A Safe Place for Dying

by Jack Fredrickson

  I asked the question only to hear how he was going to dodge it: “He’s not going to evacuate Crystal Waters?”

  “You wouldn’t believe the extra security we hired. More than when you were last here.”

  “He’s taking a big chance.”

  Stanley breathed heavily into the phone. “Like I said, with the A.T.F. hunting for Michael Jaynes and watching Mr. Chernek, Mr. Ballsard feels the matter is under control.”

  I wondered if Stanley knew I’d been added to Till’s list. “And if it’s not Jaynes or Chernek?”

  Stanley paused. “I agree with you about Mr. Chernek. But this Michael Jaynes …”

  “What if somebody else is doing this? Somebody you’re not searching for?”

  “Michael Jaynes is sending money to Nadine Reynolds from the same Chicago zip code as our bomb threats.”

  “A ten- or a twenty-dollar bill?”

  “It was all he could afford, Mr. Elstrom.”

  “He could have sent more after he picked up the half million behind Ann Sather’s.”

  He didn’t say anything. I was a broken recording, playing in an empty room.

  “You’ve got to clear out Crystal Waters, Stanley.”

  “Mr. Ballsard feels—”

  I gave it up. “I got some computer-generated renderings from A.T.F., showing what Jaynes might look like now. At least see if you can send them out to electrical contractors.”

  “I’ll pick them up.”

  “I’ll drop them off. I’m going to be out there anyway. It’s too late today to call Amanda in Paris, but tomorrow I’m going to get her to authorize me to supervise the removal of her artwork. The bomber hasn’t gone away, Stanley, and she needs to get her stuff into a bonded storage house until things are safe again at Crystal Waters.”

  I looked up at the water dripping from the ceiling. Just a drop every few seconds was all, now.

  “Stanley?” I asked after a minute.

  “Yes, Mr. Elstrom?” His voice sounded far away.

  “I’ll let you know when I’ll be out with people to pick up her art.”

  I didn’t hear him say good-bye but supposed I’d missed it. I clicked off my cell phone and looked at my Timex. It was just after four o’clock. I called Leo, got him at home. He gave me the name of a firm he used to transport and store valuable art. I called Amanda’s answering machine in Crystal Waters, knowing she checked every day for messages, and asked her to call me. Then I hung up the phone and told her I missed her.

  I’d been too tired to squint at my tiny T.V. and had gone to bed at nine thirty, thinking of ways to fool myself into sleep. Nothing worked. Too many dark shapes crawled in under my eyelids, each of them carrying bombs. I got up at two forty-five in the morning, made coffee, and took my travel mug up to the roof.

  I had just taken a second sip of the coffee, trying to think of nothing at all, when the ground flashed below and blinding light shot up into the sky like a million-watt strobe. I dropped out of the chair, onto the gravel roof, pulling my forearms over my head to shield my eyes from the glare. A roar came then, a big ripping boom that shook the turret. Crazily, I heard my stainless travel cup bounce hollowly some place far away. I pushed down flat against the roof and crab-crawled across the stones to the trapdoor. I found the handle, lifted the door enough to squeeze through, twisted, and dropped through the opening, feet first. I missed the ladder and fell to the floor, pain shooting up from my knees. Miraculously, I stayed on my feet. I reached for the pull rope and tugged the trapdoor closed to the harsh white of the sky outside.

  I circled my arms to stay on the ladder down to the fourth floor, rang the metal on the circular stairs as I ran down to the third. The inside of the turret was bright from the fire outside the windows. The cell phone was by my cot, someplace. I got down on my knees, flailed at the floor for my phone. Found it, punched 911. A woman answered instantly, told me they’d already gotten a report. Units were on the way. Anybody hurt? Told her I didn’t know, the blast was outside. Go down to the basement, she said, away from another explosion. There was no basement, but there was no time to say that. I clicked off, ran down the next two floors, and out the door.

  The shed was a flaming skeleton. All of the siding was gone; the few remaining wall studs stood spindly and black in the orange inferno. Two Rivertown ladder trucks came racing off Thompson Avenue, sirens screaming, just as the uprights collapsed into the pile of burning rubble. What had been a garage-sized shed was now a small bonfire of boards. Start to finish, it hadn’t taken five minutes.

  Firemen jumped off the trucks, making for the hydrant. A Rivertown fireman with a shield on his helmet came over. There was no hurry now; there was nothing left.

  “This place yours?”

  I nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I was on the roof when it exploded.”

  “On the roof at three in the morning?”

  “I do that sometimes.”

  “The building just exploded?”

  “It was just a shed,” I said, to say something. My mind was a few feet away, starting to poke at the idea that someone had just tried to kill me.

  “What did you have in there?” Behind him, two firemen trained a single hose on the fire.

  “Rats. And some half gallons of paint, a can of turpentine, a push lawn mower, a long wood ladder.”

  “Enough paint and turpentine to set it off?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We’ll be in touch.” He turned and walked over to the firemen hosing the fire.

  In the shadows, out of the way, Till’s two men leaned against their Crown Victoria, watching. One was talking on a cell phone. I wondered if he’d been the one who phoned in the first report.

  The fire trucks left at five. I went back inside and lay on the cot, trying to slow my heart by telling myself the explosion had been just a message, nothing more.

  Someone pounded on my door at six fifteen. I went down and opened it. It was Agent Till.

  I stepped outside. Two men in olive drab padded bomb suits, looking like 1950s television spacemen, poked through the black rubble, gathering bits from the ruin of the shed. Farther down, the Crown Victoria was gone.

  “Looking for D.X.12?” I asked.

  Till nodded and turned to watch the men.

  “When you find it, what conclusion will you draw?”

  “That, I do not know.”

  “I was up on the roof when the thing went off.”

  He turned back to look me. “Are you one of those guys that likes to watch, Elstrom?”

  I stared at him. “I might have been killed.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic.” His eyes went back to the men in the bomb suits.

  “Then what do you call that explosion, Till?”

  “A diversion, to get the scrutiny off you. An attempt against you must then point to somebody else, mustn’t it?”

  “You’re saying I set this off?”

  Till shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe this was just an accidental loss of inventory, some unstable shelf stock of yours that got a little too unstable.”

  “What did your stakeout boys see?”

  “Your inside lights going on a few minutes before the explosion.” He looked at my eyes. “And nobody going in your shed.”

  “It was put there while you were tailing me elsewhere. I’m threatening someone.”

  He nodded. “Perhaps, Elstrom. Perhaps.”

  Amanda’s home answering machine was full, probably from the messages I’d been leaving all morning. She wasn’t answering her cell phone either, though it was only late afternoon in Paris, and caller I.D. would have told her it was me.

  She was avoiding me. Somebody—Stanley, a Fed, a Maple Hills cop, maybe even Till himself—had gotten to her, had told her about the explosions at Gateville, and now, the one in my shed. Whoever had called her might have greased it up, saying I wasn’t really under suspicion, but they would have let the link dangle, abou
t as subtle as a helicopter hovering over a lawn party, impossible to ignore. Whoever called would have suggested it was best for her to avoid all contact with me until things settled out. I didn’t blame her. After my Halloween escapade, and now explosives in my storage shed linking me to Crystal Waters, I wouldn’t have talked to me, either.

  I passed the middle days of August in a void, isolated from any contact with the Gateville investigation.

  I gave up trying to call Amanda. After learning of the potential bombs at Gateville, she would have flown in from Paris, removed her artwork, and gone back. That she hadn’t called when she’d been home told me all I needed to know about what must be running through her mind.

  Agent Till wouldn’t take my calls, either. He must have found D.X.12 in the remains of my shed, because the surveillance on me continued. At no time was I more than a hundred yards from a Crown Victoria, and that was fine. I’d gotten myself to believe the bomb in my shed was a message, not a serious attempt on my life. I didn’t understand the message, though, and until I did, I wanted a couple of Till’s young men, with their fast feet and semiautomatic weapons, nearby.

  I didn’t try to call Stanley, and I didn’t expect him to call me, not after a chunk of D.X.12 had gone off in my shed. I mailed him Till’s composites of Michael Jaynes and assumed he’d sent them out to anybody he thought might be helpful.

  The Bohemian took my call, but I only called once, and that was because he was technically still my client. I told him about the D.X.12 explosion in my shed.

  “That makes me a suspect now, too,” I said.

  “You need Michael Jaynes as much as I do, Vlodek.”

  “Maybe it’s not Michael Jaynes.”

  “Then who, Vlodek?” he shot back.

  “Someone who benefits by shifting the suspicion to me.”

  “Like me?”

  When I didn’t answer, he swore and hung up.

  I tried to play those days light under the constant surveillance, show Till’s boys that I couldn’t possibly be a bomber. Mornings, I worked outside, cutting up the rubble of the shed, filling a large Dumpster with the remains of the charred wood, exploded paint cans, and odd bits of trash I’d never bothered to throw out. It was hot that August, and the work was deadening, but the sweating passed the time as, down the street, Till’s boys watched from a dark Crown Victoria.

  Lunchtimes, when he was in town, Leo and I met at Kutz’s. I arrived as the head of my very own two-vehicle parade, and Leo thought that a stitch. He told Kutz the guys in the dark sedan were Secret Service, there in case the president of the United States needed my advice on a moment’s notice. That didn’t impress Kutz, but he was delighted that the young suits always brought big appetites—and rarely made it five feet before bobbling their overloaded, springy plastic trays upside down onto the dirt. Those were good days for government reorders at Kutz’s Wienie Wagon.

  Afternoons, I’d take the boys on a field trip to the health center, waving at them as I ran my circles. Then we’d troop back to our cars and drive to the turret so I could work indoors and they could watch my front door.

  It worked for a time, but after two weeks of long days spent wondering whether a new bomb was coming to take down the turret, of not hearing Till call to report he was closing in on a suspect other than me, of never sleeping more than two hours at a time, and trudging up to the roof to watch the sky to the west, my fingernails began to itch.

  Then it rained.

  It came blowing and pounding one night, too much to catch in buckets and pickle pails. It poured in from the roof and ran down the limestone walls, to pool temporarily on the fifth floor, until, building pressure, it cascaded through the floor to the floor below. I emptied and mopped and swore all night.

  The next morning, when the sun at last came out, I strung up my undies and called the roofer and gave him the go-ahead. I still didn’t have a permit, but that only sweetened my rage. I needed a roof, but after two weeks of waiting for Gateville, I needed the gutemptying release of outright conflict even more.

  I made sure to be working outside, two days later, when the roofing crew arrived. It took just seventeen minutes for Elvis to storm over. His skin had worsened.

  I told him I was having the roof patched, not replaced. He demanded entry. I told him to get a warrant. He told me he didn’t need one. I blocked the door. And so it went, on and off, for three days, while from above, the roofers tossed bits of my old roof from the top of the turret. They were ridiculous, those outdoor arguments in the hot August sun, but good for his complexion. By the time the roofers were done, his skin had noticeably improved. And I had gotten a few solid hours where my stomach wasn’t queasy, worrying about Gateville.

  Till finally took one of my calls toward the end of August.

  “I take it you found D.X.12 residue by my shed?”

  “We’re still analyzing.”

  “Have you tried to find out who might have put it there?”

  He chuckled softly into the phone.

  I asked other questions. He was polite. Yes, he’d sent out the computer pictures of Michael Jaynes. No, he’d not gotten any responses yet. Yes, it was conceivable there were other suspects, but Chernek and I remained the primes. No, he had no one else specifically in mind. Yes, the best course was to evacuate Crystal Waters. No, he couldn’t enforce that. And no, he couldn’t comment on the Chernek investigation; it wasn’t his case.

  “Bullshit to all of that,” I said.

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  And the last days of August dribbled away slowly, like water down a clogged drain.

  Until early in the morning of August 30.

  Twenty-three

  They were battering down my front door, BAM BAM, BAM BAM, fast and loud in a one-two tattoo. I rolled off the cot, onto the floor, came awake. BAM BAM, BAM BAM, the pounding was closer now, as if men in heavy boots had gotten inside and were charging up the stairs, but it was the turret echoing, the metal stairs reverberating in sympathetic vibration with the timbered door.

  The sky was black outside the slit windows. I rubbed at my eyes. The big red digital letters on my clock said it was three in the morning. Down below, the pounding went on: BAM BAM, BAM BAM. I grabbed my jeans and yesterday’s knit shirt from the chair, pulled on my Nikes, and ran down the stairs.

  “Stop it!” I yelled through the door. I swung it open and switched on the outside light.

  Two fresh-faced young suits stood under the light, looking like choirboys hawking chocolates to send their youth group to Salt Lake City to sing in the nationals. Except it was three in the morning. And they were holding A.T.F. photo I.D.’s.

  “He’s here, sir,” the blonder of the two said into a cell phone. He listened, nodded, and clicked the phone off with his thumb. “Please come with us, Mr. Elstrom.”

  I took half a step back from the glare of the outside light. They both stepped forward.

  “Am I being arrested?”

  “Agent-in-Charge Till instructed us to bring you to Crystal Waters.”

  The air went out of my lungs. “What happened?”

  “Please come with us, sir,” Blonder said.

  They walked me to the Crown Victoria. The other agent, the one with darker hair, opened the back door for me, and I got in. They sat in front. As Agent Blonder twisted the key, I started pressing with questions. Without turning around, Agent Other cut me off, saying their instructions were merely to drive me to Crystal Waters. Agent Till would speak to me there. We sped out of the dark of Rivertown in silence.

  I didn’t have to wait the whole ride. I saw it in the sky above the ridge from two miles away: a bright red glow pushing at the black of the night like blood spilling into ink. I thought of yelling at the agents to tell me what was going on. But I didn’t. I knew. And as we got to the top of the ridge, I saw.

  Flames punched high into the sky from inside the walls of Gateville, looking from the top of the ridge like a bonfire for giants. A hundred flashing red
and blue lights, some still, some moving, ringed the inferno, down Chanticleer and out onto the highway. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars.

  The inside of the Crown Victoria went white as headlamps came racing up from behind. A siren screamed. Blonder jerked the wheel and skidded onto the gravel shoulder as the fire truck raced past us. A hundred yards ahead, a Maple Hills police officer, lit up like prey in the glare of the fire engine’s headlights, yanked a wooden barricade out of the way a fraction of a second before the truck flew through.

  Blonder checked his rearview mirror before pulling cautiously back onto the road. Holding his I.D. out the window, he coasted down to the police officer and stopped. The cop examined it in the glare of his flashlight and waved us through. Blonder drove the rest of the way down the hill hugging the shoulder, and pulled off the road two hundred yards short of the marble pillars. He shut off the engine.

  Fire seemed to engulf the entire western half of Gateville. Flames shot up fifty, one hundred feet, spiking jagged yellows and oranges high into the air. I looked for the greatest concentration of flames, the highest density of flashing red and blue lights.

  It was right where Amanda’s house was.

  I pawed the door, fumbling for the handle. It was locked, from the front seat.

  “Let me out,” I yelled.

  Blonder started to say something, but a diesel fire truck pulled up next to us, blocking out his voice. I slapped at the window button. It was shut off, too.

  “Let me out,” I shouted. I pressed my face against the glass, straining to see past the police cars and ambulances parked on the highway, past the uniformed police officers, white-shirted E.M.T.’s, and others in civilian clothes standing frozen on the blocked-off highway, watching the sky burn inside the wall.

  The fire truck pulled away.

  “That’s my wife’s house,” I yelled.

  Blonder turned. “No, sir, that’s the house across the street from your ex-wife’s.” He opened the driver’s door and got out. Other shifted on the front seat so he could watch both me and the conflagration outside. They weren’t going to let me out.