Shoreline

by Carolyn Baugh

  “Shhh,” said Ben. “You’ll scare the ammonium nitrate.”

  “Again with this shit?” Abe demanded. “When can we get a real bomb up in here?”

  “Probably when the bombers aren’t angry agrarians,” Chid spouted a bit weakly. Two of the EMTs had already left. One stood nervously by his stretcher. “Can’t you just get me a bag of glucose? Anything?”

  “You need to come to the ambulance, sir.”

  “Go to the ambulance, Chid; just keep your phone on speaker,” Nora said.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake … I’m gonna need a laptop and someone to help me type.”

  Ben stared at Nora. “You go.”

  “No way. You.”

  He shook his head. “Nora, I’m serious.”

  “And so am I. I was there when we sorted out the last one. I can help.”

  “You all need to get out of here right now,” Abe warned.

  “No, it’s a thing, Abe,” Nora insisted. “He left us something to solve. Like last time. Only harder, he said.”

  “Sounds like he’s fucking with you. The last one was to trigger. He’s suggesting this one can be defused?”

  “He’s dead,” Ben interjected. “But yeah, it seemed pretty clear.”

  Abe shook his head. “What does he gain?”

  “Chance to see us sweat again. Even from down in hell,” volunteered Chid as the EMT wheeled him out. “Ben, I need you now,” he called weakly, making the decision for them.

  Ben frowned and followed the stretcher.

  Nora swallowed, then answered Abe.

  “A chance at … what? Restitution? Redemption? In not blowing up his hometown?”

  Abe looked at her askance. “Either way, sounds risky. Where’s this office?”

  Nora pointed up at the wobbly metal staircase.

  “He’s going to have hooked up a small detonator to a respectable pile of dynamite; if all the gasoline drums are down here, they will be connected to the detonator by a long wire.” He began circling the wide interior of the brewery floor.

  “Here,” he finally called, crouching in the northwest corner. He peered at the wire snaking upward along the brick interior wall toward the office, then at Nora.

  She let out a low whistle. “I can’t believe we didn’t see it the first time.”

  He brushed this off and gave her a piercing look. “I’m going up now. You need to go. I only have one suit. Go now—or wait, open videochat with Chid and leave me your phone. Then go.”

  “But Abe, I—”

  Abe wasn’t interested in discussion. He hissed something at her in Bosnian, then wrestled the phone from her hand even as she obediently punched in the commands. Nora swallowed, then gave him a small pat before running for the ambulance. Before exiting the brewery, she paused to see him leaping onto the metal staircase and making his way toward the office. Given his bomb suit, it was an awkward undertaking.

  Nora dashed for the ambulance. As she entered, she was relieved to see that the phone connection between Chid and Abe was solid.

  They heard Chid’s voice coming through the speaker. “What’s it look like?”

  Abe was saying, “It looks like the last one, only it has a small screen attached to it and a keypad. Can you see it?” he asked, holding up the phone to show them the small screen. “There’s eight spaces here. Eight individual lines.”

  “Okay, so it was just … six last time,” Chid protested. “You wanna argue or solve it?”

  Chid cursed and then hissed something at the EMS people.

  Abe’s voice was over-loud: “The screen is compact. It isn’t going to take a manifesto. Just … yeah, it looks like short words or numerical sequences, each separated by a hyphen. Two of the lines are just one space. The rest are one space before a hyphen and four spaces.…” Abe’s voice trailed off.

  Chid was silent, confused. “Let’s do that again but in sequence,” he said.

  Abe said through gritted teeth, “Space-hyphen-four spaces. Single space. Space-hyphen-four spaces. Three times. Single space again. And then twice more: space-hyphen-four spaces.” He positioned it so they could see:

  Nora watched Chid’s chest rising and falling rapidly.

  “Ok, so it isn’t WWV numbers again,” he said finally, softly, speaking swiftly to himself. “Right—it would be the opposite. The four spaces would be in the front not the back.… What about Götterdämmerung … Cast members? Scene numbers?”

  Ben took to typing various searches into the laptop, opening new tabs for every topic Chid hissed at him.

  Chid turned to Nora with a manic look. “What did he say to you? Tell me everything he said!”

  “Ummmmm … He said it was a chance to be a hero. Save lives. A … what? A code to what came before.”

  “Coda,” Ben corrected sharply. “He said coda.”

  “Coda?! Are you sure?” Chid demanded.

  Nora shrugged. “What’s a coda?”

  “Musical afterthought—a sort of a summary to a piece of music, announcing its conclusion.”

  He began muttering again to himself. “Measures? No, they’d all be in the thousands.… Key signatures…?”

  Nora looked at Abe through the phone’s small screen. “If we plug in something that’s incorrect, will it backfire or trigger or something?”

  “We won’t know until we try,” Abe said.

  “Nora!” Chid’s voice was even sharper now. “What else did he say?”

  His voice was a tumble of rapid words. “—The coda … the coda … I need a score, call up a PDF of the score. Just type in full orchestral score. No, you don’t need the umlauts.… See if you can find a numbered one,” he directed Ben. Then he looked at Nora fiercely. “What else did he say? Think!”

  She thought. “Something about … Zift. He said, if we wanted the Ring we’d have to earn it.”

  Chid nodded distractedly, frowning hard at the computer screen.

  “He said we understood his motives … something about the motive of redemption…”

  He whipped his head around to look at her. “What?”

  “We were saying that we thought we knew what he cared about. He said we understood his motives … and something about redemption. Motive of redemption.”

  “Ben, come on, open the PDF!”

  “Okay, okay!” Ben snapped. “I’m opening it.…”

  “Scroll down, scroll down!” Chid shouted.

  “Jesus, I’m scrolling down.… God, it’s…”

  “Goddamn, it’s long. Yes, we all know that one.” Chid didn’t stop frowning at the screen.

  “Okay, umm, okay, so it ends in D-flat major. Motives … motives…” Chid looked wildly around for a pen and paper and started snarling at the EMS tech. “Just—just give me the one you’re using, Jesus Christ!” he cried, stretching his hand toward the ponytailed woman who had been so eager to flee the brewery.

  She gave him a furious look, then handed over her pen and a notepad.

  He did not immediately write anything, but instead started rubbing his head as though to extract information from his brain as he muttered “Newman, Newman, Newman.”

  Nora and Ben stared at each other.

  “Okay,” he said at last, talking so rapidly and so softly that Nora could barely follow. “Newman wrote on leitmotifs, or motives—recurring musical themes—in Wagner’s operas. There are a couple in the coda. Majesty of the gods, Siegfried’s horn theme … and the theme of redemptive love that challenges the gods … and usurps their plans!”

  Nora felt her breath catch. “You’re telling me he might have picked that?”

  “A coda code. Notes in a leitmotif. That theme, and it first comes in Walküre where Brünnhilde imperils herself to save innocent lives, is…” he stopped and hummed softly to himself … “eight notes long. And it’s here then in the opera’s end, see? Like … a palliative. The last thing we hear, the thing that Wagner leaves us with, even if he’s been screwing us around for a total of sixteen hours or something.
”

  Nora swallowed a thousand responses and contented herself with just frowning at Chid.

  He himself was looking quite pleased. “Yeah. I like it. So I think Geyer would. Or Martin. Whoever.”

  “Because you’re both evil genius types?”

  A smile flickered across Chid’s face as he directed Ben where to stop the cursor.

  Nora pressed him. “What does he gain?”

  Chid shrugged. “Well, maybe he’s just doing what he was supposed to do. We’re just the Rhinemaidens getting our Ring back. Power is back with the little people again. For the moment.”

  Nora inhaled doubtfully, holding Ben’s equally doubtful gaze. “He said we’d only get it back if we prove ourselves worthy. Is you reading music what makes us worthy?”

  He shrugged. “Respecting the universal language? At the least makes beauty accessible. Now, eight lines?” Chid said, his eyes riveted on the score before him.

  “Eight lines,” she confirmed.

  “Oh…” He slumped onto the pillow.

  “What?!” Nora and Ben chorused.

  “Fuck … This is ten notes.…”

  Their faces fell.

  “Oh, no! Nevermind. I’m fucking right as always.” He grinned at them.

  “What?” Ben asked. “What just happened?”

  “It’s really ten notes. Two are tied though, so written, not played. We only hear eight.”

  In wobbly script, he wrote down the names of eight notes, then turned the paper to face the phone screen. “Can you see it? Abe?”

  Abe removed his gloves and began typing on the small console. Chid read them aloud for good measure:

  D-flat.

  C.

  D-flat.

  E-flat.

  D-flat.

  C.

  D-flat.

  E-flat.

  As Abe was entering them, Chid said, “That last E-flat is down an octave, but I don’t see any way to designate that.…”

  Nora thought she could see Abe’s nostrils flare, but he did not comment. When he had finished, he glanced at them through the screen.

  Then he looked back at the console. Nothing happened.

  Nora found and held Ben’s worried gaze.

  Then Abe sat back on his heels and grinned at them. “Nothing happening means the world didn’t just end. Nice work, kids.”

  With that, he detached the fuse, which sat, utterly mute, atop its small pyre of dynamite.

  EPILOGUE

  “There she goes again,” Ben said, looking up through the ceiling. He zipped his suitcase closed and slipped into his shoes.

  “She said she’s got some kind of audition,” Nora said.

  “Got it.”

  “I can’t believe you’re going already,” Nora said, staring at Ben’s SUV. “You should wait around for the mayor’s ceremony tomorrow.”

  “Nah, Chid alone deserves every moment he gets in the spotlight for all that brainiac work. Plus I used up all my vacation time for this lovely outing.”

  Nora pulled back from him, studying him with a confused frown. “What?”

  Ben shrugged. As if for emphasis, the violin music overhead ceased and the two were left in total silence.

  “What?” Nora asked again.

  “I don’t work in domestic terror. Or hostage rescue or any of that fun stuff. On what basis can I show up here?”

  “Ummm … collegiality?” she ventured.

  He shook his head. “Schacht and I exchanged words over it. So. You know. You know Schacht, the stickler. I said I wanted to come, he said he wasn’t running a dating service or some damn thing. So we cut a deal.”

  He picked up his suitcase and headed out toward the street.

  Nora followed, barefoot. “What kind of deal?”

  “I come on my own time and on my own dime. I can volunteer my time to help out. At my own risk, of course.”

  Nora stared at him, dumbfounded. “I—you did that for me?”

  He stopped walking and turned around to let her catch him. “Nora,” he said, looking away, almost blushing, then looking back at her, his eyes clear. “Come on. It’s you.”

  She leaned in and kissed him then, hard, on the lips. “I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you, Ben Calder.”

  “Well it’s about time you caught up, Nora Khalil.” He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her nose.

  “Ben … we’re … in public…” she whispered, not fully committed to caring about that.

  “Erie will survive. Erie is resilient.”

  Nora laughed. “Erie will flourish again!”

  “It will indeed. Right after it comes to terms with the evil legacies of its beer tycoons.”

  Nora grinned. “I warned them about the perils of alcohol. After all that, Pete told me he wouldn’t rest until he got me to try his fascist beer.”

  Ben smiled, tucking the usual loose tendril of hair behind Nora’s ear. “Let me know how that battle goes.”

  “I’m not worried.” She tilted her head, regarding him. “You’ll be back at Labor Day?”

  “Yes,” he said, unlocking the SUV and getting in. “I promise.”

  He kissed her again and started the engine. She watched the car until it turned right onto State Street and headed for the Bayfront Parkway.

  She sighed. With Ben’s departure she felt like the last vestiges of adrenaline had left her body. She walked back to the house, her bare feet padding on the concrete walkway. She realized she had never had a walkway that needed to be swept before. Maybe she would look for a broom and sweep.

  Or maybe she would sit in her sweatpants and tank top and watch Netflix.

  Yes.

  She turned to lock the door when it was shoved open with unbelievable force, sending her flying.

  Nora’s head slammed against the mirrored coat closet in the foyer. The mirror shattered as Nora sank to the ground, stunned. Her eyes wouldn’t focus, no matter how hard she tried. She reached out to get her bearings but was picked up bodily and tossed face forward onto her living room floor.

  She pulled herself onto all fours just in time to have her arm yanked up behind her. She cried out as she heard it snap.

  “Did you really think that you could put a stop to a movement?” Goatee was demanding. He bent over her and picked her up, crushing the broken arm against her body and making her cry out again. Blood was dripping down the back of her neck.

  “Those men are two of liberty’s finest patriots!”

  Nora couldn’t speak. The pain in her arm was so intense that she felt faint, and her head injury had made her so dizzy. White light crowded in on her vision.

  “I told him. I said no code-solving was gonna make you people deserve mercy.”

  She looked into his icy eyes, trying to convey her own request for mercy when suddenly a rustling sound behind Goatee gave way to a shriek as someone pounced on him from behind.

  At first his massive head blocked Nora’s view, but then she saw who was clinging to him. It was Rachel. Rachel. Rachel had a wire and she had wrapped it hard around Goatee’s neck and she was holding on for dear life. Goatee was clawing at his neck, gasping. Rivulets of blood were erupting out of his neck as the wire dug deeper and deeper into his flesh.

  Rachel met her eyes. As Nora sank to the floor, her eyes fighting to stay focused, she saw that tears were streaking down Rachel’s face, but still she was holding on to the wire with a ferocious expression.

  That look was the last thing Nora saw before losing consciousness.

  * * *

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” she heard someone say. This was followed by a loud laugh.

  She realized it was Peter. She tried to remember what she’d said that was so funny, but couldn’t think of anything.

  Suddenly, though, she heard another voice laughing as well. She tried hard to place it and couldn’t.

  She decided to open her eyes in order to see who could possibly be laughing so much. And why were they in her house?

&n
bsp; She opened her eyes and peered around. “Oh, my God. Hamot Hospital again?”

  Both Pete and Rachel immediately appeared in her line of vision.

  And then everything came back to her. “Rachel! Rachel!” Nora rasped. “Pete, Rachel killed a guy in my house.”

  “Yeah,” said Pete. “That guy broke your arm and had the hospital staff pulling glass out of your scalp for about an hour.”

  Nora winced. “Hence the pain I’m in right now.”

  He nodded. “Hence the pain you’re in right now. And the concussion, so you have to take it easy for awhile. Also I think you destroyed the living room rug by bleeding on it. Don’t count on getting the deposit back.”

  Nora smiled lopsidedly.

  “I take it,” Pete said, “that this guy was the guy who killed Will Martin?”

  Nora was nodding, trying not to talk too much.

  “Loose ends tied up, then.”

  “Loose ends tied up.” Nora looked over at Rachel. Her normally pallid cheeks were flushed. “Rachel, are you hurt? You’re okay?”

  She grinned down at Nora, then held up bandaged hands. “Hands a little sliced up but I’m just fine. You think I’m not as tough as you, Nora Khalil? That you can waltz in and kill my bad guys and I can’t do the same for you?”

  Nora shook her head, very slowly, aware that the back of her head had been wrapped in something. “No way. I’d never underestimate you, girl. But … well, maybe you need a handgun or something? What did you have there?”

  Rachel was laughing. “I was just about to replace the string I’d broken when I heard the commotion. And no, I will never own a handgun, although I’d agree our neighborhood is maybe a little too rough.”

  Nora blinked at her. “A violin string. You killed a crazed white supremacist militia guy with a violin string?”

  She shrugged. “As the great Woody Guthrie said…” she began.

  Pete joined in, “… This machine kills fascists!”

  The two began laughing again, and Nora found she loved the sound of their combined laughter.

  “Of course I’m probably going to need several years of therapy to recover…” Rachel added soberly.

  Pete did not miss a beat before saying, “You know, I’ve had a few near-death experiences myself lately. Perhaps we could counsel each other, Miss Rachel.”