by John Verdon
It did, however, get the attention of the face-painted kids. They stopped and gaped at one another—as if the explosion had awakened their appetite for disaster—then turned and hurried back along the concourse toward the origin of the sound.
Gurney caught up with them two concourses later. They had drawn together at the edge of a larger crowd, staring. Smoke was billowing from the arena that was home to the nightly demolition-derby events. Some people were running toward the arena. Some were backing away from it, clutching small children. Some were questioning one another, wide-eyed with anxiety. Some were pulling out cell phones, tapping in numbers. A siren began wailing in the background.
And then, barely discernible above the general din, there was another whump.
Only a few members of the little posse Gurney was focused on showed any immediate reaction, but the ones who did then appeared to be passing the news of it to their companions. It also appeared that this was breaking the group apart—that there were those who’d heard the latest explosion and those who hadn’t (or who had, but considered the commotion in front of them more interesting). In any event, three individuals separated themselves from the larger group and headed off in the direction of the latest scene of destruction.
Curious himself about the pattern of Panikos’s attack, Gurney decided to follow the splinter group. As he passed those who were remaining at the periphery of the unsettled crowd of onlookers, he tried to get a good enough look at each little face to judge its compatibility with the mental images he carried from the videos.
Failing to see any resemblance convincing enough to demand a closer examination, he continued after the departing threesome.
His progress was slowed by people beginning to flow out of the arena. From what he overheard of their comments to one another, he concluded that the audience in the stands hadn’t come close to grasping the significance of what they’d just witnessed—the massive, fiery explosion of one of the cars in the final event of the derby, the horrifying immolation of the driver, and multiple injuries to other drivers. They seemed to be attributing all this to some sort of gas-tank malfunction or the use of a prohibited fuel. The darkest suggestion was that there might have been some sort of sabotage arising from a family feud.
So, two firebombs within a twenty-minute period, and still no panic. That was the good news. The bad news was that the only reason there was no panic was that no one understood what was happening. Gurney wondered if that third whump he’d heard would change things.
A couple of hundred yards ahead of him, a fire engine was trying to clear a right-of-way through the throng with repeated blasts of its air horn. Overhead, smoke was blowing in the wind—coming from the area toward which the fire engine was heading. It was a cloudy, moonless night, and the smoke was weirdly illuminated by the concourse lights below it.
People were starting to show signs of unease. Many were proceeding in the same direction as the fire engine—some walking fast beside it, some running ahead of it. The expressions on faces ran the gamut from apprehension to excitement. The three small figures he’d been following had been swallowed up in the moving mass of bodies.
Turning the corner into the intersecting concourse about a hundred yards behind the engine, he could see flames against the black sky. They were coming from the roof of a long, single-story wooden structure, which he recognized as the main shelter for the animals entered in the various demonstrations and competitions. As he drew closer, he saw a few cows and horses being led out of the building’s main doors by their young handlers.
Then others, unattended and skittish, began coming out through other doors—some hesitating uncertainly and stamping on the ground, some bolting into the crowd, generating cries of alarm.
One overwrought individual with an unfortunate sense of drama shouted “Stampede!” A sense of panic, the absence of which Gurney had noted minutes earlier, now appeared to be infecting pockets of the crowd. People were jostling one another to get to what they probably imagined were positions of greater safety. The noise level was rising. So was the wind. The flames on the barn roof were being lashed sideways. Loose canvas panels on the exhibition tents along the concourse were flapping sharply.
It appeared that a sudden summer storm might be blowing in. A flash of light in the clouds and a rumble in the hills confirmed it. Moments later the lightning flashed more brightly, and the rumble grew louder.
Chapter 59
All Fall Down
More security people were rushing to the scene now. Some were trying to get the fairgoers away from the barn and the engine, out of the way of the fire crew deploying the hoses. Others were struggling to regain control of escaping horses, cows, hogs, sheep, as well as a pair of giant oxen.
Gurney observed that word of the two earlier fire explosions was spreading, producing a rising level of fear and confusion. At least a third of the people were now glued to their phones—talking, texting, and photographing the fire and the turmoil around them.
Scanning the shifting mass of faces for the trio who’d slipped out of sight, or for anyone else who might resemble Panikos, Gurney was taken aback to catch a glimpse of Madeleine emerging from the barn. Angling for a less obstructed view, he saw that she was leading two alpacas by their halters, one in each hand. And Dennis Winkler was right behind her, leading two more the same way.
As soon as they were out of the immediate area occupied by the fire crew, they stopped to confer about something—Winkler doing most of the talking, Madeleine nodding earnestly. Then they continued on, Winkler now in front, following a kind of passageway through the crowd opened by some security people for the evacuation of the animals.
This brought them within a few feet of Gurney.
Winkler noticed him first. “Hey, David—you want to make yourself useful?”
“Sorry. I can’t help you right now.”
Winkler looked offended. “I’ve got a significant emergency here.”
“We all do.”
Winkler stared at him, then moved on with a muttered comment that got lost under a peal of thunder.
Madeleine stopped and eyed Gurney curiously. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” Even as he was speaking, the harshness in his voice was warning him to be quiet.
“Helping Dennis and Deirdre. As I told you I would be.”
“You need to get out of here. Now.”
“What? What’s the matter with you?” The wind was blowing her hair forward, around her face. With both hands on the halters, she was shaking her head to keep the hair out of her eyes.
“It’s not safe here.”
She blinked uncomprehendingly. “Because of the fire in the barn?”
“The fire in the barn, the fire in the arena, the fire in the flower booth …”
“What are you talking about?”
“The man I’m chasing … the man who burned down the houses in Cooperstown …”
There was flash of lightning and the loudest thunderclap yet. She flinched and raised her voice. “What are you telling me?”
“He’s here. Petros Panikos. Here, tonight, now. I think he may have seeded the whole fairgrounds with explosives.”
Her hair was still blowing in her face, but now she was making no effort to control it. “How do you know he’s here?”
“I followed him here.”
“From where?”
Another lightning flash, another thunderclap.
“Barrow Hill. I chased him here on Kyle’s motorcycle.”
“What happened? Why—”
“He killed Mick Klemper.”
“Madeleine!” Dennis Winkler’s impatient voice reached them from the place where he was standing, waiting, about thirty feet away. “Madeleine! Come on! We need to keep moving along.”
“Klemper? Where?”
“By our house. I don’t have time to explain it. Panikos is here. He’s blowing things up, he’s burning things down, I need you to get the hell
out of here.”
“What about the animals?”
“Maddie, for Godsake …”
“They’re terrified of fire.” She glanced back in distress at her oddly thoughtful-looking pair of alpacas.
“Maddie …”
“All right, all right … let me just get these two to a safe place. Then I’ll leave.” She was obviously finding the decision a difficult one. “What about you? What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to find him and stop him.”
Outright fear finally filled her eyes, and she started to object, but he cut her off.
“I have to do this! And you have to get the hell out of here—please—now!”
She appeared for a moment immobilized by her own frightening thoughts, then she dropped the halters, stepped toward him, hugged him with something like desperation, turned away without another word, and led her charges along the concourse to where Winkler was waiting for her. They exchanged a few words, then moved on quickly, side by side, through the corridor that had been cleared through the crowd.
Watching them for the few seconds until they were out of sight, Gurney felt the stab of an emotion he couldn’t name. They looked so goddamn domestic, so bloody compatible, like caring parents of little children, hurrying to find shelter from the storm.
He closed his eyes, hoping for a way up and out of the acid pit.
When he opened them a moment later, the strange little face-painted threesome had reappeared, seemingly out of nowhere. They were walking past him in the same direction taken by Madeleine and Winkler. Gurney had the unsettling impression—it could have been his imagination—that one of the painted faces was smiling.
He let them get about fifty feet farther along before he set out after them. The concourse ahead was a jumble of conflicting currents. Curiosity was pulling droves of the mindless toward the burning barn, while the security staff were doing their utmost to turn them back and to keep a channel open for the displaced animals and their handlers moving in the opposite direction to a series of corrals on the far side of the fairgrounds.
Beyond the radius of the fire’s visibility and primitive power of attraction, the threat of a downpour was persuading swarms of fairgoers to abandon the pedestrian concourses in favor of the exhibitor tents or their own cars. The reduced density was making it easier for Gurney to keep the trio in sight.
At the end of a massive thunderclap that reverberated through the valley, he realized his phone was ringing.
It was Hardwick. “You spot the fucker yet?”
“Maybe a possibility or two, nothing firm. What area have you covered so far?”
There was no answer.
“Jack?”
“Hold on a sec.”
As the seconds passed, Gurney found himself dividing his attention between the trio he was following and the giant video cube that dominated the center of the fairgrounds and provided an incessant country-music accompaniment to the nightmare in progress. As he listened for Hardwick’s return to the phone, he couldn’t quite tune out the Oedipal-creepy chorus of a song called “Mother’s Day”—about a hard-workin’, hard-drinkin’, pickup-drivin’ guy who’d never met a lady as lovin’ as his mama.
“I’m back.” It was Hardwick’s voice on the phone.
“What’s happening?”
“I’ve been tailing a rat pack, didn’t want to lose them. Dressed in scumbag couture. Couple of them got that paint shit on their faces.”
“Anything special about them?”
“There seems to be a core group, and then there’s sort of an outlier.”
“An outlier?”
“Yeah. Like he’s with the pack but not really part of them.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Right, but don’t get carried away. There’s always some kid in a group who’s a little out of the group. Don’t necessarily mean shit.”
“Can you see what’s painted on his face?”
“Got to wait till he turns around.”
“Where are you?”
“Passing in front of a booth selling taxidermied squirrels.”
“Jesus. Any bigger landmarks?”
“There’s a building down the concourse with a picture of a humongous pumpkin on the door, next to a video arcade. In fact, the mini-scumbags just went into the arcade.”
“What about the outlier?”
“Yeah, him too. They’re all inside. You want me to go in?”
“I don’t think so. Not yet. Just make sure there’s only one door, so you don’t lose them.”
“Hold on, they just came back out. On the move again.”
“All of them? The outlier, too?”
“Yeah. Just counting … eight, nine … yeah, all of them.”
“Which way are they heading?”
“Past the pumpkin building toward the end of the concourse.”
“That means we’re going to converge. I’m one concourse over from you, moving in the same direction—following a procession of animals and a face-painted troupe of my own.”
“Animals?”
“The animals that were in the barn are being moved to the corrals behind the Ferris wheel. The barn is on fire.”
“Shit! I heard someone talking about a burning barn. I thought they were just confused about the fire in the arena. Okay, let me hang up. I got to pay attention here—but wait! You got any news on what’s happening up at your house?”
“I need to call my son and find out.”
“Let me know.”
As he ended the call, Madeleine and Winkler were turning onto a kind of rotary concourse that encircled the carnival rides and the corrals. A minute later Gurney’s target threesome went the same way, and by the time he reached the intersection, they were meeting up with the group of nine Hardwick had been following.
Moving among the animals and those clutches of fairgoers who remained ignorant of the unfolding disaster and undaunted by the threatening storm, the dozen little bodies defied Gurney’s efforts to identify any conspicuous outsider—any monstrous mini-adult in the guise of a child. As he watched, they gravitated toward the waist-high railing that separated the curving concourse from the rides.
Madeleine and Dennis and the alpacas were moving along past the rides toward the corrals. Gurney placed himself where he could see as far as possible in the direction of the corrals while still maintaining a clear view of the group gathering at the railing. He spotted Hardwick taking up a position where the second straight concourse fed into the circular one. Rather than reveal their connection by walking over and conferring with Hardwick directly, he took out his phone and called him.
When he answered, Hardwick was looking over at Gurney. “What’s with the redneck hat?”
“Ad hoc camouflage. Long story for another time. Tell me—have you spotted anyone else of interest, or are our prime candidates right here in front of us?”
“That’s them. And you can knock out about half on the basis of the pudge factor.”
“What factor?”
“Some of these kids are way too fat. From what I could see on the videos, our little Peter has a lean and hungry look.”
“So that leaves us with maybe six possibles?”
“I’d say more like two or three. In addition to the pudge factor, there’s the height factor, and the basic facial structure factor. Which leaves maybe one of your group, two of mine. And even those seem a bit of a stretch.”
“Which three are you talking about?”
“The one closest to you—idiot baseball hat, hand on the railing. The one next to him, in the black hoodie, hands in his pockets. And the one closest to me, wearing the blue satin basketball uniform three sizes too big. You got any better choices?”
“Let me take a closer look. I’ll call you back.”
He slipped the phone in his pocket, studying the twelve little bodies at the railing, with particular attention to the three highlighted by Hardwick. But there was a phrase the man had used that hit
a nerve: a bit of a stretch.
A bit of a stretch, indeed. In fact, Gurney had a sick, sinking feeling that there was something preposterous about the whole notion—the notion that one of these restless, absurdly dressed middle-schoolers might actually be Peter Pan. As he changed his position in order to see more of their faces, he was tempted to abandon the whole endeavor, to accept the probability that Peter Pan had escaped the fairgrounds and was at that moment bound for places unknown, far from Walnut Crossing. Surely that was a saner position than believing that one of the little people at that railing—seemingly enthralled by the roar and clatter of the “amusements”—was a ruthless executioner.
Was it conceivable that the man whom Interpol credited with more than fifty hits, who cracked Mary Spalter’s skull on the edge of her bathtub, who hammered nails into Gus Gurikos’s eyes, who burned seven people to death in Cooperstown, who cut off Lex Bincher’s head, was now passing himself off as one of these children? As Gurney ambled past them as if he were trying to get a better view of the huge Ferris wheel, he found it mind-boggling to imagine any of them as a professional murderer—and not only a murderer but also a man who specialized in contracts others considered impossible.
That final thought pulled Gurney sideways to an issue he’d wondered about several times in the last few days but had spent no real time examining. It was probably the most perplexing question of all:
What was so hard about the hit on Carl Spalter?
What was the “impossible” aspect? What made it a job for Panikos in the first place?
Perhaps the answer to that one question would unravel all the other secrets in the case. Gurney decided then and there to think his way through it until the truth emerged. The simplicity of the question persuaded him that it was the right question. It even restored in him a modest sense of optimism. He felt that he was on the right track.
Then something startling happened.
An answer occurred to him that was as simple as the question.
At first he was afraid to breathe—as though the solution were as fragile as smoke and breathing might blow it away. But the more he examined it, the more he tested its solidity, the more convinced he became that it was right. And if it was right, then the Spalter murder case was finally solved.
