Grofield’s second call was to Littlefield, who jumped when the phone rang as though he’d been hit by a live wire. He fumbled the receiver, dropped it, picked it up again, and tried to clear his throat while he was saying hello. Grofield told him about the speed-up, and Littlefield nearly fainted from relief. But after that, he wasn’t tense any more; if the phone rang again, no matter who it was calling, he wouldn’t be nervous or frightened at all.
Grofield called the firehouse, got Chambers, and said, “It’s running faster than we thought. We’ll be going in about half an hour.”
“Boy, you’ll never know how Hey!”
“What?”
It sounded like a machine gun, roaring away there at the other end. Then the line went dead.
Forgetting himself, Grofield shouted, “Chambers! Chambers!” But the line was dead.
Mary was staring at him wide-eyed. “What is it? What’s the matter?” The other two women were stirring, disturbed out of sleep.
Grofield had the walkie-talkie now, was saying, “P. Listen, something’s gone wrong.”
“What?”
“The firehouse. I don’t know what it is. Sounded like machine gun fire, and then we were cut off.”
Parker cursed, and said, “W, you hear that?”
“I hear it.”
“Take the wagon. I’ll meet you at the firehouse.”
The first explosion woke Pop Phillips. He jumped up, startled, looking around, not knowing what had knocked him out of sleep.
Parker heard the explosion, cursed again, and gunned the prowl car forward.
Citizens heard the explosion, and some of them started phoning police headquarters to find out what it was, but nobody answered at police headquarters. Some of them dialed operator, but no operator answered either; Mary Deegan was trying to get Grofield’s attention, and failing.
The firehouse was on fire; half the front wall had been blown away, and, inside, flames leaped around the fire engines as the gasoline in their tanks burned. Parker got out of the prowl car, looking around, and didn’t see Chambers or anyone else. The station wagon raced up, squealed to a stop, and Wycza jumped out, saying, “What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know. Come on.”
They went across the street to the police station. Edgars was nearest; he ought to know what had happened.
Edgars wasn’t in the Command Room. Phones were ringing, but Officer Nieman lay bleeding in the middle of the floor, nearly shot in two.
“Edgars,” said Wycza.
Parker grimaced. “I knew there was something wrong with that bastard, I knew it.”
Wycza said, “One of them groaned.” He went over, knelt, said, “This one’s alive.”
It was Officer Mason. He whispered, “Edgars, Edgars.”
“Yeah,” said Wycza. “We know.”
Parker came over. “Did he say Edgars? Does he know Edgars?”
Officer Mason whispered again, and Wycza leaned close to hear him. Parker watched impatiently, and said, “What did he say?”
Wycza looked up. “Chief of police. Edgars used to be chief of police here.”
The second explosion was a lot bigger than the first.
8
He hadn’t wanted to kill Chambers, but Chambers had tried to get in his way. He didn’t know what the others would think of that; they might be sore at him, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t interfering with them, and they shouldn’t interfere with him.
He came up to the east gate, and Pop Phillips came out of the shack, saying, “What the hell was that explosion?”
“A vault, I guess. There’s something I’ve got to do in here.”
“A vault?” Phillips frowned. “They don’t need thatmuch nitro,” he said.
Edgars went on by him, and walked along the company road. He knew which building contained the furnaces and fuel; he went straight to it, and there he used the second of his grenades. He threw it, then flattened himself behind a wall, but the explosion knocked him off his feet anyway.
He picked himself up, found the machine gun, and started running. He ran back to the gate, and Phillips shouted, “What’s going on?”
“Just stay there! Stick to your position!”
Edgars ran down Copper Street toward Raymond Avenue. Off to his right, part of the plant had started to burn; orange flames were shooting up, dirtying the night sky.
“Goodbye, Copper Canyon. I’ll burn you to the ground.”
He turned at Hector Avenue. Hector was four blocks east of, and parallel with, Raymond Avenue. The railroad station was on Hector Avenue, two blocks away.
They’d never proved anything on him, the bastards. People had sat there in front of that grand jury and spouted all their stories about him, but they’d never been able to prove a thing. Brutality? A kickback from Regal Ford on the purchase of the new prowl car? Kickbacks from the suppliers of radio equipment, weapons and ammunition, uniforms, all the rest of it? You needed witnesses, you needed proof. Well, they couldn’t get proof. He wasn’t dumb enough to be caught by these hicks, not in a million years.
They couldn’t return a single indictment, not a one. On over fifty charges of one kind and another, they hadn’t been able to dredge up enough proof to hit him with even one little indictment. He laughed at them. He sat there as safe as houses, and laughed at them.
So they threw him out. The call to the mayor’s office, and the whole crowd there; Thorndike, the mayor, and Ableman, the general manager of the plant, and all the rest of them. Notoriety, they said. Bad press. The lost confidence of the voters. They wanted his resignation.
“But the grand jury cleared me!”
Ableman was the one who answered him: “No, they didn’t. They couldn’t pin anything on you, but they didn’t clear you.”
“You don’t get any resignation from me.”
Thorndike: “It’ll look worse for you if I have to dismiss you.”
“You do, and you’ll regret it.”
But he did. And he was going to regret it.
Just ahead was the railroad station. And just beyond it was Ekonomee Gas.
Ekonomee Gas was a filling-station, an independent not connected with any of the major gasoline companies. Ekonomee, like many similar independents, had no underground storage tanks. The station was built next to the railroad line, and a short spur track ran across the rear of the station property. Ekonomee bought gasoline in tank car lots, and piped the gas straight from the tank car into the pumps. There were always three or four tank cars full of gasoline on the spur behind Ekonomee Gas.
That was the place for the last grenade. That one ought to start a lovely fire. Two fires then, one at the plant and one at Ekonomee. Maybe three, if the firehouse had caught. In any case, they’d have plenty of time to spread. There was no longer any fire-fighting equipment in town. The radio station was disabled, the transmitting equipment at police headquarters had been riddled with machine-gun bullets, and once he’d blown up Ekonomee he’d go over to the telephone company and put thatout of commission.
No fire-fighting equipment in town, and no way to call to Madison or anywhere else to get some help. It would be hours before they could get organized to fight the fire, hours. With luck, the whole goddam town would burn down.
And Parker and the others would have to help. All this racket would attract the attention of the state police, at the barracks down 22A. Parker and the others would have to put that barracks out of commission; they’d have no choice.
“I toldyou you’d regret it, Thorndike!”
He ran past the railroad station, over the blacktop driveway of Ekonomee and around the corner of the building. Three tanks cars there. The spreading fire back at the plant glinted in smudged reflection on their sides.
Edgars paused at the corner of the building. He had the last grenade in his hands, and heard someone shout his name. He turned and saw two of the others running toward him, the prowl car standing behind them.