Zero Option

11

Stafford saw it on the morning news as he was getting dressed in his hotel room: a presumed propane gas explosion in southeast Atlanta. There were some long-range TV news shots of a smoldering crater and small knots of curious people milling around behind fluttering yellow police tape.

Blackened debris littered the street and the sides of what looked like a railroad embankment at the end of the street. A couple of junked cars near the crater were still smoking. Spindly trees next to the house had been snapped off at midtrunk. The camera panned to the house next door, which had also been flattened. An ambulance was backed up to that house. A lime green fire truck was parked across the street, and two firemen were playing a desultory stream [on the grass of the railroad embankment.

B Stafford hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention to it all until the announcer identified the house as belonging to a B. Lambry, reportedly a government worker at nearby Fort Gillem. It was not known if Lambry or anyone else had been in the house; the police and the county Arson Unit were still investigating. According to police, the blast had occurred just after two hi the morning. An elderly man in the house next door had been severely injured when the wall facing Lambry’s house had caved in.

Stafford paused in the delicate task of knotting his tie one-handed and stared at the television set. Well, now, he thought. B. Lambry. Wasn’t that the guy that weird Harold Corey in search of ‘munity had told him to find yesterday? Hey, maybe we have developments here. He finished dressing and placed an unsecure call to the DCIS office in Smyrna. Mr. Sparks wasn’t in yet, he was told. He asked the secretary to have Sparks call him on a secure line at the administrative offices at Fort Gillem in one hour.

Sparks called right on time. Stafford closed the door to his office, although with its large glass window, the privacy afforded was minimal.

They switched to secure.

“You called, Dave?”

“Yeah. Did you see the morning news? Item about a propane explosion in southeast Atlanta last night.” — .

“Yeah, I think I did. Should I care?” “You might,” Stafford said. He saw Carson’s secretary walk by, gawking at him as he talked into his computer. “The house belonged to a guy who worked here, a guy named Lambry.” He told Sparks about his conversation with Dillard.

“Jesus, Dave, don’t tell me you’ve got something going already.”

“If I do, it’s all feeling and no facts,” Stafford said. “It’s mostly the way people are acting at this place. I’m pretty sure the employees have figured out I’m no auditor, and also that they are not surprised that a cop is here. This hillbilly guy, Dillard, was dancing all around something.”

“Any idea of what?”

“Not a clue. But I spoke to Carson when I got in this morning — he’s the manager down here, remember? And he told me Lambry had quit unexpectedly a few days ago.”

“Interesting. Was he in the house when it blew up?”

“Apparently not. House next door had one victim. But that’s why I called: I need you to introduce me to whatever cops are working that scene. I’d like to talk to them.”

“Okay, I’ll make some calls. You want to go to the scene, or just talk to the people doing the investigation?”

“Either one. Their call.”

There was a pause on the line. “Dave?”

“Yeah, Ray?” Stafford thought he knew what was coming next.

“You be careful now. Remember what you’re really down here for. Don’t go getting involved in a local crime, or stirring up the locals with conspiracy theories. You uncover something hinky at that DRMO, we give it to the Feebies, right?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Stafford said. “It was just the coincidence, okay? Guy talks to me about Lambry, and then Lambry’s house goes into orbit.” Sparks, not sounding entirely convinced, said he’d get back to him, and they hung up. Stafford went down the hall to get some coffee, then decided to walk across the tarmac to the feed-assembly warehouse. You find out something’s going on at the DRMO, we give it to the Bureau.

Don’t make any damn waves, Stafford. You bet, Ray.

He walked through the steel doors to the demil feed assembly room, where he found the same crew as yesterday, minus Corey Dillard, unloading forklifts. He had to wait until the two forklifts in the warehouse had backed out before anyone could hear anything. He approached the large black man Dillard had called Boss Hisley yesterday.

“I’m David Stafford from DLA,” he said. “You Boss Hisley?”

“That’s me,” Hisley said. The other two men walked away toward the table with the coffeepot. “He’p you with something’?”

Carson had to tilt his head back to look Hisley in the eye. “Yeah. I understand from Mr. Carson that a guy named Lambry quit recently. Can you tell me about that?”

“Mr. Carson say he quit?”

“Yeah.”

Hisley considered this for a moment. “Mr. Carson say he quit, then that’s what he done.”

“But you didn’t know anything about it?”, Hisley shook his head. “He didn’t quit on me, that what you asking’.”

“Did you know that Lambry’s house blew up last night?” Stafford said.

“Yeah, seen that,” Hisley replied. Stafford could read absolutely nothing in Hisley’s broad, impassive face.

“If something had happened to Lambry, would Mr. Carson maybe know about it?”

Hisley’s eyes flashed briefly with some hidden knowledge. “Shit happens here in the DRMO, Carson’s the man, know what I’m sayin’? Nice talkin’ to you.”

He wanted to ask Hisley if he knew where Lambry was now. But he knew if he pursued the matter with any further questions about the explosion, he would absolutely blow his cover as a DLA auditor. And he still didn’t know if Lambry had even been in that house last night. He thanked Hisley and walked away, trying to decipher Hisley’s cryptic comment about Carson.

Sparks got back to him thirty minutes later with a name and the number of the Arson Unit investigating the explosion at Lambry’s house. He also reported that NCIC database had come up dry on Lambry. Stafford contacted the team leader, a woman detective named Mary Haller, and she agreed to talk to him.

“I guess my first question is, Was this arson?”

“Too soon to tell,” she said. “It was definitely a propane gas explosion, and it did what propane usually does— leveled the place.”

“A leak? Pilot light in a stove or something like that?” “Like I said, Mr. Stafford, this was propane. Propane pools on the floor until two things happen: It achieves between a nine and eleven percent mixture with air, and it finds a point of ignition. The vapor then ignites and blows everything up and out. Whatever’s left burns with a very hot fire.

We have a bunch of blackened concrete-block pilings surrounding a hole at the scene, and a neighbor hood full of Kibbles ‘N Bits. We’re still rounding up all the identifiable pieces.”

“No human remains?”

“Doesn’t smell like it.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how we usually tell. There was a geezer next door who was blasted out of his bed when the east wall of his house went west. He’s in the hospital with a concussion. We’re waiting to interview him, but he’s not conscious yet.”

Stafford wondered what age she considered old. She sounded as if she was in her twenties, tops.

“Now, one for you,” she said. “Is whatever you’re working likely to surface a reason for someone to blow up this house deliberately?”

“No, or at least not yet. Look, I appreciate the courtesy of your talking to me, but J don’t really even have anything going here yet. I talked to one Corey Dillard, here at the DRMO yesterday. He was sort of speaking in tongues, and I’m damned if I know what it was all about. My cover is that I’m supposed to be an auditor for the DLA. Anyway, he mentioned Lambry’s name, said I ought to find Lambry. That’s all I’ve got, which is to say, nothing. If there’s a connection between my case and any of that, it’s not visible yet.”

“Well, if you make a connection, we’d appreciate knowing. We’re going to have to go out there to Fort Gillem eventually to do some interviews.”

“Fine. I’ll generate some notes. Just remember, I’m supposed to be an auditor with the Defense Logistics Agency, not a DCIS guy. Only the manager here, a guy named Carson, knows I’m with DCIS.”

“That’s okay with us. We’ll give you any further info if and when we have it, Mr. Stafford.”

He thanked her and they hung up. Stafford wondered what to do next. He had told the arson investigator, the truth: He didn’t really have anything of substance going here at this DRMO, other than the small mystery of what

Dillard had really wanted to tell him, and then the bizarre coincidence of what had happened to Lambry’s house. But he couldn’t just go around here making a big deal about Lambry; everyone in the DRMO would wonder what the hell he was doing, including Carson. And right now, Carson was becoming more interesting than Lambry.