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Authors: Jack Fredrickson

BOOK: A Safe Place for Dying
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“What about setting up a trace from that pay phone in Clarinda?”
“And have a man monitoring the line for the next few months, ready to jump on a phone conversation that might be too quick to trace?”
“How are you going to find him?”
“He's disappeared for too many years. If he's not dead, he doesn't want to be found, and he's been damned good at staying hidden. I can't pull agents off other cases for some nut-cake manhunt, but I didn't need to. I had you to chase that wild goose, Elstrom, and you got nowhere. Unless …”
He paused, baiting me.
I bit. “Unless?”
“Unless there was nowhere to get to. Maybe you were just trying to fool us all with this Michael Jaynes stuff.”
“It's a wrong bet to concentrate only on Jaynes. But you can't forget about him, not if your only other suspects are Chernek and me.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Start looking at everybody who has had access—”
“Manpower problems,” he said, cutting me off. “What other bright ideas have you been percolating?”
“Those computer-aging photos you said you were going to do.”
“You see those things work on T.V.?”
“And at the movies. I bone up on investigating technique in all kinds of places.”
“They never work, you know. Too many variables in a person's appearance.”
“Why don't you try?”
“They're done. We used Michael Jaynes's Army picture, added a bunch of years, then did four more with baldness, large weight gain, the beard the woman at Universal Electric said he had, and a mustache. I sent them to our branches yesterday.”
“And they'll send them to electrical contractors?”
“When they can. Maybe you could get your rich friends at Crystal Waters to blanket electrical firms, too. There's two hundred right now sitting in an envelope in our lobby with your name on it. Come pick them up.” He hung up.
Till was too twitchy for me to figure. He was firing blindly in all directions. I would have been all right with that, thinking it might shake something loose, except that one of the places he was aiming was at me.
I pulled out of the Bohemian's parking lot, my eyes in the rearview mirror. Nobody followed me. Maybe Till was just jerking me around about being a suspect.
I drove east the few blocks into downtown, parked in the shortterm garage, and went into the A.T.F. offices. As Till had said, an envelope with my name on it was at the first-floor reception desk. I pulled one sheet out.
There were six images: an Army photo and five computer renderings created from it. When he'd enlisted in the Army, Michael Jaynes could have been anybody's fresh-faced boy next door: big smile, round baby features under the Army buzz cut. The computer shots aged him, but in each he still looked harmless, like the guy down the block, in plaid shorts, who cuts his grass every Saturday afternoon before going inside to pop the tab on a brewski and watch the ball game. I slid the sheet back in the envelope, went back to the Jeep, and oozed into rush hour on the Eisenhower Expressway.
Just past Austin Boulevard, the outbound traffic loosened up and I spotted it hanging back, three cars behind, in the far outside lane. Another dark Crown Victoria, this one blue. I changed lanes;
they did, too, maintaining the three-car gap. I sped up; they stayed with me. I slowed down; they backed off. They must have picked me up outside the A.T.F. offices.
I stayed in the outer lane until just before Harlem, then cut left through a hole in the left two lanes, shot up the inside exit, ran the red light at the top of the overpass, and swung right. They might have been rookies, but they were good enough behind the wheel. They swung left across all the traffic, too, and made the exit without drawing a single horn.
I went north, then west on Lake Street. A couple of times, I turned off onto the side streets, but that was just for sport. By then I was sure. They stayed with me all the way to the turret, not bothering to do much to conceal themselves. I got out of the Jeep and walked to the door. They parked a hundred yards down, just off Thompson.
I tried to not think about being under surveillance. I nuked three Lean Cuisines and watched crime shows on my mini T.V. I didn't learn any useful investigative techniques, but at nine o'clock I did remember the piece of lime pie I'd gotten in Bodega Bay. I found the Styrofoam container nestled in my still-unpacked suitcase. The pie was warm and had congealed into a kind of lime mash embedded with sodden specks of crust that had become mostly indistinct, like the information in the Gateville investigation.
I ate the pie and went up to my cot. Before I turned out the lights, I looked out the window. The dark Crown Victoria was still there, in the shadows past the streetlamp.
It rained the next morning, so hard the water streamed into the turret like the Devil himself was up dancing on my roof, aiming a pressure hose at the cracks in the tar. The five-gallon pickle buckets I'd scavenged from the deli couldn't catch it all, and for three hours, I raced the rain, emptying old varnish cans, a plastic wastebasket, and the pickle buckets out of the top-floor windows like a third-world washerwoman. Each time, I was tempted to wave a long finger at the boys in the Crown Victoria.
Stanley called late in the afternoon. By then the rain had stopped, though water was still dripping in.
“Mr., Mr. Elstrom—” Stanley started, began again, stammering so badly I cut him off.
“Let me guess, Stanley. Ballsard thinks the matter is over.”
“He feels the A.T.F. will keep a close watch on things, and besides, we paid the demand and should be left alone now, anyway.”
I asked the question only to hear how he was going to dodge it: “He's not going to evacuate Crystal Waters?”
“You wouldn't believe the extra security we hired. More than when you were last here.”
“He's taking a big chance.”
Stanley breathed heavily into the phone. “Like I said, with the A.T.F. hunting for Michael Jaynes and watching Mr. Chernek, Mr. Ballsard feels the matter is under control.”
I wondered if Stanley knew I'd been added to Till's list. “And if it's not Jaynes or Chernek?”
Stanley paused. “I agree with you about Mr. Chernek. But this Michael Jaynes …”
“What if somebody else is doing this? Somebody you're not searching for?”
“Michael Jaynes is sending money to Nadine Reynolds from the same Chicago zip code as our bomb threats.”
“A ten- or a twenty-dollar bill?”
“It was all he could afford, Mr. Elstrom.”
“He could have sent more after he picked up the half million behind Ann Sather's.”
He didn't say anything. I was a broken recording, playing in an empty room.
“You've got to clear out Crystal Waters, Stanley.”
“Mr. Ballsard feels—”
I gave it up. “I got some computer-generated renderings from A.T.F., showing what Jaynes might look like now. At least see if you can send them out to electrical contractors.”
“I'll pick them up.”
“I'll drop them off. I'm going to be out there anyway. It's too late today to call Amanda in Paris, but tomorrow I'm going to get her to authorize me to supervise the removal of her artwork. The bomber hasn't gone away, Stanley, and she needs to get her stuff into a bonded storage house until things are safe again at Crystal Waters.”
I looked up at the water dripping from the ceiling. Just a drop every few seconds was all, now.
“Stanley?” I asked after a minute.
“Yes, Mr. Elstrom?” His voice sounded far away.
“I'll let you know when I'll be out with people to pick up her art.”
I didn't hear him say good-bye but supposed I'd missed it. I clicked off my cell phone and looked at my Timex. It was just after four o'clock. I called Leo, got him at home. He gave me the name of a firm he used to transport and store valuable art. I called Amanda's answering machine in Crystal Waters, knowing she checked every day for messages, and asked her to call me. Then I hung up the phone and told her I missed her.
I'd been too tired to squint at my tiny T.V. and had gone to bed at nine thirty, thinking of ways to fool myself into sleep. Nothing worked. Too many dark shapes crawled in under my eyelids, each of them carrying bombs. I got up at two forty-five in the morning, made coffee, and took my travel mug up to the roof.
I had just taken a second sip of the coffee, trying to think of nothing at all, when the ground flashed below and blinding light shot up into the sky like a million-watt strobe. I dropped out of the chair, onto the gravel roof, pulling my forearms over my head to shield my eyes from the glare. A roar came then, a big ripping boom that shook the turret. Crazily, I heard my stainless travel cup bounce hollowly some place far away. I pushed down flat against the roof and crab-crawled across the stones to the trapdoor. I found the handle, lifted the door enough to squeeze through, twisted, and dropped through the opening, feet first. I missed the ladder and fell to the floor, pain shooting up from my knees. Miraculously, I stayed on my feet. I reached for the pull rope and tugged the trapdoor closed to the harsh white of the sky outside.
I circled my arms to stay on the ladder down to the fourth floor, rang the metal on the circular stairs as I ran down to the third. The inside of the turret was bright from the fire outside the windows. The cell phone was by my cot, someplace. I got down on my knees, flailed at the floor for my phone. Found it, punched 911. A woman
answered instantly, told me they'd already gotten a report. Units were on the way. Anybody hurt? Told her I didn't know, the blast was outside. Go down to the basement, she said, away from another explosion. There was no basement, but there was no time to say that. I clicked off, ran down the next two floors, and out the door.
The shed was a flaming skeleton. All of the siding was gone; the few remaining wall studs stood spindly and black in the orange inferno. Two Rivertown ladder trucks came racing off Thompson Avenue, sirens screaming, just as the uprights collapsed into the pile of burning rubble. What had been a garage-sized shed was now a small bonfire of boards. Start to finish, it hadn't taken five minutes.
Firemen jumped off the trucks, making for the hydrant. A Rivertown fireman with a shield on his helmet came over. There was no hurry now; there was nothing left.
“This place yours?”
I nodded.
“What happened?”
“I don't know. I was on the roof when it exploded.”
“On the roof at three in the morning?”
“I do that sometimes.”
“The building just exploded?”
“It was just a shed,” I said, to say something. My mind was a few feet away, starting to poke at the idea that someone had just tried to kill me.
“What did you have in there?” Behind him, two firemen trained a single hose on the fire.
“Rats. And some half gallons of paint, a can of turpentine, a push lawn mower, a long wood ladder.”
“Enough paint and turpentine to set it off?”
“I don't think so.”
“We'll be in touch.” He turned and walked over to the firemen hosing the fire.
In the shadows, out of the way, Till's two men leaned against their Crown Victoria, watching. One was talking on a cell phone. I wondered if he'd been the one who phoned in the first report.
The fire trucks left at five. I went back inside and lay on the cot, trying to slow my heart by telling myself the explosion had been just a message, nothing more.
Someone pounded on my door at six fifteen. I went down and opened it. It was Agent Till.
I stepped outside. Two men in olive drab padded bomb suits, looking like 1950s television spacemen, poked through the black rubble, gathering bits from the ruin of the shed. Farther down, the Crown Victoria was gone.
“Looking for D.X.12?” I asked.
Till nodded and turned to watch the men.
“When you find it, what conclusion will you draw?”
“That, I do not know.”
“I was up on the roof when the thing went off.”
He turned back to look me. “Are you one of those guys that likes to watch, Elstrom?”
I stared at him. “I might have been killed.”
“Don't be melodramatic.” His eyes went back to the men in the bomb suits.
“Then what do you call that explosion, Till?”
“A diversion, to get the scrutiny off you. An attempt against you must then point to somebody else, mustn't it?”
“You're saying I set this off?”
Till shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe this was just an accidental loss of inventory, some unstable shelf stock of yours that got a little too unstable.”
“What did your stakeout boys see?”
“Your inside lights going on a few minutes before the explosion.” He looked at my eyes. “And nobody going in your shed.”
“It was put there while you were tailing me elsewhere. I'm threatening someone.”
He nodded. “Perhaps, Elstrom. Perhaps.”
Amanda's home answering machine was full, probably from the messages I'd been leaving all morning. She wasn't answering her cell phone either, though it was only late afternoon in Paris, and caller I.D. would have told her it was me.
She was avoiding me. Somebody—Stanley, a Fed, a Maple Hills cop, maybe even Till himself—had gotten to her, had told her about the explosions at Gateville, and now, the one in my shed. Whoever had called her might have greased it up, saying I wasn't really under suspicion, but they would have let the link dangle, about as subtle as a helicopter hovering over a lawn party, impossible to ignore. Whoever called would have suggested it was best for her to avoid all contact with me until things settled out. I didn't blame her. After my Halloween escapade, and now explosives in my storage shed linking me to Crystal Waters, I wouldn't have talked to me, either.
I passed the middle days of August in a void, isolated from any contact with the Gateville investigation.
I gave up trying to call Amanda. After learning of the potential bombs at Gateville, she would have flown in from Paris, removed her artwork, and gone back. That she hadn't called when she'd been home told me all I needed to know about what must be running through her mind.
Agent Till wouldn't take my calls, either. He must have found D.X.12 in the remains of my shed, because the surveillance on me continued. At no time was I more than a hundred yards from a Crown Victoria, and that was fine. I'd gotten myself to believe the bomb in my shed was a message, not a serious attempt on my life. I didn't understand the message, though, and until I did, I wanted a
couple of Till's young men, with their fast feet and semiautomatic weapons, nearby.
I didn't try to call Stanley, and I didn't expect him to call me, not after a chunk of D.X.12 had gone off in my shed. I mailed him Till's composites of Michael Jaynes and assumed he'd sent them out to anybody he thought might be helpful.
The Bohemian took my call, but I only called once, and that was because he was technically still my client. I told him about the D.X.12 explosion in my shed.
“That makes me a suspect now, too,” I said.
“You need Michael Jaynes as much as I do, Vlodek.”
“Maybe it's not Michael Jaynes.”
“Then who, Vlodek?” he shot back.
“Someone who benefits by shifting the suspicion to me.”
“Like me?”
When I didn't answer, he swore and hung up.
I tried to play those days light under the constant surveillance, show Till's boys that I couldn't possibly be a bomber. Mornings, I worked outside, cutting up the rubble of the shed, filling a large Dumpster with the remains of the charred wood, exploded paint cans, and odd bits of trash I'd never bothered to throw out. It was hot that August, and the work was deadening, but the sweating passed the time as, down the street, Till's boys watched from a dark Crown Victoria.
Lunchtimes, when he was in town, Leo and I met at Kutz's. I arrived as the head of my very own two-vehicle parade, and Leo thought that a stitch. He told Kutz the guys in the dark sedan were Secret Service, there in case the president of the United States needed my advice on a moment's notice. That didn't impress Kutz, but he was delighted that the young suits always brought big appetites—and rarely made it five feet before bobbling their overloaded, springy plastic trays upside down onto the dirt. Those were good days for government reorders at Kutz's Wienie Wagon.
Afternoons, I'd take the boys on a field trip to the health center, waving at them as I ran my circles. Then we'd troop back to our cars and drive to the turret so I could work indoors and they could watch my front door.
It worked for a time, but after two weeks of long days spent wondering whether a new bomb was coming to take down the turret, of not hearing Till call to report he was closing in on a suspect other than me, of never sleeping more than two hours at a time, and trudging up to the roof to watch the sky to the west, my fingernails began to itch.
Then it rained.
It came blowing and pounding one night, too much to catch in buckets and pickle pails. It poured in from the roof and ran down the limestone walls, to pool temporarily on the fifth floor, until, building pressure, it cascaded through the floor to the floor below. I emptied and mopped and swore all night.

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