Shane and Vignette were both young adults now, but he could not imagine them doing well on their own, not yet. With just a few more years to grow into themselves, to finish casting off the worst effects of the brutal experiences of their early years, they might each grow into fine lives.
Of course none of that would matter anymore if he went to prison. An even deeper burn came from the knowledge that his sanity would never survive a false imprisonment and the destruction of his family.
Still, it was not the burning of the building under orders and encouragement from above that held him tied in knots, now. The poisonous element was that for the rest of his days, he would never escape the knowledge that he had taken a chance with the life or the lives of innocent people—no matter how remote that chance may have been. The only thing that would have been necessary for a real tragedy to ensue was for some unexpected person to be in the area.
Then Detective Randall Blackburn would have been a killer, a common murderer. Nobody at the station house showed any interest in that during the hours of his debriefing. His lieutenant-level tormentors repeatedly assured him that he nearly ruined everything with his “safety” tactics. Officers outside in the hall who caught snips of conversation probably assumed that he was in there explaining the details of how he spotted the fire. Instead, he spent every moment fighting to control his anger until the lieutenants’ sneering disrespect was replaced by that of his captain. The captain was so angry over the risk that Blackburn had taken with his tactics that he threatened to retract his prior offer and have him arrested anyway.
Blackburn’s last-minute concession to his conscience had been to set the fire down beneath the stage, instead of the backstage area. Down there, he trusted that the lesser air supply would slow down the fire’s advance. Then he sneaked out and hurried to one of the new police call boxes to report the fire. It would be hard for him to explain, if somebody on the fire department questioned how it was that the fire got reported before it was visible from outside. He would have to make up something. Tell them he smelled smoke.
He successfully minimized the fire, which was easily extinguished. But the smoke damage was barely enough to justify sealing the building. It would provide a plausible rationalization for declaring the entire place condemned, but just barely. No thanks to Blackburn, it would be quietly slated for demolition in what would be advertised as an abundance of caution against undetected fire damage.
The fishy circumstances would quickly wash away amid the public excitement over the exposition. The news representatives were not going to print anything that could not be explained. Key players had all been rewarded or threatened into silence.
And so this challenging incident of civic corruption was guaranteed to pass undetected. There were, after all, other things screaming for priority in the public attention span. The city was trying to hold an international party while a great war was spreading all through Europe, threatening to pull the United States into the mess along with everybody else. The civic authorities counted on the fact that people had a lot of other things to think about.
Fortunately for Blackburn, the captain reminded him, his tracks were being efficiently covered by the authorities in spite of his cautious performance.
Except that he felt as if he were the one who had fallen into the fire. He was burned and blackened in ways that he could not escape. At the worst of the damage points, he felt nothing, like the burn victim whose flesh is charred black. There was only ash remaining in the places where he had always found pride in his life. He was used to the feeling of living his life as a good man. All of that was in ashes.
A soft knock came from outside his bedroom door. He tried to respond and found that his vocal cords felt as if they were asleep. He resented any intrusion at this moment, and the feeling was heightened by his frustration at not being able to come up with some decent way of keeping either of them from coming in.
It did not matter what he might have said, because it was Vignette knocking. She took advantage of his brief silence to test the doorknob, discover that it was unlocked, and walk into his room without waiting for an invitation.
He turned to look at her with a small sigh and tried to make a smile of some kind, but was not sure what it must have looked like. She suddenly smiled so large, so quickly, that he realized it was in reaction to her own thoughts and not to whatever facial expression he had just tried to imitate.
She kept a bit of distance, the way she always did, and leaned against the edge of the tall bookshelf next to the doorway. She spoke to him in a near whisper that he recognized as her most tender tone of voice. She used it on frightened stray animals. Her voice already told him that she grasped his condition.
“I knew that she wouldn’t want me to let you sit here alone like this, without knowing.”
He raised his eyes to meet hers for a moment, but it hurt too much and he had to pull them away.
“I finally had to accept that she loved you. The last thing we talked about was her plans for your marriage, and she sounded so wonderfully happy.” Vignette snickered and added, “She talked about you like you are the finest man ever born and she couldn’t believe her luck in finding you. I told her I’ve been driving the women away ever since we all moved in, and she laughed and thanked me!” She shook her head and laughed a little, just to think of it.
Blackburn was instantly caught up and so completely mesmerized by the pictures she was painting in his imagination that he did not speak. He felt their eyes connect again and a wave of the girl’s love washed over him. It broke his heart and spared the rest of him. Tears rolled down his face without stopping. His masculine habits barely restrained his facial muscles. They prevented his sobs by pushing them back down where a man was expected to keep those things.
Vignette grew serious and gazed directly at him. “I want you to know that I don’t think I could have helped her. I really don’t, Randall. I’ve thought it all out.”
He found his voice. “All right, you listen to me. I’m thankful that you weren’t around. I know this was the same guy who went after Duncan. And Duncan knew all about him. He was just so ashamed of him that he never gave us the real information that we could have used to keep him safe.”
He stood up, feeling about a hundred years old while he walked over to her. She flinched the way she always did when he hugged her, but then she relaxed a little.
He whispered, “You were never going to take down a man like that. Don’t you worry about any of that other nonsense. I’m glad you weren’t there, Vignette. That’s all. I love you too much to ever want you to risk yourself like that.”
He felt Vignette take in a long breath. For once she didn’t try to push away. She stood and returned his hug.
“It gets lonely downstairs.” Shane spoke from the doorway. Blackburn grinned and motioned him in. He released Vignette and went back to the stuffed chair. His energy was spent by that small exertion.
“I was just telling Randall about the fine things that Miss Freshell was saying about him,” Vignette announced.
Shane glanced at her in a flash of surprise, but he immediately erased it. He kept quiet and listened while she went on.
“Her book was using James Duncan for the main character, because he was famous and all, but she was going to make Randall the real hero. You know, as if to say that the fancy guy was just the one who had to be protected, but it was Randall who was the one who really does things. In the story. Not that it was finished yet. These were her ideas. Sketches of ideas. Apparently that’s how you write those romance novels. You sketch things out in advance. Or that’s how she does. Did. She just admired you so much, that frankly, it was something to see. She was besotted. That’s the word! ‘Besotted’ with love over Randall Blackburn!”
“Not that we can understand why,” Shane added, grinning.
Vignette laughed at that and quickly added, “Of course not. It’s a mystery!” They both turned to Randall to see if he was catching the wave.
>
He could not get there with them. His insides were charred. He did not know how to pretend.
“Listen to me, both of you.” He spoke softly, but his tone was strong, resolute. “What would you have done, if they had hauled me away today?”
“Why the hell would they do that?” Vignette interrupted.
“Later. Right now, just tell me. What would you do? Those little inheritance payouts might keep body and soul together, if nothing goes wrong with the economy, what with all of this war talk. But how long will that be enough? You get old enough, people don’t want to give you chances anymore. You can’t get started. Nobody wants to give you a break, because they figure that if you haven’t done things right by then, maybe you’ve got something wrong with you. That way, no matter how well you approach them, they’re going to look at you and see trouble. How would you two keep yourselves from coming to that?”
“Well, Randall,” Shane began, “I don’t see why anybody needs to come over here and arrest you, so I—”
“Forget about why they do it. Just say they do, for any reason.”
“All right, then. I have been working at The Sea Mist for almost a year.”
“That’s fine for a young guy. But what if arthritis starts to settle in your hands, your wrists, your leg joints? What are you going to do then? If you don’t have working skills?”
“Randall,” Vignette interrupted, “I don’t see what any of this has to do with Miss Freshell.”
“It doesn’t. It has to do with me realizing you both need a livelihood that lets you be yourselves, that doesn’t force you into some kind of a mold.”
“You’re just now realizing that?”
“Vignette…”
“Sorry.”
“Tell me, does either one of you think that if something happened to me, I could rely on any help from the department for you?”
Vignette started to answer, but her throat seized up. She put her hands on her hips and stared at the floor.
“Shane, I’m proud of you for taking on an honest job. It’s just that, to me, your temperament does not seem suited to restaurant work. I think that in order to make it through a shift, you have to become like a sleepwalker, and not feel anything.”
“Jesus, Randall…” Shane muttered.
“No, come on now, I’m not saying this to rub your nose in it. I’m telling you that yesterday might have been the worst day of my life, but it forced me to ask hard questions.
“You both need to get out of the traps you’re in, just like I do.”
“What ‘trap’ are you in?” Shane asked.
“In one more year, I get a twenty-year pension. Good for life. And it’s a stupid goal to throw away your soul for.”
“Randall,” Vignette began, “what are you getting on about?”
“You just look at the kind of danger both of you were in, yesterday, because of my line of work.”
“We never said that we—”
“Each of you came close to getting killed, for no reason but for me being a police detective.”
“So what? That wasn’t your fault. You always wanted to be a detective. It’s why you walked that beat all those years,” Shane said.
“Here’s what would be my fault: If I let you two go on out into the world without being better prepared for it than you are.”
“Oh, well then. You’ll put in a good word for us at City Hall?” Vignette sweetly asked.
“Too late,” Shane said with a grin.
Randall stood up and took a deep breath. “No, right now I’m going on in to the station.” He picked up his boots, sat in a chair, and pulled them on. Shane and Vignette watched in puzzled silence. He opened the closet and took out a topcoat and a heavy felt hat. “I won’t be gone too long.”
“Who’s in, today?” Shane asked.
“I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.” He put his coat on.
“You mean you’re not going in to see somebody in particular?” Vignette asked.
Randall stood holding his hat and looked her straight in the face. “I have a letter of resignation in my pocket, here. Actually, a note. There are three lines. I only needed one. So I’ll give it to the desk sergeant. Doesn’t matter who’s on the desk. Long as I turn it in, that makes it official.”
“Randall,” said Shane, “I have a bad feeling that you’re still in shock. You shouldn’t be making this kind of a decision. Not now, anyway.”
“Yeah. I’m in shock, all right. But waiting around isn’t going to change anything.” He turned to go.
Shane grabbed his arm and turned him back around to them. “Wait, I mean it. Please. Just wait.”
Vignette jumped in, saying, “Wait ten minutes! You can always do it after ten minutes, can’t you? You can wait ten minutes, right?”
He gave them a tired smile, and did not start for the door. “What will change in the next ten minutes?”
“Nothing, maybe,” Vignette replied. “But you might find that after you more or less count to ten, things start to look different.”
“Nothing will look different. I already wrote the letter. I even used so much tact that it took up three lines. Did I mention that I could have done it in one?”
“Randall,” Shane used his most serious tone, “you also just mentioned your twenty-year pension. If you quit—”
“I know.”
Vignette spoke though a pensive frown. “I’ve known you all this time, Randall, and I don’t ever remember hearing you talk about anything with the kind of enthusiasm that you always show. I mean, when you talk about figuring out crimes and outsmarting bad guys. Doing your work.”
“Playing their game better than they do,” Shane added.
Randall stood looking at both of them, overwhelmed by their attempts on his behalf. They meant the best, but they also had no idea.
“Because of my job, you two. It would have been amazingly easy for them to blow us apart. Look how close they came.”
“Hey,” Shane protested, “we are not children! I’m not so sure what it is that you’re afraid of, with us.”
Blackburn quietly regarded Shane while answers flashed through his mind. He had no doubt that both of these young people were capable of having fine lives, if they could keep using the special individual skills that they each possessed while they learned to compensate for social skills they lacked. Without such a chance—without some sort of protective place where they could finish developing fundamental things that they needed—he could hold out little hope for them in a society like theirs, so quick to judge and quicker to condemn.
Shane’s awkward social behavior kept him isolated. And Blackburn thought of Vignette’s strange need to reject any attempt to treat her as a feminine creature, her constant state of battle with the world. They would both be lucky to scrape by and keep out of jail.
The world itself was a slaughterhouse, for them, even when it was safe and serene for others. Its terrible mechanisms would be activated by their eccentricities, the process powered by the inevitable hostility that would eventually corner each of them, visiting destruction in any of countless ways.
He took out his weathered silver pocket watch and flipped open the case. The crystal was cracked again—for, what was this, the seventh time? He dropped it back into his pocket.
“Makes sense,” he said. “Time for a new watch.”
Because the flow of time was not on his side. Ten minutes, ten days, or ten years, there would be no fixing this one through the mere passage of time, unless he found a way to fix it himself.
He put his hat on. It helped make the point to them—and to himself—that it was time for him to leave and get this thing done now, no matter how many minutes it had been.
ONE MONTH LATER
THE BLACKBURN-NIGHTINGALE HOUSE
THE ROUTINE DETAILS WENT by in the fashion of final rituals: the wrap-up on Miss Freshell’s murder by James “J.D.” Duncan’s maniacal bastard son, the burial of Miss Freshell’s remains. When they were done
, Shane went back to working at the restaurant. Vignette went back to burying herself in her books. Randall spent a good deal of time outside, taking long walks. His legs had spent so many years walking a beat that they demanded regular use.
Over on the exposition grounds, the water in the dead space behind the life-sized Cave Dwellers exhibit never rose high enough to spill out and repel the visitors. Not that the problem went away; rather, the further crumbling of the hastily man-made six hundred and twenty-five acres of land allowed the leaks to spread throughout the landfill. The phenomenon distributed the water load so well that it would conceal the problem until the next major earthquake, at which point the land would liquefy and swallow large homes up to the second floor within a matter of seconds.
The rest of the exposition was thus able to play itself out for the full ten months without the embarrassment of a spontaneous geyser in the middle of the fairgrounds—and without the embarrassment of a collapsed balcony at the Pacific Majestic Theatre. The minor fire story played for a couple of days, but since nobody died, it faded like a spent match.
Blackburn especially enjoyed the experience of having Captain Merced show up at their home in an attempt to dissuade him from leaving the force. Shane and Vignette hung in the background to eavesdrop. The men were behind closed doors, but it became clear to them that Blackburn was continuing to refuse Merced’s offer, while the captain’s voice grew louder.
When Captain Merced finally opened the office door and stomped out, he shouted that Blackburn was finished at the department. He marched to the front door, stopped just long enough to announce that there would be no second chances, then glared at Shane and Vignette with disdain and slammed the door as he left.
The Hidden Man Page 26