A Safe Place for Dying

Twenty-five

I was leading my two-car parade home on the Eisenhower, the Crown Victoria tight behind, when Stanley called. “It’s a mess here, Mr. Elstrom,” he yelled into the phone, trying to be heard above what sounded like large truck engines. “The Members won’t leave without their furniture and clothes. Everybody has hired moving trucks, and now Chanticleer Circle looks like rush hour downtown. Gridlock. Agent Till is bringing in tow trucks to clear the street so he can get his own equipment in, but I don’t know how long that will take.”

I took the next exit off the expressway, swung into the corner of a gas station, and cut the engine so I could hear. The Crown Victoria screeched to a stop behind me.

“Stanley,” I shouted into the phone, “do you know anything about underground tunnels and bomb shelters at Crystal Waters?”

The sound of diesel motors at his end was deafening. I didn’t think he heard me. “I said, do you know anything-”

“Tunnels?” he shouted back. “I never heard that, except from your message. There are no tunnels here.”

“I think you’re wrong. Get Till to comb every lawn, every foundation,every basement, looking for ways into those tunnels. I think the D.X.12 is hidden there.”

The sound of truck engines got louder.

“Stanley?” I yelled into the mouthpiece.

“Got it, Mr. Elstrom. Tunnels. I’ll tell Agent Till.”

“Start with Amanda’s house.”

“You don’t think Miss Phelps-”

“Of course not,” I shouted. I took a breath, trying to slow down so I could be precise. “It’s because her house is so close to the two that have been blown up and because it’s been unoccupied. Tell Till to start there.”

“I’ll tell him, Mr. Elstrom. Wait at home until you hear from us.” He clicked off.

I drove to the turret. Before getting out of the Jeep, I picked up the cell phone, toying with the idea of calling Amanda. I could use the pretext that I was making sure she’d gotten her artwork out of Gateville, but it would be pointless. She knew about the bombs and knew about the link between them and me. It was why she hadn’t been taking any of my calls.

I put the phone in my pocket. I couldn’t repair anything over the phone.

I got out of the Jeep. I didn’t recognize the two young agents back in the Crown Victoria, trying to appear to be looking everywhere but at me, but they looked the same as the others: dark suits, white shirts, close haircuts. Till must have had dozens of them. I gave them a nod, which they ignored, and walked up to the turret, scanning the ground around the base for small packages, containers, anything big enough to hold an explosive. It was my habit now, since the shed had gone up. I did the circle, unlocked the heavy door, and went in.

It was only eleven thirty in the morning but I had a hundred pounds of fatigue clamped to the base of my neck. From too many nights on the roof, I supposed, watching the sky over Gateville. Butthings were ending. Till was up to his knees in Gateville now. He was taking things apart; he’d find the tunnels. Then he would find the D.X.12, or at least the wiring, and no one else would die.

I went upstairs to the third floor and lay on the cot and checked out.

A cold gust of wind blew in from the river, arcing the metal slats of the window blinds into a crazed kind of St. Vitus’ dance. It was dark, the only light in the room a gauzy, narrow beam from the moon outside the slit window. I pulled the blanket over my ears to shut out the clatter and tried to will myself back to sleep, but images of what must be going on at Gateville, of diesel searchlights and teams of men in bomb suits, probing the grounds, going into tunnels to rip things out, popped me all the way awake. I squinted at the clock. It was twelve thirty in the morning. I’d slept for thirteen hours.

I put on my jeans, Nikes, and the red sweatshirt, stenciled with I LOVE ARKANSAS in green below a Tweety Bird, that I’d gotten at the Discount Den during Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings. I like to be stylish, even in the middle of the night. I went downstairs to make coffee.

I filled my travel mug, grabbed a two-pack of Twinkies, and went outside. A Crown Victoria, black in the white light of the moon, was in the usual spot, a hundred yards down. I recognized Agent Other behind the wheel, Agent Blonder riding shotgun. I smiled at them, held up my Twinkies in salute, and rejected the idea of asking them for an update about Gateville. They wouldn’t tell me; zipper-lips was the first commandment of being a junior G-man. No matter, things were under control.

I walked down to the bench by the river. Behind me, the Crown Victoria started up and eased quietly forward to keep me in sight. I sat on the bench, and the car’s engine stopped.

I sipped coffee and took small bites of a Twinkie, making it last.For the first time since Stanley Novak had come to see me in June, the greasy tingle of impending disaster was gone from my gut. I felt good, rested. Things were going to get better.

Trucks rumbled along the tollway. Somewhere closer a railroad signal clanged, and Rolling Stones music filtered out of one of the joints along Thompson Avenue. Mick was complaining about getting no satisfaction. Right, Mick. And from a car parked in the dark fringes of the city hall lot, a woman laughed, not in joy but in need. Too bad she couldn’t hook up with Mick, I thought; they could do each other some good.

Normal sounds; Rivertown sounds.

I slid the second Twinkie out of the package. It was cool for the end of August, and I was glad for the sweatshirt. I looked up. The sky was that startling black that comes when there is a full moon and the summer air has suddenly gone crisp. The lights along the river stood out bright in the night, temporarily freed from the humid haze that shrouds them in summer. It was a good night, a clear night.

I watched the river reflect lazy silver ripples in the moonlight, ate slowly at the Twinkie. By now, Till’s men were in the tunnels. I imagined dozens of them hand-digging, pulling out wires and packets of D.X.12. With luck, they’d also be pulling out evidence that would lead them to the bastard that had set off the bombs. And that would finish it forever. There would be epic battles with insurance companies, and people like Bob Ballsard were going to lose a lot more than his inventory of boat shoes, and Amanda might lose her house. But she’d still have the art. And no one else would die.

I checked my watch. One thirty. I finished the last of the creamy white nutrient they inject for health reasons into Twinkies and went back up to the turret. I waved at Blonder and Other. They didn’t smile.

I climbed the stairs to the third floor, thinking Till might take mycall. He’d still be at Gateville, far enough along to have made some real progress. He’d have to thank me for the tip on where to start digging; he might even drop his stony facade to congratulate me on the brilliant sleuthing that had yielded the presence of those long-abandoned tunnels. It was probably just oversight that he hadn’t contacted Blonder and Other to call off the surveillance on me.

The cell phone wasn’t on the wood table by my cot. I checked the floor and poked under the mound of clothes on the chair. Not there, either. I thought back. The last call I’d had was from Stanley, in the Jeep, when I’d told him where to hunt for the bombs. I went downstairs and outside. Blonder and Other watched me from the Crown Victoria. Blonder picked up his phone.

I looked through the plastic passenger window of the Jeep. The cell phone lay face up on the seat. I opened the door, turned on the phone, and sat on the passenger seat. The message indicator started flashing. I punched in the code.

“Hi, Dek.” Amanda’s voice was guarded. “I don’t know if I should be calling you. I have no one else to call. I don’t want to put you at risk, but I have to know what’s going on. Two weeks ago, Stanley Novak called me, saying there have been bomb threats at Crystal Waters. He also said that your storage shed blew up and that you are being falsely considered a suspect. He told me there was no danger of any bombs actually going off and that you would be cleared shortly. Then he said that you would be better off if I avoided contact with you. I asked him how long that would take. He said less than a month. I didn’t understand, but I said fine, I would wait one month for him to give me the go-ahead to call you. Now somebody from my father’s office just called and said there’s been an explosion at Crystal Waters. He said it’s all over the news, that the police are going to search my house, and that I should get my paintings out of there. What is going on, Dek? I’m over Ohio now. I’ll call you when I get to O’Hare.”

I held the phone tight while I listened to the second message. “Where are you, Dek? I’m in a cab on the tollway. I’ll be at Crystal Waters by ten thirty. Call me on this cell phone.”

Something sick danced in my head.

She hadn’t known about the bombs. Stanley had called her a couple of weeks before but had said nothing about the Farraday house or the lamppost. He hadn’t told her to get her paintings removed.

Maybe that was understandable, if I had the time to think.

But the time of her last message wasn’t, at least not why she hadn’t called again.

She’d said she’d be at Gateville at ten thirty. That meant she would have been stopped around then, at a police roadblock or at the gate, and told that her house was off-limits. She would have become furious. She would have stayed right there, demanding to be let in to get the Monet, the Renoir, and the other works safely out of her house. She wouldn’t have walked away. Her artworks were her soul. She wouldn’t have left them.

“If there were ever a fire, I would get the Monet out of the house before I’d call the fire department,” she’d said the first time I’d come to Gateville. Never had I doubted that.

She would have grabbed her cell phone in a fury, to call her father to use his pull to get her inside Gateville. She would have called Ballsard, and every other Board member she could locate, to bully to get her in.

And, in her rage, she would have called me again, demanding to know what was going on.

She hadn’t. There was no third message. No call demanding information. No call saying she’d gotten in, had grabbed her oils, was safe, and would call me tomorrow.

I called her cell phone, listened to four long, slow rings, got the voice mail message.

It was wrong. She should have picked up.

I waited a minute, redialed. Again I got the voice mail. I leaned over to look in the rearview mirror. Back in the Crown Victoria, Blonder and Other were watching me.

My mind flitted across options. The smart move was to get out of the Jeep, walk back, and get Blonder and Other to call Gateville and ask at the guardhouse if Amanda had arrived. But that would take time, assuming they would even do it.

The dumb move was to charge out to Gateville myself. Dumb. But fast.

I slid onto the driver’s seat, fumbling in my pants pocket for the ignition key. Before my fingers could close on it, headlamps flashed from the Crown Victoria as it shot forward to stop diagonally across my left front fender. Blonder and Other jumped out with their guns drawn. I pulled my hand out of my pocket. It hadn’t even touched the key.

Blonder was just outside the driver’s door. “Step out of the car, Mr. Elstrom,” he yelled through the plastic window.

I put my hands on the steering wheel so they could see I wasn’t holding a weapon.

“Out of the car,” Blonder shouted again. He raised the gun in his right hand, steadied by his left. Something moved out of the corner of my right eye. Agent Other stood in front of the Jeep, his gun also raised to firing position.

I got out, slow, hands high. And stupid. “Call Till. I know where the bombs are.”

“Palms on the hood,” Blonder yelled.

Agent Other came around, holstering his gun. He pushed me against the hood of the Jeep. I managed to push out my palms in time to break my fall as I hit. Other kicked my legs apart and patted me down, then pulled my arms behind me, sending my chin onto the metal. Two snicks and I was handcuffed, trussed, wings back, like a Christmas turkey. Other pulled me up. “Back to our car.”

They marched me to the Crown Victoria. Agent Other openedthe rear door, put his palm on the top of my head, and gave me a quick nudge. I fell sideways onto the cold vinyl of the backseat like meat.

I pushed with my feet, managed to struggle upright, found a tinny voice. “What the hell are you guys doing?”

But I knew. I’d made the moves of someone trying to flee, and, when cornered, I’d made it worse by announcing that I knew where the bombs were, sounding every bit like the person who had planted them. They were rookies, but they knew to get me bundled up and neutralized in a heartbeat.

Other got in behind the wheel. Blonder took the front passenger’s seat and pulled out his phone.

My shoulders felt like they were slowly being torn from their sockets. I shifted on the seat until I could lean against the door and ease the pressure off my arms.

“My wife’s trapped inside-”

“Be quiet,” Other said from the front seat.

Blonder had reached whomever he called. “Yes, sir, I think he was attempting to escape.” He listened, then said, “He said to tell you he knows where the bombs are.” He’d called Till. There was another pause. “We’ll be right there.”

Blonder clicked off and nodded to Other. Other started the car and nailed the accelerator, throwing me back against the seat like a bottom-heavy punching dummy.

He sped west on Thompson, toward Gateville.

As on the night of the last house bombing, the road was blocked just past the crest of the hill by a Maple Hills squad car and white sawhorse barricades. Unlike the last time, there were no flames shooting into the sky at the base of the hill. From a distance, Gateville was a cluster of trailer searchlights, surrounded by a halfmile-wide ring of dark landscape. Till had cut the power to the area all around Gateville.

Two blue-uniformed young police officers, holding yellownosed flashlights, stood in front of the barricade. Agent Other slowed to a stop and held his I.D. out the window. One of the officers approached the car.

I rocked forward as best I could. “Can you tell me if a brunette in her midthirties tried to get through here in the last couple of hours?”

The officer bent down to peer through the back-door window, saw the way my arms were pinned behind me, and looked at Agent Other. Other shook his head. The Maple Hills officer nodded and handed back Other’s I.D., ignoring me. Other put the car in gear and started down the hill.

Blonder was back on the phone. “Yes, sir. Still cuffed.” He listened for a minute, nodded at nobody, and thumbed off the cell phone.

Agent Other had to pull off the road well before the entrance. Ahead of us, fire engines, ambulances, several squad cars, at least three tow trucks, and, at the very end, a lone yellow cab were lined along both sides of the blocked-off highway. Forty or fifty people milled around on the pavement, talking. A couple of them smoked. Most were in uniform: firemen in opened yellow slickers, police in dark blue, paramedics in white or light blue. Those wearing civilian clothes I guessed to be forensic technicians waiting for orders, or reporters with enough connections to get past the police barricade. I scanned them all slowly. Amanda wasn’t there.

I twisted on the seat to look at the compound to my left. Behind the brick wall at the east end, the sky and the tops of the houses were white, almost colorless, from the glare of the portable searchlights.

I pressed my face against the glass. The lights were all at the east end. I turned my head to check the northwest quadrant, where I’d told Stanley to tell Till to begin the search.

The sky above Amanda’s house was black.

They were searching at the wrong end.

I pushed myself forward and tried to sound calm. “Till is looking in the wrong place.”

Blonder spoke without looking at me. “Agent Till will come out when he can.”

“The bombs are at the west end, in the tunnels.” I spoke to the back of Blonder’s neck, slowly, making each word distinct.

This time both of them turned around.

I wanted to scream at their young, unmarked faces. “I left a message for Stanley Novak to search for tunnels in the west end. The bombs are there.”

Blonder’s eyes were unblinking. “How would you know that?”

“Get Stanley Novak.”

Blonder and Other looked at each other. Other shrugged. Blonder got out of the car and hurried across the highway to two Crystal Waters security guards standing a few feet from the entrance. He said something to them, and the two guards turned to look at our car. Blonder said something more, and then all three walked quickly across the highway to the Crown Victoria. One of the guards bent down to look at me through the side window. I recognized him from last Halloween. He’d been the guard that had pulled off my Wendell Phelps mask.

He moved to the open driver’s window. “Mr. Elstrom,” he said.

“Get me Stanley Novak.”

“The agent here tells me you know something about tunnels?”

“I left a message for Stanley.”

“What tunnels would those be, Mr. Elstrom?” the guard asked.

“Has my ex-wife been here?”

He made no secret of studying my red I LOVE ARKANSAS sweatshirt. “Are you here because of a marital issue?”

“Has Amanda Phelps been here?”

“No one’s been allowed in since five this morning.”

The other guard bent down. “Actually, that’s not true,” he saidto the first guard. “Miss Phelps phoned the guardhouse from the barricade a couple of hours ago, demanding to be let through. Said she had to remove some paintings. She insisted we call Stanley. We did, and he OK’d her coming through. He said he’d meet her at the guardhouse.”

“Where are they now?”

The guard shrugged.

“Let me out. I need to talk to Stanley.”

Blonder bent down to the window. “In a minute. You told Stanley Novak to search the west end first?”

“I left a message on his cell phone early yesterday morning, telling him about the abandoned tunnels at the west end. Then I talked to him. He was going to tell Till. Let me out.”

Blonder straightened up, and he and the two guards stepped away from the car. Blonder got on his phone and spoke for a minute. I heard the word “tunnel” three times. Blonder came back to the car. He opened the rear door.

“Agent Till wants you to wait for him in the guardhouse.”

I slid out of the car and wobbled to stand up. “How about the handcuffs?”

Other looked at Blonder, who nodded. Other took out his key and removed the cuffs.

My arm throbbed as I raised my hand to point at the end of the row of cars and trucks parked along the road. “Is that my wife’s cab?” I asked the Gateville guards.

“Don’t know,” the first one said.

“Amanda may be inside.” I started for the cab.

Blonder held out an arm to stop me.

“She can tell us where Stanley is,” I said, thinking no such thing, hoping she’d gotten rebuffed at the gate and was fuming in the cab, with a dead cell phone.

Blonder dropped his arm. With him at my left, Other on myright, and the two security guards following, we moved quickly down the line of vehicles.

The cabbie was slumped back behind the wheel, asleep. I looked past him. The backseat was empty.

I reached in and shook his shoulder. “Did you drive a woman here tonight?”

“Hey.” His eyes popped open, startled by my hand still on his shoulder. “Easy.”

“Did you bring a woman here tonight?”

He straightened up on the seat, rubbing his eyes. He looked over at the meter. It was running. He smiled. “She told me to wait.”

“Where is she?”

“In there.” He pointed at the entrance to Gateville.

We hurried down to the guardhouse.

“Where’s Stanley?” the first security guard asked the man at the console. The console was dark. The only light came from a portable electric lantern.

“Around someplace. Haven’t seen him in a while.”

“You hear anything about any tunnels in Crystal Waters?” the first guard asked.

The console guard shook his head. “There are no tunnels here.”

“Did Amanda Phelps get in here tonight?” I asked the console guard.

The console man shook his head. “Strangest thing. She’s almost always gone. Then tonight, of all nights, she shows up, demanding to get some stuff out of her house. Stanley kept telling her, ‘No way,’ over and over, but she wore him down. You know Stanley: anything for the Members. He finally folded and took her up himself.”

“When was that?” I asked.

The console guard checked the log sheet on the masonite clipboard. “One hour and forty-eight minutes ago. Funny, I didn’t see them come back.” He reached for the console microphone. “Stanley,come in, over.” He waited a minute and repeated it. “Stanley, come in, over.” He pushed the talk button again. “Cassidy, you there, over?”

“Cassidy to base, over,” a voice crackled back.

“Where’s Stanley, over?”

“Haven’t seen him, over.”

The console guard checked the other guards. No one had seen Stanley.

I looked out the window, toward the dark, west end of Chanticleer Circle. “I’m going up to Amanda’s house.”

“You’ll do no such thing.” Blonder gestured to a chair. “Park it right there until I come back with Agent Till.” Other took out his handcuffs and jangled them in his hands. Blonder put his hand on my shoulder, hard enough for me to realize he could push me down one-handed.

“You’ll be back right away?”

“He wants to talk to you about those tunnels,” Blonder said.

I sat down. After a glance at Other, Blonder paused at the door and spoke to the console guard. “Mr. Elstrom is a material witness. He can’t leave.” He went out the door and started running toward the lights at the east end of Chanticleer Circle.

Ahead of him, a small army of men with hand shovels worked slowly in the bright lights, poking and digging around the foundations and across the lawns. Their silhouettes were black against the glare of the lights. They looked like ghost soldiers, burying their dead.

“How long have they been working down at that end?” I asked the console guard.

“Since first thing this morning.”

“They haven’t been up by the Phelps house?”

The console guard shook his head. “They won’t get up there for a couple of days.”

“Try radioing Stanley again-”

The sky to the west lit up a fraction of a second before the guardhouse windows blew in. A roof of a house hung suspended for an instant, then it began spewing out a thousand glowing embers, just like the Farraday house on the videotape. The guardhouse shuddered, rocking on its foundation. Next to me, Agent Other swiped at the back of his neck. It was a lazy move, confused, as if he were swatting a mosquito at a summer picnic. Then blood spurted from between his fingers. I turned for help from the guard. He was on the floor beneath the console, not moving.

I turned back to Other. He had his hands locked behind his neck, stanching the flow of blood. “I’m just cut. Get out of here.”

I ran out into the smoke and the fire in the sky. The smell of chemical explosives, thick and sweet, hung everywhere. Behind me, a hundred men were yelling, their shouts lost in a muddle of noise, as, outside the wall, the fire trucks and the ambulances rumbled to life.

I ran up Chanticleer toward the hail of embers that was falling into the flames at the northwest bend of Chanticleer. Amanda’s house was around that bend, obscured by two dark houses on my left.

If her house was still there.

I tripped, on a curb or a yard stone, fell to my elbows. I got up. Pain ran down my leg; wet and raw. I’d been cut. I ran on, screaming into the night, pleading with every deity I knew.

Let her be alive.