The room was about fifteen feet square, dominated by a king-sized bed covered with a thick off-white satiny comforter and at least a dozen oversized pillows arranged by the headboard. The floor was carpeted in thick shag, also white, which provided quite a contrast to the red velvetlike wallpaper. A large flat-screen TV was mounted to the wall about four feet beyond the foot of the bed, a small black cabinet below. Undoubtedly the most arresting decorating touch was the six large, framed black-and-white photographs along three walls, all depicting naked men and women entwined with one another like they were auditioning for a remake of Caligula.
Scattered across the floor were half a dozen plastic DVD jewel cases. All open, all empty.
“I don’t think it’s a panic room,” I said.
FIFTEEN
BARRY Duckworth booted it back up to the drive-in site, where he met Michelle Watkins, the bomb expert the state police had sent in to assist.
“So what happened here?” he asked her as they stood amid the rubble. “The demolition guy screwed up, or are we looking at something else?”
Michelle Watkins said, “I’m saying that guy Marsden, the one who was hired to drop this sucker a week from now? He told you he hadn’t even started on this job? He’s not lying. This is not his work. At least, it’s not the work of any professional demolition expert.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a big difference between how a pro would bring down a structure like this and how it was actually done. This is amateur hour. From what I can tell, we’re looking at IEDs.”
“Improvised . . .”
“Yeah. Improvised explosive devices.”
“So more than one,” he said.
“Walk with me,” she said, then glanced down at his feet. “You got some proper shoes like I’m wearing?” She pointed to her own feet, which were protected with thick-soled steel-toed boots. “You go walking through this in those loafers and you’ll end up with half a dozen spikes through your feet.”
“In the car,” Duckworth said.
“Go get ’em.” She took out her phone. “I’ll check my messages.”
He was back in five minutes, the legs of his suit pants tucked into the tops of his boots.
“You still have to watch your step,” Michelle said, moving gingerly over the wreckage. Duckworth noticed this woman—all five and a half feet of her—seemed to be entirely muscle. “First thing we had to do, of course, was be sure there weren’t any other bombs planted in here that hadn’t gone off. Hate to be poking about, then kaboom, there goes your left tit.”
“Sure.”
“We sent in some sniffer dogs this morning, poked around with a camera, and as far as we can tell, there’s nothing else.”
“As far as you can tell.”
Michelle grinned. “Hey, nothing in life is a hundred percent. Except that, at some point, it will end. Oh, and that everything that tastes good is bad for you.”
“What’s your background?” Duckworth asked, stepping carefully over broken boards.
“I was a bomb disposal officer with the army. Iraq, Afghanistan. When my tours ended, and I’d had enough, I put my skills to work over here, got a job with the staties.”
“Like that movie,” Duckworth said. “What was it called?”
“The Hurt Locker.”
“That’s the one. Was it like that over there?”
“Meh,” she said, shrugging. “Movies. If it hasn’t got George Clooney in it, I don’t much care. Okay, so our Marsden friend would have rigged this thing to drop nice and neat, rigging charges there, there, and there.” She pointed. “But the guy who did this wasn’t quite so tidy. Not that he did a completely terrible job. He did bring the damn thing down, after all.”
“IEDs, you said.”
“Yeah, homemade bombs.”
“You’re saying the same kinds of explosives you encountered in Iraq are what was used here? Some folks, they started wondering if this was terrorism or something, and my first thought was, Promise Falls can’t be high on the list of targets for Islamic extremists.”
“I wouldn’t disagree with you there,” Michelle said. “IED is just a fancy acronym for a bomb you build yourself. Doesn’t mean it’s a bomb made by some Middle Eastern terrorist group, but then again, it doesn’t mean it’s not. But there’s plenty of places online where you can find out how to make one. Plenty of yahoos over here can figure out this stuff. Remember Timothy McVeigh and Oklahoma City? He was a fan of fertilizer. You get someone reasonably smart, pretty handy—they can put one of these together, do a lot of damage. Whoever did this did have some engineering smarts. He knew where to plant the devices to make the screen fall the way it did. Assuming he did, in fact, want it to fall on the audience.”
She did some more pointing as they continued their slow trek over the remains of the screen. “The screen had four main supports, and my guess is there were four bombs, each attached to one of those supports, on the parking lot side, so the screen would drop in that direction.”
“Would the bomber have had to be here? Close by? Maybe in one of the cars?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m guessing what we’ll find is there was a common timer for all four, so they went simultaneously for maximum impact.”
“So he could be anywhere. He could have been a thousand miles away when the bombs went off.”
“Yup.”
“And they could have been planted anytime.”
“Double yup.”
Duckworth felt a wave of hopelessness wash over him. Interviewing all the people present at the time of the explosion wasn’t likely to produce anything helpful.
“No advance warnings, no threats, no one claiming responsibility?” Michelle Watkins asked.
“No,” he said.
“Well, we’re going to start pulling together bomb fragments. Once we get a handle on what it was made of, how it might have been put together, we’ll cross-check that with other bombings, look for similarities. That may end up pointing us in the right direction.”
“Appreciate it,” Duckworth said. He was panting.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t usually spend my day climbing over a mess like this.”
“You might want to think about taking up jogging or something,” she said. “Get yourself in shape.”
“Thanks for that,” Duckworth said.
“Maybe cut back on the Big Macs.”
“I said thanks.”
Michelle continued. “It’s clear to me our bomber was hoping to hurt some people, having this thing come down at twenty-three twenty-three, when it was known there would be people here for the drive-in’s last night. You ask me, it was lucky only four people got killed. If more people’d parked in that first row, there’d—”
“Sorry. What was that?”
“What was what?”
“When it came down?”
Michelle grinned. “Once you’ve been on military time, you’re on it forever. More precise, at least to me, than saying a.m. or p.m. I’m always thinking of a twenty-four-hour clock. The screen came down at eleven twenty-three p.m. Twenty-three minutes past twenty-three hundred hours.”
Duckworth had stopped.
“You out of breath again?” Michelle asked.
“No, I’m okay.”
“What is it? You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”
“Something just stopped being a bunch of coincidences,” he said.
SIXTEEN
Cal
I stepped into the red-walled room.
“You’re saying you’ve never been in here?” I asked Lucy.
Her eyes were wide. “Cal, I swear, I’ve never known anything about this.”
“Did you grow up in this house?”
“Not really. Dad got this place just
as I was finishing high school. Once I went to college I never moved back. I’ve been over here hundreds of times, of course, but I’ve sure as hell never been given a tour of this. What is this?”
Given the sexually graphic photos on the wall, and the bed, and the satin pillows, it seemed pretty obvious to me.
“It’s not exactly a woodworking shop,” I said.
“This is . . . unimaginable,” she said.
The room wasn’t added onto the house. It was within the perimeter of the foundation. Maybe, at one time, this really had been a woodworking shop, or a wine cellar, or an exercise room. All Chalmers would have had to do was cover over the access with that sliding bookcase to keep anyone from knowing the room was here.
Then the question was why.
There was no shame in the fact that couples living together shared bedrooms, with actual beds in them, where they had sex. No one would go to that kind of trouble to hide that fact. I was betting Adam and Miriam Chalmers had spent most of their nights in that bedroom upstairs. In that huge bed. Where they often had sex.
But this room, this was for something more than garden-variety sex. This was for when sex was an event. This was a room dedicated solely to sex. No sleeping went on in here. This was not a room where you put your aunt when she came to visit.
I took in the erotic photographs framed on the walls. “Would that be Miriam’s work?” I asked.
Lucy nodded. “I think so. I’ve seen her stuff online. When she wasn’t doing run-of-the-mill portraits and weddings, she fancied herself a female Mapplethorpe.”
I stepped carefully over the discarded empty DVD cases, then knelt down on one knee in front of the small cabinet that was tucked up against the wall below the flat-screen TV. One of the doors was half-open, and I was guessing this was where the cases had come from. I pulled it open all the way. Lucy had come into the room and was standing behind me, looking down over my shoulder.
There were two shelves. On the top, to one side, was a DVD player. Next to it were an assortment of creams and lotions and condoms and an open jewel case. The bottom shelf was littered with what would be categorized as sex toys. Vibrators, rubber phalluses, various and assorted straps, handcuffs. Even a box filled with batteries, although not the kind you put in the smoke detectors.
I heard an intake of breath behind me. I turned my head to look at Lucy. “You okay?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I mean, it’s a lot to take in. I don’t think I’m a prude. People have sex, sometimes with all the extras, and I’ve got nothing against that. Even when it’s your own father.” She paused. “But this . . . I don’t know what to think about this.”
I glanced back at the bed, spotted some items on the table next to it. Remotes, for the TV and the DVD player.
“Lucy, can you grab me those?”
“What?”
“Those remotes.”
She walked around the bed, appeared hesitant to grab them at first, but of the items I’d found in this room, the remotes were the ones I’d be the most comfortable touching. She handed them to me. I figured out which one was for the DVD player, powered it up, then hit the eject button. The tray slid out.
Empty.
Either Adam Chalmers was in the habit of taking the disc out of the machine when he was finished watching it, or whoever ransacked this place was thorough.
Even though my right knee was planted in shag carpeting, it was getting sore, so I switched to the other and, in the process, shifted in such a way that I caught a glimpse of something under the bed.
A black case. Plastic, it looked like.
I reached under, grabbed it by the handle, and slid it out.
“What’s that?” Lucy asked.
I didn’t answer. Instead, I flipped up the tabs on the front of the case and raised the lid. It was filled with soft gray foam, with cutouts to hold a camera and a couple of lenses that were packed neatly inside.
I pried out the camera. It was a nice, expensive model designed to take still photos or video.
“Oh my,” Lucy said.
I glanced back at the empty DVD cases. “Yeah. Looks like your father’s home movies are missing.” I thought a moment. “My guess is, someone was looking for the DVD they wanted, heard you come in, slipped out of this room with the discs, slid the shelf back into position, and took off out the back door.”
She nodded slowly.
“He probably figured he had time to go through the discs. Maybe they were labeled. Then he heard the door open, and he left these cases scattered all over the place.”
I studied her.
“Are you sure you didn’t know about this?” I asked. “You haven’t received a phone call since what happened at the drive-in? Someone offering to sell these back to you.”
Lucy shook her head. “Nothing like that. I swear.”
Maybe the call had yet to come. But did blackmail really make sense? The ones you’d want to blackmail, if you had these discs, would be Adam Chalmers and his wife, Miriam.
But they were dead.
“At least now we know what they were after,” I said. “We know what was taken. Do you want to bring the police into it now?”
Her mouth opened in horror. “God, no.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Find these DVDs. Find out who has them. I don’t have any idea what’s on them and I really don’t want to know. But we need to get them back, and they need to be destroyed. There can’t be anything on them that I’d want anyone to see.”
“Your father’s reputation is important to you.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “I mean, it’s partly that, but . . .”
“Your daughter,” I said.
Lucy nodded. “If these get out somehow, I can survive the embarrassment. But what about Crystal? You know how things are these days. Everything goes viral almost instantly. And even kids know what’s happening. I can’t bear the taunting she might endure, the humiliation. Or that she might go online one day and see this stuff herself, if that’s what the person who took those discs plans to do. To put them up on YouTube.”
“Sure,” I said.
I wondered where to start. Who might know about this secret room? The guy who built it, perhaps, although Adam Chalmers might have done the work himself. A cleaning lady, maybe, or a person authorized to come into the house to do some kind of repair work? But how would they know the room even existed? And if they did, why would they want the discs?
Who’d care about acquiring videos of Adam Chalmers and his wife getting it on? Especially after they were dead.
And then it hit me.
Adam and Miriam weren’t the only performers.
There were supporting players.
SEVENTEEN
ANGUS Carlson had exited the Thackeray College admin building and was almost to his car when he heard someone yelling in his direction.
“Excuse me! You!”
Carlson was the only one crossing the parking lot, so there was a pretty good chance that whoever was shouting was shouting at him. He stopped and turned. The man he knew only as Peter, the one he’d pegged as a Thackeray professor who’d been talking to Duncomb, was trying to get his attention.
“Me?” Carlson said, pointing to himself.
Peter nodded, closed the distance between them. He was panting.
“Sorry. I was waiting for you to come out of Clive’s office, but I guess I missed you, didn’t realize you’d already left. Had to run when I spotted you. You’re with the police? You’re a detective?”
“That’s right,” he said. Acting detective, but he didn’t see any need to point that out. “Who are you?”
“Oh, I’m Peter Blackmore. Professor Blackmore.” He extended a hand and Carlson took it. “English literature and psychology.”
“Okay.”
&nb
sp; “I wondered if I could ask you a couple of questions. Kind of hypothetically.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“If someone is missing, how long do they have to be missing to be, you know, official?”
“Official?”
“Officially missing,” Blackmore said.
“Who are we talking about here?” Angus Carlson asked.
“It’s just a hypothetical.”
“Hypothetically speaking, is this missing person a four-year-old girl who didn’t show up at nursery school, a ninety-year-old man who wandered away from a nursing home, or a husband who ran off with his secretary?”
Blackmore blinked. “It’s none of those.”
“The point I’m trying to make is, it depends. A kid fails to show up for school, the police jump on it right away. You have to move quickly on something like that. An old guy who wanders off is pretty urgent, too, but at least with him you’re less worried that he’s the victim of an abduction. And the husband who runs off with his secretary, well, that’s not really a concern of ours at all. Depending.”
“I see,” Blackmore said, thinking.
“Maybe if you could be more specific.”
“It’s a bit like the third one you mentioned, but not exactly. Do I have to wait twenty-four hours before reporting someone missing? That’s what I’ve heard. That you have to wait twenty-four hours. Or is it forty-eight?”
Carlson shook his head. “That’s a TV myth. You can report someone anytime you want. If there’s reason to believe a crime was committed, that this missing person is in danger, the police will act right away. Was a crime committed in connection with this hypothetical disappearance?”
Blackmore paused, looked away. “Not that I know of, I guess. She just hasn’t come home.”
“Is it your wife, Professor? Is that who’s missing?”
He swallowed, hesitated, then said, “Maybe. I mean, yes, it’s my wife, but I can’t say for sure that she’s actually missing.”
“What’s her name?”
“Georgina Blackmore.”
“When did you last see her?” Carlson was reaching into his pocket for his notebook.