The Alpine Obituary (31 page)

Chapter Seventeen

WITH ONLY THE briefest of explanations to the Thorstensens, I raced out of their house and drove away as if Satan himself were in pursuit. It took me less than five minutes to reach the radio station site. All the emergency vehicles were roaring to the spot. I slowed down within about fifty feet and surveyed what was left of KSKY.

Frankly, I couldn’t see much through the smoke and flames. The clearing was alight as the fire raged. I flinched as a couple of small explosions went off somewhere inside the inferno. I could barely make out the rear part of the building that had been left standing. Not that Spence had built himself a broadcasting Taj Mahal—KSKY was a small cinder-block edifice consisting of a half-dozen cramped rooms. Some fifty feet away from the building, I noted that the radio tower was still intact. Apparently whoever had bombed the station had wanted to destroy the people, along with the place.

As the firefighters uncoiled their hoses, I spotted Milo pulling up behind the engines. The other emergency vehicles were arriving, including a state patrol car and a Forest Service truck, as well as Alpine’s medics and ambulance crew, who were having a busy day. As I hurried toward the sheriff, the smoke made me cough and my eyes began smarting.

I stopped short of Milo as I saw him confer with one of the firefighters. Then I caught sight of a huddled figure leaning against a tree while another person paced close by.

“Hey!” The pacer called to the medics. “Over here! Craig’s hurt!”

Milo turned, shouting to the man who had asked for help. “Anybody else inside the building?”

“No,” answered the man, who I now could see was young and fair-haired and might have been in shock. He stopped pacing, then held his head as if reconsidering his answer. “No.” He sounded more confident the second time around. “Craig was the only one in the station. I was outside having a smoke during a canned feature.”

The medics were tending to Craig, whose head was bleeding and who seemed to be in some pain. If memory served, Craig was an older college student who served as KSKY’s engineer. I guessed that the younger man was Rick Corrolla, the D.J. I’d heard a few hours earlier.

“Where’s Fleetwood?” Milo yelled as the fire hoses began to douse the blaze.

“What?” Rick—assuming it was Rick—looked at the sheriff in a dazed manner.

Naturally, I didn’t have a camera with me. Scott had gone to Seattle. Maybe Vida was home by now. I dialed her number, but she didn’t answer. In desperation, I called Leo, who was at his apartment, watching the same football game that had so enthralled Don Thorstensen.

“Jesus,” Leo said in wonder when I hurriedly told him what had happened. “I’ll grab a camera and be right there. Anybody killed?”

“No, but the engineer is hurt. Hurry.” I clicked off.

The rain was helping to put out the fire. Fortunately, it hadn’t gone beyond the clearing, where flames or sparks might have touched off the surrounding trees and brush. Craig was attempting to get to his feet, but the medics wouldn’t let him. They had a gurney and apparently were trying to talk Rick into going to the hospital, too. Rick, however, had resumed pacing and was shaking his head.

I figured this was my only chance to get a firsthand interview. “Rick?” I called. “What happened?”

Rick stopped moving, but was still having trouble focusing. “I don’t know.”

“You were outside?”

He nodded. “I was having a smoke. Jeez, smoking probably saved my life. The studio must be gone. Poor Craig, he got the worst of it.”

“He looks like he’ll be okay,” I said gently. “So somebody threw a bomb into the station?”

“I guess so.” He paused, reaching for his cigarettes. His hands shook as he tried to light up. “I was standing out back and then I heard this huge noise. Wham!” He held out his arms to indicate the enormity of the blast. “It lit up everything like it was daytime. In fact, I guess it knocked me down.” The cigarette was finally aglow. Rick paused to take a deep puff. “I looked around, and the whole place was starting to go up. What was left of it, I mean. The rear part of the building wasn’t hit so hard, not at first. I went through the back door and got Craig. He was half out of it. God. What a mess.”

“Do you know where Spence is?” I asked as one of the medics took Rick by the arm.

Rick shook his head. “He left, maybe half an hour ago. Somebody called and he had to run.”

I stepped aside as the medics took Rick to the aid car. Craig was being put in the ambulance, which had its lights flashing. Milo was now concentrating on the fire that was mercifully sputtering out.

“I hope Fleetwood’s got insurance,” the sheriff said, walking over to join me. “I put out an APB on him. He’s out of business for awhile.”

“That depends,” I said. “He can broadcast from a pup tent.”

“Had he gotten any threats lately?” Milo asked.

“Not that I know of.” I wiped my eyes with a Kleenex. “He did get a letter a couple of weeks ago that sounded sort of like the one Judge Marsha got.”

“But no threat of violence?”

“I don’t think so. But,” I continued, remembering a remark Spence had made, “he mentioned getting the occasional bomb threat. It didn’t sound like it worried him.”

“Maybe it should have,” said Milo.

“Rick told me Spence got a phone call about a half-hour ago that seemed to make him tear out of the studio,” I said.

“Hunh.” Milo surveyed the cloud of white smoke that was settling among the radio station’s ruins. “That’s odd. You wouldn’t get a bomb threat and go off without the other guys. Who would want to blow up KSKY,” he went on with a sly glance at me, “besides you?”

“Very funny,” I retorted as Leo’s car came down the road just as the ambulance and the medic van drove off. My ad manager pulled up on the verge where the medical emergency vehicles had been parked. The area was still crowded with at least a dozen other cars and trucks that had stopped to take in the excitement.

With camera in hand, Leo waved at the sheriff and me. “Did I miss a bloody victim photo-op?”

“Actually,” I said, “you did. But that’s okay. We’ve still got smoke. And what’s left of the station.”

Leo didn’t waste any time. He finished the first roll in a couple of minutes, then reloaded and began taking pictures of Milo, the two state patrol officers, and Wes Amundson from the Forest Service.

“I’m leaving,” I announced. “My eyes are driving me nuts. Thanks, Leo.”

“No problem.” Leo was still shooting film.

Back inside my car. I sat very still for a few moments. I was tired. It had been a long, harrowing day. The rain was letting up. I’d go home, change into my robe, zap the Chinese takeout, and collapse in front of the TV. It was a travel day for the Mariners, so there was no baseball. Maybe I’d catch the end of the football game instead.

I will never really know why I did what I did next. Some might call it fate. Others might say it was perversity. I’d like to think it was simply journalistic curiosity along with a need to get the smoke and the chemicals out of my eyes and lungs. Maybe I wanted to close the circle on Marsha Foster-Klein and go back to the site of the photo that had sent Vida and me on a wild goose chase.

Whatever the reason, I found myself driving past the college’s computer lab and pulling off by Burl Creek where the railroad trestle is located. I got out of the Lexus and walked into the clearing. The clouds were moving swiftly across the sky. The three-quarter moon was on the rise, illuminating the trestle.

I looked up in disbelief. A rope fell from the railroad tracks above the creek.

And a man dangled from the rope.

I was too horrified to scream.

There was no need to panic. The sheriff was less than half a mile away. I was a hardened journalist. Assuming the man on the rope was dead—and from what I could tell, he definitely was—there was no immediate danger.

Steeling myself, I looked closer at the figure that swayed some fifteen feet above the ground. The moon disappeared for a moment, hampering my sight. Burl Creek offered the sound of sedate water burbling toward the river. I could still catch a faint whiff of the smoke from the fire, but it mingled with the pine trees on the hill behind me. When the clouds rolled on, I peered upward again.

The dead man was middle-aged, dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and a denim jacket. His long dark hair may have had some gray in it. The beard did not. I couldn’t help but wondering if I was looking at the body of Ezekiel Foster-Klein.

My nerves had settled. I reached for my purse to get the cell phone. As usual, it had fallen to the bottom. The clouds had once again covered the moon. Looking in my purse was like peering into a deep well. I swore out loud as I felt every other item—notebook, keys, compact, hairbrush, wallet, checkbook, sunglasses case, eyeliner, lipsticks, Kleenex, and what seemed like a dozen pens. Finally, I located the damned phone. I was extracting it from the rest of the rubble when a strong hand gripped my forearm.

“I wouldn’t call the sheriff if I were you,” said the voice that despite its ragged edge I recognized as belonging to Spencer Fleetwood.

I gasped and tried to turn around. Spence yanked the phone out of my hand. He looked dreadful, his sharp features haggard and his brown eyes darting in every direction.

“Move,” Spence ordered, still holding my arm tight and adding a nudge with his knee for emphasis. “Come on, Emma, don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

It would do no good to scream. The road was too far away and there wasn’t a house within a hundred yards. I had no choice but to obey. Spence was steering me toward his Beamer, parked about thirty feet beyond my Lexus. If it had been there when I arrived, I hadn’t seen it in the dark.

Spence opened the rear door on the driver’s side and told me to get in. At least, I thought dismally, he wasn’t going to stuff me into the trunk. Not yet, anyway.

Spence moved in beside me. I wondered if he had a gun. He seemed to be breathing rather hard, and for the first time I noticed that there was a cut on his cheek and his knuckles were badly bruised.

“I wish to God you hadn’t come along just now,” he said. “Why, Emma? What brought you here?”

Since I wasn’t really sure and in no mental shape for reflection, I gave a halfhearted shrug. “Curiosity, I guess.”

“God!” Spence’s jaw clamped shut. He was staring straight ahead into the darkened car. “Now what do I do about it?”

“About . . . what?” My voice sounded feeble.

He turned to face me. His eyes seemed to throw sparks even in the almost nonexistent light. “Why did it have to be you?” The words were ground out of his mouth, almost unrecognizable from his usual smooth, mellow radio voice. He squeezed my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “
Why
?”

“I . . . don’t . . . know.” It wasn’t easy to talk with my lower jaw immobilized.

Spence’s free hand moved to the back of my neck. He let go of my chin and placed his fingers on my throat. I tried to pull away, but he had me pinned against the car door. If only I could reach behind me, maybe I could open the door if it wasn’t locked. . . .

I twisted myself around as best I could, my right hand groping for the lever. It wouldn’t take much for Spence to snuff the life out of me. I couldn’t see his face; it was too close; now his cheek was against mine. I felt a switch of some kind. Was it the door or the window? I pressed it, but nothing happened. The door must be locked.

I was so terrified, so caught up in trying to escape that it didn’t dawn on me that I wasn’t being strangled. It was the soft, whimpering noise that got my attention. Spence’s hands had dropped behind me, his head was on my shoulder, and he was crying.

What sounded like grief brought me to my senses and restored my vocal cords. “Spence! What’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer right away but continued to sob. Finally, he looked at me, then sat up, removed his hands, and wiped his eyes.

“Christ. I can’t believe this is happening!”

“You mean the bomb? Or . . .” I wasn’t sure who the hanged man was, so I merely said, “...the body over the creek?”

“Both!” Spence leaned back against the soft leather upholstery. “This is just a nightmare. I’ve lost everything. It was supposed to turn out so different.”

My fears in abeyance, I managed to recover some compassion. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. Is there somewhere you can start?”

Spence took a handkerchief out of his pocket. The blood on his cheek was dry, but a few droplets still oozed from his knuckles. He wiped his hands again, then patted at the bloody hand. “I don’t know if I should.”

My next question took some courage. “Are you going to kill me?”

A hint of amusement crossed Spence’s face. “Kill you? What made you think I was going to kill you?”

“You were kind of rough with me,” I replied slowly. “You scared the hell out of me.”

Spence sighed. “That was panic. I just wanted to get out of that place with . . . Zeke.”

“I thought it was Zeke Foster-Klein. Did you know him?” Spence regarded me with a strange expression I couldn’t fathom. “Know him? Of course I knew Zeke. He was my brother.”

I could hardly believe that Spencer Fleetwood was really Gabe Foster-Klein. But it was true. I should have guessed he wasn’t Spencer Fleetwood. It was so obviously a made-up radio name.

“So you’re not living with your family in Santa Barbara and hustling air-conditioning,” I finally said after the shock had ebbed.

Taking out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, Spence frowned. “Is that what Marsha told you?”

I nodded and gratefully accepted the offer of a Balkan Sobranie. “She also told me she had no idea where Zeke was.”

“She knew, because I told her,” Spence said, rubbing gingerly at his chin, which I noticed was also bruised. “But she found out only in the past couple of weeks.”

I thought back to my suspicions about Spence visiting Marsha. He’d brought flowers, which seemed to indicate a romance. It never occurred to me that the relationship might be very different.