Hellbox

29

I was wild to get out of there, get to Six Pines. I tried to push past Runyon, but he blocked the doorway with his big body.

“Stay calm,” he said. “Call the law before we do anything else, get a bomb squad out to the fairgrounds-”

“No. Broxmeyer won’t be at the substation and Sadler’s back in the county seat by now-we’d have to track them down, try to convince them. Closest bomb squad is probably Sacramento. All of that could take hours.”

“We can’t just go bulling in there on our own.”

“The hell we can’t. We’ve got to get her out of that death trap now.”

“Fairgrounds won’t be open yet. It’s barely seven-thirty.”

“Climb the goddamn fence-”

“There’ll be people around, getting ready for the parade. And we’d need a key to the unit. Broxmeyer has Balfour’s keys, or Sadler does-”

“Somebody else has keys. His helper, Perez.”

I shook off Runyon’s hand, shouldered past him, and ran into the kitchen. There was a phone book on the counter; I grabbed it up. Two years old. But if Perez was listed, the number might still be good.

There was a listing, with an address in Six Pines. I fumbled in my pockets, didn’t find my cell-couldn’t remember what the hell I’d done with it. But I didn’t need it; Runyon, grim-faced, had his out and flipped open. I read off the number, and he punched it in. While he waited for an answer, I stuck my head under the sink faucet and flipped on the cold-water tap. The chill shock cleared the last of the fuzz out of my head.

I grabbed a dishtowel to dry off, took the phone from Jake just as the line clicked open. A woman’s voice chattered at me in Spanish, grumbling shrewishly about being woken up at such an early hour.

My command of the language is pretty fair, if rusty from disuse. I dredged up phrases, said them in loud and imperative tones. “Eladio Perez, por favor. Es muy importante. Una cuestion de vida o muerte.”

That got through to her. She shut up for a couple of seconds. Then, “?Quien esta llamando?”

“Digale el detective cuya esposa falta.”

“Ah, si, si. Momentito.”

Five, ten, fifteen seconds. Then Eladio Perez’s voice said, “Yes, senor, I remember you. What is it you want?”

I told him. Yes, he had keys to the main gate and another to a gate on the west side. Yes, he also had one to the storage unit. Que pasa? He hadn’t heard about Balfour yet and there was no time to enlighten him. Instead, I did some fast talking, stressing urgency without telling him too much, and finally convinced him to meet us with the keys.

“Ten minutes, Eladio. Gracias.” I broke the connection, tossed Runyon’s cell back to him, and headed for the door. If he hesitated in following, it was for no more than a couple of seconds.

In the car, rolling, he said, “I don’t like this, Bill.”

“You don’t have to like it. My decision.”

“I know that. But it’s a hell of a big risk. What if Balfour booby-trapped the shed door so it’ll detonate when it’s opened?”

As strung out as I was, the possibility hadn’t occurred to me before. I thought about it as we cut down toward the valley road. “I don’t see it, Jake. He wouldn’t have expected anybody to open the storage unit today, a holiday-the construction work’s finished, Perez wouldn’t have any reason to use his key. And Balfour wasn’t an explosives expert. Anybody can rig a gas-leak explosion-anybody can slap up a bunch of plastic explosive and wire detonators to a timer. That has to be what he did, all he did.”

“You can’t be sure. A timer, yeah, but set to blow this afternoon when the picnic’s in full swing and the grounds are jammed with people. There’s still time to do this the right way, the safe way.”

“Maybe, but that’s something we can’t be sure of, either. Suppose it’s set to go off this morning? Suppose he miscalculated or the timer malfunctions?”

Runyon didn’t say anything.

“And Kerry could be badly hurt. Sick, drugged… God knows. There can’t be much air in that box. And it’ll be damn hot pretty soon.”

Still keeping his own counsel. I couldn’t read the stoic set of his face, but I knew what he was thinking. Not that I blamed him; if our places were reversed, I’d be having doubts now, too. But I still had none: Kerry was alive.

“Don’t try to change my mind, Jake. Go along when we get there, or back off and let me do it alone-I won’t hold it against you.”

The three miles to Six Pines seemed like thirty. There was traffic on the valley road, people heading in early for the holiday festivities, taking their time, clogging the road. Runyon drove as fast as he could, passing whenever he could without endangering anybody. I sat on the edge of the passenger seat, leaning forward with my hands braced against the dash, an image of that metal storage unit fire-bright behind my eyes.

People and parade vehicles were already starting to assemble at the high school-band members, one of the VFD fire trucks, horses and horse-drawn buggies, some kind of float draped with American flags. Parade started here at eleven, finished at the fairgrounds at one. If it started and finished at all.

They hadn’t yet blocked off the main drag through town, but D ETOUR and N O P ARKING signs had been set out. Not too many people on the sidewalks yet, or down around the fairgrounds; I didn’t see any sheriff’s department cruisers. Runyon swung right on the street that paralleled the north side of the fairgrounds, then left along the western perimeter. That street was lined with trees and a handful of widely spaced houses. After dark, it’d be mostly deserted. Balfour’s route last night, I thought-less risk of being seen going in and coming back out through the west gate.

Eladio Perez was waiting for us, standing alongside the old pickup we’d seen parked at the construction site yesterday. Runyon looped into the short driveway and braked nose up to the gate. Through the mesh I could see that it opened into the long parking area adjacent to the picnic grounds; blacktops branched off at an intersection not far inside.

I jumped out, ran over to Perez. He backed up a step, and I saw his eyes widen-probably a reaction to how I looked. “The keys, Eladio.”

Wordlessly, he handed them over: three small padlock keys on a three-inch bead chain.

I said, “Quickest way to where you were working, left road or right?”

“Left.”

“Okay. We’ll get the keys back to you.”

“Senor Balfour-”

“Don’t worry about him. Go on home, thanks for your help.”

I ran to the gate. The key with “West Gate” written on a piece of adhesive opened the padlock, but tension had made me clumsy-fingered, and it took three tries to get it slotted and turned. I shoved the gate inward, let Runyon push it out of the way with the Ford’s bumper. Jerked the passenger door open, slid back in beside him saying, “Left at the intersection.”

Shade trees flanked the blacktop in that direction, separating the parking area from the picnic grounds. Be dark along here at night, but you could drive it without lights if you knew the grounds as well as Balfour had. Where the row of trees ended, the road hooked right and intersected with the main road that led in from the front gates. Runyon cut to the right along the periphery of the grandstand and track.

After fifty yards, I could see the storage box squatting back between the concession booths and the restrooms. Sunlight shone on the metal roof and sides, giving it a glowing look like something being slowly heated in a forge. The image tied more knots in my stomach. I could feel sweat running down my back and sides.

Runyon pulled up under the tree where we’d parked yesterday. I was out of the car before it rocked to a complete stop, staggering a little on my run to the shed. He came up just as I reached the padlocked door, and when he pushed in next to me, I saw that he was carrying his flashlight.

I reached for the padlock, lost my grip on it; it clanged harshly off the metal. Runyon said, “Better let me do it.”

“You don’t have to be here-”

“The hell with that. Give me the keys.”

I let him take them in exchange for the flashlight. From far off in the still morning, incongruous given what we were facing, I could hear the high school band warming up with “America the Beautiful.”

Runyon got the padlock open, slid the staple out and let it drop on the ground with the key still in the slot. My heart had begun to race. I sucked in a breath as he eased the door open a crack.

Nothing happened.

The breath hissed out between my teeth. Jake was still holding the door in the same position, with maybe half an inch between its edge and the jamb. Carefully, he took the flashlight back with his other hand, switched it on, then put one eye close to the crack and squinted inside while he ran the beam up and down along the opening.

“Nothing that looks like a tripwire,” he said.

He widened the crack another half inch, played the light again. When I moved closer to the opening, my nostrils dilated at the mingled odors from inside. Sawdust, machine oil-and that same sickening sourness that had come out of Balfour’s camper.

“She’s in there, Jake. Kerry’s in there.”

He gave me a sideways look, then a jerky nod. “Door’s clear.”

“Go!”

Again he widened the gap. But after a couple of inches, it bound up at the bottom. Grimacing, he yanked upward on the handle. That popped the bottom edge loose and the door wobbled open all the way. He swept the flash beam through the murky interior.

It was like looking into a chamber of horrors.

Half a dozen or more blocks of plastic explosive stuck to the inside of the door and to all three walls. Detonators poked into them, trailing wires that connected to a black-boxed timing device on the floor… glowing-red numerals showed it set for one-thirty, half an hour after the end of the parade when the fairgrounds would be packed with people. Other things embedded in the plastic-nails, screws. More of the same strewn over the floor, along with sharp-toothed saw blades and other stuff intended as shrapnel.

But I registered all of that only peripherally. The small, still figure encased in duct tape, lying supine on the floor surrounded by all that death, was all I really saw or needed to see.

I started to lunge inside, an animal noise rumbling in my throat. Runyon stopped me with an iron-fingered grip. “Pull the detonators first, all of them.” I struggled, thinking Kerry, Kerry! He hung onto me, saying again, “Detonators, the detonators,” and finally the sense of the words got through. I bobbed my head, pulled free, reached up to jerk the nearest metal cap out of the explosive.

We tore all of them loose, stepping carefully around Kerry, and threw them down; they were useless by themselves. Then I went to one knee beside her. That crazy son of a bitch Balfour had mummy-wrapped her from ankles to shoulders, with her hands and arms flat against her sides so she couldn’t move. Strips of duct tape covered her eyes and mouth; what I could see of her face was ghostly pale. I touched the side of her neck… cold, so cold… and probed for an artery, a pulse that I couldn’t feel.

Oh, please God, no!

Runyon had the light on her. “Is she…?”

“I don’t know, I can’t tell. Help me get her out of here.”

His shoes crunched on the shrapnel as he bent to take hold of her legs. I shoved upright, got my hands under her shoulders; my mind seemed to have gone blank. We carried her outside and over into the shade next to one of the concession booths, laid her down gently in the grass.

I dropped down beside her, felt again for a pulse. Had to be one, had to! But I still couldn’t find it. So faint only a doctor could detect it…

Runyon had backed off a couple of steps with his cell phone out, and I heard him making a 911 call as I hooked a fingernail under an edge of the tape over Kerry’s eyes, eased it off. Both eyes shut tight, not even a twitch on the lids. As gently as I could I stripped the tape from her mouth. Her lips were cracked and smeared with dried blood. When I laid my cheek down close to them, I couldn’t feel even the faintest whisper of a breath. With my thumb I raised one of the closed eyelids.

Vacant, blood-flecked stare.

Sick with anguish, I fumbled my pocket knife out. Opened it with fingers that shook so much now I had to steady my right hand with my left. Had to keep wiping sweat out of my eyes as I sawed slowly through the tape, trying not to cut her. Her left arm was free when Runyon finished his call. He dropped down on the other side and began freeing her right arm with a Swiss Army blade. Together, we sliced and stripped as much of the tape off her arms and legs as we dared.

Still no movement, no sign of life.

God, what that bastard had done to her! Finger and fingernail marks on her throat where she’d been grabbed and choked. Bruise on one cheekbone that had blackened the eye above. A scabbed-over wound above her left ear that had bled into her hair… but not much, not enough for it to be anything but superficial. Welts and lesions on her bare arms and legs from the tape. Blouse and shorts in place, but torn, soiled.

Balfour had died too easy, too easy, too easy Runyon was pressing fingers against the artery in her neck. He made a sudden low grunting sound, and when I looked up at him, I saw the tight grimace he wore smooth off.

“Pulse,” he said.

I said something, I don’t remember what, and caught up Kerry’s hand and held my thumb on the wrist. Pulse, yes! I could feel it now-thin, thready, but discernible without putting on too much pressure.

Heartbeats. Life beats.

And all at once, the emotional dam inside me burst wide open. I’d cried before in my life, but never in public and never with such unashamed intensity as I did holding onto Kerry the way a drowning man holds onto a lifeline. Dimly, I saw Runyon stand, felt his hand on my shoulder before he moved away.

In the distance, there was the sound of sirens.