Brian Freeman - Marathon

“Yes, it was a terrible thing,” Serena said.

Shelly closed her eyes and said nothing. Her blood pressure was climbing.

“I apologize for upsetting you,” Serena went on. “The reason I’m here has nothing to do with Travis. I just need to check something with you, and then I’ll be on my way, and you can rest.”

“What is it?” Shelly asked.

“I’m going through a list of calls made by marathon staff on the Tuesday before the race. It’s just routine. That Tuesday morning, someone at the marathon called your cell phone number. Do you remember what the call was about?”

Shelly’s eyes opened. Her face was confused. “What? Why does that matter?”

“As I say, it’s routine follow-up. Do you remember the call?”

“Tuesday?” Shelly asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, sure. MIH.”

“What’s that?”

“MIH. That’s what we call it. Mouse in the house. Lorena from the marathon called to say they had a mouse infestation in the office. They’d spotted three or four of them already. She wanted someone out there to take care of it right away. That’s what we do. I’m the office manager for Ralston Extermination.”

“Do you know why Lorena called you specifically?”

“Yes, the marathon has been a client of ours for years. They store a lot of perishables as they get close to race day, and they can’t afford to have bugs or mice or anything like that getting into their supplies.”

“Was there anything unusual about the call?”

“No. I mean, Lorena was a little annoyed with us, because she said they pay us to prevent that sort of thing. Anyway, it was four days before the race. She was stressed, so I just apologized and said we’d deal with it immediately. That’s what we did.”

Serena nodded. “Okay, thank you for clearing that up, Shelly.”

“Sure.”

Serena stood up. She was done; she had the answers she needed. It was time to walk away. And yet she found herself still standing there in the hospital room. She hadn’t moved; she was frozen. Something about the conversation felt wrong to her. It was the kind of wrong that set off alarms in her brain. Right now, her mind was screaming so fast and loud that she could hardly separate out all her thoughts.

She heard Shelly’s voice in her head again.

Whoever put that bomb at the marathon knew that people were going to die. It was deliberate. It was murder.

The three of us happened to be the ones standing there. We were in the path.

Serena sat down by the bed again. She felt the pounding of her heartbeat. It was hard to get out the words. “I’m sorry, Shelly. I have just a couple more questions for you. Who exactly is Joni?”

Shelly looked at her in confusion. “What?”

“You mentioned Joni. She was one of the people killed in the bombing, wasn’t she? Did you know her?”

“Yeah, of course. Joni was Wade’s wife.”

“Wade?”

“Wade Ralston. He owns the business. Travis and I work for him.”

“And where was Joni at the time the bomb went off?”

“She was standing right next to me,” Shelly said. “Travis, me, and Joni were all together.”

Serena tried to collect her thoughts and take them one at a time. “I’m sorry to go over this again, but you said Lorena was annoyed when she called you about the mice. Why was that?”

“Because they have a contract with us to prevent things like that. We keep bait stations down. Poison. It doesn’t keep them out, but if they get inside, they don’t last long.”

“Except four days before the race, they found themselves with mice, and they had to call you,” Serena said.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“This is a weird time of year for mice to get inside, isn’t it?” Serena asked. “Don’t they usually try to get in when it’s cold out?”

“It happens, but you’re right, it’s not very common.”

“Who handled the call?”

“What?”

“Who went to the marathon office to deal with the mice?”

“Wade,” Shelly said.

“Wade is Joni’s husband?”

“Yes, that’s what I told you.”

“Where was Wade during the marathon?” Serena asked.

“What do you mean? He was in it. He ran it.”

“Wade ran the marathon? Do you know where he was when the bomb went off?”

“Like, twenty feet away? He was across the street from us. He got some shrapnel in him from the explosion.”

Serena stood up again. She turned her back on Shelly and went to the window. Thoughts bounced around her head like atoms colliding. She tried to isolate each fact, because, individually, the facts didn’t mean a thing. But when she put them together...

The marathon camera went down on Tuesday. Wade Ralston was in the marathon office on Tuesday. Coincidence.

Wade’s wife was one of the victims of the bombing. Coincidence.

Wade was twenty feet away when the bomb went off. Coincidence.

Put them all together.

Not a coincidence.

Serena spun around again. “Why were you guys standing there? Why were you, Joni, and Travis outside the Duluth Outdoor Company in that particular spot?”

“We wanted to see Wade finish,” Shelly said.

“Did he know you’d be there?”

“Of course. He told us where to stand. He said he wanted us there to see him cross the finish line.”

Serena dug her phone out of her pocket and scrolled to her photos. She found the picture she was looking for. “This is going to be a strange question,” she told Shelly, “but do you know this man?”

She could read the confusion on Shelly’s face. Confusion hadn’t become suspicion yet. Shelly studied the photo on Serena’s phone, and when she spoke, all the pieces began falling into place.

“Sure, that’s Eagle. What about him?”

“ How do you know Eagle? ” Serena practically shouted.

Shelly looked scared now. Confused and scared. “He’s just a homeless guy. Wade and Travis deal with them all the time. They handle extermination work under the downtown buildings. In the subbasements. It’s warm there, so homeless people break in during the winter, and Wade and Travis are the ones who have to roust them out.”

“So Wade knew Eagle?” Serena asked.

“Of course. Wade found him hiding in the tunnels all the time. What is this about, anyway?”

Serena didn’t answer. She was already running for the door.

She realized that if the bomb was in place on Tuesday in the Duluth Outdoor Company shop, then anyone could have triggered it.

Anyone at all.

Even a runner.

Maggie followed Wade Ralston down the steps of the Third Avenue building to the metal door that led underground. “You did the right thing by calling me, Mr. Ralston,” she said.

“I just don’t want Travis getting hurt,” he replied. “He’s met you. He’ll listen to you.”

Ralston opened the door and let her brush by him as she crossed the threshold and took the next set of steps into the subbasement. As she did, her phone buzzed, and when she grabbed it from her back pocket, she saw that Serena was calling. She answered the phone, but she was too late. She’d lost signal deep under the building.

“Where is he?” Maggie asked.

“He’s waiting for me in one of the inner rooms. I told him I was arranging for a car so he could get out of town.”

Maggie lit a flashlight. Pipes ran along the ceiling just over their heads. The brick walls felt like the inside of a crypt. She saw glue traps on the wet concrete floor, with dozens of dead cockroaches stuck in the adhesive. They were just bugs, and she was the first to admit that spiders never made it out of her condo alive, but she wasn’t crazy about what exterminators did. Seeing it up close made it feel like mass murder.