Copyright © 2005, by Charles L. Collins

CLEVELAND, OH (API) – The devastating blast at suburban Crestgate Place Mall last Wednesday has been officially determined to be the result of a freak electrical failure that ignited a huge pocket of natural gas, according to arson investigators and DHS explosive experts. The blast killed 327, mostly woman and children busy with back-to-school shopping and was reminiscent of the walkway collapse at a Columbus mall a decade ago, officials said.

The initial reports of a possible truck bomb, even a suicide bombing which would have made this the first such event on an American civilian target since September 11, 2001, were dismissed as hysteria on the part of survivors and other witnesses. “We have concluded with certainty that this was an awful accident,” said Department of Homeland Security official Geoffrey Bowen. “We join all Americans in mourning such horrendous loss of life, but we can assure you that this is not a new tactic by our enemies and that you can remain confident, though vigilant in pursuing your daily lives.” All of Northeast Ohio and the rest of the nation have shown an outpouring of sympathy and support for the families of the victims.

"It’s the sickness of being that makes dying seem reasonable.”

-Stonemountain Peak

Prologue

“Herk McKay is a thief of the first order.” Bill Kradich spoke into the small tape recorder still using his radio voice, even though the audio-notes would probably go no farther than his ears. “It’s not as though he sticks a gun in the ribs of his victims; on the contrary, it’s all he can do to stop them from giving him their money. Once his larceny is sealed, the process takes a strange turn and the useless service he provides becomes the opiate of business, with the managers being incapable of making a move without him.” Kradich stopped the tape, thought and scratched. The chalky residue had collected between his fingers, under his nails, web-like and ashy against the tan. It was the first time he noticed what dried Calamine looked like, and pulled his shirt up just enough to see the cake on his chest hair. The elastic of his silk pajama stretched to reveal the same dusting on his pubic hair and penis. “Like I been bangin’ powered donuts.” He whispered in the preferred pejorative; the borrowed dialect of his Southside fans.

A light fingerfall on the record button and his thoughts moved from the torturous itch – temporarily stayed - and back to the object of his torment. “Herk McKay is a marketing consultant.” Crash grinned and ran the back of two fingernails along the tender strip beneath the waistband.

There was no real plan; nothing that directed his actions other than a need to get his side of the story in such a form that he could claim innocence. He was not totally innocent, but given the way things happened, he certainly was not that guilty. The Murders, as he began calling his syndicated radio show shortly after it hit the air, had placed him in tight spots before, and there was a crew of legal professionals – a jury of lawyers – that were all on retainer by the group that owned radio station KCI, the syndicator and air personality. Still, the whole thing reeked of the Arab street; of something not done in the United States since the Harding administration – though even the relatively recent immigrant from east-central Europe knew better - and an ugly side of human nature that made him want to vomit. There was already plenty of that, but the sight of Herk McKay sitting there in the war room of KCI’s premiere syndicated program, The Radio Murders, and laying out the plan, the event, while seriously entertaining the sideshows, as he called them, was enough to send Bill “Crash” Kradich back to his huge bathroom, face-first into the custom made crapper. Again.

“A Sound-Off, that’s what it was called initially. A sponsored event that would allow a frustrated audience of the Radio Murders to take part in the system.” Kradich fought the nausea and began again. “McKay said it was a natural extension to the things we had already done. That a normal concert was not good enough, that we needed matching marketing in order to meet expectations. ‘You wouldn’t send a Winston Cup crowd to a fashion show in mid-town, now would you?’ he argued. I have to admit, it sounded convincing, but…” The recording paused. He looked at the brick of a book on his nightstand, a recent presidential memoir. “There’s no fucking way.” Everybody’s guilty but me. The position took in the volume – something he had tried to read many times and now just used it as a prop for the many female visitors to his bedroom, it never failed to initiate a certain activity – was that every bad deed had a mitigating person, place or thing. He did not want a rationale in the account, nor did he want a confession, I have nothing to confess! What he was going for is the truth, and it was not easy. Kradich was the one on stage in the beginning and it was his face and the unique, shadowy behavior of his audience that provided the backdrop.

He started again. “There was never any intent in using this radio show to promote murder. But like all entertainment vehicles, one must promote. The problem was how to increase market share, in over five hundred markets simultaneously, and maintain the image of a legally responsible service.” The pause button was becoming his best friend. Crash thought about the way it all came about; how Herk McKay was brought in. He appeared to the radio host much as the Tasmanian Devil from the cartoons, The Warner-owned image of all arms and legs, swirling in a frenzy of aimless energy except to devour whatever was in his way. Herk, once hired by a GM or group owner, was exactly that. It was as though he had been given a license to move the furniture, or transplant a personality, in all he saw.

And it was all about image. “Sixty percent of something,” was his mantra. If the phrase was uttered once it was tagged onto an idea or an event a hundred times. Herk had flashcards made up of easily recognizable people. One was the president of Afghanistan, another was Tim McGraw, and another was one of the winners of American Idol, Ruben something. There were images of Hitler, Lincoln and Salvador Dali. As he flashed the cards he would ask, “who are they and why.” It was a question often met with confusion and wonder. But the point was made that if the person was recognized at all, it was because of a consistent image; something that took up the majority of their appearance and was closely identified to that famous person. For Hamid Karzai it was the lamb’s pelt papakha and green cloak that set him apart. For the artist it was the impossibly insected moustache and wild eyes. For the country singer it was the black hat, and on and on. Herk would explain long past the time the observer fully understood his point. “See, sixty percent of something - and their image is sealed in the minds of the witness. It was there then, while they were building their fame, and it is still there through the noise of history.”

If there was anything that made Herk McKay a very wealthy man it was his understanding of noise and how to cut through. But it was one thing to put together free concert and revive bands and images from drug-induced comas – tunes and men who were kept barely alive by oldies weekends ASCAP payoffs – it was quite another to draw events for the intellectual property of Murder Radio. “Even a complex life is made up of simple things, there’s just more of ‘em,” he would say in response to almost any question. Herk made a living by not answering questions, rather prompting the person on the other end of the query to believe he had stumbled into new-found genius and the solution to the problem, even if doing so consisted solely of hiring the outside consultant. Hercules McKay was the answer to your prayers. A flimflam man with magic eyes and ears that can convert the mundane into the spectacular, the invisible into the inescapable and the forgettable into monumental. Kradich often thought that McKay should have such a sentiment subheading his business card. But within the first three minutes of meeting the man, anyone with a budget and a need for exposure would get the idea, in no uncertain terms. With all his shortcomings – Herk stood barely five feet five, with the body image of a fourteen-year old boy – that phrase, like pepper in oatmeal, was the one thing that annoyed Bill Kradich the most. Why not just, ‘for certain,’’ without a doubt’ or even ‘for sure,’ anything in the pantheon of clichés that could serve the meaning and the moment. But as probable as the clock striking noon at twelve PM, “In no uncertain terms,” would spring from his mouth and cap a comment that needed no such closure.

“I feel like one of those poor fucks who got caught in a littoral current, just in sight of the beach, but hopelessly moving away from safety and into dangerous waters.” He stopped the tape again, “sound like a goddamn art house voice-over, huffin’ clichés and saying nothing.” Kradich dropped his head, his chin almost touching his bare chest, local hairs – beard and body - competing for sensation. It was eleven thirty on a Sunday in August. Normally, a willing young beauty would have picked up where she left off Saturday night and engage Crash in whatever diversion he might suggest. But he was in no mood and had not been for some time. Sex was the last thing on Kradich’s mind and except for the standing Friday evening appointment with a married, twenty-two year old who was ‘kinky as all hell,’ he just didn’t seem interested. This Sunday morning seemed too quiet and he was letting every noise from the condo relentlessly and violently penetrate his fears; until the phone rang. Then he was terrified.

“Mr. Kradich? This is the Special Agent Sciarabba with the FBI. We’re in your lobby. We really need to talk.”

“Do you have a warrant?” Kradich slipped on a tee-shirt, taking the phone from his face long enough for a second thought. “You know what, forget I said that. Tell Bert to let you up.” He hung up the phone and looked around the apartment. He had been clean and sober for more than two years, yet when faced with law enforcement paying a visit, he still had the guilty mind of a drug abusing felon. He raised the recorder to his lips. “To be continued.”

The prospect of federal detention was not something he wanted to face, especially for something over which he had no control. But there was a stark possibility that the ride was over and before Monday morning he was to be a man in a controlled environment. Crash Kradich suddenly broke out in a laugh. The thought occurred to him that he had beaten the odds, gotten away with murder and made a living – a very good living – on the tide of homicidal tendencies. Now he faced the ultimate judgment, all because of a special event, a little suggestion made by the man behind the curtain, pay no attention to that man! I am the wizard! the man who called himself a marketing genius and an event specialist. The laughter continued as Kradich made his way to the kitchen and started coffee for the federal agents who were seconds from his hardwood double doors. Who else in America could manage such a feat, such a stunt that was perfect for The Murders? Who else could pull off a spectacle that was once the Friday Night Social Event in Center, Texas; Fayette, Missouri; Trenton, Georgia; Anadarko, Oklahoma; Pritchard Station, Alabama, Owensboro, Kentucky and 4,743 other locations – in all parts of the nation - through the first half of the 20th century?

“It will usher in a new day!” Herk said in his usual excited manner; eyes darting from person to person and small hands flipping in the air as though he could take flight. “The people want this! I can feel it in my bones. Just like millions tune in to our show to hear the minds of a killer ticking until he’s either caught or commits.”

Our show? Crash and his executive producer Dani Drabek listened with stark amazement. When did The Radio Murders become anything by the reluctant creation of me and serendipity? He wanted to bounce McKay from the office right then and there. Looking back now, he recognized the wisdom in that first impulse. But he didn’t and the plan went forward. No one in that room ever dreamed that he could pull it off. But no one did a thing to stop him, either. One year later the deed was almost done and it took everyone by surprise.

“Sixty percent of something.” He mumbled into the bag of deeply aromatic grounds. “Sixty percent fucked.” The gentle chimes echoed through the three thousand square feet of luxury living. Kradich looked at the doors and then tried to take in the rest of his personal space. So much to lose, he thought, as he shuffled toward the door.

Full Body Cast

Back to school; it was as good as Christmas for most parents and retailers. For most kids, especially the tight jean’d girls and loose jean’d boys, it was quite the opposite. But the common denominator was a trip to the mall and an afternoon with – in most cases – mom.

This mall was one of the few named locations that lined the bottoms of boutique bags along with London, Paris, Milan and New York. Most who carted the tiny black sacks to the valet station in those cities would not suspect that Crestgate was a suburb of Cleveland. Heaven forbid the post-metro-sexual/chemo-sexual don’t-call-me-an-executive executives who approved the non-design would ever think of putting that rustbelt capital on their packaging. Yet there it was, Crestgate, more specifically Crestgate Place. As though the more mundane a geographical marker the more extraordinary the place, this Place.

And there were valets, older men who retired from Chrysler or forced into partial pensions from LTV and still called it Republic Steel, or were doing just fine, thank you, but had to get out of the house. Driving rich older women’s luxury sedan’s and SUV’s was hardly work. There were also the hordes of those who liked the tags or the conversation that placed them in The Place in order to find the closest thing to up-to-date in this largely off-white collar struggling community that was only recognized during Presidential elections, or when another plant closed, or when another floor of workers from a gray-glass complex was relocated to Delhi. A quick scan of the food court, the wide-angled corridors and the sun-filled structures and the well displayed shops, one could easily imagine these were the wives, daughters and sons of the men who made the hard choices and sliced off a piece of labor cost to float halfway around the globe in favor of greater profits. These were the families of the quiet boom that America had not recovered from and that continues unabated.

The event that was talked about for weeks, and oddly quieted in seconds, happened on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in mid-August. The depth-charge sized concrete barriers were a familiar sight around the entry ways and other glass-lined sections of the building. Most of the younger shoppers barely noticed their strategic locations. They had become part of their daily canvas.

Emily Sutton noticed everyday until that day. She made a point of stubbing her cigarette, making a dirty mess of the nearest pillar, four times in a work day when she allows her only vice. Emily remembered when the hardened mounds were put in. The mall information desk was her post since The Place opened in 1979. Things were much different then, she would quickly tell an interested visitor. “The clothes were fabulous and we had a piano player, right over there.” Emily motioned toward the section beneath the fourteen-foot tall wrought iron clock tower, a nook that was converted into a custard stand. “Cars could pull right up to the door,” her head quickly bounding back toward the near-by exterior doors. “Families would pile out while dad found a parking space. Now you have to walk a block just to get from the curb to the door. Looks like the Brandenburg Gate, the miskayt hunks of concrete. And the tsimmes they made! The fuss over barricades, barricades! I had to move five times while they figured out what to do. For what? To protect us? From what?” A visitor could try to move on, but Emily had a way of keeping one’s attention. “They should protect us from the shtarke if you ask me, the thugs, black and white, makes no difference. Kids with their pants half off their asses, girls with their beautiful bodies all pierced and drawn on like a bad coloring book. It’s disgraceful, but no, we need protection from Osama with permanent garbage cans outside the door.”

The visitor could get away with a simple check of his watch and a thank you. It was getting late, and the young man, the visitor with a single question about the mall hours, worked a pained look on his face, fitting the surgical plastic and steel that started at his chin and worked its way – one presumed under clothing - to just below the hip joint. His wife also listened politely to the monologue. A pretty-faced girl dressed in the tradition of hijab, flowing garments that swallowed any hint of the woman beneath, but with slight makeup framed in the soft beige khimar. The delicately folded scarf hid her ears, hair and neck, yet added to the mysterious and thus to her beauty. Emily bent over the chest-high counter to get a look at the baby in the stroller, but all she could see was a tiny mound beneath fluffy blankets. Thank you again, the stranger said in his youthful, respectful tone and hurried his family into the mall.

Emily watched as the flow of spoiled suburbia chattered in, either spouting aimless excitement to their companions or, more often than not, jabbering into tiny phones pressed to their ears.

A delivery man stopped at the desk to inquire about the pick-up point for uniforms. Emily Sutton was about to read him the riot act; tell him that this was the public entrance and he should know better.

But the man did something Emily was not ready for: he ran. Fear and panic seized his dark features, and his entire body, and he ran into the mall knocking over teenaged girls and old women, torpedoing three large, black boys who were about to give chase.

“What in the world…” Emily traced the man’s path, back from her desk, back through the twelve-foot high triple glass doors, past the benches and wide tree planters where the gatherings continued, ignoring the concrete intruders and all the way to the illegally parked truck. Emily learned long ago, somewhere in her seventy three years, not to trust her eyes. For some reason, she thought of Lot’s wife. The image of an old woman, dressed something like the young mother with the stroller and the body-braced husband, looking back at the final judgment, was one of a million, a hundred million things that smothered her senses and confounded the true sight she saw coming from the outside. But when she watched as the uniform company logo on the side of the truck began to bubble and melt, there was no time to doubt what she was seeing. For Emily and three hundred twenty seven other innocent mothers, wives, daughters and sons, time was up.

Jimmy Bukhari held onto his wife’s hand and watched the clock high above the food court floor. It is not time, the plans had been worked up for eighteen months. It was not time. There was supposed to be time enough for Shari, the activist who played his wife for this mission, to make it to the far anchor department store with the additional explosives stored in the bottom of the carriage. Jimmy was supposed to be on the upper floor, near the support wall before he sent a twelve volt charge into the primer that would excite the section of his body brace that consisted of almost ten pounds of C4 explosives.

It certainly was not time, because the two watched their associate - a man they had known only as UDM, for uniform delivery man – run past the escalator, upsetting the crowd and drawing attention along the way. He was not supposed to run. His instructions were to stand by his post, awaiting word that the others were in place before pressing the small red button hidden in his cargo shorts. But preserving his life overwhelmed the mission and he waited until he was near the clock tower before sending the signal to his truck to self destruct.

The thermo-chemical reaction took one quarter second to thrust fourteen tons of concussive force and sixteen-hundred degrees of heat mainly outward from the right side of the panel truck; the side not fortified, but laden with shelves of ball bearings, tin scraps, nails and rat poison. The left side of the vehicle, the side facing the parking lot, was lined with bricks of iron weights, the kind used in weightlifting machines. But to the souls near the vehicle, the precise construction did not matter. It was hell delivered in a uniform panel truck.

In the parking lot, cars and people were pelted by fast moving missiles of nearly molten iron that pushed everything in an outward direction, igniting secondary explosions from ruptured gas tanks. Twenty three people, including eight children were immediately and mercifully cut down by the onslaught. It was the fourteen who were far enough away to be sprayed with gasoline and glass who were the unlucky ones. Clothing and skin ignited in the searing heat of the fire driven air; bodies forced to ride the wave back hundreds of feet, dragging the asphalt until settling, in some cases, on blood and bone. The fire still ravishing what was left of pain sensors and shock or death providing the only relief.

That was the bulwark side.

As Emily Sutton watched, the interstice grew to devour the truck, the trees and – were her eyes able to handle the sight - people with a white flash and heat and sparkling debris. She saw images of her grand children and the house in which she and her husband, I hope he’s waiting, raised a life and family. Then the entire plaza of The Place was consumed in a black laced ball of red. The large wall of doors and glass that served as her portal on the tiny part of the world outside the mall dissolved into unstoppable powder of caustic power. Emily heard nothing that afternoon as the swell overcame her post and moved on to the body lotion store, the bank and into the food court, slamming two-foot cylinders of support into one another as they gave way to the destructive tide. None of the one hundred and twenty-one people immediately put to death by the initial torrent heard a thing. And only a few – the ones facing the doors while they bit into their chicken wraps, burgers or scooped their fried rice – saw the final footprint approach.

The blast punched the wall of the mall in like a child’s finger in a toy balloon, reducing stone and steel into fluid ripples that buried and ripped the dead as quickly as it killed them. Speeding, white-hot glass was the head of the horrible spear, cutting down anything and everything in a scoring swirl that at once seemed to have little presence, yet disrupted all in its path. Then the heavy material gathered and flung by the concussive air finished the job with ethereal efficiency.

The young man watched the scene from beneath the clock tower. He did not notice the woman leaving his side, her hand was still in his, but the rest of her was in the path of a speeding semi-intact concrete ingot support pillar, and the arm, along with the rest of her body was deconstructed and carried into the woman’s clothing store fifty feet behind them. Miraculously, the baby stroller did not move, but was doused by a frothing stream that was dislodged from the wishing well. The carriage, the explosives and the lifelike doll were held in place by opposing forces of water and debris. But it was the escalator, closed for repairs, which provided some cover for the man in the booby trapped body brace. He was not spared the flood of liquid, part water from the fountain and part fluids bursting from patrons who had been reduced to the primary ooze that truly is the physical nature of the human body. The scene flowed toward him: faces in casual expressions with no time to react to the burning dislodgement; other body parts in a macabre swim through the instant upheaval; and softball-sized crumbs of concrete, some painted with that phenomenon that the human eye does to make clumps of stone into features and were distinguishable from the real flesh by friction igniting glow and incredible speed. This should have brought elation. Paradise is at hand. But all he could feel was fear and remorse. His eyes, weary of the half-second horror, gazed down at the stump held tightly; fingers meshed into his, but only shredded flesh just above the wrist. The fingers would not let go, even though he tried to shake them free. The hand of death was holding back his hand of even greater destruction, the hand needed to set off the plastique embedded in the body brace. By then it was too late; the concussion had reached the skylight. Jimmy looked up as the noise of the initial explosion reached his ears and the crash from above seemed somehow out of place.

They say you never see it coming, the thing that ends your life. It is an unexplored notion and doomed to remain so among the living. Jimmy Bukhari, were he able to tell anyone, could disprove the assumption. He saw the ten-foot wedge of glass, supporting wire frayed and exposed, as it plunged toward him. There was just enough energy in his soon severed brain stem to witness the massive shard, propelled by unrelenting gravity, enter just at the corner his left eye and not stop until it had neatly dissected him. The accidental glass guillotine blade continued on into the pulverized stone tiles beneath his feet. Jimmy let out a little groan, involuntarily expelled from his bifurcated lungs, and his body, held together only by the tightly wrapped support structure that was used as an ingenious ploy for sympathy and apathy, shuttered at the assault. While catastrophe continued around him, all personal function, knowledge and beliefs ceased.

That is the way they found him. In a heart wrenching gallery of twisted form - people smeared and baked beyond recognition - organic and mineral, all inanimate by the time rescue workers arrived, Jimmy was the most startling display. A smashed, but intact giant finger of glass somehow pointing, detaining and horribly executing the man, it was later discovered, with the girdle of explosives that could have tripled the death toll had he been able to detonate. First responders stood, thousand-yard stares ringed with debris and tears, looking at the centerpiece of broken calm, blanched by the sunlit haze of the still smoldering ruin. It was too strange to comprehend and many just could not mentally register the sight. If asked they would see nothing. Those who did would never escape the image; it would haunt their nights from this day forth.

It was good they would never know the real meaning of the young man in the full body cast. They would never be told of the danger this image of abaddon still contained in his bodysuit.

That information, along with the actual source of the explosion, remained tightly held.

Geoffrey Bowen stared at the crime scene photo of Jimmy Bukhari for a long time. The shot was taken with fill light from the National’s crime scene specialist’s camera and intensified by the still roaming dust that illuminated the rays from the broken skylight. The other men - and they were all men - around the table were busy arguing about the best way for the infant agency, the National Agency for Law Enforcement, to contain what appeared to be the nation’s first suicide bombing at a mall. The attack, or crime as Assistant Director Bowen liked to refer to it, was less than twenty four hours old, and the ten fire companies, six police forces and six federal agencies, all first responders, were on the bubble. The National had trained for this and plans were in place, but no one really understood what dealing with a real event would bring; not completely.

“Wasn’t that long ago we’d have a panic on our hands.” One of the arguing voices caught Bowen’s ear.

“That’s exactly what we are here to prevent.” The room quieted as Bowen’s soft, slightly tremulous voice cut through the clutter. “I don’t have to tell you that we are part of the New Normal, the way it has to be if we are to survive an enemy with no nation, no uniforms and no regard for life, not his own, not the innocent and not even his family.” He frisbee’d the picture onto the table. “This man is our key. In spite of the death toll, he failed. The woman he was with also failed.” Bowen searched the eyes of the other men, all new to the agency and all from various backgrounds in government service. “Someone did not fail and I want to know who that is.”

“The truck out front was the ignition point.” A man who had once worked the arson squad for New York City spoke up.

“Good, can we tell where this truck originated, or at least where it was supposed to have originated?” Bowen’s nonexistent upper lip curved downward with the question.

“Uniform company.” A man, younger than most around the table, spoke into his notes. “Got a driver making another deliver, said he remember seeing a uniform truck illegally parked. Didn’t make the connection about that being the source of the explosion.”

“Any chance he’ll leak that bit of news?”

“No.” Everyone around the table knew what that meant. “Caught one of the weights that was apparently used to counter-direct the blast. He lived only a few hours after getting to the hospital.”

The room fell silent, but only for seconds.

“Is this the cherry-pop, chief?” The next senior at the table, Gino Sciarabba known as G2, was the only one bold enough to state the obvious. He just happened to be a world class weight lifter and filled his off-the-rack suit to seam stretching limits in some places, while cinching in others.

“That…is a call above my pay grade.” Bowen held his round-eyed, asymmetric stare on each man around the table. “But for now, we control the news about this. My gut is the pub is not ready for what this appears to be.”

“You mean what this was.” The statement was too muffled to assign to any of the meeting’s participants.

“Do we know if the driver of the source vehicle was killed in the blast?” Nothing. “Pretty important, don’t you think?” The men remained silent. Director Bowen stood and pulled at his collar, adjusting the shirt from riding back on his slumped shoulders. “Find him, or find his body. That’s all.”

“What’s the cover, Geoff?” The New York accent asked.

“You know the drill, this was tailor made. Gas explosion. Keep the evacuation another twenty four hours at least. PUCO has been alerted and our guys there are on the backstory. I’m on my way to talk to the FD and arson investigators. You guys find that uniform delivery guy.” He leaned over and brought the picture of the man with the giant glass partition back to his stack of papers. “This could have been a lot worse, gentlemen. I want to find out who their friends are before they get another chance.” Bowen left the stack where it was and walked through double glass doors.

G2 gathered the papers and with a single moment of eye contact, sent the rest of the conference into action.

“This won’t be easy, Geoff.” The large man with a bulky build and a thoughtful calm in his dark features placed the stack of papers in a solid-looking cabinet and locked the drawer. “There were at least a hundred and fifty first responders and citizens at the scene.”

“I know.” Bowen was scratching the permanently raised left eyebrow. “The next one will be even harder to…redirect. So we’d better shorten the learning curve and stop it from happening.”

“This guy with the brace, he had enough C4 on him to bring down half the mall.”

“And the baby carriage bomb would have taken down the other half. What we have here is a primer,” Bowen dropped a finger on a wide shot of destruction of what was once the front entrance to the mall. “A three-hundred-twenty-seven-dead primer. They’re getting very bold, Gino, and very scary.”

“They’ve always been scary.”

They Have it at Target

One year later
The Truman Home, St Paul, MN

“I hate the way you stew tea.” Dani Drabek took a sip from the steaming cup and squinted behind narrow, black frames.

“I hate that you are so skinny. ‘Snat healthy.” Sheila Truman examined her daughter. She was careful not to unload one of the many truly hurtful things about her eldest that she found unacceptable; that she hated. “Ya’ look like three balloons on a stick.” The older woman watched and waited for her Dani’s deadpan expression to transmit from the breakfast table. “Wid’ arms.”

“You are so full of it.” The younger woman stood and maneuvered to the sink, she wedged her mother to the side with narrow, but remarkably powerful hips and poured the tea down the drain. It was not as easy as it looked; her mom was just a little taller than the five-foot- three, infrequent visitor but easily had a sixty-pound advantage. “And you should talk about weight. You look like every other woman pushing a red cart at Target with a weight-watcher’s horror story.”

“I’ll have you know I’ve lost a few pounds.” Sheila stood to the side, holding a small towel on the counter and waiting for the next quip.

“Uh-huh.” Dani looked over her glasses at her mother’s face, close enough not to require the myopic correction of the in-the-moment fashion eye wear. “It doesn’t matter, everybody’s fat in this state. Jesus we may’s well be Wisconsin.”

“You used to like it here.”

“I never liked it here. You must be confusing me with Hanni. Where is the little whore, anyway?” The younger sister button was always an option.

“Hannah is out, had some errands to run. And you can just leave that language back in Chacahga, won’t have it here.” The orange juice seemed to retrieve itself from the refrigerator. Dani did not want it, but poured half a cup to please her mother.

“You should hear what she calls me.”

“Your sister loves and respects you, cha’ know. And you can at least be civil while you’re here.” She looked around for something to clean. “It is my birthday.”

Dani watched the sadness fall on her mom’s tired face; the sunny disposition dropping in a heartbeat and replaced by equal amounts of fear, self doubt and entitlement. It was an instant that happened around The Cities and the state a million times, and often giving strangers a jolt of reality that confounds that image of friendly accommodation. Minnesota was something of an island in a part of the country that was at once secured in the blanket of a nation, yet had a ready escape route to the north should things get too complicated. The people, as homogenous as anyplace, seemed to infect even the Southeast Asians and the few of African decent – both generations removed and transplanted from desperate placed like Eritrea. Sharing the Scandinavian Diaspora was like living in a petri dish culturing the same odd duplicity. For every one of the ten thousand lakes, the point of great pride and a unique slogan for the edges of car-tags, there were a thousand souls drowning in the rush to the bottom, the level playing field that celebrated normalcy and labeled everything else abhorrent. These observations, formed in a short lifetime of fighting - and after a liberal arts college education that failed to live up to its claims - finally sent the young woman to the city. And a target worse, in her mother’s eyes: radio.

On the surface, Sheila was fine with her daughters’ personal choices, but it only took a scratch of an ill-timed word to reveal the truth. The two, conceived by the same couple, were as different as possible. Dani was the dark and brooding type who gravitated to anything that was outside of the perceived normal, while Hanni was determined to be the very image of St. Paul Pure. Her light brown hair was streaked blond in middle school, and her large, blue eyes seemed made for viewing from the outside in, rather than a function of sight. Hanni was the cheerleader; Dani was Ophelia in the ambitions and wildly unsuccessful attempt at high school Shakespeare. Hanni loved boys and elevated teasing to a near Olympic event; Dani was sexually active and discovered she liked girls as much – or better - than boys before she was old enough to drive. Hanni was a single mother at twenty. Dani was single, childless and by her thirty second birthday a millionaire executive producer of a syndicated radio show and program director in the nation’s third largest market.

It was difficult for Sheila to tell which of her daughters was happier. Her grandson was ten and already a handful. She was thankful for the second chance to help raise a boy, but the arrangement cost a second marriage. (Harry Truman, a raw nerve by adulthood from constant teasing, was not up to being an instant grandfather. Truth be known - and it never was - Hanni’s constant flirting was getting to him.) The girls’ father, Daniel Drabek, had disappeared before Dani was five and her sister was still a newborn. Sheila never understood what chased him away, but she was not about to go to her father for help. Not then, so she managed to find work and a circle of friends in the Minnesota capital to help her get by.

The irony of her father’s request to move in with her three months earlier was lost in the confusion of four generations under the same small roof. It was not lost on Dani, whose visits became more infrequent since the old man’s arrival.

“Soaks out the caffeine.” Sheila said to the sink and the sparkling-clean counter. “You shouldn’t have so much. Caffeine, I mean.”

“I’m sorry, mom. I can be such a bitch sometimes.” Pulp! Shit. She downed the orange juice and quickly poured a glass of spring water from a jug near the sink.

“No, no. I shouldn’t push.”

Dani set down her glass and held her mother close.

“I tried my best with you girls. If only your father…”

“Don’t, mom. You were a great parent. You gave us everything we ever wanted.”

“Then you tell me why, Daniella? Why are we here?”

“You mean why are you guys here, or why am I here?” She did not wait for a reply. “We’re here because I needed to come home, at least for a few days. That’s why we’re here.”

“You know what I mean. Was it your grandfather? He was trouble then and still is now.” She pulled from her daughter’s embrace and straightened her apron. “I should never have sent you up there all those summers. He was such a bad, bad man, then. All that hate.” Sheila peeked around the small wall that propped up the kitchen door. She lowered her voice. “And hiding behind the bible and that shack he called a church. It was horrible.”

“But he was my grandfather, still is, and you needed some time. Believe me, mom, even when I was just a kid, I saw it for what it was.”

“Did you? You’re not just saying that because…because of what’s happening.”

“No, I am not just saying it to make you, or me feel better. What’s done is done.” No turning back now. “I’m a big girl. I know what I’m doing.”

Not certain where the pronouncement was directed – it seemed as though Dani was telling herself as much as her mother - Sheila took a deep breath. “There’s still a chance. Tell me there’s still a chance that you won’t go through with it.”

“We have permission.”

“Hannah said on the news, they said it didn’t matter. That it was still…”

“Murder?” Dani turned and went back to the small kitchenette. “It is not murder, mom.” The glass of spring water was warming in the streaks of sunlight free-flowing through the spotless windows. “Not even close.” Dani drank the remainder of the water. The liquid did not dissolve the lump in her throat. He volunteered.

The decision to visit her mom and the rest of the family was perfectly timed. Dani needed to get away from Chicago and the intense pressure of putting on a radio show. It was a presentation unlike any ever heard. The first two years of the Radio Murders were marked by both surprising success and horrifying realities. At birth, the concept came in the wake of incredible human suffering and death. But in time that had become commonplace in the minds of the syndicated talk show’s driving force, Bill Kradich and the rest of the staff. The public acceptance of the format was equaled only by the willing participants. Some in law enforcement speculated that the airing of the worst of man actually brought down the incidents of violent crime in the cities where the show was most popular. But there were others who believed that the modern-day broadcast of a Roman Coliseum was merely channeling the hostilities and breeding new forms of depravity. These were the conflicts Dani Drabek hoped to leave behind as she traveled the Wisconsin corridor back to her home town. She was not surprised when the demons followed her up I-94.

Nor was she surprised to find that her mother’s home, once invaded by the family’s dark secret, no longer had the open, airy atmosphere she remembered; that she longed for. It was compartmentalized by her sister’s needs - thick enough to change the very smell of the place - her nephew’s energy and her grandfather’s warped cosmic view.

The former she could handle. They were simply variations on her mother’s approach to life, but the grandfather thing; that was a complete unknown.

Odd, the Candle Maker

Dani knew where to find him. She just was not sure she wanted to, even as she descended the two flights of stairs to the basement apartment. The first thing that struck her was the strong scent of basil citrus and steam heat.

Odd Brauner was nowhere in sight, but she heard tinkering in the small, unfinished room that hid the furnace and laundry. The name, pronounced Ode, was a proud Norwegian homage to the mythic Norse god, Odin. Why Dani’s great-grand parents did not name their only son directly after the god of wisdom and war was beyond her. When she was growing up, the name seemed to match the unusual stories and beliefs with which her grandfather would fill the visits. Dani was about to call out, Opa? but stopped when she heard the old man’s voice. It was a new experience for her, the voice. There was a tender, almost gentle nature to the otherwise jagged-edged tones.

“Temperature, always watch the temperature, little son”

Dani rounded the corner, going from neatly paneled space to wall-less, roughed-out studs and crossbeams surrounding a man and small boy. Odd Brauner was bullet-headed, bowlegged – in laughable plaid shorts - and unruly at the center. He reminded Dani, standing next to the bubbling pan on the banquet burner, like a paper lantern, the kind with the large metal ring in the center that serves as support for the flimsy structure. But there was nothing flimsy about Reverend Odd Brauner. Even at eighty two, he presented arms that could crush a man’s head and a barrel chest that housed muscle mass not entirely discounted by layers of fat.

“Must be at least two-hundred degrees. Any less, you don’t get the texture you want, more is okay, but you don’t want to burn your mold.”

Dani had forgotten how silly the minimal mouth movement of the Minnesota dialect sounded on a cement truck of a man, at least to her ears; and hearing her grandfather being kind to a small boy, a man who’s every word was once laced with bible verse and contemporary distortion, was almost noisome.

“So this is how you’ve been keeping busy, now that you are down from the pulpit.” Dani managed a frightened smile.

“Aunt Dani!” The young boy, Corey Drabek, ran to his aunt’s chest and gave her a bear hug.

“Jees-oh-man, Corky, you’re almost as tall as me! And only what, ten years old?” Dani addressed her nephew with the nick-name only she was allowed to use.

“Opa says I’m gonna be as big as him one day!” The blond fuzzed head leaned back from Dani’s breasts to accept a kiss on the forehead.

“Let’s hope not so much in the middle.” She peaked over her glasses to see how the friendly swipe went over. Odd had turned to position the extended patch that covered a third of his face. It was not a problem when it was just him and the boy, but he was stung by embarrassment when his seldom seen granddaughter enter the room. “It’s okay, Opa, don’t.”

“Habit.” The old man straightened his back as much as he could and moved toward Dani. “In from the Harlot’s house, eh? Come to see if the old man’s still stirrin’ up the Philistine?” He leaned over his great-grandson, pressing him into Dani with his massive stomach and hugged her shoulders.

“Now that’s the Odd I remember, making with fire and brimstone, not heat coils and paraffin.”

“It’s not paraffin!” Corey un-wedged himself and went back to the melting pot. “It’s palm wax, all natural and really pretty.” He dropped his eyes, trying to remember the latest lesson in candle making. “If you pour it hot enough. See!” Small hands held up a bright yellow octagonal cylinder. “I made this!”

“Very impressive. You just watch, now, you know fire is really dangerous.”

“I know.”

“The boy has plenty of supervision, Daniela. Don’t need no instant momma blowing in off the devils’ breath when she feel like it.” Odd made his way back to the double boiler and turned off the heat. “We’ll let that settle a bit, Corey. Do some more tomorrow. Why don’t you go see if you can help grandma?”

Dani scrubbed the boy’s head as he sped by. “I wasn’t trying…”

“’S’okay, I shouldn’t of jumped. It’s good you come visit.” Odd stared at the translucent, bronze liquid. He thought of how much it looked like good, mellow bourbon, even though it smelled like an orange grove and, to his system, the near boiling point made it just as poisonous. “Trying to be as little burden to your mother as I can.” He let a thick finger rub the mangled skin beneath the patch, but dared not scratch.

“People change, Odd.”

“Have you? Still laying with women, still sinning in the eyes of God?” He took in a deep breath of fragrant additive. “I’m not too old to learn, daughter, it’s the sin, not the sinner I deplore.”

“We aren’t having this debate, Odd.”

“Odd.” He turned his good eye toward the doorway, not really looking at Dani. “Too old, too rich to show respect for one who gave you life? Even if indirectly so.”

“Fine, Opa. If that will make the next day or two go better. I really don’t need conflict right now.”

“There’s no escaping conflict, daughter, not as long as the devil rules the world. Not until the time comes when God takes back what he gifted us, takes it back all broken and fouled and makes it good again.” Odd moved toward the door, extending a hand to guide Dani back to his primary living quarters.

“When did you start making candles?” Little gay for a bible thumping racist? Dani smiled at the private joke.

“I’ve always liked working with malleable things, whether souls, polycarbonates or palm wax, it somehow gives me pleasure.”

Dani sat on the wood framed sofa. She remembered the same piece of furniture from her childhood. It once was the centerpiece of Odd’s rectory: a twelve by sixteen room off the sanctuary of his small church in Wadena, Minnesota. She could still smell the pine from the oils that would accumulate on his clothing after long walks, walks that featured communing with a square fifth of Kentucky whisky as much as God and nature. Dani winced at the hint of vomit and booze she swore was still present on the frequent landing platform for the old preacher, exhausted from prayer and alcohol.

“Merciful Father! Free me from this torment!” Odd screamed as he dropped into a sturdy recliner. The outburst startled Dani, but only for a second. It had been awhile since she was around her family and their ways – especially Odd Brauner’s spontaneous howls to heaven – was something she kept in deep storage. “It’s this penance of a pestilence that has ravaged by face, granddaughter. Its constant itch and pain, the running sores I swear I know what it must have been like to be Pharaoh himself in the day of the Lord!” Odd slapped the palm-sized patch and rolled his good eye toward the ceiling.

“That still bothering you?” Dani tried to imagine being in her grandfather’s place, with a raging infection that eventually lead to major surgery. Doctors struggled to save his eye, but failed, and spent the rest of the eight hours carefully transplanting skin from his thigh, buttock and arm to fashion enough covering that might prevent further damage. Had Odd Brauner done as he was told, the story might have ended there, with a formidable scare across a permanent wink. But, like so many things in his life, he knew better. He stopped taking the antibiotics, shunned the alternately warm and cold compresses and refused the pain relieving ointment prescribed in after-care. The results were massive cell rejection and a series of chemotherapy treatments that left him more disfigured and, along with the IRS reclassification of Odd’s church, destitute.

“I don’t mind being ugly. Man is made ugly by the things he does. Always been a little scary looking. Don’t know what your Oma saw in me. But the claws of demons, that’s what tortures my every waking moment.”

“I’m sorry, Opa.” It was one of the few times when Dani felt impotent. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Tell me you have returned to the church.”

“I will if that’ll make you feel better. But you know it’s a lie.”

“Then tell me about this insanity you are taking on. It cannot be true!” Odd was breathing hard, as though the itching – or fighting the compulsion to scratch – required great exertion.

“I came here to get away from work.” Dani picked up a magazine from the end table, Christian Soldier. An ad for security guards in Iraq caught her eye: $150,000 A YEAR GUARANTEED INCOME!

“Public Justice. Your mother tells me that’s what it’s being called on your radio show.”

Dani flipped the magazine back to the stack and looked, expressionless, at her grandfather. Let’s hear it.

“Vengeance is mine, and recompense. Their foot shall slip in due time. For the day of their calamity is at hand.”

“It’s not vengeance.”

“No? Then what do you call it when a mob takes justice from the hands of the Lord?”

“There is no mob, Opa. It’s just…” Dani had no answer. She wanted desperately to change the subject, but knew that she could not. “What the people want.”

“The people wanted Barabbas.” Odd dropped his head onto his chest and slapped the patch again.

“You know what, Odd, you’re just one, big paper filter for your god’s Mr. Coffee. Nothing gets by you without you turning it into so much biblical brew. This is not Caiaphas plotting against ‘Da Man. It’s what some call the New Normal. And that’s what the people want, a new way to deal with an increasingly dangerous world.” Dani stood and crossed her arms under her breasts. She wished her kick-boxing dummy were near by. Anything! Let me kick anything! There was nothing, just the necessary things her grandfather could pull from the church ahead of the sheriff’s padlock. Books in boxes, mostly bibles and other discredited studies on eugenics, end of days and a hundred different prophesies.

“You think this occasion will make things safer? Are you so blind?”

“I’m not trying to make anything safer.” Dani reached out and felt the six-inch diameter metal pole that served as central support for the entire structure. “I’m trying to make a living.” Her thumb rubbed the layers of paint, and she could remember pre-teen Dani chipping away the original color out of sheer boredom. “And if this is going to get us a few more shares, sign up a couple more markets, then beyond that I don’t give a fuck!”

The old man’s eye watered and raged, snapping Dani from her reminisces. There were few things he would not tolerate from his off spring, and Dani had just uttered one of them. “Daniella, I have trie