The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life—knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.”

~Aristotle

 

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Chicago, Illinois ~ Saturday, June 17, 1978

 

“Chicago’s not like Crescent Cove, you know,” Donovan said, stating the obvious for at least the third time since we’d left Chameleon Lake that morning. “It’s not some one-street backwater town where we can just drive through it and pick up clues about two random guys who were there a couple of years ago. We’re flying blind.”

“We’re not,” I countered, flipping to the middle of Gideon’s journal and reading the Chicago page yet again.

 

Washer fluid

Antifreeze

Motor oil

Sparkplugs

Mercury switch

Radiator pressure gauge

 

(I noted there was an ink change here.)

 

Thursday, May 13, 1976

J & I in Chicago

M + 2, D - 9

Amy Lynn ____ Best TV show on Saturday morning

 

“Look, I don’t know the significance of all the details on this page, but I’m sure Gideon gave us some clues. I’ve been thinking about this ever since you figured out there were different shades of ink. On this page, the ink change is between the radiator pressure gauge and the date, and ‘J & I in Chicago’ is right underneath that.” I paused. “There’s something about all this that’s been bugging me ever since I read it.”

Donovan took his eyes off the road long enough to glance over at me. “What?”

“For Crescent Cove, it’s possible our brothers were there on a Monday—a weekday—in the middle of the school year. Twice,” I said. “I looked on an old calendar back home and Monday, April 19, 1976, the first time they went to Crescent Cove, was the day after Easter Sunday, and we had no school that day. The next time they went to Wisconsin, three weeks later, it was mid-May and seniors were skipping days all over the place. So, the guys could’ve been gone eight or nine hours that day without Mom, Dad or me noticing. Seven hours on the road, plus an hour or two visiting.”

Donovan nodded. He was listening. Good.

I pointed to the journal. “But there’s no way the two of them went to Chicago three days later, on a Thursday. They not only would have had to skip school, they’d have been gone half the night. It’s eight hours one way. Sixteen hours roundtrip.”

I shot him a significant look. “Jeremy and Gideon didn’t go to Tulsa, Oklahoma on May twenty-sixth either—a Wednesday while school was in session. So the dates and the places can’t be connected. Or, if they’re connected, something about the listing is off somehow. The dates or places are wrong. Or the whole thing means something else.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, that’s because none of it makes any sense.”

I flipped between pages in the journal and tried to decipher Gideon’s hints. I wasn’t about to tell Donovan this because he’d press me to try to explain, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that Gideon and Jeremy had been to all of the cities mentioned.

 

J & I in Chicago.

 

What did it mean, though, that I knew they weren’t there on the date listed? That Gideon had deliberately written down a day that they for sure could not have been there?

“I’m going to figure this out,” I told Donovan. “I’m not positive what Gideon was trying to tell us just yet, but I know this wasn’t accidental.”

“We’re flying blind,” he muttered.

“We’re not,” I insisted again. “Because I did figure out one clue that I think will be useful.” I studied him as he changed lanes to stay on I-90, as the I-90/I-94 Interstates split just south of Madison. In less than three hours, we’d be in Chicago. He didn’t argue with me or even bother to ask what I’d discovered, so I said, “Amy Lynn.”

“You know her or something?”

“No, but it’s what Gideon wrote after her name that gives me the clue. The line begins with Amy Lynn, but then there’s a blank right after her name. Then there are the words ‘Best TV show on Saturday morning.’”

“Okay.” He smirked a little, clearly unimpressed but at least moderately humored. “So Amy Lynn is…what? Someone on a cartoon? A big fan of them? A character in one? Is there an Amy Lynn on Scooby Doo…or maybe on Land of the Lost or Shazam?”

I shook my head. “That’s just it. That’s one of the reasons why I’m so sure Gideon is alive and giving us clues to follow. Because that line is an inside joke that no one outside of our family would know.”

Donovan raised a single disbelieving eyebrow. “Because it means...?”

“Because it means ‘dreams.’ Gideon never woke up before eleven-thirty on a Saturday and didn’t watch TV at all on weekend mornings. He always said, ‘The best TV show on Saturday morning is my dreams.’ So, I think this was his way of telling us Amy Lynn’s last name without actually giving it to us.”

“Why couldn’t he? I don’t see why your brother didn’t just write the name down in his journal, too.”

“Maybe it would be dangerous for her to talk with us. Or, maybe, it would be dangerous for us to be in contact with her—if someone bad knew about it.”

“Amy Lynn Dreams?” he said, trying it out. He shook his head. “Sounds like a flower-child name.”

“Well, when we get to the city, we’ll look it up in the phonebook. Maybe…maybe we’ll find her there and we can see for ourselves.”

He continued to look dubious, but he didn’t turn the Trans Am around, which I considered an encouraging sign. At least he was committed to getting us to Chicago, although every one of his nonverbal cues pointed toward his disbelief that we’d find anything at all useful once we got there.

I also sensed that, perhaps, he was hoping this would be the case. Then we could put this search behind us.

Because the day was so bright and the highways we were taking so busy with weekend travelers, Donovan didn’t want to chance pulling over somewhere and setting off the last of the fireworks. “It’s not remote enough,” he said. “Plus, I don’t want to get an out-of-state ticket—or worse—if we get caught.”

So, the only stops we made were for gas and bathroom breaks and, briefly once, we made a visit to McDonald’s to grab burgers, fries and shakes for lunch. The anticipation of the week ahead made the food roil uneasily in my stomach, but I figured it wouldn’t do to faint from hunger later in the day, especially in the middle of a metropolis with three million people.

It was after four p.m. when we emerged through the sprawl of the western suburbs and entered the city of Chicago.

“Okay, we’re here, Nancy Drew,” Donovan said. “What now?” He rubbed his eyes and looked tired enough from the day of driving for me to take some pity on him and not slug him in the arm like I wanted to.

“Now we need to find a phone booth,” I told him.

It took us a few minutes to spot one in the parking lot near a movie theater. I noticed that Grease was playing here as well, along with three other films. Imagine living in a place where four movies were shown every day. It was that type of thing I loved so much about life outside of Chameleon Lake. The incredible number of choices. The options paired with anonymity.

We parked and walked to the empty booth. “There’s no directory,” I said, pointing to the silvery chain where the phonebook had once been attached.

“Damn.” He picked up the receiver and dug his hand deep into his jeans pocket, retrieving a dime. “Well, we can call the operator—”

I snatched the phone from his hand. “No. I want us to look up her name ourselves. I don’t just want to be connected to her line without knowing anything about her. Her address, for instance, or if there’s anyone else listed with her.”

“Or if this person even exists,” Donovan added sarcastically. “It could be that there’s no one by that name anywhere in the city. I think the whole idea to come here was—”

“I already know what you think.” I glanced across the street. “There’s a gas station over there. Don’t they usually have phone directories?”

He shrugged a halfhearted “yes.”

Sure enough, when we asked the older guy behind the counter, he pulled out a thick copy of the phonebook and plunked it down in front of us.

I flashed the guy a smile and began flipping to the “D’s” just as soon as he turned his attention to one of the other customers.

Dream, James P., 23 Park Ave W……… 324-5645

Dreamsly, Steve, 1556 Green Bay Rd ……… 354-9091

Dreamson, Amy L., 653 Ashton St, Apt 301-C ……… 467-8207

Dreamstrand, William & Gail, 21006 Michigan Ave ……… 316-0866

Amy L. Dreamson. Amy Lynn?

I pointed at the name. “Pretty close to what I thought,” I whispered. “I think this is her. It’d be too much of a coincidence otherwise.”

Donovan made a doubtful face and glanced away.

I pulled a pen and mini notepad out of my purse and jotted down the address and phone number. “Thanks,” I told the guy as I handed the big book back.

Donovan nodded at him, too, and bought a dollar’s worth of Kit Kat bars. “Snack,” he told me, though I was mystified that he could even think of eating right then.

We walked back across the street to the phone booth and Donovan unwrapped one of the candy bars and snapped off the first chocolate-covered wafer. He waved it in front of my nose, but I took a step back and shook my head.

“Suit yourself,” he said, crunching the stick in half. “Want me to make the call?” He devoured the other half of the wafer in one bite and broke off a second one.

For the first time since I’d met him, he looked young to me. Like a ten-year-old kid chomping on his Halloween candy. And I got a hint of what he must have been like as a boy, on a day when he was happy and unfettered by life’s burdens. There was a fun-loving recklessness lurking just beneath the surface, waiting to emerge.

“You look…preoccupied,” I told him with a scowl. “I’ll call the number.”

He shrugged, as if not caring, and handed me a dime. But, as he gobbled down his third chocolate wafer, I understood the reason he needed a snack. I knew a nervous habit when I saw one. The tremor that ran through his hand as he watched me reach for the phone was a dead giveaway.

I punched in the phone number and waited—my stomach flipping—as it rang. After five long rings, someone picked it up. A woman.

“Hello?” she said with a voice that sounded younger than I’d expected.

I cleared my throat. “Hello,” I said back. “May I speak with Amy Lynn Dreamson, please?”

There was a longish pause on the line, and I could almost feel the woman’s hesitation. “This is Amy Lynn,” she said at last, quietly. “May I ask who’s calling?”

I swallowed. Hard. And Donovan, who was listening attentively next to me, stuffed the last of his Kit Kat into his mouth and swiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“Yes,” I said, realizing suddenly that I hadn’t thought out this next part when I envisioned myself contacting Amy Lynn. Didn’t know what, exactly, to say.

I cleared my throat again. “My name is Aurora Gray. You and I have never met, and you may not know anything about me at all, but I believe you might have met my brother and his best friend. They…they, um, visited Chicago two summers ago.”

There was another long pause. “What were their names?” the lady asked, and I couldn’t help but detect a hint of dread in her soft voice.

“Gideon,” I said. “That’s my brother. And—”

“Jeremy,” Amy Lynn whispered, interrupting. “Right?”

“Right,” I managed to say. Oh, God! So they really were here! When? Why?

Beside me, Donovan was as still as if he’d been flash frozen.

“Yeah,” the woman said. “They were here. Have you, um, talked to them recently?”

“No,” I admitted. “They…they haven’t been home since then. I was hoping you might know something about what happened that summer.”

Amy Lynn’s breath caught. “There are a few things I could tell you, but I’d rather not talk on the phone. Where are you?”

“In Chicago,” I replied, my heart pounding. “It won’t be a problem to meet you wherever or whenever you want. Are you free today? Tonight? Tomorrow morning?”

I needed to see her in person. To find out what she knew about my brother, of course, but also so I could study her reactions face to face. There were only so many signals I could read over the telephone.

“Are you alone?”

I shook my head, aware that my pulse was racing against itself and my throat had begun to clog up. Then I realized the lady on the line couldn’t see me.

“No,” I said, explaining that Donovan was with me.

“Jeremy’s older brother.” Amy Lynn stated this with a certainty that was both gratifying and anxiety producing. “I knew about him,” she added. “Army guy, right?”

“Right.”

Donovan, who was able to hear every word, not only looked as unmoving as a marble statue, he now looked as pale as one.

“Okay. He can come, too, but no one else,” Amy Lynn said, giving me her address, which matched exactly the one we’d found in the phonebook, and suggesting we meet her there at six o’clock.

She paused and made a sound that was almost like a laugh, but a little strangled and uneasy. “I’ve been waiting to hear from you for a few days,” Amy Lynn murmured in the seconds before she hung up. “Gideon said you might be coming.”

 

***

 

The drive to Amy Lynn’s apartment in the Portage Park neighborhood only took about twenty minutes, even with the busy Saturday-night traffic. Figuring out where 653 Ashton Street was, however, took twice as long as that and required Donovan to finally buy a city of Chicago map, because, God knew, he was too cool to even consider asking for directions.

But we did manage to get there with twelve minutes to spare and find one of the few available parking spots. We waited impatiently in Donovan’s car until my watch read two minutes to six.

“Let’s go in,” he said, every muscle in his body so taut, he looked like he might snap.

The security in the four-story brick building was stronger than in most of the apartment complexes I’d seen in Chameleon Lake or even in Minneapolis/St. Paul. We couldn’t just walk in and take the stairs up. We had to press a button to be buzzed into the lobby first.

Donovan knocked on the door to 301-C, his body language a study in rigidity and seriousness. I could tell this Amy Lynn person was taking her sweet time inside and checking us out. A shadow passed behind the keyhole, and a number of bolts needed to be unlocked on the other side of the heavy oak door before it swung even halfway open.

When, at last, it did, I got a good view of the woman who’d been on the other end of the line during our phone conversation. I had to admit my surprise.

I’d always considered myself kind of on the mousy-looking side, being of slight build and fair complexion, with longish light-brown hair that hung limp, just past my shoulders, unless I pulled it back into a ponytail. But Amy Lynn took “mousy” to the tenth power.

She was around twenty-five years old, painfully thin, with wrists so delicate and pale that the veins protruded. Her short, goldish hair was pixie-like in style, giving her face and features a look that reminded me of Peter Pan. Her eyes—clear, blue and wary—studied me right back.

I introduced myself and Donovan, using a well-honed super-calm voice and working to put this new person at ease. With the back of my palm pressed against his chest, I physically held Donovan in the hallway, keeping him from stepping forward into the apartment until Amy Lynn was ready to receive us.

She kept us waiting longer than I’d expected but, thankfully, Donovan took my lead and allowed me to watch Amy Lynn’s reactions. He gave me time to carefully adjust my mannerisms until I felt the two of us girls were on a similar vibration. Until I could sense she was sure of us.

To my eye, Amy Lynn might have given off an air of timidity at first glance, but I could feel a resolute core beneath her fragile appearance. When she smiled carefully and stepped back to allow us to enter, I got the distinct sense that she was, in fact, choreographing every move.

Her first words to us weren’t greetings. Instead, she said, “You both resemble your brothers.” Then she turned to Donovan and added, “Especially you.”

I watched him process this. While I didn’t understand him so well as to be able to gauge half of his responses in advance, I knew him well enough to realize an inquisition was coming. Soon.

“How did you meet him?” Donovan asked almost immediately. He glanced at me for a split second, then back at Amy Lynn. “How did you meet them both—Jeremy and Gideon?”

The slender woman nodded and motioned for us to sit down. My insides twisted wildly at the thought of her parting words on the phone and the questions that were burning my tongue. I couldn’t wait a second longer to ask, “And when did Gideon tell you we might be coming? How did he contact you?”

But the other woman shook her head slightly and said, “I promise I’ll get to all of that. This—” She pointed at me then at Donovan then at herself. “This is all a little overwhelming for me, too. Just let me organize my thoughts so I can tell you both the whole story.”

So, I was forced to bide my time, knowing it was too important a meeting to screw up with impatience. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t itching to hurry her along. And Donovan looked like he was about to jump out of his skin with restless anxiety.

I forced myself to sit politely at the edge of the sofa, a foot away from Donovan, acutely aware of the tension straining his leg muscles, the rigidity of his torso and the pressure of his fingertips as they dug into the cushion between us, surely leaving angry indentations in the thinning fabric.

But then, when Amy Lynn started to speak in a curiously measured and melodious voice, I began to lose myself in her story, as cleverly executed as if by a professional narrator.

“I’ve been waiting to tell someone about this for a long time,” she said and, from my perspective, Amy Lynn did look more relieved than fearful. “In the spring of 1976, I’d just moved in with my new boyfriend, Patrick Bradley—everyone called him Treak—who was a couple of years older than me and a reporter for the Chicago Tribune.”

She nodded at a copy she had of the newspaper on her coffee table.

“I was an actress back then, only getting small parts in small theaters, and while I liked to think my big break was on the verge of finally happening, I suspected my life probably wouldn’t play out that way. That I wouldn’t end up being discovered and landing in a Broadway show or in a Hollywood movie. More likely, I was on the fast track to being either a strung-out hostess at an adults-only nightclub or a married mom juggling three kids and a sheepdog.” She laughed but I wasn’t reading a lot of genuine humor in her expression.

“Anyway, I figured when Treak asked me to move into his South Side apartment with him, this would be a better choice than doing lap dances at dive bars on Mannheim Road to pay for groceries, so I did.”

Amy Lynn shrugged. “Back then, everybody who knew me called me by my stage name, Chelsea Carew. My parents lived in western Ohio, and I hadn’t bothered to get a driver’s license when I moved to Chicago because I didn’t have a car. Since most of my work transactions were done ‘under the table,’ so to speak, I avoided stuff like filing income taxes and, because I was crashing on the floors or the sofas of other actors’ apartments, my name never showed up on a lease. Turns out, the fact that I was pretty much an irresponsible adult probably saved my life.”

Donovan was listening intently to her, and Amy Lynn, in turn, studied him carefully before continuing, her words something she seemed to weigh like fresh produce at the Grocery Mart.

“One day, about a month after I moved in, Treak came home all excited because he’d finally gotten a lead on a big story he was working on. Only problem was that he’d need to be gone—out of town somewhere—to work on it. I wasn’t going to get to see him for at least a week. Maybe two.” She looked at us and then away. “The first few nights he was away, he’d call me and we’d chat. Things still seemed normal, but then his digging led him to this little town in Wisconsin. Crescent Cove.”

I inhaled a sudden rush of air, but it didn’t help. Yet another link between my brother, his best friend and that Wisconsin town—it made me lightheaded.

Start here, Gideon had written.

I struggled not to slump back against the sofa cushions and cradle my head in my palms, but Amy Lynn noticed the change in me.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I forced a nod. “Yes, please go on. So, you’re saying your boyfriend followed some clues for a story and they led him to Crescent Cove?”

“Yes,” Amy Lynn replied. “That’s where he eventually ended up. We were talking less frequently by then. He’d call only once every few days and usually just for five or ten minutes. He was hot on the trail of something, and he was busy with it for hours at a time. Almost all day and well into the night. The last time he called me was on July 1, 1976. It was a Thursday afternoon.”

Donovan bowed his head, bit his lip and then said, in a very stilted voice, “Do you mean that was the last time Treak called you on that trip? Or the last time you ever heard from him?”

“Both,” Amy Lynn replied.

She let this sink in, belatedly asking if either of us wanted something to drink, almost enjoying the dramatic moment, I felt. Definitely a former actress.

But, much as I hated the skilled performance and the pregnant pauses used to great effect, I also strongly sensed that there was very little exaggeration in Amy Lynn’s retelling. Sure, her delivery bordered on stagey, but the actress formerly known as Chelsea Carew didn’t need to heighten the tension with unnecessary theatrics. The real story provided more than enough natural drama.

Donovan and I both declined a drink and pressed Amy Lynn to tell us what happened next.

“Sunday morning, about two a.m. on the Fourth of July, I got a phone call out of nowhere from these guys I didn’t know. They sounded really scared, and just being shaken awake like that made me really scared, too. They told me I was in a lot of danger. That they had some stuff of Treak’s and had to give it to me, but that I needed to get myself somewhere safer first.”

She slanted an odd smile at us. “Of course, I thought they were wackos, and I almost hung up on them. But one of the guys started listing all kinds of things he knew about me because of their conversations with my boyfriend. And then he listed all kinds of things he knew about Treak. And he said—I’ll never forget this—‘I know you don’t want to believe us, and I know you have to be freaking out getting this kind of a call, but we saw two men get blown up in an explosion tonight, and Treak was one of them. I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you that, but I’ll be even sorrier if you get killed, too, when I could’ve helped prevent it. So take what you need. Take anything with your picture or with your name on it. Any important documents. Then get the hell out of there, Chelsea.’ And I listened to him,” Amy Lynn said. “That was how I met your brothers.”

I tried to digest this. I knew, even without Amy Lynn telling me so, that Gideon was the one who had been listing things during that phone call.

It was very much like him. I could picture all too well what had happened that night, at least from the point where there was an explosion at Bonner Mill—killing Ben Rainwater and the unknown man, who must have been Treak, I realized—and then Jeremy and Gideon racing out of Crescent Cove, stopping somewhere to call and warn Amy Lynn.

But I still didn’t know what had set off that chain of events. Who had caused the explosion and why. Although, thank God, it didn’t seem to be either of our brothers who’d done it—at least not on purpose.

Donovan seemed to be thinking through this chronologically, too, and he was a few steps ahead of me.

“If you left Treak’s apartment, how were Jeremy and Gideon able to find you?” he asked. “How long after that did you actually meet them in person?”

Amy Lynn squinted a bit, remembering. “Well, I still didn’t totally trust them then, but I knew there was only one place in Chicago I could go to that no one in my current life knew about. It was my friend Karen’s place, and she lived on the far north side of the city. Unlike most of the people I hung around with, she wasn’t an aspiring actress, and she wasn’t someone who knew Treak and his small circle of friends either. She was a grad student at Northwestern.”

“Living alone?” Donovan asked.

“Yes, she did. So, I told Gideon and Jeremy that I’d meet them on the Evanston campus that afternoon, just outside of the student union. School wasn’t in session, of course, but there were always college kids roaming around, so I figured I could blend in with the crowd pretty well, especially on a national holiday.” She paused. “I knew it was them the second I saw them, though. They looked real jumpy and they were the only two people on the lawn who weren’t smiling.”

“Did the three of you talk right there? At the student union?” I asked her.

She nodded. “We didn’t go in, but we found a private area to one side of the building where we could talk without being interrupted and where no one would be able to hear our whispers. Gideon and Jeremy introduced themselves to me and showed me the business card they’d gotten from Treak. That’s how they’d known which phone number to call. They showed me other papers of his, too. Some notes he’d taken on this story he was working on. I was pretty much a mess, though, and I could barely concentrate on what they were saying at first. I hadn’t slept since they’d awakened me, and the fact that a guy I liked a lot, someone I was living with, might really be dead had just begun to sink in.”

Just remembering that day made Amy Lynn look shaken and pale. I knew how she felt. Even two years later, whenever I thought back on that moment when we first suspected Gideon and Jeremy were missing, not just out having fun somewhere, I felt a dark wave of nausea.

“The whole day was as bizarre as it was scary,” Amy Lynn admitted. “It didn’t feel real to me at all, even though I’d done what they said. I’d all but erased evidence of myself from Treak’s apartment. I threw my clothes, photo albums, important papers and a few keepsakes—I didn’t have much—into one large suitcase. Then I grabbed my playbills, a few 8-tracks and cassettes, Treak’s address book and a gold chain with a St. Christopher’s medallion that he’d loved because it had once been his grandfather’s. The patron saint of travelers. I wish he would have worn it to Wisconsin,” she said wistfully.

“Anyway, I stuffed those things in my bag, too, and took my purse, filling it with whatever cash I could find. I also raided Treak’s private dresser drawer, where he kept a couple of emergency one-hundred-dollar bills. My secret worry was that Gideon and Jeremy were lying to me, and that Treak would come home that day and think I’d robbed him and then left him without even a note.” She shuddered. “It was horrible to imagine how betrayed he’d feel, but that was only because I was avoiding trying to accept that your brothers might not be lying. But then, when I saw the two of them—”

“Yes?” Donovan prompted.

“Then the horror of it hit me hard. They seemed too frightened, both for themselves and for me, to be making it all up. I’d been around lots of actors. Good ones. Bad ones. Not even the exceptionally gifted ones could’ve pulled off that kind of fear.”

Amy Lynn suddenly stood and started pacing around the room, her own very composed performance having begun to unravel at last.

“Turned out, Jeremy and Gideon weren’t just here to tell me about what happened to Treak and this guy named Ben Rainwater,” she said, “but they also wanted me to fill in some gaps for them. The part of the story they didn’t know. Stuff about his reporter’s life before he went to Crescent Cove. And, while I could give them a little more information, there were huge chunks I didn’t know myself.”

My head began to throb. A low but rising ache that started behind my eyes and pulsed outward. A sob I’d tried to contain threatened to come out if I didn’t get more answers. But I had so many questions…I didn’t know which to ask first.

“What did they say about Treak and Ben?” I said. “How did your boyfriend even know Ben Rainwater?”

“Treak didn’t know him. Not until he went up to Crescent Cove,” Amy Lynn replied. “At the time, all I knew about the story Treak was working on was that it involved some shady Chicago union stuff. Something about problems in the city because of the power struggles between the workers’ unions—mostly the Teamsters—and the mob. Reporters were covering all different angles, but the one Treak was working on led him to a trucker from out of state. A guy from Wisconsin.”

“From Crescent Cove,” Donovan murmured.

The woman nodded. “Treak went up there to investigate, and he met Ben Rainwater after a few days. Ben was an amateur filmmaker, did you know that?”

We shook our heads.

“From what Treak said, Ben was just getting started. He’d bought an 8mm camera a few months before and was filming things for fun, whenever he had time, and trying to learn the best shots. He worked in his cousin’s shop—some little grocery store, I guess—but filming was his passion. Treak liked him right away and said he was a natural behind the camera. Told me Ben was going to show him some film footage that he’d shot in and around the town.” She paused. “That was our last conversation.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Me, too,” Amy Lynn said. She bit her lip and inhaled a few times. “Anyway, I came to the same conclusion that you’re probably coming to now. That the filmmaker caught something on camera he wasn’t supposed to see. Your brothers knew all about it. They’d seen the film, too. They were in Crescent Cove that weekend and they’d actually watched it with Treak and Ben. That film reel was one of the things they brought me, along with a few pages of my boyfriend’s notes.”

“Where is it? The film?” Donovan said, speaking softly but it came across as a demand nonetheless. “And what’s on it?”

“It’s in a safe place,” she replied. “I only watched it once, by myself, a few weeks after they gave it to me. And I only half understood what I was seeing.”

“Can we see it?” he asked, his breath shallower than normal. “Please?”

“Of course,” Amy Lynn said. “I’d already planned to show you. But I’d need to borrow a projector. I might be able to arrange to do that tomorrow. The landlord is a friend of mine, and I know he has one, but he won’t be home until really late tonight.”

Donovan, quite clearly, didn’t look like he could be that patient.

I was feeling my own frustrations rising. If there were answers to be had, I wanted them now. “You must have some idea of what your boyfriend was uncovering in Crescent Cove,” I said to her. “Just from talking to our brothers and reading Treak’s notes. It had to be something really big to put them all in such danger.”

“Yes,” she said. “So big that Treak didn’t want to talk about it on the phone. So big that I had to pull the details out of your brothers. They were afraid to tell me more than they had to when they saw me because, in their opinion, the less I knew, the safer I was.”

She peered out the window. “They made me promise on my grandmother’s grave that I wouldn’t contact the police or report Treak missing. That I would go back to using my real name, cut off contact with the people I knew from my actress life and stay away from Treak’s apartment. That if the cops were to ever manage to piece together that Chelsea Carew and Amy Lynn Dreamson were the same person, I should deny knowing anything more about Treak’s disappearance. I was just supposed to say that he was a jerk who’d left me one day and never came back. That I had no idea why.”

Her expression turned hard as she stopped pacing and sank into a chair across from us. “I can’t express just how difficult it was to try to absorb all of this that day. I’d taken the train up to my friend’s place, and Karen let me in at six a.m. without any questions. But what your brothers were asking me to do was going to require me to explain at least a few things to her, and I didn’t want to do that if I didn’t have to. Especially if this was all so dangerous.”

She massaged her forehead for a moment. “The Bicentennial fireworks were set for that night. It was a big deal, so I watched them with Karen and a few of her friends, and then I slept like the dead afterward because I was so exhausted. The next day was a Monday, but it was a holiday because the Fourth of July had been on Sunday. I couldn’t stop thinking about Treak and everything that happened in the past twenty-four hours.”

I remembered that weekend well. Gideon had been gone on overnight trips before, so my family didn’t panic at first when he hadn’t shown up for the big fireworks celebration. But when, after a whole weekend away, he wasn’t there on Monday either, or on Tuesday…

Amy Lynn said, “The first time I could slip away was on Monday afternoon. I took the train back down to the old neighborhood—just to see if Treak’s car was there. Maybe peek in the apartment and check for any last things I should bring along. But I didn’t even go in the building. His Chevy was nowhere in sight, but there were three cop cars lined up outside, and I could see a couple of officers milling around inside his second-floor apartment as I looked up from the street into his front window. I hid in the shadow of the doorway of the apartment complex across the street and watched for half an hour as policemen went in empty-handed and came out carting boxes of Treak’s files.”

She shivered in the summer heat. “It was awfully strange that they’d shown up there so fast, taking his papers with them. And I knew then that your brothers had been right to warn me. To be scared. There was something really off about the cops raiding his place. Treak wasn’t, perhaps, the one true love of my life, but he was an honest man. A dedicated reporter. And a seeker of the truth. Whatever the police were looking for, I didn’t get the sense that it was to protect him.”

Her expression pleaded with us to understand. She’d cared about Treak Bradley—as a friend and fellow human, if not as a lover. And I could tell he’d been kind to her when few others had. She was helping us because, even two years after he was dead, she still wanted to help him.

“Something about the intensity of the cops made me think that whatever the police were looking for wasn’t just about him,” Amy Lynn said. “I doubted he would’ve been important enough for that kind of attention and focus. I think they were looking for something else. Some dirt on someone or, maybe, a way to protect somebody or some group. I felt like I’d dodged a heck of a lot of trouble, thanks to your brothers, and I hoped that Treak’s work wouldn’t be in vain. Especially after I saw his obituary in the Chicago Tribune a week later.”

She grimaced. “It read to me like a monstrous lie, and I don’t know if that was the fault of the press or the cops. All I know is that the paper wrote he’d been killed in ‘a car accident in rural Wisconsin’ on Independence Day. That there were no witnesses but ‘evidence at the scene’ showed he’d been driving too fast and had collided with a cement divider. That there was an explosion and his body was badly burned, so much so that his grieving parents in Indiana were sent only his ashes. Now wasn’t that convenient?” Amy Lynn’s bitterness at this was impossible to hide. “I knew then that my old life had ended.”

Yours wasn’t the only one.

“Could we, maybe, take a look at his notes in a bit?” I asked. “I don’t know if anything written in them will stand out as a clue, but it’s possible Donovan or I might recognize something.”

Amy Lynn nodded. “You can try. I’ll pull them out for you later and you guys can see if you’re able to make anything of them. To me, it was gobbledygook.”

I glanced at Donovan. He looked beat. Like he’d gone twelve rounds against Muhammad Ali and was lucky to still be upright. Processing all of this new information was exhausting, I knew, but I still had a lot of questions. There were tons of things Donovan and I would need to know just to fill in a small portion of our brothers’ story. I was about to ask my most pressing question—the one that made my heart rise into my throat just thinking about it—when Donovan abruptly jumped up.

“Anyone hungry?” he asked.

I stared at him.

Amy Lynn tilted her head to one side as if not quite comprehending the question.

He tried again. “I’m starving. Is there somewhere close to here where I could pick up a snack for us? Burgers, pizza, anything like that?”

“There’s a Roma’s on Cicero,” Amy Lynn said, pointing out her window. “They’ve got Chicago-style hot dogs, sausage and Italian beef sandwiches.”

“Okay,” Donovan said quickly.

“Or—” She wandered into her kitchenette and peered into a couple of cupboards. “I have noodles. I could cook those up instead with a little tomato sauce and—”

“No,” he blurted. “No, thank you. That’s very generous of you, but I don’t want you to go to any trouble.” He paced the room like a caged baby Bengal. “How do I get to this hot dog joint?”

“It’s a green-topped building—you can’t miss it. It’s just north of the Six Corners shopping area, where Cicero, Milwaukee and Irving Park Road all meet. A three-minute drive. Maybe a fifteen-minute walk.”

“I’m just going to walk down there and grab a few to go. It sounds perfect.”

I offered to go along but he immediately shot down that idea.

“What would you ladies like?” he asked. “You each want one? Two?”

Amy Lynn smiled kindly back at him. “One is plenty for me, thank you.”

I didn’t feel the need to eat anything, but it was obvious he was desperate to get out of the apartment and be alone. So I held up an index finger to signal “one” and said, “Thanks, Donovan.” He sent me one of the most grateful looks I’d ever seen.

“Yeah, no problem. I’ll be back in about a half hour or so.” He was in the hallway before I could even say, “Okay.”

“It’s a lot to take in,” Amy Lynn said to me, her voice gentle. “Why don’t we take a break, too. You must be tired. Would you like some coffee? Wine?” Then she regarded me more intently for a moment. “How old are you, Aurora?”

“Almost eighteen,” I said. “And thanks, but I’m fine. Maybe I’ll have some water or something in a bit. I probably need to splash my face with it more than drink it, though.” I laughed. “I want to be able to stay awake a lot longer, but I’m wearing out. It’s been an action-packed day.”

“Where are you and Donovan staying tonight?”

“Not sure yet,” I admitted. “Honestly, we didn’t get that far in our planning. We were just trying to figure out any information we could from my brother’s journal.” I explained how I’d guessed at what Amy Lynn’s real last name was from the description Gideon had written next to her name.

“Clever guy,” Amy Lynn said.

“He was. I mean, he is.” My hopefulness surged every time I thought about that, although there was a big “but” attached to it. But, if he was alive out there like I wanted to believe, even if he’d seen or heard something horrible, was it still impossible…still too dangerous…for him to come forward?

“You’re clever, too, Aurora.”

I mumbled, “Thanks,” but I didn’t feel as smart as I would have if I’d have just ignored the cops’ dismissal of me and worked harder at figuring out what had happened two summers ago. I should’ve trusted my intuition from the start and not wasted all of this time. Time when Gideon must have urgently needed my help. A glance at the clock told me it was after eight p.m. already, and I realized I owed my parents a phone call.

“May I use your telephone?” I asked. “My mom and dad in Minnesota are expecting a call from me, but I’ll reverse the charges.”

“Go right ahead.” The other woman pointed to the phone and left the room to give me a few minutes of privacy. The operator dialed my parents’ number, asking my father if he’d accept a collect call from me, which, of course, he did.

“Hi, Dad,” I said, filling him in briefly on our long driving day and our arrival in the Chicago area. “I’ve only got a couple of minutes, but I wanted to let you know that everything’s going really well so far. We were just talking with someone who’s familiar with the Northwestern University campus in Evanston, and we’ll check it out tomorrow,” I told him, which was kind of true. At least the first half of the sentence.

There was a long pause on the line. “Have you learned anything…new?” he asked carefully.

“Yes,” I whispered. “It’s…mostly helpful news, but I’ll, um, find out more tomorrow. And we’ll talk again then.”

He asked how Donovan was treating me—if he was being “a gentleman”—and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, yeah. He’s been fine, Dad. Don’t worry about that. He just went out to get us some more food.” And to walk off some of his edginess and fear. Then I changed the subject and told him to give my love to Mom, who was in the bath. I said that, really and truly, everything was okay. “Better than okay,” I insisted.

It took another minute of assurances, but I was finally able to hang up. It was going to get harder, I knew, to pile on the falsehoods if our trip lasted for more than a week. Much more challenging to tell fractional truths as the chasm between what we were really doing and what we said we were doing continued to expand.

Even if my father knew enough to understand that a search for Gideon and Jeremy played a part in this road trip, he didn’t know about the journal. He didn’t know anything about Crescent Cove, Ben Rainwater, Treak Bradley or the Bonner Mill explosion. And I couldn’t explain any of it over the phone, even if I’d wanted to.

Not only was it too chancy—he might tell someone he shouldn’t—but I was also worried he’d react too strongly to the news that his son was most likely still alive. He was like Donovan that way. He’d slammed the door on any hope that my brother and his friend had survived.

When Dad had given his permission for this trip, all he’d really wanted was for our family to finally get closure on Gideon’s death. To find out for sure what had happened. Why Gideon and Jeremy had left town. I knew my father had no idea I was tracking Gideon himself. Veering right onto the path where my brother had last tread and all but walking in his footsteps.

Dad would not like the potential danger of that—not one little bit.

Amy Lynn returned to the room. “I brought the notes,” she said, setting a thin manila folder down on her small glass coffee table. She glanced at the telephone. “Everything okay?”

I nodded. “Yes, thanks. Just overprotective parents.”

“I’d be overprotective, too, in their shoes,” she admitted.

Donovan knocked on the door and, when Amy Lynn opened it for him, he strode into the room with a bag filled with warm hot dogs and fries. They smelled so good, I actually felt a pang of hunger.

He pulled out one Chicago dog for Amy Lynn, one for me and two for himself.

“Only two for you?” I teased.

“Only two left,” he retorted. “I had my first one on the walk back. Good stuff.”

I grinned at him and Amy Lynn, who’d been watching our exchange with interest, laughed a little. She likes us. More than she thought she would.

This feeling was confirmed a few minutes later when Amy Lynn said, around a mouthful of hot dog, “I know we’re going to be up late tonight, talking and looking through these papers.” She waved her hand in the direction of the manila folder. “And then there’s the film reel we need to see in the morning. It’s silly for you two to leave here and stay at some motel. I don’t have a lot of space—” She glanced around her one-bedroom apartment. “But I do have the sofa, a sleeping bag and extra pillows and blankets. You could crash here tonight, if you’d like.”

A few conflicting emotions flashed across Donovan’s face. I wasn’t sure what they all meant, but one of them was appreciation. And rightly so. Amy Lynn was being very generous to us.

But a tight feeling of jealousy strangled me a bit when I suspected that another of Donovan’s emotions might be attraction. The pixie blonde was closer to his age than I was. And pretty, in a very delicate way. More worldly than the kind of women he ran into in Chameleon Lake. A woman who’d lived with a man before. Not an inexperienced teenager, like me.

If that was the case, though, Donovan didn’t seem to dwell on it. Instead, he said to her, “Are you sure?”

I, however, knew our hostess’s answer before she verbalized it. Amy Lynn had been watching the way Donovan and I had been interacting all evening and, to some degree, envying it. Her obvious relief at having unburdened herself of a dark, two-year secret must have buoyed her and made her want to continue our private party for longer.

So Donovan made one more trip downstairs—this time to check our parking space to make sure we could stay there until morning and, also, to retrieve our bags from the trunk of his Trans Am. Then the three of us got settled in for the night.

Amy Lynn was right about Treak’s notes—they did look like gobbledygook. I recognized some of the squiggly lines as shorthand symbols, but I couldn’t read them. I didn’t have the kind of knowledge about the dead reporter that I had about my brother, either, which was the only way I’d managed to decipher anything at all in Gideon’s journal—and that had been written in standard English.

Still, I laboriously traced the three half-sheets of paper that had belonged to Treak and were his only remaining clues to us. Amy Lynn gave me some thin typing paper for the task, encouraging us to keep a copy but to be careful with it. And finally, when I was finished, I asked again the question that had been haunting me since I first made the phone call to Amy Lynn that afternoon. God, was it only five hours ago?

“How did you know we were coming?” I murmured, unable to tolerate the suspense of this even a second longer. “On the phone you said Gideon had told you to expect us. H-How did he communicate with you? Has he called? Stopped by in person?”

It was at that moment, when Amy Lynn tilted her fair-haired head in confusion again, that I began to realize that, no matter how many questions Donovan and I had already asked, there were a billion more still unanswered.

Amy Lynn must have realized it, too, because she didn’t immediately reply. Instead, she went to a desk drawer and pulled out a couple pieces of mail.

She crossed back to me and held out two postcards that had been sent in envelopes. The first one had a picture of some weird cactus-like sculpture thing on the front and a Northern Arizona University “School of Art” logo. The smudged white envelope was sent to Amy Lynn at her friend Karen’s place and postmarked September 8, 1976, Flagstaff, Arizona. More than two months after the guys had disappeared. There was no return address.

On the back of the card, in Gideon’s distinctive script, were the words: “Much worse than I thought. Be careful. Will write again if it’s ever safe to share anything. G.”

I pressed my lips together tight, remembering the “funeral” services we’d had for the guys just a few months after this postcard had been sent. Hard to believe we may have all suffered through that day unnecessarily and, yet, I couldn’t help but hope that was the case.

Mutely, I handed the card to Donovan and I looked at the second one. The image on the front was of a row of painted Cadillacs, each stuck in the ground at about a forty-five degree angle. My brother was definitely going for “bizarre local attractions” as his correspondence theme.

This envelope was light beige, and the postmark stamped it as being from Amarillo, Texas, June 12, 1978. Dated less than a week ago! Again, no return address, but he’d sent it to Amy Lynn’s Chicago apartment. How had he known where she lived now? The phonebook?

I held my breath as I read the words on the card: “My sister will probably be passing through Chicago soon. Why not show her a movie? G.”

It, too, was in his handwriting, and it showcased both his sly sense of humor and his proclivity for enigmatic wording. Real proof that he was alive. (Hallelujah!) But, also, that he’d both planned this wild goose chase we were on and made sure it was being orchestrated in the way he’d expected.

Oh, Gideon, don’t you understand? This hurts. Where are you leading us, and why this crazy game? You seem so close, like we might run into you around any corner, but yet…

It was all getting to be too much for me. The hope mixed with the confusion. The ambiguities I had to hold in my head and in my heart.

Ever since I’d found my brother’s journal, I could feel my wall of pseudo-strength cracking. Piece by piece. The pain of him being gone had been so strong, so powerful, I’d forced it back...but I couldn’t keep doing that. Not if he might really be out there.

A sob that had been lodged deep in my windpipe rose up and pushed its way to my lips, gashing through my defenses and shattering the silence in the room. I heard the pain in my own cry and it made me sink to the floor.

Donovan knelt beside me. He gently put his hand on my shoulder, comforting me, and then slowly wedged the second postcard from my grip, scanning the words once. Then scanning them again.

If I was having a hard time dealing with the vagaries of our brothers’ behavior and the mysterious, hazardous situation they’d somehow found themselves in, I could only imagine what Donovan’s reaction to the second card would be.

I found out soon enough.

He shook his head. “It’s a lie,” he stated. “This can’t be real. And I’m gonna fucking kill whoever’s faking it.” Then he jumped up and stormed out of the room while I buried my face in my hands and wept for all of us.

 

***

 

It wasn’t until over an hour later that Donovan returned for the night. He mumbled an apology, first to Amy Lynn and then to me, but he didn’t offer any explanation of his whereabouts, nor did he want to discuss our brothers any more that evening. I could tell he’d reached his saturation point. Truth was, so had I.

All of us were exhausted anyway. During his absence, Amy Lynn and I had put together two makeshift beds—one for Donovan in a sleeping bag on the carpet, and one for me on the sofa. Tired as I was, though, I knew I wouldn’t be getting much sleep.

It was destined to be a restless night for Donovan, too. I closed my eyes, willing myself to relax, but he was only a few feet away, and I could see him flipping, shifting, attempting to get comfortable on the floor. When, finally, he did drift off, he was still in an uneasy state—wrestling, no doubt, with the demons that were Jeremy’s memory and his own latent guilt, and mumbling angry words directed, I sensed, at my brother. Something about Amarillo and that Cadillac Ranch.

In my case, my mind kept replaying the memorial service we’d had for our brothers when they still hadn’t returned after several months and everyone—particularly the police—had presumed them dead. There had been the loud sobbing of some family and friends. The utter silence of others. Like me…and like Donovan. Our mutual grief stabbing invisible holes in the serene air of the church.

I remembered my parents holding hands, bracing each other for support. And I remembered Donovan’s mom and stepfather, with a palm’s span of light between them, the first noticeable fissure of what would eventually lead to their separation some months afterward.

I always knew I wouldn’t have stayed in Chameleon Lake had it not been for Gideon and Jeremy’s disappearance. But it occurred to me that I didn’t know what Donovan would have done differently if this tragedy hadn’t befallen our families. He’d left our hometown when he was eighteen. I seriously doubted he would have ever returned for more than a long weekend, even after he finished his stint in the service.

The chain of events sparked by our brothers’ disappearance led to both of us being in Chameleon Lake almost against our will. My future plans had been murky, but they’d involved going away to college and moving somewhere larger, more cosmopolitan.

For the first time, I wondered what Donovan’s dreams had been.

 

***

 

We arose the next morning, not well rested but grateful for the day to begin, tiptoeing gently around each other as we felt our way through an unfamiliar routine.

“May I use your shower?” Donovan asked.

“Of course,” Amy Lynn replied. “Let me get you a towel.” Then, to me, “Aurora, can I offer you some toast or cereal? Coffee, tea or cocoa?”

“Oh, thank you,” I said. “Just toast and coffee, please.”

Such politeness.

It was like that until Amy Lynn deemed it late enough to patter down the hallway to her landlord’s apartment. As good as her word, she asked to borrow his projector for the day and was soon spooling up a small, light-blue, plastic film reel with the word “Tribute” written in jaunty black permanent marker across the diameter. Jeremy’s handwriting this time.

I glanced at Donovan to see if he’d noticed. He had.

To help out, he and I strung up a white bed sheet across one wall, attaching our screen with a few strong tacks from Amy Lynn’s sewing drawer. But, as she turned on the machine and the film began threading its way through the projector, I couldn’t help but think back to the last film Donovan and I had watched, just two days before. There would be no singing in this picture. No poodle skirts. And I doubted much humor.

But I was wrong—at least about that latter point.

There was no sound, save for the clickety-clacking of the 8mm Kodachrome film as it snaked around the spools and fed into the empty white reel, but Donovan and I watched the grainy images come into focus in color on the bed sheet in front of us. The first of these was stunning. Our brothers, running around outside somewhere.

My breath caught as I saw them both on our flimsy fabric screen. Laughing. Taking turns being in the frame and, then, pushing the other one out of it.

In the two years since they’d been gone, I’d caught up to them in age. They were now timelessly eighteen. As young as we’d remembered or, perhaps, young in a way we didn’t quite remember…since our recollections were tinged with such heavy loss. We’d forgotten the rawness of their joy. Their shared streak of mischievousness. Their energy, which leaped into the room to dance with us.

Donovan cleared his throat. “You said Ben Rainwater—he was the one who filmed this?”

“Yes,” Amy Lynn replied. “There are a few different segments to it.”

We continued to watch as Gideon and Jeremy horsed around in the summer sunshine. I noticed their clothing. Both clad in old blue jeans, Gideon was wearing that distinctive red t-shirt of his with the white stripe slashing diagonally across the front. He loved that one. And Jeremy had on a sleeveless muscle shirt featuring a faded American flag and the words “Fort Monroe, U.S. Army” stamped above it.

I saw the softening in Donovan’s eyes as he got a closer look at his brother’s shirt, and I remembered how proudly Jeremy had worn this gift from his big brother. It’d been a birthday present, given to Jeremy after Donovan’s first year of his enlistment.

But it wasn’t until they’d set off the first firework that I realized Jeremy and Gideon’s patriotic colors weren’t unintentional. That the clothing was, in fact, a vital part of the message.

A few more seconds of goofing around followed and then, suddenly, it stopped. As if the “testing: one, two, three” stage had ended, and now the guys were going to get serious.

The camera turned its attention to a largish tag-board sign with the words, “In Honor of the Bicentennial…” written on it with the briskness of Jeremy’s block printing. Black marker on a crisp white surface.

Then a second firework was launched. And a third. Ben’s camera caught both of these explosions on film, capturing the powerful burst of sparkling light and smoke, if not the deafening sound.

Another tag-board message followed. This one read, “Happy 4th of July to our Military Heroes!” That board was removed and, in its place, Gideon stood with a smaller sign that said, “Dad.” Jeremy squished his way into the frame with his own sign—one that read, “And Donovan.”

Next to me, I heard Donovan make an involuntary, indistinct noise, but his eyes were fixed on our bed-sheet screen.

There were two more fireworks set off after that before we saw the final tag-board sign: “Our Country’s 200 Years of Freedom…is Thanks to Men Like You!” Then each of our brothers saluted and lit a series of more visual fireworks, ones that had a few aerial bursts and rivaled the display the Chameleon Lake police and fire department hosted every year.

I stole another glance at Donovan. His eyes were moist and he was rapidly blinking, clenching his jaw so hard I almost expected to hear a molar crack. Was this the “fun thing” Jeremy had spoken to him about?

Regardless, neither Donovan nor I could speak while watching it, and if Amy Lynn had anything to say, she was holding her tongue.

But then the screen went dark. And the scene changed.

The laughing, cheering pair of young men we’d loved so much weren’t in this shot. But their fireworks were. Buckets and buckets of them, labeled and carefully stashed on long shelves in what looked to be a backroom somewhere.

I shot Amy Lynn a questioning look.

“I don’t know where that is,” she said, sensing this was what I wanted to know. “But I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere near Crescent Cove.”

“It’s a kind of storage facility,” Donovan said and, then, the camera focused on a picture ID, which was face up on a small table by the entrance. “That’s Ronny Lee Wolf,” Donovan murmured.

There was no disputing it. “It is,” I said.

The eye of the camera took in more of the room, swinging in an arc—sector by sector—until we were given a full three hundred and sixty degree view. And what we saw was that the regular fireworks and firecrackers we recognized from Ronny’s store weren’t the half of it. Alongside the shelving with the buckets of M-80s, quarter sticks and cherry bombs, was a different brand of firework. One I hadn’t seen before. And, jeez, there was a lot of it. Enough to almost fill the rest of the room.

As the camera zoomed in on a box of them, I got a closer look. The casing was kind of like a tube—the type you might find at a hardware store for plumbing. A silvery color. Sturdy steel. Not quite…legal-looking. But I was hardly an expert.

Donovan was.

“Holy Jesus,” he hissed. “Those aren’t fireworks. They’re pipe bombs.”

The screen went to black again and, finally, spliced onto the end of the reel was the last segment of film with close-ups of a few remnants of those silver casings—blown apart into metal shards like shrapnel. Dirt and rubble lay all around.

Following this image, and zooming wider and upward, were exterior shots of a place I vaguely recognized but couldn’t, at first glance, pinpoint. Then I did.

“It’s Bonner Mill,” I whispered.

Donovan was already nodding. “I know.”