Murder on the Lake of Fire

by Mikel J. Wilson

  Pristine zapped him again with the stun gun, and as soon as she stopped, she dropped the baggie over his head. The mouth of the baggie now rested around the nape of his neck, allowing in precious little air for him to breathe.

  “When you think about it, this is all your fault.” She unbuckled his belt and slipped it from his pants. Wrapping it over the mouth of the baggie, she tightened it around his neck. “You promised me a rich man, but you didn’t quite deliver on that promise. His kids had all the money. That left me no choice. I had to kill Britt and frame Ian so the entire estate would belong solely to Victor and me.”

  “Of course, no matter how much Ian disliked his sister, he truly hated Rick Roberts much, much more, and everyone knew it. I couldn’t frame him for the premeditated murder of his sister without the number-one person on his hit list dying too.”

  Jeff gasped for air as the baggie began to fog. He tried to get his legs to work, but utter exhaustion kept them still.

  Pristine arose again and continued talking as she worked. “My plan had a couple of variables that were not completely within my control.” She plugged the kitchen sink and turned on the faucet. “I could plant evidence pointing to Ian but it had to be subtle enough not to be an obvious setup while still being blatant enough to be noticed. Fine line.”

  Pristine opened the jar of calcium carbide and held it up. “This is amazing stuff, by the way. I’m so glad Ian turned me on to it. It creates a fire that burns extremely hot, destroying all the evidence, even itself.”

  Almost unconscious, Jeff could feel himself slipping away.

  CHAPTER 44

  PRISTINE SPRINKLED THE calcium carbide all over the floor and onto Jeff’s legs. “The good thing is that you’re going to die a hero. You came to see me, to see how I was doing before you left town. You spotted smoke coming from behind the house. Thinking I was in trouble, you rushed into the maid’s house to save me. Instead you found Scot, who had already succumbed to the fire he accidentally started. You tried to get back out, but you became trapped.”

  Pristine put the empty jar by the stun gun and crouched once more beside Jeff. She took a credit card from her pocket and shoved it into Jeff’s. “Just in case someone spots that last transaction. I’ll say that you must’ve come inside the main house first, while I was sleeping upstairs, recovering from being poisoned. You saw my purse in the parlor and took my credit card to claim your precious reward. Knowing you, I don’t believe for a second that you didn’t ask Victor for the money, and he must’ve turned you down. Anyway, while you charged my card, you smelled smoke, which brings us back to the beginning of this little tale of your last minutes on Earth.”

  Seeing his eyes close, she loosened the belt around his neck. “No, not yet. We still have a couple of minutes, and I really want to finish my story.” She pulled the bag off his head and let him gasp in a few breaths.

  As she lowered the bag over his head again, Jeff pleaded, “Don’t…please—”

  Pristine tightened the belt. “The second variable was Victor. I can feel him drifting away from me with each extra minute he spends at work every passing day. I signed an airtight pre-nup. I couldn’t take a chance that he would leave me once his kids were out of the picture, and I certainly wouldn’t be able to arrange an accident for him without putting suspicion squarely on me – at least not anytime soon.

  “When Scot came to me with his idea to start a mini drug empire, it sounded like the perfect Plan B. We developed a five-million-dollar business plan over the next two years. There’s so much money to be made in drugs.”

  Jeff’s eyes drooped shut.

  “That’s all shot now. Thank you very much. Now I have to ensure Victor stays in love with me at least for a couple more years, until I can safely execute an accident for him. I was thinking I’d play up the poison’s impact on me. Play a victim for a year or so, like his first wife. He seems to be attracted to that.”

  As Jeff’s eyes closed for a final time, he saw a strange figure appear, but he couldn’t be sure if it were real or imagined.

  Emory stepped into the kitchen. As soon as he saw Jeff, he ran and rammed Pristine, sending her flying to the floor.

  He fiddled with the belt around Jeff’s neck, but frustrated, he grabbed the bag and ripped it in half.

  “Jeff!” Emory slapped his face again and again.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Pristine coming at him. She picked up the stun gun and was about to aim it at Emory when he grabbed her wrist. He banged her hand against the corner of the counter. She dropped the gun into the sink, which was two inches from being full of water. He flung her to the ground and ordered, “Stay down!”

  Jeff gasped and opened his eyes, wild with anguish.

  Emory ran to his side and crouched beside him to hold his face. “Are you okay?”

  Jeff half-nodded but didn’t speak. Emory unwrapped the duct tape from around his wrists, unaware that Pristine had gone looking for a weapon in the kitchen drawers.

  Instead of a knife, she found a claw hammer. She held it high and lunged for Emory.

  “Behind you!” Jeff croaked.

  Emory turned around and was about to stand when he saw Pristine swinging the hammer around toward the side of his head. He ducked. The hammer slammed the faucet instead, sending the handle bouncing off the backsplash tile before clinking to the floor. Emory wrestled the hammer out of her hand.

  He twisted her arms behind her, drew his handcuffs from his belt and slapped them onto her wrists.

  Jeff began unwrapping the tape around his ankles. “Emory!” He nodded to the powder on the floor. “Calcium carbide.”

  While Pristine ran for the door, Emory looked at the water filling the sink almost to the rim. He tried to turn it off but couldn’t. “She broke the damn faucet handle!”

  “I don’t think I can walk yet,” Jeff told him. “Help me get out of here!”

  Emory saw the water had now reached the rim. “We can’t let this place burn.” He began blowing out the candles. “I don’t have time to get you and Scot both out.”

  Jeff scowled at him. “He’s dead!”

  “He’s evidence.” Emory retorted as he blew out the final candle in the kitchen.

  Jeff freed his legs. “There are more in the living room.”

  Emory ran into the other room to blow out the remaining candles. By the time he returned to the kitchen, Jeff had made it to his feet and was walking out. “We need to go! The water’s overflowing onto the floor.”

  Emory returned to his side. “We’re fine. There’s no flame to ignite the acetylene gas.”

  Jeff threw his right arm over Emory’s shoulder, and the two walked from the house. Once they were about fifty feet from the maid’s house, Jeff pointed at the main house. “Look.”

  Pristine was trying her best to open the back door to the house but finding it very difficult with her hands cuffed behind her back.

  “I better get her,” Emory said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Jeff looked down and saw smoke rising from his pant legs. “Emory!”

  Emory realized the snow was melting on Jeff’s pants and mixing with the calcium carbide powder stuck to them.

  “Oh my god!” Jeff screamed. “I’m going to catch fire!” His fingers fumbled as he hurried to unbuttoned his pants.

  Emory laughed and told him, “You’re fine. Seriously. The gas isn’t going to ignite as long as you don’t get near an open flame.”

  BOOM!

  An explosion caused them both to duck and cover their heads. The maid’s house erupted into a fireball, raining flaming shrapnel all around them.

  Emory looked at Jeff and yelled, “Take off your clothes!”

  Jeff pulled off his shirt and kicked off his shoes with as much force as he could. He pushed his pants down and tried to get them from around his ankles, but he lost his balance. He fell backwards onto Emory, whose back hit the snowy ground.

  “I forgot the pilot light,” Emory muttere
d.

  Jeff turned his body around to straddle Emory, planting a hand on the ground beside each of his shoulders. “You forgot?! You were in no hurry to get out that house. You could’ve killed us both!”

  As Jeff yelled in his face, Emory smiled.

  “Don’t smile. I’m mad at you.”

  “Look up. It’s snowing.”

  “That’s ash.” Still on top of Emory, Jeff craned his neck toward the dark sky, now peppered with falling snow. “You’re right.”

  Emory raised his hands to the sides of Jeff’s cold and goosebumpy torso. As the PI faced him again, Emory’s gaze traveled from his blue boxer shorts up to his six-pack and striated chest before locking on his green eyes. “You are just stunning.”

  Jeff dropped his chest onto Emory’s. “Compliments? Is that how you wiggle out of an argument?”

  Emory shrugged. “It’s a new tactic I’m trying.”

  Jeff smiled, his lips now an inch from Emory’s. “I think it’s working.”

  Emory locked his arms across Jeff’s bare back and kissed him. A moment later, when their lips smacked apart, he felt Jeff shiver. “You’re freezing. Take my jacket.”

  Jeff pushed off him and stood, his pants still at his ankles.

  Before Emory could make it to his feet, he saw someone approaching. Wayne walked toward them with his hand vised around Pristine’s arm and Deputy Harris at his side.

  CHAPTER 45

  THE SHERIFF’S STATION on Monday evening was livelier than it had been in eight years, as enthusiastic debriefs and verbal backslapping filled the coffee-scented air. While Deputy Loggins booked Pristine, the nightshift deputies had arrived, and they joined the sheriff, Deputy Harris, Wayne and Victor in listening to Emory and Jeff relate in feverish detail the events of the evening and all unanswered questions involving the murder of three Barter Ridge residents, as well as the attempted murder of the PI. Wayne didn’t look at either of them, and he had grunted maybe two words to Emory after catching him kissing Jeff. Ian, now released and no longer a suspect in any of the crimes, sat on the bench by the front door, listening with his eyes on the floor.

  Jeff rubbed his aching neck, bright red and welted from the numerous electric shocks he had endured. Now barefoot, he wore an old deputy uniform shirt and pants that Sheriff Rome found in a cabinet, but the clothes were, of course, too small for him. Emory had also given him his jacket to wear, telling him, “Try not to stretch out the shoulders.”

  Jeff explained how he figured out that Pristine was involved in the drug scheme, and he told them about her confessing to the killings and her attempt on his life.

  Victor seemed to have regressed into an emotional numbness that kept his face stuck in desolation. Every once in a while, he shook his head and moved his lips for lamentations like, “I can’t believe I married that woman,” and, “She destroyed my life.”

  Jeff told Emory, “I still don’t know how you found out about Pristine.”

  Emory pointed to his dad. “It was the snake handlers. Dad told me about the controversy that surrounded their arrival here a year ago.”

  “Got that right,” said Deputy Harris. “Those freaks should’ve never come to this town.”

  “Stop being a bigot, Deputy,” ordered Sheriff Rome. “They have a right to their religion, same as you.”

  Emory continued, “I imagine the news stories about them included some of their rituals.” The sheriff nodded. “They drink strychnine during their services, but they don’t just pick it up one day and take a swig, hoping it doesn’t kill them. They build up a tolerance by ingesting a little at a time over months or years.”

  Victor said, “Pristine’s not a snake handler.”

  “No, but I think that’s what gave her the idea to fake her own poisoning with strychnine.”

  Victor asked, “Why would she poison herself?”

  “To throw suspicion off her by making us think that whoever killed Britt and Rick was after her too.”

  Jeff shook his head. “I was there when she took the strychnine. Her reaction looked real to me.”

  Emory said, “I think she ingested more than she anticipated. Regardless, the amount of strychnine she ingested would’ve killed someone who hadn’t built up a tolerance to it. I took some of Pristine’s hair from her hairbrush when she was in the hospital, and I gave it to the lab for testing. I got the call from Cathy when I was interviewing Ian, and she told me that Pristine had been taking strychnine for at least eleven months.”

  Jeff said, “So that’s how you knew I was in trouble.”

  Emory nodded before asking Wayne and Deputy Harris, “How did you end up at Victor’s house?”

  Deputy Harris responded, “We thought Scot might’ve rented a car so we checked the only rental place in town. He used a fake credit card and ID, but the clerk recognized his picture when we showed it to him. The car he rented had a tracking system, and we found it parked in the woods, just off the road near the driveway to the Algarotti house. We thought he might’ve gone there to get revenge on Victor. When we got to the house, we heard the explosion.”

  The next second, all eyes turned to the same face. Deputy Loggins had returned to the room with Pristine.

  “Victor!” Pristine called with her cuffed hands reaching out for him.

  To Emory’s surprise, Victor advanced toward her. With each step he took, the emotions that he appeared to have dammed up inside him seeped through expanding cracks until the wall crumbled as he stood before her.

  “Pristine, why?” he asked. “I loved you. Why would you do this to Britt? To my son? To me?”

  “Victor.” Pristine grabbed his hands before Deputy Loggins pushed her forearms back down. “I love you. This is a mistake. None of it’s true. I would never hurt you.”

  Victor told her, “That’s how you did it, isn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You lie with such conviction. I couldn’t see it before.”

  With that, Pristine’s sadness evaporated, leaving behind a salty indignation. “You know nothing about me! You just wanted someone to plug the hole left by your precious Meredith.”

  Victor turned from her, and Sheriff Rome told Deputy Loggins, “Take her to the interrogation room.”

  Jeff smirked at Pristine. “What’s your plan B for this?”

  She glared at him while asking, “Victor, did Jeff tell you how you and I met?”

  Victor turned back around. “What do you mean?”

  Emory approached her in an attempt to get her out of the room. “If you have a statement to make, save it for us.”

  “We didn’t meet by chance.” Pristine smiled at the growing nervousness in Jeff. “He set it up.”

  “That’s enough!” proclaimed Emory. He placed a hand on Deputy Loggins’ shoulder urging him to move her out.

  Victor turned to Jeff. “What’s she talking about?”

  Jeff sighed and gritted his teeth. “Pristine hired me to find her a rich man to marry…” He trailed off when he saw Victor drawing back his right fist.

  Emory sprung to Jeff’s defense, pushing him out of the way. Victor’s punch landed on Emory’s left jaw, and the special agent fell to the floor on top of Jeff.

  “You brought this plague on my house!” Victor shouted, looking at Jeff but pointing at Pristine. “This is all on you!”

  The sheriff and Deputy Harris rushed to restrain Victor, while Wayne only watched. “Lock him up for assault!” ordered Sheriff Rome.

  “No!” Emory countered as he climbed back to his feet and helped up Jeff. He tilted his head toward Ian. “He shouldn’t be alone right now.”

  The sheriff frowned at his son’s decision. He pointed an angry finger in Victor’s face. “Control yourself, or I will lock you up. Don’t test me!”

  Victor nodded, and Deputy Harris released him. Sheriff Rome told Deputy Loggins, “Get her out of here. Victor, take your son and go home. You both have been through too much.”

  Victor walked t
o the front door without looking at Ian. “Let’s go.” The boy hopped from the bench and followed his dad, closing the door behind them.

  Sheriff Rome put a hand on Emory’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  The sheriff inspected the bruising skin just below his eye. “I’ll get you something for that eye.” He hurried to his office, past Wayne, who was now sitting on the edge of Deputy Harris’ desk with his arms crossed and eyes down.

  Emory asked Jeff, “How are you?”

  Jeff checked out the damage to Emory’s face. “You shouldn’t have done that. I deserved that punch.”

  “And you should’ve gone to the hospital like the paramedics suggested. I guess we’re both good at ignoring what’s best for us.”

  Sheriff Rome returned with an emergency ice pack. “Here you go, Son.”

  Emory took it and placed it against his cheek. “Well, I think we’ve done enough damage here. We’ll be heading out.”

  The sheriff smiled at him and gave him a hug. “Thank you for everything, Son. There’s no way I would’ve seen this outcome. Don’t tell your mother about the shiner. She’d blame me for not keeping you safe.”

  “I won’t. Dad…” Emory stopped, as he searched for the right words to say.

  “What is it, Son?”

  “I’m sorry about losing my temper earlier.”

  His father waved off the need for any apology. “It’s forgotten. This case was tough on us, and we both needed to blow off some steam.”

  Emory started to get choked up. “You’re a wonderful lawman, and you know you’re the reason I wanted to be one too.”

  “I know.” The sheriff flashed a smile that let Emory know it was good to hear. “Now don’t be such a stranger.”

  Emory nodded. “Wayne, are you ready to go?”

  Wayne glanced up but not enough to make eye contact. He pointed to the man at his side. “I’m catching a ride with Deputy Harris.”

  “You are?”

  Deputy Harris explained, “I’m driving Pristine Algarotti up to Knox County tonight. I’m not risking another escape.”