Blind Pursuit

34

Annie was silent as Walker escorted her out of the community center. He wondered if he’d been wrong to ask about the fire. She had been upset to begin with, and reliving those memories might have served only to traumatize her further.

They crossed the street together. At the curb Annie abruptly turned to him and whispered, “It wasn’t luck.”

He blinked. “What?”

“I told you we were lucky to escape the fire. But it wasn’t luck.”

“What, then?”

“Erin saved me.”

Their shoes clacked on the sidewalk. A robin burst out of the branches of a mesquite tree and shot into the clear, warm air. In the near distance, the bells of San Agustin Cathedral chimed ten o’clock.

“I panicked,” she went on softly. “I mean, I lost it. Totally. I could hear our mother shrieking, and the flames crackling, and I started to yell and yell and yell. I couldn’t stop.”

He heard bitter self-recrimination in her voice, and frowned at it. “You were seven years old.”

“So was Erin.”

“Anyone would panic in that situation.”

Annie stopped walking and looked up at him, her face flushed, candescent in the harsh sunshine. “ She didn’t.”

Walker took that in. A first grader, and she had kept her cool in an arson fire.

“How did your sister save you?” he asked after a thoughtful moment.

“First she got me to calm down. She grabbed hold of me, put a stuffed animal in my hands, a koala bear. My favorite bear. I’d named her Miss Fuzzy.”

Walker felt his throat catch. The mention of the doll brought it home to him-how little those two girls had been. Small enough to still cling to teddy bears for comfort.

“That shut me up,” Annie went on. “It wasn’t just the bear; it was Erin’s attitude, her… decisiveness. Then she took me by the hand and led me into the hall.”

“Which was soaked with gasoline,” Walker said, “and ablaze.”

“It was the only exit. We were on the second floor, with a concrete patio twenty feet below. To jump out the window would have been suicide, and there was no time to improvise any sort of ladder, even if we’d thought of it. We had to get out fast.”

Standing on this quiet tree-lined street, listening to birdsong and the rustle of leaves. Walker tried to visualize what it must have been like inside that house.

He had seen a few fires, though he’d never been in the midst of one. A house fire out of control was a waking nightmare, a riot of churning smoke and hellish flames, of windows and walls blown apart by combustible gases, of spinning clouds of soot like fallout from a bomb blast.

Even to stand outside such a spectacle could be unnerving. To be at the center of it-his imagination failed him. And to be at the center of it and only seven years old…

“Our mother was quiet by then,” Annie said softly. “There was no sound except the fire-I can still hear it-roaring and bellowing like a dragon, and that’s what I thought we were walking straight into. A dragon’s open jaws.”

“But you went anyway.”

“Because Erin led me,” Annie said simply.

Slowly, Walker nodded.

“Our end of the hall wasn’t on fire yet-he hadn’t poured any gasoline there, for some reason-but there was a sheet of flame across the staircase landing. Like a wall, a wall of heat, only not a wall, because it was moving, it was… alive.”

“How’d you get through?”

“Between the fire and the banister was a narrow gap. Barely enough clearance, but we had to chance it. Erin went first, and I followed.” The memory winded her; she drew a shaky breath. “It was like a circus act, you know? Like jumping through a flaming hoop.”

“And you made it.”

“Almost didn’t. My pajamas caught fire. Erin snatched the bear out of my hand and beat at the flames till they were smothered. I was crying again, because I knew the dragon had almost gotten me, and because I’d lost Miss Fuzzy. She was all charred and mangled and… well, I just left her there.” She hugged herself and managed a faltering smile. “Sometimes I still think about that bear. Still wish I hadn’t lost her.” Her voice was a whisper. “Isn’t that silly?”

Walker didn’t think so, and he knew she didn’t, either. “Go on,” he said gently.

“We got down into the living room, and God, such an awful smell, gasoline everywhere. The fire was still after us-I saw it marching down the stairs. We ran for the front door, but the fire was too quick; it beat us there. Then the whole room went up-everything flame and smoke, orange and black-whirling sparks like the dragon’s eyes.”

In the belly of the monster. The string of words ran through Walker’s mind, a random fragment of thought.

“It was hard to breathe.” Annie gazed into the distance, her face in profile, moisture glistening on her cheek. “Erin pulled me to the floor, where the air was cleaner. We crawled into the kitchen. No flames there yet, no gasoline trail. She helped me up on the counter, opened the window and punched out the screen, then pushed me through and followed.”

Her shoulders lifted in a shaky shrug, and abruptly all the breath seemed to sigh out of her.

“Anyway, that’s it,” she finished. “That’s how we survived.”

Walker shook his head. Seven years old, hardly more than babies-yet so incredibly brave, both of them.

For although Erin clearly had taken the lead, Annie had needed courage, too, more courage then she gave herself credit for-the courage to leave the imagined safety of the bedroom and face the dragon’s scorching breath.

“So you see?” She looked at him, desperate intensity shining in her eyes. “You see why I have to help her? She saved me. Now she’s in trouble, and it’s my turn to rescue her. It’s my turn.”

He tried to be gentle. “You’ve done all you can.”

“I haven’t done anything,” she snapped, turning away.

In the parking lot, watching her unlock her car, he looked for words of reassurance. “From everything you’ve told me, I’d say your sister can take of herself.”

“She needs me now.”

“How can you be sure?”

“SOS,” she said hotly.

“Annie…”

Her eyes flashed at him, hard and angry. “I know you think I’m overreacting. 1 know you think I should forget about it. I know you think Erin is fine, just fine. But you’re wrong.”

“I just hate to see you so worked up over-”

“You’re wrong,” she said again, and then she was behind the wheel, slamming the door, revving the engine, racing out of the lot and down the street at twice the posted speed limit, daring him or any other cop to ticket her.

He stared after the car until it hooked around a corner with a shriek of tires. Then he sighed. He supposed he would never see her again.

Or perhaps he would. Once Erin turned up unharmed, sheepish about her temporary abdication of responsibility, Annie might drop by the squad room to fill him in. He hoped so.

A new thought made him frown. The seven-year-old who had kept her presence of mind in a blazing house didn’t sound like the type to ever abdicate responsibility. A fire hadn’t rattled her; how likely was it that she would fall victim to the pressures of work?

Standing very still, feeling the steady heat of the sun on the back of his head. Walker wondered if Annie could be right.

He abducted her, she’d said, and forced her to write this phony letter, and then later he returned for the Tegretol because, without it, she could die.

Was it possible?

Oh, hell. Of course not.

What did he have to go on? An incorrect street address on an envelope? A letter that was oddly terse and impersonal?

There was nothing to justify any further investigation. Nothing.

“Sorry, Annie,” he said to the silence around him.

Before entering the station, he remembered to straighten his tie. His neck, he noticed, was damp with sweat.

The temperature must be ninety-five already; low hundreds by afternoon. Summer weather, coming early.

A real scorcher, he thought grimly, opening the lobby door.