Could this be Irene? Could this be Seth?
And always answered no, hoping he had not lied to himself.
He continued to watch the stretchers — the noisy, bustling activities of rescue around him going on as if at a great distance — all his awareness focused on this macabre parade, so that he stood like a man waiting at the end of a jetway for a loved one to disembark from some ruinous flight. But the number rapidly dwindled, for the ones the workers could quickly and safely reach had been brought out, and he realized that Irene and Seth would not be among them.
From his own department’s training, Frank knew the basic procedures for “major incidents” — a phrase that seemed so inadequate now — and he forced himself to think through what he had learned in those training sessions. Again and again he tried to think of what he could do, what he must do.
Kerr’s office was on the seventh floor. There was no way to get up to what was left of it except by helicopter or fire truck ladder. He knew a couple of helicopter pilots, and for a time he wondered what they would say if he asked them to risk losing their licenses for interference in this type of crisis situation. But the first numbness was wearing off, and he knew he could not value his own misery above that of others who stood beyond the police barrier tape — moaning and crying, or simply staring up at the ruin with anguished faces — waiting for word of missing friends and family.
Still, there must be something he could do. When he could not think of what that might be, a kind of hollowness carved itself into his chest.
The body of a security guard was found. She had apparently gone to investigate the sound made by the first and smallest explosion, the one that took out the telephones, and had been killed by the second one, the one in the elevator shaft. The rescuers, although taking no joy in her death, could not help but feel excitement — for near her body, and quite undamaged, was a clipboard. The clipboard held a sign-in sheet. From it, they gained a better sense of who, in addition to workers, was in the building when the bombs went off.
For Frank, though, the discovery only confirmed that Seth and Irene had indeed signed in, had been escorted to Kerr’s office on the seventh floor, and had not come out — it denied him his denials, that persistent hope that she had never made it here after all, that she was somewhere else, repairing a flat tire on the Jeep or stuck in line at a bank.
No, they were here. He had known it, of course.
He tried to study the building. He thought of what the various rescue personnel had told him. The east stairwell, the one nearest Kerr’s office, had collapsed completely. The top two floors of the west stairwell had also sustained severe damage, but where the old and new courthouse buildings were attached to each other on the lower five floors, there had been less destruction. From that point downward, the west stairwell was, in fact, two adjoining stairwells, with connecting doors between each flight of the old and new. Each had collapsed in a different way. Portions of the stairways for the second, third, fourth, and fifth floors were inaccessible, but they were not reduced to dust.
The bomb squad suspected that additional charges had been placed near the stairwells to close off escape routes to survivors. Or at least, Frank thought bitterly, to survivors on the seventh floor. The more damaged east stairwell had been the one they thought Judge Kerr would have most likely used.
Another five minutes and he would have been inside. Once inside, it would have been hard to stop him from — from what? he asked himself. From dying in the blast? From being buried in the rubble? If Irene and Seth were trapped in there, what help could he offer, even now?
Word came to him that the bomb squad had cleared the building. The technical rescue operation went into full swing — core teams of four to six members with highly specialized training, each supported by eight to twelve others. Using jacks and lifts and other equipment, they would shore up the collapsed structure, level by level — all the while trying to locate trapped victims, knowing every minute might be one a victim spent bleeding or crushed, suffocating or in pain, the likelihood of survival decreasing.
He should just get the hell out of the way, he told himself. But he couldn’t make himself leave. Not when they were so close. Irene was a survivor. She had proven it again and again. Frank had to wait. He had to be sure.
He thought of how much she hated enclosed spaces. Of all that Seth had already been through.
No, he wouldn’t even think it.
After a time, he wasn’t waiting alone. He wasn’t entirely sure when it had come about, but Reed and Pete found him. Hale, too. Vince was still keeping an eye on the airport, they said, and would have been here if he didn’t want to capture Haycroft so badly. Frank didn’t want to capture him. He wanted to kill him. He would have gladly killed him for what he had seen in the last twenty minutes alone.
Somehow Hale had made it possible for them to remain within this highly restricted area. They did not try to cheer Frank up with talk of miracles or try to buoy him up with false hope. For that, he was grateful. The waiting changed — his tension eased slightly in their presence, although they said little.
Utter helplessness should not be discussed, he thought, even among friends.
No, he told himself. There is something you can do. What?
He closed his eyes and forced himself to think of the scene here an hour or so ago. In a second call to Irene’s boss, he had learned that she had had an appointment to meet with Kerr just before the ceremonies. Kerr was going to show off the new office for a few minutes, then walk down to the dais with them. She would have been there when the first small blast had taken out the telephones, though she might not have heard it, up on the seventh floor. She would have heard the second one — the one that had taken out the elevators.
He was picturing the big window, Seth and Irene looking down at the plaza, seeing everyone seated in anticipation of the ceremony — but no, that’s not what she would have seen. She would have seen people being evacuated.
“Frank?”
He gave a start, then turned to see Reed Collins. Next to Reed, seeking support on his arm, was a weeping woman in her fifties. She was wearing business attire. There was something in Reed’s manner, in his reddened eyes, that made Frank want to stop time. He wanted Reed to stop walking forward with this woman.
He knew what this primly dressed woman was. She was a harbinger.
And he knew what was weighing Reed down. Sympathy.
