Red House Blues

by sallie tierney

  * * *

  Suzan was flat on her back on a patch of wet shaggy weeds, a carnival of red, white, and blue lights playing over her face. The fact that no medical professionals were working on her she took to be good sign. Either they had given up or she was relatively unhurt.

  How had she gotten out of the house? The last thing she knew they were trapped in Nick’s attic room with smoke billowing in through cracks around the door. She gingerly turned her head to see what was going on. A sledge hammer of pain walloped the back of her neck, her chest constricted. How am I still alive? Where are the others?

  The street in front of the house was clogged with fire trucks, aide cars, police cruisers and media vans. She could hear a siren approaching. How would they ever get another vehicle on the block, she wondered. The air was thick with the acrid stench of wood smoke, burnt rubber and something that smelled like barbeque. Suzan tore her mind from speculation of what that might be.

  Clouds of white steam rose into the setting sun as fire hoses played over the structure. From what she could see, most of it was still standing. She wasn’t at all sure how she felt about that.

  Then she saw it, a blanket-draped form on the ground beside the front porch, ignored by the firefighters manning the bucking hoses. Please, please don’t let it be Nick or Claire!

  “Good, you’re awake,” said a male voice from behind her. “How you feeling? Sorry I had to leave you alone just now. We’re bringing out another person.”

  She coughed and struggled to sit up.

  “Take it easy, miss. Here, I’ll help you,” said the firefighter.

  She tried to speak but nothing came out but a raspy cough.

  “Easy,” he said, patting her on the back.

  “Wheeer . . . where?”

  “Where are the others?”

  She nodded.

  “There is a woman talking to the officers over there by M.E.’s truck. That’s probably your friend.”

  The Medical Examiner? Her heart did a flop. “Nick! Where’s Nick?”

  “The man with you upstairs? Don’t worry,” said the medic. “He is already on his way to Harborview to get checked out. It’s your turn next.”

  Two paramedics with a stretcher hustled in from the ambulance at the curb.

  “I can’t go. I have to talk to Claire.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be along to the hospital just as soon as the police get her statement.”

  “Can’t she go with me?”

  Something sorted itself out in her smoke-fogged brain.

  “Wait, how many people were brought out? There were just the three of us upstairs.”

  Her eyes gravitated toward the shrouded form on the grass. And at the side of the house a trio of fire department medics working on yet another person. Oh my god, she thought, if there were at least two others in the house, two they knew nothing about then . . . then the woman talking to the police might not be Claire at all and the man on the way to the hospital might not be Nick!

  “The man they took to Harborview, did he have a cast on his leg?” Oh please say yes.

  “Yeah. That was one of the reasons they took him in. He looked like he had been through the wringer even before the fire,” said the medic. “So do you, by the look of those bruises. No more talking. Let these guys get you loaded in the ambulance.”

  He turned Suzan over to the paramedics without answering her question.

  Cops were stringing yellow crime scene tape around the front yard as they loaded her into the ambulance.

  Chapter 25

  The sun had set. The coroner's van had taken the body to the morgue. All but one fire truck had left. There was still a crew of firefighters putting out hot spots in the house. In the street, police and TV news reporters were falling over each other to interview the crowd of neighbors that had gathered to watch the excitement

  Claire sat on the low rock wall wishing she had a cigarette and a double shot of espresso. What a lousy time to give up smoking. At least the detectives had finally finished with her and moved on to other victims. All she told them was that she and her girlfriend Suzan were in the house helping Nick pack up his belongings. They stuck to that story, that he was a friend moving back to California to his parents. The three had been trapped in the attic room by a fire. No, they didn’t know how it started. No, they hadn’t seen or heard anyone else in the house. The detectives asked about Suzan and Nick’s previous injuries. Claire told them there wasn’t any connection between the two accidents but that they could always check with Harborview if they needed the gory details.

  They asked her about the dead woman, did Claire know her. She answered truthfully that she didn’t. They lost interest in her when the crime scene technicians arrived and the medical examiner had the body transported. Forgotten, Claire watched the various officials “process the scene”, as she had heard one of the cops call it, everyone walking slowly under the spotlights. She knew she should use the opportunity to get out of there before someone thought of more questions. Get up to Harborview and see how Suzan and Nick were getting along. She sat motionless as if glued to the rock. Claire knew it must be shock. Her body as well as her mind were inert and numb.

  She yearned to call Tony and tell him what had happened but Tony was no longer someone she could confide in. When she got back to Bellingham everything will have changed between them. She wanted to understand why he had lied to Suzan and to her, why he had conspired with Sean and these Seattle psychopaths. She didn’t think she would ever understand what had prompted the betrayal and deception that had resulted in so much pain and death. No matter what the reason behind it, what Tony did was inexcusable. She could never forgive him.

  She didn’t want to be a bitter, distrustful woman. Claire had seen how Suzan had crawled into herself, had shriveled up like desiccated fruit after Sean left her, a young woman growing old in the span of a few years. Please don’t let that happen to me, she begged the universe. If only she could punch Tony so hard in some tender area that he would feel a tiny fraction of the hurt she felt. But along with that thought was the knowledge that she would probably love him forever. That was the worst of it. She loved him still, no matter what he had done. How does anyone heal from a wound that deep, she wondered

  Suzan was sitting beside Nick’s bed when Claire tiptoed into the hospital room, still smudged with soot and smelling of smoke.

  “Hi Suze,” she whispered. “How is he?”

  “He’s down for the count for a while. They had to re-stitch him and put a new cast on the leg but he should be okay. What did you tell the cops?”

  “Nothing much. Just that we were there helping Nick move out. I could tell they suspected there was more to it. They been here?”

  “Not yet, but I suppose they’ll turn up eventually.”

  “Bank on it. They want to talk to Nick about the dead woman.”

  “It was a woman? Did they say who she was?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me but I overheard enough. Looks like it was Marla.”

  “Marla?” What was Marla doing there?

  “Yeah. They think she started the fire. One of the other housemates caught her at it and shot her. At least that’s what I was able to piece together.”

  “It must have been Ferlin. He had a gun when I was at the house with Marla.”

  “No, it couldn’t have been Ferlin. Firefighters found him out cold in the basement,” she said. “They brought him out while I was talking to the cops. He’s still in I.C.U. downstairs.”

  “This is all just plain crazy. Nothing makes sense.”

  “Maybe not,” said Claire. “Could be we’ll never know what kind of doggie-do we inadvertently stepped in.”

  “Wonder if there’s anything on the news.”

  “I suppose we could get a nurse to turn on the TV.”

  “No, it might wake up Nick. He needs as much rest as he can get,” said Suzan. “How about if we go down to the cafeteria. There should be a TV and I could use a cup of hot
tea. My throat feels like a piece of raw meat.”

  “Good idea. Wonder if they have soup. I’m starving.”

  “Nothing new there, you’re always starving.”

  Claire borrowed a wheel chair from the nurse’s station for Suzan. She was still not steady on her feet.

  “Just thought of something,” said Claire as she wheeled Suzan into the elevator. “Do we know what happened to the infamous notebooks?”

  “Got it covered. When they cut off Nick’s old cast the packet was still wedged in the top of it. Really surprised the nurse who did the cutting. I’ll never know how he managed to get it in there. I imagine he’s going to have a notebook shaped bruise.”

  “He still has the notebooks?”

  “No, he passed it to me before they shot him full of meds,” said Suzan. “I put them in the drawer of the bedside table and that’s where they stay until we get a chance to look at them.”

  “You haven’t read them? God, that’s the first thing I would have done! What are you waiting for, Suze?”

  “Guess I’m afraid of what I might find. I wanted so badly to know what Sean was thinking but now, after all that has happened . . . I don’t know anymore. People died because of a few cheap pocket notebooks that might contain nothing more than drugged-out scribbles and a grocery list. I couldn’t stand it if it all comes down to nothing.”

  “Eventually you’ll have to read them? Unless you’re considering burning them.”

  “Of course not. I just need more time.”

  “There may not be time, Suze,” said Claire. “Don’t know if it has occurred to you, but when the cops find out about them they’ll be marked evidence and we will have lost our chance.”

  The cafeteria was nearly deserted except for a pair of kitchen workers at the steam table. Claire and Suzan took a table near the windows and Claire went to find them some food. Suzan sat in her uncomfortable plastic chair, fluorescent lights hissing overhead, a collection of dusty aspidistras in a room divider planter beside which an old man was frowning into his coffee. Such a strange still life in a place of sickness and worry.

  Beyond the windows it was still dark. The clock on the wall above the cash register said five-twenty. Hard to believe, thought Suzan, it had been a over twelve hours since they had gone to the house on Fir. It seemed like a century. She expected any time now her nerves would uncoil and her hands unclench. The overdose of adrenaline retained a firm grip. How long before I feel safe again, can relax, forget, go on with my life? It wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

  She was starting to remember what had happened, those terrifying moments in the attic as the fire licked the other side of the door, sucking the air out of the room. The crackle of wood catching alight, the acrid stench of smoldering carpet. Scraps of memory. Nick grabbing her arm, throwing her to the floor. She couldn’t see where Claire had gone but she had heard her cough. Nick pulled a blanket from the bed and drew it over the two of them. That was when they heard the second shot. They were as good as dead at that point. They didn’t have a chance of getting out of the attic, out of the house. A house that old, that dry would go up like a match, so full of junk furniture and garbage. On the other side of the door was conflagration and death. Suzan felt the heat against her face through the door. Only a matter of minutes left. It was likely to be quick. She was glad of that. She held tight to Nick until the darkness circled in on her.

  Then there was nothing until she woke up on the rough grass at the foot of the porch steps. She knew she had been unconscious. Still, she had the distinct memory of someone being there in the room with the three of them. A woman in a long dress. An angel? Is that what you see as you die? Suzan remembered being so cold, shivering within the circle of Nick’s embrace. Chilled to the bone while a fire raged on the other side of the bedroom door on the landing. It had been so strange. No doubt a hallucination brought on by shock and fear yet she couldn’t forget it. It lingered on the fringes of her mind like the remembrance of a loved one’s perfume. Suzan had heard stories of out of body and near death experiences. This was different. She wasn’t floating near the ceiling watching herself die. If anything she was quite solidly trapped within her paralyzed body.

  How had the firefighters gotten the three of them out of that room, down the burning staircase and out of the house? It was not possible. Suzan didn’t believe in divine intervention any more than she believed in crop circles, yet undeniably they were all three still alive. So maybe she would have to rethink a few things.

  There were a number of things to rethink and very soon. Suzan didn’t want to move forward, and by moving plunge past where she could turn back. Until she opened them she could still choose to toss the notebooks into the garbage. There was time to refuse to know but the window was closing.

  Claire returned with a tray crowded with plastic ware piled with scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and two styro cups, one containing coffee and the other tea.

  “Hope this stuff is warm. They were out of soup. They had this in aluminum pans under glow lights,” said Claire, placing a plate in front of Suzan as if she were serving at a five star restaurant. Such a tender soul, such a loving friend. I’m going to miss her.

  The realization came as a surprise. She had made a decision without being aware of it. She wouldn’t be returning to Bellingham with Claire, at least not right away. It was going to be the hardest thing she ever did telling her that things had changed.

  “Shit, forgot the sugar for your tea. You want lemon while I’m at it?” said Claire.

  “Never mind. I don’t need it really. No amount of sugar and lemon is likely to help much anyhow.”

  Claire took a sip. “You’re right. Damn, this coffee is pretty bad. I’d get fired if I served this sludge. Still, it may get the job done.”

  Suzan took a hesitant bite of gelatinous scrambled egg, more concerned with the need for sustenance than any real desire to eat.

  “Okay, Suze, let’s get it over with,” said Claire when they returned to Nick’s room. He was still asleep.

  Suzan was just then wondering how to tell Claire she was going to stay in Seattle until Nick was on his feet, so she wasn’t immediately sure what Claire was referring to.

  “Get what over with?”

  “The notebooks, of course,” she said. “Why, what else did you think I meant?”

  “Nothing. Are you sure you don’t want to wait until Nick is awake and we can do this together?”

  “Why wait? By the time he wakes up this room could be crawling with cops.”

  Suzan sighed and retrieved the packet of notebooks from the drawer where she had stashed them. Three three-by-five spiral notebooks with tattered blue cardboard covers. Nothing written on the cover, front or back. She flipped open the cover of the top notebook and silently began to read her husband’s cramped uneven hand. Sean had written with a cheap ballpoint pen that tended to glob on the down strokes and smear where, being left handed, he dragged his hand over the line. Someone less familiar with his script would have had a nearly impossible time deciphering his words.

  She followed his thoughts page after page with a sick dread. And with a feeling of terrible sorrow at the disintegration and confusion spread before her on the tiny pages. These were the merest scraps of thought, the start of a lyric that went nowhere, disjointed observations with no conclusions. Incomplete and confused. The product of a drugged and depressed mind. How could any of these sad meanderings threaten anyone, she thought, wanting to weep at the senselessness of it all.

  Suzan had skimmed half way into the third book when a name caught her attention. Paging back a bit she reread more carefully what she had just skimmed. There it was again. Marla! Sean had probably never known the importance of what he had scribbled there. It was part of a conversation. Hard to say what about the conversation interested him enough to record it. Maybe it had been nothing more than that it had concerned Kiki Zell, whom he had idolized but never met.

  “Holy . . .,” Suzan said u
nder her breath.

  “What? You found something?”

  “I don’t know, could be. Give me a minute to reread it.”

  Suzan went back to the beginning of the notebook and reread it carefully this time, page by page, line by line until it was etched into her brain. People had died for this. She was heartsick.

  “We were right, Claire. I wish we weren’t but we were. I don’t think Sean even knew the magnitude of what he wrote, the poor stupid jerk.” Tears welled in her eyes.

  “Well, are you going to share or do we play twenty questions?”

  Suzan pulled a tissue from box by the bed. “Damn, I can’t believe this. I didn’t cry when he died but now I’m a blubbering mess.”

  Claire took her hand and gave it a light squeeze.

  “There’s nothing any of us can do about it now, Suze, but it might help us make sense of the madness if we knew how it began.”

  “Sure, you’re right. I wish Nick would wake up but he needs his sleep. I suppose we can fill him in later,” said Suzan, glancing at the still, pale man on the bed beside them. She took a ragged breath.

  “Here’s how it seems to have played out,” she continued. “The same night that Alaskan fisherman was convicted of KiKi Zell’s murder Sean had a conversation at the Comet with Jonson, the deli guy. Jonson gets all nostalgic. He tells Sean that he remembered something strange that happened the night KiKi was killed. Sean writes that Jonson told him he’d been ‘shit-faced drunk that night’. Those were his words. Someone confiscated his keys and put him into a taxi for home. He assumed it was the bartender. That night at the Comet . . . this is where it gets interesting . . . he tells Sean he finally remembers that it was Marla who put him in the cab.”

  “What would that have to do with anything?”

  “Jonson tells Sean that the next day when he went back to the parking lot to get his car he asked the bartender for his keys. The bartender didn’t have them. After a whole comedy about Triple A and a locksmith and searching the whole car, the keys were located under the car. Jonson said that was weird enough but even odder was that the car wasn’t parked where he usually parked it. He was sure he parked it on the end by the Dumpster but it was way on the other side of the lot.”