The Black Silent (12 page)

"We've got ten or fifteen minutes at best," said Sam.

"I'm surprised Frick's people aren't here. If it weren't Thanksgiving weekend, deputies would be shouting through a megaphone at us."

"Yup."

Sam didn't tell her that the one reason Frick might not do any shouting with a bullhorn is if he wanted to kill one or both of them.

Haley reached the end of the album and looked up. "This will take forever. We can't do this. His library's only the beginning; there are more bookshelves downstairs. Which one do we choose? Could he have narrowed the field for us and we're just missing it?"

"The bathroom," Sam said.

"What? Why?"

"Because he's talking about the ocean cleansing itself, and there might be a sort of crude parallel to people. And because it's unlikely."

Haley looked willing if unconvinced. "Okay, there are four. Let's try the master bath."

They exited double-wide doors into the large entry hall, crossed it, and went into the master bedroom. The master bath was spacious and decorated with small watercolors of tropical islands and one stunning photo of an undersea coral reef. They found no other photos of the sea, let alone any that involved undersea vents.

"Maybe it's downstairs," Haley said. "Or back at the office. Or even over on Lopez Island at the beach house. Oh God. . ."

"Try the other three bathrooms," Sam said.

He followed her back through the large entry hall, past the library, past the back door to the garage and down another short hall to a back bedroom. Just outside the bedroom was her old bathroom. On the wall of Haley's old bathroom hung pictures of characters from famous children's stories, like Winnie the Pooh, supplemented by sweaty, screaming rock musicians of twenty years previous. She had been a precocious kid and had grown up fast.

"Two bathrooms left and then we're sunk," she said.

"Let's look in your old bedrooms. The first bedroom first."

It was around the corner. She led the way.

It was still decorated like a girl's room: part kid, part teenybopper—the latter before she moved downstairs.

"Did you have a hope chest or a special place?" Sam asked. "Maybe a place for, I don't know . . ."

"A diary," she said excitedly. "My right-hand desk drawer." Her white dresser stood against the wall at the foot of the bed and next to a desk. She pulled open the drawer. No diary, but a
National Geographic.
The February 2003 edition. "Say," Haley said, "you're good." "Not that good. It wasn't in the bathroom." She flipped through it until she reached the section on an
Alvin
deep dive. It was the Snake Pit Vent. Scrawled in pen across the bottom of the picture were the words:

One sigh and we 're all dead. Feed them so we can breathe and it kills us, anyway. We
must

learn to empower the lungs of the earth and get more than breath. Let us not breathe
only to

watch us suffocate or roast.

Under the magazine lay an envelope full of papers. Across the bottom of each page was the word
ARCLES.

"I've been meaning to ask," Sam said. "What's ARCLES mean?"

"I don't know, but I do think I know where we're supposed to go next."

A sound from outside interrupted them. It sounded like tires on gravel.

Sam drew back the drape a half-inch.

A car was nearing the end of the long driveway.

"It's a patrol car," Haley said.

"Do we need anything else here?"

"I don't know," she said. "I'll tell you in a couple hours, when it will be too late."

As Sam dropped the drape, a boom shattered the silence. Haley jumped and grabbed him. It was a deep, concussive roar that Sam associated with his 10mm Glock or some other similar weapon. Most 10mm gun models could not handle what was considered the optimum powder charge. The Glock packed the full wallop and sounded like it.

"I think that might be Frick framing me." Sam hobbled on his bad leg in a weird sort of run to the front door. From the gravel driveway, only about fifty feet from the house, a patrol car had run off into the grass, lights on and its engine running. Sam could almost picture the neat round hole in the windshield.

Opening the front door a crack, he listened and watched. The fields and yard had the still quiet of a chilly winter afternoon interrupted only by the faint sound of a beginning rain and the swirling breezes. There was no movement in the car and only a quiet hum from its engine. Sam was certain now: He and Haley were being set up. Again. Frick would be wearing surgeon's gloves and would leave no sign of his passing. Even the shoes on his feet would be discarded.

"Someone's shot a deputy," Haley whispered frantically. "We have to help him."

"Yes," Sam said. "And we will. Stay where you are. Call the dispatcher. Tell them to send an ambulance. Officer down."

Sam went to a door in the family room that opened onto the patio. There was a small, glassed alcove, which protruded from the side of the house, that framed the door. If he stepped forward, he could see to the left and right through angled wing windows. Ahead, through the glass doors, against the perimeter railings of the patio, he saw flower boxes and billowing plants. Not wanting to show his body or his whole face, he peeked around the corner of the left wing's window. To his immediate left were barbecues along the wall of the house. To his right, steps led off the patio to a garden. He could not immediately discern any shooters waiting in the shadows.

To the left an outline stood against the wall behind the barbecues. It was perhaps the top of a person's head, although he couldn't be sure. He watched quietly for a good two minutes before he saw movement. Someone had turned to look down the wall toward the alcove. Probably there were at least two men at the house, one in front and a second in the back. There was no easy way out the back—no easy way to stalk the shooter in front. Maybe they could make it through the side garage door again. But maybe not.

He wondered how Haley was doing, imagining her standing in the gray light of the hallway, shivering in fear, and wanting to go to the fallen deputy.

He hobbled as quickly as he could back to Haley at the front door. A fire truck emergency-aid vehicle was coming up the road and turning in.

"Call the station," he whispered. "Tell them that we need more ambulances."

"They'll think I'm nuts."

"The truth grows on people. Tell them to send the fire department and ambulances. Tell them there's a chimney fire and that Frick has us pinned down inside the house. Tell them it won't be long before he burns down the house."

"There's no chimney fire," Haley said.

"There will be."

While she made the call, Sam went to the garage, where he remembered seeing some paint thinner. Using sheets, towels, paint thinner, and furniture cushions, he built a fire in the living-room fireplace until the roaring flames indeed looked like they might burn the house down.

Sam shuffled through the kitchen, grabbed Haley, and headed back to the garage. On their way there someone broke through one of the back doors. By that time Haley had run and Sam had limped at a half-run to the door to the garage. They went through it as quietly as they could. Sam imagined that the intruder came in through the dining room and headed into the living room. That would put him on the far side of the house.

That left someone, probably Frick, at the front. He considered the odds. A lot of dead men in Sam's life had played the odds. Hopefully, the man inside the house would check the garage last.

Sam found lawn mower gasoline and filled a canning jar with it. He screwed the lid down over a rag. He didn't have a match, but there was an acetylene torch in the garage and it had a barbecue lighter hanging from a string.

Timing would be everything.

Ben had a Jeep in the garage; they hid behind it.

The sound of fire engines came through the walls, and hopefully the ambulance. Sam was pretty sure that with the paint thinner in the fireplace, flames were spewing out the top of the chimney. There was no sound from the house and now it had been three minutes. Any second the garage door could open and they would have a problem.

When it happened, there was no time for thought. Slamming open the inside garage door to the house, a man jumped through and stood behind a hot-water heater for cover.

Sam lit the rag and tossed the jar. For a split second the masked shooter stepped out with two hands on the gun, taut, braced, ready to shoot. He wore a police officer's uniform.

The bullets started at about the same time the jar struck the wall over the door. Between the conflagration and the muzzle flash, the deputy was lost to sight.

Bullets punched the wall where Sam's head had been, and then the firing stopped. From the concrete floor Sam saw the door and the shooter were burning. Flames rose from the man's arms and back, where gasoline had drenched him. His screams filled the air with his agony. Walking crazily, he reentered the house. Frick would come around to the garage, probably from the outside.

Sam motioned Haley to run for the flaming door through which the shooter had disappeared. They found the man rolling in the hall, ripping off his jacket as he fought the flames.

"Extinguisher," Sam said. He remembered one in the kitchen.

Sam grabbed it from the wall, hurried back to the man, kicked the pistol far away, and blasted the burning man with fire suppressant.

Haley came with a small bucket of water and a blanket to smother the flame.

Sam grabbed the groaning man by the shirt.

He screamed. He was burned badly over his back.

"Who'd you shoot?" Sam asked.

"I didn't shoot anybody," the man said in great pain. "Frick probably did."

"Does Frick have any idea where Ben Anderson is?" asked Haley.

"No."

"Are you really a deputy?" Sam asked.

The wounded man hesitated. "Not normally. I'm from Las Vegas."

Sam knew it was past time to leave. They left the burned man and the shot officer in the car to the medics that no doubt were in the front yard. He took a risk and led Haley, crouching low, through the back door and into the trees.

They heard more fire engines in the distance as they went. Sam ran as fast as he could.

It took a little over three minutes to make it back to the forest edge near Haley's. They both puffed a bit, Sam more from the pain than anything else. They stayed low in a swale, but Sam worried about the open forest and the fact that they had already put a man at Ben's. He considered their options. Other than Haley's car, which was hidden in the orchard, they had nothing but one of her rental motor scooters.

"You stay put. I'll go get your motor scooter out of the garage and we'll get out of here,"

Sam said.

"I'm supposed to stay here while you get shot? I'm coming."

"So you can get shot too?" Sam sighed, exasperated that she wouldn't just do as he said.

"You stay here." He said it as if he were a fighter on the verge of a brawl. For some reason it worked. She nodded but glared.

He and Haley were going to have to come to an understanding.

Under the circumstances the motor scooter was the best choice. Haley had concluded the same thing. She handed Ben's papers over to Sam and devoted herself to starting the scooter. Unfortunately, with every cop on the island looking for them, the odds of making it on the scooter were not good. They climbed on and it was a tight fit, like two big men on a burro. Haley drove because Sam grudgingly had to admit that he was more accustomed to Harleys. As they ran down the highway, moving away from Ben's, he hoped they wouldn't run into a cop before they could turn off Beaverton. Once they got onto Boyce and other back roads, he breathed a little easier. It was hard to think about motor scooters and traveling after having just read the startling words of a very serious man, a man who seemed to think that a relatively ordinary event—comparable, at least in metaphor, to a sigh— would precipitate a catastrophe—roasting or asphyxiating.

Dr. Ben Anderson
had
said,
"All
dead."

S
am directed Haley to turn the motor scooter right onto Bailer Hill Road and then back to the southeast to a gravel drive that meandered past a house and led to an old barn.

"Why are we going to Rachael's?" Haley said over her shoulder, obviously surprised at their destination.

They dismounted and Sam pushed the motor scooter into the barn. Inside, he closed the doors and flipped on a set of fluorescent lights. As Haley watched, he pulled the tarp off his 1967 Corvette. Even without natural light it had a sheen that appeared three-dimensional, like the deep blue of the ocean.

"That's yours?"

Sam smiled. He put both piles of Ben's papers on the car hood.

"Oh, I get it," Haley said. "You didn't say anything because that would actually give us information about you. I'd have died thinking you drove a two-year-old Taurus. And Rachael was a perfect choice for you. She is one of the few people I know that can really keep a secret. How did you figure that out?"

"Ben told me. We discussed where to hide my car."

"Ben told you?" she asked.

Again the surprise was evident. More like shock, Sam thought.

"I feel a little left out," Haley said. "She's my best friend."

"Believe me, you weren't left out of much. Most of the time I've spent with Rachael was because you invited her to dinner at Ben's. Now let's talk about Ben's message in the
National Geographic.
Deadly sighs?"

"I have no idea what that means," Haley said, her face still fallen. "The rest I think I understand. You've heard that the rain forests are the lungs of the earth? Well, plankton use photosynthesis and they're equal to all the forests of the world as a major source of oxygen. Given that Ben's talking about the sea, I'd call plankton the lungs of the earth.

Some scientists have even suggested fertilizing the ocean to create more plankton to reduce CO and slow global warming. But it sounds like Ben's saying that's dangerous, 2