by Brad Smith
There was another crash from above. The sound of the blaze was incredible, like a firefight. Carl reached down with his right hand and, taking Frances by the collar of her coat, he dragged her across the concrete floor, through the open storm door and into the stairwell. She was dead weight and she didn’t make a sound. It was all he could do to move her. His back to the stairs, his heels dug in, he moved her upward, one step at a time. When he got to the top, he had to stop. His heart was pounding, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
He could rest for only a moment. The heat was vicious there, the walls above him on fire. He took her again by the collar and pulled her away from the house, across the grass of the yard. Twice his feet went out from under him and he fell. The second time, he took Frances in his arms and just sat there, watching the inferno that was the house. The place was fully engulfed now, the windows blown out, the roof ablaze. The heat came after him again where he sat. With an effort, he got up and again began to pull Frances along. When he was fifty yards from the building, he stopped. He couldn’t go any further and so he hoped they were safe. He kept thinking of Stacy and praying she had somehow escaped.
His hands and arms were sticky with the blood that still flowed and he began to feel weak. In the distance, he thought he heard sirens.
THIRTEEN
There were trucks and tankers and rescue units parked everywhere, in the drive and in the yard and along the road out front. A news team from Rose City was on the scene, wandering around the periphery of the ruined house looking for footage and soundbites.
The fire crew was pumping water from the river, keeping a steady flow on the house, but it was obvious there was little to salvage at this point. It was an old farmhouse and the substructure would have been tinder dry. They had soaked the garage to prevent it from catching fire as well. The wind was gusting, flaring hot spots here and there in the ruined house, showering the garage roof and vehicles with sparks illuminating the dark sky.
Dunbar parked the SUV along the road, a hundred yards or so away, and walked up to the scene. He had been at home when he got the call. He and Martha had had a late dinner, roasted chicken and potatoes and salad. They had drunk most of a bottle of wine with the meal and were watching a movie that he had little interest in when the phone rang.
‘Why are you being called to a house fire?’ Martha had asked.
‘Good question. Dispatch didn’t know, other than to say the fire marshal had requested it.’
So he’d left the boring movie and driven out to Talbotville. The marshal’s name was Jason McLean. Dunbar had never met him before. He was young, maybe thirty or thirty-five. Dunbar wasn’t certain that thirty-five was considered young these days, but it was certainly young to him.
‘So what’s going on?’ he asked.
‘Something not right about this one,’ McLean said. ‘Looks to me like a murder/suicide gone wrong.’
‘Oh?’
McLean pointed to the back yard. ‘When first response got here, a man and a woman were on the grass over there. Both unconscious. Neighbor confirms that they live here. Looks like the woman took a pretty good beating and the man’s wrists were slashed. I’m thinking he beat her up, got all remorseful and tried to off himself. Set the house on fire and then changed his mind about the whole thing and got him and her out of there in the nick of time.’
That was a fair amount of calculating for a young fire marshal, Dunbar thought. And pretty premature to boot. ‘Where’s this neighbor?’
McLean looked around for a moment before spotting the woman, standing with a group of others in the lee of the garage, out of the wind. ‘There,’ he said. ‘In the green jacket with the hood.’
Dunbar nodded. ‘The couple – you have their names?’
‘Not yet, but the property belongs to a Frances Rourke.’
‘You say they were both unconscious?’
‘Yeah,’ McLean said. ‘Paramedics said in his case it could have been from lack of blood, although his face was banged up too, like from a fall or something.’
‘What were her injuries?’ Dunbar asked.
‘Blunt trauma to the head.’
Dunbar stood looking at the house, where the firefighters were moving about, hitting hot spots with the hoses. There was a lack of urgency in their movements, as would be expected with a lost cause. Dunbar turned to take in the numerous vehicles in and around the property. By the garage, dripping with water from the hoses, there was a Lexus SUV, a Ford pickup and an older hatchback of some kind.
‘Do we know if anybody else was home?’
‘Not definitely,’ McLean said. ‘But the neighbor said it was just the two of them lived here.’
‘Those three vehicles by the garage,’ Dunbar said. ‘Were they here when your men showed, or are they part of the circus that came afterward?’
‘Well … I don’t know,’ McLean said.
‘Let’s find out.’
Dunbar walked to the three vehicles in question and as he took down the plate numbers he asked McLean to direct him to the first responder. It turned out to be a captain named Pollard. He was standing by one of the tankers, drinking a cup of coffee. He was tall and heavy, with a walrus mustache.
‘So far as I recall, those three cars were parked there when we arrived,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t pay a whole lot of attention to that. We’re looking at the fire.’
‘I suppose it’s too early to speculate on cause,’ Dunbar said.
‘Not too sure about that,’ Pollard said. ‘Come here.’
He led Dunbar around to the front of the house, where a large bay window had blown out. The heat was fierce even yet and they couldn’t get any closer than forty feet or so from the building. Pollard pointed inside, to the water-soaked living room. Most of the floor had collapsed into the basement but a portion of it, alongside a stone fireplace, was still intact.
‘See there, by the hearth? Looks like a gas can. One of those old steel cans. You know anybody keeps a can of gas in their living room?’
Dunbar allowed he did not. McLean had been trailing and now he stepped forward. Apparently he was feeling left out.
‘Why wasn’t I told about this?’
‘We just spotted it,’ Pollard said. ‘The building was on fire previously.’
‘You’ll hang on to that for me when you can get to it,’ Dunbar said.
The captain assured him of it. Dunbar left them there and continued to walk around the house. The walls were caved in along the far side but the rear wall was still partially erect, held upright by the stone fireplace. Stopping in the back yard, Dunbar saw stairs leading to the basement through a storm door. He attempted to get near for a closer look but the heat drove him back. Stepping away, he skidded on the slippery ground and almost fell. He knelt down and ran his fingers over the grass. They came up bloody. Taking his flashlight from his pocket, he followed the blood trail to the storm door, or at least as close as the heat would allow. Then he turned to retrace his steps. Several yards out into the yard he came upon a spot where the grass was matted down and there was a considerable amount of blood. Presumably that was where the couple was found.
He tracked McLean down by one of the tankers, talking to the reporter from Rose City. Dunbar recognized her. She was young and very pretty and tonight was wearing a trench coat. Old school. Dunbar waited until McLean finished talking to her and then approached.
‘Looks as if the couple came up from the basement,’ he said, gesturing to the yard.
McLean glanced over. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘There’s a trail of blood from the storm door.’ Dunbar indicated the house. ‘I count three exit doors above ground. Why would they leave from the basement?’
‘Who knows? Maybe they were trying to get away from the fire.’
‘You said she was unconscious,’ Dunbar said. ‘He carried her downstairs and then up again?’
McLean shrugged. ‘You wouldn’t think so.’
‘Where did they take them?�
� Dunbar asked. ‘Which hospital?’
‘Talbotville.’
Before he left, Dunbar walked over to talk to the woman in the green jacket. She was maybe seventy, wearing duck boots and corduroy pants. He told her who he was, then asked where she lived.
‘Next place over.’ She pointed to the west. ‘I was walking my dog down by the river and coming home I heard the fire. I could see the flames through the trees. I went in and called nine-one-one, but somebody else had already called it in.’
‘And you walked over?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I put my dog inside first. He’s funny around fire.’
‘And you saw two people on the lawn?’
‘Frances and Carl,’ the woman said. ‘They were both lying over there. She was kind of in his lap but they were both unconscious. I didn’t get too close because the rescue trucks were just pulling in.’
‘Can you give me their names?’ Dunbar asked.
‘Frances Rourke and Carl Burns.’
Dunbar wrote in his notes. ‘How well do you know them?’
‘Frances I know real well. This is her family farm. She’s a good person. She has a big heart but she doesn’t take any guff from anybody.’
‘And him?’
‘Him – well, the last couple of years I’ve got to know him. Some thought at first like maybe he was a bit of a hoodlum, maybe taking advantage of her. You know, with it being her farm and all. Not that Frances would be easy to take advantage of. But I don’t figure that’s how it is. He’s a real good worker, and I know he treats her fine.’
‘What do you mean by hoodlum?’ Dunbar asked.
‘He’s been in jail.’
Dunbar started to ask more, but it was then that he recognized the name.
‘Did you see anything earlier, when you were out walking?’ he asked. ‘Strange car in the driveway or anything like that?’
‘I never walked past here. I always make a loop down along the river to the side road up yonder and back.’
‘You see any strange cars on the road?’
The woman shrugged. ‘The usual traffic, I guess. What would you call a strange car?’
‘Good point,’ Dunbar admitted.
‘Oh, there was a truck parked on the lane leading to the river,’ she said.
‘Where was this?’
She pointed. ‘A couple hundred yards or so past my drive. But people park there quite frequently. They fish off the old stone dam down below.’
‘Was this after dark?’ Dunbar asked.
‘Just, I’d say.’
‘And you didn’t see it leave?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d have any idea what kind of truck it was?’
‘It was a white Dodge.’
‘You’re certain of the make?’
‘That’s what was written on the back,’ the woman said. ‘My father always drove a Dodge. He claimed Henry Ford was in cahoots with Hitler.’
Dunbar wrote down what she’d told him, aside from the father’s political theories. He got the woman’s name and phone number before indicating the three vehicles by the garage.
‘Do you know who owns those?’
‘Frances drives the SUV,’ the woman said. ‘The pickup is Carl’s and the little red car belongs to the girl that works here.’
Dunbar walked over to the vehicles. None of them were locked and he looked inside all three. There was a cell phone on the console of the SUV. Dunbar put it in his pocket, got into his car and headed for the hospital.
Billy stayed home the following day and the day after that, watching the news and reading the papers. After they had left the burning farmhouse he’d driven Chino and Bug back to Chino’s house at the scrap yard. In the truck they were both drunk, pulling from the bottles they’d stolen. They were high on adrenaline and what they had seen. What they had done. Billy had tried to close his ears to it; he didn’t want to know.
When they got to Chino’s, Billy left them staggering around the yard and got into his car and started for home. As he drove he wondered if this time Chino would give the money to Tommy Jakes. The only reason that Billy had gone along tonight was that Chino told him that Tommy Jakes was under the impression that Billy had ripped him off. It didn’t take much to figure out where he’d gotten that idea. Billy didn’t know Tommy Jakes, other than by reputation, but he knew that he was nobody to cross. Not that Billy had crossed him, but all that mattered at this point was that Tommy thought that he had. According to Chino anyway. Billy wondered if Tommy Jakes would believe whatever Chino told him. Billy was in no position to think otherwise.
Chino had said that the woman who owned the farmhouse was rich and that the robbery would set them square with Tommy and net them a few thousand apiece to boot. Apparently she had her own show on television. Billy didn’t care about the money anymore; all he wanted was to be free of Chino and Bug. He should never have agreed to the border run to begin with. He knew when Chino and Bug had showed up in his yard that day that nothing good would come of it. He’d been right but he’d gone along anyway.
Just as he’d gone along tonight. And tonight was going to stay with him forever. As he drove he tried to convince himself that the three people had escaped from the house. Out a window or back door, some way. It didn’t seem likely, though. The state of the house as they’d driven away, it really didn’t seem possible.
Cheryl and the boy were asleep when he got home. Billy looked in on them in the bedroom and then walked outside. He sat there in a lawn chair, smoking, until it was nearly daylight in the east.
The next morning he watched the news as he fed his son cereal. Cheryl had already left for work. Billy was elated to hear the reporter say that the man and the woman were found on the lawn. They were both in the hospital, in critical condition. But alive. There was no mention of the other woman though, the scared girl huddled on the couch beside Bug. Maybe she had gotten away and was too frightened to come forward. Maybe the cops had her and weren’t saying anything. Because if there was one thing that Billy knew, it was that the cops were involved. The news said that the cause of the fire was unknown at this time, but they knew. Arson was hard to hide, especially arson by amateurs. Not only that, but the couple would have told the cops everything by now. And they had seen Chino’s face, and Bug’s too. But they hadn’t seen Billy’s.
Billy kept the TV on the news channel all day and late in the afternoon they announced that a body had been found in the house. No identification as yet. The boy was sleeping and Billy shut off the TV and went out on the back step and lit a cigarette. He sat there for a long time, watching the neighborhood. It was a sunny day and in the park down the way a mother was playing on the slides with her daughter. A couple threw a tennis ball for their dog and beyond them an older man was casting a line out into the river. Billy had talked to the man before; he fished there nearly every day.
Billy hadn’t even wanted to go into the house, thinking the less he knew the better. He’d said he would wait in the truck, which they’d parked a half mile away, near the river. But Chino said he was coming along. Chino kept acting as if it was Billy who had pissed away the money at the casino, as if it was somehow his fault. Chino seemed to be living in a world of denial. Everybody was against him. Most of what he believed was just false.
When the three of them had walked into the house wearing the masks the girl had been standing in the kitchen preparing a salad. There’d been a glass of wine on the counter. She didn’t speak when she saw them. It appeared that she was too frightened to say anything. Chino had grabbed her in a choke hold and dragged her to the couch, where he and Bug had tied her hands with electrical wraps and wound the duct tape around her head. She was a pretty girl, maybe twenty, Billy had thought, watching her scared expression. He had wanted to leave then.
But he hadn’t.
When Chino got up, it was noon. He made instant coffee and then went to check on the money, which he’d stashed in the cupboard in the back p
orch when they’d come home. It was gone.
Chino got his revolver and went into the living room. He lifted Bug off the couch and threw him on to the floor. Bug came awake scrambling for cover, his hands above his head.
‘What?’
‘Where is it?’ Chino demanded.
Crabbing his way backwards toward the wall, Bug looked up at him through bloodshot eyes. ‘Where’s what?’
‘The money, you little cocksucker.’
‘I didn’t touch it, Chino.’
Chino saw Bug’s brain slowly come to life, washed as it was in the fog of the booze and the drugs. He could see him begin to know what he already knew.
‘Where is it?’ Chino asked.
‘I moved it,’ Bug realized.
Chino pointed the gun at Bug. ‘Where is it?’
‘Fucksakes,’ Bug said. It took him another few moments to remember. ‘I put it under the sink.’
Chino turned and went into the kitchen. The money was there. ‘Why the fuck would you do that?’ he shouted into the living room
Bug stood up. ‘So you wouldn’t get drunk and gamble it again.’
Chino shook his head and went to the sink for a glass of water. He had some pills in his pocket and he took two. ‘Do me a favor, Bug. Don’t think.’
Chino pushed the flyers and mail off the kitchen table and on to the floor. He dumped the cash out and began to count it. With what he hadn’t lost at the casino and the money from the TV lady, it amounted to a little over fifty-one thousand.
In the other room Bug sat huddled on the couch, shoulders hunched, sucking on a menthol cigarette. He was shivering like a dog coming out of a cold bath. Things were coming back to him.
‘Oh man, we fucked up,’ he said.
‘What are you talking about?’ Chino asked calmly. He was stacking the money, putting it back in the bag.
