"Wise, wise, wise," Roger Hasterwick said impatiently, making it clear
he preferred not to be interrupted. "So finally, with a half-hour
daylight left, they decide they'll send in the SWAT guys to dig him out,
maybe save the sister and brotherin-law. So they lob tear gas in there,
see, and the SWAT guys rush the place, but when they get in they hit
trouble. Sharkle must've been workin' on the house for weeks, settin'
traps. The cops start fallin' over these thin wires he's strung
everywhere, and one gets brained by a deadfall, which don't kill him but
sure does some damage. Then, Christ, Sharkle opens fire on 'em because
he's wearin' a gas mask same as they are and just waitin' like a cat.
The dude was prepared. So he blows one cop away, utterly, and wounds
one, then he heads down into the cellar and pulls the door shut, and
nobody can get in after him 'cause it's not any regular cellar door but
a steel door he's put in special. Not only that, but the outside cellar
door, around back, is steel, too, and what he's done is he's put heavy
sheet-metal shutters over the insides of the cellar windows, so it's
your typical stalemate, see."
By Stefan's calculations, two people were dead, three wounded.
Hasterwick said, "So the cops they pulled in their horns real fast and
figured to wait him out through the night. This mornin', Sharkle the
Shark slides open one of them sheetmetal shutters on a basement window,
see, and he shouts a bunch of stuff, really crazy stuff, and they figure
somethin' more is gonna go down, but then he closes the shutter again,
and since then nothin'. I sure hope he does somethin' soon, ,cause it's
cold and I'm beginnin' to get bored."
"What did he shout?" Stefan asked.
"Huh?"
"This morning, what crazy stuff did he yell from the basement?"
"Oh, well, see, what he says . Roger Hasterwick stopped when he
realized that a piece of news, passing in from the edge of the crowd,
had electrified everyone. People hurried away from the barricade, some
walking fast and some running south on Scott Avenue. Appalled by the
prospect of missing new bloodshed, Hasterwick grabbed frantically at a
blotchyfaced man in a deerstalker cap, the flaps of which were down but
flopping loose. "What is it? What's happenin'?"
Trying to pull away from Hasterwick, the man in the deerstalker cap
said, "Guy down here has a van with his own police-band radio. He's
tuned in on the cops, the SWAT team, they're getting ready to wipe that
fuckin' Sharkle off the map!" He wrenched loose of Hasterwick and rushed
away, and Hasterwick hurried after him.
Father Wycazik stared after the departing throng for a moment. Then he
glanced around at the ten or twelve onlookers who had remained, at the
officers manning the barricade, past the barricade. More death, murder.
He could sense it coming. He should do something to stop it. But he
could not think. He was numb with dread. Until now, he had seenand
been able to see-only a positive side to the unfolding mystery. The
miraculous cures and other phenomena had engendered only joy and an
expectation of divine revelations to come. But now he was seeing the
dark side of the mystery, and he was badly shaken by it.
Finally, hoping he would not be mistaken for just another ghoul in the
bloodthirsty crowd, Stefan hurried after Roger Hasterwick and the
others. They had gathered almost a block south of O'Bannon Lane, around
a recreational van, a metallic-blue Chevrolet with a California-beach
mural on the side. The owner, a huge and hugely bearded man sitting
behind the wheel, had opened both doors and turned up the volume on the
police-band radio, so everyone could hear the cops in action.
In a minute or two, the essentials of their attack plan were clear. The
SWAT team was already moving into place, back into the first floor of
Sharkle's house. They would use a small, precisely shaped charge of
plastic explosives to blow the steel cellar door off its pins, not
enough to send shrapnel cutting through the basement. Simultaneously,
another group of officers would blow off the exterior cellar door with a
similar carefully gauged charge. Even as the smoke was clearing, the
two groups would storm into the basement and catch Cal Sharkle in a
pincer attack. That strategy was terribly dangerous for the officers
and the hostages, though the authorities had decided that they would be
in far greater danger if action was delayed any further.
Listening to the radio-relayed voices crackle in the cold January air,
Father Wycazik suddenly knew he must stop the attack. If it was carried
out, the slaughter would be worse than anyone imagined. He had to be
allowed to go past the barricade, to the house, and talk to Cal Sharkle.
Now. Right away. Now. He turned from the Chevy van and raced back
toward the entrance to O'Bannon Lane, a block away. He was not sure
what he would say to Sharkle to get through his paranoia. Perhaps, "You
are not alone, Calvin." He'd think of something.
His abrupt departure from the van apparently gave the crowd the idea
that he had heard or seen something happening up at the barricade. He
was less than halfway back to the entrance to O'Bannon Lane when younger
and fleeter onlookers began to pass him, shouting excitedly, plunging
off the sidewalk and out into the street, bringing a complete halt to
the already crawling traffic on Scott Avenue. Brakes barked. Horns
blew. There was the thud of one bumper hitting another. Stefan was
jostled by runners and struck so hard that he fell to his hands and
knees on the pavement. No one stopped to help him. Stefan got up and
ran on. The air seemed to have thickened with animal madness and
bloodlust. Stefan was horrified at the behavior of his fellow men, and
his heart was pounding, and he thought, This is what it might be like in
Hell, running forever in the midst of a frantic and gibbering mob.
By the time Stefan reached the police blockade, more than half the
frenzied crowd had returned ahead of him. They were jammed against the
sawhorses and police cars, craning to see into the forbidden block of
O'Bannon Lane. He pushed in among them, desperate to get to the head of
the mob, so he could speak to the police. He was pushed, shoved, but he
shoved back, telling them he was a priest, but no one was listening, and
he felt his fedora knocked off his head, but he persisted, and then at
last he was through to the front of the surging multitudes.
The policemen angrily ordered the mob to move back, threatened arrest,
drew batons, lowered the visors on their riot helmets. Father Wycazik
was prepared to lie, to tell the police anything that might get them to
postpone the imminent attack on the house, tell them that he was not
just a priest but Sharkle's own priest, that he knew what was wrong,
knew how to get Sharkle to surrender. Of course, he didn't really
know how to obtain Sharkle's surrender, but if he could buy time and
talk to Sharkle, he might think of something. He caught the attention
of an officer who ordered him to s
tep back. He identified himself as a
priest. The cop wasn't listening, so Stefan tore open his topcoat and
pulled off his white scarf to reveal his Roman collar. "I'm a priest!"
But the crowd surged forward, pushing Stefan against a sawhorse, and the
barrier fell over, and the cop shoved back angrily, in no mood to
listen.
An instant later, two small explosions shook the air, one a split-second
after the other, low and flat but hard. The hundred voices of the crowd
gasped as one, and everybody froze, for they knew what they had heard:
the SWAT team blowing the steel doors off the cellar. A third explosion
followed the first two, an immense and devastating blast that shook the
pavement, that hurt the ears, that vibrated in bones and teeth, that
shot slabs and splinters of Sharkle's house into the wintry sky, that
seemed to shatter the day itself and cast it down in a billion broken
pieces. Again with a single voice, the crowd cried out. Instead of
pressing toward the blockade this time, they scrambled back in fear,
suddenly realizing that death could be not just an interesting spectator
sport but a participatory activity.
" He had a bomb!" one of the barricade cops said. "My God, my God,
Sharkle had a bomb in there!" He turned to the emergency medical van in
which two paramedics were waiting, and he shouted, "Go! Go!"
The red beacons flashed atop the paramedics wagon. It pulled out of the
barricade, speeding toward the middle of the block.
Shaking with horror, Father Wycazik tried to follow on foot. But one of
the cops grabbed him and said, "Hey, get the hell back there."
:'I'm a priest. Someone may need comforting, last rites."
'Father, I wouldn't care if you were the pope himself. We don't know
for sure that Sharkle's dead."
Numbly, Father Wycazik obeyed, though the tremendous power of the
explosion left no doubt in his mind that Cal Sharkle was dead. Sharkle
and his sister. And his brother-inlaw. And most members of the SWAT
team. How many altogether? Maybe five? Six? Ten?
Moving aimlessly back through the crowd, absentmindedly tucking his
scarf in place and buttoning his coat, partially in a state of shock,
murmuring a Pater Noster, he saw Roger Hasterwick, the unemployed
bartender with the queerly gleaming eyes. He put a hand on Hasterwick's
shoulder, and said, "What did he shout to the police this morning?"
Hasterwick blinked. "Huh? What?"
"Before we got separated, you told me Calvin Sharkle slid open the metal
shutter on one of the cellar windows and shouted a lot of weird stuff
this morning, and you thought something was going to happen, but then
nothing did. What exactly did he say?"
Hasterwick's face brightened with the memory. "Oh, yeah, yeah. It was
real weird, see, straight-out crazy stuff." He scrunched up his face,
striving to recall the madman's exact words. When he had them, he
grinned, rolled his mouth as if savoring the revelation, then repeated
Sharkle's ravings for Stefan's enjoyment.
Stefan not only failed to enjoy the performance, but second by dreadful
second, he became increasingly convinced that Calvin Sharkle had not
been insane. Confused, yes, baffled and afraid because of the
tremendous stress generated by his brainwashing and by the collapse of
his memory blocks, badly confused but not insane. Roger Hasterwick and
everyone else thought Sharkle's shouted accusations and declarations and
imprecations, flung at the world through the shielded window of a
jerry-built fortress, were obviously the lunatic fantasies of a demented
mind. But Father Wycazik had an advantage over everyone else: He saw
Sharkle's statements in the context of events at the Tranquility Motel,
in the context of miracle cures and telekinetic phenomena, and he
wondered if there might be some truth in the claims and accusations that
the poor frightened man had shouted through the basement window. And
wondering, he felt the fine hairs rise on the back of his neck. He
shivered.
Seeing that reaction, Hasterwick said, "Hey, ain't no point takin' it
serious, for Christ's sake. You don't think what he said was true?
Hell, the guy was a nut. He blowed himself up, didn't he?"
Father Wycazik ran north along Scott Avenue to the parish car.
Even before he had arrived in Evanston and discovered the unfolding
tragedy at Calvin Sharkle's house, Stefan Wy cazik had half-expected to
be on a flight to Nevada before the day was through. The events at the
Mendozas' apartment and at the Halbourgs' place had set a fire of wonder
and curiosity burning in him, and the blaze would not be quenched unless
he plunged into the activities of the troubled group in Elko County.
Now, because of what he had just learned from Hasterwick, the urge to go
to Nevada had become a burning need. If only half of what Sharkle had
shouted through the basement window was true, Stefan had to go to
Nevada, not only to witness a miracle but to do what he could to protect
those who had gathered at the Tranquility. All his life, he had been a
rescuer of troubled priests, a shepherd bringing lost souls back into
the fold. This time, however, he might be called upon to save minds and
lives as well. The threat of which Calvin Sharkle had spoken was one
that might put body and brain in as much jeopardy as the spirit.
He slipped the car in gear again. He drove out of Evanston.
He decided not to return to the rectory to pack. There was no time. He
would head straight to O'Hare International Airport and take the first
available seat on the first available flight west.
Dear God, he thought, what have You sent us? Is it the greatest gift
for which we could have asked? Or a plague to make all Biblical plagues
pale by comparison?
Father Stefan Wycazik put the pedal to the metal and drove south and
then west toward O'Hare like . . . well, like a bat out of Hell.
Ginger and Faye spent the larger part of the morning with Elroy and
Nancy Jamison under the pretense that Ginger, supposedly the daughter of
an old friend of Faye's, was moving west for unspecified health reasons
and was interested in learning about Elko County. The Jamisons were
local-history buffs, eager to talk about the county, especially about
the beauty of the Lemoille Valley.
Actually, indirectly and directly, Ginger and Faye were seeking
indications that Elroy and Nancy were suffering from the effects of
collapsing memory blocks. They found none. The Jamisons were happy,
untroubled. Their brainwashing had been as successful as Faye's; their
false memories were firmly rooted. Bringing them into the Tranquility
family would put them in jeopardy while serving no great purpose.
In the motel van, as they pulled away from the Jamison house (with Elroy
and Nancy waving from the front porch), Ginger said, "Good people.
Really nice people."
"Yes," Faye said. "Reliable. Wish they were standing beside us in this
thing. On the other hand, I'm happy they're well out of it."
Both women were quiet then, and Ginger figured Faye's thoughts were the
<
br /> same as her own: They were wondering if the government car was still
parked along the county road, near the entrance to the Jamisons' place,
and if the men in it would still be content merely to follow them. Ernie
and Dom had armed themselves for their expedition into the mountains
around Thunder Hill Depository. However, considering the unprovocative
nature of Faye's and Ginger's errands, no one had thought that they
might be in special danger, too. Ginger, like many attractive women
living alone in a city, knew how to use a handgun, and Faye, a good
Marine wife, was something of an expert, but their knowledge and
expertise was of no use when they were not armed.
Having driven only a quarter-mile along the Jamisons' halfmile driveway,
Faye stopped the van in one of the deepest pools of shadows cast by the
overhanging pines. "I'm probably being melodramatic," she said. She
slipped open a few buttons on her coat and reached under her sweater.
"And these won't be much good if they point guns at our heads."
Grimacing, she withdrew two steak knives and put them on the seat
between her and Ginger.
Surprised, Ginger said, "Where'd you get these?"
"This is why I insisted on drying the breakfast dishes while Nancy
washed them. Putting away the silverware, I swiped these. Didn't want
to ask straight-out for a weapon; that would've meant bringing Nancy and
Elroy into it, which it was clear we weren't going to have to do. I can
return them later, when this is over." She picked up one of the knives.
"The end's nicely pointed. The blade's sharp and serrated. Like I
said, not much help if they've got a gun at your head. But if they were
to run us off the road and try to force us into their car, you keep the
Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers Page 75
