by JJ Gould
The rooms echoed. There was no furniture. Polished wood floors gleamed and squeaked quietly as they walked through the house. Stan was quiet, impressed, taking it all in.
They ended in the basement. Solid new foundation walls allowed for a more modern look, with a few historic features to tie in with the rest of the house. Heavy five-panel doors, brass knobs, and substantial millwork enhanced a complete kitchen, bath, two rooms, and a gas fireplace by the walkout entrance.
“It’s not the best part of town right now, but I think it will be. There are three renovations on this block alone, close to downtown. I think you could rent out two of the three and break even on the payments. Maybe even rent the loft above the garage—might be nice for a single guy.” She paused. “For whoever buys it.”
Stan stopped and looked at her. “You like this house?”
Claire hitched the baby on her hip. He was a solid little guy. “I like the idea of this house.”
Slowly, Stan turned around, looking at a place that seemed permanent and solid, wondering if a home and lifestyle like this was really possible. In the quiet of the room, they could hear the bells of the downtown cathedral, chiming out a carol.
Merry Christmas.
Chapter 78 - Deidre Hall
It was the morning of Christmas Eve, and Deidre Hall was exhilarated. Today was the day, or perhaps more accurate, tonight was the night. Like a chess master examining the remaining pieces on the board, she went over her plan. In one or two moves, it was checkmate. Life was not like chess, of course. People were more varied and their moves more complex. But the important pieces, Harrison and LaFave, were as predictable as gravity. That was the exhilarating part—to move and manipulate, to cause pain and suffering and have people helpless to stop it, all because of their stupid predictability. Stan Martin would die that night, not because he would fall to his death but because he would willingly, oh so willingly, climb his way hundreds of feet to do it.
She gave a brilliant white-toothed smile and kissed LaFave, the instrument of her torture. “Come on, lover. Let’s go get the baby.”
Chapter 79 - Claire
Traffic was at a greasy standstill. At five o’clock Christmas Eve, snow like wet goose feathers was falling, beautiful to behold and a mess to drive through. There were four inches on the ground—nothing for most Sioux Falls drivers, who were used to five months of lousy driving conditions, but Tenth Street was a steep hill with a stoplight in the middle of it. Traffic was forced to stop then had to claw its way uphill, tires polishing the snow to packed ice. Cars with old tires or bad traction would lose faith and snarl the trip for everyone.
Bang. She felt the impact before she registered the cause. A shopping cart? Lewis Drug was to her right, and it looked like some jerk had taken a shopping cart from the lot and pushed it between stalled cars, eventually hitting hers. She sighed in frustration. If she left it there, it would only cause more trouble for others. She’d better get it out of the way, while traffic was stopped.
“Hang on, little man,” she said to John, who sat in his car seat, looking as frightened as she’d ever seen him. “Don’t worry, buddy, it’s only snow. Mommy’ll be back in a jiff.”
Claire unhooked her seatbelt, got out of the truck, and corralled the cart, which was dented and covered in slush. Motioning to the cars behind, she pushed the cart quickly off to the side, jumped it up the curb and onto the sidewalk, then tipped it over like a calf at a roping contest in case it tried rolling into traffic again.
Then she dodged back, slipped behind the wheel, buckled up, and released the parking brake just as traffic started moving. “Here we go, John! We’ll go pick up Daddy and head on home!” She looked in her rearview mirror to reassure him.
The car seat was empty.
Chapter 80 - Stan
It was five thirty on Christmas Eve, and Stan was cleaning up and getting ready to leave. There was not much for news. Jim Fletcher was working on a piece about farmers buying equipment before year-end as a tax write-off, which would be more interesting to Sioux Falls listeners once Jim could quantify the economic impact in dollars and cents. And Gretchen Wallace was working on a holiday shopping poll of which stores offered best customer service, interesting for this time of year. Maybe it could become an annual story.
Stan glanced at the clock. He and Claire had decided to go to the candlelight service that evening at the nearby church, a conversation that apparently both had put some serious thought into.
“We should go to church tomorrow,” Claire had said at bedtime as she and Stan were at the edge of sleep.
Stan had his own thoughts but wanted to know hers. “Why?”
She sighed. Stan thought she’d drifted off, but after a few moments, she murmured, “Because of my dad. Because of John. Because of you… because if we don’t go, then what’s the point?”
Stan had nodded against her back, spooning her. “I agree.”
So they were going to church, and Stan felt a ridiculous urge to sing—something he was very bad at—when the phone rang to his desk.
“Stan Martin, KCAH.”
The voice at the other end was strained and broken, hard to hear because of the static. “Y-You… fucker.” Stan had been sworn at before and was ready to hang up when the voice continued. “Before I kill myself and your kid, I thought I’d introduce myself as the man you ruined.”
Stan’s heart chilled and stopped. Did he say “your kid”?
“I am Harrison Benjamin Hall the Fifth, MD. At least for a little while longer. I thought I’d make this a most memorable holiday by jumping and taking your dear little boy with me.”
“You have my son?” Stan said in a choked voice.
He heard staticky laughter.
“Where are you?” Stan asked.
“Four hundred feet…” The man’s voice was trembling.
“Wait! Hang on! No need to do this… just tell me where you are, and we can get through this.”
The laughter came back, high and unhinged. “Weather ball red, soon we’ll both be dead.” There was more static…
Stan threw down the phone and ran from the building.
Chapter 81 - Doris
Doris was at the radio station, working on some year-end stuff, ready to call it quits for the holiday and feeling troubled about Stan’s behavior.
Claire came racing into the building. “Where’s Stan?”
“He left. What’s wrong? He seemed terribly upset.”
“It’s John! Someone stole him out of the back seat of the truck on Tenth Street. Call the police and let them know. Where is Stan?”
Doris’s heart stopped. “John? Little John? Oh my God.”
“Where is Stan?” Claire asked again. “Where did he go?”
Doris’s thoughts were tumbling over each other as she tried to grasp what was being said. “He, uh, he ran out of here a few minutes ago. He said something about the weather ball.”
“The weather ball?”
“Uh, yes. They used to tell the weather with it.”
“What about it?” Claire looked frantic.
“Uh, well, he said, uh, he needed to drive out to the tower and see someone, something about stopping a crime…” Suddenly, tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh my gosh, do you think this has something to do with John?”
Claire blanched. “Call the police.” And then she ran out the door into the snow.
Chapter 82 - Stan
The snow was falling in deep clots as Stan raced to the transmitter site. Not an ideal winter car, the Shark slipped and swerved from side to side, almost throwing Stan into the ditch. Up ahead, the beacons on the tower flashed red… off… red… off. He made a left turn, and the Shark followed the ruts in the snow, struggling to gain ground, finally slowing to a stop in the slog of snow.
He pushed the door open into a drift and climbed out, frantic. The he leapt through the drifts down the drive toward the transmitter shack. Near the door was an unknown car, an SUV, proof of something he dr
eaded.
He heard a sobbing scream as he got near the open door. “Noo! Please, Gawd, save him!”
Bursting in, he saw the wretched woman, red-faced and tearstained.
“Oh please, save him! He’s insane!” The blond woman clutched at him, pulling on his sleeve hysterically.
“Who?”
“It’s my stepson, my beloved Benjy! You’ve ruined him! Ruined him… and he… he’s going to jump!”
“Jump. Jump where?”
“I tried to stop him… it’s all your fault… you and your stupid radio story. You did this!”
“Did he have a young child, a baby, with him?”
The woman melted into the floor, sobbing, fists pressed into her eyes.
Stan lifted her up and shook her, shouting, “Did he have a baby with him?”
Swollen, teary green eyes looked up at him. She grabbed him for support.
“Oh, save him, please! Save my Benjy!”
Frantic, Stan grabbed a climbing harness and headed for the door.
Chapter 83 - Deidre Hall
Lifting herself from the floor of the radio shack, Deidre Hall rearranged her hair and adjusted her clothes. She listened for a second then walked outside to check the tower. Snow was falling in clumps. She could see the red lights glowing on the tower. Shielding her eyes from the falling snow, she peered up, looking for…
There he is! Yes, it was Stan—she was sure of it. Surprised, she could see that he was already about fifty feet up the tower and still climbing. She ran back inside and located the jack switch, gray and substantial. The handle was pointing to the white Off sticker, safety protocol for anyone on the tower. Reaching up, she grabbed the handle and threw the switch to On. A little insurance.
She wheeled around and headed to the SUV to get the bolt cutters to finish the job completely.
Chapter 84 -Stan
The wind. Always the wind. Calm during much of the day, it had now picked up to about thirty miles an hour, moaning through the guy wires as Stan climbed up, up, up. Heart pounding, thighs burning, he grabbed and slipped then grabbed again. He looked down and almost panicked. The ground was gone in the darkness, swirls of snowflakes whirling by into nothingness. Climbing a tower rung upon rung was more than dangerous—it was also hard physical work and, for one not used to it, a quick way for an unsteady foot to slip. Pausing, Stan forced himself to breathe and slow down a bit. Pace yourself.
The rubber gloves were cold and unwieldy. The climbing harness cut into his crotch, restricted his shoulder movement, and impeded the motion of his legs, but adjusting the straps was far from his mind. Don’t look down.
The tower consisted of three upright steel rods about two feet apart from each other, and connecting the uprights was a series of welded triangles. Theoretically, it was the most rigid of structures, but as he climbed, he could feel it sway in the wind. He reached a juncture in the tower where impossibly thin guy wires were attached, stretching down and away into the darkness, and the color of the tower changed from red to white. Unwillingly, Stan remembered that meant he’d climbed another seventy feet. His legs trembled violently from the exertion, and his breath came in ragged puffs, his heart in his throat, as he peered up into the tower heights, chasing after his son.
Nearing the top, Stan could feel the tower sway in the wind two or three inches. Shit.
There! In the glow of the blinking lights, Stan could make out the base of the platform at the top of the tower and the small booth that the crazed Dr. Hall was in.
He called up to the tower from below the base. “Dr. Hall! It’s okay! I’m Stan Martin. I just want to talk to…”
Suddenly, a length of chain came slapping down and crashed an inch away from Stan’s right hand. Clang! Stan’s foot slipped, and for a sickening second, he hung from two rubber gloves off of the half-inch-thick steel supports.
A head appeared three feet above him, grimacing down at him. The red light of the tower beacon pulsed, and for a second, Stan could see him. The form, the posture… something told Stan it was the man from Claire’s video, the man in the Hall Cable TV van.
Clang! The chain lashed down again, a painful glancing blow to his knuckles.
A trap! The fool is trying to kill me!
Stan stepped down the tower three steps and paused, hooking the carabiner of his safety harness to the tower support. The face looked down at him again. He was wearing a similar harness to Stan’s and hooking his own carabiner to the chain—Stan could see him jump off the tower feetfirst, swinging wide, heading for him.
Stan dodged to the edge of his tether but was still struck. It was only a glancing blow, yet Stan lost his footing and fell one foot before the harness he was wearing jarred him to halt, his heart in his throat.
The wind moaned through the wires, the click of the tower lights switching on and off, so that the frenzied battle was fought in ten-second increments of complete darkness or garish red light.
Bigger and stronger, the stranger now had the back of Stan’s harness in his grip and was looping behind him, clutching him around the waist with his legs, wrapping his arms around Stan’s throat from behind.
Pulsing fear made Stan’s own heartbeat the loudest sound and, after that, the harsh breath of the man behind him. Then he had a sense of being kicked sideways. The entire tower jolted, a sickening sudden shift of six inches, pulling Stan back into the man. Questions of why this had happened were answered in a millisecond with a Tching!—the metallic snap of a guy wire being broken.
Realization hit Stan in a cold rush. “The tower…!” Stan kicked furiously back with his heels. “It’s going to fall!”
The tower beacon’s red flash lit up the darkness. The man did not know or seem to care what Stan said. He dug his forearm under Stan’s chin and pulled back, trying to rip Stan away from his grasp of the tower.
There was darkness as the beacon shut off, another shuddering kick, and Tching! The tower swerved with a drunken lurch, this time more immediate—Stan could feel the tower sing like a metal key struck by a mallet. The man behind him must have understood what was happening because he suddenly loosened his grasp, allowing Stan to twist and escape. Facing the man, he struck out blindly to where his face should be. The red light flashed on, and Stan could see in harsh red light the reason his adversary had stopped struggling. An astonished pair of eyes stared blankly at him underneath a forehead mostly gone, sliced cleanly away by the whiplash of the broken guy wire.
Stan gasped.
And then as had happened just once before in his life, Stan found himself transported into a place of complete clarity, his situations and options laid out before him in slow motion where they could be decided upon with dispassionate reason.
The tower was starting to topple. The wind pushing against him and the corpse in front of him were slowing its fall, but he could already feel the tilt. There was no way to climb down—he was certain to fall four hundred feet to his death, crushed into the frozen earth by a toppling tower.
Click. The red light turned on one last time. Acting quickly, Stan decoupled his carabiner from the tower and clipped it to the carabiner of the dead man’s harness. Then he heaved up and decoupled the dead man from the tower. Both men started falling. Using a final kick, Stan pushed away from the tower, launching them both out and away as he and the dead man plunged into darkness.
Chapter 85 – Deidre
It was fascinating. As soon as that fool Stan Martin headed up the tower, Deidre Hall had trotted back the SUV and grabbed the bolt cutters out of the back seat. Stepping purposefully, she made it to the chain-link fence surrounding the guy-wire anchor. She looked up, and in the flash of the tower lights, she could see that Stan Martin was already about two-thirds of the way up the tower. Better hurry.
She turned back and clipped her way through the fence wire, clip, clip. It had taken about a full minute to cut her way through the fence, resisting the temptation to see how far Stan had climbed. Plenty of time.
Now
she was through the fence and standing next to the guy wires. She could hear them hum and thrum in the wind. Surprisingly thin, the stranded wire was no match for the cutters. She picked the second one and cut it. Tching! She laughed. It sounded like a science-fiction gun. The wire whipped up and away like a rubber band. From a distance, she could see the tower stagger a bit, lurching like an enormous wounded insect. Cool.
Now for the fun part. Picking carefully, she cut the top wire. Tching! The wire whipped away into the darkness like a broken guitar string. The top third of the tower swayed drunkenly then slowly toppled away from her, down, down to the ground. She could not see either LaFave or Martin fall, but her breath quickened at the thought of the terror of their last moments. Hopefully, she could find them in the wreckage. She was curious to see what happened to them.
Chapter 86 - Claire
Claire saw the tower lights fall and crumple as she swerved into the tower driveway, shouting in anguish, “Noo!” She opened the door next to Stan’s abandoned car, stumbled out of the pickup, and ran into the blowing snow, plunging through the drifts. “Stan!”
She was not the first on the scene. Out of nowhere, a sobbing woman with blond hair was pointing hysterically. “They’re over there! Hurry!”
As Claire pivoted to look, the very back of her mind asked a question that took too long for her conscious to form. Why was that woman here before me?
There was a crushing, blinding blow to the back of Claire’s head, and she fell unconscious into the snow.
Chapter 87 - Stan
The fall through darkness had only lasted three seconds—three heart-stopping pitch-black seconds that seemed like an eternity. Later, Stan looked it up in a physics book that told him that the acceleration of a three-second free fall meant he hit the guy wire at thirty miles an hour. In his memory, the fall was much, much longer, the speed much, much faster. He’d felt a sudden twanging jolt of shock and relief, the hope that when he pushed off and away from the tower, he’d aimed right, and the guy wire would land between him and the dead man.