A Safe Place for Dying (25 page)
Read A Safe Place for Dying Online
Authors: Jack Fredrickson
“I made him, Dek,” Amanda shouted. “I made Stanley take me up here.”
I looked at her face, saw fear and panic, but saw the future, too. I saw the guilt that would haunt her for the rest of her life if Stanley died inside her house.
I grabbed the flashlight she was holding and shoved the Monet at her.
“Find Till,” I shouted, pointing at the cluster of men behind the fire engines. “Tell him the bomber is in a tunnel that leads from your basement. Tell him everything is going to go up. Tell him Stanley is in the house.”
“But where will youâ”
“Do it,” I yelled.
She hesitated, nodding her head, but still frozen. I grabbed her shoulders and shook them hard. Then she ran, the Monet swinging under one arm, stumbling in a contorted, hobbled jog down Chanticleer toward the group of men huddled behind the two fire engines.
I ran back into the house.
Grotesque black shadows danced in pantomime on the walls of the foyer, dark reflections of the trees and the smoke and the flames in the new light of the second explosion. There was no noise. No sirens, no firemen yelling, no big engines racing up Chanticleer. They weren't coming. They'd been held back, away from the explosions at the west end.
More debris had fallen in the foyer. The plaster dust was thicker now, making the foyer look like a barnacle-encrusted stateroom caught in the glare of an underwater shipwreck photograph. Jagged cracks ran up the walls. Soon, the walls would start falling.
I crossed the foyer in the strange new light, to the base of the stairs going up. The staircase canted downward, loose from the wall. A main support had given way. I looked up. The crack in the ceiling had grown to be a foot wide. Beyond it, a trace of orange peeked from the second-floor landing. New firelight, showing through the collapsing roof.
My shoes ground at the debris as I hurried into the central hall. The house was dead quiet now. Chillingly, the pops and groans of just a few minutes before had stopped, as if the house were holding
its breath for one last shudder, one final exhalation, before it let go and collapsed.
its breath for one last shudder, one final exhalation, before it let go and collapsed.
I moved down the hall, past the living room arch. Outside the dining room, my foot struck something that wasn't plaster. I looked down, then bent to pick it up. It was an old Army flashlight, olive plastic, with its head set at a right angle to the body. The lens and the bulb were gone. My finger touched something damp. I turned the Army flashlight around and held it to the light coming from the foyer. It was blood, mixed with plaster and several short strands of dark hair. I threw it down. It had been used to strike Amanda.
I switched on the rechargeable flashlight and went into the dining room. The beam flickered and then died as I swept it around the empty room. I shut the light off, rapped it hard against my leg, and turned it on again. No beam. I dropped it on the floor. Without a charge, it was worthless.
Down the hall, to the library. Like the dining room's, its windows were on the other side of the house from the fires. I made the circle around the walls, then crossed the carpet on a diagonal to make sure Stanley wasn't trussed up in the middle. The room was empty.
I hurried down the central hall, toward the little corridor that led to the family room. And stopped at the turn. A pale sliver of green light ran up the wall ahead. The basement door was ajar. The greenish light was coming from down below.
I wanted to run then, run like a man on fire. It was Till's job I was doing, hunting to save a man trapped in a collapsing house. I turned, started for the foyer. And saw Amanda, in the dark, in my mind, as she'd been outside her house, tormented by guilt, and pleading. I could give the basement a quick look from the top of the stairs, and then run to get Till. He could send his men into the basement of that collapsing house to find Stanley. I turned back.
But I wasn't going anywhere near that green sliver of light without a knife.
There was a door to the kitchen off that short hall. I eased past the basement door, went into the kitchen. It was brighter now, from the second fire; the light coming in through the slats was strong enough to bathe everything in soft, ghostly illumination. I went to the knife block, found the big-handled carving knife. I'd never been in a knife fight, and I doubted I could cut a man, but it might give me enough courage to make it a step or two down the basement stairs. I went out to the short hall.
Ten feet from the basement door, I got down on my knees, crawled as silently as I could through the grit to the sliver of green light. I reached with the blade of the knife to ease open the basement door. A cold draft of air came up, dry, as if from a crypt. Dropping to my belly, I pushed forward and looked down. The base of the stairs was dark, barely visible in the soft green gloom. For a second, I let myself hope that the green light was coming in from outside, but then I remembered that the houses in Gateville didn't have basement windows.
Someone was down there.
Head first, still on my belly, I pulled myself down one step, but I could see nothing. I was too high up. I pulled myself down another step. Still the walls blocked my view. I pushed back, got to my feet. I'd have to go down. At the third step, the staircase was open at the sides; no walls, just handrails. I could see there. But I'd be vulnerable. If somebody were waiting, a grab from either side would send me tumbling down onto the concrete.
Something crashed upstairs, shaking the whole house. A roof rafter or a ceiling joist had broken away. Down or out, I had to do it now.
I gripped the carving knife tight in my right hand, eased onto the first step, then stopped, partially hunched to slash at a first touch at my ankle. But nothing moved. I took a second step, then a third. Each time I stopped, tensed to cut at a hand coming out of the strange green glow. But only the faraway shiftings of the joists
and rafters, vague and restless, stirred the house. I took the rest of the steps down, and moved behind the stairs.
and rafters, vague and restless, stirred the house. I took the rest of the steps down, and moved behind the stairs.
The green light came from an opening cut into the center of the south basement wall. The cutout was roughly chiseled and about two feet square. Rock-sized, irregular chunks of cement lay on the floor underneath, where they'd fallen when the hole was cut.
It was the entrance to the tunnel to the bomb shelter.
I looked around the basement and saw the familiar outlines of the wicker lawn furniture that her father had left behind, the few boxes of Christmas ornaments, the couple of extra suitcases, and, toward the cutout, the black upright coffin shapes of the two furnaces. Nothing moved; the basement seemed empty.
I looked back at the cutout wall, and caught my breath at what I'd missed. A man was hunched in the corner of the south wall, huddled down, twenty feet from the cutout.
The green light dimmed, then surged brighter, then dimmed again.
And then it went out.
I stayed stock-still behind the stairs, tensed for any rustling in the corner. I clutched the carving knife, but I was wrapped in black gauze; in the darkness, I couldn't have defended myself against a blind man. I felt for the stair rail, then let my hand fall away. He'd expect that, expect me to run back up the stairs. I'd never make it to the top before he'd stab me, or shoot me, from behind. He wouldn't even have to aim. In the narrow stairwell, I'd be a rat in a tiny tunnel. All he'd have to do is slash or shoot at the sound of the fear coming ragged out of my lungs.
I waited, breathing shallowly, for the slightest change in the air around me. After a minute, I could stand it no longer. I was like a goat tethered to attract a lion, all fear and sweat and tingling instinct. I came out from under the stairs and moved in a crouch toward the furnaces along the west wall. He might not expect that, and in that tight space between the furnaces and the wall, I'd have
a chance to cut him. It would be like a knife fight in a closet, its outcome determined more by chance than skill. But it was a chance.
a chance to cut him. It would be like a knife fight in a closet, its outcome determined more by chance than skill. But it was a chance.
I touched the cold metal of the ductwork and slipped behind the furnaces. My skin prickling, my lungs starving for oxygen, I steadied myself against the duct, locked my eyes on the spot in the darkness where the man had been, and breathed in.
The green light glowed back on, slightly brighter than before. The light was being run off a battery; someone had just changed it. I looked in the corner. The man was still there. Incredibly, he hadn't moved.
At best, it was Stanley Novak, bound and gagged, but alive. At worst, it was Stanley, dead. No, at worst it was someone with a knife, ready to slit my throat. I supposed the good news was the house might come down on both of us before he could do that.
I came out from behind the furnace, low, knife tight in my right hand, eyes on the corner. Ten feet, eight feet, the shape didn't move. At three feet, I stopped, reached to touch it with the knifepoint. The shape puckered. I bent down and touched cloth. It was the empty sleeve of a heavy jacket. I pushed at it. It fell to one side. It was just an empty jacket, tossed upright in the corner.
I crouched down and felt familiar flapped pockets with Velcro closures and a zipper set into the collar where a thin hood was stored. I knew those kinds of pockets; I knew that kind of zipper. I'd bought a jacket just like it from a surplus store when I was a kid. They came in only one color: Army olive drab.
I got down on my knees, grabbed the jacket, and crawled toward the green glow spilling out of the cutout. I needed to see; I needed to know. I stopped two feet to the right of the opening and turned the jacket so I could make out the nametape that every one of those jackets had sewn above the right pocket. I held it close to the light. JAYNES, it read.
All my theories, all my smug posturing about Jaynes being long
gone, had been crap. He'd come back. He was on the other side of the cutout, in the tunnel, twisting wires, connecting the circuits that would soon blow the rest of Gateville to the moon.
gone, had been crap. He'd come back. He was on the other side of the cutout, in the tunnel, twisting wires, connecting the circuits that would soon blow the rest of Gateville to the moon.
But he had to know that Gateville was crawling now with cops and Feds. He couldn't get away.
The jimjams tittered, a sneering chorus: He wasn't doing it for money, not anymore. He was acting out a different last act of the play he'd written in 1970. And this finale had him exiting in a blaze of twisted, deranged glory, taking the cops, the firemen, and everybody else outside with him. I saw Amanda among them, clutching her Monet.
Something huge thundered upstairs, banging the ducts, ringing the pipes. For a second I let myself hope that the sudden loud noise might be pounding boots, Till's men, storming down the hall with flashlights and guns. I turned toward the center of the basement, to the stairs I could not see, praying for the first flash of a handheld light. But nothing lit the staircase, and the noise upstairs stopped. Till's men wouldn't come, not into a house laced with explosives.
I got to my knees and peered over the top of the roughly cut ledge. There couldn't be much time left now.
The tunnel was made of poured concrete, five feet high, four feet wide. Just big enough for a family to run through, single file, bent over. The only light came from the lone green bulb hanging by the tunnel opening, strung with two skinny wires that ran along the ceiling from deep inside the tunnel. Twenty feet in, the tunnel dissolved into darkness.
The bulb flickered and brightened again, and I saw the wires to the bulb, one black, one white, jangle slowly below the tunnel ceiling. He was doing something with the wires, deep inside the tunnel, connecting them to something else.
I looked down. Stacked low against the concrete wall were several spools of wire, a dozen black-box timers, and a dozen square batteries, each the size of a baking-soda box. Farthest in lay an object
wrapped in silver carpet tape. It was another battery, this one attached to a timer, and to something else: a small cube wrapped in plastic. It was a timer bomb.
wrapped in silver carpet tape. It was another battery, this one attached to a timer, and to something else: a small cube wrapped in plastic. It was a timer bomb.
I didn't let myself think.
I crawled over the jagged, chiseled ledge of the cutout and dropped down, hands first, onto the floor of the tunnel. The cement was chalky from being entombed for so many years. I moved to the pile against the wall.
Each of the spools looked like it held hundreds of feet of fine thin wire, yellow, red, black, and white. I heard again the puzzled voice of the old electrician I'd hired to check out the lamppost. “These wires don't belong here,” he'd said. “Too skinny for residential or commercial use.” Maybe, old friend. But they were all that was needed to carry a spark from a battery through a timer a few hundred feet to one of those little plastic-wrapped cubes of D.X.12.
Just a few spools of that wire and some timers, batteries, and cubes of D.X.12 would be enough to blow all of Gateville to hell.
I saw it all in a second. Jaynes would have told his crew the extra, thin wire was for battery lights, or alarms, or any of a number of low-voltage items. They wouldn't have questioned him; he was their supervisor, and there were lots of things that were hush-hush about the construction of Gateville. They wouldn't have been around later anyway, when he came back to attach the thin wires to the little cubes that he then covered with a few shovelfuls of dirt. The other ends of the wires, the trigger ends, he would have already had his men run into the labyrinth of the bomb shelter tunnels. He'd have left those alone, for later, when it was time to attach the battery-operated timers with the round dials.
Next step was to test his plan. He sent the first note, demanding the ten thousand dollars. Then, after a few days, he hung around after his shift at Gateville, twisted a timer onto the pair of wires that led to the little cube he'd buried behind the guardhouse, set
the dial, and was probably having the pot roast special at some diner when the back wall of the guard house blew off. He'd probably mailed the second letter after dessert, telling them where to leave the ten thousand. So simple, he must have thought. Plans that work are always simple.
the dial, and was probably having the pot roast special at some diner when the back wall of the guard house blew off. He'd probably mailed the second letter after dessert, telling them where to leave the ten thousand. So simple, he must have thought. Plans that work are always simple.
I squinted into the tunnel. Somewhere in there, dozens, maybe hundreds, of thin wires came together, needing only a battery and a timer and the final twist of a dial to make them lethal. Jaynes was in there, too, probably so crazy by now he didn't give a damn about anything except twisting the last of his wires together. Maybe he had a gun and was hoping someone like me would come looking, so he could put a bullet into my brain and have a last giggle before he twisted the dial.
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