Shadows at the Spring Show (30 page)

Fire-Works on the Night of the Fourth of July.
1868 wood engraving in
Harper’s Weekly
by Winslow Homer. Wonderful close-up of faces turned to the sky looking up at the fireworks. One distinguished gentleman is being hit on his head by a stray rocket. Homer signed
W. H.
in the lower right-hand corner. 11 x 15 inches. Price: $225.

As George had predicted at the meeting Monday, even after the power had blown, the gyms were not totally black. The emergency generator kicked in after five seconds, providing low lights by the exits, and a few dim lights on the ceiling. But the sun outside didn’t reach into the gyms.

The booth walls blocked any light from the exit signs, and of course, all the lamps carefully placed in booths to show off the merchandise had also gone out.

Making her way through the aisles of confused dealers and customers, Maggie headed to the front of the building. Maybe turning the air-conditioning on blew the electrical power for some reason. If Eric turned the air-conditioning off, maybe the lights would come back on. She hoped.

In the meantime, she also hoped no one would stumble on the
electrical cords duct-taped on top of the carpet, or knock against tables covered with crystal, or take the opportunity to relieve a booth of a piece of jewelry or silver.

The good news was that no one was panicking. Some people were even laughing. Dealers and customers were in the aisles. Everyone thought it was a glitch, a momentary outage. The lights would come back on any moment. Maggie hoped they were right.

She kept her eyes open, looking for Eric.

He’d said the electrical panel was in a closet down the hall and pointed to an area near the entrances to the locker rooms. There were no generator-created lights along that hall. Maggie touched the masonry wall gently as she felt her way down the corridor.

Suddenly she heard someone in back of her. “Eric?” she called out, turning around.

A piece of duct tape was swiftly pulled across her mouth and twisted behind her head. As she reached to pull it off, someone yanked her arms down and behind her back before she could react. Her wrists were held firmly, despite her struggles. She felt duct tape bandaging them together. She smelled spicy sweet after-shave.

She wriggled and kicked, but that didn’t seem to bother whoever was holding her. Why hadn’t she worn high heels that would hurt someone, instead of comfortable sandals that could do no damage? She twisted, trying to see who was holding her, but he held tight and pushed her against a doorway. One of the doors into the locker room.

The locker room was unlocked. Inside, he pushed her down on the concrete floor, hard, on her stomach and lay on top of her. Her struggling didn’t seem to make a difference. He was a lot bigger and stronger than she was. He duct-taped her ankles.

Then he released her. She lay on the floor, fighting the duct tape for a few minutes. When she stopped, she heard the sound of a key in a lock. She was being locked in. Her nose picked up
the flowery scent of powder. Deodorant. Hand lotion. The girls’ locker room. Her eyes began to adjust to the dim emergency light from the exit signs on the doors. Then she saw Eric, similarly bound, perhaps ten feet away. They were both lying in one aisle of gym lockers.

No one would be turning the electricity back on.

She twisted her body and looked up. Hal stood over them, on the other side of a low bench. A gun and a cell phone lay on the bench between him and his prisoners. He put a key ring down next to them. His tools.

“I warned you. I said to cancel the antiques show. But you went ahead and did just what you wanted. You ignored me, no matter what I did. People have always made that mistake. They never take me seriously.”

Maggie squirmed, trying to loosen the duct tape. But Hal had twisted it. The tape that covered her mouth and was fastened at the back of her head was pulling her hair. It hurt even more when she moved her head. Eric was watching her; she saw his eyes in the almost darkness. He was scared. Hell, she was scared.

“I like you both. I do. So I’m going to give everyone at this show one last chance. You’re not the people who need to suffer.”

Hal picked up the cell phone. Where had it come from? She hadn’t seen him with one before.

He dialed.

“Hello, Carole?”

Carole always had her cell phone. Thank God she’d picked it up now.

His voice was calm and slow. “No, it’s Hal. I’m calling from Al Stivali’s cell phone.”

Carole must have caller ID and thought Al was trying to reach her. Where had Hal gotten Al’s phone? She hoped Al was all right.

“No, he didn’t give it to me.” Hal grinned.

He was enjoying this! Maggie tried to kick with both of her
feet and managed to hit the bench in front of the lockers. The noise was minimal. And her naked toes hurt like hell.

“Stop talking and listen to me. I sent those letters. You know what letters. And the telephone message. I thought I was being clear. I want this show to stop.”

He paused. Maggie wondered what Carole was saying. She hoped Carole was walking quickly toward wherever Al was. Or one of the other security men. Someone else must have a phone. Someone that could call for help. Police should be patrolling the parking lots about now.

“Two reasons. One, you’re messing with people’s lives. Your agency gave me to two people who didn’t listen. They said they loved me, but they didn’t care enough to even keep me around. They sent me to live with a lot of crazy people. Do you have any idea what it’s like to spend years living with psychos? They drug you to control you, and then they lock you up in rooms with bars and glass that won’t break. They laugh at you and talk about you behind your back. And then they spew you out and send you back to live with the people who sent you there in the first place. And those people act so sweet and nice, but then you find out they’re adopting other kids behind your back. Other kids they can put in places like that.” Hal paused. “I couldn’t let that happen, you understand?

“And the second reason isn’t for me. It’s for Jackson, and all the kids like him you placed with parents of different colors. You mess with ethnic purity. You condemn the future of America by creating families of mixed races. Those families can’t protect their kids from hatred. Those kids won’t fit in. And they’ll be blamed for everything done by anyone who looks like them. They’ll have no place to go.”

Maggie looked over at Eric. He was listening carefully, and his eyes were no longer full of fear. They were angry.

Hal paused for a moment. “Good. You’re hearing me. Adoption between the races is wrong. People can only become who they’re meant to be when they’re raised by people like them.”

He paused again. He was close enough so Maggie could see the muscles in his face tense. “
Listen!
This is not a discussion! Listen carefully!” Hal looked down at his watch. “It is now approximately twelve forty. Two bombs are set to go off at one. One in each of the gyms. They’re the same kind that blew up Maggie Summer’s van. But no one paid attention to that bomb. No one took me seriously. Nobody stopped this show. I couldn’t let it earn more money so you could make victims of more innocent children like me!”

He was quiet for a moment. What was Carole doing? What was she saying? What was happening in the rest of the building? Maggie looked for something that would cut the tape that was binding her.

“I am in the building. I have Maggie Summer and Eric with me. Even if you evacuate the building, you won’t find us. The three of us will blow up with the show.”

Carole was trying to find out something.

“I’ve said all you need to know! Stop interrupting me! You have to close the show down! And stop placing children with parents who don’t understand them! If you promise to do that, then call me back. If you call me in time, I can locate the bombs and disengage them. If you don’t call, Whitcomb Gymnasium is going up, with everything and everyone in it. You now have”—Hal looked at his watch again—“sixteen minutes until one o’clock. But I’ll need time to disconnect the bombs. So you have ten minutes.” He put the cell phone down on the bench and walked over to where Eric lay.

“I’m sorry about Jackson. I thought I was doing him a favor. After we met at one of those rah-rah-adoption picnics at your house, he told me what it felt like to be biracial. He hated it. He said he hated his mother; she was white, like his birth mother, and she thought she could take the place of a real mother. But a real mother would have cared enough about him to have made sure he had a father of the same heritage.”

Hal looked over at Maggie. “Abdullah met Jackson here on
campus. He told Jackson and me about that melting pot you talk about in your classes. He tried to tell us we were all Americans. Abdullah is mixed race, too. But Jackson and I knew better. You can’t mix rice and noodles and potatoes and couscous in a bowl and expect to end up with anything you can eat. It just doesn’t work. Jackson and I talked about it. He told me how when adoption agencies can’t find families with the same race as a child, they put them with anyone who’ll say yes. Jackson hated that. He told me he couldn’t stand his mother; he wished she were dead.

“He told me his father had a gun, and he could get it. So I told him to do that; we’d find a way to make things better for him.” Hal looked down at Eric. “Only when I shot his mother—your mother—I messed up. She didn’t die. And then Jackson got all turned around. He said he didn’t mean to have her hurt. That he loved her! After all he’d said about her. When she was white! “He said he’d turn me in. He’d tell everyone. I couldn’t let him do that. He let me down. I was his friend, and doing him a favor, and he was letting me down. He’d promised to help me stop the show.”

Hal’s voice was almost pleading.

“You understand, I couldn’t let the show go on. I couldn’t let more kids be put in wrong families. I couldn’t let it happen again in my family. I couldn’t let it happen in anyone’s.”

He looked at his watch. “They’re probably trying to get everyone out of the gyms. The walls are too thick to hear anything in here. Maybe I’ll be nice and take the duct tape off your mouths. Just your mouths. Then in case they call and want you to prove you’re here with me, you’ll be able to talk.

“But don’t count on saying much. If they don’t call in another few minutes, I won’t have time to disconnect those bombs.”

Hal reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pocketknife. Maggie saw the handle as it went by her face. Boy Scouts of America. Always prepared. She winced as Hal sliced the duct tape and then pulled. Skin and hair came away with the
tape. He then went to Eric. “I like you, man. Even though you didn’t see things as clearly as your brother did.”

Before he had a chance to cut Eric’s duct tape, the phone rang.

“Right on time,” Hal said. “Very good. Very organized.” He picked up the phone and sat on the bench between Maggie and Eric, his feet between their bodies.

“Yes?”

Maggie reached out with both her arms and legs, angling so they hit the top of the bench. Eric watched and immediately did the same. Hal, concentrating on the phone, slipped backward off onto the floor as the bench tumbled, putting it between him and Maggie and Eric. “The girls’ locker room!” Maggie screamed, hoping whoever was on the other end of the phone would hear. “We’re in the girls’ locker room!”

Hal threw the phone across the room. “You think that’s going to help? They were going to let me out. And both of you. I’m going to die anyway. I killed that idiot brother of yours who didn’t know what he wanted. But you might have survived. Before you started doing crazy things. Before you started thinking you were in control.

“You both saw the van, right? Blew pretty high. And I put more stuff in these bombs. I’m not as dumb as everybody thought. I know about fires and bombs. I can put things together. I read all about how to do it on the Internet. That idiot Carole and her husband never paid attention to what I was doing. They were just happy I was being quiet and not bothering their kids. But now you two aren’t going to get to see all the excitement. Because you’re going to die before the fireworks.”

When the bench had overturned, the gun had slipped onto the floor near where Hal had fallen. Just the bench was between Hal and his prey. As he reached for the weapon, Maggie kicked the bench again, pushing it and the gun farther away. Hal slipped as he reached again, and this time Eric and Maggie kicked the bench together and the bench moved on top of the gun. Pain streaked through Maggie’s bare toes.

As Hal reached to move the bench, the locker door opened.

The light of a torch blinded all of them. A policewoman was there, with two other cops in back of her. She held her gun on Hal as one of the other officers pulled him up and handcuffed him. Then she reached down and pulled the gun from under the bench.

“You think after that sort of treatment I’m going to tell you where the bombs are?” said Hal. “You think I’m not brave enough to die?”

“I don’t know how brave you are. But you’re plenty crazy. And we’ve already found the bombs.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“We figured if anyone was going to set off another bomb, they’d set it up yesterday. Maggie said anything could be brought in and hidden under table covers while the dealers were bringing in boxes and packages. So late last night, after everyone but Al had left, we brought in a bomb-sniffing dog. You were pretty smart. The bombs were on twenty-four-hour clocks. Not bad. But not good enough.”

The cop pushed Hal through the door. Another policeman knelt and cut the duct tape holding Maggie and Eric. “Eric, can you get these lights back on?”

“Yes, sir,” said Eric, stumbling a bit as he regained his balance. “The master key is somewhere on the floor. George left it with me, in case of emergency. Hal followed me when I was turning on the air-conditioning and took it. That’s how he turned off the lights and got into the locker room.” One flashlight survey of the floor and the keys were in Eric’s hands.

“Sorry, Maggie. I didn’t think it was anything important when he followed me to turn on the air-conditioning. He was being really friendly. I . . . I liked him.”