Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano - All Fall Down

And Rob was married, up there in the glacial wilderness of Maine. He hadn’t bothered to let Vanessa know, not firsthand, but he’d sent cards to Dad and Mom, who’d both told her. Vanessa had trouble imagining a woman rash enough to want to tie the knot with her big brother, but there you were.

Here she was, all right. “Don’t!” she said one more time. She didn’t want Bronislav turning Dad’s car into an IED or anything like that. She wasn’t sure he knew how to do such things, but he was liable to. He was liable to want to show off for her, too. That was how he would think of it, anyhow.

“All right,” he said now. Did he sound sulky, like a kid deprived of his favorite toy? Damn straight he did.

So she found something else for him to do. And he did, with the same kind of enthusiasm he’d probably shown for guerrilla warfare while Yugoslavia was falling apart. But bedroom explosions had aftermaths much more enjoyable than those involving plastique .

Some of the things he did. . “Where did you learn that?” she asked, her heart still thumping.

“I am a Serb. It is in my blood,” Bronislav replied with dignity. And maybe that was true, and maybe he’d picked it up from a jowly hooker in Barstow or Phoenix or Las Cruces or one of the other towns on the route that fed Los Angeles. How could you know for sure?

Simple. You couldn’t. But Vanessa chose to believe him. Choosing to believe was part of what love was all about. So was forgetting you even had a choice. Vanessa tried her best to do that, too.

* * *

When the phone rings at 3:25 a.m., it’s never good news. If you’ve won the Nobel Prize or $150,000,000 in the lottery, they’re always considerate enough to let you sleep in before they tell you. When the phone goes off in the wee smalls like a grenade on your nightstand, they’re calling to let you know something is wrecked or somebody’s hurt or somebody’s dead-if you’re really lucky, all of the above.

Colin knew it was 3:25 because the glowing hands on the windup clock by the phone told him so. When power started erratically going in and out, the San Atanasio PD issued one to every cop on the force. The bean counters hadn’t squawked about that; you didn’t want people (especially people who worked the evening and night shifts) not showing up because their electric clocks crapped out on them.

The power was out now. Without the glowing hands, it would have been absolutely dark in the bedroom, not just almost absolutely dark. Colin fumbled for the phone. He snagged it in the middle of the third ring-and in the middle of Kelly’s groggy “What the fuck?”

“Ferguson,” he said, sounding at least something like his ordinary self.

“Lieutenant, this is Neil Schneider at the station.” All right: it was a police emergency, not a family disaster. That was better. Or maybe it was-the sergeant didn’t sound even remotely ordinary. He might have been trying to get back up on his feet after taking a sucker punch in a bar fight. And what he said next explained why he sounded that way: “Chief Pitcavage is dead, Lieutenant.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” Colin blurted. Ice and fire chased each other along his nerves. He wasn’t sleepy any more. He both was and wasn’t astonished. “What happened?” he managed after a moment.

He ate his gun was what he expected. Mike Pitcavage had definitely freaked at Darren’s arrest. Colin had known that would be bad. He’d had no idea it would be as bad as it was.

“Caroline just found him-they’ve got separate bedrooms, you know,” Sergeant Schneider said.

Like an idiot, Colin found himself nodding there in the dark, as if Schneider-or anyone else-could see him do it. He did know the chief and his wife slept apart. Mike was liable to get called out at odd hours, and he didn’t want to bother Caroline any more than he had to.

The cop at the station went on, “She went in there with a flashlight. Dunno why. Maybe she thought she heard a noise and wanted to get him. Whatever. She found him on the bed with a bottle of pills next to him and a plastic bag over his head and fastened tight around his neck. He’d been gone for a while-he was getting cold.”

“Jesus!” Colin said again. So Mike hadn’t shot himself. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to leave a mess behind for Caroline to have to clean up. Well, when you killed yourself you left a mess behind whether you wanted to or not. Colin found the next obvious question: “Was there a note?”

“If there was, I don’t know anything about it. I don’t think Caroline said anything about one, but I can’t tell you for sure. I didn’t catch the call,” Sergeant Schneider replied.

“Okay,” Colin said. It wasn’t-nowhere close-but he was starting to see what the picture looked like.

“Uh, Lieutenant, is there any way you could come in for a while?” Schneider asked hesitantly. “I mean. .” His voice trailed away.

“Be there fast as I can.” The plea didn’t surprise Colin, much as he wished it did. With Captain Miyoshi on the shelf after stomach-cancer surgery, he was the most senior man available. And people would know he’d orchestrated Darren Pitcavage’s arrest. Without a note from Mike, they wouldn’t be able to prove that was why he’d done himself in, but it sure looked like the way to bet.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Neil Schneider said. “Thanks very much.”

“Yeah.” Colin hung up. He pulled the nightstand drawer open and groped for the flashlight that lived in there. He imagined Caroline doing the same thing a couple of miles away. No one could see his grimace, but he felt it.

“What happened?” Kelly asked just as his fingers closed around it. “Somebody committed suicide. Who? Why?”

“Mike Pitcavage. Don’t know why yet, but it’s gonna be a hell of a mess.” Colin had already flicked on the light and was squinting against the beam when he realized he’d cussed in front of his wife. Well, too goddamn bad. This was already a mess. It called for cussing or praying, one. It probably called for both, but Colin had not even a nodding acquaintance with prayer.

“My God!” Kelly said. She jumped to the same conclusion people at the cop shop had to be reaching: “Is it because you busted his worthless kid?”

“Don’t know,” Colin repeated, as stolidly as he could. “If it is. .” He didn’t take that any further.

If the chief had killed himself because of Darren’s arrest, Colin was anything but sure he could go on at the San Atanasio Police Department. How many people there would blame him for Mike’s suicide? Enough to make him persona bigtime non grata? He had the bad feeling the answer to that one couldn’t be anything but yes. He was a long way from sure he didn’t blame himself, when you got right down to it.

“That would be awful, Colin!” Kelly exclaimed, so she could see it, too. Well, it wasn’t anything complicated, worse luck.

By the flashlight’s white glare, he put on jeans, a sweatshirt, and his beat-up old denim jacket. The middle of the night wasn’t the time to worry about suit and tie. He looked a lot like the way he had when he first met Kelly at the late, ever so lamented Yellowstone. “I’ll be back when I can,” he told her, brushing his lips across hers. “Try and grab some more z’s.”

“Any other time, I’d tell you you were out of your mind,” she said. “The way Deborah runs me ragged, I may have a chance of doing it.”

He hurried downstairs. He started to roll his bike out of the foyer and onto the porch, but shook his head, went outside on foot, and got into the Taurus instead. Sometimes speed mattered. To his relief, the car started.

The streets were eerily empty. He drove past two people showing bike lights and one moron who wasn’t. Crunching the fool would have been just what he needed now, but he swerved and missed. Having the guy appear out of nowhere in his headlights startled him so much he didn’t even honk.