The Death in the Willows (6 page)

“Demons can take other forms than the strange names she calls them. I'm an accountant by profession, and tend to believe more in the laws of probability and chance. There's a rumor among the passengers that the gun you used this afternoon wasn't yours.”

“It belonged to a man sitting behind me.”

“Did you know him? Is he here?”

“No, he slipped away. I can hardly recall what he looked like except for his cap and beard.”

Collins looked out the window over the darkening city. “A strange set of circumstances.”

“You're from Yugoslavia, Mr. Collins.”

“Serbia. We used to make a distinction. I didn't realize it still showed after all these years.”

“And you aren't a retired army officer.”

“You're either very perceptive or make wild guesses.”

“You hadn't heard of a two-oh-one file.”

“That revealed me. What is it?”

“A service records jacket.”

“No. I haven't been in the army. Let's say I was involved in a war of a different sort.” He went to the bathroom door. “I know you must be very tired. Good night.”

“Good night, Mr. Collins.”

Sometime during the night a nightmarish dream of a hundred men with revolvers walking bus aisles jolted Lyon awake. He lay on his side staring across the darkened room. Collins sat hunched in a chair by the window. A flashing neon sign from below intermittently illuminated the lower portion of his face. Lyon watched the sad man in silence for a few moments until waves of sleep again released him.

Police Chief Rocco Herbert didn't hate the state police; he merely liked to avoid them as much as possible. Ordinarily he considered any intrusion into Murphysville matters a violation of his domain, but this morning he had no alternative. The governor had insisted that Bea Wentworth be chauffeured to New York in her official car driven by a state trooper.

He did luxuriate in the width of the rear seat and found he was nearly able to extend his legs their full length. Bea was huddled in the corner staring out the window. “He's all right.”

She turned and smiled. “I know. Do you know this is the second time I've seen you in your full dress uniform?”

Rocco reddened. “When was the first?”

“At the Bicentennial parade a couple of years ago.” She laughed. “And what in the world are those things on your shoulders?”

Rocco turned a deeper hue of embarrassment. “Stars.”

“General's stars?”

“As chief I'm entitled to wear them.”

“Rocco Herbert! A twelve-man force and you wear stars?”

“They were Martha's idea. Damn it all, Bea! It won't hurt to impress those jokers in the city.”

She gave his shoulder a pat. “I only hope they don't need to be impressed.”

The Department of Internal Affairs had provided Lyon with photographs of all men authorized to wear a gold shield in the city of New York. After examining the fiftieth or sixtieth picture, he found they were all beginning to merge into one image, and he wondered if he'd even be able to identify himself. Nevertheless, he kept doggedly at it, looking for the man who had occupied the seat behind him.

They had sequestered him in a small, glass-partitioned cubicle off the main squad room. Captain Nesbitt, McAllister of the FBI, and two men from Internal Affairs were clustered in a small knot near the elevators and occasionally glanced in his direction. He turned the last page of photographs and closed the heavy binder. The man on the bus could have been there, but even a tentative identification was impossible. He left the cubicle and walked toward the officers.

“You buy that cockamamie story of someone slipping him the piece?”

“Hell, no!”

“Does the Pope say mass?”

They laughed.

“We've got to take a position on this,” Nesbitt said. “The goddamn mayor is coming down here and the commissioner wants the official line to be lily white.”

“Which means we believe he found the gun?”

“You better believe it!” Another officer left the elevator and crossed to them. “There's a mile long Connecticut State car downstairs with a trooper driver and a guy in dress blues that's seven feet tall and must be in charge of every cop in New England.”

“We officially believe it,” Nesbitt concluded.

They sat in a row along the divan in Nesbitt's office. Rocco seemed uncomfortable in his tight dress uniform, and Bea held her husband's hand tightly.

“We're very proud of your husband, Madam Secretary.”

“Please. Call me Bea.”

“Of course, and I'm John. In fact,” he glanced at his watch, “in an hour the mayor would like to make a presentation with radio and television coverage.”

Lyon abruptly went to the window and stood with his back to them. “There will be no coverage as there will be no event to cover.”

“Mr. Wentworth, the mayor and police commissioner …”

“Am I in custody?”

“Of course not. You can leave at any time. However, we would like you back again if anything further turns up.”

“Do you know anything about the man I killed?”

“We haven't had time to complete a full investigation.” He picked up a thin file folder. “But there's enough here to tell me he was a real loser.”

“May I see it, please?”

John Nesbitt hesitated a moment and then handed over the folder. Lyon stood at the window reading the sparse outline of William Banning Shep's brief life. A room search on East Tenth Street had yielded few possessions except an irate landlady concerned over back rent. His neighbors knew him as a moody, taciturn man who kept to himself; his job history was splotchy, with continued bouts of unemployment. There were several photographs, including a group taken inside the bus, that showed the dead man sprawled in the aisle as Lyon so vividly remembered. He closed the file and gave it back to Nesbitt. “I'm going home now.”

Rocco sat in front with the trooper driver while Lyon stared moodily out the rear window. He was unable to shake the sheen of depression that engulfed him. He had tried to view the events with logic, but coherent thought could not dispel his depression.

“You shouldn't have looked at the file.”

He didn't answer for a moment. “How's the campaign coming?”

“Lousy. My unworthy opponent has accused me of everything except soliciting votes on my back, and I believe that'll be suggested next week. Did you know that I'm a dupe of the Communist party?”

That penetrated his depression and he smiled. “What kind of dupe are you: Russian, Maoist, Red Guard, or CP U.S.A.?”

“He doesn't know the difference.”

“Is he reaching the voters?”

“He talks a lot about what haunts people: taxes, crime, inflation. People hear what they worry about.”

“I keep going over it again and again.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“He keeps coming down the aisle and I'm holding that damn gun in my lap. There must have been another way.”

“I've thought about it, and I could never see what else you could have done under the circumstances.”

“There are always alternatives.”

“Not in this case.”

Rocco turned toward them and pointed out the window. They were overtaking a Nutmeg Transportation Company bus. As they passed, the passengers waved out the window. Lyon recognized Hannon, with his arm in a sling, the voodoo lady, and a few others. He gave them a thumbs-up sign as they pulled past the bus and it began to recede in the distance.

He wondered if he'd ever see any of them again. The camaraderie of the cocktail party the night before had been strong, and the promise of a yearly reunion well-intentioned, but might be forgotten as life continued and feelings diminished.

An accident of life had taken a dozen and a half people and put them into extraordinary circumstances. For the present they were riding an emotional high, but it would fade, just as he hoped the face of the man he had killed would eventually go away.

But there had been an additional passenger—the man with the beard who gave him the gun. Why did he leave and disappear?

The shock wave from the explosion was sufficiently powerful to rock the heavy car.

“What in hell was that!” The trooper driver fought the wheel and glared into the rearview mirror.

A plume of black smoke had mushroomed skyward. A second explosion shattered it into long streamers.

“Get back there fast!” Rocco yelled at the driver.

“Yes, sir!” Without further instruction, the driver swerved onto the grass, bumped across the median divider, and swiveled into the far lane. He accelerated toward the burning wreckage.

Bea put her hands to her face. “Good Lord, it's the bus!”

4

The bus straddled the highway with flames lapping from its shattered windows and its interior a smoking mass. The state car made a sweeping skid back across the dividing median and screeched to a stop thirty yards from the inferno. Miraculously other cars had been far enough behind the explosion to remain untouched by fire, but they were now splayed and stalled in odd positions across the road.

Rocco and Lyon slammed from the car and sprinted toward the wreckage. A final scream issued from the bus and then abruptly died.

Rocco had snatched a small fire extinguisher from under the dashboard and held an arm protectively across his face as he fought to work his way toward the door. Intense heat drove him back, and the large chief stood helplessly with the extinguisher dangling uselessly from his hand.

The cause of the explosion seemed to be a 38-ton propylene truck that had pulled from the nearby service area directly into the side of the bus. The single tank had ruptured, and within seconds of the collision the explosion had occurred.

Their driver was speaking frantically into the car's two-way radio, while Bea had discovered a first aid kit in the car trunk.

“Is there anything we can do?” she asked.

Rocco's response went unheard as another explosion rocked the wreckage and nearly knocked them over. He turned toward the gathering crowd and waved his arms. “Get back! Back!”

A lone siren could be heard in the distance as Bea walked away from the bus toward the side of the road.

A strangled groan came from a shallow gully a dozen feet from the edge of the pavement.

She stumbled across the grass and found him where he'd been thrown, face down in the gully. His feet were bare and white in contrast to his blackened back and arms. She stooped and turned him over. He groaned again.

She recoiled back from the contorted face and sightless eyes. What remained of his clothing hung in scorched tatters, and yet, unaccountably, an arm sling was untouched. She ripped the cover from the first aid kit and searched through the meager contents for something useful. What she needed was morphine, but that would have to wait until the ambulances arrived.

The charred caricature of a man groaned again as an arm reached toward her. “Mother, is that you?”

“Yes.” She felt his fingers brush against hers and close over her hand.

“It's me. Bobby. Bobby, Mother.”

“Only a little while now, Bobby.” Her free hand still searched frantically through the first aid kit.

He mumbled something and she bent closer to his mouth to catch the rasping words. A strong wind swept from the north and the words were lost as his hand fell limply from hers.

Bea Wentworth stood slowly. She looked at the thin vial of burn cream clutched in her hand and then down at the body shriveled in the gully. A tear peaked at the corner of her eye and started a slow course down her face, and then her shoulders heaved and she cried in silent sobs.

Vehicles converged on the now smoldering bus: three ambulances, fire equipment, and state police cruisers swiveled in concentric patterns around the wreckage. Ambulance doors slammed open and stretchers were wheeled across the pavement. Firemen ran toward the bus. They ended their dash by joining the others as silent spectators. A fireman in an asbestos suit and face mask entered the bus. They saw his dim figure through the smoke as he moved awkwardly down the aisle and then back out.

The suited fireman pulled off the hood, shook his head at the others, and then turned to retch in the grass.

Lyon walked to the tanker that had rammed into the bus. The tank had ruptured violently, and flames had moved across the cab and onto the bus. He looked at the present position of the two vehicles, mentally aligned them back to the moment of impact, and backtracked the trajectory of the tanker as it left the service area.

It didn't make sense.

The tanker driver had a clear view of the highway, and yet had to accelerate to the maximum speed his lower range of gears would allow in order to ram the bus at that angle. Unless the driver had a heart attack at the wheel when he was leaving the service area—but in that instance, the tanker would not have run the course it had.

He climbed the tanker's step and peered into the still smoldering cab, the metal hot to his touch. The burned body of the driver lay on the floorboards half under the well and over the accelerator.

He turned from the tanker and walked through the onlookers now being pushed back toward the service area by newly arrived state troopers. The men he wanted to speak to were standing under a high lamp post. They were young, both acne-faced, and wore service station coveralls with their names inscribed over a breast pocket.

“Do you two work at the gas station in the service area?”

They looked at him blankly a moment. “You a cop, huh?”

“You work here?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you see it happen?”

“Heard it.”

“What about before the explosion?”

“Nothing much. I pumped him fifty gallons of diesel and he left.”

“Did he look all right, the driver I mean?”

“Sure. Looked like everybody else, but musta' been crazy as a loon to pull out like that.”