Beneath Still Waters
Page 7
close.)
“Hey, I’m sort of eager to get out of here myself. You
wouldn’t have any lunch plans, would you?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Then shall we hit the local greasy spoon? A cup of java
and a stale cruller would hit the spot after the dungeon tour.”
“Sure.” She smiled.
Massetrino had stopped and was delivering another of
his bits of trivia about the dam.
“Each pump here can handle up to fifty thousand gal-
lons a minute. In case of a flood, there are special overflow
gates to direct the water to the Bronx River.”
Dan stepped close to the railway. The pumps over-
lapped and crisscrossed each other in a chaotic way that
made it impossible for him to see what pipes connected
where. They were covered with a black, crusty coating that
made them look alive, organic.
(Like the fossilized entrails of some prehistoric crea-
ture.)
He took a half dozen quick photos, finishing the roll.
“Hold on. Need a new roll of film,” he said, slipping his
camera off and opening it up.
“Where’s that water come from?” he heard Susan ask,
leaning over the railway beside him and looking down at
the ground.
“What water?” Massetrino grumbled.
“There. On the ground. All over the ground. Near the
pipes.”
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Dan was still fiddling with his film, threading it into the
sprocket, closing the back of the camera.
“What the . . . what the hell?”
Dan looked over at Massetrino, scanning the floor, and
he looked up.
(Just as if he had suddenly noticed someone standing
there in the shadows watching him.)
He saw a crack.
“From there,” Dan said quietly. He took a photo.
The crack ran from the ground, up eight or ten feet, a
dark gash, moist with the slight trickle of water running to
the floor.
“Oh, shit,” Massetrino mumbled.
“Your dam’s broken,” Dan said. He took a photo of the
narrow gash.
“Is that new?” Susan asked. “Did it just happen today?”
“No . . . I mean, I—”
“Of course it didn’t just happen,” Dan said, clicking
away. “Look at the trail the water’s made traveling over the
stone. See, there, a thin line of algae. It’s been here for
months . . . maybe longer.”
He turned to Massetrino. “When’s the last time you
were down here to check the inside of the dam, eh, Fred?”
He took a photo of Massetrino, the gibbering idiot in
his domain.
(And wouldn’t that be a nice item to put in a frame over
the mantelpiece. Uncle Fred in shock, watching his dam
leak.)
“I don’t know. A little while ago. Just last . . .”
He trailed off into some incoherent muttering.
“That water’s coming from the reservoir?” Susan asked.
Massetrino nodded.
“You better call some people,” Dan said. “The Water
Department. Whoever the hell’s in charge of your dam.”
“Yes, I . . . I should go now.”
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The trickle was small but steady. A thin, shining ribbon
running along the inner stone wall.
And on the other side, thought Dan. Enough water to
wash Ellerton away in minutes.
“Dan, I’ve got to get out . . . tell the paper.”
“Right, reporter lady. We’ll head back now.”
Massetrino didn’t move.
“You staying here?” Dan asked.
Massetrino shook his head. “No. I don’t want to. I got to
tell—”
But Dan was already leading Susan back to the main
staircase, up and out of the wounded dam.
Max Wiley sat in his office, achy and tired, wanting noth-
ing more than to lock his office door, curl up, and go to
sleep on his couch.
But too much was happening for such a luxury.
Rogers had called him twice. First to tell him the divers
were coming that night, then to report that he was calling
off his search teams at the reservoir. There was, quite sim-
ply, no sign of Tommy Fluhr.
And as expected, the local rag called for a quote. The
Ellerton Register offered more typos for your twenty-five cents than any other paper. The fact that it had not supported his run for mayor still stuck in his craw. Certainly
it wouldn’t back him when he declared for Congress.
If he ever got to declare for Congress.
But PR was power. If the fabulous Ellerton celebration
of the Kenicut Dam got screwed up, it would reflect di-
rectly on him.
(Already he was calling it the damn dam, grinning at his
feeble joke. He liked saying it out loud, under his breath . . .
“The goddamn dam.”)
Then, surprise, boys and girls, an earthquake. Not a small
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one, either. No buildings or trees down—the Hudson Val-
ley was too geologically old for such a catastrophe. That
was for the Californians to worry about.
But big enough to give the houses a good rattle, send a
few plates and pictures crashing to the floor, make a few lit-
tle kids cry and run for their mommies. Hell, it was enough
to wake him when he was trying to sleep in, and he had
been dead to the world.
The boiler, he had thought, blinking awake. It’s going to
blow, taking me and the house with it. His kids were away at camp, and his wife had already gone to the real-estate
office where she nailed down an extra few hundred dollars
a week. It would have just been poor Max going kaboom.
But it ended, and it was only a few moments before he
realized that it was an honest-to-God earthquake.
If that didn’t beat it all. A drowning (a champion swim-
mer drowning!) and a freakin’ earthquake.
He picked up the schedule for Saturday’s celebration. A
full day’s worth of activities. Tours of the dam. Historical
Society lectures. Naturalists running field trips around the
reservoir. (Here’s where the frogs like to fuck, ladies and
gentlemen.) And bands and barrels of beer and soda. Fol-
lowed by all the neighboring fire departments parading
their heavy trucks over the dam’s roadway while the mas-
sive fireworks display (contracted, you bet your life, by the
ever-present Carlino Brothers, who seem to win every fire-
works bid in the county—a nice bunch of boys if you
didn’t get them mad) lit up the summer sky.
Plenty of opportunities for his photo in the paper, inter-
views, and even a Sunday magazine feature. Yeah, lots of
golden opportunities to get his name in black and white in
the paper. Lots of good publicity, the ever-lovin’ lifeblood
of the politician on the make.
The phone buzzed, insistent and annoying.
He pushed a button and picked the receiver up. “Yes,”
he said distractedly. Damn. It was the town supervisor, Jack
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O’Keefe—another old-time employee of the town who re-
membered when Ellerton still supported a working dairy
farm and a cup of coffee was a nickel. “Jack, how are you
doing? What can I do for you?”
Wiley listened (all the time trying to think of a quick fix
for the headache O’Keefe was dumping on him).
“A crack? In the dam?” Max said lightheartedly. “Gee,
nothing too severe, I hope.”
But the supervisor didn’t seem interested in allaying
Max’s fear.
(Just fix it, you stupid bastard, Max wanted to scream.
Get some goddamn cement and patch the friggin’ crack!)
“That bad, huh? I hope we can get everything in good
shape for Saturday. We have tours planned, you know,
and—”
But the supervisor refused to be lured into making
everything okay for Max. He took the biggest, grimmest
brush and painted Max a nice dismal picture.
The dam interior had to be closed. The State Water
Commission had to be notified. Emergency evacuation
plans had to be developed. No alarms were to be sent out,
but the local authorities needed plans. Notification had to
be given to the cops, firemen, and volunteer ambulance
people, not to mention the mayors of nearby towns stretch-
ing from Harley-on-the-Hudson to Rye, on the Connecti-
cut border.
And best of all, the papers already knew about it. In
fact, it was a reporter who first saw it. Lots of publicity
about this story.
“Jesus,” Max said. “Jack, do what has to be done, but
please, let’s not go to pieces over it. Don’t go overboard with
all this alarmist junk. This is an important week for Ellerton.”
(But Max could sense that O’Keefe saw through that lit-
tle lie. No problem. Max felt as transparent as glass. Some
people wouldn’t buy a load of bullshit no matter how you
dressed it up.)
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Then the supervisor was gone, off to set a bunch of
nasty wheels in motion, and Max Wiley felt like he was
tied to something beyond his control.
He pushed the burton of his intercom.
“No more calls,” he told his secretary. “From anyone.
Until I tell you otherwise.”
He leaned back in his comfortably padded chair, put his
feet on his desk, and stared out the office’s picture window,
looking out over Ellerton and beyond, to the great wall of
the Kenicut Dam. A wall that, unfortunately, happened to
have a crack in it.
F I V E
Claire Sloan hated camp. This camp or any dumb camp.
While the rest of the girls laughed and ran around together
acting like total jerks, the whole dumb thing just made her
want to throw up.
First there was swimming, every day, twice a day, no
matter what, like the kids were frogs or something. And
loads of dumb little arts-and-crafts projects (with the fatty
“art” counselor telling her she had to make a coaster, ’cause everyone was making a coaster— everyone). But the games
were the absolute worst. Field hockey, volleyball, kickball,
one stupid game worse than the other.
(It didn’t help that she was so klutzy. Here she had an
absolutely beautiful mom who probably used to be great at everything, while she was totally uncoordinated.)
Rainy days were better. Then, at least, she could spend
just about the whole day reading. Jean Auel’s book about
growing up smart in the good old Neanderthal days. Ursula
Le Guin’s SF fantasies—so real, she could picture absolutely
everything. And her new favorite, the best book of all time,
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Anne of Green Gables. They took her places. They took
her away from camp.
The other kids didn’t bug her, though. In fact, they liked
sitting with her at lunch, swapping desserts, and listening
to Claire goof on the entire camp staff one by one, ripping
them to pieces. That was fun. And sometimes, like now,
she could sneak to the side, plop down next to a tree, and
read without some gung-ho counselor bopping over and
ordering her to play the game or jump into the water, or
whatever.
But at least this wasn’t sleepaway camp. That would be
the end. The absolute bottom. She couldn’t imagine a
whole summer (imagine, a whole summer) at the mercy of
the dopey counselors and camp food, with the nearest
bookstore miles and miles away.
(And something else—though she’d never tell anyone,
not a soul. How could she explain her dreams? How would
she explain waking up and screaming in the middle of the
night, begging for it to end before she slowly realized that’s
all it was . . . just a dream. Just a spooky little dream.)
The same dream.
Every time.
The same ugly little nightmare.
Of course, her mother would have loved for her to go
away to camp.
“Everyone loves it,” she argued. “All your friends—”
“But all my friends don’t wake up screaming at night,”
she said.
And her mother finally agreed, telling her, though, that
everyone has nightmares.
(Even if Claire did hear her call the doctor and ask about
something strange, called “night terrors.”)
The books helped. Sometimes she dreamed about other
things . . . about beautiful Alpine meadows, and crenelated
castles, and horses galloping along a bench.
Books took her away.
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67
She heard someone yell from the field, and she looked
over.
The kickball game seemed to be running along just fine
without her. The two counselors, tall and gawky Mary
Stanger and Pam Marsh, the snot, were so busy blabbing
to each other that she could stay away.
She started reading again.
Anne. Now that was a beautiful name. Not like Claire—
why, it almost sounded like chair. Such an old, dull name, it just didn’t sound like the name other kids had. Like
Tammy, or Terry, or Sandy. Claire just didn’t fit. Mary
Stanger looked over at her as if she had just discovered her
missing camper.
Just go on with your talking, jerk.
Stanger signaled to her to come over to the field, but she
quickly stuck her face back in the book. Then the coun-
selor shrugged and went back to talking.
Claire. She’d been named for her grandmother. And for
that reason she almost didn’t mind. Almost. She and her
grandmother had something special between them. Ever
since Claire’s father left when she was four, Grandma was
there. Working in their small garden, pulling up weeds and
talking, really talking to her, about school, her friends, and
books.
It was Grandma who gave her Anne.
“There’s more when you finish that one,” she’d said,
touching Claire’
s head ever so gently. (’Cause she knew
she was no huggable kid. Only special people got close to
her. And she liked it that way.)
Mom was great, really super. But Mom worked a lot at
the paper, even at night. And Mom maybe forgot what it
was like to be a kid. The only way she got Claire to agree
to go to camp was if she could also go spend a week at
Grandma’s house. It wasn’t far away, but it was a whole
different world. There was an actual farm—with cows,
sheep, and everything—right next to the house. And big
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fields with tall grass that she could wander into until she
found the perfect spot to lie down and read.
One more week at camp and she was free.
And tomorrow afternoon she’d even get out early to
baby-sit for Mrs. Benny’s two kids. Mrs. Benny was nice,
even if the kids were total brats, and she paid well.
“Sloan, you’re supposed to be playing kickball with the
rest of your group,” Mary Stanger yelled at her.
“C’mon, Mary, let me just—” she called back.
“Up and at ’em, Sloan,” Stanger barked back.
Claire made her most disgusted face.
Probably neither of them would know a book if it fell on
their heads. I’m trapped in a world controlled by illiterate
counselors.
She closed her book with a loud snap.
“As if kickball was really important,” she muttered to
herself.
And she strolled over to the hot field.
“No dice, Dan. Sorry, but they say there’s too many prob-
lems with insurance and they don’t want anyone mucking
about until the body is found.”
Dan put down his coffee cup. “Damn!” He looked up at
Susan. “Who’d you talk to?”
Susan slid into the booth and picked up the second half
of her tuna on rye. “A couple of people. The County Water
Commission, the town supervisor, and even the police chief.
I left word at the mayor’s office, but he flies whichever way
the wind blows.” She took a bite.
Great. Just how was he going to do a story on the town
with the place off-limits? He considered bagging the whole
project, packing up, and heading back to Pennsylvania. (And
watching all the bills accumulate. Wouldn’t that be fun?)
Then he looked at Susan. She seemed to feel bad for
him, unless he was misreading the look in her eye.
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“Hey,” she said, “you’ve got time to make your dead-