Silence.
Three. Two. One. He presses down again.
And again.
And again.
Still, silence. No alarm. No flashing lights. No shrieking warning to terrify the intruders and send them fleeing, knocking into each other like off-balance bowling pins as they make for the exit. What the heck kind of alarm is this? Is it malfunctioning?
Something instructional his father once said, when he was giving his sons the run-down on their own home security system, bubbles up toward the surface of Shane’s consciousness. But it doesn’t quite get there. He can’t quite recall the words. His father remains so constantly in ‘instructional’ mode that it would be impossible to retain one twentieth of the information he tries to impart, even for someone with the prodigious capacity for consumption of data that Shane/Fa’hrouq possesses. Even if he were trying!
Maybe this is some kind of silent alarm. Maybe that’s what his almost-recollection is trying to tell him. He’s got to allow for that. But he’s also got to allow for the possibility that this signal is going nowhere. That the intruders—or Rich—have cut off the security system. If he leaves, he might be leaving the couple to be eaten by the wolves.
The question now is obvious. It’s the same question he’s been asking himself repeatedly tonight, the question that has guided him safely and surely thus far: What would Arun’dh’aile do?
The answer is not so clear. Arun’dh’aile would never go back on his word, and Shane gave the man his word that he would press the button to activate the alarm and then run home and tell his parents what’s going on. But the button may not have actually triggered the alarm. And Arun’dh’aile would likewise never leave an innocent person in harm’s way. If the first part of his pledge is impossible, does that mean that the second part is nullified? Does that mean he can safely exercise his own judgment without violating his covenant with the man? It’s a real head scratcher.
It seems to him the main part of the directive was the bit about pressing the button, which he’s already done. The rest was more sort of an “if I were you I’d” piece of advice. No one would blame him for not fleeing the house now. In fact, when the dust has settled, he’ll be lauded for his bravery in seeing it through. (Supposing they somehow discover his identity, that is.)
Shane starts again toward the great room. There’s a commotion upstairs. Footsteps on or near the stairs. Making a quick decision, he scampers instead down the opposite hallway, heading for the rear of the house. He passes a study, some closets, and the laundry room.
At the end of the hallway, he arrives at a narrow, unlit staircase. He tiptoes up to the second floor and listens. Around the corner, he hears the continued rush of water, along with a pair of voices. Deeming that it wouldn’t be prudent to enter the fray so directly at this juncture, he continues up two more flights until the stairs reach their terminus at the attic. He gropes around on the wall until he finds a light switch.
He flicks on the light.
The attic is finished, with hardwood floors and some furniture and a big TV. Dust motes hang in the air, lit by the track lights hanging from the sloped ceiling. The room smells faintly of the non-culinary herbs his brother keeps in small plastic vials in his closet. It looks and feels like no one’s been in here in a while. It should be a suitable enough base for him to regroup and plan the next phase of his operation.
The first thing to do is to look for more supplies. His odds of remaining undetected seem longer now. He’ll need to find anything he can that might be used for an attack, defense, or diversion.
Shane looks around. A wide, squat dresser stands against one wall of the attic, beneath the sloped ceiling. It seems as good a place as any to start looking.
Damien wipes the sweat from his brow. It’s not clear what the endgame here is. Even if the folks in the nearby houses—he figures there are maybe half a dozen within a mile radius—even if they assume the shots came from some drunk, joyriding kids and decide not to call it in, someone is going to find Sheldon Merriwether’s abandoned car soon enough. Not to mention the Toyota with two executed bodies sitting in the driver and passenger’s seats. Despite his best efforts to conceal the cars with branches and leaves after rolling them to the edge of the woods beyond the embankment, both vehicles are easily visible from the road.
He would consider moving the two bodies from the Toyota to the trunk of his cruiser, where the remains of Sheldon Merriwether are currently packed, but both the man and woman are on the bigger side. They were probably on their way home from the pancake house. Even if he could cram them all in, it would cause a ton of drag, hauling that much freight in the carriage. That much junk in the trunk, so to speak. Ha.
Besides, the two bullets from his service weapon are gonna be the really incriminating evidence, and they’re irrecoverably embedded in the back seat of the Toyota. Given the blood on the upholstery, whoever cases the car is going to know that someone was shot. And when they take apart the back seat, they’re gonna discover that the shots were fired from a service weapon belonging to a member of the Great Falls PD. From there, it won’t be too difficult to look into who might have been out on that particular road at that odd hour, narrowing the possibilities down until the obvious—perhaps only—suspect is one Officer Damien Edwards.
The upshot of all that being, there’s no point in disposing of the bodies.
So what the fuck is he gonna do? He’s gonna buy himself some time, that’s what. And he’s gonna keep Sheldon Merriwether’s body close at hand. He might just be able to find himself a scapegoat.
Sitting against the rear fender of the cruiser, he pops open a fresh can of Red Bull and takes a deep breath of the cool night air. The field across the street glistens slightly in the moonlight, wet with the first dew of the morning.
Nights like this, it’s almost like he’s back there. In Iraq. Sure, it’s cooler here, and you’re talking another world in terms of the humidity and the foliage, but the silence, the dark, endless mantle of the sky, pocked by stars so far away you’re talking God-like dimensions, it all points to the simple, bare reality—a reality he can’t get away from whether he’s ten-thousand miles away receiving fire from a bunch of desert-dwelling camel jockeys or back home dealing cold, hard truth to the coddled citizens of Central Maine. The reality is that each of us is alone in the universe. Everybody knows it on some level, no matter how well they hide it. It’s in the blood. It’s in the bones. It’s what we’re born to.
It used to get to him when he was younger, the thought of his perfect isolation. It would keep him up all night with cold sweats and tremors. But not anymore. He’s come to understand that this reality is what makes him free. He’s not tethered to anybody. Never could be. All those laws and regulations that occasionally chap his ass, the way the Sergeant gets to breathing down his neck, none of that can alter the truth, annoying as those things may be. He is alone in the universe, and that means he’s at liberty to do whatever the hell he might want or need to do.
And at the moment, that means finding a way to make it look like Sheldon Merriwether, resident of 17 Mayfield Street in Portland, Maine, has for some unknowable reason decided that this cool September night is the right time to begin his new life as a cold-blooded killer—which project has thankfully been aborted by the one-hundred percent justified and frankly commendable actions of Officer Damien Edwards. He’s just got to figure out how he’s going to stage the whole thing.
He slams the Red Bull and tosses the empty can onto the shoulder of the road. The Smarties-like sweetness lingers on his tongue, and within seconds he feels the cascading effects of glucose, taurine, and B-vitamins entering his bloodstream.
A phone rings. Not his. It’s coming from behind him. No, beneath.
The ringing grows louder as he pops open the trunk. He paws at Sheldon’s inert body and feels the phone in the right front pocket of his jeans. He pulls it out just as the call is going to voicemail. It’s a (310) number. California. Why is this ass
hole getting a call from California? Something doesn’t feel right.
He swipes open the phone’s display (no security protocol—what an idiot) and looks at the call log for maybe a minute or two (it’s hard to tell—he’s disappeared again) before pressing the (310) number to return the call.
The voice that answers sounds both brusque and theatrical, like its owner watched too many game shows as a child and wants very much to inform you that he’s now pissed off about this fact.
“If I get sent to your voicemail one more time,” the voice announces, “we’re not gonna have anything else to talk about.”
“Okay.”
“Sheldon?”
Damien does his best to remember what Sheldon sounded like. Maybe if he just talks quietly… “Yeah, this is me.”
“Why the fuck are you whispering?”
“Because… I’m not alone.”
“What do you mean you’re not alone? Wait… did you get another lead?”
“… Yeah. I did.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t talk about it right now.”
“But it’s good though? Good enough to follow up on?”
“I think so.” He has no idea where this might be going.
“And it’s in line with that stuff from before? That Reclamation business?”
“Seems to be.”
“Okay. Listen, Sheldon, I understand that you can’t say much at the moment… but just answer me a couple of questions. Are you in danger?”
“… Possibly.”
“Are you saying… is there someone after you?”
“I think so. In fact, I’m kinda fearing for my life. I don’t know what to do.”
“Are you telling me that you think this thing could be for real?”
Damien shrugs. “I think it might be, yeah.”
“No shit.”
Damien swallows. “Not only that… I think it’s big.”
“Holy shit. Holy shit.” The voice takes a long, thoughtful pause. “All right, listen. You get as much material as you can. And you update me as soon as you’re able. I’m gonna catch the first flight out to Boston in the morning. I’ll hire a crew when I get there. I’d appreciate any referrals you can give me, but don’t trouble yourself too much about it. You stay focused on the task at hand. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. You do understand that if you’re shitting me about any of this, I’ll cut your fucking eyelids off, you understand that, right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Good work. Keep it up.”
Click.
Alrighty then. At the very least, he’s got a narrative now. Young guy, aspirations of working in television, gets a juicy lead. But he doesn’t realize what kind of people he’s dealing with. Maybe Sheldon didn’t even kill those folks in the Toyota. Maybe it was the characters behind this ‘Reclamation’ business—whatever the hell that is—who took them out for happening to pass by when they were abducting Sheldon. And they used Damien’s gun, which the perpetrators had been able to confiscate from him during his attempt to stop the abduction. Yes!
There are a couple of holes, no doubt, in the picture that’s forming in his mind (like for instance, why didn’t Damien radio in for back-up?), but he can iron all that out later. For now, he’s got to stay focused on the main thread: What was this Sheldon fellow up to, and where did his abductors transport him to and eventually kill him?
The dispatcher’s voice comes over the radio in the cruiser.
“Any units in the area of the Bluffs, we’ve got a call from a security company. A possible break-in at 79 Moon Drive.”
79 Moon Drive. No kidding. He was there not three hours ago. Had a chat with the guy with the fresh tattoo. Benjamin, his name was. Cool dude.
Damien darts to the driver’s-side door and reaches for the receiver.
“This is Officer Damien Edwards. I’m still in that area. I can check it out. Over.”
He’s nowhere near the Bluffs—he’s not even in Great Falls. He’d been heading for the coast, planning to do something… permanent... when he passed the speeding Sheldon Merriwether and decided he may as well go for one last traffic stop before taking that long stroll into the cold black lid of the Atlantic. Even if he guns it hard, it’ll take him 20 minutes to get to Moon Drive.
Not that it matters. Even if this whole thing comes crashing down in the light of an internal affairs investigation—or a lawsuit filed on behalf of one of the deceased—he’ll be no worse off than he was before.
The ocean isn’t going anywhere.
And even if he never sees the ocean again, there’s always a belt nearby. A blade. A length of rope.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Probable Cause
Harry takes a knee beside the water heater, checking the valve near the base of the cylinder. “That’s the first thing you want to do, of course,” he says to Stanley, who stands beside him scribbling in a small notepad. “You want to make sure that thing is turned off before you start the rest of the inspection. Otherwise, you’re liable to get scalded.” He looks up at Stanley. “You understand?”
“Yes,” says Stanley.
“It seems simple, I know, but it’s very important.”
“I understand.”
Harry takes a loud breath and places a meaty forearm behind his raised knee. “Why do you even want to get into this racket, Stan? You won’t be making no more than you were in construction, not ‘til you’re done apprenticing at least, which can take a good four, five years. Besides which, with all the bending over and whatnot, I don’t see how it’s gonna be much easier on your back. Why don’t you stay the course, see if you can’t become a contractor?”
He’ll never be a contractor. People just don’t see him as a leader, an organizer. He doesn’t know how to talk to them, command their respect. What does it matter if he knows all the workers and suppliers in the area, what they’ll work for and whether they’re worth it? What does it matter if he’s got a better understanding of structural integrity than every contractor he’s worked for in the past decade? What does it matter if he’ll bust his ass to get a job done on time and under cost? If he can’t get other people to bust their asses, and his contacts think he’s a joke, and his clients look at him like he’s a lummox, the whole thing is a non-starter. No one takes him seriously. And why the heck should they—the way he’s standing there, not responding to Harry’s question, unable to say out loud what he perfectly well knows.
Harry shrugs and shakes his head, frowning a little. “Suit yourself. I’ll keep showing you the ropes if that’s what you want. I just wouldn’t want you to get into some kind of grass-is-greener kind of scenario.”
“I understand,” says Stanley.
“All right.” Harry picks up a wrench from the floor and rises. “Now the thing to understand here is that we’re working with a closed loop.” He makes a wide circle with the wrench to indicate the elliptical shape of the piping system. “The hot water that doesn’t get used recirculates back around. That’s got a lot of advantages, of course, mostly ‘cause you don’t gotta run the water while you’re waiting for it to heat up. It’s hot right out of the tap. That saves you time and money. Trouble is, when you get any kind of blockage anywhere in the loop, the pressure starts to build throughout the whole system. In a conventional system, where the line branches out, only the branch where the blockage is located gets affected, but here it’s the whole damn thing. And if the pressure builds up enough, you can have a dangerous situation on your hands. Worst case, you’re looking at basically an explosion.” He taps the thick pipe running out of the water heater. “Fortunately, these folks called before it got to that. But I’ll tell you, I’ve seen a blockage that when it burst nearly took out a whole floor of the house. No kidding.” He gives a man-that-was-something shake of his head. Stanley forces himself to nod and chuckle.
Harry gives him a long look. Stanley meets his gaze, but after a moment looks back at his notepad and then a
t the water heater.
“A closed loop,” he says. “I think I got it.”
Harry sighs. “Let’s go have a look at those faucets.” He claps Stanley on the shoulder and heads for the basement stairs.
3:37 a.m.
“Frankly, Stan, I think you’re acting just a little bit paranoid.”
Stanley paces, not looking at Dresden, every impulse urging him to draw back, to not engage. But he’s been hanging back for over an hour now, awaiting orders, listening to Dresden talk and talk, every sentence Dresden utters contradicting the last one—We’ve just gotta wait this out! No, we oughta cut and run!
Enough of this. “Really, Dresden?” he says. “I’m being paranoid? After what I found you doing in here?”
“I am sorry about that,” says Dresden.
“It’s been almost two hours since we heard from base,” says Stanley. “Doesn’t that seem just a bit suspicious, them going quiet all of a sudden, right after all that shit went down? ‘Cause to me it seems like we might be cut off—nothing coming in, nothing going out.”
“Wow… That’s the most I’ve heard you say all night. Look, I talked to frogger13 while you were taking care of the doc. She’ll tell you that.” Dresden nods to Val, who doesn’t contradict what he’s saying. “He said we did a good job handling a difficult situation and we should just stand by for the moment. I’m sure when he calls back he’ll give us information about the next phase of the operation. Or he’ll tell us to drop the whole damn thing and go home. I don’t fuckin’ know.”
“Why doesn’t it say there’s a missed call?”
Dresden sighs impatiently. “I told you, he called me with that thing… you know, where it wipes the call record as soon as the call is over.”
Dresden feints a nod at the phone sitting on the nightstand. Stanley doesn’t bother going over to it. He knows he won’t find any evidence. “I want to talk to him,” he says, his fingers running scales on the stock of the rifle.
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