“And me you,” she said, saluting him with the glass.
He took a big gulp, smiling with red stuff in his beard, then another generous drink, after which came the twitching, the dance, a seated version this time. His eyes were on her but he couldn’t even blink.
She just stood there, drink in hand, sipping now and again. “You’re interested in science, Rory, aren’t you? Fascinating what you had to say about TNT. Three deadly little letters . . . like S-U-X sux. What’s that? Well, it’s a neuromuscular paralytic drug. Works at the junction of the nerves and muscles, causing muscular paralysis.”
He twitched. He danced, then tumbled onto his side on the sofa, eyes wide open. Unblinking, of course.
She gazed at him with contempt as she finished her drink.
Then she drifted to the kitchenette and, with a handkerchief from her purse—a purse not wired for anything except death by sux—she wiped off anything she’d touched.
“I would imagine you’re feeling pretty panicked right now, Rory—fully conscious as you are. You can feel the paralysis spreading, can’t you? Swallowing, breathing—those just can’t be done anymore, can they?”
She washed out the empty water glass of the traces of Bloody Mary. Dried it with a towel, almost surprised that the slob who lived here . . . still lived here, for a little longer . . . even had a towel.
She returned to the shabby living room and collected the rigged purse—Big Bertha, he’d called it. She tucked this under her arm, her other purse on a strap over the opposite shoulder. That was the purse into which she tucked the fat envelope of cash. The five grand was probably somewhere in this wretched excuse for a domicile, but she would not take the time to look for it.
And hadn’t Rory earned at least that much?
Then she picked up the coin purse and unlatched it. A small square Dollar Store kitchen timer starting its digital countdown from three minutes blinked back at her.
She exited into darkness.
But in three minutes, behind her as she drove, the sky erupted into a temporary dawn.
TWENTY-TWO
Two hours before the music festival officially began at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, Keith took in the briefing at the PD in the classroom near his daughter’s office.
Used not only for instruction but for press conferences and meetings like this one, the classroom—which flowed freely from the bullpen, separated by a wall but not shut off by doors—was today packed with reps of the sheriff’s office, the fire department, the state police, health department, critical incident team, and local officers, among others. Every chair was filled, the overflow standing in back or on the periphery. Keith was one of these.
“Obviously, we have a perfect day for it,” Krista told the group, standing before them, her back to the chalkboard, a big map of the event on an easel to one side. “Eighty degrees at the moment, no rain in the forecast. Now. The command post vehicle will be outside the Visitor’s Center in the old train depot . . .”
Projecting a PowerPoint presentation on a pull-down screen, Krista went over the Incident Action Plan, including revised duty assignments, radio communications, and medical arrangements. Everyone had been given handouts that spelled out the same material.
She was saying, “If you haven’t already given your cell number to Lieutenant Harrison, do so immediately after we finish. We’ll be using our portable radios today, but the cells are a good backup.”
Keith was proud of his daughter for holding up under the pressure of this past week. Yesterday Krista had made countless phone calls, including dealing with routing traffic, setting up parking barricades, and arranging for public works trucks to block certain intersections. Looking for better radio communication, she’d supervised tests of an Illinois Transportable Emergency Communications System radio tower that arrived on a trailer.
As the rundown continued, Keith got taken aside by Booker, who walked him out into the bullpen.
“The other day,” Booker said, “you mentioned seein’ that little ex-con in town. Rory Michaels, right? Arsonist?”
“Right.” Keith shrugged. “Just wanted to get him on your radar. Why?”
“Well, he’s on some people’s radar, all right, but he’s not beepin’.” Booker gestured vaguely toward the briefing going on. “Tom Summitt came drag-assing in for this meeting—you better talk to him.”
Summitt was the fire chief.
“What,” Keith asked, “does Tom dragging his tail have to do with Rory Michaels?”
Booker’s chin lowered and his eyebrows went up. “Fire department pitched in last night at a little weenie roast at that trailer court over near Hazel Green. And the weenie that got roasted would seem to be your buddy boy, Rory.”
“Hell you say.”
Booker nodded. “Seems his mobile home, which the neighbors considered an embarrassment to the good name of trailer park living, went and blew up.”
Keith frowned. “Meth lab, you think? Not really Rory’s style.”
“I’ll leave that to you. But there’s a wooded area nearby and it took some doing to contain the thing, Tom says. Fortunately your pal’s trailer was down a little blacktop away from the trailer park hoi polloi.”
Keith frowned. “Doesn’t sound like Rory was just playing with matches.”
“It does not. No official ID yet, of course, but it’s the remains of a little guy that fits the description given by nearby residents, who Tom says seemed more broken up about flying pieces of smoking rubble landing in their yards than losing an unloved neighbor. You put him away for burning down a restaurant, you said? Could be he was making some kinda explosive device. Technical term, I believe, bein’ bomb.”
“That’s the term, all right. And he was in town just the other day.” Keith shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
“Well, Rory won’t be in town today, unless the breeze belatedly drops some of him on us.”
Keith, disturbed by this news but not knowing what to make of it, spoke with the fire chief after Krista’s briefing.
Summitt, about thirty-five and boyish with ruddy cheeks, wire-frame glasses, and a short blond haircut, said, “Too early to know much, and anyway it’s not ours to look into. We were just helping out the Hazel Green volunteer department, all five of ’em.”
“How bad was it?”
A shrug. “By the time we got there, it was pretty much just a charred smoky trailer-shaped hole in the ground. What we really had to deal with was the fiery damn debris that got tossed around. You knew the deceased, assuming that’s who we found? Friend of yours?”
Keith shook his head. “Guy I put away. Harmless, when he wasn’t blowing things up or burning things down.”
“Yeah. Sad, really.”
“Don’t get broken up about it, Tom. Just another amiable little sociopath.”
“Oh, I was talking about the other carcass we came across.”
“Somebody else buy the farm?”
The fire chief shook his head. “Not somebody. Some thing—the skeletal, scorched remains of what musta been one fine vintage Harley.”
Krista was just heading out when Keith caught up with her and brought her up to speed on Rory Michaels and his exploding trailer. He’d already told her about running into the torch artist the other day.
“Well,” Krista said, “if he was planning something, it obviously blew up in his face.”
“That’s just the thing. Rory was a pro, in his small-time, sleazy way. Not a firebug. He wouldn’t have been putting something together just to hear it go boom shakalaka.”
Frowning, she said, “You mean he’d have a client.”
“Right. And that client is still out there somewhere.”
“We don’t know it has anything to do with the fest.”
“We don’t know it doesn’t.”
She nodded. “I’ll spread the word.”
They headed over to Depot Park in separate vehicles.
Keith had already helped the band load their gear this morning,
driving out to the Coursen’s Landing subdivision where Rod and Chloe lived in a brick ranch-style. Most of the equipment fit in Rod’s SUV, with the overflow going in trunks and back seats. The band had been in a non-joking, somber mood, the first real sign that the dark cloud hanging over them and the reunion concert was real and unavoidable.
The sound company had been waiting at Depot Park where the big portable stage was already in place, massive PA speaker stacks looming at left and right. The stage faced the river, midway between the bridge and the old train depot, the cement lane at its back.
After Keith, the musicians, and the two sound guys loaded equipment up onto the stage, various technical demands were met. The band’s amplifiers were small but the sound guys miked the guitar amps and took the keyboards direct, to go through the big, beefy sound system; the drums were also miked, rather elaborately, and that took the longest to get right. Getting a good mix on the monitors came next, then a one-two-three mic check for the “mains,” the PA itself.
Once all that was done, though, a single run through “The Girl Can’t Help It” did the trick, utilizing as it did Rod on lead vocals and Brian and Phil on backup singing. The Pistons were at heart a simple, stripped-down rock ‘n’ roll band, and it came together quickly. They even got some scattered applause and whoops from across the river, a few tourists getting an advance taste.
Now, hours later, in the department’s unmarked Impala, Keith tooled over the Spring Street/Highway 20 Bridge and cut left on Park Avenue, then drove down to Bouthillier and made another left. Past Otto’s Place, and across the railroad tracks, another left took him down the one-way drive that looped around the expansive teardrop-shaped park. This section was open and green, with only a few trees spotted around; under the bridge stretched woods with a bike path.
Already the fewer than one hundred parking places at various points around the park were taken, including one near the depot with Krista’s Toyota in it. The big white command post vehicle was parked there, too, taking up four spaces. The limited parking would be taken care of by overflow into residential neighborhoods, and by shuttles running every half hour from Walmart and Galena High.
Even now, true believers were staking out their territory on the grass, lawn chairs and blankets and coolers already in position, front-row seats despite the lack of rows and seats. Locals and tourists less concerned about sitting close to the entertainment wandered in shorts and hats and sunglasses and sandals, taking in a park that was admittedly pretty much just a bunch of open grass, but perfect for an event like this.
The vendors weren’t selling yet, their food trucks, carts, and tents filling the grassy space within the lower loop of the lane, like a nomad city in the desert, if a desert were lushly green. The food aromas were wafting, waving their smoky arms and wiggling their fingers like belly dancers, mirages so very inviting . . . and so very bad for your own belly.
As he pulled around the bottom of the loop, heading back toward the depot, he saw half a dozen young musicians there for the “battle of the bands,” their equipment gathered on the grass to either side of the stage, getting instructions from the sound company guys. Teens and early twenties they were, with big dreams and small chances. But they had to try.
He’d been on the fringes of the success they sought, when he was a roadie for the Pistons, before they briefly made it big. Success when it came, in that game, was often fleeting. Rod and Steve were men now, middle-aged ones, like Keith. A big night lay ahead for them, and for him, too, for that matter. He wouldn’t be needed here for a while, and even Krista hadn’t given him anything to do, really.
He headed home, to the house on Quality Hill.
For a nap.
In an eye blink he was back.
As he drove the same route as before, Keith smiled at what the dusk had done for the park and its temporary inhabitants, teens on dates holding hands, senior couples doing the same, families taking a break from squabbling, food vendors giving correct change, flawed human beings all transformed somehow. Something magical, some twilight-induced pixie dust had descended, and not the kind they used to clean up some kid’s unfortunate misadventure with a funnel cake. No, this was seeing the downtown of Galena across the way turned into an array of glowing lights worthy of fireflies, a cool blue patina conquering the green of the park, making even the tackiest apparel appealing, as if this ridiculous hat was a joke and that tasteless T-shirt intentionally ironic.
Keith was in a black Pistons T-shirt the boys had given him (it said ROAD CREW) and jeans and running shoes, but also a Dubuque PD windbreaker, long enough, loose enough, to conceal his hip-worn Smith & Wesson.
Because he was with the band, the police chief’s father was able to pull off the cement lane to park on the grass in back of the stage with Rod’s SUV and several other band member vehicles. The Pistons would go on in about half an hour. Right now they were milling down behind the stage, their spirits better now, laughing, joking. They were dressed for the gig—precisely chosen T-shirts, perfectly ragged jeans, and vintage boots (motorcycle and Beatle)—much as they had been at the preview last weekend at the Grape.
A young band whose punky, purple-haired female lead singer was screaming wordlessly into the microphone, to the accompaniment of screeching guitars and flailing drums, had won the battle of the bands. And the privilege of opening for the Pistons.
Keith jerked a thumb at the rear of the stage. “What did the losers sound like?”
“Don’t ask,” Brian said.
“If this is the new rock ‘n’ roll, I am officially old.”
“You are old,” Steve reminded him.
“I like their energy,” Phil said.
Keith shrugged. “I envy it, I admit. You guys ready for this?”
“Oh, yeah,” Rod said, speaking up to be heard over the opening act. “The only thing that’s gonna keep us from blowing the roof off this dump is . . . there’s no roof!”
Keith tossed a grin around. “In the spirit of the ’80s, let me say, you were bad this morning, dudes. And also rad. And that sound company is righteous.”
The punkette was screaming.
“Well,” Steve said, “you can hear her fine, anyhow.”
That got a few laughs.
Phil said, “I wonder what the families sitting out there on their blankets are going to think.”
“About this band,” Rod asked, “or us?”
He shrugged. “Either. We have a great crowd tonight . . . I mean, we’re homegrown boys. But that country act tomorrow night, who I never heard of, that’s what it’s really about these days.”
Rod shrugged. “We could always play ‘Honey, Don’t’ twelve times and call it a set.”
More laughter. Keith saw the nerves under it. He knew this night meant more to these guys than anyone in the crowd could imagine.
He left them and went wandering. Anyone seeing him would see only the smiling face of a people watcher. And people watching was what he was doing, all right, but not in the benign sense they assumed. He was looking at anybody who was alone, not sitting with his or her family or a date, plopped in lawn chairs or on the ground on blankets. Looking for faces that either gave away something negative or were just blank enough to get his attention.
The kind of person who might have hired Rory Michaels to spoil the party.
That was another countryish song the Pistons could do—“I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party,” written by two Liverpool lads but rockabilly all the way.
He wandered on. News anchors from the Quad Cities TV stations were doing quick attendee interviews, including KWQC; but Rebecca wasn’t among them—she didn’t do the weekend shows. She would be here tomorrow night, when his roadie duties were behind him, and they could enjoy themselves.
He passed Chloe Penniston, Maria Paulen, and even Lisa Pike, a little Pistons support group, seated together on lawn chairs, purses in their laps. Not a bad idea, considering the proclivity of pickpockets to work a crowd like this.
He drifted into the domain of vendors, where he risked a hot dog on a stick. He turned his nose up at the fried butter and fried Snickers bars. But he gave in to a lemon shake-up. Water and sugar and lemon for a mere four bucks. Such a deal.
Krista was circulating, too. She and her officers were in uniform, but nonthreateningly so—short-sleeve shirt with vest, shorts, baseball hats. Keith and his daughter saw each other as they both wound through the grass-seated crowd, and smiled across a sea of heads. She had a walkie-style radio in her hand, ready to report anything she saw.
Attagirl, he thought. Using a shoulder-mounted mic could have you turning away from a suspect, or raising your elbow, compromising your sidearm.
He wondered how many of the fest attendees noticed the SWAT-style snipers on the roofs of Otto’s Place and the old train depot. Keith found the plainclothes men threading through the crowd easy to make; but their casual clothes would fool most.
So you’re spotting the good guys, he said to himself. How about the bad guys?
Making his way to the stage—the battle of the bands winners had cleared out, taking their amps and futures with them—Keith fell in alongside the mayor, who was moving in the direction he was.
“Keith,” Mayor Rector said with a smile, “we seem to be heading the same way.”
“Yes, Your Honor. I have the vital role of running water bottles and towels out to the boys if they so desire.”
She laughed, said, “Rhonda, Keith, please—I’m still the same old Rhonda.”
But in her lightweight light blue jacket, floral blouse, and navy slacks, this ash blonde with gray-blue eyes looked much younger than her age. She’d been just a few years behind him in school, so she’d always be young to him.
As they wove around the seated spectators, Keith said, “You’re introducing the band?”
“Yes! They were just a little after my time, but they’re local heroes to all of us.”
“You must be proud of Brian.”
“Proud?”
“Yes, a proud employer, I mean.”
She owned Rector Real Estate where Brian worked.
Girl Can't Help It: A Thriller (Krista Larson Book 2) Page 21