Hellbox

28

JAKE RUNYON

Morning.

After a long, bad night. Two and a half more hours at Eagle Rock Lake with Verriker, Deputy Broxmeyer, and a crew of other sheriff’s department people. Another hour at the Six Pines substation with a departmental investigator from the county seat named Sadler. Questions and more questions, a lot of finger-pointing and milling and scrambling around that didn’t lead anywhere because nobody knew what the hell to do about Kerry. The FBI? Sadler hemmed and hawed on finally calling them in. They still weren’t completely convinced Balfour had abducted her. And even if they had been, there was the usual jurisdictional bullshit: county law, especially small county law, always balked at relinquishing control to the feds because they usually got trampled when the FBI took over. Sadler did say he’d notified the ATF of the illegal weapons stash in Balfour’s camper, but the ATF wasn’t in a position to do Kerry a damn bit of good.

To make matters worse, the local law was miffed at the way Bill and Runyon had handled things, berating them for not reporting immediately after they’d caught Balfour. But there was as much embarrassment and frustration at the department’s own bungling mixed in, at least on Broxmeyer’s part, and enough concern for Kerry and how the media would react to the whole sorry business, to keep the browbeating to a minimum.

Verriker had been arrested, mandatory in a fatal shooting without eyewitnesses. But as far as the law was aware, he and Balfour were the only ones who’d broken any laws. There was no real cause to hold Runyon and Bill, so they’d finally been released. With nowhere to go at three A.M. except back to the rented house.

By then, Bill seemed to have settled into a zombielike melancholy, staring glassily into space and not tracking well, his voice flat and lifeless when he spoke at all. Plain enough that he blamed himself for leaving Verriker alone with Balfour, just as he blamed himself for not searching Balfour’s property sooner; Runyon bore the same guilty weight. But at the same time, he knew they’d handled the situation as best they could under the circumstances, with their focus on finding Kerry and their emotions in turmoil. There just hadn’t been any warning signs that Verriker might’ve smuggled in a gun or that he’d wanted revenge on Balfour as much as Balfour wanted it on him.

Bill had almost literally collapsed into bed when they got back to the house. Exhausted. Sick, too, maybe. His color wasn’t good, his breathing heavy and labored.

As tired as Runyon was, he couldn’t sleep except in fitful dozes. Once he got up to make sure Bill was all right. The rest of the time he lay staring into the darkness, listening to the throbbing night rhythms of crickets and tree frogs and sorting through the fragments of information they had on Balfour.

The dark gray, sticky stuff on Balfour’s fingers and the pickup’s steering wheel. Nobody had been able to identify it. It wasn’t mud, and there were no clay deposits in the area. Broxmeyer: “It looks like modeling clay.” Being sent out for analysis ASAP, but with the holiday weekend, that meant sometime next week at the soonest.

The sawdust on Balfour’s pant leg. He’d worked construction and lived and traveled within hundreds of square miles of timberland. He could have picked it up kneeling anywhere.

His dying words. “Bastards. Payback. Asshole valley. Hellbox.” Bill was sure of all the words but the last. And fairly sure that Balfour had laughed with his final breath. None of it seemed to make much sense. Bastards… Runyon and Bill and Verriker? What kind of payback? Did “asshole valley” refer to the mayor tag Verriker had hung on him, or to Green Valley? Assume Bill had heard correctly and “hellbox” was the last word Balfour had uttered. A hellbox was a receptacle where old-fashioned cast-metal type was tossed after printing, but an uneducated carpenter and handyman wasn’t likely to have known that. What else was a hellbox? That sheet metal-roofed shed where he’d kept Kerry was a hellbox in the middle of a hot summer, but even if that was how Balfour had thought of it, why would he say the word? And why would he laugh with his last breath?

Runyon sifted through what else they knew about the man. Dishonest loner at odds with most of those who knew him, wife abuser, coward. Paranoid psychotic driven by hatred and revenge. Devious schemer: the blowing up of the Verrikers’ home, the attempt on Verriker’s life, the camper full of survival gear and weaponry… and the probable secret he’d been harboring that had kept him from breaking under pressure at the cabin. Kidnapper, but not by design-he’d grabbed Kerry because she’d seen him coming back from rigging the gas leak, an act of panic.

Why had he held her captive for four days? The obvious answer was rape, torture, only that didn’t fit the revenge-obsessed profile. The fact that Balfour had beaten his ex-wife didn’t necessarily make him a sexual sadist. If anything, according to those who knew him, he seemed to have shunned relationships with women. Kept Kerry as some kind of sick trophy? That didn’t fit his profile, either. Unsure of what to do with her or her body? Squeamish about murdering a stranger in cold blood?

Pretty obvious why he’d taken her out of the shed yesterday morning: hadn’t wanted her found there, alive or dead. All right, but why the decision to run in the first place? There was no proof that he’d booby-trapped the Verriker house, and if Verriker had been alone at the lake cabin and Balfour had succeeded in killing him, no proof that Balfour was the guilty party. Another panic reaction, maybe. Except that his actions yesterday and last night had been too calculated. The decision had to be connected to, or motivated by, whatever he’d been up to during the ten to twelve hours he’d been missing yesterday.

He’d kept Kerry in the camper for most of that time-the odor wouldn’t have permeated everything inside the cramped space if she’d only been in there a short time. As a hostage, as they’d surmised? Or for some other reason that was also connected to that secret plan of his? Wherever he’d left her, it couldn’t have been very long before he showed up at the cabin or very far from Eagle Rock Lake…

Runyon had had enough of the lumpy bed. His watch told him it was a little after seven-time to be up and moving. The plumbing in the adjacent bathroom made loud grumbling noises; when he was done in there, he went again for a quick check on Bill. Still asleep in the same facedown sprawl, his breathing heavy, congestive. He needed to see a doctor pretty soon, before he suffered a complete breakdown.

In the kitchen, Runyon slaked his thirst with a glass of cold water from the fridge. He knew he should eat, but he would have choked on anything solid he tried to swallow. He went back through the living room, out onto the front deck.

Still early-morning cool, but the clouds were gone, and already there was a whitish dazzle in the blue overhead. You could feel the heat gathering. Another sweltering day coming up, probably hotter than yesterday.

But he didn’t want to think about that. He sat at the table, his hands flat on the cold glass top, and stared out over the valley without seeing any of it. Going over the Balfour fragments yet again, trying to shape them into a pattern that had some meaning.

Psychotic driven by hate and hunger for vengeance. Rigged the explosion that killed Verriker’s wife. Tried to kill Verriker before heading for the backwoods with an arsenal of weapons.

Drove around with Kerry in that camper of his for half of another day before leaving her somewhere. Had to be a purpose in that. Nothing else he’d done had been aimless, unplanned.

Sticky gray substance that wasn’t clay or mud. And couldn’t have been on his hands or the steering wheel very long.

Sawdust.

Payback. Asshole valley.

Hellbox.

The pieces were like parts in a disassembled template that wouldn’t connect. He strained to get a mental grip on them, manipulate and force them together. They kept glancing off each other, as if the pieces were antimagnetized.

Payback. Asshole Valley.

Dark gray stuff that looked and felt like modeling clay.

Sawdust.

Hellbox.

Last breath, last laugh From somewhere down on the road below, a sudden series of popping noises disturbed the morning stillness. Runyon tensed until he identified the sounds: a string of firecrackers going off. Undisciplined kids getting an early start on the Fourth. He’d almost forgotten the holiday, the big celebration coming up in Six Pines. Parade, picnic, speeches, fireworks Fireworks.

Explosions.

Explosive devices.

He went rigid. And the pieces came flying together like digital images interlocking, until they formed the template of Balfour’s last planned act of vengeance. Insane, monstrous, but the pieces fit too well, explained too many things, for it not to be right.

Runyon stood so suddenly that the chair went skidding backward, toppled over. He ran inside, back to the master bedroom. Caught Bill’s shoulder and shook him, lightly at first, then harder.

“Wake up, Bill. Wake up.”

Bill’s eyes flicked open, blinking up half focused and groggy. But the grogginess lasted only a few seconds; he threw it off as if it were a heavy blanket, sat up scraping a hand over his face. “What is it? You’ve heard something?”

“No,” Runyon said, “but I think I may have figured out what Balfour was up to last night.”

“My God, Jake… you mean what he did with Kerry?”

“If I’m right, yes. He was crazier than any of us realized. It wasn’t just Verriker he hated and wanted revenge against, it was everybody in Green Valley. Asshole Valley to him. Pay back Asshole Valley for all the ridicule heaped on him… that’s what his dying words meant.”

“But how-?”

“That stuff on his hands… malleable plastic explosive, probably some crude homemade version of C-4 or Semtex. Got it from whoever supplied him with the illegal weapons. Rigged another explosive death trap last night, only this one in a place where it’d take out a whole bunch of people.”

Bill saw it, too, now. He was off the bed, scrambling into his pants. “The fairgrounds. Somewhere under the grandstand…”

“No. Too open, too much chance of it being spotted.”

“Then… Christ! That storage unit on the construction site.”

“Has to be. The repair work was finished last night, there wouldn’t’ve been time to have the unit hauled away. That’s where the sawdust came from, that’s what Balfour meant by hellbox.”

“And where he left Kerry. Holy Mother, inside a hellbox packed with explosives!”