That very night, the law clerk drove to Tom Krome's house and shot out the windows with a deer rifle. The judge rewarded him the next morning in chambers with a collegial wink and a thumbs-up. Two days later, though, Arthur Battenkill phoned Champ Powell to irately report that Krome was still communicating with Katie, sending her photographs of an occult nature: weeping statuary. Champ was outraged. With the judge's blessing, he left work early so he could get to the hardware store before it closed. There he purchased twelve gallons of turpentine and a mop. Any experienced arsonist could have told Champ Powell that twelve gallons was excessive and that the fumes alone would knock an elephant on its ass.
But the law clerk had no time for expert consultations. With resolve in his heart and a bandanna over his nostrils, Champ Powell vigorously swabbed the turpentine throughout Tom Krome's house, slicking the floors and walls of each room. He was in the kitchen when he finally passed out, collapsing against the gas stove, groping wildly as he keeled. Naturally his hands latched onto a burner knob and unconsciously twisted it to the "on" position. When the explosion came, it was heard half a mile away. The house burned to the foundation in ninety minutes.
Champ Powell's remains were not discovered until many hours after the blaze had died, when firefighters overturned a half-melted refrigerator and found what appeared to be a charred human jaw. Larger bone fragments and clots of jellied tissue were collected from the debris and placed in a Hefty bag for the medical examiner, who determined that the victim was a white male about six feet tall, in his early thirties. Beyond that, positive identification would be nearly impossible without dental records.
Based on the victim's race, height and approximate age, fire investigators conjectured that the dead body was probably Tom Krome and that he'd been murdered or knocked unconscious when he surprised the arsonist inside his house.
The grisly details of the discovery, and the suspicions surrounding it, were given the following morning to The Register'spolice reporter, who promptly notified the managing editor. Somberly he assembled the newsroom staff and told them what the arson guys had found. The managing editor asked if anybody knew the name of Tom Krome's dentist, but no one did (though a few staff members remarked upon Krome's outstanding smile, cattily speculating that it had to be the handiwork of a specialist). An intern was assigned the task of phoning every dental clinic in town in search of Krome's X-rays. In the meantime, a feature writer was assigned to work on Krome's obituary, just in case. The managing editor said the newspaper should wait as long as possible before running a story but should prepare for the worst. After the meeting, he hurried back to his office and tried to reach Sinclair in Grange. A woman identifying herself as Sinclair's sister reported he was "at the turtle shrine" but offered to take him a message. The managing editor gave her one: "Tell him to call the goddamn office by noon, or start looking for a new job."
As it happened, Champ Powell and Tom Krome had, in addition to their race and physique, one other characteristic in common: a badly chipped occlusal cusp on the number 27 tooth, the right lower canine. Champ Powell had damaged his while drunkenly gnawing the cap off a bottle of Busch at the 1993 Gator Bowl. Tom Krome's chip had been caused by a flying brick during a street riot he was covering in the Bronx.
One of Krome's second cousins, trying to be helpful, mentioned the broken tooth (and its semiheroic origin) to a Registerreporter, who mentioned it to the medical examiner, who dutifully inspected the charred jawbone retrieved from Krome's house. The number 27 canine looked as if it had been busted with a chisel. With confidence, the medical examiner dictated a report that tentatively identified the corpse in the ruins as Tom Krome.
The Registerwould run the news story and sidebar obituary on the front page, beneath a four-column color photograph of Tom Krome. It would be the picture from his press badge – an underexposed head shot, with Tom's hair windblown and his eyes half closed – but Katie would still fall apart when she saw it, dashing to the bedroom in tears. Judge Arthur Battenkill Jr. would remain at the breakfast table and reread the articles several times. Try as he might, he would not be able to recall the condition of Champ Powell's dentition.
Arriving at the courthouse, he would find that for the second consecutive day his eager law clerk hadn't shown up for work. The secretaries would offer to go to Champ's apartment and check on him, but the judge would say it wasn't necessary. He would pretend to recall that Champ had mentioned driving to Cedar Key, to visit his parents. Later Arthur Battenkill Jr. would go alone into his chambers and shut the door. He would put on his black robe, untie his shoes and sit down to figure out what would be worse for him, from the standpoint of culpability – if the burned body belonged to Champ Powell or to Tom Krome.
Either way meant trouble, the judge would reason, but a live Krome was bound to be more trouble than a dead Champ. Arthur Battenkill Jr. would find himself hoping the newspaper was right, hoping it was Krome's barbecued bones that were found in the house, hoping Champ Powell was lying low somewhere – like the savvy ex-cop he was – waiting for things to cool off. He'd probably contact the judge in a day or two, and together they'd invent a plausible alibi. That's how it would go. In the meantime there was Katie, who (between heaving sobs) would accuse Arthur Battenkill Jr. of arranging the cold-blooded murder of her former lover. The judge wouldn't know what to do about that,but he'd find himself wondering whether a new diamond pendant might soothe his wife's anguish.
On his lunch hour he would go out and buy her one.
When they returned to the motel, JoLayne changed to her workout clothes and went for a walk. Tom Krome made some phone calls – to his voice mail at The Register,where his insurance agent had left an oddly urgent message regarding Krome's homeowner policy; to his answering machine at home, which apparently was out of order; to Dick Turnquist, who reported a possible sighting (in, of all places, Jackson Hole, Wyoming) of Krome's future ex-wife.
Krome fell asleep watching a European golf tournament on ESPN. He woke up gasping for air, JoLayne Lucks astride him, jabbing his sides with her supernatural-blue fingernails.
"Hey!" she said. "Hey, you, listen up!"
"Get off – "
"Not until you tell me," she said, "what the hell's going on."
"JoLayne, I can't breathe – "
" 'Helluva risk,' that's what you said. But then it dawned on me: Why in the world would a federal lawman tell you –a newspaper guy, for Lord's sake! – that he's about to commit a break-in. Talk about risk. Talk about stupid."
"JoLayne!"
She shifted some of her weight to her knees, so that Krome could inhale.
"Thank you," he said.
"Welcome."
She leaned forward until they were nose to nose. "He's a smart man, Moffitt is. He wouldn't blab anything so foolish in front of the press unless he knew there wasn't going to be any story. And there's not,is there? That's why you haven't taken out your damn notebook the whole time we've been on the road."
Krome prepared to shield his ribs from a fresh attack. "I told you, I don't write down every little thing."
"Tom Krome, you are full of shit." She planted her butt forcefully on his chest. "Guess what I did? I called Moffitt on his cellular, and guess what he told me. You're not working for the paper now, you're on medical leave. He checked it out."
Krome tried to raise himself up. Medical leave? he thought. That idiot Sinclair – he's managed to muck up a perfectly splendid resignation.