A Safe Place for Dying

Seventeen

The Maple Hills police station occupies a redbrick building designed to look like something in Colonial Williamsburg. Parking is in back, because nobody in eighteenth-century Williamsburg parked cars in front.

I got there a half hour early and waited in the painted cinder-block hall, reading public notices about lawn-sprinkling restrictions while I drank vending-machine coffee from a paper cup that had a losing poker hand printed on it.

Stanley arrived at quarter to ten, holding the door open for Bob Ballsard. Stanley’s pale blue uniform looked crisp, but the skin on his face sagged like it was falling off of its own weight. Ballsard wore one of his blue blazers, a yellow tie with blue anchors on it, tan trousers, and polished boat shoes with no socks. He looked like he was going to a dockside tent party at the Chicago Yacht Club.

They paused in the hall.

“Elstrom,” Ballsard smiled nautically, “the chief invited you?”

“Actually, it was Agent Till. Seems he’s angry at you and me.”

His lips closed around his teeth, choking off the smile. Icouldn’t tell if he was mad at Till’s impertinence at being angry or because of the indignity of being lumped in with me.

“We’ll see who’s angry at whom,” he said. He marched down the hall with Stanley following a half step behind.

The Bohemian arrived five minutes later. He was impeccably dressed as always, but there was a tight look to the skin around his eyes. The days were not being kind to the Bohemian. We walked together into the police department conference room.

Agent Till sat hunched forward at the end of the narrow folding table, his watch unstrapped and lying on the fake wood-grain table top. He was murmuring something to a red-faced Chief Morris, who sat to his left and looked like he would rather be anywhere but in that room. At the other end of the table, Ballsard and Stanley sat like two spinsters at a rock party, not speaking. Till gave me a quick, annoyed look as the Bohemian and I sat down. He repositioned his wristwatch a quarter inch to the left in front of him and began.

“Gentlemen, we need to get some things straight, starting with the fact that Chief Morris here is in charge of investigating this case.” Next to him, Chief Morris shifted gingerly in his chair like he had stones in his underwear. “We need all the leads we can get, but the chief, and I as necessary, will chase them down. Outside help is not needed.” Till aimed his eyes at me. “Am I being clear, Mr. Elstrom?”

“You bet.”

“That said, tell us how you came across the name of Michael Jaynes.”

“Actually, it was Stanley. He remembered that at the time the guard shack blew up, there had been a problem with one of the electric contractors. A supervisor had not shown up to do some final wiring, and there’d been concern that it would delay the issuance of the occupancy permits. Stanley wondered if the man’sabsence was tied to the explosion. He checked it out, found nothing. We thought it would be worth a second look. I found the contractor, Universal Electric, and asked about him. They remembered sending on his last paycheck, a copy of which you are getting in the mail.”

“Like Mr. Elstrom just told you,” Stanley said, “I checked with Universal Electric right after the guardhouse exploded. They told me Michael Jaynes had a family problem and had quit his job. Now, I know they lied about that because they didn’t want any trouble getting final payment, but back then, I couldn’t see any connection between Jaynes and the bombing, so I dropped it.”

Agent Till reached in his shirt pocket for reading glasses, slipped them on, and opened a manila folder. “I don’t know that he is much of a lead, but Michael Jaynes is interesting. He had an ordinary boyhood in Santa Rosa, California. Only child, average student, ran track in high school. Went to U.S.C., dropped out at the end of his freshman year. Got drafted, Vietnam, 1965-66. Reupped, took another tour over there. Wounded in a firefight, two Purple Hearts, got out in 1968. Got hired by Universal Electric. Good worker, they made him a supervisor. He was in charge of the Crystal Waters project until April 22, 1970, after which he didn’t show up.” He looked at us over the top of his reading glasses. “According to his Army 201 file, he did advanced classes in demolition after basic training.” Till put down the folder and looked at the Bohemian. “Any chance you could pinpoint the day back in 1970 that you dropped the ten grand behind the restaurant?”

“I could check the old records to find out when the developers withdrew the money.”

“No need, Mr. Chernek,” Stanley said. “I remember. It was the night of April 22. It was Earth Day; there were protesters all over Chicago that evening. I was worried I wouldn’t get through all the traffic tie-ups.”

“Jaynes disappeared the next day.” Till looked at Stanley. “Yet you say you saw no connection?”

“Not after Universal Electric explained it as a family problem.” Stanley dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief.

Agent Till looked at Stanley for a long minute before he turned back to his folder. “As I said, gentlemen, Mr. Jaynes is an interesting man. He has not been seen, or heard from, since. No G.I. Bill applications, no claims for Army medical, no filing of income tax returns. For all intents and purposes, the man known as Michael Jaynes disappeared from the world when he quit Crystal Waters, the day after ten thousand dollars was left in the Dumpster.”

“He changed his name and disappeared,” the Bohemian said.

“And that’s consistent with the facts,” Till said. “If it was Jaynes who blew up your guardhouse in 1970, he extorted your money and high-tailed it out of here. His parents were dead, he wasn’t married, he didn’t have any kids we know of. He saw a chance to score, took it, and vaporized.”

“All for the huge sum of ten thousand dollars,” I said.

“Ten grand was a lot of money back then,” Till said.

“Not to a guy who had bigger plans. We don’t have the 1970 letters, but Stanley and Mr. Chernek think the notes they received this summer are identical-same pencil lettering, same paper. It’s not that much of a reach to think he wrote those back in 1970, too. And as we know, those demanded fifty thousand, and the five hundred thousand Stanley just paid.”

Till shrugged. “He got scared after the guardhouse, so he took the money and ran. Change of heart. It happens.”

“Come on, Till. It takes him all those years to get to thinking of the painless way he scored the ten grand, of the plan he put in place back then, of the notes he wrote, and don’t let us forget all that D.X.12 he planted in the ground, before he decides to come back for another helping?”

Till looked at me over the top of his reading glasses. “Your point?”

“Our man never planned to quit at ten thousand dollars. It was a test run, just for openers. Then something stopped him, caused him to abort the plan. That’s the key. Find what stopped him all those years ago, and you’ll find your man.”

“Like from this?” He held up some white sheets of paper. “Your fabled parolee list?”

“Just because he isn’t on the Illinois list doesn’t mean the idea’s not worth trying. You can do parolees for the whole country.”

“We did. Too many names to chase down.”

“What about Nadine Reynolds?”

Till looked at me, his face momentarily blank. “Who?”

“The woman Michael Jaynes listed as a contact on his employment application. I called you for her address.”

Till nodded and flipped through his file folder. He came to a photocopy. “Nadine Reynolds. General Delivery, Clarinda, California. I forwarded an interview request to our San Francisco office, asking them to check her out.”

“That’s it? You forwarded a request?”

He took off his reading glasses. “Between us, the F.B.I., and local and state cops, we get hundreds of reports of terrorist sightings, bomb threats, and what-have-you, every day. Some days it seems like every Jordanian cabdriver, Egyptian flight student, and Saudi college kid around Chicago is reported doing something suspicious. Our reality is we have to check them all out. To say we’re short-staffed doesn’t cover the half of it.” He rubbed his eyes and looked around the table. “Do I believe there’s a real threat at Crystal Waters? Yes. Does it rank with the other threats we get every single day, the bomb threats against big buildings, somebody overhearing something on the train about a plan to poison the water supply, or the hourly incidents at Milwaukee, O’Hare, and Midway airports? Maybe. I don’t know. Without concrete evidencelinking these notes”-he tapped his manila file-“to the two explosions you’ve had this summer, I’m limited in what I can do.”

“What about ground-penetrating radar?” Stanley asked.

Till shrugged. “You can hire private contractors, if you want to waste the money, but my guess is that G.P.R. will never find it all. I certainly can’t provide federal resources for that.”

The Bohemian spoke. “Then what are you telling us? We’re not to chase down our own leads, yet you’re too busy to offer us help?”

“I’m telling you to quit being such damned fools,” Till snapped. “I don’t want you chasing down anything, making things worse, like your man Elstrom might have done last Sunday night.” He looked around the table. “Have any of you considered that Elstrom was spotted and scared away the bomber from the pickup? And that now the money is rotting somewhere, buried under tons of food waste and household trash, while your bomber is angrily planning something worse?” He glared down the table at Bob Ballsard. “But even more, I want you to quit being negligent with human lives. What is it about evacuation you don’t understand? You might have bundles of D.X.12 wired together all over your little community, wanting just one spark to turn you all into ash. And don’t tell me about your security; it’s for shit. Get the people the hell out of Crystal Waters.”

Till grabbed his wristwatch from the table, jammed it in his suit coat pocket, and stood up. “I’m done. Any questions, direct them to Chief Morris.” He turned quickly and left the room. Chief Morris got up before anybody could ask him anything and followed Till.

“Bob-” the Bohemian began, but Ballsard, red faced, was already marching out of the door. Stanley made a move to follow him, but the Bohemian motioned for him to stay.

“We must trace this Nadine Reynolds on our own,” the Bohemian said to both of us.

“You just heard what Till thinks of that,” I said.

“I also saw him fumble the lead about Nadine Reynolds. The man has too much on his plate.”

I looked at Stanley.

“Stanley has other commitments, Vlodek. You have to be the one to go to California to find Nadine Reynolds.”

“Chances are, she’s long gone,” I said.

“What other leads do we have?”

“Till said he forwarded the information to the A.T.F. office in San Francisco,” I said. “He’ll follow up.”

The Bohemian nodded, watching my eyes.

The clock ticked on the cinder-block wall.

“Surf’s up,” I said.