In the ICU, John goes straight to his father. He touches the IV bag, neatens the sheet, shifts the heart monitor a few inches, as if to ascertain whether anything changed while he was gone. A breathing tube extends from Ragnar’s mouth like a coughed-up organ, and the ventilator wheezes. Only half his face is visible beneath the bandages and she puts a hand to her mouth and says, “I didn’t realize it was —”
“Yeah,” John says, moving over to the window. “It’s bad.”
There is a knock at the door and the nurse with the pink fingernails enters, holding another flower arrangement. This one has a woodland feel, moss and cattails and birch bark and pearly everlasting and ferns. “Got another special delivery,” she says, struggling with the size and weight of it.
“I said no more,” John says. “There’s no room.”
“This one was too pretty to send away,” she says and finds an open spot on a table near the bed. “I’ll stick it right over here. Flowers are supposed to have a positive effect on people whether they’re awake or not, you know.”
“This is ridiculous,” John says. “Can’t we donate these to some other families? Or put them in the employee lounge or cafeteria or something?”
The nurse is already on her way out of the room when she says, “My mom always said flowers were like prayers, so I wouldn’t be passing on a single petal if I were you.”
John continues to stare out the window another minute before he says, “Well? What did you want to ask me?”
Stacie isn’t sure how to respond at first. She downloaded the data from the dash cam’s memory card onto her home computer. She scrolled through the video and followed Dan Swanson on patrol as he pulled over a jacked-up truck and gave the driver a citation, then responded to a call about a noxious smell and discovered a gas leak in a new development and ordered the whole block evacuated. Finally she found what she was looking for. His phone buzzed with a call. He said, “Hey, what’s up?” And then: “Okay . . . why?” A long pause and then: “I’m kind of busy right now,” followed by “I understand. See you there.”
He drove to the lot where Stacie later found his cruiser and it wasn’t long before someone joined him. Who it was, she couldn’t tell, because he had parked facing the woods. She heard a door open and close. She saw the flash of brake lights reflect off the hood of the cruiser. And then the car pulled away.
But here is what she realized after replaying the video two dozen times: There was no engine noise. The car pulled up and the car left. She could hear the weeds scraping its undercarriage and the dirt crunching beneath its tires, but no growl of a diesel engine, no murmurous purr of a V6. Because it was an electric car, she felt certain.
And though it was difficult to tell due to the slope of the hood, the reflection seemed to match the flat, squared C of the Tesla’s taillight design. A DMV search revealed there were only ten electric cars registered in the entire county, and only two of them were Teslas. One of those belonged to the Frontiers.
She knows that the family put several million into the design and construction of the new police station. And she remembers how Hank’s tone had shifted from disgusted and demanding to friendly and accommodating when he encountered Nico among the metal-eaters at the church. So she’s going to do some poking around on her own before she presents anything to her department. Maybe she knows nothing, but maybe she’s found something.
“I already talked to somebody else,” John says. “Officer Bratland, maybe? Doug or Don?”
“Right,” Stacie says. “I just have some follow-ups.”
“They’re saying he must have nodded off in his chair and somehow the fire spread out of the hearth. But I don’t think I buy it.”
“No?”
“No. I walked through the office. Or what was left of it. After the crime tape got cleared. The stone in the fireplace is all cracked and crumbled. Like there was an explosion.”
“You’ve got a theory.”
“One of the logs was packed with gunpowder or C-four or something.”
“That’s a . . . very specific theory.”
“It was a prank I once pulled as a teenager.”
She blinks several times, unsure how to respond. Part of her wants to seethe her breath and another to laugh incredulously. One second he seems in complete control, and the next he seems wild and impulsive. “Isn’t that . . . kind of self-implicating? For you to admit that?”
“What? No. Why would I—don’t read into it that way.” Again, his expression and voice broke down before cementing into something stronger and calmer. “I’m just . . . trying to make sense of what I’ve seen.”
“So you’re saying this was an attempted hit?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Obviously.”
“If this was a hit, who do you think did it?”
“I can name a few people, easy.”
“Go ahead.” She pulls a notepad out of her purse and clicks a pen and takes a seat on a chair. “I’m listening.”
“Well, I mean, you must have heard how many people were at that reception? Any one of them could have done it. Check the guest list. Or maybe security was lax enough, some stranger made their way inside. There was this one guy.”
“Yeah?”
He sips from his espresso. The steam of it has left a shrinking oval of steam on the window. “This short guy in a bow tie. Something Gunn. I don’t know who he is, but he was meeting with my father that night. I overheard some of their conversation, and it was . . . unpleasant.”
“What does that mean?”
“The guy was upset. He was hoping for a deal and my father was refusing.”
“Do you know what the deal was about?”
“Omnimetal. I don’t know.” He gestures with his cup and spills some espresso, then shakes off his hand and licks it. “And you should really look into those enviros downtown too. Just the other day, they were protesting and some of them were talking about going to war with the mining industry. They used that exact word. War. It was on one of their signs.”
“Just a sec.” She’s writing fast enough to tear the paper with her pen. “Okay. Keep going.”
“Anyone who works for Black Dog Energy.”
“Anyone? That’s a pretty long roster.”
“Well, there’s this one dude in particular . . .”
“Yeah?”
John looks like he’s going to tell her something but then waves the thought away. “Look. My father had a lot of people who wouldn’t have minded him dead.”
“I thought he was a hometown hero.”
“I bet you’ve heard more than that.”
“You mean about the money laundering? Tax evasion? Front organizations? Illegal logging and timber exports?”
“Like I said, a lot of people wouldn’t have minded him dead.”
“You seem to suspect everyone.”
“Check out the security cameras. And again, take a look at the wedding guests. I’d —”
“Including you?”
With that, he swings his head away from the window and looks at her sharply. “Me?”
“You,” she says. “I noticed you were a guest at the wedding, not a member of the wedding party.”
“So?”
“Seems odd. So does the fact that you come home after five years away, and there’s suddenly trouble.”
“I —” It takes him a second to get it out. “I love my father.”
“Did he love you back?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“It’s just a question.”
“In his way. Yes. We both loved each other in our own ways.”
“How would you describe your relationship with your family?”
“Fine.” He sets the cup on the windowsill, then picks it up, examines its bottom, and drains the dregs.
“Fine?”
“Distant.”
“What does that mean?”
He approaches her, then takes a seat on the hospital
bed. The steel webbing beneath the mattress whines. “I guess you could take it literally. I’ve been overseas.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Wanted a change of scenery.”
“Is that what you told your family?”
“I don’t recall what I told them.”
“You told him you were in the army.”
He puts his hands on his knees and straightens his posture as if bracing for something. “Yeah.”
“Even though that’s not true.”
He doesn’t blink so much as snap his eyes shut several times.
“It’s not true, John. You’re not in the army. You never were.” She doesn’t realize she is tapping her pen repeatedly onto her notepad until she sees the ashy sprinkle of ink. “It’s not that difficult to look up military records, you know.”
“No,” he says with a hard swallow. “I suppose it isn’t.”
“So why are you lying to everyone?”
“Because.”
“Because?”
“Maybe I wanted him to be proud.”
“Your father.”
John studies his father’s still form and rests a hand on the rail of the bed. “And you know what? It worked.”
“He never wondered whether you were telling the truth.”
“Look. My father was sixty when I was born. There’s a—I don’t know what you call it—a remove that comes with that big of an age gap. His focus was always business. Work. He only had so much time. He barely paid any attention to me when I was home, let alone when I was three thousand miles away.” John adjusts the IV line. “I’d e-mail photos now and then. Proof of life. That was enough.”
“There are more people you had to lie to besides your father.”
“Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
He rubs his hands together and his calluses scrape. “They understand my relationship with my father. Things were always . . . difficult. They knew it would be easier—not just on him, but everyone—if Pops thought I was off doing some good.”
“They lied for you?”
“You say that like lies can’t be good.”
She wants to say, Yes, that’s right, lies are wrong, they’re always wrong—but recognizes her very presence here is a kind of deception. She straightens up and checks her ponytail. “I heard you even showed up to the wedding in uniform.”
“That? Yeah. Sam got it for me.”
“Sam Yesno. Your adopted brother?”
“Not adopted, but—yeah. Sam arranged it. Sam arranges everything.”
“Is there something else you want to tell me?”
“What do you mean?”
“About why you lied.”
“Why else would I lie?”
Stacie says, “Maybe you didn’t want him to wonder what you were actually doing?” She cocks her head when he doesn’t respond. “What have you been doing these past five years?”
“So you really think I did this?”
“I don’t know what I think. I’m sorry for your father, honestly.”
“I’m sorry too. That’s why I’m here. Looking after him.”
“Where were you that night?”
He crunches the coffee cup and tosses it at the trash can—and misses.
Stacie says, “You weren’t home when the fire broke out, when the emergency crew arrived.”
“I was driving around.”
“Where?”
“Around.”
“Seems like you should have been pretty tired. After a long day of travel. The wedding and reception. The fact that you weren’t home at three a.m. is a little . . . odd. Don’t you think? Especially when you consider what happened.”
“I couldn’t sleep. So I decided to drive around, see how the town’s changed.”
“Hmm,” she says and waits an awkward beat. “I’m also interested . . . in Dan Swanson.” She is someone who normally can’t stand uncomfortable silences, but she leans into this one as best she can. “Does that name ring a bell?”
His shoulders tighten to the point that they’re nearly touching his ears. “Should it?”
“You used to date his wife. As I understand it, you were pretty serious for a while.”
He hasn’t shaved and when he runs his hand across his cheek, the stipple of hair sizzles against his palm. “You mean Jenna Flatt.”
“I mean Jenna Swanson. Dan’s wife.”
“Something happen to Dan?”
“He’s missing.”
“He’s missing?” he says. “I’ve got nothing to do with my father lying in this bed, and I’ve got nothing to do with any Dan Swansons going missing.”
“Seems a little suspicious, don’t you think? You show up, he goes away.”
“How long has this Dan guy been missing?”
“Few days.”
“How long exactly?”
“We don’t know exactly. Maybe Tuesday.”
He barks more than laughs. “I didn’t even get into town until Wednesday, genius. Took the Bullet in.” He pulls out his phone and calls up the QR ticket scan and shows it to her.
“Oh,” she says. “Well, that’s not . . . that doesn’t mean . . .” She feels her eyes blink at camera-shutter speed as she tries to process this. “That’s interesting. Thank you. Can I get a copy of that ticket, please?”
They both notice something then. A click. Like a gear turning or a ballpoint pen retracting. But it doesn’t come from Stacie. It comes from the opposite side of the bed. His eyes narrow when the click sounds again.
“John? Can you please —”
He holds up a hand and says, “Shh.”
“What?”
“I said shh.”
He stands and walks slowly around his father’s bed, eyeing the equipment, then the rolling table, then the flowers on it. Click. It sounds again.
“Do you hear it?” he says.
“I hear it.”
She helps pinpoint the location: it’s the woodland arrangement. Click. The sound is nested inside it. She lifts the clay pot it sits in, and it feels heavier than it should. Leaden.
“Oh no,” he says. “Oh no, no, no.”
“What are you doing?” Stacie says as he grabs the pot from her; he rushes to the window, yanks it open, and hurls the arrangement outside. He doesn’t see it arc through the air and explode in a carnation of flame because he’s shielding his father with his body. But she does, and the detonation is enough to crack the window and open a jagged black crater in the parking lot.
15
* * *
Thaddeus was teased as a child. For his small size and for his glasses, yes, but there was something else about him that upset people. What his mother called his “old-mannishness.” This referred not only to his manner of dress—he was fond of bow ties and suspenders from an early age—but to the certainty of his views, the breadth of his knowledge and his willingness to share it, the way in which he would smack his fist into his palm when making a point or drop a word like simulacrum or crepuscular into everyday conversation. From the time he learned to talk, he had always asked the hard questions: “Why is the sky blue?” and “Why doesn’t the moon crash into the Earth?” and “Why does my body look distorted when I lower it into the bath?” He insisted on being called Thaddeus. Not Tad. Never Thaddy.
His mother once told him that, soon after he was born, she began to suspect he was a changeling. An impostor left by fairies who had stolen away her actual baby. You could identify a changeling by its ugly temper, wisdom, and strange appearance, she said. “But I decided to love you anyway,” she added.
He was thrown in dumpsters and locked in his locker and spitballed and shoved and kicked and pinched because the other children didn’t think he deserved his self-confidence. When he came home with a broken tooth one day, the result of a baseball hurled at him during PE, his father hugged him and said, “Do you know why they’re angry? It’s because they know they’ll be working as garbage men and gas-station
attendants while you go on to rule the world.” Thaddeus had an only child’s self-assurance and knew without a doubt that his father was correct.
Service was in his family’s blood. His great-grandfather had been a general, his grandfather a captain, his father a major. And this tradition had been continued by Harold, the older brother Thaddeus never met. A West Point grad, he’d died by sniper fire in Lebanon. His square-jawed photo was framed alongside a folded American flag in the living room. Thaddeus’s family remembered him by attending Memorial Day celebrations and always setting an empty plate at the dinner table at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. His parents were old. Old enough to be his grandparents. They referred to Thaddeus as their second chance and spoiled him accordingly. “Your brother died a hero,” they said. “But you’ll live as one.”
His parents believed he loved animals because he asked for them as pets. His room was stacked with glass tanks. Some were aquariums that bubbled with oxygen filters and held fish that flashed colorfully in and out of ceramic pirate ships. Others were bottomed with cedar chips or sand and housed tarantulas and iguanas and gerbils and mice. But he wasn’t caring for them. He was experimenting on them. With tools and chemicals. He knew other people wouldn’t think of it the way he did—they would use a word like torture—so he kept his scientific inquiries a secret and hid the logbook in which he noted his results. And when he reported their deaths to his mother, telling her, “Sadly, another guppy died,” or “Alas, Mr. Mouse is gone,” he always hung his head as though to hide his tears, and she would rub his shoulders and say, “Don’t be blue. We’ll pick you up another.”
He developed very early on, from his animals and from his deceased brother, the perspective that life was discardable, replaceable. And that the difference between man and animal was comparable to the difference between himself and his schoolmates. Beasts accepted their station in life, whereas the best of humans dreamed and aspired. Besides having sex and watching movies and winning ball games and buying new clothes from the mall, his fellow students didn’t seem to care about much beyond their most basic needs. They did not wish to conquer or influence or discover. This seemed to Thaddeus positively un-American. They had been given a gift—to be born in this country at this time was a gift. This was the richest, healthiest, least dangerous, and most educated moment in human history, and to be an American at this juncture was the equivalent of winning the cosmic lottery. You were obligated to do something with your winnings.
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