PANIC (16 page)

Or so the reasoning went.

“What’d you say your name was?”

“I didn’t. I’m P.J.”

“I’ve seen you around.”

“Yeah, I recognized you. Anyway,” he began, turning to survey the scene over the balcony.

He traces his finger around the edge of the scene, expecting that the older man intuitively senses what’s wrong.

“Well, first off, look at this blast radius. It’s tear shaped. That’s not that unusual for an explosion with a lot of front-”

The detective’s low voice cut him off slightly-

“You mean like if there’s a deflection behind the blast or shielding of some kind. A nice heavy wall, or something.”

“Exactly. Supposedly, this originated in the garage, which as you can see is centrally located and not particularly sturdy. It’s just a insulated wood frame with siding on it, a good sized lab would make shrapnel out of that thing.”

The man stroked his beard like some medieval scholar and nodded thoughtfully.

“It would be a radial blast. Nice and clean.”

“Exactly.”

“Big black cinder, nice scorch marks.”

He guided his hand to the spot where the garage roof was flattened on the ground. It was splayed out, mashed into the soft earth and the lawn like someone stepped on a cocktail umbrella.

“Nothing. Nothing at all like that. It looks like it was just stamped flat, not blown out.”

When he pulled up twenty minutes ago in his wife’s Dodge, Wilson was greeted by an eager sheriff's deputy and told it looked like they found a good-sized meth lab explosion - something common out in the county but very occasional in affluent commuter towns like this one.

Didn’t fit anyway, just a hasty conclusion by some townie cop. No nail polish remover smell, no debris from coffee cans or plastic jugs or anything like that. No discoloration from the blast except from some old paint cans, flattened, their contents bleeding down the driveway.

The house paint bleeds into the gutter in sickly, plastic ribbons, rivulets of muted and tasteful shades.

Under the spotlights set up so the scene investigators could work through the night, it looked a bit like a movie set. More like a scale model, actually, from the vantage point on the elevated deck.

The house adjacent to the garage, a newish Cape Cod nearly identical to most in the neighborhood, was a sorry sight. Only the rightmost wall of the house still stands - it will have to be pulled down once they cut away the tape. Where it stands away, it seems like the building was smashed so cleanly that it seemed to just shear away, leaving a thin cross section; part of a bookcase in what looks like a reading room, heavy plastic bags with shrink wrapped clothes spilling from a back room used for storage, a hallway window, a corner bathroom with an intact toilet. Wilson’s eyes follow the plumbing line down the side of the house to where it disappears underground, wondering if it still flushes.

There’s no car in the driveway, either - thank goodness. They may have lost a six-figure home in a great neighborhood, but at least they’re on vacation or out to dinner or whatever they do on weeknights. These kinds of people pay their insurance, yet some green ass glorified patrolman is already making them out to be Mr. and Mrs. Walter White.

“There’s this, too.”

The photographer is spinning his index finger in the air as if trying to gauge the wind velocity before taking a swing.

“Smell anything?”

“No, nothing at all.”

“Right. I’m no detective but shouldn’t you smell something? Even if there was a fire, just an ordinary house fire, or a water heater blowing up and collapsing the house, you’d smell something.”

“I see your point.”

“Ah,” says P.J., becoming visibly animated. “Here’s the freaky deakiest part of the whole thing. See those patterns?”

P.J traces his fingers over concentric lines, like a magician, trying to make the detective see the overlay.

They form an oblong arrangement, some of the lines swirling, others tracing, elongating, exaggerating the pattern. The outline of the pattern looks like a bulging egg. The slender, neat ridges are miniature Nazca lines, furrowing the rolling carpet of grass surrounding the property. His brow furrows, too, in response to this riddle. He can’t seem to immediately think of what the cause of such a thing might be. Even in places where the house and garage have been smushed flat, there are faint traces of them outlined by the nighttime condensation.

He finally does see it, ruminating on it for a bit before putting words to it. It sounds foolish in his head and ridiculous coming out of his mouth.

“Well I’ll be,” the detective said, unsure. He strokes his goatee with a flourish, absorbed in a fanciful idea. “It looks like a fingerprint. A thumbprint, specifically.”

“Exactly.”

“And that’s where we are? An eighteen hundred square foot thumbprint?”

“It sounds preposterous when you say it, but yes.”

“Hm.”

Neither man knows what to do with this information and stand there mulling it over.

An older man stands off to the side, a little disheveled in a dirty undershirt, gray bathrobe and sleep pants. He isn’t wearing socks or shoes of any kind and has his hands in the pockets of the bathrobe and a bemused look on his face. He looks like a widower, Wilson thinks, his mind always churning.

“Are they conducting interviews with the looky-loos?” asks the detective, nodding in the direction of the lone man standing on the lawn behind the caution tape.

P.J. shrugs.

“Didn’t think so,” he says, hustling down the stairs and over to the yellow tape, stretched between the side of the house on the adjoining property and a sapling tree, then to the light post on the curb.

“Sir. Excuse me, sir?” He’s flat and calm, trying not to startle the guy.

The older man looks up with a start, lost in thought.

“Oh, I...I didn’t see you there. I’m sorry. I’ll stand back a ways if you’d like.”

“No sir, it isn’t that. I just have some questions for you about what you may have seen here.”

The older man’s eyes look wild, like the swirl of swept white hair that partially covers his prominent bald spot.

“About that,” he says, as if losing his train of thought.

“Go on.”

“I live just up the block there, where it bends, you see. Number 52, just right over there. It isn’t hardly a football field away, yet we didn’t hear a damn thing.”

“Were you sleeping, sir?”

“Yep, me and the missus. You got to figure something that close would be kinda loud, you know?”

Wilson scratches a pad, jotting down a brief sentence.

“If I may ask, what was it that woke you, if not the sound of an explosion?”

“Wasn’t no explosion. Those lights and the damn sirens woke me.”

In his mind, Wilson was drawing a diagram. No bodies.

No noise.

No explosion.

No smoke.

No smell.

“I appreciate it. Thanks for your time, sir.”

He nodded, and then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper.

“So, uh. What the heck happened here?”

Wilson gave him a genial smile, he wasn’t faking; he seemed genuinely surprised that he had found a problem with no obvious answer. No obvious plausible answer, at any rate.

“Confidentially, I have no earthly idea.”

P.J. was snapping away next to him, trying to see if the optical illusion would dispel itself if he took enough photographs.

Tomorrow, a backhoe would tear down the lone wall, still miraculously standing. The returning couple would sit with their insurance agent, shell-shocked but with check in hand.

The people down on the scene just milled around, wrapping it up. There wasn’t much left for them to do until the arson investigator arrived to appraise what they’d all puzzled over. Like the insurance company, they’d just shrug their shoulders and call it an Act of God. This is what the average person did, when faced with novel situations and information they had no reference for, they’d subconsciously file it away. People had an uncanny knack for ignoring what was staring them in the face; except, of course, when it verified their biases or beliefs.

Wilson had been born without that thing, whatever it was, the ability to dismiss incongruities.

They’d reach the man and his wife and let them know there’d been an accident, but no one was hurt.

Tomorrow, Wilson had the luxury of wondering if they were just punchy and free associating in the small hours of morning.

He’d wonder and doubt.

W
EDNESDAY

WILSON WAKES AT five every morning, usually going for a walk. Seven years ago, on his fiftieth birthday, his GP advised him regular cardio for his blood pressure but he hated treadmills. So he walked the short walk to the storefronts in town as part of his routine, sometimes early enough to catch them rolling up the steel shutters in anticipation of the workday. He knew them all, at least by sight, something he’d picked up from his days as a uniformed officer.

Know the public you serve.

His favorite was Mr. Teng, pronounced like tongue, who’d invite him in sometimes to have tea and rice porridge with his wife before opening their laundry at six thirty. In his neighborhood of this laid-back bedroom community, there was an open space with a man made pond; a misty home for ducks and migrating Canadian geese. Somehow, the lack of serious crime made the the city seem less real and it put Wilson on edge to think of himself turning into a slow-witted old man. He was semi-retired but stayed busy in the county to keep his mind sharp. He could feel his edges being filed off, slowly and steadily.

This morning, he sits in the kitchen, right by the window. He watches wisps of heat curl up and away from his cup, enjoying the aroma of the rich brew. He hasn’t made it himself.

His wife is at the stove pouring herself a cup, her jaw unhinged in a lazy yawn.

“How long have you been up?” she says, putting her hand to her mouth to excuse herself. “You look like you’ve been at it a while, babe.”

He doesn’t turn to look at her, instead watching a squirrel bound across the neatly mowed lawn and scramble up a fence.

“Oh, you know. A while. You making eggs?”

“I wasn’t planning on it. You want eggs?”

She cradled her mug in her hands and leaned against the counter, sighing. Sunlight peeks over the tree line and bathes the wide-open kitchen in brilliant orange, highlighting her soft, brown features. She’s already dressed in her tank top and capris under her dressing robe, ready for her morning run. She’s ten years younger than him but with her bright personality and perfect complexion, the gap looks more like twenty.

“I’m not getting into it with you, Will. Toast, too?”

“I don’t wanna keep you from your run.”

“Lord have mercy, Will, it’s my day off and it’s six A.M. I’m gonna make us some breakfast, okay?”

She’s already at the fridge, putting eggs in a bowl and grabbing a midget carton of cream.

“I’m gonna make some bacon but you can’t have any. You can have toast.”

He crosses his legs at the ankles and leans back in the chair, sipping at his mug.

“Alright, honey, I give,” he retorts, indifferently. He’d promised to stop being so difficult when she wanted to do nice things for him, but the habit was old as he was.

She cracked the eggs in the bowl and whisked, humming sweetly. Soon the sounds of crackling bacon filled the kitchen, mingling with her music. He was so distracted he felt his eyes unfocus as he tried to stare out the window. Between the glass and the backyard there was a smudged fingerprint, right at eye level.

It was like some kind of a joke, just a single, solitary stupid little print touched to the windowpane like a signature. He licked his thumb then wiped over the smudge on the window. The image lingered in his mind, nevertheless.

“Yeah, alright,” he muttered at the nagging memento. It had no response so he turned to Sandra, who was busying herself at the stove.

“That the paper?”

She turns the bacon in the pan with a fork then leaves it alone. The smell fills the kitchen, overpowering the gentle aroma of breakfast tea and rich, scrambled eggs slowly curdling in a dark pan.

“Yes it is, but I haven’t even had a chance to read it yet.”

“I know, honey, I just wanted to see the front page.”

She works like she has three hands, tending to the stove and now the toaster, moving the butter dish from the counter to the kitchen table. Even at this hour, her movements are a symphony.

“Well?” she said, exasperated, spooning creamy eggs onto a platter for the both of them. “Take it if you want. Just don’t separate the sections yet, I hate when you do that.”

He scooted over to the counter, leaning over to grab it as if he were in a wheelchair. He flopped the paper over on the fold and scanned the front page.

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P
ASQUOTANK COUNTY INLETS GRADED: ‘SAFE FOR FISHING SEASON’

PANTHERS RB DONATES TO HOMETOWN

BILL WOULD PROMPT INCREASED REGULATION OF BIOMASS PLANTS

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N
othing on the night’s events, even in the early edition. He flipped through a few of the pages just to see if the story had been buried, not even certain he was looking for the right keywords. “Strange.” “Finger.” “Explosion.” “Crush.” “Accident.” “New Hope.”

The newsprint ruffled loudly as he turned the pages, scanning them silently. It didn’t seem that possible that something so noteworthy could go totally unreported. In his recollection, he must’ve been so relieved by the absence of television cameras or press or any real civilian presence that it didn't occur to him that was unusual. That must’ve been what happened - the press had no wind of it at all, strange as that seemed.

He turned on the kitchen television sitting off on the edge of the counter, using the remote on the table. It was on mute, as usual. It helped him concentrate; to filter out the distracting and inane chattering. None of the local channels seemed to have anyone on the scene or reported on the destruction. It was just one house, but that was beside the point.

His fingers combed his beard, giving him that bewildered wise man look.