A Fatal Stain (31 page)

I knew. I was often surprised by how little people paid attention to odd events around him. “This still doesn’t explain who blew up my shed,” I said. “Or why you’re here.”

“Well, we traced de Leon. This is not his real name, by the way. We’re not at all sure what his real name is, as he has something like ten aliases. He seems to be in his late twenties, and possibly, once having dropped out of college, to have drifted from place to place, living in odd and semi-legal ways. Anyway, what we could trace was a history of bombs, arson, and other…things involving explosives. And as far as the explosive guys can tell, that bomb in your shed, stuck under the table, had a timer that looks like other bombings he’s been suspected in.”

“How can he have that kind of record and be walking around?” I asked.

“Well, because it was never
definite
enough,” Cas said. “There were maybe some indications he was guilty of this or that, but it was never clear enough for anyone to arrest him and bring him to justice. There were causes for suspicion but never for arrest, and he has the sort of associates who aren’t particularly eager to help the police with their inquiries. If you know what I mean.”

I knew what he meant. It seems like the easiest way to get away with crimes is to be either very rich or very poor and have a somewhat shady background. If you’re rich,
you’ll of course be able to make whatever you do look perfectly legitimate, by dint of lawyers and various other tricks. If you’re very poor and somewhat shady, they’re likely not to be able to find anyone to testify against you, and besides, you can just pick up roots, move to another town, get a fake ID, and for all intents and purposes stop existing as the person the police were looking for.

“We’ve shown his picture to the few neighbors around the empty condos. With other pictures as decoys, of course, and they picked him out as having been in the neighborhood. We’ve identified the burnt remains, and it was one of his two roommates. The evidence is inescapable.”

“Except?”

“Except he’s disappeared. When I called you this morning, we were already trying to find him. And we have to find him, Dyce. I’m hoping that he means to come here and take revenge on you, since it’s too late to silence the whole thing.”

“You’re
hoping?
” I said, feeling horribly betrayed.

“Well, yes,” Cas said. “Because at this point we have to figure out what he did with Maria and where he hid the body. If he comes here, it will be difficult, but there’s at least a good chance of catching him. If he takes a bus out of town, we might never find her body or know what happened, and think what that will do to her husband and kids.”

“Oh,” I said.

Which is when we heard Dad scream. And this time it sounded really bad. Like he’d just woken up from his semi-permanent daydream and found a monster in the store.

The scream echoed from downstairs, and I was on
my feet and running out the kitchen door and down the rickety stairs before even waiting to see if anyone was following. This is a big character flaw, see.

They did studies, apparently, on toddlers some years ago, and found that most toddlers, being sensible or at least conditioned for survival, run away from scary things. But then there is something like 1 percent of toddlers who will run toward scary things. I have no proof of this, and I doubt I could get a coherent report out of my mother or father—who would probably confuse me with some mystery character—but I’d always thought I was in that second group.

I was dimly aware of heavy footsteps behind me, and I assumed that Cas, and possibly Ben and Nick, were following me, but I was flying on automatic, all the way
down the stairs and around the side path, to the front of the bookstore.

The door was closed, the way it normally was, but with a sign on it that said,
Come in, we’re open
.

Everything looked as it normally did, from the two white wicker chairs on the porch—people actually used them in the summer but not so much when it was cold, as it was now—to the bookshelf of free books, which were the ones my parents rejected for trade. There were people who came by every week and gleaned reading material from that shelf.

I put my hand on the doorknob, shaking.

“Dyce, damn it.” I expected it to be Cas, but to my surprise, it was Nick, and he was reaching over and pulling my hand away from the doorknob. Cas and Ben were right behind him, coming up the porch, in what they probably thought was a semblance of stealth. Ah! They still sounded like small elephants, or perhaps large ones.

“I have to see if it’s locked,” I said.

“No, you don’t,” Nick whispered furiously. “Get behind me.”

Since he forcibly moved me around his body and behind him, I didn’t have much choice but to obey, as he reached over, opening the door, and staying to the side, in case someone shot.

No shots erupted, but that’s when I realized Nick, and Cas, too, had his gun out. “What?” I said. “What are you doing? You can’t do that!” I was whispering, too, of course, because you always whisper around people who are whispering. Must be Basic Human Conditioning 101. “If you shoot a book, Dad will go nuts. He will go insane.”

“Shh,” Cas said, and, in turn, moved me around his body, and to stand in front of Ben, who put his hands on my shoulders, physically restraining me.

Nick and Cas went in, while Ben held me outside the door. I could hear them moving around inside, but listen, that store was a labyrinth. Forget minotaurs; my father could probably have hidden an entire village in there or perhaps a bunch of Tibetan monks. Considering how the bookshelves forked from each other, only bread crumbs or a bunch of string could ensure you came out all right again. Besides there were a hundred and one places where they could be ambushed and shot. Or worse. In my mind was an image of a bomb. I figured de Leon could time those bombs, or perhaps give them a signal to make them explode. I’d heard of terrorists using cell phones to set off bombs. What would stop this twit from using Dad as bait and then setting off a bomb and killing Cas and Nick? And as much as I would miss Cas, I also didn’t want to deal with Ben if he had to get over Nick’s death. No.

As my dad’s voice yelled, “Help!” I pulled away from Ben’s hold.

“Dyce,” he said.

“No, you listen. Those two don’t know the store. Remember how easy it is to get lost in there? I have to go in. I can find my dad. They can’t. And if de Leon sets off a bomb…”

Ben became visibly paler, probably envisioning mince-Nick. “All right,” he said. “I know the store almost as well as you do. We go in.”

Which is how we ended up in there, walking around, following the sound of Dad’s cries for help, which were
echoed, immediately after, by furious whispering as, I suspected, de Leon told him to be quiet or else.

Okay, it was stupid, as we could easily have ended up shot if Nick or Cas had seen a glimpse of something or someone moving and shot first and asked questions later. But Nick and Cas were properly trained police officers, and I was sure they didn’t want to deal with the administrative penalties—let alone the administrative paperwork!—for improperly shooting someone. So they’d want to make sure that they were shooting the right person.

Which is why, as I almost collided with Cas, he said, “Dyce, damn it,” then, looking behind me, “And Ben. Just great. Nick,” he called, in a stage whisper. “The footsteps were Dyce and Ben.”

Nick appeared around the next bookcase and said, in the same sort of furious whisper, “Why?”

“Because you two don’t know the bookstore,” I said. “We do, Ben and I. We used to play here when we were little. I’ll find my dad. Follow me.”

They didn’t look particularly happy about it, but really what could they do? So they followed me as I followed the periodic screams for help.

I half-expected this to lead to the kitchen, or the restroom, but no. It led, instead, to a little door, at the back, in what I thought was a closet beneath the old stairs that led up to the second floor. I had only the vaguest of memories of Mom and Dad storing the rarest books in that closet, the kind of books that sold for five hundred dollars and up. As everyone will probably understand, they’d never given me a key or given me much chance to explore in there.

Just as we got to the door, Dad screamed again—this
time sounding very loud, since we were only separated by a thin pine door.

“Dad?” I said, half in a stage whisper. Then I dove out of the way, as I thought de Leon might be in there with him, and he might have a gun and shoot through the door.

But no shot followed, and I thought I was being silly. This was my father, after all. Just because he was screaming for help didn’t mean that he was in there against his will or with anyone else. It was quite possible, not to say probable, that my father was in there clutching a rare and collectible book to his chest and barricading the door against potential buyers.

“Dad,” I said, getting up and getting as close to the door as possible. “What is wrong?”

“He wants to blow me up,” he said. “Help. Get me out of here.”

“Who wants to blow you up?” I asked, as my heart beat very fast, because this didn’t seem like random locking himself in against the depredations of customers.

“I do,” a voice said from behind us.

We turned around and there, at the corner of the
bookcase that divided the new from the used part of the store, stood the man who was almost for sure Winston de Leon.

He matched the description, being skinny, not particularly prepossessing, with large bugged-out eyes and blond hair. “I do,” he said again, and made a dramatic gesture, like a villain in a pantomime.

The men immediately, and with possibly foolish chivalry, formed a wall between me and this creature, while Cas turned back and whispered, “Go now. Go get help. Get out of here.”

I had no clue what help he thought I could get, but he probably just wanted to get me out of the store. I wanted to get out of the store, too, but not leaving them behind, possibly to get blown to bits.

I managed to peer between Cas and Nick and see the guy wasn’t carrying a gun. Instead, he had a cell phone in his hand. “If I press this button,” he said, showing his finger just above a button, “it will automatically dial the bomb that’s in that closet with the old man, and it will all go up in flames. This place”—he gestured around—“will burn like a tinderbox.”

“But then you’ll die, too,” Cas said.

De Leon shrugged his skinny shoulders. “What do I care? You guys have destroyed everything I’ve built over time—all my contacts here in town, and everything I’ve worked so hard to do. I’d have to move again, with nothing, and you guys would probably be after me still, from town to town. All because that stupid bitch fell on the table and hit her head.”

“Maria?” Cas asked, alert. “Maria Ashton?”

“Yeah, the Ashton bitch. Accusing me of all this stuff.” He sniffed, violently, the kind of sniff that was part a need to clear the nasal passages and part disdain. He threw his head back, making a bit of blond hair flop backward and away from watery blue eyes, which looked like they would, with a little more effort, pop out of their sockets. “That I’d used her husband’s name,” he said, in a squeaky voice that he doubtless felt was a fair imitation of a woman’s voice. “And that I could get him in trouble. And that I hadn’t gone clean as I’d told them I would. As if anyone really expected me to go clean, just because they’d let me crash on their sofa and gave me food.” He sniffed again. “There’s hundreds of thousands of dollars to be made on the street, and they were always on me about stupid stuff like learning a trade. As bad as my parents.” He sniffed again. “I don’t want to be a menial
laborer, like that idiot Sebastian. I want to be rich. I want to have my own place, and, like, a mansion, full of hot women, and a butler, and my own private jet and stuff.”

He paused, and the finger hovered over the button. “But if I can’t have that, then I’ll go and take all of you with me.”

“What do you expect to get from this?” Cas asked, and this time it was Nick who turned around and whispered, “Go, now, Dyce. We’re going to need help.”