The Crimson Brand

by Brian Knight

  Michael came to full awareness with a shout of alarm, stumbling to his feet, and saw Penny.

  “Who …?” Michael started to ask, but Penny interrupted him.

  Disguising her voice as well as she could, Penny said, “You got him. He’s behind you.”

  Michael turned and found Joseph Duke sprawled out on the mud, groaning as he struggled his way back to consciousness.

  “We were never here,” Penny said to Michael’s turned back. The girls fled down the tunnel, Katie in the lead.

  Water now spilled from the grates above them; the sprinklers inside the building and the firemen outside with their one salvaged hose were working. The flickering firelight falling through the grates was weaker now.

  They were running blind again. Suddenly, Katie stopped.

  “Kat, hurry …,” Penny pleaded.

  “Shhh.”

  Penny hushed, and heard what Katie already had. The clanking of boots treading the metal rungs of the manhole ladder. Someone new was in the tunnels with them, cutting off their escape.

  “Michael, where are you?” A man’s voice.

  Katie cursed and a dim white light glowed at the tip of her wand.

  At least we can see now, Penny thought.

  “Follow the water,” Katie whispered in her ear, pointing to the floor.

  The water spilling through the grates had risen to their ankles, flowing in the direction they had been running. “It has to come out somewhere.”

  “Drain pipe,” Penny said and nodded, feeling that they just might get away after all.

  They sprinted now, passing the intersecting tunnel before the new person could cut them off, following the water as it rose higher and flowed faster; and sooner than Penny could have hoped, she saw starlight illuminating a wall in front of them and heard the lazy rush of the Chehalis River. They turned a last corner and saw their way out, a narrow drainpipe that led to the stony river shore.

  Penny led the way through it, crawling on her hands and knees as the water rushed around her, and finally fell from the other end. She lay, panting, wet and filthy on the stony shore of the river, and was never more grateful to see the sky.

  A moment later Katie was lying beside her, wand still in hand and her eyes closed. They lay there for a few minutes, not speaking, only enjoying the clear air and the wide-open sky.

  “Thanks,” Katie said at last, and sat up, trembling. She looked exhausted but relieved.

  “Anytime,” Penny said.

  * * *

  They rinsed off the muck from the service tunnel in the river, then soaked and shivering raced down the shore toward Katie’s house.

  “Almost there,” Katie said.

  “What if your dad sees us?”

  “He won’t. He’s probably downtown helping out.” Katie said this with an obvious pride that seemed to surprise her.

  A few minutes later, Katie changed direction, climbing slowly up a well-traveled dirt path through the stones and weeds, then onto her neatly cropped yard.

  “This way,” Katie whispered, and Penny crept nervously behind her.

  They didn’t go to the front, but around back, to the side of the house facing the church and the park beyond it. They stopped for a moment to watch.

  Most of the town seemed to have turned out for the spectacle, gathered in the park behind a barricade of cars, trucks, and the town’s two sheriff’s cruisers.

  The firemen had hooked their hose to a hydrant at the corner of the park and school grounds, dousing the nearly demolished east end of the building from Main Street’s center line. The flames had mostly died down, but steam and smoke still poured from the shattered windows and collapsed roof. The bakery at the far end was gone, Homefries was gone, the seldom-used accountant’s office was intact, but black smoke gushed from its shattered front window and empty doorway.

  The little that Penny could see of Sullivan’s was a smoke-blackened ruin. The door and picture window lay shattered on the sidewalk, and the blue canvas awning hung in charred, soaked tatters.

  Susan’s shop, her livelihood, was destroyed.

  “Penny,” Katie said quietly, and then grabbed her arm to shake her from her shock. “Look.”

  Penny followed Katie’s pointing finger and saw three figures approaching Main Street. They watched the procession in silence, Joseph Duke in the lead, handcuffed and dazed, guided forward by Michael in his mud-splattered deputy uniform. Behind them was one of the men Penny had seen loading the fire hose earlier. With a start of shock, she realized it was Katie’s dad.

  Then the rest of the town saw them, and the disquieted hum of talk stopped. A woman, Katie’s mother, broke from the crowd and ran toward them. Mr. West took the lead and met her before she could get near Michael and his prisoner. For a moment she struggled to get past him, to see Michael, but he restrained her. She struggled for a moment, then gave up and fell into his arms.

  There were two figures conspicuously missing from the crowd … Morgan Duke and Ernest Price.

  “I gotta go,” Katie said at last, and began to drift toward the park. “There’s a side door into the garage … it’s unlocked.”

  Penny watched her walk away, then scanned the park for Susan. She found the old Falcon first, parked with so many other cars in the school parking lot, and then Susan standing with Jenny, just apart from the crowd, next to Michael’s cruiser. They watched Michael approach with his prisoner, and when the men finally reached the car Susan lunged for them. Jenny grabbed her around the waist and held her back as Michael deposited Joseph roughly into the back seat.

  Penny could hear her voice rise above the new babble in the park, but couldn’t make out her words.

  She tore her eyes away from the drama in the park and sprinted to the door before someone spotted her loitering, and stepped through into her bedroom to change out of her wet, filthy clothes.

  Five minutes later she was on her bike and flying high above the deserted highway back to town. When she saw the first lights of town below her, she guided her bike down to earth.

  “Susan!” Heads turned toward her as she guided her bike through the parking lot and into the park. “Susan!”

  The crowd refused to part for her, so she dropped her bike, checked that her wand was still secure in her sock, and shoved her way in.

  “Susan!”

  “Penny?” She heard Susan before she saw her, but a second later the crowd that would not part for her opened to let Susan through. “Penny, what are you doing?”

  Penny found herself hoisted from her feet before she knew Susan meant to do it. A moment later they were outside the crowd again, Jenny trailing behind them.

  “I told you to stay home,” Susan said, but hugged Penny so tightly it hurt.

  “I had to see,” Penny said lamely, but Susan seemed unable to scold her any further.

  Jenny’s eyes were red, puffy, and still wet, as if she’d only just finished weeping. Susan’s were dry, but wide and wild with shock.

  “It’s gone,” she said simply. “My shop is gone.”

  * * *

  She was on the way home, her bike safely secured to the rack on the Falcon’s rear bumper, when Penny realized she hadn’t heard from Zoe since they’d parted back in town.

  Susan drove them home in silence, a silence Penny didn’t attempt to break, and after a quick and distracted good-night hug, went to her room. The tears she’d kept back all that night broke free now, and Penny fled from the sound into her room.

  She was tired, and she was heartbroken for Susan, but before she let herself sleep she had to make sure Zoe was okay.

  “Zoe,” she whispered into her mirror, but there was no reply. “Zoe?”

  She called for Zoe until sleep finally crept up and took her, and fell asleep with the mirror still in her hand.

  Chapter 15

  Just Like Sisters

  Penny arose late the next morning, her body still aching from the night’s adventure, the mirror resting beside her on the covers
. She picked it up blearily, regarded it, and remembered her desperation to reach Zoe the night before. She couldn’t remember why, only that it had been important.

  Need … coffee.

  Yes, that was just the thing she needed. And then a shower. She felt filthy.

  She opened up the trapdoor to the house below, letting the ladder unfold smoothly on its way down to the floor, but froze with her foot on the first rung.

  “My insurance was paid up, so it’s not a total loss, but it’ll be a while before I’m back in business.” Susan was speaking with someone, maybe on the phone since Penny couldn’t hear a reply.

  Susan should be at work, Penny thought.

  And then she remembered. The fire, Morgan Duke’s creepy kid down in the service tunnel attacking Michael, Susan’s shop destroyed.

  “We’re meeting the investigators this morning,” Susan continued, then paused.

  Penny descended to the second floor and followed Susan’s voice to her room.

  Susan saw her at the door and motioned her in, patting the edge of the unmade bed. She looked tired and was still dressed in her clothes from the night before. Penny wondered if she’d had any sleep at all.

  “No, he hasn’t confessed.” Susan nudged Penny, mimicked drinking from an imaginary cup and raised her eyebrows.

  Penny nodded and ran downstairs. She returned ten minutes later with two mugs to find Susan still talking.

  “Morgan Duke still hasn’t turned up but Sheriff Price is questioning Ernest.” Susan barked a short, cynical laugh. “I don’t know if Ernest had anything to do with it but he was in business with them. The sheriff says that kid went out of his way to make it look like arson ….”

  The voice on the other end interrupted her, and she took advantage of the break to drain half her cup in two long, wincing swallows.

  “A deal between them went bad. The sheriff is claiming Duke tried to set Ernest up by having his kid fake an insurance fire.”

  More animated talk on the other end of Susan’s phone. Penny wondered who it could be.

  “No, it wasn’t common knowledge until the sheriff let it slip, but everyone knows now.” Susan’s brow furrowed, and Penny thought Morgan Duke was very lucky Susan couldn’t get to him at the moment. “If he hadn’t, I bet he’d be keeping it quiet now. The Prices are taking a hit on this one whether Ernest goes down or not, and there’s an election coming up. Sheriff Price could end up being plain old Avery Price again.”

  Interested as she was to know what had happened since the catastrophe, Penny grew bored with her role as eavesdropper. She decided to shower while Susan was occupied. She’d get the full story afterward.

  Gathering clean clothes, she noticed the little mirror and decided to give Zoe another try. Zoe didn’t answer, so she tried Katie, then Ronan. After half a minute of nothing, Penny gave up in frustration and descended to the second floor to clean up.

  A half-hour later, showered and refreshed, feeling almost human again, Penny joined Susan in the kitchen.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Susan greeted her, sounding more cheerful than Penny had expected. She was finishing a bowl of cereal and working on what must have been her second or third cup of coffee. “I’m headed to town. Wanna go with me?”

  Penny did.

  Susan allowed her ten minutes to eat a rushed breakfast and chug a second cup of coffee, then they were on their way, her bike once again riding on the back bumper.

  “Who were you on the phone with?” Penny was less interested in who Susan was talking to than the information they’d shared, but couldn’t think of a way to ask outright without feeling nosey.

  “June,” Susan said, and as always when speaking about her older sister, any vestige of gentleness left her face and voice. “She just found out about it this morning and called too see how I was doing.”

  For a moment a new question overrode Penny’s desire for information about the Dukes and the Prices.

  “Susan, how can you be so …,” Penny struggled to articulate what Susan was being. “Calm? How can you not be freaking out right now?”

  A quick smile touched Susan’s lips, then vanished. “Would you like me to freak out a bit?”

  “No,” Penny said, knowing Susan was dodging the question. “I’m glad you’re not freaking out, but it was your business.”

  Susan sighed. “It still is, Penny.”

  Susan maintained her calm for the rest of the car ride and said no more about it.

  * * *

  The stretch of Main Street from the school parking lot to Grumpy’s was cordoned off and closed, traffic through town being detoured through the residential district, but the devastated block was still the center of frenzied activity. Susan parked the Falcon between a white car with a Washington State emblem on the door and the words Fire Marshal below it in bright red, and the sheriff’s car; Sheriff Price was sitting inside, red-faced and shouting into a cell phone. The firemen who had been on duty the night before stood on the center line with a gray-haired man in a gray suit and Michael West, still in his muddied, torn uniform and newly elevated from football hero to supercop.

  Standing slightly away from them, Penny saw the old proprietor of Golden Arts, Zoe’s favorite shop; a plump, matronly looking woman who owned the bakery; and a scattering of others.

  “Going to Zoe’s?” Susan climbed from her open door, leaning on it heavily for a moment before straightening up. Her strength seemed to be deserting her in the face of the destruction. “I don’t think you’ll be allowed near that building. In fact I won’t allow it.”

  “Yeah,” Penny said. She closed the door and hurried to Susan’s side of the car, knowing she wouldn’t be able to catch Susan if she fainted but determined to try.

  Susan was pale and shaking, seemed to be moving forward through pure force of will. She shut her own door, perhaps a little harder than was necessary, and strode forward without another second’s pause toward the barricade.

  Penny watched her for a few steps, then lifted her bike from its rack and pushed it into the park.

  The park was not the buzzing center of activity it had been the night before, but it was much fuller than usual. Penny scanned the faces present for familiar ones but found neither Katie’s nor Zoe’s among them.

  Though she was in a hurry to see Zoe, she walked slowly through the park, taking in the full devastation. She couldn’t help herself. The light of day revealed far more than she had seen by the glare of electric lights and the dancing orange glow of the flames.

  Everything from the bakery to the accountant’s office was gone, and Sullivan’s was a blackened shell. Golden Arts seemed mostly intact, but with the building itself so badly ravaged Penny doubted that anyone would be buying a new watch or engagement ring there anytime soon.

  Penny hated to think how far the fire might have gone if Michael hadn’t turned the water back on.

  She had to go far out of the way, around Grumpy’s and up another block to skirt the closed-off street, but once she was off the grass and cruising along on the blacktop she made good time.

  Penny was still a block away when she heard the first warbling notes of an approaching siren. She looked back over her shoulder but the street behind her was empty. She steered onto the sidewalk and continued.

  The siren’s volume grew, and curious neighbors stepped out onto their porches to see what new trouble was brewing. She peddled past them, looking up and down the street for the source of the noise, and as she turned the corner to Zoe’s house, a new, more alarming sound joined the approaching siren.

  Crying.

  Penny saw Zoe sitting on the porch in the same clothes she’d worn the night before, bent almost double, her face in her hands. She wept into her hands, oblivious to the swelling wail of sirens and the stares of the growing crowd lining her street.

  Dread filled Penny’s gut. She peddled as fast as she could toward her friend. She didn’t think to look as she crossed the street to Zoe’s house, didn’t see the ambulance, sti
ll a half-block away but moving fast, or the sheriff’s cruiser, coming from the other direction, that had to slow to avoid hitting her. Forgetting caution in her haste, she flew her bike a few inches above the curb in front of Zoe’s house and leapt from it. Unguided, it continued for a few more feet before hitting the ground and crashing onto its side.

  “Zoe!” Penny shouted in alarm and ran to her friend, but Zoe didn’t look up, only shook her head wildly from side to side. Her weeping had subsided to frame-racking sobs.

  Penny heard a brief squeal of tires behind her, and a second later a car door slammed. A new, familiar voice shouted Zoe’s name.

  A second later Penny had fallen to her knees before Zoe. She took her friend by the shoulders and called her name again, gently this time.

  “Zoe … what happened?”

  And now Zoe did look up, and the pain and fatigue in her face started Penny’s tears. Zoe’s eyes were puffy from weeping, bloodshot and bleary from exhaustion. For a moment she didn’t seem to recognize Penny, only stared into her face with pitiable confusion.

  “Zoe, is it your grandmother?” Penny recognized the voice behind her now. It was Michael, Zoe’s crush. His right hand fell onto Penny’s shoulder, his left onto Zoe’s.

  Zoe’s eyes rolled from Penny to Michael, and for once there was no shyness or embarrassment in them.

  “She’s dead,” Zoe said, sounding as if she didn’t quite believe it herself. “I tried to save her but I didn’t know what to do ….”

  Her eyes rolled back to Penny, and the pitiable confusion was gone, replaced with an even more pitiable expression. Comprehension.

  Michael stepped away and she began to cry again.

  The ambulance rolled to a stop, the siren cutting out midwarble but the lights still flashing panic-red.

  Michael led two paramedics past them and inside while Penny sat with Zoe and held her.

  After a while exhaustion took the sharpest edge off Zoe’s grief and she simply sat, leaning against Penny, leaking silent tears into her hands.