his heroic resistance to it.
Brus walked the grounds, ordering his men to the perimeter, an act that was greeted by cheers of triumph from the protesters. It had gone exactly as planned, so well that he didn’t even think the Mayor would have the political capital to fire him.
Holland, realizing the police would no longer do his bidding, sought out Alex Hutchinson. “Alex, we need to get these people out of here.”
“No, we don’t,” she said.
“Yes, we do,” said Lucas Somers.
It was seven thirty, and Tommy Rhodes had planned to be on a nine o’clock flight.
If I was wrong, we had all the time in the world. If I was right, we could be minutes from disaster.
“Alex, listen to me. I have reason to believe that explosives were planted all over this property, placed on timers. The strong likelihood is that it is programmed to blow at any minute.”
�
��You too?” she asked.
“No, not me too. I have no dog in this fight. It’s not my problem, and I basically don’t give a shit what happens to this land.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“But I care what happens to these people, and what happens to you. And right now, standing here, I care what happens to me.”
I was waiting to hear her reaction, and trying to figure out what I would do if she wasn’t convinced. There was no way Emmit and I could move these people out ourselves.
We could try and bring in the New York State Police, but the Governor had already refused to act. In any event, it wouldn’t be possible to accomplish it on a timely enough basis.
She was honest about it. “I don’t know whether to believe you.”
I nodded. “I understand that. And if I’m wrong, then the downside is you’ll all leave this area for a few hours and then march back in. But if I’m right, then the downside is incalculable.”
She didn’t answer, just thought about it some more, so I said, “The time to do this is right now. Not in five minutes. Right now.”
She turned and walked away, towards the podium. She got up there, took the microphone, and said, “Listen to me, everyone. This is important.”
She said it a few more times, and waited while the crowd quieted and turned its attention to her. “The state police have told me that they have reason to believe it is dangerous for us to be here. They’ve asked that we walk down the road a bit while they check the place out.”
There were some shouts of surprise and resistance, as the people tried to decide whether Alex had gone over to the other side. “I believe them,” she said. “Once everything has been cleared, we can come back; Lieutenant Lucas Somers has promised that. Come on, my friends, safety is the reason we are here in the first place, so safety comes first.”
Some people started to gather their possessions, and Alex said, “You can leave your things here; we’ll be back in a little while. This is just a precaution, but it is an important one.”
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