Fire Spirit Read online

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘No, I’m not kidding you. But then I’m still waiting on the DNA analysis from the first sample, if any DNA survived the cremation, and I’ll have to send away this sample, too.’

  ‘Did you dry out all of that sludge?’

  Jack nodded. ‘Total weight after drying was a fraction under a kilo. A smidgin more than we got from the mattress.’

  ‘So if we collected up all of it, or most of it, it could have been a child?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, boss. That’s an educated guess too far.’

  ‘If it was a child, though, that would mean that each of the two fires involved some cremated kid’s remains. Two cremated kids’ remains.’

  ‘That’s what I mean about the world not making any kind of sense.’

  Jack spent the rest of the afternoon testing every item of evidence that they had taken from Tilda Frieburg’s bathroom, including her sponge, her soap, her towels and her bathrobe. Meanwhile, Ruth fed into her computer the dozens of digital photographs she had taken, and used them to recreate the progression of the fire from the moment it had started.

  It was nearly five p.m. when Jack’s phone rang. He picked it up and said, ‘Jack Morrow. Yes, it is. Yes. I see, thanks.’ He hung up and then he turned to Ruth. ‘That was Aaron Scheinman. I was right. There were pieces of tooth in that sample, and he was able to extract DNA. Our mystery remains were those of a male, of Northern European origin. Aaron’s emailing the full report.’

  Ruth was staring intently at her computer screen. She had fed in all the photographic evidence, as well as the chemical clues – the carbon particles which had penetrated Tilda Frieburg’s sponge, and the hydrogen chloride gas which had contaminated her towels and her bathrobe – but still the fire made no sense at all. There were mineral traces in the sludge from the bottom of the bath, but not magnesium or sodium, which she would have expected from an exothermic reaction – only cadmium and lead.

  Jack came over and peered at the screen over her shoulder. ‘Well?’ he asked her. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I still can’t work out how the fire first ignited. There were absolutely no accelerants involved. No chemicals that might have reacted with the bathwater. All we have are cadmium and lead, and since cadmium and lead are what you’re left with when you burn PVC, and since we have cremated human remains here, my guess is that this was PVC varnish from a funeral casket.’

  ‘Which still doesn’t explain what happened here. Or what made the fire so intense. Or why it burned for such a short time. Or why the heat was confined to the bathtub and almost no place else.’

  Ruth said, ‘I’ll run some simulations on the computer. If those don’t tell us what happened here, we’ll have to try some real-life tests with pig carcasses.’

  Jack looked at her. ‘What if it was SHC? How do you simulate that?’

  ‘Jack, I’ve told you. I don’t believe in SHC. People don’t suddenly burst into flame for no reason at all. Especially if they’re sitting in forty-five gallons of water.’

  ‘Just remember what Sherlock Holmes said about eliminating the impossible. When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

  ‘SHC is impossible.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. But right now I can’t think of anything else that could have boiled and broiled Tilda Frieburg both at the same time.’

  Mrs Lutz opened one eye. The other eye was so swollen that she couldn’t see out of it at all. She was lying on her side on the floor of the bus, and Mr Kaminsky’s face was so close to her that she couldn’t focus on it.

  She lay there, not moving, and listened. Somebody in the bus was sobbing softly. It sounded like Mrs Tiplady. Somebody else was groaning – Mr Kaminsky? But what Mrs Lutz was listening for was the laughing man, or the scowling man, or the man with no expression on his mask at all. She wasn’t going to move if she suspected that all or any of those three was still around.

  She felt bruised all over – her neck, her shoulders, her back, her knees. Her left wrist was tucked up under her ribs like a broken bird’s wing, and it hurt so much that she was sure that it was fractured. She also felt a deep throbbing between her legs, where they had violated her, all three of those men.

  Five minutes went by. She heard thunder booming in the distance, and the rain was still pattering on the roof of the bus, but apart from the sobbing and the groaning she heard nothing else. Maybe they had finally gone, those terrible monsters. To Mrs Lutz, as she lay there, the most appalling aspect of what they had done to her, and all of her fellow passengers, was that there seemed to have been no reason for it. It had been cruelty for its own sake. She couldn’t even believe that they had taken any pleasure out of penetrating her, a skinny seventy-seven-year-old woman with sagging breasts and withered thighs.

  She raised her head a little, and tried to shift her elbow so that she could sit up. But the bones in her wrist crunched audibly, and the pain that lanced up her arm was so intense that she cried out loud, a self-pitying wail that sounded more like a wounded animal than a woman.

  She lay back, quivering. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t move. All she could hope for was that some passer-by would see the Spirit of Kokomo bus standing under the trees in the park and call for the emergency services.

  She whispered a prayer that she used to recite when she was a little girl. ‘Dear Jesus, as you pass along, walking through the adoring throng, please turn your head and see my tears, please hold me close and soothe my fears . . .’

  It was then, though, that another voice joined in. A young boy’s voice, a little hoarse but still unbroken.

  ‘. . . oh dear Lord Jesus, give me light, and save me from the fearful night.’

  Mrs Lutz raised her head again. ‘Who’s that?’ she quavered. ‘Who’s there? Haven’t you hurt us and mocked us enough?’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then somebody stepped into her line of vision – a boy in faded red jeans, with scuffed brown sneakers. She managed to raise her head a little further, and now she could see his face. He looked very pale, with tousled black hair and large brown eyes. He was frowning.

  ‘Grandma?’ he said, kneeling down beside her and gently touching her shoulder. ‘Grandma, what’s happened?’

  ‘Son, listen to me,’ said Mrs Lutz. ‘You need to go find us some help.’

  ‘But what happened, Grandma? Are you hurt?’

  ‘Please . . . all I need you to do is find us some help. Go outside, find a grown-up. Find anybody. Tell them we need the police and an ambulance. You know where this is, don’t you? Bon Air Park, near the pavilion. Tell them it’s very urgent. Tell them some people have been killed.’

  But the boy stayed where he was, stroking her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Grandma. I’ll look after you. Whatever they did to you, I won’t let them do it again.’

  ‘Please,’ said Mrs Lutz. ‘Go find some help. Please do it now. Please.’

  ‘It’s all right, Grandma. Remember that time when you fell down the steps and broke your hip? Remember I made you those brownies? You liked my brownies, didn’t you, Grandma? You said they tasted like the angels had baked them, in God’s own kitchen.’

  Mrs Lutz took three deep breaths to steady herself. Then she said, ‘What’s your name, boy?’

  The boy stared at her, as if he didn’t understand what she meant. ‘They shouldna took you away, Grandma. I won’t let them do it again.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Mrs Lutz. ‘I am not your grandma. I am just an old woman who has been attacked by some very evil men, and I’ve been very badly hurt. All of these old people on this bus have been badly hurt, too. At least two of them are dead, do you understand that? They’re dead, they’ve been murdered, and everybody else needs urgent medical attention, right now.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have taken you away, Grandma. Nothing bad woulda happened if they hadn’t took you away.’

  For the love of God, thought Mrs Lutz. Of all t
he people who could have found us on this bus, it had to be some kid with an IQ of less than fifty.

  ‘Go find help!’ she shouted at him, even though her ribcage was bruised and the pain when she shouted was almost unbearable. ‘Go find somebody to help us! Don’t you understand me?’

  Mrs Tiplady let out a cry. She must have heard them talking and was calling out for help. Mr Kaminsky groaned, and Mr Thorson gave a hideous cackle from the stoma in his throat.

  The boy smiled and started to stroke Mrs Lutz’s hair. ‘You’re beautiful, Grandma. You always said you loved me, didn’t you? They shouldna took you away. I’ll look after you, I promise. I won’t send you away.’

  Mrs Lutz let her head sink back on to the floor. She felt utterly defeated.

  ‘Son,’ she whispered. ‘Listen to me, son.’

  The boy bent his head close, still smiling at her. She looked into his eyes but she couldn’t understand what she saw there. Was he really a retard? Or was he simply playing with her? Maybe the three masked men had brought him here for the sole purpose of giving them false hope. Maybe this was just another part of some sadistic and humiliating joke, some three-act torture.

  ‘Son,’ she repeated.

  ‘What is it, Grandma?’

  She took another deep breath, and then she said, ‘Go get some help, son. Do it now.’

  The boy ignored her. Instead he lay down on the floor of the bus right next to her, and put his arm around her. ‘I’ll help you, Grandma. I’m the only help you need. I love you, Grandma. I always will.’

  ‘Go get some help,’ she insisted. ‘Go get some help.’ Then she shrilled at him again: ‘Go get some fucking help!’

  ‘You’re so cold, Grandma,’ the boy told her. ‘I can warm you up.’

  Mrs Lutz stared at him, helplessly and hopelessly. Maybe he was deaf. Maybe he simply hadn’t understood her – or worse still, maybe he hadn’t wanted to understand her.

  ‘We need help,’ she intoned. ‘We need help.’

  ‘You’re cold,’ he repeated. ‘But you don’t have to be cold, ever again.’

  He clung on to her tighter and tighter, so that she felt as if she were being crushed.

  ‘Stop!’ she gasped. ‘Stop, you’re hurting me! Oh God, you’re hurting me! Stop!’

  But then the boy detonated into flames – instantly, as if he had been doused in gasoline and set alight. He stared straight into Mrs Lutz’s face, his eyes wide open, and he screamed at her in agony and terror.

  Mrs Lutz screamed, too. Bruised and broken as she was, she struggled and kicked to get herself free, and she managed to roll over on to her back. But the blazing boy was holding on to her much too tight, and now he was burning so fiercely that her skin began to shrivel. Her hair caught alight, and turned from a white pompadour to a high plume of orange flame, as if she were a candle.

  Mrs Lutz’s face reddened, and then blackened. She began to shudder, her bare heels hammering on the floor of the bus as the fire seared her nerve-endings. But as her nerve-endings were burned away and she lost all sensation, she stopped shuddering, and both of her arms slowly rose up, to embrace the burning boy as if he really were her grandson, and both of them had been baked together in God’s own kitchen.

  She thought, this doesn’t hurt any more. Nothing will ever hurt me any more. I’m so happy. She saw her late husband’s face, turning toward her as they walked together beside Mississinewa Lake, with the sun shining so brightly off the water that she was dazzled. She said, ‘Ted,’ or at least she thought she said it. Then she died.

  By now, however, the bus seats next to them had caught fire, too. Within less than a minute, the interior of the bus was filling up with toxic black smoke, and the three passengers who were left conscious and alive began to cough and retch. Mr Thorson managed to stand up and beat at the window five or six times with the heel of his shoe, but he was far too weak to break the glass, and he collapsed, trying to cover his stoma with his hand so that he wouldn’t breathe in smoke through his throat.

  Mr Kaminsky managed to crawl on his elbows all the way along the aisle to the front door of the bus, but it was tightly closed and he had no idea how to open it. He lay with his head hanging down in the stairwell until he, too, succumbed to the smoke.

  Now the fire raged hotter and hotter, until the entire bus was blazing like a funeral pyre. Flames leaped twenty feet up into the branches of the trees, and the rain crackled like sparklers on the Fourth of July. The burning bus was first seen by a dog-walker, who called the Fire Department on his cellphone while his brown spaniel stood and stared at the fire, transfixed, with the flames dancing in his eyes.

  TWELVE

  Craig tapped his knife on his wine-glass and said, ‘Hush up, everybody! I have an announcement to make.’

  They were sitting at the kitchen table, eating a supper of peanut-crusted chicken with creamed potatoes and collard greens. Ruth had decided that it was time they all ate supper together, even though Jeff had grumbled that he had arranged to go out bowling with his friend Lennie, and Amelia wanted to eat alone in her room, finishing another plaintive song about a boy who didn’t know that it was going to rain and that his girlfriend had left him for ever.

  Ruth wanted her family close to her because she could feel something in the air, something wrong – and it was a feeling she couldn’t shake off. It was partly the inexplicable nature of the fires that she had been investigating. She couldn’t stop thinking about them – how they could have started, how they could have burned so fiercely and yet caused so little peripheral damage. But it was also Ammy’s persistent anxiety about ‘people coming through from underneath,’ and the repeated appearance of the Creepy Kid, although she couldn’t understand why one dejected-looking boy should disturb her so much.

  Craig tapped his glass again. ‘Shush, will you, and listen up!’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Jeff. ‘We’ve gone bankrupt and we have to go live in the Sycamore Stump.’

  Even Craig couldn’t help himself from smiling. The Sycamore Stump was the remains of a hollowed-out tree, supposedly more than one-and-a-half thousand years old, which was preserved as a tourist attraction in Highland Park.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s much better news than that. For all of us – but especially for you, Jeff. This morning, ladies and gentleman, I signed a contract to fit eight new kitchens out at Logansport.’

  ‘Sweetheart, that’s wonderful news,’ said Ruth. ‘Maybe things are starting to look up at last.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope so. Eight kitchens is only eight kitchens, but I guess it’s better than no kitchens at all. But the main point is, I was talking to Gus Probert, the project manager, and I told him about your accident, Jeff.’

  ‘Great. I bet you both laughed your asses off.’

  ‘I can’t lie to you – we did, as a matter of fact. But when we stopped laughing, he said that he was just about to trade in his wife’s car, and would I be interested if he threw it in as part of the kitchen-fitting contract. Seems like he can get some kind of a tax break if he does.’

  Ruth passed the basket of cornbread across to Amelia. ‘You mean, he’ll give you the car as part of the deal?’

  ‘That’s right. He’ll write it off as transportation expenses, something like that.’

  ‘What kind of a car is it?’ asked Jeff, suspiciously. ‘Not some girly Toyota?’

  ‘No . . . it’s a 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix SE, white. Three-point-one-liter V6. Great condition, he says, for a car that’s over ten years old, and only seventy-three thousand miles on the odometer.’

  Jeff tossed the hair out of his eyes. ‘What? And I can have it?’

  ‘If you want it, sure.’

  ‘If I want it? Are you kidding me? When?’

  ‘I can go pick it up for you tomorrow evening.’

  Jeff didn’t know what to say. He looked from Craig to Ruth and back again and all he could do was shake his head in happy disbelief.

  Amelia pulled one of her airy, who-c
ares faces and said, ‘So long as you don’t go driving this car into a lake.’

  After supper, when they were clearing the table and stacking the dishwasher, Ruth said, ‘You sure cheered somebody up tonight.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Craig, holding her close and kissing her forehead, ‘what are dads for?’

  ‘Well, you cheered me up, too. I am so pleased about that contract at Logansport.’

  ‘That’s what husbands are for.’

  ‘What about lovers? What are they for?’

  Craig kissed her again. ‘Sometimes it seems like nothing is ever going to go right. You know what I mean? Sometimes you feel like you’re stuck down the bottom of a well like that girl in The Ring and you’re never going to be able to climb out of it. But I decided, that’s it, I’m going to start climbing, no matter how difficult it is. I have you, and I have Jeff, and I have Ammy, and I’m never going to give up. Ever.’

  Ruth reached up and touched the scar on his cheek. His eyes were as gray as rain clouds. ‘I think fate was smiling on me when I met you,’ she said. ‘You mean everything to me, you know that?’

  ‘How about another glass of wine?’ he asked her. ‘Maybe we could take it up to bed and watch TV. Or something.’

  ‘Sure. “Or something” sounds highly tempting.’

  While Ruth covered the remains of the chicken with Saran wrap and put it in the fridge, Craig opened a bottle of Zinfandel and poured out two large glasses. They were about to switch off the lights when Jeff came into the kitchen, already shrugging on his oversized gray windbreaker.

  ‘OK if I go round to Lennie’s? I just got to tell him all about my new ride.’

  ‘Can’t you phone him? Or text him? It’s raining buckets out there.’

  ‘No way. I need to see his jaw drop when I tell him it’s a Grand Prix.’