Peter Pan Must Die (51 page)

“Klemper’s up there by my house. Dead. Long story. Looks like the first responders found the body and called for help. The convoy you see would be the second wave.”

“Dead? Mick the Dick? Dead how?”

Gurney gave him the fastest run-through he could—from the flat tire to the lumber explosion to the fatal joist hanger in Klemper’s neck to the flowers on Barrow Hill to the flowers at the fair.

Reviewing it all underscored in his own mind his need to call Kyle ASAP.

Hardwick listened in complete silence to the narration of events.

“What you need to do,” said Gurney, “is get over here to the fairgrounds.
You’ve seen the same videos I have, so your chance of recognizing Panikos is as good as mine.”

“Which is close to zero.”

“I know that. But we’re got to try. He’s here, somewhere. He came here for a reason.”

“What reason?”

“I have no idea. But he was here earlier today, and now he’s here again. It’s not a coincidence.”

“Look, I know you think that getting Panikos is the key to everything, but don’t forget that somebody hired him, and I’m thinking it’s Jonah.”

“You find out something new?”

“Just what my gut tells me, that’s all. There’s something off about that slimy bastard.”

“Something beyond a fifty-million-dollar motive?”

“Yeah. I think so. I think he’s way too smiley, way too cool.”

“Maybe it’s just the charming Spalter gene pool.”

Hardwick produced a phlegmy laugh. “Not a pool I’d want to swim in.”

Gurney was getting antsy to check in with Kyle, antsy to start looking for Panikos. “Okay, Jack. Hurry up. Call me when you get here.”

As he was ending the call, he heard the first explosion.

He’d recognized the sound as the muffled
whump
of a small incendiary device.

As soon as he reached the scene, two concourses over, his impression was confirmed. A small booth was engulfed in flames and smoke, but already two men with
FAIR SECURITY
armbands were hurrying toward it with fire extinguishers and shouting at the onlookers to step back out of the way. Two female security people arrived and began working their way around to the rear of the booth, repeatedly calling out, “Anyone inside? Anyone inside?” An emergency vehicle with lights flashing and siren blaring was making its way down the middle of the concourse.

Seeing there was no immediate contribution he could make to the effort, Gurney focused instead on the crowd within sight of the fire. Arsonists have a well-known proclivity for observing their handiwork, but whatever hope he might have had of spotting someone matching even the most general description of Peter Pan soon evaporated. But then he noticed something else. The half-burnt sign above the booth said
WALNUT CROSSING FLOOD RELIEF
. And amid the debris the explosion had scattered onto the concourse were charred bouquets of rust-red mums.

It seemed that Panikos had a love-hate relationship with chrysanthemums, or maybe with all flowers, or with anything that reminded him of Florencia. But that alone couldn’t explain his presence at the fair. There was another possibility, of course. A more frightening one. Major public events were attractive venues for the making of memorable statements.

Was it conceivable that the purpose of Panikos’s earlier visit to the fair that day was to lay the groundwork for such a statement? Specifically, might he have mined the place with explosives? Was the destruction of the flower stand only the opening sentence of his message?

Was this possible scenario something Gurney needed to share immediately with Fair Security? With the Walnut Crossing PD? With BCI? Or would an attempt to explain such a scenario take more time than it was worth? After all, if it was true, if that was the reality they were facing, by the time the story was told and believed, it would be too late to stop the event.

As crazy as the conclusion seemed, Gurney decided that going it alone was the only feasible route. It was a route that depended on the successful identification of Peter Pan—a task that he realized was close to impossible. But there were no other options on the table.

So he started doing the only thing he could do. He started making his way through the crowd, using height as the first screen, weight as the second, facial structure as the third.

As he made his way through the next concourse, checking not only the individuals in the flowing crowd but also the customers at each booth and each exhibitor’s tent, an ironic thought came to mind: The upside of the worst-case scenario—that Peter Pan had come to the fair to blow it up piece by piece—was that he’d be there for a while. And as long as he was there, it was possible to catch him. Before Gurney could wrestle with the edgy moral question of how much human and material destruction he’d be willing to trade to get his hands on Peter Pan, Hardwick called—announcing that he’d arrived at the main gate and asking where they should get together.

“We don’t need to get together,” said Gurney. “We can cover more ground separately.”

“Fine. So what do I do—just start searching for the midget?”

“As best you can, based on your memory of the images on the security videos. You might want to pay special attention to groups of kids.”

“The purpose being …?”

“He’d want to be as inconspicuous as possible. A five-foot-tall male adult is attention-getting, but a kid that size isn’t, so there’s a good chance he’s made himself look like a kid. Facial skin can be an age giveaway, so I’d expect he’d find a way to obscure that. A lot of
kids tonight have their faces painted, and that would be an obvious solution.”

“I get that, but why would he be in a group?”

“Again, inconspicuousness. A kid alone attracts more attention than one with other kids.”

Hardwick uttered a sigh, making it sound like the ultimate expression of skepticism. “Sounds like a lot of guesswork to me.”

“I won’t argue with that. One more thing. Assume that he’s armed, and don’t underestimate him. Remember, he’s alive and well, and a hell of a lot of people who crossed paths with him are dead.”

“What’s the drill if I think I have him ID’d?”

“Keep him in sight and call me. I’ll do the same. That’s the point when we need to back each other up. By the way, he blew up a flower stand here right after your last call.”

“Blew it up?”

“Sounded like a low-impact incendiary. Probably like the ones at Cooperstown.”

“Why a flower stand?”

“I’m not a psychoanalyst, Jack, but flowers—especially mums—seem to mean something to him.”

“You know ‘mum’ is the Brit word for ‘mom,’ right?”

“Sure, but—”

A series of rapid-fire explosions cut off his reply—propelling him down into an instinctive crouch. He sensed that the blasts had come from somewhere above him.

Quickly scanning the area around him, he got the phone back up to his ear in time to hear Hardwick yell, “Christ! What did he blow up now?”

The answer came in a second series of similar explosions—with geometric lines of light and bursts of colored sparks streaking across the night sky. Gurney’s tension was released in a sharp single-syllable laugh. “Fireworks! It’s just the summer-fair fireworks.”

“Fireworks? What the fuck for? Fourth of July was a month ago.”

“Who the hell knows? It’s a tradition at the fair. They do it every year.”

A third series went off—louder and gaudier.

“Assholes,” muttered Hardwick.

“Right. Anyway. We have work to do.”

Hardwick was silent for a few seconds, then switched directions abruptly. “So what do you think about Jonah? You didn’t react when I brought it up. You think I’m right?”

“Right about him being the mastermind behind Carl’s murder?”

“It’s all to his advantage. All of it. And you gotta admit, he’s one oily operator.”

“Where does Esti come out on this? She agree with you?”

“Hell, no. She’s all zeroed in on Alyssa. She’s convinced the whole thing was payback for Carl raping her—even though there was no real evidence for that. It was all hearsay, through Klemper. Which reminds me, I have to let her know about Mick the Dick’s demise. I guarantee she’ll do a happy dance.”

It took Gurney a few seconds to get that image out of his mind. “Okay, Jack, we need to get to the job at hand. Panikos is here. With us. Within reach. Let’s go find him.” As he ended the call, a final deafening display of fireworks lit up the sky. It made him think, for the twelfth time in the past two days, of the case of the exploding car. That made him think of the events in the alley shooting described by Esti. Which made him wonder yet again what revealing element they might have in common with the Spalter case. As important as that question seemed, however, he couldn’t let it divert his attention now.

He resumed his progress through the fairgrounds, fixating on the face of every short, thin person he came upon. Better to study too many than too few. If someone of the right size happened to be looking away, or if their features were obscured by glasses, a beard, the brim of a hat, he followed them discreetly, angling for a better view.

With a rising sense of possibility, he followed one tiny, ageless, genderless creature in loose black jeans and a baggy sweater until a wiry, sunburned man in a John Deere hat greeted her warmly in a tent sponsored by the Evangelical Church of the Risen Christ, called her Eleanor, and asked about the condition of her cows.

Two more such “possibilities”—discovered in the next two concourses and collapsing in similar absurdities—were draining the hope out of his search, while the nasal country lyrics blaring from the giant four-sided screen at the fair’s central intersection were saturating the atmosphere with a disorienting sentimentality. There was a similarly
disorienting combination of odors, dominated by popcorn, French fries, and manure.

As Gurney rounded the corner where a room-sized refrigeration unit with a glass front was displaying a huge bovine butter sculpture, he caught sight of the same roving band of a dozen or so face-painted kids he’d seen before. He picked up his pace to get closer.

Apparently they’d been successful in their flowers-for-donations pitches. Only two members of the group were still carrying bouquets, and they seemed in no hurry to give them away. As he was watching them, he spotted the cop from the exhibitors’ gate coming along the concourse from the opposite direction with what looked like two plainclothes colleagues.

Gurney ducked through a doorway and found himself in the 4-H Club exhibit hall, surrounded by displays of large, shiny vegetables.

As soon as the search party had passed, he stepped back outside. He was closing in again on the face-painted kids when he was startled by another explosion, not far away. It was a powerful
whump
—incendiary style—with maybe twice the force of the one that had destroyed the flower stand. But it had little immediate effect on the meandering mass of fairgoers, probably because the fireworks had been louder.

It did, however, get the attention of the face-painted kids. They stopped and gaped at one another—as if the explosion had awakened their appetite for disaster—then turned and hurried back along the concourse toward the origin of the sound.

Gurney caught up with them two concourses later. They had drawn together at the edge of a larger crowd, staring. Smoke was billowing from the arena that was home to the nightly demolition-derby events. Some people were running toward the arena. Some were backing away from it, clutching small children. Some were questioning one another, wide-eyed with anxiety. Some were pulling out cell phones, tapping in numbers. A siren began wailing in the background.

And then, barely discernible above the general din, there was another
whump
.

Only a few members of the little posse Gurney was focused on showed any immediate reaction, but the ones who did then appeared to be passing the news of it to their companions. It also appeared that this was breaking the group apart—that there were those who’d heard
the latest explosion and those who hadn’t (or who had, but considered the commotion in front of them more interesting). In any event, three individuals separated themselves from the larger group and headed off in the direction of the latest scene of destruction.

Curious himself about the pattern of Panikos’s attack, Gurney decided to follow the splinter group. As he passed those who were remaining at the periphery of the unsettled crowd of onlookers, he tried to get a good enough look at each little face to judge its compatibility with the mental images he carried from the videos.

Failing to see any resemblance convincing enough to demand a closer examination, he continued after the departing threesome.

His progress was slowed by people beginning to flow out of the arena. From what he overheard of their comments to one another, he concluded that the audience in the stands hadn’t come close to grasping the significance of what they’d just witnessed—the massive, fiery explosion of one of the cars in the final event of the derby, the horrifying immolation of the driver, and multiple injuries to other drivers. They seemed to be attributing all this to some sort of gas-tank malfunction or the use of a prohibited fuel. The darkest suggestion was that there might have been some sort of sabotage arising from a family feud.

So, two firebombs within a twenty-minute period, and still no panic. That was the good news. The bad news was that the only reason there was no panic was that no one understood what was happening. Gurney wondered if that third
whump
he’d heard would change things.

A couple of hundred yards ahead of him, a fire engine was trying to clear a right-of-way through the throng with repeated blasts of its air horn. Overhead, smoke was blowing in the wind—coming from the area toward which the fire engine was heading. It was a cloudy, moonless night, and the smoke was weirdly illuminated by the concourse lights below it.

People were starting to show signs of unease. Many were proceeding in the same direction as the fire engine—some walking fast beside it, some running ahead of it. The expressions on faces ran the gamut from apprehension to excitement. The three small figures he’d been following had been swallowed up in the moving mass of bodies.