Heat

by R. W. Clinger

  “What does he do with Underground Spectacle?” I asked, feeling miserable and with a low self-esteem because of her endless details and my failure as an investigator.

  “Firewalking. What else is he supposed to do at the cult? Fire is his passion. He loves heat, as the walkers call it.”

  “And how does Rudy Shower fit into this? Why were two buildings caught on fire? Why was Rudy’s life cut short?”

  “One of a beginning member’s tasks is to recruit a new fellow member. It’s an obligation to be a part of the group, or cult, as some people call it.”

  I cut her off. “And Bruno had his eye on Rudy Shower, right?”

  “Not just as a member, but also as a lover. But Rudy wouldn’t have anything to do with the design student, which irritated Bruno.”

  “So Bruno used gasoline and caught the Flaming Flamingo on fire, knowing Rudy was inside.”

  She nodded and dabbed the tip of her left index finger to her nose, suggested I had guessed right, spot on with my assumption. “Because he doesn’t like to be rejected, and he loves to start fires.”

  “What about Bungalow Fifteen? Why was it torched?”

  “Once a firebug, always a firebug,” she said, grinning at me. “Bruno enjoys his fires, which motivates him in life. The fires take away from the norm and reality of all the rubbish in the world. I do believe I can relate.” She winked at me, and her cheeks turned a soft shade of pink. She delivered a confession of sorts that only she could produce; a physical acknowledgement to her own historical doings with fire and being a practicing arsonist throughout her entire life, even lately.

  I felt enlightened by her honesty, whether she verbally shared a confession with me or not. “What about Margo’s novels being burned on Hurricane Bay Beach? Tell me what you know about those smaller fires. Are they also tied to Bruno Grigade?”

  She waved both hands at me this time and giggled with joy, perhaps entertained by my visit and our shared meeting. “Stop, you’re being ridiculous, young man. Why would Bruno start little fires when he can torch large buildings?”

  Her garble made sense. The cliché go big or go home came to mind, which I thought appropriate at the moment.

  “The urge to set harmless fires is still inside me, Axle. I’m no angel and never will be. You know my history. You know how much money I have. You comprehend my status as a wealthy and smart woman in Turtle Bay, which could all be ruined in a snap by a simple confession. But I have far too much respect for you to lie. Starting fires has always been a joy of mine, of course. I crave the heat, relish its warmth. I love the flames and destruction. Perhaps you could understand this if you were an arsonist.”

  “Why did you set Margo’s books on fire and dump them on my boyfriend’s beach?” I had to ask because any good investigator would have.

  She huffed, rolling her eyes. “My animosity for that woman will never dissipate. Driving her mad drives me. The two of us have been fighting with daggers for years now, decades. I knew that you were working for her, and details of those Hurricane Bay Beach fires would get back to her one way or another. What writer wants their novels burned? Wouldn’t that crumble their well-established egos? Couldn’t that drive them mad, Axle? I’m sure it would affect a national bestselling writer like Margo Pagino, right? I figured it would cause her to go batty, which I’m sure it did. I felt accomplished because of that and still do. The deed is done now. Kudos to me. Our war with each other will continue until the end of time. The beach fires were just another chapter in the book that she and I are creating together.”

  “You know for a fact that Margo isn’t the arsonist?”

  She burst into hearty laughter, almost falling out of her chair. “Oh, young man, of course not. Margo is far too busy writing those despicable damsel-in-distress and fluff-filled romances for her to burn down Hurricane Bay. Whatever gave you that ludicrous idea?”

  I told her about my meeting with Officer Bishop that afternoon and what it entailed, concentrating on Margo’s hate for Peter Rotunda because of Peter’s affair behind Margo’s back.

  “You’re silly, Axle,” she said, shaking her head. “Margo has murdered Peter in her latest three books. He’s been shot, hung, and drowned in the most severe methods. That is her revenge and satisfaction. It’s how writers pride themselves. Margo is no exception to that literary behavior. Besides, she isn’t one to get her hands dirty with gasoline, if you know what I mean. She’s an upper crust, sane woman who would never behave that way. Whatever Officer Bishop told you, you should classify it as pure garbage.”

  Following her spiel, she looked down at her bracelet for her watch, which still wasn’t present.

  “I’m sure it’s getting late. There’s nothing more that you need from me, young man. I’ve done my duty. If you’ll please return my binder to me.”

  I did as she said.

  “And you can find your way out, I presume?”

  I did, thanking her for her time and details, perplexed and drowning in all her gathered facts.

  Chapter 47: Bungalow 16

  Hurricane Beach Bay

  Bungalow 16

  9:10 P.M.

  I didn’t find Casey at home, which wasn’t a surprise. He still had a few big jobs on his plate and strict deadlines. I figured he wouldn’t be home for another two weeks, or until the end of the month. It didn’t stop me from calling him, though. I dialed, and the line rang two times.

  “Babe, what’s going on?”

  “You working?” I asked.

  “I’m always working. I’m at Two Humps Dune tonight. Van Rockingbaugh is coming home early, and I need to get this place finished. How’d your meeting with Laura go?”

  “We’ll talk about that when you get home. Wake me up if I’m asleep.”

  “Must be super important if I have to wake you up.”

  “Trust me, it is.”

  “Anything you want to talk about right now? I have a few minutes.”

  “No. It can wait until later. But before you go back to work, are you with Bruno?”

  He sighed, growing mad at me. “I’m not. If I were, you don’t have anything to worry about. You and I have already been through this.”

  “It’s not about you sleeping with him that bothers me.”

  “What is it then?” he asked, irritation deep in his voice.

  “It’s about something else. We’ll talk about it when you get home.” I paused, wishing I hadn’t bothered him. I fretted telling him that his intern was an arsonist and killer. He couldn’t recover from that predicament, I assumed. “If you’re not with Bruno, where is he?”

  “Don’t know. He has the evening off. Besides, I’m not his keeper.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, realizing our conversation took a nosedive and my call to him had ended pointless. “I’ll try to wait up for you, Casey. I can’t promise anything, though.”

  Before terminating the call, he said, “Hey, Axle.”

  “Yeah.” My voice cracked and wavered with nervousness, which I couldn’t contain.

  “Are you all right tonight, babe?”

  I didn’t lie and replied, “Not really. I just have a lot on my mind.”

  “That’s what I thought. I’ll wrap things up here and be home soon.”

  * * * *

  9:25 P.M.

  I had a drink. Jack with ice. Then I had a second drink. Darkness just started to emerge when I decided to take a dip in the Gulf. Could it have been dangerous? Any fool knew that it was. But I had to relax and clear my mind. So I changed into a pair of ass-clinging trunks, sandals, and grabbed a fresh towel out of the linen closet.

  I trudged through the sand and dark, listening to the tide rise with choppy beauty. A light wind blew against the coast and grazed my bare shoulders and chest. My nipples firmed up, and the thin hairs along the divot of my navel twisted around each other.

  I enjoyed swimming at night even though I knew the dangers of doing so. The undertow ravaged with wickedness and could pull me under in a
second. That wasn’t the case as I walked into the water, up to my hips. I dove headfirst, surfaced, and swam back to shore. I thought about Bruno Grigade and the crimes he had committed in Hurricane Bay. How exactly could I take him down?

  Not only did I want to tell Casey exactly what I had learned about his intern, pinning a murder and two fires on Bruno, but I also wanted to get my lover’s input about how and when to confront Bruno. Casey seemed good like that, reliable. He would know what to do. I just had to wait until he came home from Two Humps Dune to discuss the matter.

  After twenty minutes in the Gulf, exhausted from the swim, I walked out of the water. I stood on the sand and dried off. The grinning moon, with its silver layers, vanished behind clouds. The wind had picked up a touch, forewarning something wicked. I heard thunder in the distance, over the Gulf, yet rain wasn’t in the local forecast.

  As I walked up to the bungalow, needing a third drink, and then sleep, I said to the wind and distant thunder, “Come home, Casey. I need you to come home.”

  * * * *

  10:25 P.M.

  I slipped between a thin summer sheet and the mattress, wearing nothing more than a pair of thigh-tight briefs. Although I did try to stay awake, I couldn’t. Exhaustion called out to me, and I followed its soothing voice into an abyss of dark sleep.

  Dreams were undiscovered, though. Instead, I floated in nameless time and space, deep in the mysterious folds of my sleep. Unconsciousness and numbness controlled every part of my body. The nothingness of that dreamless world acted soothing, relaxing, enjoyable, and unlimited until…

  A blast of copious heat against my left arm yanked me out of sleep, and the strong scent of smoke filled my nostrils. Alert like a Roman sentry protecting his daughters from horny gladiators, I sat up in bed. Pushed into a state of confused panic, I became somewhat blinded by bright yellow and gold flames engulfing the bedroom around me. The wall to my left burned with a screen of fire, which reached from floor to ceiling, eating the silk draperies, an oil painting, and a picture of me and Casey on Hurricane Bay Beach, enjoying a Labor Day barbecue with a few of our closest friends.

  Paint peeled, and wood splintered. Thick smoke emanated and spiraled from the hellish inferno. The twists of smoke started to fill the bedroom in dense layers. The smoke caused me to cough, and I started choking. Asphyxiation—the same condition that had taken Rudy Shower’s valuable life—took over my entire body. I became weak and breathless. My eyes were stinging because of the collection of smoke in the bedroom, and I continued to cough, believing that death wanted to do a little dance with me.

  I wondered if Rudy Shower had felt that way when he was presumably trapped inside the Flaming Flamingo’s storm of fire. Had extreme panic settled rather quickly into his world? Did it feel as if the walls around him were closing in, or burning in? Had smoky cyclones of black soot baked in his lungs as it tried to bake in my own? Did he lose all sense of time and space? Had death appeared in his vision, grinning wildly with deception and need, just as it had appeared at the bottom of the bed, standing motionless over my feet, ready to take me?

  “You’re next on my murder list, Axle Dupree,” Bruno said, positioned at my right side.

  Why was Bruno Grigade inside the bedroom with me, the same room that I had shared with Casey, night after night? How did he find his way inside the bungalow, and during the fire? I couldn’t understand. Nor could I understand why he held a plastic gasoline tank that couldn’t have been any bigger than a breadbox, in his right hand.

  I had to be dreaming. Was that moment real or like the fiction that Margo Pagino created day after day, laboring over a vintage Underwood that still clicked and clacked? Half of me believed I had lost my mind, reaching into the depths of insanity. The other half believed that I had already died and would soon arrive in a less conventional place called Afterlife. What? Who? Where? Why?…

  I wasn’t insane. I wouldn’t die, at least not anytime soon. My mental facilities emerged in a matter of seconds, and I started to make sense of why Bruno Grigade stood in the bedroom with me. The same Bruno Grigade who just happened to enjoy interior designing, arson, and murder. Right there at my side, grinning at me with menacing eye teeth, scowling with beady eyes.

  Then he started pouring gasoline over the bed, and it splashed against my legs.

  I started to scream.

  Chapter 48: The Burning Bed

  Just like Rudy Shower, I faced reality and planned to burn to death. Torched like a rag covered in gasoline or a warlock in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Barbecued inside the bedroom of Bungalow Sixteen if…

  What unfolded next occurred almost instantly.

  Fire raced toward the bed, rolling over a carpet on the hardwood floor. Part of the wall gave out, falling to Hurricane Bay Beach and creating a sharp and quick cracking noise. Two square feet of night opened to the left of the bed. Smoke billowed around the room, entering my lungs, causing me to repeatedly cough. Heat built inside that tomb, and fear struck me from all sides, trapping me on the bed, motionless.

  “I’m going to make you burn!” Bruno said, emptying the gas can over the bed and soaking the mattress with the flammable liquid.

  A look of terror and happiness surfaced on his face. A glow of deep satisfaction sparkled in his eyes. I swear to God that he winked at me, relishing his destruction and being a monster, out of his mind, and a murderer, just as Laura Monigal had attempted to sway me to believe.

  A whooof sound echoed about the room, and the left side of the bedroom caught ablaze, eating the window and curtains. The heat inside the room became an inferno. Instantly, the temperature climbed, filling the ro om with unbearable warmth and thick spirals of smoke.

  “Burn, motherfucker! Burn!” Bruno yelled from over top me, smirking like a sadistic clown, pleased with himself.

  Smoke thickened inside the room, accentuated with blazing flags of hot fire. More of the wall on my right side crumbled to the sand, meeting Hurricane Bay Beach. I didn’t doubt that the bungalow would be burned to a crisp and barely standing during the next few minutes.

  Just as the mattress and sheets were going to turn into a fire bed, I immediately lost all control of myself and kicked my feet to the right, over the gasoline-drenched and fiery sheet. I nailed Bruno in his right side, banging my heels as hard as I could into his hip. The gasoline tank dropped out of his hand and fell to the hardwood floor. The contact forced an umph sound with a deep-throated growl out of him. He fell forward, landing face-first next to me, covered in gasoline.

  Bruno tried to reach for me when, out of nowhere, Casey appeared in the bedroom’s doorway, a look of surprise on his face.

  “Out, Axle! Get out!” he yelled at me, waving a hand in front of his face because of the thick smoke that formed a tornado inside the room.

  I bolted off the bed as Casey leaped forward and grabbed Bruno by the back of his neck with both hands. Then he pulled Bruno off the bed like a cat and started shaking him as fire danced about the room with its heated and licking passion. I flew around the bottom of the bed and headed for the doorway with the speed of Nike. Before making my quick exit from the blazing bedroom, safe now, I watched the bed flower into a red and orange burst of fire.

  I couldn’t move, though. Not because of fear. Not because panic rushed throughout my core. I froze in the doorway because of what Casey did. He still had Bruno by the back of his neck and threw his intern on the burning bed as if Bruno were nothing more than a piece of kindling.

  Screams from Bruno broke through the night. His entire body became a human torch, from head to toe. Bruno morphed into a ball of fire, swirling with bright red and electric yellow. He yelled at the top of his lungs, begging for his life. The smell of burning skin filled the remains of the room. The stink became guttural, biting against my nostrils, and overwhelming.

  Once Casey tossed Bruno to the bed, he turned toward me and yelled, “You’ll die in here, Axle! Get out!”

  I came to, shaking my head, disbelieving the pa
st few seconds. Casey reached my back and pushed me forward.

  “Go!”

  I tumbled into the hallway, through the living room, and then outside, saving my life.

  * * * *

  Wretched screaming ensued inside the house as Casey held me against him on the beach. The screaming unfolded for less than minute and then ceased. Men and women of the Hurricane Bay Fire Department pulled yellow fire hoses over the sand from the main street and started to douse the sky-reaching flames. It turned into a useless cause as lumber cracked and stucco continued to burn. Another wall fell outwards, decorating the beach.

  The bungalow burned inside a giant orange flame that illuminated the night, the wide span of sand, other bungalows, and palm trees. The scent of gasoline mixed with melted plastic filled the air. An explosion occurred with three ear-banging booms as aerosol cans under the kitchen sink blew into the night’s heavens. Eventually, the roof of the bungalow gave out, falling inward. Another fire truck arrived, this one from Turtle Bay, assisting our hometown heroes in tamping out the firestorm.

  Fire Chief Darren Dawe and Officer Cane Bishop pulled up to the scene in Dawe’s candy apple red RAM 150. Both jumped out of the truck and bolted toward Casey and me on the beach. An exchange of questions and answers occurred. Casey eventually stepped away from me to discuss the details of the fire with both men because he couldn’t hear due to the intense and loud ruckus around us. Chatter among the three continued for the next few minutes.

  Alone, I watched a Hurricane Bay ambulance arrive. Taylor Dixon, a beefster with golden hair and a matching mustache, jumped out of the vehicle and provided me with an oxygen mask to breathe better. I lay down on a gurney, consuming the oxygen, but refused to be whisked away to the hospital when asked.

  Taylor said in a deep drawl, “I recommend you get checked out at Hurricane Beach Medical.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m fine here. I just need to catch my breath.”

  After Casey talked to Dawe and Bishop, he stood next the gurney as I inhaled the oxygen, clearing my lungs. He squeezed my right hand and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”