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King waited for one of them to start playing Good Cop.
“Come on, Oscar. The more you say now, the better it will be for you. You could be looking at real time for this.”
King, seated in a fold-out chair, looked across the dented metal table at Sheriff Davis. The sweat that had dried on his skin felt like it had been reanimated. “Jail time? For what?”
“Inducing a public panic is no joke, Mr. Desario,” said the deputy who was pacing behind the sheriff.
“It’s War of the Worlds,” King said. “I didn’t expect any of this to happen.”
“What do you mean, war of the worlds?” the deputy asked.
King threw his hands up. Why didn’t they get it? “The novel. The novel!” he exclaimed, stunned by the deputy’s blank look. “H.G. Wells. The Time Machine? The Island of Doctor Moreau? Come on, H.G. Wells.” King’s breath caught in his throat, and he coughed. Sheriff Davis put his hands in front of him, palms down. Calm yourself, kid, the hands said. King noticed the deputy wasn’t making the same gesture. Instead, his right hand was on his gun. Only then did King realize he had stood up.
King sat back down. He ran trembling fingers through his hair.
The deputy, a beefy young guy with a thick mustache, put his hands on the table. He leaned into the suspect. “You were reading a story?”
“Yeah, the Mercury Theatre adaptation. Everyone reads H. G. Wells in school. How can doing it on the radio be a crime?”
“When it makes people grab their guns and run for the hills, it’s a crime,” the deputy said.
King closed his eyes. His head pounded; he could feel his lungs straining against his chest. He was in trouble here, he knew that. But it wasn’t the trouble he’d thought he was in.
“What are you smiling about, Oscar?” the sheriff asked. He was a small man, wiry, with a boxy face. Leaning on an elbow across the table from King, he affected casualness, as if this interrogation was nothing, the case was all wrapped up, and he was just dotting i’s and crossing t’s.
King tried to pull his face into a grimace, the appropriate look for this situation, but he couldn’t manage it. The grin wouldn’t be denied. He put his hand over his mouth.
“Let us in on the joke,” Sheriff Davis said. “We like a good joke.”
King took his hand away from his mouth. The sheriff seemed like a decent man. He might understand. “It was a radio show. The Mercury Theatre did it in 1938, like I said. It created a panic just like this. But that was years ago. Not so many people were literate. There was no TV. You know how good I had to be to do the same thing today?”
“To do what?”
“Start another panic,” King said. “Did Orson Welles go to jail for his show?”
“Who?” the deputy asked. “Achy Wells?”
“Orson Welles,” the sheriff said. “The sell-no-wine-before-it’s-time guy. The actor.”
The deputy caressed his mustache. He had no idea what either of them was talking about. “You’re one up on Orson Welles then,” he said to King.
Yeah, King thought. I’m better than Orson Welles. Better than a guy who has an Academy Award on his mantel. He couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. He’d watched the TV movie about the panic a couple of years ago—that had put the idea in his head. Paul Shenar played Welles. The Night That Panicked America—that was the title. He remembered that nothing about the Mercury radio hysteria had seemed plausible in the movie, but now King had proved it. He hadn’t really believed he could do it, but he had. People had actually freaked out and evacuated the town. He was still smiling even as the deputy clapped on the handcuffs.
When they brought him out for booking, he spotted Tori at the front desk. A man stood with her, nodding at a policeman. The man signed something on a clipboard, and the officer took it and moved away. King blanched when he realized who the man was. Billy. King mentally shook himself to clear his vision. Yep, still Billy Lane. Billy was Tori’s father? Tori spotted King. She stood up straight, smiled, and started to raise her arm in greeting. Her mouth fell into a surprised O when she saw the handcuffs. Billy turned then, following his daughter’s gaze. He froze at the sight.
“Dad, what’s going on?” Tori said. “That’s the man who saved me. He’s the one.”
King, continuing across the room, watched Tori’s mouth move. Another wave of happiness rolled over him, better than the one during the interrogation. She was coming to his defense! She liked him; she respected him. A feeling of power followed, surging through his torso. He gave no indication that he recognized Billy. As the sheriff and the deputy guided him toward a back room, he casually raised his hands as if to scratch an itch. He put an index finger to the side of his nose and tapped, making eye contact with Billy. You’re safe. King was no snitch. Especially when the cops were clueless. He thought about the other girl, Alice Krendel, who helped set all of this in motion. He thought about how she gave up the morning routine and the vault code so easily. He didn’t even have to bed her. A make-out session in the park behind the bank, his hand up under her bra—that was all it took. She was desperate for it—desperate for anything he would give her. King smiled to himself. He sniffed at his fingers, as if he could still smell Alice on it. He felt on top of the world.
Billy followed King’s progress until the DJ and the two lawmen had disappeared into the booking room.
Tori saw the look from King, too, the swipe at the nose, and immediately understood it. “We should go, Dad,” she said.
Billy started to respond, but the front door swung open behind them. The Mammoth View police chief—a gaudy patch on his shoulder identified him—and another Mammoth View officer pushed into the building. They stopped, scanned the room, and clocked an unfamiliar cop—the state policeman who had been helping Billy.
“Where the hell is Marco?” the chief said.
The state policeman had turned away and didn’t respond.
The Mammoth View officer with the chief noticed another cop, a sheriff’s deputy, in the back room. “I’ll get this thing moving,” he told the chief. The officer headed for the deputy in the back. “Hey,” he called out, “we found the suspects’ car wrapped around a tree on Minaret Road.”
The chief had nodded at his subordinate, but he didn’t seem interested in what was going to happen next. His look was inward, deep into unexplored space. He took hold of the badge on his shirt and carefully unhooked it. He smoothed out his shirt; with the other hand he squeezed the badge as if crushing it. Looking up, he noticed Billy and Tori. He gave them the once over.
Billy put his arm around Tori’s shoulder as he offered the chief an appreciative smile. “I heard about the bank,” he said, probing. “I have a safe-deposit box there.”
The chief looked like he needed to spit. “Well, you’ll have to check with the bank when it reopens.”
“Of course. Of course. Thank you.” Billy steered Tori to the door, pulled it open.
Once they were outside and by themselves, Tori looked up at her father. “Dad, you know King?”
“Yeah, we go back.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
Billy patted his daughter’s head. He was impressed that she picked up on King’s signal in there. “Don’t worry. He’ll be fine. He’ll come by the house in a few days, say hello.”
The Chevelle sat in the space right in front of the building. Billy ushered her inside it and closed the door behind her. “Nice wheels, huh?”
“I like it,” Tori said.
Stepping around to the other side of the car, he looked out at the horizon. The stars glimmered in the sky like Christmas decorations. He read the small metal sign that stood in front of the Chevelle: “Reserved For Police Vehicles.” Billy inhaled the evening air. He liked it up here in the mountains. It smelled fresh and pure. Like freedom.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I must offer a hat tip to Jeff Guinn, Michael Meggison, and Derek Zeller, my close friends who always support my efforts. And, of course, endless thanks to my wife, Deborah King, for making this book—and my life—so much better.
About The Author
Douglas Perry is the author of two critically acclaimed nonfiction books: The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago and Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
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