The Murder Book

CHAPTER 43

Bill was right about the cooking twine. Too flimsy. I used it anyway, sitting the small man in a chair in the front room and using both rolls to create a macramé mummy. He looked out of it, hopefully for a while. My heart started racing again.

I searched the small kitchen, found a crushed, nearly empty roll of duct tape beneath the sink, unspooled enough to run two tight bands around his body and the chair, at nipple and waist levels. What was left, I used to bind his ankles together. He offered no resistance… how old was his kid?

I said, "Where's the phone?"

Bert shuffled over to a corner, bent behind another chair, retrieved an old, black dial phone, and handed it to me. He hadn't said a word since the shooting.

I lifted the receiver. No dial tone. "Dead."

Bert took the phone, jabbed the receiver button, dialed O. Shook his head.

"Do you generally have phone problems?"

"No, sir," said Bill. "Not that we use it much, maybe-" He frowned. "I know that smell."

"What smell?" I said.

The concussion came from behind, from the rear of the house. The impact of something striking wood, followed by a loud sucking swoosh! Then the xylophone glissando of broken glass.

Bill turned toward the sound. Bert and I stared. Only Aimee seemed unconcerned.

Suddenly daylight- a false, orange daylight- brightened the bedroom, followed by a rush of heat and the cellophane-snap of flames.

Fire licked the curtains, a zipper of it, running up to the ceiling and down to the floor.

I ran for the bedroom door, slammed it shut over the spreading inferno. Smoke seeped from under the panel. The odor hit: metallic, acrid, the chemical bitterness of a flash storm ripping open a polluted sky.

The smoke from beneath the door fattened from wisp to wormy coil to clouds, relentless and oily, white to gray to black. Within seconds, I could barely make out the forms of the other people.

The room grew furnace-hot.

The second firebomb hit. Again, from behind. Someone was stationed out back, in the forest, where the phone wires ran.

I grabbed hold of Bill's chair, waved frantically to Bert and Aimee's smoke-obscured silhouettes.

"Get out!" Knowing that what I was sending them to was unlikely to be safety. But the alternative was roasting alive.

No answer, and now I couldn't see them at all. I rolled Bill toward the front door. From behind came roaring protest. The door collapsed and flames shot forward as I shoved the wheelchair. Groping the air for Aimee and Bill. Screaming with clogged lungs: "Someone's out there! Stay low-"

My words were choked off by convulsive coughing. I made it to the door, reached for the knob, and the hot metal broiled my hand.

Handicapped push door, idiot. I shouldered it hard, shoved Bill's chair, lurched outside, eyes burning, retching, coughing.

Running into the darkness and aiming the chair to the left as a bullet impacted against a front window.

Smoke billowed out of the house, a smothering curtain of it. Good cover, but poisonous. I ran as far from the gravel drive as possible, into the underbrush that formed at the house's eastern border. Racing with the chair, struggling to manipulate the contraption over rocks and vines, getting caught in the underbrush. Unable to free the chair.

Jammed. I lifted Bill out of the chair, slung him over my shoulder, and ran, adrenaline-stoked again, but his weight bore down and I could barely breathe and after ten steps I was on the verge of collapse.

My legs buckled. I visualized them as iron rods, forced them straight, lost my breath completely, stopped, shifted the load, panted and coughed. Feeling the dangle of Bill's ruined legs knocking against my thighs, the dry skin of one palm against the back of my neck as he held on tight.

He said something- I felt it rather than heard it- and I resumed carrying him into the forest. Pulled off ten more steps, counted each one, twenty, thirty, stopped again to force air into my lungs.

I looked back at the house. None of the Halloween glare of fire, just smoke, funnels of it, so dark it bled easily into the night sky.

Then, the spot where the little green house had stood was suddenly engulfed by a crimson ball haloed in lime green.

The kerosene stink of a stale campground. Something igniting- the kitchen stove. The explosion threw me to the earth. Bill landed on top of me.

No sign of Aimee or Bert.

I stared back at the house, wondering if the fire would spread to the forest. Not good for the forest, but maybe good for us if it attracted attention.

Nothing but silence. No spread; the firebreak serving its purpose.

I rolled Bill off me and propped myself up on my elbows. His glasses had come loose. His mouth moved soundlessly.

I said, "You okay?"

"I- yeah. Where's…"

"Let's keep moving."

"Where is she?"

"She's fine, Bill, come on."

"I need to-"

I got hold of his shoulder.

"Leave me here," he said. "Let me go, I've had enough."

I began lifting him.

"Please," he said.

My burned hand began to throb. Everything throbbed.

A raspy voice behind me said, "Dead end, Mr. Cadillac."