by John Lutz
“Fine,” said Harper. “I don’t want to spend any more time around Speed than I have to. Nothing personal, but it’s not the safest place to be.”
She didn’t glance at him again, but threw the car into another sharp turn. Harper grabbed the handle on the dashboard with his good hand and held on. When he straightened up, he saw that they were approaching the house.
At first sight, it was reassuring. It looked secure. Bunker-like, in fact. The house was long and low, built right into the brow of the hill. They parked and went in the front door.
The interior was bright, tastefully furnished, and above all spacious—built, Harper supposed, to accommodate Speed Rogers’s broad-shouldered figure and booming voice. They descended flights of steps past burbling fountains and stands of green plants with exotic flowers. They had entered the house at the top and were descending, level by level, down the side of the hill. Harper was changing his mind about the security of the place. They kept coming to big windows that looked out on blue sky, rolling green hills, and woods. There were too many places of concealment out there for comfort. And it was all too easy to see into the house.
Naomi reached the bottom of yet another short flight of steps a little ahead of Harper. She said, “Speed? This is Sergeant Harper, formerly of the NYPD.”
The talk-show host was sitting in a tan leather armchair, reading a script. He put it aside and stood up. Harper had heard that the TV camera made people look fatter than they really were. It wasn’t true in Rogers’s case. In real life he looked enormous—bull-necked and barrel-chested. He was smiling. Under the blond brows, his blue eyes twinkled with a boyish happiness.
“Hello there! Nice to see you.” He took Harper’s hand in a gentle clasp. The missing fingers didn’t make him look down in surprise: He’d been briefed and had remembered. “Thanks for coming all this way. Have you eaten? Want to join me for lunch? I’ve got an order coming from the best burger joint in—”
“Will has only five minutes, Speed,” said Naomi.
“Oh. Well, sit down and we’ll get down to business. You’ve got time for a Coke, at least. Diet or regular?”
Harper declined. He found that he wasn’t surprised by Speed Rogers’s hospitality. Under the bombast and bluster, the talk-show host had always struck him as a friendly man, a man who was eager above all to please. His regular listeners sensed that about him, too, Harper speculated. It had as much to do with making them like him as did his ferocious attacks on the people they and he hated.
Harper and Rogers sat down facing each other. Naomi remained standing. She glanced at her watch. Harper began, “I suppose you’ve been briefed on—”
“Yes, yes. Sounds like you’ve uncovered another nutcase, even loopier than most.”
“You think I’m right, then. That there is a Celebrity Bomber, and he’s targeted you.”
“Of course. With all the nutcases we’ve got running around the country these days, why should I doubt you?” But Rogers was smiling as he gazed out the window. Whatever was going on in the country at large, he felt perfectly safe in his own home. “I’ve got the best security people in the business. There’s no reason for you to be concerned.”
“Rod Buckner had excellent security too.”
“Yes. Poor Rod. I was at his funeral.” The light abruptly went out in Rogers’s blue eyes. His chubby-cheeked face became solemn. But it lasted only a moment. Then he smiled and turned toward Naomi. “I met Colin Powell there—did I tell you?”
While Rogers related the anecdote to an appreciative Naomi, Harper considered. He thought it was going to be necessary to throw a scare into Speed Rogers, and he was wondering how to do so when someone sneezed behind him.
Stuart, the skinny staffer he’d met yesterday in New York, was coming down the stairs with a big paper bag in his hand.
“Hi, Will,” he said pleasantly, and sneezed again.
Rogers chuckled sympathetically. “Poor Stu. Hay fever really gets to you this time of year, doesn’t it?”
“I’m all right in New York. But here—” Stuart’s face was screwing up with an impending sneeze. He advanced blindly toward Rogers, holding out the bag.
“Ah!” exclaimed Rogers, taking it. “Burgers from Carl’s Drive-in in town,” he explained to Harper. “Been eating them since I was a teenager, and they’re the best I’ve found anywhere. The ones in New York don’t even come close.”
Harper leaned forward alertly. He said to Stuart, “Did you see them put the burgers in that bag?”
Stuart sneezed. He mopped his nose and streaming eyes with a handkerchief. “What? Sure I did.”
“Think a minute. Did you actually watch them pack the bag?”
“Harper, this is ridiculous,” Naomi said. “There are burgers in the bag. I can smell them from here.”
“Something else could be in there too.”
“Look, it’s just a little drive-in place,” Stuart said. “I know the guy. I was talking to him the whole time. I saw everything be did.”
“Didn’t you have to turn away and sneeze?” Harper asked. “At least once?”
Stuart didn’t reply.
Speed Rogers was staring wide-eyed at the bag in his hand. He slowly straightened out his arm, moving the bag away from himself.
“This is ridiculous,” Naomi said again. “It’s a bag of burgers from Carl’s. Anyone can tell that.”
“Rod Buckner thought it was a book. Tim Sothern thought it was a box of tennis shoes. How the bomb got into Congresswoman Wylie’s suite we still don’t know.”
“Let’s humor Harper, Stuart,” Naomi said. “Take the bag down to the gatehouse. They’ll know what to do.”
Stuart was standing motionless, staring at the bag in Rogers’s outstretched band. He was too preoccupied even to sneeze.
“Stuart!” said Naomi sharply. “You want me to take it?”
Stuart snapped out of it. Taking the bag, he trotted up the stairs.
“It’s okay, Speed,” said Naomi. “We’ll get ’em back, put ’em in the microwave, they’ll be good as new.”
Rogers sank back in his chair. He gave no sign of having heard her. In fact, he didn’t look hungry anymore. He kept glancing up the stairs, and he didn’t speak again until he heard the faint sound of the front door closing behind Stuart. Harper had gotten to him.
“Naomi,” he said petulantly, “I’m disappointed in you. This is the kind of stuff you usually keep away from me. Why can’t you—why can’t you work it out among yourselves?”
She drew herself up at the reproof from her boss. She said, “Work it out among ourselves?”
“You know—take Will on down to meet what’s his name—the head guard?”
“Jim Clifford.”
“Yeah, have Jim give Will a tour of the place. Listen to his suggestions.” Rogers turned to Harper. “Just spend an hour with Jim, Will. He’s a good man. He’ll convince you I’m safe. Then you report back to me.”
“And convince you that you’re safe?” Harper shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rogers. There’s only one way for you to be safe, as far as I’m concerned. Get out of Elmhart.”
“But this is my home. If I’m not safe here—” Rogers was slowly shaking his massive head.
“Excuse me, Speed?”
Someone else was coming down the stairs. It was another staffer Harper remembered from New York—the Asian guy, Howard. He was wearing a gaudy electric-blue shirt. Harper supposed that being in the provinces relieved him of the necessity of making a fashion statement. But his glasses were still sliding down his nose. He pushed them up with his right hand. His left held a cell phone, which he offered to his boss.
“This is George. In L.A.”
“Oh, sure.” Speed extended a band for the phone.
Harper got to his feet. “Wait,” he said, “you recognize the voice?”
Howard looked puzzled. “It’s George. Speed’s literary agent.”
“I don’t care who he says he is, do you recognize t
he voice?”
“What are you talking about now, Harper?” asked Naomi in a bored voice.
“Old Mossad assassination method,” Harper replied. “You call your target from a safe distance. When you hear his voice, you send a signal and the plastique charge you’ve planted earlier in his phone explodes. Takes only a small charge to blow the target’s head clean off.”
Rogers was staring at Harper openmouthed. his eyes rolled as he turned his gaze to the phone. He was breathing loudly, raggedly. Abruptly he heaved his bulk from the chair.
“Speed,” Naomi said, “give me the phone. I’ll verify it’s George. Just give me the phone, Speed.”
But Rogers was too frightened to understand. He was staring at the phone, paralyzed.
“Speed—” said Naomi again.
Rogers drew his arm back and hurled the phone as hard and as far as he could. It shattered against the wall and its pieces clattered to the floor.
There was a brief silence when only Rogers’s heavy breathing could be heard.
“Well, I knew it was George,” said Howard. “I talk to him every week.”
Rogers didn’t seem to hear the muttered remark. A last wild-eyed glance at Harper, and he swung around to face Naomi. “Goddamn it, Naomi. I won’t be able to stand this—”
“You don’t have to,” said Harper. “Just go back to New York.”
He gave Harper another quick look, then stepped closer to Naomi. “Can I do that? Leave Elmhart? What’ll I say?”
Harper had almost succeeded. Rogers was clearly wavering, looking to Naomi for an out. But she drew herself up. She was smiling and shaking her head. “Now, Speed. Calm down. Get a grip. Where can a man be safer than his own home? What kind of crazy world is it, where you’re told to go to New York to be safe? New York City?”
“It doesn’t have to be New York,” Harper started to say, but it was too late. Speed Rogers wasn’t listening anymore, he was talking. Naomi had given him the cadence of his own indignant rants, and he’d picked it up like a familiar tune.
“New York City,” he intoned. “A place where murder is a popular indoor sport—like bowling is in Elmhart. A place where the police treat homicide as a much less serious matter than—than parking in a loading zone. You park in a loading zone and go in a store for a minute and your car will be gone—towed by New York’s finest. But you kill somebody, and it’s okay. Everybody understands. You come from a deprived background. Society has wronged you, the taxpayers haven’t done enough for you, it’s not your fault.” He gave a grunt of laughter. “Try telling that to the cop in the tow truck as he hauls away your car.”
The big man was on the move, pacing the room, gesturing. The twinkle had returned to his blue eyes. Harper knew he’d lost him, but he took one last stab at it. “This bomber is very dangerous. He’s never failed that we know of.”
“Very dangerous,” said Rogers, laying on the sarcasm as only he could. “A master criminal, in fact. How do I know? Because he’s waited till I got back to Elmhart to come after me. What a stroke of genius! Someone else, some inferior grade of killer, might have gone after me in New York or Washington, D.C. The murder capitals. Not our man. He waits till I get back to a little town in the cornfields, where the sheriff knows everybody by name, where there hasn’t been a murder in five years. Yes, I remember the case, and the man was caught, and he is in jail. Because that’s how we treat murderers here in Elmhart.”
Rogers swung round on Harper. “And this is a guy you expect me to be scared of? This—this pathetic nutcase? You think I’m going to let him drive me out of my home? I don’t think so, Harper. I can get along without your advice. I think you’d better get out of here.”
By now he was bellowing. He stalked toward Harper. Being in a confined space with an agitated Speed Rogers was like being in the ring with a sumo wrestler. Harper could almost feel the floor shaking under his feet. Naomi darted across the room and grasped his arm. Her grip was surprisingly strong for such a slight woman. “Come on, Harper,” she hissed in his ear.
Rising to his feet, he allowed her to pull him over to the stairs. Rogers was still glaring at him. As they climbed the steps, Harper heard him yell at Howard, “Where are my goddamned burgers?”
Naomi hustled him along so quickly that by the time they reached the top of the stairs, Harper was breathing hard. Only when they were outside the front door did she pause and pull a walkie-talkie out of her pocket.
“This is Ms. Glidden,” she said into it. “I’m at the main house. I need someone to give Mr. Harper a ride back to his car. And make sure he gets off the property.”
Putting away the device, she said, “That’s it, Harper. You heard it from the man himself. Now I want you to leave town. I think I’ve done enough for you.”
“You’ve done enough, all right. Maybe too much.”
She frowned at him, her brows drawing together above her glasses. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I was getting somewhere with him. I’d almost convinced him to take the threat seriously.”
Naomi’s brow cleared. She looked away from him, out toward the sunlit fields. “You were scaring him. A scared Speed Rogers is no use.”
“No use?” Harper repeated. “No use to you, you mean? Does he work for you, or do you work for him?”
“We both work for the public. For the millions of Speed Rogers fans. We have a show to put on, Harper. And I’m not going to let you get in the way. You won’t be allowed within sight of Speed again. So why don’t you just head for the airport and catch the next plane out?”
She turned and went back into the house, without waiting for an answer.
Which was just as well. Because it wouldn’t have been the answer she wanted.
Harper had to wait only a few seconds before a Jeep swung around the corner and stopped beside him. The uniformed guard threw open the door. To get here so fast, the guard must have been patrolling in the vicinity. From what Harper’d seen so far, Speed Rogers did seem to have excellent security.
Harper wondered how the bomber was planning to beat it.
16
Twelve miles outside Elmhart lay the old airstrip. It had been abandoned when the county built the new airport on the other side of town. The buildings were gone now and only the long, narrow stretch of concrete remained, cracked and overgrown with weeds. Nobody came out here much anymore, except for the occasional parent giving driving lessons to his sixteen-year-old, or the restless young man itching to open his motorcycle up all the way. On this particular sunny afternoon there was no one around at all.
A dusty pickup truck turned off the road and rolled to a halt on the concrete strip. Markman got out. He was wearing a cap with the name of a fertilizer company on it, a blue pocket T-shirt, jeans, and workboots crusted with dried mud. Keys, a jackknife, and a tape measure hung from his belt. He looked like any other farmer or workman in Elmhart; no one would have given him a second glance.
The tape measure was not just part of his disguise, though. He unhooked it from his belt and went down on one knee. After making a yellow chalk mark on the concrete, he measured off 155 feet down the strip, then stooped and made another chalk mark. At a right angle to the line defined by the two marks, he measured off 52 feet, made another mark, then measured off 27 feet at a right angle to that mark. Then he walked back to his truck.
From the cab, he brought out a toy car and the radio unit that controlled it. He placed the car on the first chalk mark. Straightening up, he glanced at his watch and pressed a button on the remote control. The car rolled along the line he’d walked to the second mark, where he used the control to turn it left and send it to the third mark. Then he turned it right and sent it to the last mark. Each time he stopped the car on a mark, he looked at his watch.
With the course completed, he pressed the button to bring the colorful little car speeding and bumping back to his feet. The cap brim cast a deep shadow over most of Markman’s face, but it didn’t conceal his thin smi
le of satisfaction.
He set the car on the mark and ran it through the course again.
And again.
The shadows of trees and fence posts slowly lengthened. As evening drew in, the swallows came to swoop and dart over the level fields. But still Markman continued to run the little car through its simple pattern. He didn’t stop until it was too dark to see.
Then he picked up the car and walked along the strip, scuffing out the chalk marks until nothing remained.
On a weekday evening, the liveliest place in Elmhart was the Tahitian Lanes. The bowling alley tried to live up to its name with an orange-and-azure mural of a tropical sunset on the wall above the pins, and a bar that served sweet rum concoctions as well as more serious drinks. The bar was kept as dark as a cave: In this part of southern Indiana, people still preferred to drink in places where they couldn’t be seen doing so.
Harper was sitting on a bench behind the lanes, watching the bowlers. There were family groups, with the parents urging on their children, who would stagger to the line and drop the ball with a thud, so that it rolled unerringly into the gutter. There were noisy parties of teenagers, showing off and flirting. And there were pairs of lean men with wizened faces, who kept their cigarettes in their free hands as they smoothly rolled strike after strike. It seemed to Harper they never missed a pin. He wondered why they bothered to go bowling anymore.
Eventually Speed Rogers’s staff, conspicuous by their multiethnicity and their loose natural fiber clothing, their ear-studs and sunglasses, came sauntering in. The smell of stale cigarette smoke made them cough and wave their hands around. Harper had been waiting for them. The doings of the Rogers establishment were much discussed in Elmhart, and it was his waitress at the Jolly Porker who’d told him that this was where the young folks from New York liked to come in the evening. Not that they had much choice; it was either the Tahitian Lanes or drive fifteen miles to the Omniplex for a movie they’d seen weeks ago in the city.