[Version 2.0 by BuddyDk – January 2004]
NELSON
DEMILLE
SPENCERVILLE
A Time Warner Company
Author's Note:
This is entirely a work of fiction, and while there is a town in Ohio called Spencerville, its location and description are different from the town I describe, and neither the town nor the people in it bears any resemblance to the town or people in this story.
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1994 by Nelson DeMille
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Tony Russo
Cover illustration by Stanislaw Fernandez
Warner Books, Inc.
1271 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Visit our Web site at
www.wamerbooks.com
© A Time Warner Company Printed in the United States of America
Originally published in hardcover by Warner Books.
First Printed in Paperback: October, 1995
Reissued: May, 1998
10 9 8 7 6 5 4
To the memory of my father, with love.
Acknowledgments
I'd like to thank three fellow authors for sharing with me their expertise: Pete Earley, Washington insider; Tom Block, airline captain and novelist; John Westermann, law enforcement officer and novelist.
Also, my thanks to my Ohio in-laws, Al and Carol Schad, and Mike and Melinda Myers for their help with research for this book and their midwestem hospitality.
Special thanks to Larry Kirshbaum, President of Warner Books, for putting this story on the right track.
Last but not least, my gratitude to the early readers and critics of this book: Pam Carletta, my assistant; Nick Ellison, my agent; Nanscy Neiman, my editor and publisher; and of course Ginny DeMille, master of English, Ohio State, patient wife, and good friend.
The barbarians are to arrive today.
Why such inaction in the Senate?
Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?
Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
What further laws can the Senators pass?
. . . . night is here but the barbarians have not come.
Some people arrived from the frontiers,
and they said that there are no longer any barbarians.
And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
Cavafy
"Expecting the Barbarians" (1904)
CHAPTER ONE
Keith Landry was going home after twenty-five years at the front. He turned his Saab 900 off Pennsylvania Avenue onto Constitution and headed west, along the Mall toward Virginia, crossing the Potomac at the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. He caught a glimpse of the Lincoln Memorial in his rearview mirror, gave a wave, and continued west on Route 66, away from Washington.
Western Ohio, eight P.M., daylight saving time, mid-August, and Keith Landry remarked to himself that the sun was still about fifteen degrees above the horizon. He had nearly forgotten how much light remained here at this hour, at the end of the eastern time zone, and had forgotten how big his country was.
The driving on the flat, straight road was easy and mindless, so Landry allowed himself some thinking that he'd been putting off: The Cold War was over, which was the good news. Many Cold Warriors had been given pink slips, which, for Keith Landry, was the bad news.
But God had taken pity at last, Landry thought, and with a puff of divine breath blew away the pall of nuclear Armageddon that had hung over the planet for nearly half a century. Rejoice. We are saved.
He reflected, I will gladly beat my sword into a plowshare or pruning hook, and even my 9mm Clock pistol into a paperweight. Well, perhaps not gladly. But what was his choice?
The Cold War, once a growth industry, had downsized, leaving its specialists, technicians, and middle management exploring other options. On an intellectual level, Landry knew this was the best thing to happen to humanity since the Gutenberg printing press put a lot of monks out of work. On a more personal level, he was annoyed that a government that had taken twenty-five years of his life couldn't have found enough peace dividend to keep him around for five more years and full retirement pay.
But okay, Washington was two days ago and six hundred miles behind him. Today was day three of life two. Whoever said that there were no second acts in American lives had never worked for the government.
He hummed a few bars of Homeward Bound but found his own voice grating and switched on the radio. The scanner locked on to a local station, and Landry listened to a live report from the county fair, followed by a community bulletin board announcing church activities, a 4-H meeting, a VFW picnic, and so forth, followed by crop and livestock prices, hot tips on where the fish were running, and an excruciatingly detailed weather report. There were tornadoes in southern Indiana. Landry shut off the radio, thinking he'd heard this very same news a quarter century ago.
But a lot had happened to him in those years, most of it dangerous. He was safe now, and alive, whereas for the past quarter century he'd felt that he had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. He smiled. Homeward bound.
Sure, he admitted, he had mixed emotions, and he had to sort them out. Two weeks ago he was in Belgrade exchanging threats with the minister of defense, and today he was in Ohio listening to a twangy voice speculating about hog prices. Yes, he was safe but not yet sound.
Landry settled back in his seat and paid attention to his driving. He liked the feel of the open road, and the Saab handled beautifully. The car's unusual shape attracted curious attention when Landry passed through the small towns and hamlets of western Ohio, and he thought he should probably trade it in for less of a conversation piece when he took up residence in Spencerville.
The cornfields stretched as far as the deep blue sky, and here and there a farmer had planted soybeans, or wheat, or alfalfa. But mostly it was corn: field corn to fatten livestock and sweet corn for the table. Corn. Corn syrup, cornstarch, cornflakes, cornmeal, corn, corn, corn, Landry thought, to fatten an already fat nation. Landry had been in a lot of famine areas over the years, so maybe that's why the sight of the heartland's bounty made him think of fat.
For amber waves of grain, he said aloud. He noticed that the crops were good. He had no vested interest in the crops, neither as a farmer nor as a man who held crop futures. But he'd spent the first eighteen years of his life listening to everyone around him talk about the crops, so he noticed them wherever he was, in Russia, in China, in Somalia, and now, coming full circle, in western Ohio.
Landry saw the sign for Spencerville, downshifted, and took the turn without braking, causing the Ford Taurus behind him to try the same thing with less acceptable results.
On the horizon, he could see a water storage tower and grain silos, then later, he could make out the clock tower of the Spencer County courthouse, a sort of Gothic Victorian pile of red brick and sandstone built in a burst of turn-of-the-century enthusiasm and boosterism. The courthouse was a marvel when it was built, Landry reflected, and it was a marvel now—the marvel being that Spencer County had once been prosperous enough and populated enough to finance such a massive edifice.
As Landry drew closer, he could see most of the town's ten church spires, catching the light of the setting sun.
Landry did not enter the town but turned off onto a small farm road. A sign reminded him to watch out for slow-moving farm vehic
les, and he eased off the accelerator. Within fifteen minutes, he could see the red barn of the Landry farm.
He had never driven all the way home before but had always flown to Toledo or Columbus and rented a car. This drive from the District of Columbia had been uneventful yet interesting. The interesting part, aside from the landscape, was the fact that he didn't know why he was driving to Spencerville to live after so long an absence. Interesting, too, was the sense of unhurried leisure, the absence of any future appointments in his daybook, the dangling wire where his government car phone had once sat, the unaccustomed feeling of being out of touch with the people who once needed to know on a daily basis if he was dead, alive, kidnapped, in jail, on the run, or on vacation. A provision of the National Security Act gave him thirty days from time of separation to notify them of a forwarding address. In fact, however, they wanted it before he left Washington. But Landry, in his first exercise of his rights as a civilian, told them tersely that he didn't know where he was going. He was gone but not forgotten, forcibly retired but of continuing interest to his superiors.
Landry passed a row of post-mounted mailboxes, noticing that the one with the Landry name had the red flag down, as it had been for about five years.
He pulled into the long gravel drive, overgrown with weeds.
The farmhouse was a classical white clapboard Victorian, with porch and gingerbread ornamentation, built in 1889 by Landry's great-grandfather. It was the third house to occupy the site, the first being a log cabin built in the 1820s when the Great Black Swamp was drained and cleared by his ancestors. The second house had been circa Civil War, and he'd seen a photo of it, a small shingled saltbox shape, sans porch or ornamentation. The better looking the farmhouse, according to local wisdom, the more the husband was henpecked. Apparently, Great-Grandpa Cyrus was totally pussy-whipped.
Landry pulled the Saab up to the porch and got out. The setting sun was still hot, but it was dusty dry, very unlike the Washington steam bath.
Landry stared at the house. There was no one on the porch to welcome him home, nor would there ever be. His parents had retired from farming and gone to Florida five years before. His sister, Barbara, unmarried, had gone to Cleveland to seek career fulfillment as an advertising executive. His brother, Paul, was a vice-president with Coca-Cola in Atlanta. Paul had been married to a nice lady named Carol who worked for CNN, and Paul had joint custody of his two sons, and his life was governed by his separation agreement and by Coca-Cola.
Keith Landry had never married, partly because of the experience of his brother and of most of the people he knew, and partly because of his job, which was not conducive to a life of marital bliss.
Also, if he cared to be honest with himself, and he might as well be, he had never completely gotten over Annie Prentis, who lived about ten miles from where he was now parked in front of his family farm. Ten-point-three miles, to be exact.
Keith Landry got out of his Saab, stretched, and surveyed the old homestead. In the twilight, he saw himself as a young college grad on the porch, an overnight bag in his hand, kissing his mother and his sister, Barbara, shaking hands with little Paul. His father was standing beside the family Ford, where Landry stood now beside the Saab. It was sort of a Norman Rockwell scene, except that Keith Landry wasn't going off to make his way in the world; he was going to the county courthouse, where a bus waited in the parking lot to take that month's levee of young men from Spencer County to the induction center in Toledo.
Keith Landry recalled clearly the worried looks on the faces of his family but could not recall very well how he himself felt or acted.
He seemed to remember, however, that he felt awful, and at the same time, he was filled with a sense of adventure, an eagerness to leave, which made him feel guilty. He didn't understand then his mixed emotions, but now he did, and it could be summed up in a line from an old song: How you gonna keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?
But it wasn't Paree, it was Vietnam, and the recruits hadn't mustered in the village square for a roll call and jolly send-off, nor had they returned marching up Main Street after what would have been called V-V Day. And yet, the net effect of the experience for Landry was the same: He never came back to the farm. He'd come back physically, of course, in one piece, but he'd never come back in mind or spirit, and the farm was never his home after that.
So here it was, a quarter century after he'd stepped off his front porch into the world, and he was standing at the steps of that porch again, and the images of his family faded away, leaving him with an unexpected sadness.
He said to himself, Well, I'm home, even if no one else is.
He climbed the steps, found the key in his pocket, and entered.
CHAPTER TWO
On the north side of Spencerville, the better side of town, ten-point-three miles from the Landry farm, Annie Baxter, nee Prentis, cleared the dinner dishes from the kitchen table.
Her husband, Cliff Baxter, finished his can of Coors, barely suppressed a belch, looked at his watch, and announced, I got to go back to work.
Annie had gathered as much from the fact that Cliff had not changed into his usual jeans and T-shirt before dinner. He wore his tan police uniform and had shoved a dish towel in his collar to keep the beef gravy off his pleated shirt. Annie noted that his underarms and waist were wet with perspiration. His holster and pistol hung from a peg on the wall, and he'd left his hat in his police car.
Annie inquired, When do you think you'll be home?
Oh, you know better than to ask me that, honey buns. He rose. Who the hell knows? This job's getting’ crazy. Drugs and fucked-up kids. He strapped on his holster.
Annie noticed that the gun belt was at the last notch, and if she had been mean-spirited, she would have offered to fetch a leather awl and make a new hole for him.
Cliff Baxter noticed her looking at his girth and said, You feed me too damn good.
Of course it was her fault. She remarked, You might ease up on the beer.
You might ease up on your mouth.
She didn't reply. She was in no mood for a fight, especially over something she didn't care about.
She looked at her husband. For all his extra weight, he was still a good-looking man in many ways, with tanned, rugged features, a full head of thick brown hair, and blue eyes that had a little sparkle left. It was his looks and his body that had attracted her to him some twenty years before, along with his bad-boy charm and cockiness. He had been a good lover, at least by the standards of those days and this place. He'd turned out to be a passable father, too, and a good provider, rising quickly to chief of police. But he was not a good husband, though if you asked him, he'd say he was.
Cliff Baxter opened the screen door and said, Don't bolt the doors like you did last time.
Last time, she thought, was nearly a year ago, and she'd done it on purpose, so he'd have to ring and knock to wake her. She was looking for a fight then but had gotten more than she'd bargained for. He'd come home that time after four A.M., and since then and before then, it was always around four, once or twice a week.
Of course his job required odd hours, and that alone was no cause for suspicion. But through other means and other sources, she'd learned that her husband fooled around.
Cliff trundled down the back steps and howled at their four dogs in the backyard. The dogs broke into excited barking and pawed at their chain-link enclosure. Cliff howled again, then laughed. To his wife he said, Make sure you give them the scraps and let them run awhile.
Annie didn't reply. She watched him get into his chief's car and back out of the driveway. She closed the kitchen door and locked it but did not bolt it.
In truth, she reflected, there was no reason to even lock the door. Spencerville was a safe enough town, though people certainly locked their doors at night. The reason she didn't have to lock the door was that her husband had assigned police cars, nearly around the clock, to patrol Williams Street. His explanation: Criminals know w
here we live, and I don't want nobody hurting you. The reality: Cliff Baxter was insanely jealous, possessive, and suspicious.
Annie Baxter was, in effect, a prisoner in her own house. She could leave anytime, of course, but where she went and whom she saw came to the attention of her husband very quickly.
This was embarrassing and humiliating, to say the least. The neighbors on the neat street of Victorian homes—doctors, lawyers, businesspeople—accepted the official explanation for the eternal police presence with good grace. But they knew Cliff Baxter, so they knew what this was all about. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, Annie said aloud for the millionth time, had a wife but couldn't keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well. She added, You bastard.
She went to the front door and looked out the leaded glass into the street. A Spencerville police cruiser rolled by and she recognized the driver, a young man named Kevin Ward, one of Cliff's favored fascists. She fantasized now and then about inviting Kevin Ward in for coffee, then seducing him. But maybe Cliff had someone watching Kevin Ward, probably in an unmarked car. She smiled grimly at her own paranoia, which was becoming as bad as her husband's. But in her case, the paranoia was well founded. In Cliffs case, it was not. Annie Baxter was sexually faithful. True, she didn't have much choice, but beyond that, she took her marriage vows seriously, even if her husband didn't. There were times, however, when she had urges that would have made her mother blush. Cliff's lovemaking came in spurts, followed by longer intervals of disinterest. Lately, she welcomed the disinterest.
The patrol car moved up the street, and Annie walked into the large living room. She sat in an armchair and listened to the grandfather clock ticking. Her son, Tom, had gone back to Columbus early, ostensibly to find a part-time job before school started, but in reality because Spencerville, and Williams Street in particular, had nothing to offer him for the summer, or for the rest of his life, for that matter. Her daughter, Wendy, was up at Lake Michigan with the church youth group. Annie had volunteered to be one of the chaperons, but Cliff had remarked smilingly, Who's gonna chaperon you darlin'?
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