Hannah Alexander - Collateral Damage

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Nicolas Tyler slid the hasp one more time along the riding mower’s blade, sharpening it to perfection. He was rotating to the next cutting edge when the wall phone rang loudly enough for the neighbors to go deaf. His hand jerked, and the fleshy part of his right thumb encountered the newly sharpened blade.

It was a clean cut, and while the pain of it registered he couldn’t help a buzz of pride at the quality of his work as he watched blood seep from the wound. He winced at the continued ringing of the phone. Should’ve chosen lawnmower maintenance as his primary profession twelve years ago and avoided all the frustration of education, more education, sleepless residency, divorce, frivolous lawsuits. He preferred the landscaping business to family practice for now, and solitude to marriage to a cheater.

He glared at the phone as the ringing persisted. Voice mail was turned off; everyone knew Dad’s cell number. Why did Dad keep this phone out here, anyway? Didn’t a guy deserve some time to himself? But then, Dad wasn’t a recluse. Nick had been the one to morph to introversion when he received the notification of a frivolous malpractice lawsuit. Things had gone downhill from there.

He’d disconnected the doorbell after Chloe left and discontinued the landline at his home in Rockford, Illinois, only a few weeks before the explosion.

The ringing stopped and Nick relaxed. Dad had his cell phone with him in case someone wanted to contact him, but he was on leave from the church. A pastor couldn’t lead his flock when he was driven to his knees with grief; his church should understand that. Nick could think of no one he wanted to talk to. The neighbors knew he wasn’t much of a socializer these days.

He reached for the first-aid kit in its cubicle above the work stand. A little peroxide, gauze and tape would take care of this.

He was pouring medicine into his wound when the phone jangled again. He jumped, splattering the liquid in a three foot radius and giving the garage floor an expensive cleansing. Peroxide bubbled on his hand, the gauze hovering over his thumb, tape tangling in his arm hair. With a yank and a grunt, he tore away the tape and lost a considerable amount of arm hair. And women waxed. Go figure.

He pulled out another strip of tape, secured the bandage and replaced the top on the peroxide bottle before strolling toward the phone. Maybe it was Dad. One never knew when he might run into trouble with that old pickup truck.

A quick check of the incoming number sent a shiver down Nick’s spine as it had the last time he’d answered a call from Emma Russell—the name Mark Russell flashed on the tiny screen. As if he was receiving a message from a dead man.

For that fraction of a second, as before, Nick’s mind ricocheted through the grief, blackness and shock. Then he answered the phone, fully expecting to hear young Emma’s voice again. She’d called him and emailed him after he’d sent the girls flowers and a sympathy card, and she’d called again today. The kid had an uncanny sense of compassion for one so young. It surprised him that he didn’t mind talking to her.

“Hello, Nick?”

He hesitated. Not Emma. Too mature for a sixteen-year-old. He found his voice, but only barely. “Is this...Sarah?”

For a moment, there was no reply. Sarah was the quiet one, the twin who’d always remained in the shadows at her own insistence. Though he hadn’t heard her voice for many years, he recalled the beautiful script on her sympathy card after the tragedy.

“I’m sorry to bother you.” Her voice continued to wobble.

Not how he remembered her at all. “Bother? You? Never.” Her loss had obviously taken a heavy toll. “Kind of startled. I thought it was Emma. I saw your father’s...uh...name on the caller ID.” Oh brother, just what she needed.

“Yeah, Dad had all of us on a family plan for our cells. He wanted his name to show up when we called anybody, especially when Emma called boys. Leave it to Dad to be overprotective.”

“I remember Mark could be intimidating when boys came around.”

“Not with you, of course. Listen, um, I need to warn you that you might have company soon, if you don’t already.”

“Company?”

“Emma.”

“She’s coming here?”

“I’m on my way there, too. She told me about your theory.... The explosions? Murder?”

He wanted to bang his head against the wall in self-reproach. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I didn’t mean for this to reach you or Emma. You’re struggling enough. I was looking for help from neighbors and friends here in Jolly.” That was how a newly minted recluse did things—online.

“You believe it.”

“I...have my suspicions.”

“Too coincidental to have two explosions like that.” As she spoke, her voice regained the steadiness he remembered from their teen years. “Two days in a row.”

“Exactly.” Why hadn’t he crawled from his hidey-hole here at Dad’s and gone door-to-door and faced all those neighbors instead of setting up that blog? “I was hoping to talk to you about all this after I’d found out more. You’re sure about Emma? She called me today, a little after noon, and she didn’t say anything about coming here.”

“You’ll understand better once you meet her. She thinks she’s going to help. She left me an extended email explaining it, which I didn’t receive until I got home from work tonight. I’m sure that was her intention.”

“I’m sorry. I knew that controversial blog could stir up trouble, but not for you.”

“So you were trying to gather information from the community?”

“Exactly.” And it was the very community that was never the same after Sarah was gone. The weight of seventeen years dropped from his shoulders for a few seconds, and he recalled with exquisite clarity the impact of Sarah’s presence in his life—and the dark pit that remained in his heart after Mark Russell moved his family away to St. Louis. By the time Nick was in college, he heard they’d moved to Sikeston so Mark could take a job as pastor of a congregation again.

After a brief hesitation, Sarah said, “I don’t understand. Didn’t the investigator blame the explosions on gas leaks from faulty pipes?”

“Two gas leaks in two days? Not likely. The investigator was a new kid, not only wet behind the ears, but as slick as if he’d just hatched. His father’s a local judge, and the kid—his name’s Chaz Collins—missed some inspection reports that showed no cracks where he indicated. He’s off the case, and right now there’s no one to fill his shoes. The sheriff’s busy chasing meth labs, and you know Jolly Mill’s always been low priority.”

“Chaz inspected both explosions?”

“Yep. He wouldn’t look me in the eye when I spoke with him.”

“Could he have had something to do with it? You know, start a fire, cause an explosion so he could make the judgment and prove his worth?”

“And kill people in the process? Chaz and his family attend Dad’s church.”

“Just because he’s a churchgoer doesn’t mean he’s a good boy.”

Nick hesitated. Emma was on her way here and Sarah was following her; they’d find out the worst as soon as they arrived. “The problem is, Sarah, Chaz is nowhere to be found.”

There was a soft intake of breath.

“There’s a search under way. His parents called yesterday, and they’re frantic.”

“You think he did find something incriminating?” Sarah asked.

“Judging by his behavior, I’m almost sure of it.”

For a moment Sarah didn’t speak, and Nick recalled her tendency to choose her words carefully. In that way she was very different from her twin, who would chatter to anyone and everyone in school—Shelby, the popular twin.