by Nora Roberts
Cleaning fluid, rags, candles, waxed paper. No need to make it look like an accident, but no point in being sloppy. A man should take pride in his work.
He snapped on the surgical gloves from his backpack. While he was soaking rags, the phone rang. He paused, waiting, listened to the bright, female voice that came on after the answering machine picked up.
“Hi, Mom. It’s just me, checking in. I guess you’re out on a hot date.” There was a tinkle of laughter. “Give me a call if you don’t get home too late. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Love you. Bye.”
“Isn’t that sweet?” Joey whined as he continued to work. “Yeah, your mom’s got a hot one tonight.”
He chipped up some of the vinyl tile to expose the subflooring, used the electric screwdriver out of his pack to remove some of the cupboard doors to tent into funnels for flame. He cracked the window for ventilation, set his trailers of rags and loosely crumpled waxed paper.
Satisfied, he carried candles and rags into the bedroom.
She was only half conscious now, but he saw what was left of her go on alert, the fear that leaped into her eyes.
“Sorry, Deb, just don’t have time for a third round, so we’re going to move straight to the grand finale. Your cocksucking husband ever bring his work home?” he asked, and pulled out a knife.
She went wild—still some life in the old girl yet—when he turned the blade in the light.
“You ever have discussions about how he spent his workday? He ever bring pictures home so you could see what happens to people who burn in bed?”
He brought the knife down, viciously, an inch from her hip. Those hips reared up, and she began to struggle madly, gurgling, air wheezing out her nose, her eyes so wide he wondered they didn’t just pop out of her skull like a couple of olives.
He scored the mattress, pulling stuffing free. After replacing his knife, he took a container out of his pack. “I used some of your kitchen supplies in the other room. Hope you don’t mind. But in here, I brought my own. A little methyl alcohol. Goes a long way.”
He soaked the scattered stuffing, rags, the sheets she’d soiled in terror, drawing them onto the floor, using them and the rags, the rest of the waxed paper as a trailer to her curtains.
He set her lamp on the floor, and whistled between his teeth as he dismantled her bedside table. “Just like making a campfire,” he told her as he arranged tepees of wood over the trailers. “See the methyl alcohol, it’s got a flash point below a hundred degrees. The pine oil I used in the kitchen, it’ll take a lot more heat, closer to two hundred—that’s Fahrenheit. But you set it all up right, it’ll burn pretty good once it gets going. Out there, that’s what we’re calling my second wave. What they call a point of origin. In here’s the main show, and, Deb, you’re the star. Just a couple more details, first.”
He picked up her little desk chair and stood on it to open the casing of the bedroom smoke alarm. Unhooked the battery.
Since it was handy, he broke the chair apart, used it to arrange another tent on the mattress.
He stepped back, nodded. “Not bad, not bad at all, if I do say so myself. Damn, getting another woody here.” He rubbed his crotch. “Wish I could give you one more taste of it, honey, but I’ve got places to go.”
He arranged books of matches along the trailers, inside the tents, smiled—coolly now—while she twisted, beat her heels against the mattress, strained to scream through the gag.
“Sometimes the smoke gets you first. Sometimes it doesn’t. The way I’ve set this up, you’re going to hear your own skin crackling. You’re going to smell yourself roasting.”
His eyes went flat as a shark’s, and just as cold. “They won’t get to you in time, Deb. No point in false hope, right? And when you see that cocksucking husband of yours in hell, tell him Joseph Francis Pastorelli Junior sends his best.”
He used a long, slim butane lighter—let her see the flame spurt out of it before he set mattress wadding, matchbooks, rags on fire.
He watched it start to smolder and leap, watched it slyly sneak its way along the path he’d provided for it.
He gathered his pack, strolled out and lit his stage in the kitchen. Then he turned on the gas stove, extinguished the pilot and left the door open.
The fire was edging toward her, crawling over the bed like a lover. Smoke rose in sluggish plumes. He stepped around it, opened the window two inches.
For a moment he stood there, watching it circle him, daring him.
He’d loved nothing in his life the way he loved the dance of flame. It tempted him to stay, to watch, to admire, just another minute. Just one more minute.
But he stepped back. The fire was already starting to sing.
“Hear it, Deb? She’s alive now. Excited and hungry. Feel her heat? I almost envy you. Almost envy you what you’re about to experience. Almost,” he said.
And hitching his pack, he picked up the florist’s box and slipped out the door.
It was dark now, and fires burned brighter in the dark. This one would. He took a Sirico’s takeout menu, dropped it at the front edge of the building.
When he reached his car, he stowed his backpack, the empty florist’s box in the cargo area. He checked his watch, calculated the time, then took a leisurely drive around the block.
He could see the whiffs of smoke finding their escape from the window he’d opened, and the sparkle of flame just rising up, seeking the air he’d provided.
He dialed Reena’s number. He kept it short this time, simply rattled off the address. He tossed the phone out the window and drove toward home.
He had work to do.
The war was being fought when Reena arrived. Arcs of water hurled against the building, battled the bright flames that shot out of windows. Firefighters carried people out of the building while still others dragged hoses in.
She grabbed a helmet out of her trunk and shouted at Bo over the sounds of battle. “Stay back. Stay way back until I get a handle on the situation.”
“There are people in there this time.”
“They’ll get them out. That’s what they do.” She raced over, around barricades that were still being set up. Through the haze of smoke, she spotted the company commander barking into a two-way.
“Detective Hale, arson unit. I called it in. Give me the status.”
“Third floor, southeast corner. Evacuation and suppression. Black smoke, active flames on arrival. Three of my men just went in the door of the involved unit. We’ve got—”
The explosion blasted out, punching through the wall of noise. Glass and brick rained down, lethal missiles battering cars, the street, people.
She threw up an arm to shield her face and saw the sword of fire stab through the roof.
Men rushed the building, charging into the holocaust.
“I’m certified,” Reena shouted. “I’m going in.”
The commander shook his head. “One more civilian reported inside. Nobody else goes in until I know the status of my men.” He held her off, snapping orders, questions into his two-way.
The voice that crackled on reported two men down.
The night was full of the fire, the power of it, the terrible beauty. She stood, as mesmerized as she was horrified as it danced out of wood and brick, toward the sky.
She knew how it capered inside that wood and brick, flying, consuming, lashing back at those who tried to kill it. It roared and it whispered, it slithered and it flashed.
How much would it destroy? Flesh and bone as well as wood and brick, before it was tamed. This time.
The third floor collapsed with a sound like thunder and opened the gateway for the fire to soar.
Men stumbled out of the building with their fallen comrades on their backs. And paramedics dashed forward.
She moved forward with the commander toward one of the men taking long hits of oxygen through a mask. The man shook his head.
“Bitch was in flashover. We got in. Victim on the bed. Gone
. Already gone. We laid down a line of suppression, and it blew. Carter took the worst. He took the worst. Jesus, I think he’s dead. Brittle’s bad, but I think Carter’s dead.”
Reena looked up at the sound of more thunder. More of the roof going, she thought dully. And most of the floor under the apartment he’d chosen.
Who had he killed tonight? Who had he burned to death?
She crouched down, touched a hand to the shoulder of the firefighter who dropped his head to his knees. “I’m Reena,” she said. “Reena Hale. Arson unit. What’s your name?”
“Bleen. Jerry Bleen.”
“Jerry, I need you to tell me what you saw in there while it’s fresh in your mind. Give me everything you can.”
“I can tell you somebody set that bitch.” He lifted his head. “Somebody set her.”
“Okay. You went in the southeastern apartment, third floor.”
“Through the door. Brittle, Carter, me.”
“Was the door closed?”
He nodded. “Unlocked, hot to the touch.”
“Could you tell if there’d been forced entry?”
“No sign, none I saw. We hit the room with a stream. Bedroom on the . . . the left, fully engaged, kitchen straight back, thick black smoke. He’d set chimneys.”
“Where?”
“I saw one in the kitchen, maybe two. Window was open. Me and Brittle, we swung toward the bedroom. The whole room was going. I could see the body on the bed. Crisped. Then it blew. From the kitchen. I smelled the gas, and it blew. And Carter . . .”
She closed a hand over his. And, sitting with him, watched the men surround and drown the lethal beauty of the fire.
Her shoes crunched broken glass when she rose, walked over to meet O’Donnell. “He killed two this time. One civilian inside the apartment he used as point of origin, and a firefighter who was killed in the explosion, probably gas from the stove. He timed it, timed it to call me so by the time the fire department arrived on scene, it would already be fully involved.”
“Reena.” He waited until she turned away from the belching smoke, the stubborn tongues of flame. “Deb Umberio lives at this address.”
“Who?” She rubbed the back of her neck, struggled to place the name. When it hit, her heart slammed her ribs. “Umberio? Relation to Detective Umberio?”
“His widow. Tom died a couple years ago. Car wreck. That was Deb’s apartment.”
“God. Oh God.” She pressed her hands to her eyes. “Alistar? What about his partner, Detective Alistar?”
“In Florida. Retired, moved there six months ago. I’ve put a call in to him, gave him a heads-up.”
“Good, okay, good, then we . . . Oh sweet Jesus. John.”
She was already fumbling out her phone when O’Donnell clamped her arm. “He’s okay. I got him on his cell. Some lucky bug crawled up his butt and told him to drive to New York tonight, check up on Pastorelli in person. He’s okay, Hale, and since he’s already on the turnpike, he’s going to follow this through. We’ve got a unit going by his place, just in case. Check it out.”
“We’ll want to put a net over his social worker from back then, the court psychologist, hell, the family court judge. Anybody who had a piece of this. But I think he’ll be concentrating on those who had any part in taking his father down. I need my family protected.”
“We’ve got that. We’ll stay on that until we’ve got him.”
“I’m going to call home—I mean my parents and the rest—just clear that out of my head first.”
“You do that. I’ll talk to some of the tenants, see who saw what.”
Once she’d made her calls, she walked back to where Bo waited. “He killed two people tonight.”
“I saw them take that firefighter away.” In a body bag, he thought. “I’m sorry.”
“The woman he killed was the widow of one of the detectives who arrested his father for the fire at Sirico’s. He’s made his big move now, he’s opened the field. It doesn’t matter that we know who’s done this. It doesn’t matter to him that we know why. It just matters that he can do it. I’m going to ask you to do me a favor.”
“Name it.”
“Don’t go home. Call Brad, stay with him tonight. Or Mandy. Or my parents.”
“How about a compromise? I won’t go home. I’ll wait for you.”
“This is going to take hours, and you can’t help me here. You can take my car. I’ll ride with O’Donnell. Do me a favor, okay?”
“One condition. When you’re done, you don’t go home either. Not without calling me first so I can meet you there.”
“All right, that’s fair.”
She leaned against him for a moment, let herself be held.
An ambulance whizzed by, sirens screaming. On its way to take someone toward help, maybe comfort. She walked back through the smoke and into the weeping.
29
The heat hung, a curtain soaked in sweat, when John threaded through the unfamiliar streets of the Bronx. The call from O’Donnell had changed his plans to find a motel off the turnpike, get some sleep and track down Joe Pastorelli in the morning.
Even with the map he’d printed off the Internet, he’d made a couple of wrong turns. His own fault, he admitted, shifting to find comfort behind the wheel after four hours in the car.
Getting old, he mused. Old and creaky. His eyes weren’t as good for driving at night—and when the hell had that happened?
Used to be he could work forty-eight hours straight on a couple of catnaps and coffee. Used to be he had work that could keep him going two days straight, he reminded himself. Those days were gone.
Retirement wasn’t a reward at the end of a well-run career, not in his mind. In his mind it was a void surrounded by endless dull hours, haunted by memories of the work.
It was probably foolish to have driven all this way, but Reena had come to him, asked for help. That was a hell of a lot more to him than a gold watch and a pension.
Still, his eyes were gritty from the strain by the time he found the right street, and his head was aching when he searched out a parking lot.
The walk from the lot to the address he had on Pastorelli worked out the kinks in his legs, but did nothing for the dull pain in his lower back. Sweat clung to him like a second skin. He stopped at a Korean grocer’s, bought a bottle of water and a pack of Excedrin. He downed two on the sidewalk, watched a hooker on the corner come to terms with a john and slide into his car. Wanting to avoid the others still hawking their wares, he cut across the street.
Pastorelli’s building was a low-rise, its bricks scarred and smoked from time and generations of exhaust. His name was printed beside a first-floor apartment. John pushed buttons for third- and fourth-floor apartments, then opened the door when some cooperative soul buzzed him in.
If the air outside had been a steam bath, inside was a closed box baked in a high oven. The headache traveled from the back of his eyes up into his skull.
He could hear the TV through Pastorelli’s door clearly enough to make out some dialogue. He recognized Law & Order, and had the sudden, uncomfortable flash that if he hadn’t taken this impulsive trip north, he’d be sitting alone in a darkened room watching the same damn thing.
If it was Pastorelli watching justice climb the slippery rope of the law, he sure as hell hadn’t been in Maryland playing with fire ninety minutes before.
He balled his fist, thumped the side of it on the door.
He’d thumped a second, then a third time before the door creaked open on the chain.
Wouldn’t have recognized you, Joe, he thought. Would’ve passed you on the street without a glance. The tough, handsome face had devolved into a hollow-eyed, jaundiced skull with skin bagging at the jowls as if it had melted off the bone and pooled there.
He smelled cigarettes and beer, with something soft, like rotted fruit, underlying it.
“What the hell you want?”
“Want to talk to you, Joe. I’m John Minger, from Baltimore.”
“Baltimore.” A dim light bloomed in those sunken eyes. “Joey sent you?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
The door shut, the chain rattled. “He send money?” Pastorelli asked when he opened the door. “He’s supposed to send some money.”
“Not this time.”
A couple of fans stirred the stale heat and spread the smell of smoke and beer, and that underlying stench.
John recognized it now. Not just old man, not just old, sick man. It was old, dying man.
A black leather recliner sat like a man in a tuxedo at a homeless shelter. The rickety TV tray beside it held a can of Miller, an overflowing ashtray, the remote for the TV that looked as shiny and out of place as the recliner. With them were bottles of medication.
A sofa held together by dust and duct tape was pushed against the wall. The counters in the kitchenette were spotted with grease and layered with boxes from various takeout and deliveries. John could see the menu for the last few days had included Chinese, pizza, Subway.
A roach strolled across the pizza box, obviously at home.
“How do you know Joey?” Pastorelli demanded.
“You don’t remember me, Joe? Why don’t we sit down?”
The man looked like he needed to, John thought. He wasn’t sure how he managed to move the bag of bones he’d become without rattling. John took the single chair—a metal folding type—and pulled it opposite the recliner.
“Joey’s supposed to send money. I gotta have money, pay the rent.” He sat, picked up a pack of cigarettes. John watched the bony fingers fish one out, fight to light a match.
“When did you see him last?”
“Couple months maybe. Bought me a new TV. That’s a thirty-six-inch, flat screen. Fucking Sony. He don’t buy cheap.”
“Nice.”
“Got me this chair last Christmas. Son of a bitch vibrates, you want it to.” Those dead eyes latched onto John’s face. “He’s supposed to send money.”
“I haven’t seen him, Joe. Fact is, I’m looking for him. Talk to him lately?”
“What’s this about? You a cop?” He shook his head slowly. “You ain’t no cop.”
