Bellows Falls (24 page)

“I think that’s him,” Fasca muttered and headed gingerly in that direction, as conscious as I was that a fall off the narrow plank bridge would take us right through the ceiling to the seats far below. None of the catwalks had railings.

As we got nearer, I returned the penlight to my pocket. The glow from the cavern beneath us filtered up around the feet of the man ahead, revealing the source of his attention to be a large, extinguished spotlight, sharply angled to pinpoint objects on stage. It was bolted to a thick stanchion, which was attached to an open-mesh steel grate. Its dark, tapered head—an oversized parody of a monk’s cowl—peered down through an open rectangular hole in the grid, also without a rail.

The man, whom I could now see was wearing black pants and a black long-sleeved turtleneck, turned and straightened as we reached him. In the light from below, his features were sharply highlighted, making him look like a silent-movie Dracula. “Who the fuck is this, Duncan?”

His voice was an urgent whisper, incredulous that the sacrament of a cop and his snitch was being so cavalierly breached. Under our feet, through the mesh of the grid and the hole at the base of the light, a crowd of small figures, casually dressed, sat in a large semicircle of chairs, instruments in hand. The familiar sweet jumble of their tuning up revived an instant mental snapshot of the first time my mother took me and my brother to a concert. We’d both thought that initial swelling of incoherent sound was the start of the program, and we’d been entranced.

From this height, I felt like I was looking down from a low-flying airplane.

Fasca’s voice brought me back to the present. “This is Joe Gunther, Lenny. He’s from the AG’s office.”

Lenny Markham glared at me. “My pleasure. Now get the hell out of here. It’s a restricted area. No tourists allowed.”

“He knows you’re my CI.”

Markham looked at both of us in stunned silence.

“The reason I’m here,” I put in, “is that I think your life may be in danger.”

Lenny rolled his eyes heavenward. “No shit, Sherlock.” He pointed at Fasca. “You come sailing in here with a cop from Montpelier, say, ‘He knows you’re my CI, Lenny,’ and you tell me my ass is up for grabs? What kind of fucking idiot do you take me for?” He suddenly stabbed Fasca in the chest with his finger. “You being straight with me?”

Fasca looked confused. “Sure, Lenny. That’s why we came.”

“Then tell me: is this bozo the only one who knows about me?”

The answer should have been an immediate and unequivocal “Yes.” Instead, Duncan hesitated a split second and glanced at me. His “Sure,” came too late.

Markham stepped back as if we’d just exposed him to the plague. “You cocksucker. I take care of your fucking career, and you run me up the flagpole.” He shifted to me abruptly. “So who’s out to kill me, besides you two assholes?”

“Norm Bouch.”

Mimicking a bad melodrama, a sudden burst of orchestral music filled the air, causing both Fasca and me to instinctively look down. Lenny’s reaction was more original. He grabbed the narrow end of the spotlight and swung it with all his strength. It spun around, smacked me on the side of the head, and sent me sprawling against Fasca.

Fasca fell back against one of the steel girders. I continued past him, and stepped through the open hole in the grid.

I have often wondered at the written accounts of people in times of peril. Does time slow down? Do you suddenly reminisce? As my feet slipped past the comforting plane of the grid, and I felt the sudden lurch of abrupt acceleration, neither of those impressions struck me. All I thought, and all I managed to say, was “Shit.”

But that may have been because I wasn’t given more time. Instead of having the full distance of the drop to come up with something more satisfying, I was jarringly interrupted by my right hand grabbing onto the edge of the hole as it went by.

There was a near-mystical feeling to it all in the end, however. Hanging there by one hand, the raised teeth of the grid’s mesh cutting into my fingers, the pain from my shoulder just starting to set in, I did enjoy a moment of almost weightless euphoria. The music that had distracted me now filled the air in which I was suspended, sliding off the curved ceiling and hitting me with a wonderful, swelling vibration. I even knew the tune—the “Infernal Dance,” from Stravinsky’s
Firebird
—which my mother had exposed us to as children on the record player, another example of her campaign to bring us culture.

Between my dangling feet, the orchestra was hard at work, laboring over their instruments in perfect synchrony, their heads bent over the music. The conductor, in jeans and a colorful shirt, cut the air with her baton, which from here looked as large as a single shaft of straw. I felt warm, and stimulated, and washed with beauty.

I could also feel my hand getting very tired.

“Joe?”

I tilted my head back to look up, half resentful of the intrusion. The movement made me dizzy, and I suddenly remembered how the spotlight had smacked my temple. Seeing Duncan’s terror-filled eyes, I realized for the first time that I was in real trouble. Falling through a hole half-conscious hadn’t seemed all that terrifying at the time. Having interrupted the process, however, and regained an element of focus, I was now all too aware of what was about to happen.

A surge of panic hit me. “I can’t hang on much longer.”

He reached down tentatively and touched my forearm.

“You won’t be able to hold me,” I grunted, the pain in my hand becoming excruciating.

“Right, right,” he muttered. “Can you get your other hand up?”

“I don’t dare try. I can’t feel my right one anymore.”

“Shit,” he said loudly, echoing my own thoughts precisely. Then, “Hang on,” and he vanished from view.

I took that last comment as literally as possible.

I no longer wanted to look down, no longer thought the music beautiful and soothing. I was drowning in it now, felt it pulling at my legs. I shut my eyes briefly and thought about letting go. The relief from the pain, even though brief, might be worth it.

Fasca’s excited voice brought me back. “I found something, it’s like a safety strap. I’ll try to get it around you.”

It looked like an oversized leash with a heavy clasp at one end. He quickly slung it around my arm, clipped it to itself, forming a lasso, and then lowered the loop to the middle of my chest.

“Put your left arm through it, so I can snug it up to your armpit.”

I did as he asked and felt the comforting bite of the strap against my body. Still looking up, I saw Fasca stand and straddle the hole, his legs braced for my weight, the strap snaking across the back of his neck and shoulders.

“Okay, now listen. When I tell you, let go with your right hand and lower that arm—fast. I don’t want this thing slipping off. Ready?”

I was, intellectually, but nothing happened with my hand. I could no longer feel it, much less control it. My whole body was given over to pain and exhaustion. I shut my eyes.

“Now.”

It worked, although I don’t recall how. There was a sudden drop, a great tightening around my chest. Fasca grunted once, loudly, as if he’d been hit by a branch, and I remember swaying, as I’d enjoyed doing as a child from high in a tree.

Fasca’s strangled voice barked out, “Grab on,” moments later, and I reopened my eyes to see the edge of the hole at eye level. My right arm throbbing, I hooked my left onto the grid and began hefting myself on board. Duncan stopped pulling on the strap and quickly grabbed the back of my belt. With a final heave, he dumped me like a duffel bag at his feet.

He collapsed sprawling onto the catwalk. “Jesus H. Christ. That was close.”

“Radio,” I whispered weakly.

He shook his head in anger. “Damn,” and grabbed a portable from his pocket. As soon as he turned it on, we heard Audrey saying, “He’s gone back in. Joe? Duncan? You there? Come in.”

Fasca keyed the mike. “Audrey. You see Lenny? He clobbered us and split.”

Still flexing my right hand, I turned on my own radio and added, “Call for backup. Aggravated assault of an officer. Is he still in the building?”

“Yeah,” Audrey answered. “He came barreling out the front door, saw me, and ducked back in.”

“Okay. Stay put ’til reinforcements come, then check out the lobby and foyer. Duncan and I’ll start working down from the grid.”

I directed Duncan to the nearby ladder running down to the stage below, while I returned the way we’d come, sweeping the area as I went with my penlight. By the time I reached the short ladder to the staircase, my arm, though painful, had regained its feeling and mobility.

I first checked out the control room at the top of the stairs, where I found people manning computers and lighting equipment, and from where the stage could be seen through a row of thick glass windows. No one there had seen Lenny go by.

Returning to the mezzanine, I quickly ran up the aisle alongside the deserted seats, looking for anybody who might be curled up on the floor. After finding myself alone, I used the radio again. “Audrey, it’s Joe.”

“Go ahead. The lobby and foyer are clear.”

“Same with the grid, the control room, and the mezzanine. Is the building sealed off?”

“People’re coming from all over. I have an idea, though. Meet me just inside the performance hall doors.”

I quickly descended the last flight of stairs and found her standing by a small hatch, much like the one we’d taken to the grid, mounted halfway up the wall.

“Where’s this lead?” I asked.

“It’s like the grid in reverse—they call it the plenum. It’s a crawl space between the floor and the dirt, used to circulate air—1930s ventilation technology. It’s got fans big enough to replace all the air in the building in three minutes.”

She pulled on the handle and swung it open. Immediately, I heard and felt the rush of a steady wind sucking by the door. “And it’s unlocked, which it shouldn’t be.”

She hopped up onto the threshold, reached inside and hit a light switch. Before me was an enormous concrete chamber, gray, featureless, and about four feet high, stretching away in a downward curve as far as I could see. The dirt floor, covered in thick plastic sheets, alternated between broad avenues leading in the direction of the stage, and six-foot-deep trenches that ran alongside.

“Those are for any water runoff,” Audrey explained, “in case of flood or whatever. I bet my butt he went through here. There’s a door connecting it to the fan room.”

I hesitated, although I liked the notion that I couldn’t fall any distance from here. “Are the two of us going to be enough?”

She was already swinging her legs inside. “Sure. It’s wide open and well lit.”

I climbed up beside her as she updated the others by radio. It was true that by simply walking the entire breadth of the building stooped over, we could check on the ditches just as I had the rows of seats in the mezzanine—and with similar results. The difference in environment, however, was considerable. Where the first had been lofty, dark, elegant, and filled with music, the plenum was claustrophobic, starkly lit, and energized by a dry, odorless, virtually soundless wind. I felt I’d stepped from an opulent prior century into the vision of a lifeless future.

Audrey eventually led the way downslope to the chamber’s back wall, and to another door next to a large wire-mesh window. Here the wind was at its most powerful, being sucked from around us in a steady, dull cyclone, lifting our hair and riffling our clothes, drawn through the opening by an enormous, ancient impeller fan that moved in a blur, but emitted no more sound than the element it was consuming.

Audrey drew open the door, ushered me through, and followed me into a bare cement room dominated by the fan. Over our heads, in place of a ceiling, was a louvered panel through which the air was pushed around the rest of the building. We left the room via a solid steel door and found ourselves standing, incongruously disheveled, in a brightly lit, silent, cement-walled hallway.

Audrey spoke in a whisper. “The way things stand now, the top, the bottom, and the front of the building have been checked. I’ve sent people in to clear the main hall and business offices. Duncan and Jonathon’re covering the area above and behind the stage. That leaves this area.” She gestured around us. “Three floors of hallways, dressing areas, utility rooms, and Christ knows what else, all tucked under the stage. We’re at the bottom now. I figure if we just head up floor by floor, room by room, we can squeeze him between us and the people up top.”

I merely nodded as she radioed the others, enjoying being a part of someone else’s attack plan. I assumed the pain in my shoulder would disappear in time, but I was happy to be one of the soldiers for once.

Audrey’s strategy worked well for the floor we were on. It had a single staircase heading up at the far end of the hallway, so we were able to cover one another during the room-to-room search. The next floor, however, proved another matter.

Reaching it, Audrey explained, “Two halls, two staircases, a shitload of rooms. This and the one above are where most of the action is when things are up and running. I’ll take the far end and work this way. You start from here and meet me. Keep your radio handy.”

I was too slow reacting. I didn’t like her proposal and knew it wasn’t necessary. If Lenny was stuck between us and the others, it meant time and patience were on our side. Flooding the next two floors with people as they became available was the prudent course. But fatigue had kicked in, creating a numbing submissiveness. I merely watched her trot down the hall and vanish through a fire door without saying a word.

Once she was gone, however, doubt became apprehension. All the standard protocols had been overwhelmed by spontaneity and a crisis mentality. I knew that with extra personnel already spreading throughout the building, calm would soon be restored, probably with the arrival of a senior officer. I’d been beaned by Lenny’s spotlight barely fifteen minutes ago, after all, not long in the life of an emergency. I could even hear the music still reverberating throughout the building.

But as I began going from door to door, my discomfort grew.