Fear Itself

by Jonathan Nasaw

  Which didn’t mean OPR wasn’t going to have her on the griddle—but neither, given the current climate, were they going to be eager to broadcast the fact that one of their agents had endangered two civilians, with fatal results. They’d probably settle for a medical retirement, and there was a provision in her federal health coverage plan that would—

  Buchanan’s cell phone beeped; they both jumped.

  “Buchanan…Yeah, that’s the one…Okay…Okay, got it…Affirmative, keep me in the loop….”He hit the disconnect, but didn’t put the phone back in his pocket.

  “Well?” said Linda. “I’m dyin’ heah.”Dog Day Afternoon was one of her favorite movies.

  “The Lexus is parked out front of the building. Atlantic City PD is bringing up their tac squad.”

  More Dalí’s-clock watching. Buchanan left the kitchen, returned with two cups of hot coffee from God-knows-where. Linda switched from feeling guilty about the Gees to trying to decide whether she’d been negligent in not having Rosie put under surveillance. But yesterday, she reminded herself, there was no reason to believe Childs was even west of the Mississippi. So maybe she could let herself off on that one.

  Or maybe not. The next call came in at nine-fifteen.

  “Buchanan…No shit?…Sounds about right…. Let me know.” Again the disconnect, followed by the infuriating stage pause.

  “C’mon, spit it out.” Linda wasn’t sure how much more suspense she could take.

  “He’s there, all right. They have the mother on the phone—she called them while the tac squad was moving into place. She told the negotiator he’s holding a gun on her. She says he says he doesn’t want to shoot her, but he will if they try to come in. But the situation is currently stable, so as long as they have Childs contained, they want to wait him out, see what develops.”

  “If they have Childs contained. Rosie’s his mother, Joe. She could be covering for him. He could be miles away by now.”

  “I’m sure they thought of that,” said Buchanan. He called LaFeo back, though. “Larry, Abruzzi wants to know how you know he’s really in there…. Check, got it.…I’ll let her know.” He gave Linda the thumbs-up. “Negotiator says you can hear him talking in the background.”

  “Guess I’m getting paranoid.” So much for all our scenarios, thought Linda. You can spitball until you’re out of paper and spit, and in the end it plays out the way it plays out. His mother—he wanted to see his mother.

  Special Agent Lawrence LaFeo’s last call came in at nine-thirty-seven. ACPD officers were in the process of clearing the building floor by floor, and LaFeo himself was on his way up to the fifth floor with Mark Scott, one of the FBI’s best hostage negotiators, who’d just arrived from Philadelphia, the field office with jurisdiction over Atlantic City.

  Special Agent LaFeo’s last words, to Buchanan anyway, were, “I’m getting too old for this shit,” apparently in reference to the long climb. He promised, as he’d been promising all night, to call Buchanan back, keep them in the loop, so when ten o’clock had come and gone with no word, Buchanan called him and got a “not-responding” message on his cell screen.

  “It must be going down,” he told Linda. “God-damn I wish I was there.”

  So did Linda—until the call came in at ten-fifteen from LaFeo’s partner, Special Agent Lisa Kingmore, out on the street outside Rosie’s apartment building. Buchanan could barely hear her over the roar of the flames and the screaming sirens—not that there was much to tell at that point, other than that there’d been one hell of an explosion, and that the top two floors of the building were fully involved.

  Eventually, with both Linda and Buchanan working their phones, they managed to piece an outline of the story together. At nine-forty-six, just around the time LaFeo and Scott would have been reaching the fifth floor, Rosie had mentioned something to the ACPD negotiator about smelling gas. The explosion had followed within seconds (the negotiator was still deaf in one ear from percussion tinnitus), blowing a hole clean through to the kitchen of the adjoining apartment (or so it was believed).

  Casualties, in addition to the partially deafened negotiator and a few Atlantic City cops down in the street who’d been slightly injured by falling masonry, included both Childs and Rosie, probably killed in the explosion, as well as LaFeo, Scott, a sergeant from the tac squad, and Mrs. Schantz, Rosie’s eighty-year-old next-door neighbor, who had all perished in the fire.

  It would take another hour before the fire was brought under control, and yet another forty-five minutes until it was extinguished, and the arson investigators could begin the grisly work of sorting out the bodies. Exhausted as she was, Linda wouldn’t allow herself to relax, much less head home, until Agent Kingmore, who had attached herself to the arson boys (always the first ones in after—and sometimes before—the all clear), was standing in what was left of Rosie’s kitchen, looking down at two charred corpses, one female, one male.

  And yes, the male, though curled up now, had probably been a six-footer in life, according to the arson investigator, who ought to have known, having seen quite a few of what he referred to as the crispy critters.

  As for a more definitive identification, Linda was told that would have to wait at least until Simon Childs’s dental records were obtained from his dentist, presumably in the Bay Area, for comparison with the corpse’s dentition. But at this point nobody doubted it was Childs—certainly not Linda. Why, then, was she so reluctant to give it up and go home that Joe Buchanan practically had to drag her out to her car? Maybe it was because she already knew that this would be her last case.

  And not just because of the Lhermitte’s sign, or the numbness and tingling spreading up her left arm, but because Joe was right—when you screwed up in this job, people died. First the Gees, then Rosie and all the others. Linda thought back to her conversation with the poor old drunk only yesterday afternoon.

  Let somebody else tell her her daughter’s dead and her son’s a monster—there must be people who get paid for that.

  Good call, Abrootz, she told herself, as she climbed into the Geo. Then something else occurred to her: her grand gesture this evening, unburdening herself to Joe Buchanan, had been unnecessary. She’d gotten her wish—no, not wish, never that. What she’d wished for on the ride down was a false alarm. Instead, the second scenario: Gloria, Jim, Childs all dead. But as far as she was concerned, the results would have been even better this way—no one would ever have had to know who Skairdykat really was.

  But maybe it wasn’t too late. She could go back inside, throw herself on Joe’s mercy, beg him to keep silent. He was a field agent, he’d understand. And he wouldn’t even have to lie—just forget something a fellow agent had told him.

  Sure, she would still have to resign, for all the reasons she’d already laid out for herself. But not in disgrace. And she would have spared herself the OPR grilling and all that other unpleasantness.

  It all sounded good—so good that even thinking about it helped lift some of the crushing weight from Linda’s bony shoulders, as she buckled her seat belt, turned the key in the ignition, and drove off, leaving Conroy Circle, her career, and her professional reputation behind, but bringing away with her the last few tattered shreds of her self-respect.

  6

  Pyromania, enuresis, cruelty to animals—the homicidal trinity of forensic psychiatry. Sid Dolitz used to have a standing bet with Pender: if Pender ever caught a serial killer who didn’t have a childhood history of starting fires and/or wetting his bed and/or torturing small animals, Sid would buy him dinner.

  Simon Childs had never wet his bed as a boy, and cruelty to small animals per se was anathema to him, although he did get a kick out of feeding white mice to Crusher, the boa constrictor who’d succeeded Skinny as his boyhood pet. But Simon had certainly started a few fires in his day, and while the thrill wasn’t as intensely orgasmic for him as it was for your true pyromaniac, there was a definite erotic charge that accompanied watching the flames and hearing the
sirens.

  So it was something of a disappointment to him, to have to miss the fire. But otherwise, Plan C had gone so smoothly that by the time he left Atlantic City on Cappy’s classy old Harley, he was not only reasonably certain that the explosion and fire would take place as scheduled, but that the fates had given their seal of approval to the entire venture.

  The key to the first part of the plan, as Simon had foreseen, was Rosie. The news about Missy had devastated her—but it gave Simon a chance to comfort her, to play the heartbroken, but loving son, which had not only endeared him to Rosie, but to Cappy as well.

  With the ground prepared, Simon had then spun the same yarn he’d spun for Zap Strum after learning of Missy’s death, once again imbuing the embellishments with the authority of his own emotional investment, as well as making sure that both Rosie and Cappy were kept well-lubricated with Select Choice vodka. And by the time he’d finished telling his rapt audience of two how a crooked FBI agent named Pender had tricked Missy into letting him into the house, then attacked Simon, how Missy tried to stop him and there was a scuffle, how the struggle had overtaxed her heart, and how Pender had then shifted the blame to Simon to cover his own rear end, Rosie didn’t need any more convincing—maternal guilt alone would have been sufficient motivation for her.

  But just to be on the safe side, Simon added a spoonful of sugar to make sure Cappy’s medicine went down smoothly. He took the old CPO aside and showed him the satchel filled with cash, then explained how once he, Simon, had confronted Pender while wearing a hidden tape recorder and fooled him into confessing, he wouldn’t be needing his getaway money. In which case, he would be happy—no, honored—to leave the money behind for Cappy, as a token of his appreciation for his help in clearing his name and bringing Missy’s killer to justice, not to mention the loan of the Harley.

  From the glitter in the old man’s eyes when Simon dumped half of his remaining stacks of dead presidents on the bed, Simon was reasonably certain that he had just bought himself a second accomplice. But it wasn’t only the money that had won Cappy over, it was the prospect of adventure. Judging by the man’s excitement and enthusiasm when they started going over the next part of the plan, Simon had the feeling that Cappy would have paid him for the opportunity to be useful again, to do something important for somebody, something that mattered, to be a participant in life again, and maybe even have a little fun with the cops in the bargain.

  Simon had thought of everything. The two were to stay in the kitchenette portion of the apartment, where they couldn’t be seen from the apartment’s only window. Rosie was to wait half an hour, then call the cops and tell them she was being held hostage by her son. After that, all Rosie had to do was stall, stall, stall; all Cappy had to do was let himself be heard in the background every so often.

  And when push came to shove, Simon assured them, they wouldn’t have to put themselves in danger—he wouldn’t think of allowing any harm to come to either of them. Let the cops in, explain how Simon had threatened to kill them if they didn’t help him get away, then go treat yourselves to a fancy dinner someplace with the money Simon had so generously left behind, and never mind the senior/twilight discounts.

  Before leaving, he’d traded clothes with Cappy and kissed his mother good-bye. The wrinkled cheek was surprisingly soft against his lips; the eyes were filled with tears. She cried easily, this old woman—but had she cried when she spent the blood money Grandfather Childs had given her to abandon her children? And did she cry when she spread her legs for that old man on the Murphy bed? Did she cry for her children then?

  Of course not—so why should I cry for her? thought Simon as he closed the door behind him. Then he’d made a big stomping show of starting down the stairway, before doubling back quietly to ring the bell of the apartment next door.

  “Who’s there?” A shaky, phlegmy old voice. Perfect for his purposes: if the occupant was as feeble as she sounded, there would be no need to strong-arm her, as he’d originally planned. He might not even need to improvise a delayed-action fuse to trigger the explosion.

  “Gas company, ma’am,” Simon had called. “I’m afraid there may be a problem with your line.”

  Twenty minutes later he was on his way. He might even have passed the Bu-car containing Special Agents LaFeo and Kingmore, traveling in the opposite direction. He heard the explosion an hour later, from a phone booth near Deep Water, New Jersey, just east of the Delaware Memorial Bridge spanning the Delaware River.

  “Hello, Mrs. Schantz? This is Joe from the gas company. Your readings are all clear now—as they say in the Navy, the smoking lamp is lit…. Yes, ma’am, I know the smell is strong—that’s the anti-inflammatory I told you we were going to be pumping in.…I quite understand—I’m a pack-a-day man myself. What I want you to do, though, while I’m holding, I want you to flick that Bic for me, walk around the apartment, see if the flame wavers…. No, you can keep the Bic with our compliments…. Yes, ma’am, I’ll wait.”

  While he waited, Simon held the phone at arm’s length to avoid the percussion tinnitus syndrome shortly to be experienced by the hostage negotiator for the Atlantic City Police Department, currently holding the line for Rosie Delamour next door—unlike her, he knew what was coming.

  And though he’d told himself he wasn’t going to cry, afterward there were tears in his eyes as he replaced the receiver and walked slowly back to the Harley. He was an orphan now, he’d suddenly realized—a motherless, fatherless, sisterless child.

  7

  Dorie and Pender hit the hay early. It didn’t take Pender long to drop off—within twenty minutes he was bleating and blatting like a Sun Ra solo scored by John Cage.

  No such luck for Dorie, not with her first airplane ride looming at seven-fifty in the A.M. It was funny, she mused, how she’d never really thought of herself as an aviophobe. Probably because flying was so easy to avoid. But fear of flying was one of those sneaky phobias. It’s not really a problem for me, you say: I don’t like to travel anyway. And you never think about what came first, the fear of the chicken or the fear of the egg.

  Plenty of time to think about all that now, however. And the longer she lay there listening to Pender snore, the more unfair it seemed. Wasn’t this whole thing his idea in the first place? So how come he gets to sleep like an adenoidal baby while I lie here gnawing on my liver? She scooted over toward the warm center of the bed until she felt his hip warm and solid against hers.

  “Hey, Pen? Pen, you awake?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Tell me about your house.”

  “Hill. Woods. Canal. Bedrooms, lots of bedrooms. Pen sleep now.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it. How come you have so many bedrooms if you live alone?”

  Pender bowed to the inevitable. “Tinsman. The lockkeeper. He used to add another bedroom onto the end of the house every time his wife had another kid. She had seven.” A portentous pause—this was one of Pender’s set pieces. “Only six bedrooms were added on.” And another pause.

  “How come?” Dorie rolled onto her side and pillowed both hands under her cheek the way she used to when she was a little girl—her daddy had been an excellent storyteller.

  “The way the rangers tell it—every year they have a special Halloween program down at Great Falls: rangers in period costumes tell all the ghost stories and murder stories from the history of the canal, and they always end with Tinsman’s Lock. The way they tell it, the last kid wasn’t Tinsman’s. His wife had been having an affair with a redheaded mule driver from Rock Creek. They say the lockkeeper cut her throat, then drowned the seventh baby in the canal. Some people claim to have seen her ghost wandering up and down the banks in a bloodstained nightgown, searching for her redheaded baby.”

  “Great, a ghost story,” said Dorie with a mock shudder that turned real at the end, as mock shudders often do. “Remember one thing, buster: I don’t sleep, you don’t sleep.”

  Pender reached across his body with his good
arm, and patted her shoulder. “You don’t have a thing to worry about. They say she only walks on Halloween night.”

  “Pender.”

  “What?”

  “Halloween is this coming Sunday.”

  “Is it really?” Wide-eyed and innocent; butter wouldn’t melt…, as his sister Ida would have said.

  “Yeah—and you know what’s amazing? For the first time since I can remember, I don’t care—it doesn’t matter.”

  “I remember you telling me Halloweens were always tough on you.”

  “And Sunday ones were the worst. ’Cause if it fell on a Sunday, that’d be three days I’d have to hide out in my house with the curtains drawn. Couldn’t go shopping on Friday, because the store clerks might be in costumes with masks, on Saturday night people in masks might be coming and going from parties, and then of course the trick-or-treaters on Sunday.”

  “No trick-or-treaters out where I live.”

  “But don’t you see, it doesn’t matter anymore? I’d almost like to give it a try.”

  “Ask and you shall receive. Pool, the Liaison Support secretary, she and her roommate always do Halloween up real big, costume party, haunted house and all. If you want me to take you, I have a standing invitation.”

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” said Dorie. She suspected it was an idea that was going to seem less and less attractive, the closer to Sunday they got.

  8

  It was close to two in the morning when Linda let herself into the house. She hung her coat on a peg in the vestibule; as she limped past the answering machine in the living room, she saw the message light blinking, and stopped to check it out.