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 womananswered 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 acouple 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.