He shrugged.
“That’s why you brought me here?”
“It’s not just my gut that likes you, Elstrom. My head does, too.”
Blonder’s breath tickled the hairs on the back of my neck. He’d moved closer, ready to snap handcuffs on me. I moved a step to the side.
“You’re grasping, Till. You can’t find Jaynes, you can’t make a case against Chernek, you won’t look for anybody else, so you’re aiming at me.”
“You really like Jaynes for this, Elstrom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Chernek?”
“You’re blowing smoke on him, trying to force a motive.”
“So who fits better than you, Elstrom?”
Behind me, Blonder exhaled softly.
“Maybe the missing man,” I said. “The one we don’t know about. The one who got in here tonight.”
Till watched my eyes. “There was another note, came day before yesterday. Two million.”
“They’ll never pay two-” I stopped. “It arrived the day before yesterday?”
He nodded slowly, his eyes still locked on mine.
“When was the payment supposed to be made?”
“Four days from now, Sunday night.”
“The note arrived day before yesterday, and the bomb goes off tonight? He didn’t give the Board time to pay.”
Till nodded. “Bingo, Elstrom. Ballsard called me two days ago, screaming, said they’d just received another note, this one demanding that two million be left next Sunday, same place. Ballsard said he couldn’t pay, not two million.”
“So what was the plan?”
“We were going to surround the drop site, try to grab him.”
“There was no way for the bomber to know you weren’t going to pay.”
“Bingo again.” Till’s eyes were hot on mine. “The bomber couldn’t know he wasn’t going to get more money-”
I finished it for him: “-unless he was connected to the investigation.”
“Bingo for the third time, Elstrom. You’ve got all the answers, and that brings us right back to you.”
“I didn’t know about the new note, Till.”
“Unless you sent it.”
“Even if I had, I couldn’t have known Ballsard wasn’t going to pay.”
“You could have had ways.”
“Why did you pull me out here, Till?”
“I wanted to watch you watch the fire.” Till turned to look up Chanticleer. There were only flashing red and blue lights now. The yellow glow from the flames was gone.
“Bingo your ass, Till.”
Till smiled.
Twenty-four
The Bohemian called at seven fifteen, his voice quivering like he was a hundred years old. “Four have died. Turn on your T.V.”
“Till hauled me out there. I just got back.” I held the cell phone next to my ear as I went down the stairs to the first floor. I’d left my television on the table saw.
“What the hell’s happening?”
“Hold on.” I switched on the little T.V., fiddling one-handed with the wire antenna until the snow went away. Agent Till was on Channel 7, standing at a plywood lectern in front of the green cinder-block wall at the Maple Hills police station. Black microphones with local T.V. logos were clustered in front of him. The crawler at the bottom of the screen said it was a live broadcast. “I’ll call you back,” I said, and clicked off. I turned up the volume.
Till was nodding at a perky young thing in a thin sweater. “Of course, we have to assume this explosion is related to the one in June. We’re not ruling anything out.”
The live shot on the screen switched to the composite renderings of Michael Jaynes. “What you are seeing now is computer-aged pictures of a man we are seeking for questioning,” Till’s voice saidover the image on the screen. “His name is Michael Jaynes, he is sixty years old, and we believe he may have information about the explosions at Crystal Waters. We don’t have a current picture, only an old Army photo, which we have used to prepare several views of what he might look like now. We are asking anyone with any information to call us or the Maple Hills Police Department.”
“Any other suspects?” one of the reporters shouted.
The screen flashed back to the lectern. Till was looking right into the camera, like he was looking right into my eyes.
I squeezed the little television with both hands, as if I could keep the screen from showing the photo the Tribune had taken of me during the Evangeline Wilts trial. “Don’t do this, Till,” I heard myself say.
Till paused and then said, “None at this time.” He shifted his eyes from the camera lens-and from me. I breathed and relaxed my grip on the television.
“What else can you tell us about Michael Jaynes?” the early morning man from the local Fox affiliate asked.
The cameraman widened the view to include the area to the side of the lectern. Chief Morris, wearing a tight uniform, was standing a full step back and off to the side from Till.
“Unfortunately, very little,” Till said. “He was an electrician who worked on the construction of Crystal Waters. We believe he may have gained information back then that pertains to the current situation.”
“You’re going back to 1970 with this?” a reporter called out from the back row.
“We’re being thorough.”
“There is speculation that this is actually the third bombing at Crystal Waters this summer, the second being a lamppost outside the walls. What have you been doing since the house explosion in June?”
The room went silent. Behind Till, Chief Morris took another step back. Till gripped the sides of the lectern.
“We’re asking residents of Crystal Waters to vacate their homes temporarily-”
Pandemonium broke out as all the reporters began screaming questions at once.
“Are there more bombs?” someone shouted above the din.
“We’re going to conduct a house-to-house search for evidence,” Till yelled, holding up his hand for quiet.
He waited until the shouting stopped. “We have no reason to believe there are any more bombs. As a precaution, the road outside Crystal Waters is being closed to all public traffic, effective immediately. We need to keep spectators away while we conduct our investigation.”
“Are you cutting the electric to Crystal Waters?” a reporter at the front of the throng asked.
To the side and back from the lectern, Chief Morris shut his eyes.
“We might have to shut off the current to check the security of the electrical lines. Again, we’re just being thorough.”
A female voice: “You mean the bombs might be hardwired into-”
“What about Anton Chernek?” the Channel 5 field man said loudly from the front row, cutting her off. I turned up the volume on the T.V. The Channel 5 man had good sources, maybe good enough to have learned that I was a suspect as well.
“What about Anton Chernek?” Till repeated, looking almost gratefully at the Channel 5 reporter. The other reporters hadn’t picked up on the trampled question about hardwiring, the one question that, if answered, would have caused all the television stations to abandon local programming in favor of a vigil outside Crystal Waters, their cameras aimed for the big blow.
“You also have Chernek,” the Channel 5 reporter prompted.
Till stared at the reporter, feigning confusion. “We don’t ‘have’ Anton Chernek. We’re A.T.F. Mr. Chernek was arrested on an unrelated financial matter by the F.B.I., and he’s free on bond. Thank you,” Till said abruptly, as he stepped away from the lectern. Chief Morris scrambled after him.
The sweet young thing in the thin sweater filled my four-inch screen. “That’s the situation from Maple Hills,” she said, signing off, as the screen went to a live helicopter shot of Crystal Waters. From up high, the fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances parked crazily along Chanticleer Circle looked like toys discarded by a monster child.
I stared at the helicopter shot of the charred ruins of the house that had exploded just hours before, the newly landscaped Farraday lot around the bend toward the guardhouse, and, across the wall, the lamppost next to where the school bus shelter had once stood. All were in the same northwest quadrant of Gateville. I kept looking at the screen, still seeing the helicopter shot, long after the picture had cut away to a commercial.