The girl said, “You don’t have to worry about me, you really don’t.”
“I’m not going to,” Wycza told her. “Grofield is.” Ahead was the highway turnoff.
10
Four a.m.
Most of Copper Canyon was awake. The sidewalks were full of people, and other people were standing on their porches, and other people had gotten into their cars and were jamming up the streets around the fires.
There were three fires. Behind the plant fence, four buildings were aflame. On Caulkins Street, the firehouse was still burning, but was nearly out; the exterior walls, made of brick, were unharmed except for the chunk blown out by the hand grenade, but the interior of the building had been gutted. The square block bounded by Orange Street and Hector Avenue and Loomis Street and George Avenue was one mass of flame. The railroad station was in that block, and Ekonomee Gas, and a few other buildings, stores mostly, plus the garage and storage building of Elmore Trucking. Just at four o’clock the fire leaped Loomis Street; two residences on the south side of the street caught fire as embers fell on their roofs.
The two state troopers had discovered the destruction of Copper Canyon’s fire-fighting apparatus, had radioed to the barracks to have fire engines rushed in from Madison and Polk, and had entered police headquarters, baffled by the absence of all local police officials. Just at four a.m. they entered the Command Room and found the three bodies; all three were now dead.
In all the confusion, with the gigantic distraction of the triple fire, no one had yet noticed the broken windows and gaping doorways along Raymond Avenue.
Eight miles south, a brown tractor trailer was making the turn from 22A to the highway, eastbound. Two miles behind it a station wagon was speeding along at eighty miles an hour.
Three other cars were leaving the state trooper barracks two miles south of town, but all three of them were heading north, toward Copper Canyon.
Five a.m.
The three fires were one. The plant fire had moved south, and the Ekonomee fire had moved north, and they’d met at Caulkins Street, one block west of the firehouse. The suction of the fires was forcing winds into Copper Canyon from the south, fresh cold air rushing in to supply more oxygen for the flames, hot dry air blasting upward along the rear canyon wall. The direction of the wind confined the fire, for the most part, to the area north of Loomis Street, but nearly everything in an area three blocks wide and five blocks long was or had been aflame.
Fire engines from Madison and Polk had arrived half an hour ago. The firemen were primarily trying to contain the blaze, trying to keep it from stretching east and west of the area it had already consumed. The morning and evening shifts of the town police department had come out in uniform to help the state police maintain some sort of order, keeping the curious back out of harm’s and the firemen’s way.
Somebody had found Eddie Wheeler, and he’d been brought to one of the troopers, so now the law knew about the robberies, or at least some of them. The two women at the telephone company had been found and released, so now the law also knew that the robbers had taken a hostage with them. Eddie Wheeler had described the truck he’d seen, and state police cars were combing the highway and route 22A and other secondary routes in this part of the state, but they hadn’t as yet found any brown truck. Two police helicopters were being readied at Bismarck, the state capital, and would be in the air shortly. Reporters and wire service stringers were driving pell-mell toward Copper Canyon from all over the state.
It would be late afternoon before the fire would be completely extinguished, and tomorrow morning before the rubble would have cooled enough to permit inspection. Bodies would be found in the ruins, and tentatively identified, but the body of Edgars would never be discovered, it had been too close to the hottest core of the fire. All the next day, merchants and accountants would be toting up figures, learning just exactly how much had been stolen in all. Police technicians would be dusting virtually the whole town for fingerprints, and would find none left by the robbers, but would be surprised that there were still on various surfaces in police headquarters fingerprints left by former Chief of Police Edgars, who’d left town nearly a year ago and was not likely to show his face here ever again.
The roadblocks would be left up for another day, to be on the safe side. The two helicopters would continue their search. The police expected to apprehend the responsible parties very soon.
Eddie Wheeler spent the rest of the week in his own bed, with a headcold. By the time he was well enough to get up and move around, Betty’s parents were back in town.
Three days after the holocaust, two architects and a lawyer and a minister formed the Citizens for Copper Canyon, CCC. Their goal was to convince their fellow citizens to rebuild the gutted section of town according to this plan they’d whipped up. Copper Canyon Plaza. Official buildings here at this end, new railroad station at the other end, the fountain here, the gardens here, and so on. The architects would be happy to prepare plans for the new integrated area, and the lawyer would be happy to handle the legal work involved. The minister was selfless.
PART FOUR
1
Parker watched Wycza drive the truck over to the edge and start it down the road to the bottom of the ravine. The loot was still in it; it would be light in an hour, so the best thing was to get the truck out of sight right away. Tomorrow night would be soon enough to make the split.
After the taillights had dropped down out of sight, he turned and went back toward the shed, thinking about the job. It had been beautiful. It could have been the cleanest and sweetest job he’d ever been in on. The closest thing to a foul-up was that night-owl kid that stumbled over Paulus working the bank. And that had turned out to be no problem; they’d handled it smooth and quiet and sweet. The whole thing was smooth and quiet and sweet, no killings, no messiness, no problems.
Except Edgars.
He’d known, God damn it, he’d known all along there was something wrong with Edgars. Edgars and his personal reasons. Those personal reasons had to blow the whole job sky high, they hadto.
It had still worked out. They’d had to leave a little of the take behind, dribs and drabs from a couple of store safes, nothing important. They’d had to do the get a hell of a lot faster than they’d planned. But still and all it had worked out. Chambers was dead, and Edgars was dead, and there was no telling how many locals were dead, but at least they’d managed to get themselves out from under with the loot.
The dead locals were what bothered him. He didn’t give a damn one way or the other, not personally, couldn’t
