He did not answer. Struggling to his knees, he dabbed once at his eye to stem the blood and looked up just as a massive flare of light seared the darkness. The sound came an instant later, or so it seemed. The impact sent him rolling back downhill amid a hail of soaring rock and wood and plaster. By the time he righted himself again a plume of smoke rose high above the shed. The roof crumbled and collapsed as flames darted upward against the night sky.
Glancing downhill, he saw Waxman struggling to his feet; he’d been knocked against the car by the blast. A smell of spent ether filled the air. Waxman started up the hill and Abatangelo, not waiting, headed toward the milk shed ahead of him. Aware there might be a second charge, he covered his face with his arm and crouched as he walked.
In time he reached the shattered burning doorway and found what remained of Frank’s body. The upper half of his torso had been shorn away by the blast and scattered in pieces that smoldered here and there. A tangled shred of a blackened arm. The lower portion of his body lay in a senseless tangle almost fifteen yards away, the fabric of his trousers aflame. One foot was shoeless, bent at an impossible angle from the leg. Abatangelo thought: As long as you tell the truth, you’re safe. We’ll protect you.
Waxman gained the top of the knoll. Appraising the scene, he muttered, “Good God,” then turned to Abatangelo. “How badly are you hurt?” Before he’d ended the sentence Abatangelo was skidding downhill in the mud and gravel and debris. He reached the car and opened the trunk, withdrew his camera, then headed back uphill, the camera in one hand, his flash in the other.
Waxman said, “You can’t be serious,” as Abatangelo reached the shed again. He shot the better part of two rolls, searching out body parts and looking for a window through which to shoot the burning interior of the milk shed. Coughing from the smoke, he got so close at one point his sleeve caught fire; he bent down, chafed his arm through the damp grass till the flame was out, and resumed shooting. Waxman scuttled behind.
“This is perverse.”
Abatangelo turned around and put his hand to Waxman’s chest, the better to get his full attention. “Just so I get this straight. What part of this story don’t you want to tell?”
Waxman swatted the hand away. “I’ve had enough of your patronizing macho bullshit. What happened between you and him? After you dragged him out of that restaurant, what happened?”
“You can’t blame me for this. Get serious.”
He rewound his film and headed downhill. His legs shook so badly he nearly fell with every step. Over his shoulder he called out, “That explosion was heard for miles. We’ll be tied up all night explaining things if we don’t leave now.”
Waxman stood rooted to his spot. He looked as if he was searching for something to say. The proper thing. The flames had reached a stack of hay bales inside the shed, the fire was burning hot and high. He turned and followed Abatangelo down the hill to the car.
“I intend to call this in as soon as possible,” he said, getting in on the passenger side. “We’ll tell them who it is up there.”
“Fine,” Abatangelo said. Sitting down behind the wheel, he became aware at last just how badly he was shaking. “I’ll stop. But I’m not stopping long. They can place where you’re calling from.”
“I’m having difficulty reconciling your concerns with mine.”
“My concerns will get us out of here.”
“Exactly my point.”
Abatangelo decided against heading back the same direction they’d come. It seemed likely sightseers would gather there soonest. He pointed the car in the opposite direction, heading for the center of the Akers’ property, not sure where the narrow mud lane came out, or even if it did. He’d drive across virgin pasture if he had to, just to put some distance between him and Frank’s body.
“One thing you need to understand,” he told Waxman. “I can’t stay back there. I stay, it’s prison. They don’t need any more reason than that I’m standing there when it happened.” He shook his head. “I won’t go. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I don’t share your confidence in that regard,” Waxman muttered. “God forgive me.”
“No, Wax. No. Damn it, listen to me. It was his bomb. He knew it was there. He set the whole thing up. You see that, right? What did we have to offer him? Three thousand dollars. Witness protection, which is living death, and we couldn’t even guarantee that. This was his only real way out. He was busted, jilted, haunted by ghosts. He’d boxed himself in, he had people who wanted to hang him on every side. You get pressed up to a cliff, sometimes that’s the best way to turn. He looked down, he liked what he saw, he jumped. End of story.”
Waxman regarded Abatangelo with an expression that suggested alarmed fascination. “You beat him into a wreck,” he said finally.
“No, Wax. No. I hit him, yes. I didn’t beat him to where- ”
“I met him first, remember? He was in bad shape, I admit. But he wasn’t to the point that being blown to pieces was his only out.”
“Yeah, right, at that point he figured he could still con you out of the money.”
“I should be grateful.”
“Wax, what is this? Weren’t you paying attention? He’s the one who set it up. He’s the one led us out here.”
Waxman sighed and looked away. “Argument of convenience.”
“No. No, Wax.”
Abatangelo began pounding the steering wheel. To the right he saw through a walnut orchard what he believed was the barbed-wire fence surrounding the Akers’ stockade. It encouraged him. They were on their way out.
“So it’s on my head, then,” he said. “I might as well have shoved him through the door. Is that what you’re going to say?”
“Say to whom?”
“To your public. To the guys in Homicide you enjoyed so much last night.”
“Is that what you think? I’m in league with those detectives?”
“You know what Tony Cohn told me? He said you’d betray me the first chance you get.” He turned to Waxman, glaring. “Well? How about it?”
“If I was going to betray you,” Waxman responded, “I would not be in this car.”
Abatangelo turned back to look out through the windshield. They entered a clearing beyond which he spotted the ranch house.
“I appreciate that,” he said finally.
“I know you do.”
As they came abreast of the outbuildings, Waxman pointed to the house and said, “Pull up at the gate. I’ll use the phone in the kitchen.”
Abatangelo’s jaw dropped. “Here?”
“Why not?” Waxman buttoned his coat in preparation for the cold outside. “Even if they trace the call we’ll be gone by the time they get a car out here. Besides, I know where the phone is.”
Waxman opened his door and got out. Abatangelo, deciding to follow, put the car in park and left it idling. They hurried toward the back porch through the growing wind and a faint mist. They ducked under the yellow crime scene ribbon draped across the stair. Abatangelo reached inside the door pane he’d shattered the night before and threw the lock.
The tape outlines of where the bodies of Rowena and her son Duval had been discovered remained from the night before. The bloodstains seemed to have aged considerably in just the few hours they’d been there. The door frames and cabinet edges and countertops all wore the coarse black dust left by the fingerprint examiner. There were pencil markings left here and there on the walls, the tabletop, the floor, with the initials of the trace specialist circled alongside. For all that, the room seemed as utterly indifferent to human concern as a raided tomb.