Flame

Chapter 3

He was dancing, whirling on two good legs. The woman he was with was wearing heady perfume. A scent he couldn’t place. Diamonds shot sparks off her black velvet gown.

Carver opened his eyes wider.

There was no woman. He wasn’t dancing. The diamonds were fragments of glass. The velvet wasn’t a gown, wasn’t black, and wasn’t even velvet; it was the blue carpet in his office.

He was disappointed.

Why was he lying on the floor? Staring at a thousand glittering glass shards and wondering where the hell was his cane? A curl of blackness broken by light washed over him, then receded. Like a dark surf rushing in, rushing out. He tried to gather his senses.

What’s going on here?

Not sure.

You fully conscious, Carver? Reasoning straight?

Dumb question. How would I know? But yeah, I think so.

Where was his cane?

Stretched out on his stomach, he propped himself up on his elbows and looked around.

Whoa! The office was some mess. All the papers that had been on his desk were spread over the floor and up against the far wall, like leaves tossed by the wind. Nothing was left on the desk, not even the ashtray or the incredibly complicated Japanese-made combination answering machine, telephone, recorder, and Dictaphone Edwina had talked him into buying. The drapes hung limply at the window and were so shredded they admitted narrow sunbeams that dappled the floor and caused the broken glass to glitter. Diamond, diamond.

Carver saw his cane lying on the floor near the desk. He started to drag himself toward it, then felt a shard of glass penetrate the heel of his hand and stopped and lay still.

The sharp pain cleared his mind. Gingerly, he pulled the splinter of glass out with his thumb and forefinger and dropped it off to the side.

Then he moved more carefully, picking glass out of the carpet before him. Like a fastidious maid removing dangerous lint.

He reached the cane and gripped it tightly, feeling the hard walnut warm to his grasp. But he didn’t try to stand up. The way he felt, that could wait a minute or two. Instead he worked his way to a sitting position and leaned his back against the wall, his stiff leg angled out in front of him, and wondered what had put him here, what had happened.

He heard the singsong wail of a siren, way off in the distance, yet red and blue light danced off the glass fragments remaining in the window frame. Roofbar lights. Odd. A police car had turned into the lot and was parking out front, but the siren seemed miles away. Sound and sight didn’t coincide. Didn’t make sense.

Then he realized there was something wrong with his hearing. And there was a high, steady buzzing in his ears, hardly noticeable because it was so monotonous it seemed part of normal background noise. He’d been ignoring it the way people ignore crickets screaming.

Then the sky outside the window darkened, lightened, darkened. Smoke drifting on the wind. He could smell it. And he could smell something else. Something sweet and cloying that was burning and creating the black smoke. And he remembered.

Said, “Holy Christ!” Grabbed the edge of the desk, planted the tip of his cane firmly in the soft carpet, and pushed himself to his feet.

His head ached and he was dizzy. And now that he’d remembered, he was trembling. He could feel the vibration running like electricity through the cane.

He leaned hard on the cane with both hands and waited, his body swaying. Finally the dizziness passed. The trembling ceased. The headache decided to stay.

Another siren wailed outside. Much louder than the first. Through the window, Carver saw the roof of another police car and its flashing red and blue lights as it braked to a halt outside.

Renway. It had to be Renway who’d triggered the explosion when he started the Caddie. Carver remembered how the sound of the big car’s engine turning over had preceded the blast. Renway, who’d been pretending to be someone else. Who? Oh, yeah, guy named Weston, or Wesley. That was it-Frank Wesley.

Carver hobbled to the window to make sure he was right about the source of the explosion. Peered outside and saw the long Cadillac burning despite the frantic efforts of two uniformed cops with fire extinguishers. The car’s twisted hood was lying on the ground nearby; its doors were blown open or had been opened by the cops. One of the rear ones hung crazily by only the bottom hinge, like some kind of injured wing.

The car’s interior was pure orange flame, fed by gasoline and not in the least affected by whatever the cops were spraying on it. The tires were already melted to globs of rubber. What Carver had smelled were the mingled odors of rubber-and Renway-burning. The sickening stench of charred flesh that lodged in the nostrils and lay thick on the tongue to become taste.

Through the pulsing, constantly unfolding orange blossom trapped in the car, a wizened black form could occasionally be glimpsed bent over the steering wheel as if trying to coax speed from hurtling steel, like Renway’s narrow shadow. Only it wasn’t his shadow, it was Renway himself. What he’d become in the blast furnace of the Cadillac.

People were standing across the street and on the edge of the parking lot. Staring, knotted close together as if for protection. Death was always an unpleasant reminder. Another uniformed cop was over there, strutting back and forth like a storm trooper and waving his arms, motioning for everyone to stay well back, though no one was moving. Carver knew there was no danger of another explosion. Everything explosive or flammable in the car was already blazing.

Sirens. Very loud now. And a clanging bell.

A yellow-and-chrome Del Moray fire engine, gaudy as a jukebox, belched black smoke of its own from its diesel exhaust, slowed down with more bell clanging, and turned off of Magellan into the driveway. Another patrol car arrived, following the fire engine like a pilot fish trailing a shark. No other vehicles moving out there; Magellan must be blocked to through traffic.

The breeze caught the smoke and the sweet odor again, carrying them Carver’s way.

He swallowed the syrupy taste at the base of his tongue and backed away from the window. Limped over behind his desk. Sat down hard in his chair. Dizzy like before. Not feeling well at all. His headache flared, pounded. Jesus! Soon as he felt like standing again, he’d root through the locked bottom drawer of the file cabinet, where he kept his gun and some Extra-Strength Tylenol. Needed three of four tablets to block this baby.

What happened next didn’t help his headache at all.

The office door opened and in stepped McGregor.