6 DEAD, 14 INJURED IN DANBURY BOMB ATTACK
Radical Group Claims Responsibility
'No One Meant to Be Hurt,' Female Caller Tells Police
The group — Militant Students for Peace, they called themselves — planted the bomb in a lecture hall on the Danbury UConn campus. On the day of the explosion, Coleman Chemicals was holding job interviews there between ten A.M. and four P.M. The bomb was apparently supposed to go off at six in the morning, when the building was empty. It failed to do so. At eight o'clock, then again at nine, someone (presumably someone from the MSP) called Campus Security and reported the presence of a bomb in the first-floor lecture hall. There were cursory searches and no evacuation. 'This was our eighty-third bomb-threat of the year,'
an unidentified Campus Security officer was quoted as saying. No bomb was found, although the MSP later claimed vehemently that the exact location — the air-conditioning duct on the left side of the hall — had been given. There was evidence (persuasive evidence to Willie Shearman if to no one else) that at quarter past noon, while the job interviews were in recess for lunch, a young woman made an effort — at considerable risk to her own life and limb —
to retrieve the UXB herself. She spent perhaps ten minutes in the then-vacant lecture hall before being led away, protesting, by a young man with long black hair. The janitor who saw them later identified the man as Raymond Fiegler, head of the MSP. He identified the young woman as Carol Gerber.
At ten minutes to two that afternoon, the bomb finally went off. Gobless the living; gobless the dead.
Willie turns the page. Here is a headline from the Oklahoma City Oklahoman. April of 1971.
3 RADICALS KILLED IN ROADBLOCK SHOOTOUT
'Big Fish' May Have Escaped by Minutes,
Says FBI SAC Thurman
The big fish were John and Sally McBride, Charlie 'Duck' Golden, the elusive Raymond Fiegler . . . and Carol. The remaining members of the MSP, in other words. The McBrides and Golden died in Los Angeles six months later, someone in the house still shooting and tossing grenades even as the place burned down. Neither Fiegler nor Carol was in the burnedout shell, but the police techs found large quantities of spilled blood which had been typed AB Positive. A rare blood-type. Carol Gerber's blood-type.
Dead or alive? Alive or dead? Not a day goes by that Willie doesn't ask himself this question.
He turns to the next page of the scrapbook, knowing he should stop, he should get home, Sharon will worry if he doesn't at least call (he will call, from downstairs he will call, she's right, he's very dependable), but he doesn't stop just yet.
The headline over the photo showing the charred skull of the house on Benefit Street is from the Los Angeles Times'.
3 OF 'DANBURY 12' DIE IN EAST L.A.
Police Speculate Murder-Suicide Pact
Only Fiegler, Cerber Unaccounted For
Except the cops believed Carol, at least, was dead. The piece made diat clear. At the time, Willie had also been convinced it was so. All that blood. Now, however . . . Dead or alive? Alive or dead? Sometimes his heart whispers to him that the blood doesn't matter, that she got away from that small frame house long before the final acts of insanity were committed there. At other times he believes what the police believe — that she and Fiegler slipped away from the others only after the first shootout, before the house was surrounded; that she either died of wounds suffered in that shootout or was murdered by Fiegler because she was slowing him down. According to this scenario the fiery girl with the blood on her face and the sign in her hand is probably now just a bag of bones cooking in the desert someplace east of the sun and west of Tonopah.
Willie touches the photo of the burned-out house on Benefit Street . . . and suddenly a name comes to him, the name of the man who maybe stopped Dong Ha from becoming another My Lai or My Khe. Slocum. That was his name, all right. It's as if the blackened beams and broken windows have whispered it to him.
Willie closes the scrapbook and puts it away, feeling oddly at peace. He finishes squaring up what needs to be squared up in the offices of Midtown Heating and Cooling, then steps carefully through the trapdoor and finds his footing on top of the stepladder below. He takes the handle of his briefcase and pulls it through. He descends to the third step, then lowers the trapdoor into place and slides the ceiling panel back where it belongs. He cannot do anything . . . anything permanent ... to Officer Jasper Wheelock . . . but Slocum could. Yes indeed, Slocum could. Of course Slocum was black, but what of that? In the dark, all cats are gray . . . and to the blind, they're no color at all. Is it really much of a reach from Blind Willie Garfield to Blind Willie Slocum? Of course not. Easy as breathing, really.
'Do you hear what I hear,' he sings softly as he folds the stepladder and puts it back, 'do you smell what I smell, do you taste what I taste?'
Five minutes later he closes the door of Western States Land Analysts firmly behind him and triple-locks it. Then he goes down the hallway. When the elevator comes and he steps in, he thinks, Eggnog. Don't forget. The Aliens and the Dubrqys.
'Also cinnamon,' he says out loud. The three people in the elevator car with him look around, and Bill grins self-consciously.
Outside, he turns toward Grand Central, registering only one thought as the snow beats full into his face and he flips up his coat collar: the Santa outside the building has fixed his beard.
MIDNIGHT.
'Share?'
'Hmmmm?'
Her voice is sleepy, distant. They have made long, slow love after the Dubrays finally left at eleven o'clock, and now she is drifting away. That's all right; he is drifting too. He has a feeling that all of his problems are solving themselves ... or that God is solving them.
'I may take a week or so off after Christmas. Do some inventory. Poke around some new sites. I'm thinking about changing locations.' There is no need for her to know about what Willie Slocum may be doing in the week before New Year's; she couldn't do anything but worry and — perhaps, perhaps not, he sees no reason to find out for sure — feel guilty.
'Good,' she says. 'See a few movies while you're at it, why don't you?' Her hand gropes out of the dark and touches his arm briefly. 'You work so hard.' Pause. 'Also, you remembered the eggnog. I really didn't think you would. I'm very pleased with you, sweetheart.'
He grins in the dark at that, helpless not to. It is so perfectly Sharon.
'The Aliens are all right, but the Dubrays are boring, aren't they?' she asks.
'A little,' he allows.
'If that dress of hers had been cut any lower, she could have gotten a job in a topless bar.'
He says nothing to that, but grins again.
'It was good tonight, wasn't it?' she asks him. It's not their little party that she's talking about.
'Yes, excellent.'
'Did you have a good day? I didn't have a chance to ask.'
Tine day, Share.'
'I love you, Bill.'
'Love you, too.'
'Goodnight.'
'Goodnight.'