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.
The next morning, when the sun at last came out, I strung up my undies and called the roofer and gave him the go-ahead. I still didn’t have a permit, but that only sweetened my rage. I needed a roof, but after two weeks of waiting for Gateville, I needed the gutemptying release of outright conflict even more.
I made sure to be working outside, two days later, when the roofing crew arrived. It took just seventeen minutes for Elvis to storm over. His skin had worsened.
I told him I was having the roof patched, not replaced. He demanded entry. I told him to get a warrant. He told me he didn’t need one. I blocked the door. And so it went, on and off, for three days, while from above, the roofers tossed bits of my old roof from the top of the turret. They were ridiculous, those outdoor arguments in the hot August sun, but good for his complexion. By the time the roofers were done, his skin had noticeably improved. And I had gotten a few solid hours where my stomach wasn’t queasy, worrying about Gateville.
Till finally took one of my calls toward the end of August.
“I take it you found D.X.12 residue by my shed?”
“We’re still analyzing.”
“Have you tried to find out who might have put it there?”
He chuckled softly into the phone.
I asked other questions. He was polite. Yes, he’d sent out the computer pictures of Michael Jaynes. No, he’d not gotten any responses yet. Yes, it was conceivable there were other suspects, but Chernek and I remained the primes. No, he had no one else specifically in mind. Yes, the best course was to evacuate Crystal Waters. No, he couldn’t enforce that. And no, he couldn’t comment on the Chernek investigation; it wasn’t his case.
“Bullshit to all of that,” I said.
“Absolutely,” he said.
And the last days of August dribbled away slowly, like water down a clogged drain.
Until early in the morning of August 30.
Twenty-three
They were battering down my front door, BAM BAM, BAM BAM, fast and loud in a one-two tattoo. I rolled off the cot, onto the floor, came awake. BAM BAM, BAM BAM, the pounding was closer now, as if men in heavy boots had gotten inside and were charging up the stairs, but it was the turret echoing, the metal stairs reverberating in sympathetic vibration with the timbered door.
The sky was black outside the slit windows. I rubbed at my eyes. The big red digital letters on my clock said it was three in the morning. Down below, the pounding went on: BAM BAM, BAM BAM. I grabbed my jeans and yesterday’s knit shirt from the chair, pulled on my Nikes, and ran down the stairs.
“Stop it!” I yelled through the door. I swung it open and switched on the outside light.
Two fresh-faced young suits stood under the light, looking like choirboys hawking chocolates to send their youth group to Salt Lake City to sing in the nationals. Except it was three in the morning. And they were holding A.T.F. photo I.D.’s.
“He’s here, sir,” the blonder of the two said into a cell phone. Helistened, nodded, and clicked the phone off with his thumb. “Please come with us, Mr. Elstrom.”
I took half a step back from the glare of the outside light. They both stepped forward.
“Am I being arrested?”
“Agent-in-Charge Till instructed us to bring you to Crystal Waters.”
The air went out of my lungs. “What happened?”
“Please come with us, sir,” Blonder said.
They walked me to the Crown Victoria. The other agent, the one with darker hair, opened the back door for me, and I got in. They sat in front. As Agent Blonder twisted the key, I started pressing with questions. Without turning around, Agent Other cut me off, saying their instructions were merely to drive me to Crystal Waters. Agent Till would speak to me there. We sped out of the dark of Rivertown in silence.
I didn’t have to wait the whole ride. I saw it in the sky above the ridge from two miles away: a bright red glow pushing at the black of the night like blood spilling into ink. I thought of yelling at the agents to tell me what was going on. But I didn’t. I knew. And as we got to the top of the ridge, I saw.
Flames punched high into the sky from inside the walls of Gateville, looking from the top of the ridge like a bonfire for giants. A hundred flashing red and blue lights, some still, some moving, ringed the inferno, down Chanticleer and out onto the highway. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars.
The inside of the Crown Victoria went white as headlamps came racing up from behind. A siren screamed. Blonder jerked the wheel and skidded onto the gravel shoulder as the fire truck raced past us. A hundred yards ahead, a Maple Hills police officer, lit up like prey in the glare of the fire engine’s headlights, yanked a wooden barricade out of the way a fraction of a second before the truck flew through.
Blonder checked his rearview mirror before pulling cautiously back onto the road. Holding his I.D. out the window, he coasted down to the police officer and stopped. The cop examined it in the glare of his flashlight and waved us through. Blonder drove the rest of the way down the hill hugging the shoulder, and pulled off the road two hundred yards short of the marble pillars. He shut off the engine.
Fire seemed to engulf the entire western half of Gateville. Flames shot up fifty, one hundred feet, spiking jagged yellows and oranges high into the air. I looked for the greatest concentration of flames, the highest density of flashing red and blue lights.
It was right where Amanda’s house was.
I pawed the door, fumbling for the handle. It was locked, from the front seat.
“Let me out,” I yelled.
Blonder started to say something, but a diesel fire truck pulled up next to us, blocking out his voice. I slapped at the window button. It was shut off, too.
“Let me out,” I shouted. I pressed my face against the glass, straining to see past the police cars and ambulances parked on the highway, past the uniformed police officers, white-shirted E.M.T.’s, and others in civilian clothes standing frozen on the blocked-off highway, watching the sky burn inside the wall.
The fire truck pulled away.
“That’s my wife’s house,” I yelled.
Blonder turned. “No, sir, that’s the house across the street from your ex-wife’s.” He opened the driver’s door and got out. Other shifted on the front seat so he could watch both me and the conflagration outside. They weren’t going to let me out.