Periphery, page 17
Without taking her eyes from his, Katie Fife went in for a pound.
Twelve
It turned out to be alarmingly easy to leave the station with the Trenchrite banging at his hip, concealed by a few shirts and a bath towel at the bottom of his overnight bag.
Andrew hadn’t slept well, spending most of the night blinking up at the bunkroom’s drop-tiled ceiling and listening to the snorts and snores of the rest of the men on B shift. Each time he began to drift off, a bell would ring or a firefighter would haul himself out of his cot, coughing and absentmindedly scratching his ass, to use the john.
Try as he might, he could conceive of no scenario that would allow him to simply waltz into the supply room, remove the explosives from the box of cervical collars, and sashay back out again without drawing attention. Someone would notice. With his luck, it would be Sid Langston. In the dim light filtering in from the hallway, he could envision the exchange with a neon brilliance, Sid’s bulk blocking his escape, his expression changing from suspicion to a “gotcha” smirk. What’s in the bag, Tate? Oh, man, you really fucked up this time. No squirming your way out of this one.
Even if he made it out of the storeroom without being noticed, he would still have to exit the station, and that would mean going through the common room and passing at least half-a-dozen firefighters. Of course, many of them would be the C crew arriving for their shift. There’d be the usual exchange of greetings and gossip.
He might be able to slip out quietly while the rest chummed it up. Actually, wasn’t that the way things usually turned out, with Andrew slipping away after a vague wave to an indifferent crowd? But how to conceal the Trenchrite? He couldn’t just throw it in his overnight, could he?
Could he?
What choice did he have? He couldn’t hide the explosives under his clothes. He couldn’t toss them out an open window and nab them on the other side. Maybe the simplest plan had the best chance of success. Wasn’t that the way they approached every fire? Every medical emergency? First responders didn’t have the luxury of elaborate schemes and convoluted strategies. That was for engineers and architects.
Even as these considerations looped wearily through his thoughts, Andrew came to realize on an almost subconscious level that over-thinking his plan might be more than just counter-productive. It might be dangerous. He did not believe his thoughts were entirely his own anymore. Others might be listening in, their ears-if they had such things-pressed against the outside of his skull like a drinking glass to a closed door. In the hours before dawn his exhaustion settled in an obscuring white drift over the outlines of what he would do the next morning, and with that Andrew had slept until morning.
He woke in a sort of anesthetizing fog, knowing on some level what he planned to do but giving it little, if any, conscious thought. Andrew showered and shaved. He brushed his teeth. He went to his locker and dressed in his civilian clothes. With his bag over his shoulder, he strolled down the hall to the storeroom. His heart beat slowly and steadily as a collision of voices drifted out from the kitchen. Breakfast. Eggs and bacon. Laughter and pancakes.
He felt nothing as his hand drifted out to insert the key into the lock on the storeroom door. Andrew could not remember having removed it from its peg on the office wall, yet he must have. He stepped inside. He was a piece of driftwood, moving effortlessly on a current sweeping him into this eddy before swirling him out again into deeper waters. Slowly, methodically, he removed the collars, gathered the Trenchrite, stashed it away, returned the collars, returned the box to its shelf and exited the storeroom.
He felt nothing as he relocked the door, replaced the key on its peg. He did not rush. If anything, he moved slower than usual, almost defiantly sluggish. No one stopped Andrew. No one saw him until he crossed the common room and even then no one took notice except Gary, who slapped him on the shoulder, gave him a questioning look and wished him a good day.
In the car driving back to his motel, the bag sat next to him on the passenger seat. Gradually, the fog lifted and the reality of what he’d done rushed in to take its place. He was a criminal now. A thief. There was something naggingly familiar in the way surrender and resignation swirled sourly in his stomach, and for several blocks, Andrew puzzled over the tug of déjà vu until it came to him. This was how he had felt the first time he’d taken a drink before work, the shameful realization that he was now a man who couldn’t keep the booze from spilling into places it should never go.
Now he had become something new yet again.
You had to appreciate the irony, Andrew thought as he turned into the motel parking lot. He’d started drinking in earnest to keep from seeing his father’s monsters (hadn’t he?), and now he had stopped drinking (hadn’t he?) after accepting they were real. Maybe this was what sobriety looked like. Andrew had always assumed it would arrive gradually, a slow accumulation of dry days that would solidify into something substantial, a border dividing then from now. But maybe, under extreme circumstances, sobriety came all at once, like a wall, a tree, a guardrail bringing an abrupt stop to a long skid.
Andrew rounded the motel’s back wing and hit the brakes. Grace stood outside the door to his room, and she wasn’t alone. Her brother James was with her.
After a moment, he eased forward and crept into a parking space. He considered leaving his overnight bag in the car, afraid that Grace would somehow sense the Trenchrite concealed inside. But he quickly rejected the notion. It probably wasn’t a good idea to keep high explosives locked in a hot car.
“I didn’t want to bother you at work,” she said, taking a step back as he approached. Andrew could feel his pulse in the inner lining of his mouth, hammering so hard his gums felt inflamed. All the fear he had kept a lid on earlier sprang up with a Jack-in-the-box release of uncoiling dread. James held an envelope in one hand.
“Jim,” he said, giving his brother-in-law a nod that was mechanically returned. “What brings you to my humble abode?”
Grace cleared her throat. “Andy,” she said, not taking her eyes from the pavement, “Andy, I’m sorry. I never wanted… I never thought it would…”
“Grace?”
She let out a watery breath and shook her head. “God. I don’t know how to…”
“She’s taken out a restraining order against you, Andy.” James thrust the envelope at his chest. His tone was businesslike, the brisk, unsympathetic professionalism of a man with a job to do. “Take it,” he said. Andrew’s head tick-tocked between Grace, still refusing to meet his gaze, and James, whose face was an expressionless mask, his eyes invisible behind the black ovals of his sunglasses. “Take it,” he repeated. “Don’t make this difficult. She’s already doing you a favor. A cop normally does this. Grace asked Natalie to keep things just between us. She wanted to protect your privacy.”
Natalie, James’ wife, was a Hillsborough County family court judge. Numbly, he grasped the envelope. Yes, she was definitely a judge. A judge for the county. He couldn’t seem to move beyond this simple fact. Natalie Couter was a judge. He was holding a restraining order from his brother-in-law’s wife and she was a family court judge.
“It’s only temporary,” Grace said. She wiped her cheek with the back of her fingers.
“Until a permanent one can be issued,” James added. “Thirty days.”
“I haven’t decided that yet.”
“Grace, what’s this all about? What does this thing say?”
She tried to speak, but managed only a series of clicks and gulps.
“It says you’ve lost your right to have unsupervised visits with Anna.” An edge of impatience gave James’ words a sharpened precision. “From now on, you want to see your kid, you do so in the presence of Grace.”
Presence of Grace. Presence of grace? Isn’t that what he had always tried to do?
“Is this about the other day? I wasn’t drinking, Grace. I swear to god, I would never put Anna at risk.”
“Since when?”
“James, stop.” His wife placed a hand on her brother’s shoulder.
“Fine. I did what I came to do. I’ll be at the car.” He turned without giving Andrew another glance and marched off across the parking lot, his heels clicking like distant gunfire across the asphalt.
“I’m sorry, Andy. I had to bring him. Legally, I’m not allowed to serve you the order. It has to be someone else.”
“Grace, please. Don’t do this.” His throat clamped shut.
“You didn’t give me much choice, did you? You think I like this?” She was crying freely now, gasping out words between sobs. “You think I want to keep you and Anna apart? She loves you so much. Even after everything that’s happened. This is going to break her heart.”
“Mine, too. But it’s not too late.” He grasped the envelope in both hands. “We can tear this up, start over. I’m not the same man I was six months ago.”
“I don’t know who you are now.”
“Sober.”
“Then I’m happy for you.” She pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “I am. But for now, I think this is best. I’m not forbidding you from seeing Anna. Visit whenever you want. You just won’t be taking her out on your own.”
“What about us, Grace? Where does this,” he waved the envelope between them, “leave us?”
“You’re the one who moved out.”
“I’m ready to come back.”
She leaned forward and gave Andrew a peck on his cheek. “We’ll see. I have to go now. Anna’s with my sister and I promised I’d be back before lunch.”
Grace turned. Stop her! a voice screamed. Take her inside. Tell her everything. Make her see the truth.”
He reached out, grasped her hand, interlaced his fingers with hers, and although she did not turn to face him her fingers tightened around his.
“Grace, there’s something I need to tell you.” She said nothing, but her head turned slightly, as if she were watching what their hands would do next.
Andrew imagined leading her into the motel room, sitting her down at the table, falling on his knees and begging her to believe what he was about to say. In the next instant, he saw the room’s squalor, the unmade bed, the yellowed walls. The wastebasket still filled with empty liquor bottles. It would be the first thing Grace noticed and no words would convince her he hadn’t drunk them dry.
And yet, he was willing to push on despite his misgivings, when the impression of movement drew his glance over his wife’s shoulder to James, standing next to his car and tapping away on the screen of his iPhone. Something floated over his brother-in-law’s head, a living ball of spikes. It hovered for a moment, rotating slowly. Little Billy would have a specific name for this thing, but “monstrosity” was good enough for Andrew. It swelled, the folds of its translucent skin stretching taut before a spasmodic constriction sent the creature drifting toward them with the soft hiss of air jetting from a valve.
“What?” Grace whispered.
Without taking his hand from hers, Andrew pivoted to position himself between his wife and the approaching bilantu. He leaned in and kissed her hard, pulling her close with a fierceness that startled them both. He felt her stiffen as she tried to back away, but he followed, keeping his lips on hers even as he sensed the creature directly overhead. Andrew’s tongue probed across lips pressed tight. The struggle went on for an unseemly amount of time. His testicles drew up in anticipate of an imminent knee to the groin, but just as he was about to relent he heard another hiss of expelled air. A shadow drifted over them, and as it did Grace suddenly relaxed, although whether in resignation or empathy he couldn’t tell. He held her for another two seconds, three seconds, four, then released her. As she stood with her head tilted up to his, the bilantu disappeared around the corner of the motel.
“I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Because it was so horrible?”
“Because it wasn’t.” She waved off James, who was halfway across the parking lot, his hands balled into fists. “Is that all you wanted to say?”
“Tell Anna Daddy says ‘hi’. Tell her I love her very much and I’ll see her soon.”
“Of course, of course.”
Of curse? No, that wasn’t right. He was losing it.
“And you. So much, Grace. I’m sorry for everything. Everything. Give me a chance to prove it.”
“Thirty days. Then we’ll see.”
Little Billy jumped when his phone began to ring. The apartment had fallen into thick silence after Katie left, and although she’d urged him to make himself at home while she attended Bobby’s funeral, he couldn’t bring himself to turn on the television. Even using the toilet felt invasive. Two nights of sleeping under a roof had left him jittery and claustrophobic.
At least in Andrew’s motel room, he had taken some comfort in its cheapness. There was nothing there he could ruin or corrupt with his presence. But this tidy one-bedroom with its shelf of family photos, wall of Monet prints and little bowls of potpourri made him nervous. He didn’t want his presence to change a thing, not even the couch cushions. He’d slept fitfully on the couch, afraid his snores would wake Katie as she slept—or so he assumed—behind her closed bedroom door.
Little Billy wished now he had refused her offer, but she’d been so adamant he return home with her after the cemetery he hadn’t had the heart to say no. What she’d seen after touching the xalanthracoil had scared the hell out of her. He couldn’t blame her for not wanting to spend the night alone.
Little Billy pulled the cell from his shirt pocket and glanced at the display.
“Andy.”
“Got what you want.”
“What we talked about the other day?” He understood Andrew’s reluctance to speak openly. Even thinking the word “explosives” felt dangerous.
“Boom, boom.”
Little Billy winched. “You free tonight?”
“Free as a bird.”
Little Billy pulled the phone from his ear and checked the display again, as if reconfirming who he was talking to. “You okay? You sound… tired.”
There was a pause during which he thought he heard a faint slosh, the clank of glass against a countertop. “Didn’t sleep well last night. Too much going through my head.”
“I know how you feel.”
“Do you, now?” A gulp. The smack of lips.
Little Billy nodded to his faint reflection on the dark television screen. “I’ll come tonight at eleven. Why don’t you get some sleep in the meantime? You sound like you could use it.”
“Yes, sir! Sleep, sir. Count on it.” The line went dead.
Little Billy sat for a long time with the phone in his hand, perched on the edge of the couch, listening as the clock on the wall relentlessly ticked down to a terminal event, one represented by a long series of glowing red zeros.
“How much should we use?”
Andrew leaned back on his haunches and ran a finger over the molded plastic capsules enclosing the packets of Trenchrite. He hated being this close to a coil. He could feel its aura as an unpleasant tingle in the nasal lining beneath his eyes, a low-grade irritation that left him on the perpetual verge of a sneeze. They might sleep at night, as Little Billy claimed, but even now he could tell their potency had grown since his last encounter.
Of course, being hung over was probably exasperating its effect, but that was the cost of doing business with Mr. Beam. At least his afternoon sleep had been dreamless. If the vetro offalate had been listening, all they would have heard was the hollow drone of a brain sloshing in an alcohol bath.
“If I’m remembering right, two coils of this can knock over your average-sized tree. The entire packet can blast a firebreak twenty or thirty yards long and five feet wide.”
“I say we use everything,” Katie said. “If we’re going to do this, then let’s do it. Go big or go home.”
Her presence still annoyed Andrew. He had answered the knock at his motel door in his tee-shirt and boxers, expecting only Little Billy. Instead, he had come face to face with Ms. Fife, who had given him a bright smile and sighed, “My hero.” What the hell did that mean?
“Katie’s the all-or-nothing type,” Little Billy offered. “She wanted to bring a backhoe in here to dig the hole.”
Andrew removed the top blister pack of explosives and set it next to the detonation cords, blasting caps and orange control box already on the ground. “How far down did you say you dug?”
“About thirty feet.”
“And the coil? How far down does that go?”
Little Billy’s lips fluttered as he exhaled. “Hard to say. Deep. Your dad and I found that out the hard way. I think Katie’s right. Use all of it.”
“I have absolutely no experience with this stuff. Using it all could mean downed trees, downed power lines.” Andrew surveyed the houses and backyards abutting the small cemetery’s chain link fence. “Not to mention property damage. Broken windows. No matter what, we’re going to be waking the neighbors.”
“Maybe they’ll think a transformer blew,” Little Billy suggested.
“Or some kids set off fireworks,” Katie added.
“More like a couple sticks of dynamite. I’ll use five feet worth. That should give us a big enough bang. Then we’ll need to get out fast.” He gave Katie a sidelong glance. “Ever fantasize about being a getaway driver?” They had all come in Katie’s CRV, the same vehicle she had been driving the day Comanche had taken her hostage.
“Ever since I can remember.”
Andrew cut open the plastic using Little Billy’s pocket knife. It only took a few minutes to set the charge. Packaged in ropey folds, the putty-like Trenchrite uncoiled to a single long segment which he double-braided around the detonation cord before threading down the hole.
