"John did."
"Yeah. I don't know much about it. It hasn't been going on long."
"Didn't he brag? I thought men always kissed and told."
"Some do, I guess. But I don't know any. Guys I know don't talk about a woman till a relationship is over. Well, that's high school stuff anyway."
John's place seemed strange. There was an air of gloom about it, as if the structure knew, as if its heart had been ripped out. Nancy's decrepit Datsun stood behind Carrie's Satellite.
"This could get to be pure soap. Michael's wife is here."
Carrie had red, hollow eyes and wore an air of total despair when she answered the bell.
She stepped aside without speaking, apparently able to respond with nothing but a stare.
"Who is it?" Nancy called from the rear of the house. "News?" Her voice betrayed false optimism.
"It's Norm. And…" Carrie struggled for the name.
"Beth Tavares," Beth told her.
Nancy came from the kitchen. She was pale, tense, had a tall drink in hand. Cash glanced around. There had been a lot of drinking and very little housekeeping here since John's disappearance. "Dad?…"
"It's news all right." Carrie sniffled. "Bad news."
Where are the kids? Cash wondered. Farmed out to a grandmother? "You'd both better sit down."
"I told you!"
Beth moved nearer Carrie. The woman was on the verge of hysteria.
"Shit!" Cash swore. The grief was creeping up on him too.
Nancy made Carrie gulp half her drink, forcing her head back till she choked. "Calm down, Carrie. We expected bad news, didn't we? Dad, get it over with. Did he really go this time?"
"Go? This time?"
"He's threatened to before. He even started out one time."
"Not this time. I wish that's all it was."
Nancy sat down on Carrie's feet. In an instant she had become as haggard as her cousin.
"We think he's been killed." Christ, wasn't there a gentler way?
"Oh my God!" Carrie moaned. And visibly pulled herself together, becoming more sober, more alert, more intense.
"How, Dad? What happened?"
"We're not sure…"
Beth interrupted. "Norm, let me. You've torn yourself up enough. Make yourself a drink."
"There's Coke in the fridge," Carrie told him. "I think there's still some Bacardi Dark in the liquor cabinet." She had changed radically. Already she was straightening everything within reach.
How long before she breaks? Cash asked himself. As soon as she runs out of laundry, dirty dishes and dusting?
It wasn't a response that could be maintained indefinitely. He knew. He had tried it.
He mixed a weak, water glass full and downed it. Belching, he mixed another, stronger drink. The wall phone began ringing. It went on and on. Should he answer it just to get it to stop?
It did so as he sipped and stared through the kitchen window into the backyard. The swing John had bought his kids last spring creaked in the breeze, abandoned. Grass grew where little feet should have dragged the earth bare. The children just hadn't been interested. To the swing's left stood the brick barbecue pit he had helped John build two years ago. He smiled weakly, remembering how often they had screwed up.
Yes. John might as well have been his son.
"Norm!"
Beth sounded hysterical.
He ran, expecting to find Carrie dying of self-inflicted wounds.
Beth shoved a phone at him. She stared at the thing as if it had turned into a snake.
"Cash. What is it?"
He listened for fifteen seconds, then slammed the receiver down, grabbed his coat. Beth barely kept up as he ran to the car.
It was the first time he had had occasion to use the siren. He flipped the switch, expecting nothing. But the banshee voice began moaning its death song.
They had begun digging for the bodies by the time he reached the Groloch house. Marylin Railsback had gotten there somehow, and was seated on a rubble-strewn lawn one door east, holding her husband. Hank was crying. Marylin couldn't get him to stop.
The explosion had shattered windows for blocks around. The facing walls of the nearest flats bore pocks and scars. One door west, firemen and neighborhood volunteers were shoring a wall that threatened to fall.
The Groloch house had been powdered.
Cash looked for someone calm enough to explain.
"What happened, Smitty?"
"Huh? Oh. Hi. I wasn't here. Ran over from the other place. From what I can make out, they broke through a false wall in the basement and found some kind of electronic rig. Nobody could figure it out. Old Man Railsback decided to fire it up to see what it did."
"Booby-trapped?"
"Looks like. Smell the dynamite?"
"Yeah. Poor Hank. He's taking it hard."
"Poor lots of people. There were eight men down there."
Tucholski and Malone had their heads together a short way away. The agent kept his briefcase clamped between his ankles while he studied a half-dozen sheets of green paper. Tucholski had a handful of photographs.
Cash went over. "What's happening?"
Tucholski expelled a blue cloud. "One of the evidence technicians took these. Polaroid."
Cash studied photos of something from Tom Swift. Bloody fingerprints smeared most.
"He was lucky. Got out with a broken back." Murder burned in Tucholski's eyes.
"What is it?"
Tucholski shrugged. "Maybe the time machine you were looking for."
Cash turned to Malone.
"Don't look at me. I don't know either. But it's something like the thing the Germans found at Lidice."
"Just a bunch of wires and old-time tubes. Look at the size of some of those babies. But she booby-trapped it. With enough dynamite to do this." Cash's sentences were as much puzzled questions as statements.
Tucholski muttered something about the basement being walled off for ages, and what would have happened if the explosive hadn't been old?
"I've got a whole different case from last March," Norm continued. "And I just get more confused. There's got to be some sense in it somewhere. Mr. Malone?"