Alan Jacobson: Inmate 1577

A loud hiss, indicating tremendous pressure-blew back at Vail. She yanked her hand away at the instant a thick stream of diesel fuel blasted outwards, cascading out of the mouth of the coupling pipe in a downward arc toward the ocean below.

The acrid odor constricted her throat. She twisted away and buried her nose in the crook of her elbow.

Dixon, her face likewise shielded, asked, “What good is that?”

“Emptying the tank,” Vail shouted. “Concrete slab might dampen the explosion. Maybe it won’t ignite the fuel underneath us.”

“Now can we leave?” She leaned in close. “Ninety seconds left.”

“What about Scheer?”

“Not happening. He’s chained down. Unless you have a bolt cutter in your back pocket, there’s nothing we can do.”

Shit.

“Karen,” Burden yelled from above. “Let’s go-now!”

Dropping her arm and holding her breath, Vail climbed around the tank to leave-but gave one last look back at Scheer’s chain.

But she suddenly found herself hefted up onto Dixon’s shoulder.

“Roxx, what are you doing? Put me down!”

Dixon made it onto the gangway and did her best to run uphill. As strong as she was, moving up a narrow path on a steep incline with a grown woman over her shoulder was difficult even for her.

“Put me down, I’ll go-I’ll go!”

Dixon lowered her to the metal bridge’s surface, and then gave her a shove. Vail made it through the fence and continued across East Road, following Burden up the sidewalk they had come down earlier, toward the landing pad/cistern and cellhouse.

“Did you reach someone on the dock?” Vail asked.

“They found a valve and opened it up. Whether it’s too little, too late-”

The explosion was concussive, an eardrum-pounding blast that shook the bedrock and sent the three of them sprawling to the ground. Vail lifted her head and saw, through the dusty fog, daylight showing through the left portion of the Powerhouse. From what she could see, the remainder of the island was largely intact.

As they glanced around, surveying the damage, Dixon gave Vail’s shoulder a shove. “That was brilliant. Brilliant, but incredibly stupid.”

“Thanks, Roxx. I think.”

Carondolet and Yeung came running down the sidewalk toward them, sidearms and cell phones in hand.

“You all right?” Yeung asked.

“We’re fine,” Vail said as they got to their feet. “Everyone safe?”

“Scheer’s obviously toast-uh, literally. Everyone else seems okay. We’ve got a fire running the length of the pipe,” he said, gesturing to the east side of the island.

Flames licked skyward from behind the foliage and brush along the coastline, extending past the vacant Officer’s Club, and beyond.

“Backup saw the explosion and called the Coast Guard. We’re heading down to the dock to help with deployment.”

“If we’ve got service,” Burden said, “we’ll keep you posted.”

The two men moved off. And Vail, Burden, and Dixon looked at one another. Now what?

They didn’t have to ponder that too long, as another text arrived:

Probly confused abowt nowe

you weakish speller;-)

i can see clearly now

im on top of the world

“What’s the deal with the misspelled words?” Vail asked.

“Who cares about-”

“No, Roxx-it’s significant. He did this once before, in the-”

“That manifesto,” Burden said. He pointed at her BlackBerry. “You have it on there?”

“I got it,” Dixon said. She brought it up on her iPhone, and Burden and Vail crowded around the small screen.

Burden reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pad and pen, then began scribbling. “Shit…” he whispered. And then his face went ashen, his skin instantly pimpled in sweat.

“What’s wrong?” Vail asked, reexamining the document.

“This sentence. It’s an anagram, a classic example. And I missed it.”

“What sentence?” she said firmly.

Burden jabbed a finger at the screen. “He wrote, ‘I am a weakish speller.’ And then he just wrote it again. Do you see it?”

“I’ve played enough word games, Burden. Just tell me.”

“Puzzles, right? I do number puzzles, but I started out doing word pattern games. Palindromes, metonyms, pangrams, all that shit. But I got bored with them, and then a buddy turned me on to Sudoku. I didn’t get those clues before because they were cryptic riddles. But this one was so goddamn simple, I should’ve gotten it. It was right in front of my eyes. ‘I am a weakish speller’ is a classic anagram. Rearrange the letters and you get William Shakespeare.”

“So?” Dixon asked. “What’s Shakespeare got to do with this? The answer’s in one of his plays?”

“No,” Vail said, “maybe he left other anagrams or word patterns for us. And we missed them.” She wiggled her fingers at the pad. “Let me see that.”

“Give me your BlackBerry,” Dixon said. “I’ll pull up all those texts he sent us.”

Vail handed it over and started writing down possible clues from memory. “No, this isn’t right.” She looked at the phone in Dixon’s hands. “It’d be something more significant. The ‘weakish speller’ thing was aimed at you, Burden. To clue us in, a slap in the face to pay attention. But it wasn’t the answer. And I don’t think the answer’s in those messages he sent us. Maybe…”

Burden looked at the pad, then the BlackBerry. “Maybe what?”

Vail wrote on her pad, Walton MacNally. “MacNally’s our prime suspect-with Scheer dead, our only suspect. What if…” She started drawing slashes across the name and writing something below it. But then she stopped. “Doesn’t work. Not enough letters.”

“What doesn’t work?” Dixon asked. “What are you thinking?”

Burden brought a hand to his forehead. “Oh, my god.”

Vail looked at him. “If you’ve got something-”

“Yeah, I’ve got something. It’s been there, right under our noses.” Burden kicked at a rock and sent it skidding down the sidewalk. “Son of a bitch! For me. It was meant for me.”

He turned away from them, but Vail grabbed his shirt. “Burden, so help me god. Tell us what you’re talking about or I’m gonna wring your neck.”

Staring into the fog’s suffocating cover of homogeneity, he said, “I know who the killer is.”

Burden clasped his hair in both hands. “I didn’t see it! Why couldn’t I see it?”

“Who’s the killer, Burden?”

“Goddamn son of a bitch!” Burden spun back toward her. “It’s Clay.”

Vail stood there staring at him. Then she looked down at the pad, at Walton MacNally’s name.

“It’s an anagram,” Burden shouted. “Walton MacNally-”

“I tried that,” Vail said, studying the pad. “Not enough letters. Clay Allman-”

“That’s because his full name is Clayton W. Allman. Remember? You saw it on his byline in that article we read.”

Word play wasn’t Vail’s game, but one particular four-letter noun flooded her thoughts.

She grabbed her phone back from Dixon and dialed Yeung, hoping the call would go through. “We need all available agents, cops, inspectors, everyone-looking for Clay Allman. I’m betting he’s somewhere on the island. Use extreme caution-he’s the Bay Killer.”