Page 42

CHAPTER 42

T he same fire chief who’d responded to the crash and explosion of Geoffrey’s hearse showed up to certify that yes, the fire was really out. He’d gotten over a dozen calls from civilians who’d heard the explosion, and even though I’d also called right away and told him the fire was dead, he was duty bound to show up. But he hadn’t brought all the trucks and other stuff that would follow him in a normal town.

The fire had burned fierce and bright for a couple of minutes but then died out. It turned out Lian, being Lian, had put in sprinklers. So everything was damp and soot-covered but the building was intact. It was going to need repairs and a cleanup inside, but the structure was fine.

Junior hadn’t been good at arson. An inept bombing was a fitting legacy for him.

The official story for the curious was that it was a gas leak, but we knew it wasn’t. However the civilians in Rocky Start tended not to ask too many questions, mostly because they didn’t want to know the answers. The fire chief didn’t ask any questions, either. Oz had paid off the Bearton Fire Department with a new rescue vehicle a few years ago, and I’m also sure back in the beginning, Herc had reached down from on high and added his own special nudge making Rocky Start a little bubble out of the world of normalcy. I knew for certain that neither Tennessee or North Carolina wanted to claim the town, nor did our adjoining counties. We were a world unto ourselves carved out of the state line between those two. Easy to ignore. Those four boxes Lian had left with Rose probably had a lot in there that made sure Rocky Start stayed that way.

Rose came out in her robe to make sure I wasn’t rushing into a burning building, and I told her we were going to rush into a non-burning building and to go back to bed. Then Marley, Luke, and I went around to the back to look at the ignition point. From the blast pattern, that bomb had been placed at the ground floor rear between the outer wall and a dumpster, which the accelerant had also caught on fire.

Thus, it was not surprising when Luke found fragments of wire that matched what had been in the back of Junior’s van. Then Marley found a piece of a basic timer, indicating that was what had finally set off that explosion.

“Junior was an idiot,” Luke said, looking at it. “They teach this in explosives pre-kindergarten, and he still managed to screw it up. He was trying to use the dumpster to direct the blast to take out the back wall and collapse the building. Instead, he blew up the dumpster.”

“It wasn’t just that,” Marley said. “He screwed up the amount of accelerant inside and it burned itself out.” He shook his head. “Too much fuel.” When I looked at him, he said, “Common problem,” and handed the piece of the timer to Luke. I was beginning to wonder what Pike had been teaching those boys out at his cabin.

It might have been funny except for the fact that if anyone had been inside, they might have been killed from the smoke inhalation alone. I was betting the whole mess had been intended to kill. Otherwise, there was no point unless it was simply to cause confusion. But to what end?

But it had Junior’s modus operandi and his supplies all over it, so we could add it to the list of transgressions done by a dead hand. He’d set it up to go off when he was far away; he just hadn’t realized how far away he’d be when it blew. Which was across the street in Melissa’s locker.

“He should have used a shaped charge,” Luke said.

“How do you make one of those?” Marley said.

“You don’t need to know that,” I said, and then Luke gave me a look, then took Marley aside.

Great.

Of course, everyone should have a basic working knowledge of shaped charges, but Marley was still a kid.

Except he wasn’t.

He was laughing with Luke about something now, but I wasn’t as relaxed as the two of them. My conversation with Rose last night still bothered me on several levels. I wanted to talk to Luke about it, but that was short-circuited as Dmitri’s big pickup truck rolled into town, pulling the trailer with the snowcat on it.

“Treasure hunting time?” Luke said. “Six AM? Early bird gets the gold?”

“It’s always time for treasure,” Marley said.

I suppose some kids fantasize about treasure hunting. Pirates. Cowboys and Indians. Yada, yada. Things like that. I’d grown up focused on survival; fantasies hadn’t had the mind-space to bloom.

I had to keep reminding myself that Marley wasn’t a kid anymore. His childhood hadn’t been a walk in the park; he’d pretty much found his way into Rocky Start as a foreign orphan with only his little brother to rely on. I had to stop thinking of him as a youngster. He probably hadn’t been a kid since that trek up from Mexico.

“So, my friend,” Dmitri said and gestured to his truck.

“Get the maps,” I told Marley, resigning myself to the inevitable, and he nodded and went back to Oddities.

“You coming?” I asked Luke.

He shook his head. “I’m meeting Jackie for breakfast and we’re going to discuss how she’d want to set up the clinic.”

“Breakfast?”

“You know,” Luke said. “Food. Sustenance.”

“Right. So she’s staying?”

“She’s thinking about it,” Luke said, smart enough not to commit someone else to a course of action.

“Uh-huh.”

“We need a doctor,” Luke said.

“Right.” I didn’t say “And you need a lover” because Dmitri was looking at me impatiently. Also, it was none of my business. “Everything okay with Darius?”

“He’s gone to his mother’s family,” Luke said. “Going to stay there until he goes off to Harvard, he says.” He didn’t sound happy about it, but he didn’t say anything more, and I didn’t push it, just nodded goodbye to him and walked over to Dmitri, who was now staring at the broken windows in Lian’s office.

“You have trouble this night?” Dmitri said, although the damage was right there. Hard to miss blown-out windows.

“A bomb on a timer,” I said. “Looks like Junior’s handiwork.”

“Ah, Junior. A foolish boy who had a sad ending. His mother was not so foolish.”

“Same ending, though.”

“Yes,” Dmitri said. “You say Herc finished her off?”

“Yeah. Injected her with something when she was down and couldn’t fight back. Poison. You’d have liked that. He took the body for proof of death. That’s why Junior came here. Vengeance.”

Dmitri looked away and nodded.

Marley came out, maps in hand. We climbed into the pickup. The gear we had appropriated from Luke’s shop was still in the bed of the truck.

We drove out onto the two-lane highway. The road was a bit clearer since we hadn’t had snow in a couple of days. Once more we were passing the sign marking the boundary of Rocky Start. I remembered passing that sign almost two months ago now. Being annoyed that Herc had sent me that far out of my way off the Trail for a pair of boots.

And I wondered, just for a moment, if I’d known what I was walking into, if I would have kept on walking. Life was a lot more complex now. It had all these people in it. It wasn’t just gunfire and bombs, the stuff I could handle. It was Pike being obnoxious and Coral feeding me and Poppy taking care of Maggs and Marley backing me up and Rose . . .

Who was I kidding?

If I’d known what was ahead of me, I’d have run into Rocky Start.