A Safe Place for Dying

by Jack Fredrickson

  “Not bad enough to follow the wrong lead while you killed a family.”

  He dropped his hands from the ceiling and turned his head abruptly toward me. “They weren’t supposed to be home.”

  “Sure, you liked me, Stanley,” I said, trying to find a button, any button. “When everybody was giving up on the idea of finding Jaynes, you liked me enough to give them a new candidate: me. You passed a quiet word to Till about my background, no doubt suggesting I was prone to irrational behavior. That got him to put a tail on me. And when I told you I was coming to get Amanda’s paintings, you realized I might discover the hole you’d opened up to the tunnel. Then you liked me enough to set off a cube of D.X.12 in my shed, to tighten the link between me and the bombings.”

  “There was no D.X.12 in your shed, Mr. Elstrom, just a slowburning fuse and an old can of paint stripper. Your own turpentine did the rest. Agent Till thinks somebody walking along the river tossed a cigarette into your shed.”

  His hands worked in the nest of wires. There couldn’t be any time left.

  “You’ll die, Stanley. And you’ll take a hundred firemen, cops, and medical techs with you.”

  And Amanda. She was out there, too. But I couldn’t give voice to that.

  “I don’t know how much that matters, Mr. Elstrom. My boy is dead. My wife is dying because she can’t bear that, and I’m dead, too. All because of Crystal Waters. Michael Jaynes was right. This place must be destroyed.”

  Just around the corner, next to the knife that I’d never get close enough to use, lay the timer bomb.

  I started getting up then, slowly. He raised his spotlight to shine right in my eyes.

  I looked away from the light. “I liked you, too, Stanley. I liked you when the lamppost blew up, when I couldn’t get past the idea that the bomb had been triggered from inside Gateville. I liked you when, miracle of miracles, you came up with the name of Michael Jaynes, and I didn’t think to question the sudden appearance of such a good lead. I liked you when that family got blown up, when you kept waving that Member vacation roster around, insisting they weren’t supposed to be home. I liked you, Stanley, too much to take a hard look at you.”

  I was on my knees. “Even tonight, I liked you, when I was badgering Amanda to tell me it was you who had hit her. She wouldn’t believe that, and I didn’t want to believe it, either. Because I liked you. You weren’t Crystal Waters. You were a working guy, a guy carrying a load, like me.”

  I was all the way up now, hunched an inch from the ceiling. “But most of all, Stanley, I liked you because you didn’t put a clown hat on me last Halloween. You took me away from Crystal Waters, paid for a room at the health center because I was too drunk and too broke, and you left me with enough dignity to get through the night. I liked you for that, Stanley, and it made me blind.”

  He lowered the spotlight. His right hand, his gunhand, was raised, steady and motionless, but his head was moving, up and down, like he was laughing. Or crying.

  “But I don’t like you enough to sit here and watch you kill a hundred people.” I turned and stepped into Amanda’s tunnel, out of his sight, and stopped—to pick up the bomb. I gave the dial the slightest of twists, turned back around, and straight-armed it around the corner, toward the spotlight. Then I ran, crouched, down the tunnel toward Amanda’s basement.

  I remember what came next, but the remembering takes longer than the time it must have taken. I remember the sound of my lungs wheezing in the dry, cold air, and the incredible pressure of my heart thudding in my chest as I pounded down the tunnel, hunched over like a broken man. I remember the speck of green growing in the blackness ahead of me as I got closer, and praying that it wouldn’t dissolve into a flash of orange. I remember hitting the concrete wall of Amanda’s basement, hard, the pain stunning me for an instant before I thought to reach up. I remember the way the ragged, chiseled cement cut into my gut as I started to pull myself over the ledge.

  I remember the first instant of the tornado coming, bright and white and hot, without sound.

  After that, I remember nothing at all.

  Twenty-nine

  Amanda moved at the foot of the bed. Her head was wrapped in a white towel and she was wearing my red I LOVE ARKANSAS sweatshirt. It hung down to her knees, but I let the thought linger that she was wearing nothing underneath it. She smelled of shampoo and bath soap, but that was wrong. There was no hot water in the turret. No tub, either.

  I recognized the rough stone walls of the third floor but the bed was wrong, too. It was a bed, not my cot, and it was too big, the size of the bed we’d shared when we were married. I looked back at Amanda. The sleeves of my sweatshirt were gone. Cut off above the elbows.

  I opened my eyes all the way. “What did you do to my sweatshirt? I paid five dollars for that because it had long sleeves.”

  “You shredded the sleeves being blown into my basement.” She moved close to the side of the bed and bent down to peer into my eyes. I’d been right; she was wearing nothing but the sweatshirt.

  “I demand you remove that sweatshirt and give it to me, so that I might fully inspect the damage.”

  “Not now, sailor. You’ve got wounds.”

  “None that can’t be immediately healed.”

  “I’m going to call the doctor and tell him you’re regaining your strength, and then I’m going to make tea.”

  “I’m strong now.”

  She looked down. “I can see. I’m still going to call the doctor, then we’re going to have tea.”

  “And cookies?”

  She pulled the sheet up to my neck. “Sweets come later.”

  Amanda helped me out of bed on the fifth day. I had a broken arm, a dislocated shoulder, burns on both my legs, and a million cuts, give or take a dozen, from the thousand bits of pulverized concrete that had blown through the tunnel. I’d been lucky; I’d been most of the way through the cutout when the blast came, and Amanda’s foundation wall had protected me after I’d fallen into the basement. My head had stayed attached, too, in its like-new, mostly unused condition. I certainly hadn’t put any strain on it during the Gateville investigation.

  Amanda held my good arm as I levered myself upright. “Was someone pounding on the front door a short time ago?” I asked, grabbing for the headboard. The round room was spinning like an amusement park centrifuge, at that moment when the floor drops away.

  She made a face. “It was that horrible man again from city hall. Odd fellow, with sprayed hair and very bad, oily skin. He comes twice a day.”

  “What does he want?”

  “The first few times, he asked what I was doing here. He said this place was zoned for only one occupant, as if that could be true.” She looked up at me.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I’m a temporary nurse.”

  “You could be permanent.”

  “You don’t need a permanent nurse.”

  “That isn’t what—”

  She went on, ignoring me. “Then today, he asked me if I’d lost a lot of weight.” The beginnings of a smile played on her lips. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the laundry basket of ladies’ unmentionables I found under your table saw, would it?”

  “I’d like to look out the window now,” I said.

  She helped me hobble to the slit window. Down by the river, a man with a tan paper lunch bag sat on the bench, tapping a hardboiled egg against the metal armrest. He had gray, wiry hair, wore a brown suit, and appeared to be talking to a duck floating in the water.

  “Is that Agent Till?”

  “Another strange man.” She told me he’d come by every few hours during the first two days when I’d been frolicking in dreamland, demanding to speak with me. Amanda’s doctor, a tiny, peppy gynecologist—named Woody, honestly—had kept him out. She said that yesterday, day four, Till took a new tack: He brought his lunch and ate by the river. “I think he’s going to do this every day until you talk to him,” Amanda said.

  “
How did you know to keep him out?” I looked at her, amazed.

  “You said, ‘Don’t let me talk,’ when they carried you out of my house, so I told Woody. Woody kept them out.”

  I nodded. I didn’t remember. It was best.

  Two days later, at a little past noon, Amanda and Woody helped me down the metal stairs and out the door. I insisted on shuffling to the river by myself, though they followed close enough to pick me up on the first bounce.

  I sat on the bench.

  Till didn’t take his eyes off the duck as he slid his tan paper bag toward me. “Have half a sandwich,” he said.

  “What kind is it?”

  “Tuna salad. My wife says I need more omega oil, whatever that is, so she makes tuna salad three days a week.”

  “Is the sandwich any good?”

  “It’s horrible. She uses fake mayonnaise.” He threw a scrap of his sandwich in the water. The duck circled around it, picked it up in its beak, spit it out, and flew away. “I could have demanded an interrogation, you know,” Till said. “Your little pipsqueak doctor can’t keep out the federal government. I’ve been cooperative, letting you recover.”

  “I don’t remember much.”

  He had to be careful, with Amanda and Woody hovering ten feet away.

  “Think it’ll come back? Things you might not remember now?” He turned his head to look at me for the first time.

  “Ask Woody.”

  “I did. He’s a gynecologist, but he did say that after a concussion, full memory can return.”

  “One can only hope, Till.”

  “Mind telling me what you do remember, starting with after you heard the second explosion?”

  “Amanda and I had just come out of the house. I sent her off to get you.”

  “Then you went back in?”

  “To find Stanley Novak.”

  “That was noble.”

  “I figured he was taped up like Amanda had been. I was going to free him and then we’d run like hell.”

  “Risking your own life to save Stanley Novak.”

  I’d considered the next part. “He helped people.” It had been true enough.

  Till bobbed his head up and down in exaggerated agreement. “Ah, yes. Left the lovely Ms. Phelps taped to a chair in a house that was about to explode.”

  “He was otherwise occupied.”

  “Going into the tunnels to get Michael Jaynes.”

  “Stanley Novak was a good man.”

  Till muttered something.

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Bullshit,’ Elstrom.” Till shifted on the bench so that his head was a foot from mine. He smelled like tuna and fake mayonnaise. “Small fragments of an unidentified male along with the noble Stanley Novak blew out of a sealed-up air vent above one of the tunnels. But you didn’t go into any tunnels, did you, Elstrom?”

  “Just got as far as the cutout in Amanda’s basement.”

  “So you couldn’t have seen what Stanley Novak was doing in that tunnel, then?”

  “How about chasing down Michael Jaynes?”

  “Why do you think it was Michael Jaynes who was down in there?”

  “He left his fatigue jacket in Amanda’s basement. Jaynes was our prime suspect, Till, or did you forget that somewhere along the way?”

  Till’s eyes were steady on the side of my face. “Funny thing about the remains of the person that was not Stanley Novak,” Till said. “He was dead.”

  “So you said.”

  “No. Longtime dead. Years and years dead.” He stared at the side of my face. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  I shrugged as best I could with one arm immobilized in a cast.

  Amanda came up to the front of the bench. Woody hung back ten feet, but his eyes were on Amanda, waiting for a cue.

  Till shook his head and looked up at Amanda. “And you, Ms. Phelps, the way you got the ambulance driver to take him here, instead of to the hospital. I’d like to know why you did that.”

  Amanda smiled. “I thought he’d be safer here.”

  “I was outside your house when they pulled him out, Ms. Phelps. He was cut up pretty bad.”

  “The E.M.T.’s said he could be treated at home.”

  “I talked to them. Both techs said you told them terrorists were after Elstrom and that he could get killed in the hospital. You also told them you would have guards here to protect him.”

  Amanda smiled. She had a lovely smile.

  “Where are the guards?” Till asked.

  Amanda smiled.

  Till turned back to me. “I like having lunch here. It’s calm, and peaceful. I might come here every day.”

  “It’ll get cold soon.”

  “I love the brisk days of autumn.”

  “I didn’t mean that soon. I meant in January and February.” I gave him a steely look I’d practiced once in front of a mirror. “Maybe forever,” I said.

  Till picked up his paper bag and stood up. “Sure you don’t want some? I left plenty.”

  I shook my head.

  He held it out to Amanda.

  She smiled.

  Till walked the five steps to the trash barrel. “I should leave this on the bench. Keep the flies away,” he said.

  “One thing I forgot to ask, Till. Did you ever get the lab results on what blew up my shed?”

  He paused, his lunch bag poised over the barrel, and he grinned. “Solvents. Paint thinners, turpentine, gasoline.”

  “No D.X.12?”

  He dropped the bag in the barrel. “Rest up, Elstrom. I might be back.” He started up toward his car.

  “One can only hope,” I said after him.

  Amanda helped me stand. She waved Woody off, and we walked slowly up toward the turret.

  “Did I really say, ‘Don’t let me talk’?”

  “You told me you didn’t want to talk under sedation. I called Leo as they were rolling you up to the ambulance. He said if you were thinking clearly and could convalesce at home, it would be better for you. He said with the money that’s going to be lost at Crystal Waters, and the lawsuits that are sure to be filed against the Board, the Board will be going to the ends of the earth to get out from under any negligence claims. Leo thought they’d start by trying to blame you for an ineffective investigation. Leo said you’d be in court for the rest of your life.” She paused. “You know what I think, Dek?”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “I don’t think you were thinking of your own skin, or what was left of it.”

  We got to the door of the turret. “Poor Stanley,” I said.

  “That’s what I believed, and it almost got you killed.” She held the door open for me. “But you’re the only one who will ever believe that now.”

  The next week, the Bohemian came down to the bench by the river carrying a slim box wrapped in silver paper. “Vlodek.” He rolled the name. “You look horrible. Much worse than you sound on the phone.”

  With effort, I slid down a bit on the bench so we could both watch the river. He sat down.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Right as rain,” he said. He looked it. His skin was back to its usual prosperous bronze. “Miss Terrado, my accuser, got arrested for shoplifting the day before yesterday. ‘Heiress Caught Stealing,’ the paper said. After detailing her growing eccentricities, the reporter, a nice boy, the nephew of a friend, devoted some space to Miss Terrado’s preposterous accusation against me, noting that the F.B.I. anticipated the matter would be dropped.”

  He started to hand me the slim, wrapped box, saw the cast, and said, “A token, Vlodek. Allow me.” He slit the paper with his huge thumb, removed the top of the box, and held it out for me to see. It was the largest fountain pen I’d ever seen. “A 1928 Parker Duofold, in Blue Lapis. I restored it myself.” He set the pen down. “You can use it to endorse this.” He pulled a Crystal Waters Homeowners Association check from his suit-coat pocket and held it up.

  “Two thousand?”


  “The association is virtually bankrupt, and with the lawsuits—”

  I imagined he had to shake Ballsard pretty hard to come up with the two thousand. “It’s fine,” I said.

  He smiled, relieved. “Your suggestion that I visit the Novak house was most productive. I met with Mrs. Novak’s sister, who is now her guardian, and presented her with a letter from Bob Ballsard, assuring her that the Board will begin paying Stanley’s pension immediately and will also expedite her claim against his life insurance policy. Mrs. Novak will want for nothing in her current home, poor woman.”

  “I’ll bet Ballsard was most enthused about writing that letter.”

  “As you predicted, but he was persuaded when I told him I had every hope of recovering all the extortion money. Besides, as you also pointed out, Stanley dying a hero might minimize claims against the Board for negligence.”

  “You looked around Stanley’s garage?”

  “Mrs. Novak’s sister was quite cooperative once she realized I was acting in their best interests. She gave me the key and told me to take anything that belonged to Crystal Waters. It was in the attic of the garage: five hundred and ten thousand, untouched.” He patted my good shoulder. “As you requested, I told the Board only that I recovered the funds through a confidential source.”

  “That ten thousand—”

  “—did not have a bill newer than 1970.” He beamed. “And the five hundred thousand was still in the attaché case. I don’t think he ever opened it.” He watched me.

  “Attaché—” I started to stutter. “Son of a bitch.”

  He patted my good shoulder again. “Perhaps surveillance is not your forte.”

  “Thank you, Anton.”

  “You’re a moral man, Vlodek. I like that.” He stood up. “I told the Board you would be discreet.”

  He took a step toward the street but then turned. “I meant to bring you a bottle of ink for your new pen, but there are so many colors. I didn’t know which you’d like.”

  I waved my good hand. “Anything will be fine.”