A Ghost of Fire

by Sam Whittaker

Chapter Twenty Three

  The cloudless blue afternoon sky was marred by the black and gray pillar of smoke as I drove toward home. I wove in and out of the normally paced traffic pushing the car and bending it to my equally driven will. I got a few honks of protest from other drivers but paid them no attention.

  I barely made it through a traffic light turning from yellow to red but was rewarded with no satisfaction over the achievement. As I whipped through the intersection time seemed to slow briefly as it always did in my dreams and I thought I heard the faint echo of a man laughing and then I smelled smoke. In the time slowness, everything around me was clear and discernable. I saw faces of other drivers watching me with looks of puzzlement, a car put on its breaks as it just started to move into the same intersection and then I saw him.

  He seemed to be sitting and smiling in every car I looked into. The dark man sat and laughed at me knowing what I would find when I returned home.

  When I was out of the intersection time snapped back to its regular quality and the sound of honking horns faded and died behind me. Another six blocks down and I would reach the parking lot of my apartment complex. It might as well have been a world away. Impatience ate away at my confidence with every inch.

  The police and firemen had the entrance to the parking lot blocked off so I pulled the car up over the curb and onto the empty sidewalk then I got out. There was a crowd made up of residents and other onlookers held at bay by a few police officers. There were police cars and fire engines and all manner of other emergency vehicle littered through the parking lot, all with lights flashing. I ran up to the crowd and could see the building which was burning: mine. From the pattern of the damage I could also tell the fire had specifically started from within my apartment. I recalled seeing the ghost of the dark man sitting in cars I passed on my way there and began to wonder just how far his power could reach. Could he have done this by himself? I thought he might have been able to but I didn’t think that he did in this case. I was pretty sure he had help. I knew that probably meant James Price had been there not too long ago.

  The fire fighters had the blaze under control but not quite out yet. My mind was numb to rational thought and I was reduced to examining water spray through the air and land hissing in the fire. Fire and smoke and steam mingled together in a twisted tango of heat. My home and possessions were eaten by that heat. All hell had broken loose and grabbed hold of my life. It had sunk its teeth deep into my soul and now my heart screamed in anguish. My mouth kept its silence as I watched, watched, watched.

  Time passed, I’m not sure how much. The fire was finally out and only smoke and the burned out husk of an apartment remained to tell the tale. I noticed a hand fall gently on my shoulder and I heard someone speaking to me but all that felt like it was happening somewhere else. The voice continued but I couldn’t hear it. Then the hand shook me a little and my lucid mind returned from the foggy place it had been hiding for almost an hour.

  “What? Sorry, what did you say?” I said, mumbling at first. It was like waking up from a surreal dream where you weren’t sure which part of what you were experiencing was real and what was a fabrication of your sleeping brain.

  “I said, ‘Are you going to be okay.’ Are you hurt?” It was a fire fighter. His face was smudged and sweat dripped from the tip of his nose. His helmet was firmly fixed on his head. His eyes were inquisitive and genuinely compassionate. It took a moment to process the question and then to generate an appropriate answer.

  “No, I’m not hurt. But I don’t think I’m okay.”

  “Alright. I understand.” I wondered if he really did or not. Then I realized I didn’t care even if he did. My apartment and a good portion of the life I had constructed for myself out of the mess of what had happened to me while I was still a teacher was now gone. An important lesson I should have learned by then solidified in my conscience: What I can build someone else can burn. Then the reverse of that thought darkly began to take shape. I shook off that line of thought and focused on the man in front of me.

  “Is there something you need from me?”

  “Yes,” he said, “a few of your neighbors pointed you out to us. We understand you live in that one over there.” He pointed to the obvious origin point of the blaze. I looked over at it. It was the blackest, most damaged spot on the building. The whole outer wall was gone and I could see into what had once been my home. I saw there was also significant destruction to the apartment one floor above mine.

  “Yeah. That’s home, sweet home. Was anybody hurt?”

  “Yes,” he looked grave, “someone was hurt.” Then he said no more about it. “Where were you today, Mr. …?” He turned while he was talking and motioned for someone to join us. A police officer trotted over to us.

  “Nicholas. Steven Nicholas,” I answered his hanging question. “I was at lunch with my lawyer. He can confirm that. Do you want his contact information?”

  “Yes, we’ll need that,” the cop said. “Mr. Nicholas, we need a few moments of your time.”

  “You got it. What’s up?” I was emotionally spent and any concern about everything else that was going on fell limp to the ground.

  “Well,” he began and exchanged glances with the fire fighter, “it only took us about three seconds to determine the fire was not accidental after we got up close to the scene.”

  “Okay,” I said after the cop didn’t continue. “What does that mean?”

  “It means this was arson,” the fireman interjected. “But there’s…there’s more you need to know.” He stopped too and looked over at the cop. I looked between the two of them and waited for an explanation.

  When one didn’t come I said, “I’m all ears guys. What have you got?”

  The cop took that question. “The door into the building was broken into and not elegantly. But the point of interest is your door. There is a layer of cinderblocks covering it. Then there was a large sheet of plywood covering the cinderblocks. Then there was a series of two-by-fours propping the whole thing against the opposite wall. It seems like someone thought you were in there and they didn’t want you to get out.” As rational and believable an explanation as it was it didn’t ring true.

  Price might have been crazy but the description of the rudimentary construction suggested he wasn’t entirely wild. I thought it more likely that Price didn’t want anyone to get into the apartment to put the fire out. My guess was that upon investigation they were going to find the door leading into my place had also been broken into and that the fire had been started within.

  I closed my eyes to think and then I connected the dots further. Vox had told me at lunch about the bomb that had gone off at the library which at the time I had thought was merely about retribution against the librarian who had helped me. I realized the bomb was about more than revenge when I remembered Vox said something about police and firemen. The library was meant to be a diversion. It mobilized the police and the fire fighters in a completely different direction.

  “Steve,” the cop said, “do you know anyone who might want to do harm to you?”

  “Yeah, that’s an easy one. And I’m almost positive you will find him behind this,” I said pointing to the apartment building. “His name is James Price and you guys are already looking for him,” I said to the police officer. Clearly the officer was not prepared to receive such a clear and decisive answer. He squinted his eyes and he moved his head forward a bit as people do when they think they’ve misheard something.

  “Price,” he said incredulous. “You mean the missing investments guy? Why would he have it in for you?”

  “Why would he go missing when he’s about to be investigated,” I returned. “You do know what he’s under investigation for, don’t you officer?”

  A little defensively he said, “He was part of a car pile up where someone died.”

  “No,” I corrected a bit more angrily than I normally would have, “he was drunk and caused the accident where someone died. I also happened to
be a part of the accident and luckily walked away from it with not more than a sprained ankle. Maybe he has it in for me because I’m a witness.” The last part was a bit of clever and convenient imaginative construction, admittedly, but it was also plausible.

  Then, still on the creative plausibility angle I added, “He also showed up at my girlfriend’s place of work yesterday and tried to do her harm. Look it up. I’m sure there’s a police report. It was at the big book store a few miles from here and Price hurt someone else there. I saw the whole thing. Oh, and by the way my girlfriend was in the car wreck, too, although she was not as lucky as I was. She was in a coma for weeks. Maybe he thought she was a witness and went there to shut her up.” My voice had steadily risen along with my anger throughout this diatribe until at last I punctuated the last three words by poking my finger in the chest of the officer. I said nothing further about it. I had given them enough to think about.

  I turned away from both men at that point and looked at the small crowd which still hung around, most of which were residents, some of whom were being checked out by EMTs. Some of the people noticed the little exchange between me and the police officer and the fireman. When they saw me looking they turned away and pretended not to have heard. All of them, except, for one. At the back of the small crowd a figure lurked and tried to stay hidden. At first I thought it was just another onlooker, a closet-fan of destruction, the kind of person who slows way down when passing a horrific car accident hoping to catch a glimpse of something truly terrible. But the quick glimpse of his face I caught allowed me just enough material for recognition.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I said in unbelief. “He’s right there!” I turned my head to shout at the cop and the fireman and point at the figure. “James Price is right there!”

  There was an endless instant where I thought nothing was going to happen at all and time would simply unravel and come to a final and useless conclusion. The moment passed when the figure broke away from the group and ran. Just before he ran he stepped away from the group and I clearly saw Price’s face. There was no question whatsoever. It was him. He wanted me to see him. I looked back at the officer and the fireman who looked too stunned by the turn of events to believe it. I grunted in exasperation, turned and ran after the man myself. Soon, however, I heard the rapid footsteps of the other two men running behind me as they joined the chase.

  Up ahead with a sizeable head start Price cut across a lawn and turned a corner. With the power of all my anger and all my resolve I pushed myself and ran faster than I’d ever tried before. I may not have won the Gold or Silver but Bronze was definitely a possibility.

  As we closed in on the spot where Price had disappeared around the corner I heard the officer shouting into his radio as he ran, “All units in the vicinity of that apartment fire: We have a suspect on eleventh, heading south on foot…” and he described Price as best he could from the short and distant glimpses he’d had. Considering the brevity of his witness I thought he had done reasonably well with the description.

  The men who started behind me were now even with me and gaining ground. When we reached the spot where Price had turned the corner the cop was a solid meter ahead of me and the fireman was close behind him. The burn in my lungs began small but in short order blossomed into a fire of its own. As the pain intensified I thought: This is why I’m supposed to be teaching literature and not doing track and field.

  When I rounded the corner I saw Price in the distance…far in the distance. While the pursuit started with roughly the space of a block between us he was now more than three blocks ahead. As I watched he seemed to get smaller and smaller. I knew there was no hope at all of the other two men catching up to him before he was gone for good, or at least gone until the next time. I didn’t know how the man could be that far ahead but I guessed it was through no natural talent of his own. Something supernatural drove him.

  He rounded another corner ahead and soon after that a car blazed wildly the other direction, tires screeching something fierce. It was too far for me to see anything about the vehicle other than its general size and color. But the police officer was quick and apparently sharp-eyed. He gave a short description of the vehicle over the radio after he skidded to a halt. The fireman stopped too and I soon joined them.

  “You sure that was Price,” the officer asked.

  Out of breath I waited a few moments to answer. “Yeah,” I gasped heavily, “that was…him…for sure.”

  The other two men who were not as out of breath as I was but who were still visibly winded looked at each other and shook their heads. The fireman asked, “That guy is a stock broker?”

  I just nodded my head, still trying to settle my breathing.

  “He’s pretty fast for a desk jockey,” he said. The three of us chuckled a bit over that one. I turned when I heard more footsteps run up behind us. At the corner, about a block or more behind us a few good Samaritans had joined the chase but were evidently more out of shape than I. The policeman huddled the three of us together and we talked about heading back to the apartment. We all agreed and headed that way through the small group which had followed us.

  When we got back to the scene of the crime the two men sat with me in the back of an unused EMT vehicle for lack of private meeting space. I sat on a stretcher and they stood leaning against the wall of the big truck. They both asked me a series of questions regarding the apartment and James Price, thankfully none of which were sensitive to the other situation. By the time we wrapped up that discussion there was another police officer waiting to talk with the one I was with.

  “Hey Bill, we got a car parked over on the sidewalk here and we can’t find the owner. You want me to have it towed?”

  “Sorry, that’s me,” I said apologetically. “I didn’t have anywhere to park it and I was in a hurry to find out what happened. I’ll move it here in a minute.”

  “Just leave it alone Mark,” the officer said authoritatively. “He’s just lost an apartment and doesn’t need an impounded car to put the cherry on top of his day.”

  “You got it,” the other man said and walked away.

  “Do you have family here? Or do you have anyone you can stay with for a while,” the fireman asked.

  “No,” I said, “I don’t.” I hadn’t even thought of that yet. Where was I going to stay? I couldn’t stay with Trent and it would be too awkward to stay with Katie. I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving town to go bunk with my parents. There was too much to do in the city and we had made so much progress uncovering the mystery surrounding everything that had been going on. No, I had to stay in the city. There was no question about it. The only question was where I would sleep.

  “Okay. Dale’s hanging around here somewhere. He might be able to hook you up,” the fireman said.

  “Who’s Dale?” I asked.

  “Dale’s a good friend who works for the American Red Cross. He sets displaced people up with hotel rooms for a few days after something like this. I’ll go find him.” Then the fireman left to go locate his friend. I stood up and arched my back slightly and spread out my arms allowing the muscles to stretch.

  “Alright,” I said. “I better go see if I can find this Dale, too.” I started to exit the truck when the cop put his hand firmly on my arm to stop me.

  “Just wait a second,” he said. “I want to say something.”

  I was going to make some excuse and dismiss myself from any further pep talks but when I looked back at him and he was all business. I thought I had better listen to him. “Okay, go ahead.”

  “You’re not alone Steve.” Then he didn’t say anything else.

  “Okay,” I said feeling supremely un-helped. “Thanks. Have a good day.” I turned again to leave and he spoke again, this time in a tone of voice people use when they’re sharing an important confidence.

  “No,” he said, “I mean you’re not alone.” I turned and looked at his face which bore an expression which meant to say, ‘do you get
it?’ I nodded to him unsure if he was talking about what I was afraid he might be talking about. What he said next confirmed it all. “Get the key to Susan.” This time I was shocked and nearly speechless.

  “What did you just say to me?” Instead of answering my question the officer walked past me slowly, keeping his eyes locked on mine the whole time. “Wait,” I said. “Who’s Susan?” He hopped down out of the EMT truck and looked back up at me. He raised two fingers to his brow in a salute and then walked away. “Who is Susan?” I shouted once after him but he pretended not to hear and kept walking until he was out of sight.

  I stood in the back of the truck for a while trying to puzzle together what the officer might have meant. Nothing came of course and shortly thereafter the fireman returned with Dale. Dale and I chatted for a while and we worked out where I would be staying. I named the hotel Trent was staying at, hopeful that I might be able stay in close proximity to him, but Dale said that hotel was a little pricey and they didn’t like to donate space to the Red Cross. The hotel the Red Cross was using for this situation was not at all far from Trent’s and I was completely fine with that.

  When all that was squared away I got into my father’s car which I’d parked on the sidewalk and started driving. I wasn’t headed for the hotel, however. There were more important things to do. There was someone I needed to see.