The Elephant of Surprise (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 4) (14 page)

BOOK: The Elephant of Surprise (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 4)
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"Why do you sound so surprised? We knew what kind of person Kevin was."

"I don't believe it."

"Believe it. I heard it with my own ears. And last week, Gunnar saw him flipping Brian Bund shit." I definitely didn't see the need to tell her that I'd asked Gunnar to spy on him.

"But—" Min said.

"Besides, I might not be so unlucky in love after all."

"What are you talking about?"

Before I could say anything more, my phone rang. I could see it was Gunnar.

"Would you get that?" I said to Min, and she did.

They talked for a second. Min listened and then said, "Are you serious?"

Gunnar said something else over the phone.

"Okay, okay, we will," Min said, and hung up. She didn't say anything to me right away. Now she was back to staring out the side window.

"
What?
" I said, dying to know what that had been all about.

"We need to go see Gunnar. Right away."

"Why?"

"He's been going over some of the photos he's been taking. And he's convinced that Wade and the freegans are terrorists and are planning to blow something up."

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

"This is
crazy
," I said to Gunnar. Min and I had driven straight over to his house and he'd taken us to his room. "The freegans aren't terrorists!"

"Maybe they are, maybe they aren't," Gunnar said. "Just let me show you what I found, okay?"

Before I go on, I suppose I need to describe Gunnar's bedroom the way I described mine and Min's, but honestly, I'm not sure I have the time. Yes, it's just as weird as you'd think and yes, the shrunken heads are real, but they're probably just monkeys.

Gunnar had a bunch of screen-shots queued up on his computer. First, he showed us the freegan front room. I'd forgotten how dirty and messy it was. Mostly when I thought of the freegans, I thought of Wade who wasn't dirty at all.

"So?" I said.

"So the first thing I noticed was these papers on the floor," Gunnar said. "I don't know why they caught my eye, but they did." He pointed to the papers with the cartoon elf.

"I remember," I said. "I figured they must have had a kid stay there at some point." I pointed to the copy of
Curious George
on the floor. "See?"

"No," Gunnar said. "The papers are something different. I think it's a newsletter. The cartoon elf is some kind of logo or graphic. Can you make out the word at the top?"

Min squinted. "'Elf,'" she said.

"So the freegans are actually a secret community of elves?" I said. I admit I was being a bit of a butt here. Part of it was that I had all kinds of things on my mind, and I just wasn't interested in humoring another one of Gunnar's endless obsessions right then. But maybe another part of it was all those lingering suspicions I'd had about the freegans right from the beginning. I guess I didn't want to hear that they may have been right, especially not now that I'd fallen so head-over-heels for Wade.

"'E.L.F.,'" Gunnar said. "In all caps." He showed us a zoomed-in version of the screen-cap. "It's an acronym. It stands for Earth Liberation Front. They're a radical environmental group. They believe in eco-terrorism."

"Oh, God, no!" Min said. "I've heard about these people. Total idiots. They say that environmental issues are too urgent to wait for political change, that they have to stop polluters by any means necessary."

Gunnar nodded. "Anything short of hurting people."

"They also say that by being so extreme, they make other environmental activists look moderate," Min said, still fuming. "But that's either stupid or naive. All they're really doing is making it incredibly easy to paint
all
environmentalists as dangerous extremists. And that makes it even harder to get anyone to care about the environment."

"So someone at the freegan house was reading something from E.L.F.," I said. "So what? That doesn't mean they're members of E.L.F. People come and go there. Maybe an E.L.F. member stayed there once. You saw the photographs of all the people on their bulletin board."

"Exactly right," Gunnar said. "And that bulletin board is exactly what I wanted to show you next." Sure enough, he showed us a picture of the bulletin board with the snapshots of all the people who had stayed in the house.

"What about it?" I said. Everyone looked perfectly normal to me. Well, perfectly normal for freegans.

Gunnar pointed to the wrench sitting on top of the frame.

"It's a wrench," I said. "I remember seeing it when we were there."

Gunnar nodded. "Specifically, it's a monkey wrench."

"So?" I said again. "Everyone has a monkey wrench."

"That's true. But it's kind of a weird place to keep a wrench, don't you think? It's almost like it's a symbol or something, or a secret code. And the thing is, a monkey wrench also happens to be another symbol for E.L.F. They say they're against killing people, and it's true no one has ever directly died from any of their actions. Well, that's debatable. But they definitely believe in mucking things up—throwing a wrench into the workings of industries that pollute, logging companies, things like that. So the monkey wrench is a pretty good symbol for what they stand for."

"This is all very interesting," I said. "But it could all be a complete coincidence. People do that all the time—they see connections that aren't there. Min, what's the word for that?"

"Apophenia," she said. "The human tendency to see patterns in random data."

"Yes!" I said. "Or maybe some of the freegans
do
sort of sympathize with the Earth Liberation Front. I mean, we know they're pretty radical people. They eat out of Dumpsters, remember? None of this proves anything. It definitely doesn't mean they're
terrorists
."

"Or pareidolia," Min said. "That's the phenomenon in which people see or hear identifiable images or sounds that don't really exist. Like when people see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast."

"Okay, Min," I said. "Give it a rest."

"I'm not done," Gunnar said, which, frankly, was exactly what I was afraid he was going to say. "Remember when Wade showed us the freegan store?"

"Of course I remember!" I said. "It was only two weekends ago." But even as I said this, I thought: had I really only known Wade for less than two weeks?

Gunnar showed us a photograph he'd taken of the freegan store. "Look at the shelves on the back wall," he said, zooming in.

The shelves looked exactly like I remembered them.

I turned to Gunnar, confused.

He pointed to a wooden crate at the very bottom of the shelving, then zoomed in even closer.

The words "Fire Ant Explosives" were clearly written in red paint.

Suddenly, I had a very bad feeling about this.

Down below, in smaller letters, it said, "Dynamite." When we'd actually been there, I'd thought this had been a box of fireworks, but it wasn't.

The freegans kept sticks of dynamite in their store? I know they encouraged people to contribute whatever they could, but dynamite? That was ridiculous.

Even so, I said, "There are legitimate reasons to have dynamite. Or maybe that's left over from whoever used the garage before."

Gunnar just stared at me, didn't say a word.

Meanwhile, Min kept squinting at the photo.

I was afraid to ask her what she'd spotted, but I knew I had to. "What is it?" I said.

She pointed to the photo, to something right next to the dynamite on those shelves. "Here. This tool."

I squinted too. "Hedge clippers?"

"It's not hedge clippers," Min said. "It's a bolt-cutter."

"No…"

"Russel, yes. And bolt-cutters aren't just used for cutting bolts. They also cut—"

"Locks." Gunnar nodded. "That was my last piece of evidence. I was trying to make it as dramatic as possible, to sort of build tension. Did it work?"

Min ignored him as usual. "I wonder what they're planning," she said.

"Oh!" Gunnar said. "There
is
one more piece of evidence—I forgot. After I found all this, I searched the local newspaper for stories involving dynamite." He pulled up an article on the computer screen. "Two weeks ago, someone tried to blow up a tractor at a new housing development. Police thought it was vandals, but I think it was eco-terrorists."

Min sat back in her chair with a gesture that said, Well, I'm totally convinced.

But I wasn't, not at all.

"This is stupid!" I said. "Wade would never be involved in anything like that!"

Both Min and Gunnar looked at me. I guess I'd spoken more loudly than I'd intended. I was also clenching my fists.

Finally, Min asked, very gently, "How do you know?"

"What?" I said.

"You just sound pretty convinced. Why are you so certain? What, have you been dating Wade or something?"

"No. Maybe. Yes."

"
What?
" Min said. My words had set off a detonation on her face. "And you didn't
tell
me? For how long?"

Meanwhile, Gunnar just smiled to himself.

"It's complicated," I said. "We've been sort of seeing each other, but it really only got romantic this past weekend. But the point is I
know
Wade. He's not that kind of person. I know for a fact he wouldn’t be involved in anything like this. This is all just pointless speculation."

"Are you absolutely, positively sure?" Min said. "Because people's lives could be at stake here."

"Yes, I'm absolutely, positively—" But right then I remembered something Wade had told me.

I'll do what I have to do to change the world
, he'd said.
Whatever it takes—anything at all.

I didn't see how blowing something up was going to make people any more likely to listen to the freegan point-of-view. It would do the exact opposite, just like Min had said. On the other hand, it definitely sounded like something a member of E.L.F. might
think
would help change the world. Wade had even talked about a "revolution" coming. Had he meant an armed revolution?

Then I remembered something else he'd told me:

We'll probably all be moving on soon anyway.

"What?" Min said.

I repeated everything Wade had told me.

Min bolted up from the computer. "We need to call the police."

"No," I said.

Min and Gunnar looked at me.

"I still don't believe it," I said. "I
can't
believe it. You don't know Wade. Before we call the police, I need to talk to him."

"Russel—" Min said.

"Look, maybe this
is
just an example of apop-whatever. If we call the police and end up being wrong, we're going to ruin the lives of a whole bunch of people. Even if the freegans are totally innocent, I'm sure they'd be kicked out of that house. And do you need a permit to have dynamite? And who knows what other stuff might be there—drugs or whatever? They could go to jail, all because we couldn't even be bothered to ask for an explanation. That's just wrong."

Min thought for a second. "But if
you're
wrong, people's lives could be in danger."

I nodded. "So give me fifteen minutes. We'll go over, I'll talk to Wade. If the freegans really are eco-terrorists, what are the odds they're going to strike in the next fifteen minutes?"

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

So Min, Gunnar, and I drove over to the freegan house. It was after dark by the time we got there.

"Give me ten minutes to talk to him," I said from the back seat.

Min and Gunnar looked back at me from the front seat, their two heads tipped together like a cutesy photograph.

"You really trust him that much?" Min asked me.

"I don't know," I said. "I think so."

Min and Gunnar exchanged a glance—another cutesy photograph.

Finally, Min nodded. "Okay, but I'm waiting here in the car. You guys can go in, but if I don't hear from you in exactly ten minutes, I'm calling the police."

 

*   *   *

 

Wade answered the door. He took one look at me and Gunnar, and said, "Russel? What is it? You look really serious."

"Can we talk for a second?" I said. "It's really important."

"Sure," he said. "Come on inside. Sit down."

I didn't move, stayed right in the entryway. The front room was empty, but I could hear laughter from the kitchen. Something bubbled on the stove. Whatever it was, it smelled horrible—sour.

Suddenly, Venus stuck her head in from the kitchen.

"Russel!" she said. "I thought I heard you. We're totally making dandelion salad with nettles tonight, and I'm totally making you some!"

I faked a smile. This was what she'd promised me all those days ago when we'd first met.

"Sure thing," I said.

When she was gone, Wade said, "What is it? What's so important?"

I looked him right in the eye and asked, "Are you a member of E.L.F.?"

Confusion flickered on his face—in his eyes and at the edges of his lips.

"No," he said.

"Do you know what E.L.F. is?" Gunnar said.

"Sure," Wade said. "It's the Environmental Liberation Front."

And with that answer, I was almost certain he was telling the truth. If he'd been lying, he would have denied knowing what E.L.F. stood for. Wouldn’t he?

"Are there any freegans who are members of E.L.F.?" Gunnar said.

"There might be," he said, suddenly wary. "We get all kinds of different people here. Once we even had a Republican. Why?"

Gunnar showed him the photos on his phone—the ones with the E.L.F. newsletters on the floor and wrench on top of the bulletin board. As Wade took in the photos, I glanced over at that bulletin board. The wrench was still there.

Inside the kitchen, voices murmured and dishes clinked. I smelled tomatoes simmering and some herb I didn't recognize. Now it didn't seem so bad. The sour smell must have been the vinegar in the salad dressing.

"Like I said, we get all kinds of people here," Wade said to Gunnar. "But that's kind of weird about the wrench. I never thought about it before."

"There's more," Gunnar said, showing him the photos from the freegan store.

At first, Wade just laughed. But when he saw from Gunnar's face that he was totally serious, his face got sober too. Once again, I was certain Wade was telling the truth about not knowing anything about eco-terrorism. If he'd been lying, his first impulse would have been to look baffled, not to laugh.

"Look," Wade said. "I agree this is really weird. Really scary, actually. I want to get to the bottom of it. Do you mind if I ask everyone else?"

Gunnar and I exchanged a glance, and part of me was thinking: was this some kind of plan to get the others to rush us, to kidnap us, so we couldn't tell the police what we'd learned? But Min was in the car with her finger on her cell phone, and I was almost certain that Wade was telling the truth. So I nodded to him.

Wade stepped into the kitchen just as my phone vibrated. Min and I had both set our timers out in the car, and now ten minutes were up. If I didn’t contact Min right now, she was going to call the police.

I texted Min, told her everything seemed okay, but to give us another five minutes.

Meanwhile, Wade was explaining to the other freegans everything Gunnar had seen in the photos. I recognized one of them, but there were two other freegans I'd never seen before.

"Hold on," I said. "Where's Venus?" She was gone.

"She said she needed something from the store out back," one of the freegans said.

"And where's Matthew?" Wade asked.

"He went with her," the freegan said, confused. 

My eyes met Wade's. "They overheard us talking, and now they've gone to go do whatever they're planning. Once they're done, they're probably just going to leave town."

Sure enough, when we checked the freegan store, Venus and Matthew weren't there—and the dynamite box was open and the bolt-cutter was gone.

 

*   *   *

 

Gunnar, Wade, and I ran to Min, still in the car in the front yard. "Call the police!" I said. "It's Venus and Matthew. They took the dynamite and left."

"Where are they going?" Min said. "What do I tell the police?"

What
did
she tell them? What could Venus and Matthew be planning on blowing up?

"They took bikes," Wade said, "so they can't have gone far. That means wherever they're going, it's around here somewhere."

What could their target be? Somewhere on McKenzie Street? That would be pretty shitty, given how tolerant this whole neighborhood had been to the freegans. But I couldn't think of anything they might blow up there.

I remembered how the freegans had a whole system of back alleys and greenbelts that they used to travel around the city. It made sense that's what Venus and Matthew would use to get where they were going. But where was that? The garbage dump? The abandoned warehouses in the industrial district? Would anyone care if they set off dynamite in any of those places?

"The golf course," I said suddenly. "That water tower up on the hill? If they blew that up, it would flood the whole course, and probably the club house too."

I saw the glint of realization in Wade's eyes. I had to be right. Wade had made a point to tell me how bad golf courses were for the environment—the other freegans probably thought the same thing. And we'd run into Matthew in the woods near the golf course that one day. He'd even seemed sort of nervous about something.

Wade stiffened.

"What is it?" I said.

"Molly and Andy—they're living in the tunnel beneath the water tower. If they're still there when that tower blows, they'll be right in the path of the flood."

So much for the eco-terrorists not hurting people, I thought. "The police'll get there before they can do anything," I said.

"How can you be sure?" Wade said. "It's not that far on bikes, and they have a head start. There aren't any roads near that part of the greenbelt, and even if there's an access road up to the water tower, I'm sure it'll be locked, and it'll take time to get it open."

What was Wade saying? That we go after them ourselves? I was no hero. On the other hand, it was my fault that Venus and Matthew had been tipped off. I was the one who'd insisted on talking to Wade before calling the police.

So I had no choice except to say, "Let's go."

"But they took two bikes," Wade said. "We only have two left."

I turned to Gunnar and told him where to go after they called the cops—fortunately, he knew the exact area. Then Wade and I ran for the bikes.

 

*   *   *

 

When we reached the base of the hill with the water tower, we still hadn't seen any sign of Venus and Matthew. In other words, we didn't know if we'd come to the right place. If I'd been wrong about the target, they were going to get away with whatever they were planning, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. On the other hand, if I was right and they were planting dynamite on the water tower above us even now, it could blow at any time, and Wade and I were right in the path of where that water would rush. We'd be washed away in a raging wall of water, twisted up in our bikes and slammed into trees or maybe the fence that circled the golf course.

Could someone survive something like that?

A very narrow trail cut through the undergrowth to the top of the hill. But Wade hesitated. Still on his bike, he was staring toward the golf course, looking for the family in the bushes. "Molly? Andy?" he said quietly so as to not tip off Venus and Matthew, assuming they were even up at the water tower. "Are you there? You need to get out of here. Someone is about to blow up the water tower."

No one answered. This time, no one peeked over the edge. Had they moved on already to somewhere else? Or were they still crouched down there in hiding, and Molly was too fearful or paranoid to listen to our warnings? Even in the dark, I saw Wade thinking: was it more pressing to try and find Andy and Molly, and drag them away if possible, or was it more important to get to the top of the hill to try to stop Venus and Matthew?

I had stopped on my bike next to Wade, and I'd like to say that I hesitated for the same reason he did. But it's not true. The truth is I was frozen in fear. I couldn't stop thinking about all that water rushing down on me from above, roaring through the trees, engulfing me.

Finally, Wade made his decision: to try to stop Venus and Matthew. He started riding up the trail to the top of the hill, the wheels of his bike quietly grinding against the dirt and gravel. If I'd been alone, if Wade hadn't been in front of me shaming me into moving forward, I think I might have just turned around right there and biked off into the darkness.

But he was there, so I rolled forward after him.

 

*    *    *

 

In the moonlight in the clearing at the top of the hill, we saw the two other freegan bikes lying in the weeds. I'd been right: we'd come to the right place after all. And we'd made it to the water tower before they'd had a chance to blow it up. I hadn't been washed away or slammed into a tree by a raging wall of water.

The tower loomed up in front of us, a giant cylinder that I knew was painted light green, but that looked pasty white in the dark. A chain-link fence surrounded the whole thing with some surprisingly nasty-looking barbed wire on top.

Right in front of us, just a few feet from the bikes, Venus and Matthew had cut an opening in the fence, a little door in the chain-link that they'd peeled to one side so they could crawl inside.

Farther on, a couple of figures crouched in the shadow cast by the water tower. They were positioned exactly where they'd need to be if they wanted to blow open a hole in the tank in such a way that the water would rush down onto the golf course.

In frustration, I quietly squeezed the brakes on my bike.

But if Venus and Matthew were still inside the fence, that meant we still had time. I had no idea how long the timers or the fuses on dynamite were, but I knew they had to be longer than for firecrackers. Dynamite was a pretty big deal, so there had to be enough time for whoever lit it to get away. Venus and Matthew clearly thought they had enough time to light it and get outside of the chain-link fence.

I had an idea. I didn't know if it was a
good
idea—probably not—but it was the only thing I could think of on such short notice.

I whispered to Wade, "Talk to them. Try to talk them out of what they're doing. But mostly just distract them. Don't let them know we called the police and don't tell them I'm here."

"What are you doing?" he said to me.

"You'll see," I said, pulling my bike into the shadows.

 

*   *   *

 

No, I wasn't fleeing in blind panic. I won't say I wasn't still
tempted
to flee in blind panic. But as Wade confronted Venus and Matthew, I quickly untied the twist-ties that kept the brakes attached to my handlebars.

"Venus, I'm
serious!
" Wade was saying. "There’s a homeless family living right below us, between us and the golf course!"

"He's lying," Venus said to Matthew. "He'll say anything to stop us."

As they talked, I crawled through the grass to the rectangular opening they'd cut in the chain-link fence. I had four twist-ties and now I was using them to seal the chain-link fence back up. I was going to trap them inside!

Over by the dynamite, Matthew stood up. "It's ready," he said. He looked over at Wade. "Get out of here. Once we light this, you're going to have exactly forty-five seconds to get out of the way."

Venus lit a match.

"I wouldn't do that," I said, now standing and stepping out into the moonlight myself. "Not unless you want to be stuck inside there when the dynamite blows. If the explosion or the water doesn't get you, the police will. We already called them, and they're on their way."

Both Venus and Matthew looked at me, and even in the dark, even in the shadows of that water tower, I could see they didn't believe me.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Matthew said. "We cut a hole in the fence."

BOOK: The Elephant of Surprise (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 4)
3.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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