Hidden prey

Chapter 29

The disappearance of Roger Walther, and the murder-suicide of Burt and Melodie Walther, fell on Jan Walther's household like a thunderclap. She heard about it from a customer, rather than the police, closed the store, and drove to Burt and Melodie's house, where she was turned back by the police.

She saw the state cop, Davenport, and tried to flag him down. She was sure that he'd seen and heard her, but he ignored her. As the police did their work, the crowd outside the house continued to grow, now fed by rumors coming out of the police department-that the Walthers were Russian spies, and that there were other spies in the community.

When she heard that, and with no luck talking to police at the scene, she went back home and found a message from Kurt Maisler, Burt Walther's attorney. She called him back, and he told her of Burt's phone call.

"What do I do?"

"Just sit tight. I understand the FBI is taking over. They'll want to talk with you, and you might want to ask for representation."

"A lawyer? I haven't done anything. I can't afford one."

"If you can't afford one, they have to appoint one for you. But I'd have a lawyer if any of this, uh, is true, these rumors about Burt."

Maisler said that the exposure of a spy ring would draw the media like flies, and after a long series of public screw-ups, the FBI was frightened to death of more bad publicity. On the rare occasion when they actually found a bad guy, they tended to tear him to bits, Maisler said. "You've got to be prepared."

She hired him. She took a check for fifty dollars to his office, promised to call him if the FBI approached her. She went back to Burt and Melodie's house, not knowing what else she could do, and found Carl waiting for her.

Carl had heard about the murder-suicide at a service station, while he was buying gas for his old Chevy. He'd hurried downtown, found the store closed, went home, found the house empty, and continued on to Grandpa's house. The cops wouldn't let him within a block, so he ditched the car and walked in through alleys and backyards, joining a group of sixty or seventy people across the street. A few of them patted him on the back, a few edged away, and a couple pointed him out for the three TV cameras on the scene.

A moment later, his mother arrived and she ran over to him and gave him a hug, and he said, "They said Grandpa and Grandma…"

"It's true," she said. She held on to him but looked toward the house: "They won't let us in. I'll call Roy Hopper direct, to see what's going on, but I think we should go back home."

"They're taking pictures of us," he said. He nodded, and she turned toward the TV cameras.

"I think we should go back…"

The phone was ringing when they got back home. TV, she thought-but it was a friend named Lucy Parks, who worked at a rug-and-tile store down the street, and who had been one grade ahead of Janet in school. "I heard what happened. Is there anything I can do?"

"No, I don't know what to do myself-this is crazy."

"Everybody's talking about the spy business. Do you think Burt was really a spy? And Roger?"

"Burt. I don't know about Burt. But Roger-you've met Roger. That wasn't a disguise. You think he was a mastermind?"

Parks laughed. "If it was a disguise, he was a mastermind. Well, tell you what, honey, it's gonna be interesting. You need anything, give me a call."

Three more old friends called, and all of them offered support. She was a little amazed, because if this had been a TV story, the whole town would have turned on her; the yard would have been full of people with ropes and pitchforks.

Then the TV people arrived, trucks parking in the street, and people began banging on her door and taking pictures of her when she answered, so she stopped answering and called Maisler.

"I'll be right there," he said. He arrived ten minutes later, talked to all the media people, then knocked, and Jan let him in. "I've told them to stay off the lawn, and I called Roy Hopper direct and asked him to send a car over here. He said he would."

"Thanks." She was grateful, but wondered if his clock was running; he seemed to be enjoying himself too much to charge for it.

"If you want, I can make a statement to these people, unless you want to. They won't go away until they have something."

"If you could do it…"

He was happy to.

She was trying so hard to stay on top of the problem that she didn't notice how quiet Carl had been. When she did notice, she went back to his bedroom and knocked. No answer. "Carl?" She turned the knob and peeked in. He was sprawled on his bed, faceup, forearm over his eyes. "Are you okay? Honey?"

"Go away."

"Are you okay? You've got to come out and talk."

"Later. I just want to lie here for a while."

"You've been lying there for an hour. You should come out and eat something. I'll make some soup and sandwiches…"

"I'll be out in a while," he snapped.

"I'll call you when the soup's ready."

Her horror of the moment, and her astonishment, were real, for the most part. But there was a part of her, a small kernel at the edge of her mind, that had known that Burt was a spy, that there were other spies connected to him, and that Roger had, when he was young, done some spy things. Had been involved.

She hadn't known when she married him-hadn't known for a few years, after Carl was born, but small parts and pieces of it started to come out when Roger began drinking. He would talk to relieve stress-and then say he couldn't talk about why he was stressed. He began hinting of bigger forces, of untellable but important issues.

She thought of it simply as self-aggrandizement in the face of a life that had started sloping downhill after his junior year in college, when it became obvious that he wouldn't be the big hockey star at UMD.

But more pieces kept coming out, and then one night, thoroughly in the bag, he simply told her: we're a family of spies. She hadn't really believed him, and had gone to Burt, and Burt had simply sat in his chair, smiling at her, and Melodie had twinkled, and they'd said, "That was all a long time ago. Best not to think about it anymore."

She'd bought that-even when it turned out that it probably hadn't been so long ago…

Roger had continued to drink, the divorce had followed, and Burt and Melodie had come to her rescue. The previous owner of the frame shop was about to give it up and suggested that Jan, who was working the counter and enjoyed it, might want to buy the place. "It makes just about enough to support a family of two," he said. "If you work your butt off."

Burt helped with a down payment, and for the next ten years, all through elementary and junior high school, Burt and Melodie provided Carl's day care. She'd get him off in the morning, and they'd pick him up in the afternoon, be ready with snacks and dinners on nights when she had to work late. They'd take him to after-school activities, keep him busy.

They were, she thought, as much Carl's parents as she was; and that was why, she realized, Carl was lying on his bed like a log. The boy was in serious shock, the kind of shock you experience when a parent dies…

She hurried with the soup and sandwich.

The next few hours were a jumble.

The television never left. Maisler was all over the place, and not just local television, but on Fox, CNN, the major networks. She was afraid to leave the house, and instead, parked in front of the TV, nervously eating anything she could find. Other families were being interviewed, the talking heads said: the Spivaks, the Svobodas, the Witolds.

The FBI called, and made arrangements for an interview, tomorrow, first thing.

Grandma's and Grandpa's bodies were taken away from the house-she saw it all on TV, the bodies coming out on gurneys, in black bags-and the police didn't know when they would be released for burial.

The house was sealed, Roy Hopper told her. Nobody in, nobody out.

She took so many calls, talked to so many people, that she lost track of time. When she noticed that it was eleven o'clock, she realized that she hadn't talked to Carl for an hour or more. She went back to Carl's bedroom. "You've almost worn that bed out," she said.

"Yeah."

"I don't think you should go to school tomorrow," she said. "I think we can forget that."

"I'm going. If I don't go, it's like we're guilty of something."

"The TV people, Carl, I think it'd be-"

"I'm going," he said, stubbornly. "I can take it."

"We'll talk about it in the morning," she said.

He pushed himself up on his elbows. "Are you going to reopen the store?"

"I don't know. We've got to eat, so… we'll see."

"If you can open the store, I can go back to school."

She kissed him on the forehead. "You've been a good boy, Carl."