Burn All Alike

by Nene Adams

  Chapter Twenty

  Mackenzie called Veronica from the car once she reached I-85 on the way home. “Hey, I just talked to Pharaoh DuPeret,” she said into her cell phone.

  “Are you driving, Mac?” Veronica sounded suspicious.

  “Of course not,” Mackenzie lied, slowing the Datsun and pulling over onto the dusty shoulder. She turned off the engine and flicked on the flashers just in case. “I’m not sure how the monk fits into things, but I’m pretty sure I know who our burning spirit is.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Okay, from 1942 to 1945, that place out by War Woman Springs was a detention facility for internees who’d been convicted of crimes at internment camps. Usually, these prisoners went to Leavenworth and a couple of other sites, but somebody in government decided to house the overflow down here instead of someplace west of the Rockies.”

  “Why on earth would they do that? It’d be quite a chore to supervise a bunch of prisoners halfway across the country during wartime.”

  “Ronnie, your guess is as good as mine.” Mackenzie lowered her voice, although she knew she couldn’t be heard over the cars and trucks whizzing by her parked vehicle. “I suspect legislative palms were greased. Government contracts always mean beaucoup money.” She rolled down her window for a breath of air.

  “Your cynical view of our elected officials always astonishes me.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic. Anyway, according to DuPeret, there were about a hundred prisoners, mostly Japanese, a few German and Italian POWs. The sheriff’s department and people from the Federal Bureau of Prisons converted some old stables out there as barracks and threw up a fence around it. The convicts worked on the chicken farms hereabouts. Most internees went home starting in 1945 after internment ended, but those men were convicted prisoners. They were kept at War Woman Springs pending individual case reviews at the federal level.”

  “I saw a woman on fire,” Veronica reminded her. “Where does she come into it?”

  An SUV roared past, followed by an eighteen-wheeler. The hot wind stirred up by their passage brought with it the smells of exhaust, diesel fuel and sun-baked concrete. Mackenzie debated rolling up the window, but decided she’d rather suffer than suffocate.

  “The woman’s name was Osame.” She wiped sweat off her forehead with the flat of her hand. Maybe she ought to start the engine and turn on the air-conditioning, but that made the car eat gas like a hungry hog gobbling swill. “That’s the name Abbot Imamura told me when he came over to the apartment.”

  “I remember. He said, ‘Osame hears you.’ It was a warning, Mac.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re trying to help. I don’t see why she’d object—” Mackenzie broke off. Did she smell burning rubber?

  Probably a lead-footed trucker or speed freak abusing their wheels on the asphalt. The reek intensified. Dense black smoke drifted across the lanes. Not toward her, but away from her, as if… Seized by foreboding, she dropped the cell phone on the seat beside her and craned out the open window. All four of her car’s tires were on fire.

  For a moment, she dithered. Abandon the Datsun and run to safety? Try to put out the fires? She couldn’t leave her father’s legacy to burn, but if she stayed, she’d burn, too. Her thoughts went round and round in circles while she sat frozen, her hands clutching the steering wheel until unbearable heat registered, searing through the bottoms of her shoes and against the soles of her feet.

  The floorboards are burning, crept into her numbed mind.

  Galvanized at last with a heady mixture of fear and fury, she scrambled out of the car, spitting curses and threats. “Osame, you goddamned bitch! So help me, you wreck my daddy’s car, I’ll stuff your sorry ass in a bottle and drop it down a well!”

  Several horn blasts in rapid succession made her realize she was standing in the road and about to be flattened by an approaching truck. She jumped to the side. “And damn you, too!” she screamed as the truck roared past and quickly vanished from sight.

  Her chest ached as if a wedge had been driven into her breastbone. She turned to regard her beloved Datsun, wondering uneasily if the car might explode when the fire reached the gas tank. Happens all the time on TV, but that can’t be right. Can it?

  A curl of dirty orange flame suddenly lashed out at her, stopping short. A familiar flat black figure swam into focus near the car’s front bumper. Barely visible in the sunlight, a halo of red and gold fire danced around the silhouette, beating at the air like frenzied wings.

  Mackenzie thought her face might spontaneously combust. She stood her ground and glanced sidelong at the ghost. Getting mad and making threats against Osame had done nothing. Time to bring a more reasonable approach to the table.

  She drew in a lungful of scorching air. “Let me help you,” she said, striving for calm. “Tell me what you need to move on.”

  Osame’s bright yellow eyes seemed to mock her.

  “I’m sorry I called you a bitch,” Mackenzie offered.

  A withered dandelion plant in the dusty earth near her foot burst into flame. She glared and kicked dirt over the blazing plant. So much for playing nice. “Damn it, will you quit doing that?” she spat, giving the ashes a final stomp.

  A whooshing noise drew her gaze to the left. The spit dried in her mouth and her sphincter clenched on a liquid rush. She’d seen dust devils before, little whirlwinds snatching at dried leaves, dirt, and bits of debris, but this one appeared to be made of fire. Brilliant orange flames spiraled round and round, leaving scorch marks on the earth.

  Mackenzie felt the temperature rising. Sweat beaded her upper lip and drenched her armpits. The fiery whirlwind came straight at her. Her muscles tensing, she readied herself to run. “All right, bring it on,” she muttered. “I ain’t scared of you.”

  The whirlwind collapsed—it was the only way she could describe what happened. The column of flames simply fell apart, scattering tiny blazes over the ground that quickly burned out. Relief loosened the tightness in her chest, letting her breathe. She glanced around. Osame had vanished.

  On the other side of the road, a sheriff’s department cruiser made a screaming U-turn across two lanes of traffic and powered toward her. Veronica? Dumb question, she said to herself. Veronica was at home…oh, crap, they’d been talking on the phone when the car fire started. Belatedly, she raised the cell phone she’d grabbed off the seat without realizing.

  “Hey, Ronnie?” No answer. Mackenzie dialed Veronica’s number. As soon as the woman picked up the call, she began to speak. “I’m okay, I’m fine, everything’s under control. Our friendly neighborhood ghost decided to start a campfire under my tires, but the cavalry’s already here—”

  Veronica cut in. “I’m on my way, Mac.”

  The line went dead. Mackenzie shoved the phone in her back pocket. Veronica hadn’t sounded very happy. In fact, she’d seemed one step short of a dying duck fit.

  The cruiser parked a safe distance away on the shoulder. The door opened. A lanky Native American deputy unfolded from the interior. He jogged over to her Datsun, a fire extinguisher in hand, and in a few minutes, extinguished the blaze.

  Mackenzie gave him a wide smile. “Hey, Deputy Buzzard! Am I glad to see you.”

  His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. He nodded, his expression neutral. “Looks like you had a little trouble there, Ms. Cross.”

  “No kidding.”

  “How’d your tires catch fire like that?”

  “No idea.”

  “Does your car have a gas leak?”

  “No idea.”

  “Any other vehicles involved?”

  “No, sir.”

  Buzzard tilted his hat back on his head and appeared to mull over her answers. Finally, he asked in his slow, deliberate manner, “You want me to call a tow truck?”

  She nodded and let him make the call from his cruiser, praying the tow truck would arrive before Veronica, otherwise…Frying pan, meet fire.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Dadd
y’s car isn’t as bad off as I thought.” Mackenzie put her cell phone on the coffee table after speaking to the mechanic. “Bedford Ellis over at Double-A Auto Repair says he can get the parts he needs and he’s giving me a discount on the tires.”

  Veronica didn’t reply for several moments. Finally, she sighed. “From now on, where you go, I go. No more separating. I took some more time off work.”

  “You didn’t need to do that. I can take care of myself.”

  “Mac, I don’t want to argue. Really, I don’t, but I’m not going to sit on my butt and do nothing. You were threatened. You could have been killed.”

  “The fire wasn’t that bad,” Mackenzie scoffed. During the incident, she’d been scared shitless, but Osame couldn’t have been that serious about harming her. A spirit with the power to set fires could have turned her into frizzy headed flambé instead of roasting her car tires.

  Veronica’s gaze turned to green ice. Her jaw tightened. “Don’t treat this lightly. I read in your book about a wait-about similar to Osame who destroyed Tokyo back in the day.” She shook her head. “There may not be anything I can do against power like that, but whatever happens, I’ll be there with you and we’ll deal with it together.”

  Mackenzie bit back an automatic retort. “I’m sorry, Ronnie.” Wanting to change the subject, she ventured, “Do you want to hear the rest of the story I got from Pharaoh DuPeret? Or do you want to tell me first about this Tokyo fire you’ve been reading about?”

  “Go ahead.” Although some of her stiffness eased, Veronica didn’t sit on the sofa. Instead, she leaned against the bookcase, her arms crossed.

  Sensing Veronica still wasn’t entirely happy, Mackenzie complied. “Osame was engaged to a Japanese internee, Jun. Her family was interned with his family at a relocation center in Colorado, but Jun killed another man in a fight, got convicted of manslaughter and was transferred to War Woman Springs in 1945. Shortly thereafter, Osame’s family was released when the Colorado center closed and she followed him to the Springs.” She paused for breath.

  Veronica nodded for her to go on.

  “Pharaoh told me Osame found jobs at the chicken farms around here and used the money to bribe a couple of guards into looking the other way when she and Jun met at the fence each night. This went on for a few weeks. But the big boss of the Japanese detainees, a suspected gangster named Koga, got pissed because Jun didn’t ask permission.”

  “He saw their actions as disrespectful.”

  “Right. So Koga had a lot of juice with the guards. More than Jun, anyway. He arranged for Osame to be kidnapped and smuggled into the prison, then let any detainee who wanted—Japanese, Italian, German, you name it—rape her.”

  Veronica’s expression became remote.

  “Osame died. Koga killed Jun,” Mackenzie continued. “Both bodies were dumped in the incinerator, but according to Pharaoh, at some point in the night, the fire went out. The bodies were still identifiable when a maintenance man found them the next morning. Get this: Pharaoh, the warden in charge of the camp, and some guy from the Bureau of Prisons knew Koga committed double homicide, but they didn’t do a damned thing about it. In fact, DuPeret made sure the bodies were buried in an unused field on Copper Ridge, as far from War Woman Springs as he felt he could reasonably get.”

  “Why?” After blurting the question, Veronica turned her head to stare out the window. “Politics, I suppose,” she said in an undertone.

  “Something like that. Koga had immunity, so to speak. His brother was Grand Poobah something-or-other in the Japanese Army. The brother fed information about troop movements and stuff to the OSS in exchange for Koga being sent home after the war. The US government put the brakes on Pharaoh’s investigation, citing the greater good.” Mackenzie screwed up her face. Those last two words had a nasty taste.

  “I understand why Pharaoh and the others did it.” Veronica walked across the room and sat down next to her. “The district attorney’s office makes deals with criminals to catch worse criminals. I don’t like it very much, but I see the necessity.”

  “Oh, I know, but still, it irks me that Koga got away with killing two people. What did Osame and Jun get? Unmarked graves out there on Copper Ridge.”

  “Maybe near the place where the Big Burn originated in 1945.” Veronica’s brow furrowed. “Why now?”

  “Why what now?” Mackenzie paused in the act of laying her hand on Veronica’s thigh. She loved the feel of the taut muscles held captive under form-fitting jeans, like the world’s most sensual stress ball. “Oh, you mean why is Osame still so angry that she’s burning modern Antioch? I don’t—” She broke off. “Wait a minute.” In her mind’s eye, she retraced her journey out to Copper Ridge and her first sight of the assisted living facility. “What if somebody messed with her grave?”

  “I guess that might do it.” Veronica twisted around to face her. “But Renaissance Two was built…what, four or five years ago?”

  “I was thinking of Renaissance Three, a new community they’re building next door. Ground was broken not that long ago.”

  “Mac, if a construction crew finds human remains, they’re obliged to report it to the sheriff’s office or the local police department.”

  Mackenzie shrugged. “A lot of things go unreported. That’s par for the course. Construction delays cost money and news of dead bodies on the site would make buyers squeamish. I know my mother wouldn’t live there under those circumstances.”

  “All right, I’ll look into it. What company?” Veronica leaned forward to snag a pen from the coffee table and jotted down the name Mackenzie gave her on the back of her hand. “Anything else?”

  “I can’t figure out why Osame wants to burn Antioch, then or now,” Mackenzie said, voicing a question that she realized should have occurred to her at the start. “Why not War Woman Springs? Or the detainment camp itself?”

  Veronica mimicked her shrug. “Wait-abouts don’t need a reason, Mac.”

  “Well, I do,” Mackenzie muttered. Realizing the moment to suggest a little cuddle had passed, she slouched further into the sofa cushions and propped her feet on the coffee table.

  “Maybe she targeted Antioch because of where she was buried. Copper Ridge is a long way from War Woman Springs.”

  “Okay, why those particular targets in the city?”

  Veronica suddenly shifted position, laying full length on the sofa with her head in Mackenzie’s lap. “You shouldn’t expect reasonableness from a dead person.” She blinked like a lazy cat. “From the stories Mémé Faillard told me, I think ghosts are a lot like psychopaths. They follow their own personal logic which isn’t necessarily related to the living world. Their motives only make sense to them, if they make sense at all.”

  “So basically, all ghosts are crazy.” Mackenzie stared into Veronica’s pretty face, noting the dark circles under her eyes. Despite the trip to Lake Minnesauga, neither of them had enjoyed much relaxation lately.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Veronica hummed, closing her eyes when Mackenzie began to stroke her hair. “That’s nice.”

  Mackenzie leaned over and brushed her lips over Veronica’s cheek. “How’s that?”

  “That’s nice, too.”

  “And this?” Mackenzie meandered her fingers down Veronica’s shirt, ending up with a soft handful of breast.

  Veronica squirmed. “Mac,” she breathed, reaching up to pull her down into a kiss.

  Glad for a distraction, Mackenzie let herself fall.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  From the highway, the Get-R-Done Roadhouse didn’t look like much—a low-slung, ramshackle building huddled into the side of a nameless hill, a neon-topped canker on a landscape burnished by the setting sun. Mackenzie hadn’t been to the dive bar in a long time, not since she split with Debbie Lou Erskine. She didn’t look forward to visiting now.

  “You know the Get-R-Done’s the place you go when you’re already drunk off your ass, past the point of driving home, past the point of caring and jus
t want to black out, go blind, or maybe end your suffering and die.” Mackenzie shuddered.

  “It’ll be okay, Mac,” Veronica said, driving her Ford truck off the exit ramp and past a cluster of gas stations, motels and chain restaurants. “I won’t let you drink too much.” She turned right onto a narrow road winding up the hill.

  Mackenzie glanced at the driver’s side of the cab. Though officially off duty, Veronica had pinned her brunette hair in a tight knot at the base of her neck. She wore black denim jeans and a black, pearl-buttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. The stark color turned her milk-and-roses complexion to porcelain with a trace of pink and brightened her eyes to a gleaming, tigerish green.

  “Just be careful.” Mackenzie smoothed her palms over the front of her least favorite shirt, the ugly plaid button-down she kept for dirty jobs like painting or cleaning the oven. No sense wearing anything nice when she’d probably be covered in beer, broken glass, vomit, blood, or other gross bodily fluids before the end of the night. “I should have brought Daddy’s boot gun,” she added. “Or an industrial strength cattle prod.”

  Veronica reached over to pat her leg. “You don’t have a license to carry your father’s old Bulldog .44, and I’m pretty sure that revolver hasn’t been cleaned or fired in years.”

  “Well, maybe I’d give some deserving sumbitch tetanus with a rusty bullet,” Mackenzie snapped. She caught sight of her face in the review window. Her reddish brown skin seemed warped tighter than usual across more prominent bones. If her jaw clenched any harder, her teeth might pop out. She made an effort to relax. “Anyway, are you armed at all, or are we going in there without backup?”

  “I can defend us, Mac.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  “That’s my answer.”

  Mackenzie considered arguing, but changed her mind when the truck came to a stop in the roadhouse’s parking lot, full of pickups, motorcycles and classic muscle cars spackled with rust and Bondo body filler. Sodium lights gave everything a yellow tint. She got out of the truck and waited for Veronica to join her. Together, they walked to the building.