Supervolcano: All Fall Down

This was already a mess. It called for cussing or praying, one. It probably called for both, but Colin had not even a nodding acquaintance with prayer.

“My God!” Kelly said. She jumped to the same conclusion people at the cop shop had to be reaching: “Is it because you busted his worthless kid?”

“Don’t know,” Colin repeated, as stolidly as he could. “If it is. .” He didn’t take that any further.

If the chief had killed himself because of Darren’s arrest, Colin was anything but sure he could go on at the San Atanasio Police Department. How many people there would blame him for Mike’s suicide? Enough to make him persona bigtime non grata? He had the bad feeling the answer to that one couldn’t be anything but yes. He was a long way from sure he didn’t blame himself, when you got right down to it.

“That would be awful, Colin!” Kelly exclaimed, so she could see it, too. Well, it wasn’t anything complicated, worse luck.

By the flashlight’s white glare, he put on jeans, a sweatshirt, and his beat-up old denim jacket. The middle of the night wasn’t the time to worry about suit and tie. He looked a lot like the way he had when he first met Kelly at the late, ever so lamented Yellowstone. “I’ll be back when I can,” he told her, brushing his lips across hers. “Try and grab some more z’s.”

“Any other time, I’d tell you you were out of your mind,” she said. “The way Deborah runs me ragged, I may have a chance of doing it.”

He hurried downstairs. He started to roll his bike out of the foyer and onto the porch, but shook his head, went outside on foot, and got into the Taurus instead. Sometimes speed mattered. To his relief, the car started.

The streets were eerily empty. He drove past two people showing bike lights and one moron who wasn’t. Crunching the fool would have been just what he needed now, but he swerved and missed. Having the guy appear out of nowhere in his headlights startled him so much he didn’t even honk.

When he pulled into the lot, he had no trouble finding a space. Most of them went begging most of the time-who drove to work these days? He hurried inside. The lights were on: the station had its own generator, and for the moment the generator had fuel.

“Here he is!” somebody said as he came through the doors. That wasn’t relief. It sounded more like a heads-up to alert people who hadn’t seen him yet. The looks the cops and clerical staff gave him had that same feeling.

Neil Schneider came up to him. “Sorry to roust you, Lieutenant, but. .” The droopy, graying blond mustache the sergeant wore gave him a mournful aspect even when he was happy. When he had something to be unhappy about, as now. .

“I’m here, all right,” Colin said. “Has anybody told Darren yet?”

By the way the rest of the cops looked at one another, he knew nobody had. “We thought you ought to be here,” Schneider said. We thought you ought to do it, he meant.

Colin sighed. “Okay. Get him out of his cell. Bring him to interrogation room two. I’ll handle it in there.” If he was top dog for the moment, they could damn well follow his lead.

He didn’t have to wait long in the interrogation room-the jail was right next to the station. Two policemen led in Darren Pitcavage. He wore a bright blue jumpsuit with SAN ATANASIO CITY JAIL stenciled on the chest and back in white; his hands were cuffed behind him.

“What’s going on?” he demanded when he saw Colin. He was bigger than his father, and looked a lot like him, but with little of the older man’s polished hardness. Scowling, he went on, “My pop’ll eat you without salt when he hears you hauled me outa my cell in the middle of the night for the third degree.”

“We didn’t bring you out for anything of the kind,” Colin said wearily. He wished he were home in bed, or anywhere else at all but here. “And your father. . Your father won’t do anything like that, either, I’m afraid.”

“Huh? The fuck he won’t, man.” Darren spoke with the certainty of someone who’d rarely heard no in his life. “You guys try and screw me over, you think Dad’ll let you get away with that shit?”

Mike Pitcavage alive wouldn’t have let them do anything to his son, not if he could help it. Colin wondered if he wasn’t alive for no better reason than the humiliation he felt at not being able to help it. He took a deep, miserable breath. “Darren, your father won’t do anything to stop us. Your father can’t do anything to stop us.”

“What are you talkin’ about?” Darren said. “Of course he can. He’s, y’know, the chief.”

“No, he can’t. No, he isn’t,” Colin said. “Your father is dead, Darren. He killed himself earlier tonight, or that’s what it looks like. That’s what we took you out of jail to tell you. I’m sorry, if it means anything to you.”

Darren Pitcavage gaped at him. “No. No fuckin’ way.” He shook his head. “Dad’d never do anything like that. You’re bullshitting me, trying to soften me up or something.”

“I wish to God I were,” Colin replied, which was the exact and literal truth. “If you don’t believe me, ask some of the other people here. It’s not like you don’t know most of ’em.” He hadn’t known all of them, or he wouldn’t be wearing that jumpsuit now-and his father probably wouldn’t be dead. Colin made himself go on: “I know you know Neil Schneider. Ask Neil. He’s the one who phoned me with the news.”

“I don’t need to ask anybody. I know you assholes are all in it together.” But Darren didn’t sound so sure any more. He was starting to get that poleaxed look, the look anybody gets on hearing a loved one has unexpectedly died. He blinked a couple of times-blinked back tears, Colin guessed from the way his eyes brightened under the fluorescents. When he spoke again, the bluster had drained from his voice: “What-what happened, man?”

Briefly and baldly, Colin told him, finishing, “That’s just the way I got it from Sergeant Schneider. Now you know as much as I do. I am sorry. I wish like anything I didn’t have to give you news like this.”

“Dad. Oh, my God. Dad.” Darren believed him now, all right. Tears ran down his face. “What’s Mom gonna do now? What am I gonna do now?”

Colin had no idea what Caroline Pitcavage would do. Darren Pitcavage would probably do seven to ten, with time off for good behavior and prison overcrowding. That, he didn’t say. Darren would have to find out for himself.

XXII

When Bryce Miller waited at the campus bus stop for the ride back into the town of Wayne, it was twenty- one below zero. It was the late afternoon, to be fair. The day’s high hadn’t been anywhere near so frigid. It had only been eleven below then.

Not much snow was falling. The air couldn’t hold much moisture when it got this cold. But every flake that touched his cheeks and nose-the only skin he showed-burned as if it were dipped in battery acid.

“Hope the bus comes,” said a woman standing there with him. “Can’t wait around real long in this. Gotta go inside and warm up.” It wouldn’t be hot inside, either. It would be above freezing, though. No matter how many layers you had on, you’d turn into an icicle pretty damn quick in this. Bryce had known it would be cold here when he left SoCal. He hadn’t dreamt it could get this cold.

He was thinking hard about retreating to a building when the bus grumbled up. “Extra blankets on the seats,” the driver said. She was using one. Bryce gratefully swaddled himself as the bus pulled away from the curb. It helped-a little. Nothing could help much, not in this, hellfire probably included.

He didn’t want to unwrap and get out when the bus got to his stop in downtown Wayne, such as downtown Wayne was. Only a couple of blocks to his apartment. He counted himself lucky not to be devoured by a polar bear before he made it.

It was above freezing in the apartment. Not a lot, but it was. Susan wore almost as many clothes as he had on. “Brr!” he said. “That’s just brutal out there.” She hugged him and kissed him. When they both had on so many layers, the hug seemed hardly more than virtual. The kiss was fine, though.

Then Susan said, “Colin Ferguson still works for the San Atanasio Police Department, doesn’t he?”

“Sure,” Bryce said. “How come?” It wasn’t as if Susan brought up Vanessa’s dad very often-or at all, if she