While she was talking, Emmit had gone over to the Brayton Police. He apparently persuaded them to re-engage; Emmit can be a powerful persuader. They walked back among the crowd, helping them to move quickly and orderly from the area, where Alex had gone to lead them down the road.
As they walked off, Emmit and I stayed in the back to round up any slow movers, and in twenty minutes everyone was off the property. It seemed like a lot longer.
I wasn’t sure what a safe distance would be, but this wasn’t a forced march to Bataan. There were elderly people and children in the group, and there was a limit on how long a walk they would tolerate.
We stopped at about a half mile, and I called Barone, explaining the situation and asking him to pull whatever strings necessary to get the bomb squad out here.
I saw Edward Holland trying to mend fences with the people, but it seemed like he was going to have his work cut out for him. He kept explaining that he was only concerned for their safety.
It was a claim that had far more credibility a few minutes later, when the world exploded.
I’d never seen anything like it.
Well, maybe in the movies. We were half a mile away, and the ground shook so hard I was sure it was going to open and swallow us. The flashes of light, maybe three or four of them, were so bright that for those brief moments it seemed like daylight.
The crowd started to panic and run away from the explosion, though their flight was brief. Within seconds that seemed like months the blasts stopped, and peaceful darkness settled in. Sounds of children crying could be heard; I suspect each of them had some serious therapy sessions ahead of them.
Edward Holland was standing next to me. “My God…,” he said, which pretty much summed it up.
Alex Hutchinson came up and asked, “Is it over?”
I nodded. “I think so, but there’s no way to know for certain. Make sure nobody goes back there.”
“That won’t be a problem,” she said, and started walking towards the crowd. She stopped, turned, and said, “Thank you.” Then she went and started comforting people, trying to calm them. The police were doing that as well, and Holland joined in.
People started leaving, though I assume their cars were destroyed in the blast. In thirty seconds Brayton had become a community of pedestrians.
Emmit and I waited for the bomb squad to arrive, and we told them what we knew, basically the type of explosives that had been used and the fact that they were detonated by timers. Remote detonation seemed unlikely, since Rhodes was no longer around to have done so.
When we got in the car, Emmit said, “I guess you were right.”
I shrugged. “It happens.”
I called Julie at the hospital, and asked her how Bryan was doing.
“He’s drifting in and out of consciousness; at least that’s what they’re calling it,” she said. “I prefer to think of it as sleep. They said it will last awhile.”
“Does he know you’re there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about the prognosis?” I asked.
“Too soon to know. But the first forty-eight hours are key; at least that’s what they’re telling me.”
“You going back to the hotel?”
“I think so,” she said. “The nurse promised she’d call me if he wakes up, and it’s only ten minutes away. What about you?”
“I’m staying there until Bryan is Bryan,” I said.
“Me too,” she said. “How did it go in Brayton?”
“I assume you haven’t been near a television?”
“No, I’ve been in Bryan’s room.”
“It was fairly eventful,” I said. “Turn on the TV when you get back to the room.”
I saw Emmit smiling at my characterization of the evening.
“What channel?” she asked.
“Trust me, it won’t matter.”
We made plans to meet for an early breakfast the next morning at the hotel. We’d go to the hospital together from there.
I got off the phone and Emmit said, “I’m going to head home tonight. I want to see Cindy.”
“Emmit, there’s nothing I can ever say to you that—”
He interrupted me. “Man, I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.”
I laughed. “Glad I was able to cheer you up.”
As we were getting back to the hotel, Emmit asked, “Who do you think was behind it?”
He was referring to the massive explosions; we both knew that Rhodes was paid help.
“I think I’ll let the Feds worry about that,” I said. “It’s been a pretty long day.”
I got back to my room and got undressed. When I emptied my pockets, I saw that there had been an e-mail on my BlackBerry that I never opened. It was from Bryan, and it said:
Good-bye, Lucas … take care of Julie.
I love you both.
And then I did something that I hadn’t done in many years, probably not since Bryan and I were in grammar school.
I cried.
My cell phone rang seventeen times during the night.
After the third call, I kept it in bed with me, so I could check the call waiting. I didn’t answer any; they all seemed to be Manhattan numbers, and I assumed they were trying to get me to do interviews on the events in Brayton. I was only going to answer if it were Julie or Bryan calling, but that didn’t happen.
I woke up, showered, and was five minutes away from going to meet Julie when she called. “He’s coming out of it,” she said.
“I’ll be right down.”
We drove to the hospital, and that made for probably the only time I’ve felt things were awkward between Julie and me. I didn’t know what she was going to do regarding her marriage, and I wasn’t about to ask her. I’m not even sure that she knew.
The truth was that I didn’t even know what I wanted her to do. I loved her, and I wanted to be with her. I had been denying that to myself for way too long. But I also wanted Bryan to have whatever it was that Bryan wanted.
I decided not to show Bryan’s last e-mail to Julie. He asked me to take care of Julie when he thought he wasn’t going to be around. Now that he was alive and hopefully well, he’d probably feel differently.
I figured it was too much to hope that Bryan met a great woman in the bomb shelter and they were engaged.
We got to the hallway outside his room, and a nurse greeted us with, “Doctor should be here soon, but he’s doing very, very well.”
At the door, Julie and I looked at each other before going in. I said, “One at a time?” She shook her head and said, “No. Together.”
I was shocked at how good Bryan looked. More important, he was alert and smiled when we walked in. It’s amazing what access to oxygen can do for somebody.
Julie went to him and hugged him, delicately because he still had tubes attached. She laid her head on his chest and kept it there for a while; she might have been crying, but I couldn’t tell for sure.
“Hey, babe,” he said, softly.
She lifted her head, and dried her eyes. She laughed a short laugh, and said, “Hey.”
I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder. “You made it,” he said. His speech seemed a little off but not too bad.
I nodded. “Thanks for hanging in there.”
“I knew you’d make it. But I knew you’d be a pain in the ass and wait until the last minute.”
“Hey, I’ve got a lot on my plate. I had to fit you in.”
He smiled. “I’m going to want you to tell me everything that happened, OK?”
“I will,” I said. “Now I’m going to leave you guys alone; I’ll be outside.”
It was about forty-five minutes later that Julie came out. I stood up, and she came over and put her head against my shoulder, and hugged me. As always, I didn’t have the slightest idea what she was thinking, or what she was going to say.
“Bryan and I are going to try and make it work,” she said.
I didn’t know how
to answer that, so I said nothing.
I’d been saying nothing for a really long time, so I was used to it.
If I had to be doing interviews, I’d have preferred the Today show.
Instead, I had two Federal agents at my office when I got in. They had more hair than Matt Lauer but not nearly as much personality.
They were investigating the violence in Brayton. Edward Holland had been calling for Federal or state intervention for days, but it apparently took blowing up half the state to make it happen.
I was a key to their investigation, because I had been the one who realized what might happen that night. It was fairly easy for them to know that, since TV cameras had been at the site and captured everything.
The speeches of both Holland and Alex Hutchinson before the explosion had been playing in what seemed like an endless loop on television, and I had my share of airtime as well. I’m sure that both Holland and Alex were being subjected to the same type of interrogation as I was.
I had no reason to hide anything from them, until I came to a realization midway through. While they were investigating the explosion and murders in Brayton, they had not tied it in to Judge Brennan’s murder. They still thought that was solved, and that Steven was guilty.
I’m not sure why I didn’t enlighten them; I probably would have if they asked directly. It could be that I was paying back Barone for all he had done for me; I knew that Barone would want a head start in a reopened Brennan investigation, and I was giving him that. I also knew that Barone would want to manage how the information got out to the public that I shot the wrong guy.
I also realized in the moment that I had been through so much that I wanted a shot to get to the bottom of it myself. Bryan went through his terrible ordeal, Emmit was shot, and Chris Gallagher was killed. I wanted to find out who was responsible for all that, and I wanted to do one other thing.
I wanted to get justice for Steven Gallagher.
So I told the agents that I had learned about the Brayton situation while investigating the Brennan murder, but making it sound as if it were peripheral to that. And for a long time I had believed it was, while I was intent on lying to Chris Gallagher, rather than finding the truth.
When the agents left, I went in to see Barone, and told him that, for the time being at least, we had a head start on the renewed investigation into Brennan.
“Now these are the kinds of conversations I like,” he said.
“I thought you would.”
“So where do we start?”
“In Brayton,” I said. “That’s where it begins and ends.”
“So what is your ass doing here?”
I finally had time to approach the investigation my way.
Without the horrible clock ticking on Bryan’s life, I was able to analyze the Brayton system more logically and dispassionately. I did what I always did on a case. I wrote down what I knew, what I didn’t know, and why.
And then I went for a drive.
The only people who could be said to have come out of the carnage as winners were Edward Holland and Alex Hutchinson. Holland had constantly tried to protect his citizens, and it was manifested in his constant pleas for outside assistance, and most profoundly in his ordering his police chief to do whatever was necessary to remove them from a dangerous situation.
He risked unpopularity by doing so, but when he was proven right he became a political hero. He was already being talked about as the leading candidate for the open US Senate seat, and he was milking the publicity every chance he got.
Alex Hutchinson was in a similar situation, and her story was even more appealing. She was a mother protecting her children, protecting the children of an entire town, and she stood up to incredibly powerful forces arrayed against her.
Not only that, but she succeeded where Holland and the police had failed; she got the people to move off the land before the explosion. I certainly couldn’t have managed it, and neither could the local police.
With Holland moving on to a Senate bid, there was talk of drafting Alex for Mayor. Since there hadn’t been a contested mayoral election in Brayton in twenty years, it was hers for the taking. She had also been doing some interviews, but not as much as Holland.
So Alex was my first stop when I got to Brayton. She was at her normal spot behind the cash register at her diner, but that was the only thing that was the same as my last visit. It was so crowded that I had to park down the block, and there was a line stretching out the door of people waiting for a table. Even if Alex did not become the Mayor, she was already parlaying fame into financial success.
I worked my way through the line and went up to the register. She brightened when she saw me, and said, “What brings you back here?”
“My job,” I said. “Got a minute?”
She looked around at the madhouse that was the diner, and I thought she was going to ask me to wait. But she called over one of the waitresses and asked her to watch the register.
Alex smiled. “Our regular table seems to be taken. Want to take a walk?”
“Sure.”
We went out the back and walked towards a small park, with a children’s playground, a couple of tennis courts, and not much else. But it was a nice day, and I liked being around Alex. I figured things could work out between us, if she weren’t married, with two kids, and living in Brayton. Oh, well.
“You’re pretty famous,” I said.
“As are you.”
“So are you going to be Mayor, or continue fighting Hanson over the land, or both?”
She seemed surprised. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
“They’re saying that most of the explosives were planted underground, down some of the holes that had already been drilled. It caused like a small earthquake.”
“So?”
“So I’m not an expert, but it changed the whole picture. It might have made it too expensive to get to the natural gas in the shale. Either way, it will set them back at least a couple of years before they know for sure.”
I hadn’t heard that, and I said so. “So you’ve won, with some help.”
She nodded. “Not the way I wanted to win, but I’ll take it. That poor guy that was killed that night was right.”
She was talking about Chris Gallagher. “What do you mean?”
“He told me that nobody was going to drill on that land, and that we should leave when the police told us to. You think he could have planted the explosives?”
“No, Alex, I don’t. I knew him pretty well.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
We walked some more, and I said, “Alex, I want to ask you a question. But first let’s reduce it to simple terms. Your side wanted the drilling stopped, and the other side wanted to drill. OK?”
“OK.”
“So it would make sense that someone on your side would have planted the explosives, to stop the drilling.”
She shook her head. “Nobody on—”
I interrupted. “Don’t get defensive; I’m not making accusations, I’m just thinking logically. Your side benefited from the explosion; there’s really no doubt about that.”
“OK…,” she said, warily.
“So why would they have been set to go off when there were all those people on the land? It could have been a catastrophe for your side, and the other side certainly gained nothing from people dying.”
She thought about it for a while. “On the news they said it was set with timers. So maybe when it was set, they didn’t know the people would be there. Maybe they didn’t want the people there when it went off.”
I didn’t say anything, because she had just made me see something I hadn’t seen before.
“Does that make sense?” she asked.
“Probably more than you realize. One more question … why did you listen to me and ask the people to leave? The Mayor had just said the same thing, yet you didn’t listen to him.”
“I trust you.”
<
br /> The next stop on my Brayton reunion tour was Edward Holland.
I called him in his office, but he had left early, having done a round of TV interviews that apparently left him too tired to do any Mayor stuff.
I said that I was there on important police business, and they contacted him and I was told I could come to his home.
He lived on a large estate on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t ostentatious, but was very comfortable, and certainly nicer than any other homes I had seen in the area.
He greeted me himself, and invited me into the den. If there were any feminine touches in the house, I hadn’t seen them, and I asked if he was married.
He shook his head. “Who has the time?” he asked, smiling. Then, “So what is this official police business you’re here about?”
“The Daniel Brennan murder.”
He smiled. “Haven’t we had this meeting already?”
I nodded. “Right. But that’s before I knew you were responsible for it.”
He almost did a double take. Here we were, talking like buddies, and all of a sudden I was accusing him of murder. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Here’s how I see it. You arranged the sale of town land to Carlton and Tarrant Industries, the secret foreign company that you set up and own, using the tricks you learned in your law practice. Then you paid off Michael Oliver to report that there was a fortune to be made from the shale under the ground, when in reality that wasn’t the case.”
Holland was smiling, not afraid at all, but nor was he showing any of the outrage an innocent man would be showing.
I continued. “You handled the legal case yourself, going to Federal Court, even though that wasn’t the smart way to do it. But you needed Carlton to win, so you paid Brennan off when it seemed he might be on the court. I don’t know how you got to him, but you did. And then he probably changed his mind, so you had him killed.
“Then you killed Oliver, and Carlton, and Rhodes, so that no one would be left who could implicate you. Actually, I should say that you had William kill Carlton and Rhodes. And all the time you were committing acts which would logically be blamed on the townspeople.”
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