The Detonator Read online

  But after more than two decades of marriage, you know your wife, isn’t that right, lover boy? And your wife knows you. Trust me on that. She knows you’re thinking about Alison, and the conversation you had today. But then, what Ellen doesn’t know is the truth. Maybe that’s the way you have got to keep it, Ike. That is, if you want to keep your family together.

  _ _ _

  By the time we get back to the hotel, Henry is already fast asleep.

  Carrying him into the room over my shoulder, as if he were just four years old, I set him gently on the bed, pull off his too-big jeans, slip him under the covers, kiss him goodnight. Not like he’s a nineteen-year-old young man living inside an old man’s body, but instead, a little boy who refuses to grow up.

  My body in need of a nightcap, I retrieve a seven-dollar beer from the mini bar and pop the top with an opener while Ellen packs her and Henry’s bags, sets them by the door for easy access to the Suburban in the morning. Mission accomplished, she tells me she’s taking a shower tonight so the chore won’t have to be bothered with in the morning.

  “How about you?” she says, shooting me a wink while taking hold of my hand, squeezing it tightly.

  Message received, loud and perfectly clear.

  “Good idea,” I whisper, setting my beer down on the dresser.

  We run the water until the bathroom is steamy. We then slowly undress one another, all the time our mouths and tongues connecting, our hands exploring one another’s bodies like we only just met at some no-name Hyannis bar and are about to make love for the first time. I run my hands through her hair, and she runs her fingernails down the length of my spine as we kiss one another softly, but hard too.

  Stepping into the shower, we continue to kiss, but let the water soak our bodies and the steam coat our faces. Ellen uncaps a small bottle of body wash and proceeds to massage her soft flesh, starting with her breasts, which are pale against her tan skin. I quickly take over, soaping her body for her, my hands and fingers massaging her breasts, drifting down past her tight tummy, to her naval, and finally her sex. Leaning forward, her left hand pressed against the forward wall, she reaches around for me and allows me to enter her from behind. We make love slowly, but passionately too, careful not to wake Henry, but all the time wanting and needing one another.

  In my head, I try to see only Ellen. But Patty’s face flashes through my brain. In my imagination, I see a very sad Patty. Her hair disheveled, her face bloodless and pale, eyes filled with tears. Whatever excitement I had for Ellen goes irretrievably limp. I close my eyes tightly, keep them closed, try to erase Patty’s memory from my brain. I don’t want to ruin this perfect and all too rare moment.

  But it’s too late. I can’t seem to function.

  “What’s wrong, babe?” Ellen whispers. “Is it me?”

  I open my eyes. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m not sure what’s gotten into me.”

  “You’re nerved up,” she says. “Henry. His sickness. A grown-up Alison visiting you out of the blue today, churning up all those old memories of Master Blasters and Brian. Maybe it’s all too much.”

  I kiss her on the mouth. “Give me a few minutes. I’ll be back in fighting shape.”

  But the water is already going from hot to lukewarm. Within a minute or two it will be downright cold.

  “Tell you what, Singer. I’ll take a rain check on this one. But as soon as we get home, I’m gonna ravage you.”

  “I like it when you talk dirty,” I say. But I’m making light of sad situation.

  “Oh, and I’m gonna get you a Cialis prescription.”

  “Very funny.”

  I shut off the water. We step out of the shower. Ellen hands me a white towel. She dries herself, then steals another towel, which she turbans around her wet hair. She goes to open the door, but I place my hand on the opener.

  “I love you, El. More than anything in the world.”

  “I know,” she whispers. “I’ve always known.”

  She kisses me gently on the mouth.

  With that, I open the door and step out into the cold, air-conditioned darkness of the hotel room.

  Later that night, I dream.

  I’m standing on the top floor of a high-rise that’s set to blow. The walls have been stripped of their glass and the place scraped down to the naked concrete. The half dozen vertical bearing I-beams are injected with explosive and wrapped, while the blasting caps are set in position.

  In my hands I hold a remote electronic control box, my fingers on the triggers. Now appearing at the opposite end of the floor are two figures. As they step out of the shadows I see they are Ellen and Henry.

  “What are you doing here?” I say. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “We didn’t want you to be alone,” Ellen says, from across the floor.

  Three more figures appear, not from out of the shadows, but like they’ve been standing there the entire time, and only now have I noticed them. It’s Patty, Alison, and Brian.

  It hurts my head to look at them, because Patty is naked, with only a cheap motel bed sheet covering her sex and torso, her dirty blonde hair mussed up, her eyes bloodshot, like she’s been crying all night. Drinking and crying.

  Alison is nine years old again, but her T-shirt has been torn down the front, the button on her blue jeans popped off, the zipper opened, revealing a hint of pink panties. Her left eye is swelled shut and black and blue. Without her having to say it, I know she’s been victimized by her foster father.

  Brian’s body is mangled, his arms blown off, his legs pretzeled, a large gaping hole in his chest. His lower jaw is blown away and a portion of his skull is missing, exposing his brain. He’s been blasted to bits, but somehow, he’s alive.

  Ellen steps forward, holding Henry’s hand.

  “I know what you did to these people, Singer,” she says. “I know what you did to us.”

  My eyes well up with tears and I press the triggers on the controller. I don’t know why I’m doing it, but I can’t seem to help myself. The sirens sound while the tune to “Boom Boom, Out Go the Lights!” blares from the loudspeakers below.

  “Knock knock,” says Alison.

  “Who’s there?” I say.

  “Goto.”

  “Goto who?”

  “Goto hell.”

  The first of the blasting caps detonates…

  I wake. Rise up. My body soaked in a cold sweat.

  Reaching out with my left hand, I feel for Ellen. Her chest is inflating and deflating slowly up and down and in rhythm to her slow breaths. I look over my right shoulder, see that Henry is also fast asleep, his little body curled up in the fetal position.

  I lie back down, roll onto my side away from Ellen, my eyes focused on my sick son. From outside the open window come the lonely sounds of waves crashing onto the beach.

  “Christ almighty, what have I done?” I whisper to myself, as my eyelids fall.

  Chapter 5

  In the morning, the sun shines bright on Cape Cod.

  She sits tight behind the wheel of her four-door BMW while the nice family finishes packing the black Suburban to the breaking point with numerous pieces of luggage, shopping bags bearing stylish logos belonging to shops in downtown Hyannis and quaint seaside Chatham, and even the beach toys that Henry used perhaps for his final time. There’s also a couple of extra bags filled, no doubt, with meds for the boy. An old boy of nineteen going on ninety.

  Such a sweet kid. Such a sweet old man. Such a shit sandwich he’s been dealt by the good Lord above.

  Life’s a bitch, Henry old boy. Then you die way before your time.

  It will be a shame to break up his family. The only thing he’s got left on this earth.

  Lifting the center console, she rummages through her old CD collection, finds the cracked and stained plastic cover that once upon a time belonged to
her dad. Pat Travers, R&B guitarist and all around general troublemaker. A musician with an explosive anger, or so rumor has it. She pops the CD into the dash player and fingers the fast forward until she comes to the one song Master Blasters, Inc. would blare over a mic’d up boom box just prior to starting the countdown to one of their implosions.

  Boom Boom, Out Go the Lights…!!!

  She recalls sixteen years ago and the electricity that would pervade the air when the gathering crowd danced to the over-amplified guitar, throbbing bass, and pounding drums, their collective voices sending a chill through her nine-year-old flesh and bones as they collectively sang along with Mr. Travers, “BOOM BOOM, OUT GO THE LIGHTS!”

  The song she’d listened to ten thousand times before begins. The fast but steady beat mimics her pounding pulse. She eyes the happy family as they exit their bottom-floor motel room for what will be their last time this summer. When they pause for one final selfie, angling themselves awkwardly so that they can get the beach into the background, she finds herself smiling. How wonderful it might have been to experience the same thing when she was growing up. A photo by the beach with her mom and dad. A selfie of the three of them, having just enjoyed a wonderful vacation together.

  Instead, all she knew was the shame of her father’s suicide and attempted murder…the shame of her mother’s alcoholism, breakdowns, and hospitalizations…the shame and agony of one foster father after the other staring at her with hungry eyes from across a strange dinner table, in a strange house, occupied by a strange family who had no real love for her. A foster father who would impregnate her with his evil offspring. She remembers it all. But most of all, she remembers the woods.

  She watches while Ike helps the elderly but yet oh so young Henry climb up into the back. Watches Ike wrap the seatbelt around him. Watches the father gently brush back what’s left of the boy’s severely retreating hair, revealing an age-spotted scalp. Watches him close the Suburban door and do something she never would have expected: the raising of his hand to make the sign of the cross. In the name of the father, the son, and the unholy ghost of a woman you used up like a piece of meat.

  “You’re going to lose Henry soon and you know it,” she whispers under the thrashing music. “Now you know what it feels like to be me. To live in fear of what you will lose.”

  When Ike goes around the back of the Suburban, opens the driver’s side door, hops in, she fires up the BMW. She waits while Ike backs out of his spot, then pulls out of the lot onto the river road that will lead him to the Cape Cod highway and, eventually, the Mass Pike.

  Careful not to let him get too much of a head start, she shifts the transmission into drive and proceeds on down the road.

  “Boom, boom, Ike Singer,” she sings, “out go the fucking lights!”

  Chapter 6

  Traffic is light on a Friday morning.

  It takes me only twenty minutes to get off the Cape and over the steep, arching Sagamore Bridge which spans the Cape Cod Canal. From there, it’s a straight shot up Route 495. Then finally, the long westward drive on the busy Mass Pike. Traffic becomes heavier as we pass through small industrial towns like Worcester and Springfield, Henry fast asleep in the back, Ellen glued to her iPhone.

  “That’s interesting,” she says after a time. “I don’t think Alison Darling is a real journalist.”

  Just hearing the name of my partner’s daughter coming from her mouth causes a start in my heart.

  Patty’s voice sounds off inside my head again. She’s speaking to me exactly how she used to speak to me once upon a time. Same word choices, same spicy, if not humorous, take-no-prisoners tone.

  Knock knock…Wait, don’t answer, lover boy, I’ll do it for you. Who’s there? Goto…Goto who?…Goto hell…Now tell me something, Ike, have you ever heard a more stupid joke? I relinquish any and all responsibility for my one and only daughter’s sense of humor and her psychosis…

  “How do you know that?” I say while silently trying to brush off my stupid thoughts. “That Alison isn’t a real journalist, I mean.”

  “I can’t find a single article or byline with her name on it,” Ellen says, fingering the screen on her smartphone. Today she’s wearing a short, white, summer-weight dress that sports a V neck, revealing more than a hint of cleavage and a black lace Victoria’s Secret bra. Her smooth legs and manicured feet protected by leather sandals make the package complete. It also robs me of my breath. Shifting my right hand, I set it on her leg.

  But she swipes it away like it’s an insect.

  “Henry will see,” she whispers, not without a smile. “Pay attention to the road, Mr. Singer.”

  She continues to glare at her phone while I battle the traffic.

  “Here’s something,” she says, just as we pass a sign that advertises a rest stop ten miles ahead. Feeling the pressure in my bladder from the large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee I polished off prior to scaling the Sagamore Bridge, I’m setting a course straight for the exit.

  “Something what?”

  “There’s an Alison Darling…and how many Alison Darlings can there be in the world…who isn’t a writer at all, but a scientist.”

  “A scientist,” I repeat, glancing into the rearview, spotting a metallic silver BMW coming up just a little too close for comfort on the Suburban’s behind.

  “Well, she’s an assistant professor at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany, more specifically. There’s a small bio with her picture on it.”

  She reaches over with the phone, like it’s at all possible for me to take the time out to study it what with the jerk on my tail. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see the smiling face of the woman who sat across the table from me yesterday, threatening me, maybe not directly but threatening me all the same.

  “That’s her,” I say, quickly shifting into the right lane without using my directional. Take that, silver Beemer. “What’s her area of expertise? What’s she teach?”

  “Nano-thermites or what’s also known as super-thermites. Which, according to this anyway, is the study of…get this…metastable intermolecular composites such as metal and metal oxide for high and customizable reactions.” She looks up. “I can hardly even pronounce this stuff much less picture it.”

  The fine hairs on the back of my neck prick up.

  “Explosions,” I say. “Explosions, pyrotechnics. She’s studying major league explosions created by very small explosives. Super-duper small. I suppose that’s why she wanted to talk with me.” Shaking my head. “When I was young, the closest you could come to a college degree in explosive demolition was going to war. Nowadays you can get a masters or even a doctorate in Explosive Engineering.”

  “Small explosives,” Ellen presses. “Like how small?”

  “Like as small as a pinhead in some cases. I’ve done some reading up on them…their development…since I started subbing for the APD.”

  Ellen shakes her head. “I don’t get it. How can something as small as a pinhead make a huge explosion?”

  “You mess with the order of molecules on a nano-scale and then add a little propellant to them along with a shot of pure oxygen, and an ignition switch for a cherry on top, and you’ve got a bomb that will fit into the pocket of my Levi’s that’s also powerful enough to take down an airliner. Those ISIS bastards downed that Russian airliner over Egypt with a nano-scale bomb stuffed into a soda can.”

  “Oh, great. Terrorists are gonna love this nano-scale stuff. Make them even more murderous.”

  “Luckily this science is very, very expensive right now. But the military implications are huge. They’re so small and the materials are essentially odorless and undetectable by traditional methods like dog sniffers and automated colorimetrics like DataChem and SEEKERe machines. We’ve been training on them for a year now. Training how to counter them.”

  “A bomb so small you can fit it into yo
ur pocket and that can go undetected. That makes me feel better.”

  “Unfortunately it’s reality, and what’s worse is this stuff will be getting cheaper as time goes on. Used to be all a terrorist had to do was mosey on down to the local Home Depot, purchase a length of pipe, some low-burn explosive like black powder, a trigger device like an alarm clock, and you were done. You could build it for twenty bucks. But it was cumbersome and didn’t pack a lot of firepower. Relatively speaking, that is. With super nano-thermite tech, however, an IED will cost you a lot more, but you can take out a city block with a mini pipe bomb that will fit into the core of an average Bic pen.”

  Ellen stares out onto the highway. “The world is truly screwed, you know that?”

  “People seem intent on killing one another. Mutilating them. Always been that way.”

  “You sound almost excited when you talk about it. Admit it. It turns you on.”

  I cock my head. “Well, just imagine the good use super-thermite bombs could be put to. I could take down an entire concrete tower with just a small amount of controlled charge. Be a lot quicker, safer, and cheaper than shoving pounds and pounds of detonation cord and TNT into the walls and bearing beams. Course, I’d have to figure out a way to get my license back first.”

  “Let’s hope you don’t,” she whispers, her eyes peering out the window.

  We’re quiet for a moment while I peek once more into the rearview. The silver BMW is back on my tail. But this time I’m getting a clear shot at the driver. My heart flies up into my throat when I see that the person behind the wheel is Alison Darling.

  The green sign for the rest area says one mile.

  “Mind if we make a pit stop, El? I’m about to burst.”

  “What I’m trying to figure out in my head,” she says in place of an answer, “is why Alison would present herself as a reporter or journalist?”

  A quick glance into the rearview. She’s still on my tail, a sly smile on her face, her eyes shielded by aviator sunglasses.