Fire Spirit Read online

  ‘That’s sad,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Yep,’ added Jack. ‘Just like the virgin postmistress. Returned unopened.’

  Detective Garnet said, ‘It also makes this whole case even more difficult to understand. It looks like she was chosen at random, just like Mrs Benfield was.’

  ‘Well, you folks concentrate on why it happened,’ Jack told her. ‘We’ll do our darndest to tell you how.’

  While Val Minelli dusted the door and the tiled walls for fingerprints, Ruth and Jack took dozens of samples from the rings around the tub and scooped up all of the dark gray sludge at the bottom. They also cut pieces from the shower curtains, since the pale turquoise vinyl would have undergone various chemical changes, depending on the rate of heat release, and that would give them a measure of how intensely the fire had burned, and how fast.

  Ruth talked to the super, a squinty-eyed man with an elaborate comb-over and a straggly gray moustache. She asked him if he had seen anybody around the apartment complex, not necessarily acting suspiciously, but anybody who looked as if they didn’t really have any legitimate business there. No, he hadn’t.

  She asked him what he had smelled when he first opened Tilda Frieburg’s apartment door.

  ‘Barbecue.’

  No chemical smell? No metallic smell? No smell like gasoline or varnish or paint-thinner?

  ‘No, ma’am. Just barbecue. And piss.’

  It was past seven thirty p.m. when Ruth eventually arrived home. She had called Craig and asked him to defrost a chili that she had made two weeks ago, and when she came in through the front door she could smell it.

  Craig was sitting on the couch with his laptop open on the coffee table. He looked tired and harassed, and his hair was sticking up at the back.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she asked him, standing behind the couch and massaging his shoulders.

  ‘Crap. Eagle Estates have asked me to quote for a twelve-unit housing development out at Frankfort.’

  ‘Well, that’s hopeful, isn’t it?’

  ‘It would be, if they hadn’t warned me that there are five other kitchen-fitting companies putting in bids, and that I need to trim my price right down to the bone. As it is, I’m practically cutting my legs off to save on shoe leather.’

  ‘I’ll go check the chili.’

  She went through to the kitchen, with Tyson following her. She opened the oven and took out the glass casserole dish with the chili in it. She stirred it and tasted it. It was almost ready, but she had to try hard not to think about Tilda Frieburg’s body, lying in the bathtub, with her charred minstrel face and her little black fists, as if she wanted to fight the whole world.

  ‘How was your fire?’ Craig called out. ‘Eastwood Apartments, of all places. That seems like a lifetime ago.’

  Ruth was opening up a can of Ol’ Roy Hearty Cuts in Gravy Country Stew Flavor, for Tyson, who was licking his lips and doing a clickety little dance on the kitchen floor.

  ‘It was . . . weird,’ she called back. She spooned the dog food into Tyson’s bowl and then went back into the living-room. ‘The victim was burned in her bathtub. But when the fire first ignited, the tub was actually filled up with water.’

  Craig did an exaggerated double-take. ‘Huh? How do you set fire to somebody in a tubful of water?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’d like to know. Not only that, the water had all boiled away.’

  ‘It wasn’t that spontaneous what’s-it’s-name, was it? That spontaneous combustion thing that Jack was talking about.’

  ‘SHC?’ Ruth shook her head. ‘I told you. I don’t believe in it. The adult human body is made up of seventy per cent water. Can you think of anything less likely to burst into flame?’

  Craig called Amelia downstairs and they sat around the kitchen table for supper, while Old Christine flickered on the TV in the living-room, with the sound turned down. Ruth forced herself to eat, although she found each mouthful increasingly difficult to swallow. But Amelia didn’t seem to have any appetite at all, and sat slumped in her chair, prodding at the beans in her chili with her fork.

  ‘Don’t you like your chili, Ammy?’ asked Ruth, at last. ‘Did I make it too hot for you?’

  ‘I think it’s terrific,’ said Craig. He had almost finished his meal, and was wiping his bowl with a torn-off piece of tortilla. ‘Best one you’ve made in a long time. Muy picante, just the way I like it!’

  ‘Actually, I’m not really hungry,’ said Amelia, and put down her fork. ‘Is it all right if I leave the table?’

  ‘Hey, sweetheart, are you feeling OK? You’re not feeling worried again, are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m not hungry is all.’

  Craig was about to say something but Ruth touched her finger to her lips and gave him a look which meant: don’t.

  Amelia went upstairs to her room, while Ruth and Craig cleared the table and stacked the dishwasher.

  ‘Maybe she’s in love,’ Craig suggested. ‘That hot flush she had in school today. Maybe it’s hormones.’

  ‘I don’t know. I never knew hormones burn paper before.’

  ‘I’ll bet you anything she’s in love. Maybe she has a crush on her math teacher.’

  ‘Have you seen her math teacher? He looks like PeeWee Herman.’

  Ruth allowed Amelia twenty minutes on her own, and then she went upstairs. As she approached Amelia’s door she could hear her singing that song again.

  ‘I wonder where he’s going

  With that smile upon his face.

  I wonder if he knows it’s going to rain.’

  She knocked, and waited, and then Amelia said, ‘It’s OK. You can come in if you want to.’

  Inside Amelia’s bedroom, it was dark, except for the orange street light that flickered behind the basswood tree. Amelia was standing at the window, staring out.

  Ruth went up to her and said, ‘What is it?’

  ‘I told you. The door’s open and people are trying to come through.’

  ‘I know you told me, Ammy, but I still don’t quite understand what you mean.’

  Amelia turned and looked at her. The shadows of the leaves danced on her face and made it appear as if her expression kept altering: from laughing to angry, from angry to indifferent, and then laughing again. Ruth found it strangely unnerving.

  Amelia made a complicated beckoning gesture with both hands. ‘It’s the same as you coming into my bedroom from downstairs. That’s where they’re coming from, downstairs.’

  ‘Downstairs where? You mean here? Downstairs in our house?’

  Amelia shook her head. ‘Downstairs everywhere. Downstairs where it’s hot. That’s where they always have to go. But now they want to come back up. Somebody’s opened up the door and come through and now they all want to come through.’

  Ruth said nothing. She still couldn’t understand what Amelia was talking about, but whatever it was it seemed to be disturbing her deeply, and Ruth didn’t want to make her feel even more anxious by asking her which door, and what people, and what did these people want?

  She would ask Doctor Feldstein about it tomorrow. Doctor Feldstein had suggested a course of psychotherapy late last year, when Amelia had developed a phobia for going outside in traffic, but at the time Ruth had argued against it. Amelia was already undergoing a strict physical regime for the genetic weakness in her heart and the difficulty she had in swallowing food, and Ruth hadn’t wanted her to feel even more different than she already did. She knew that many young people with William’s Syndrome displayed signs of acute anxiety, but this was mostly because of their hyperacusis, their heightened sense of hearing – hence her fear of going out in traffic. Most of the time Amelia was loving, sociable and confident. It was only in the past two or three days that she had started to say that she felt worried.

  Apart from that, with Craig’s business in so much financial trouble, Ruth doubted if they could afford a psychotherapist.

  ‘These people,’ she told Amelia, ‘they’re not really real.�
��

  ‘Yes they are. They were, anyhow.’

  ‘What do you mean, they were? You’re not talking about ghosts, are you?’

  ‘Sort of, some of them. It depends.’

  ‘Ammy, there is no such thing as ghosts. They’re just stories that people make up to frighten themselves. And it sounds like this is what you’re doing. Making up a story about people coming through some imaginary door, people from downstairs. I don’t know why you’re doing it. Maybe you need to change your medication. But it’s all in your mind, I promise you.’

  ‘Then what about him?’ asked Amelia, pointing out of the window.

  Ruth looked out. The boy in the black T-shirt and the red jeans was standing next to the basswood tree, staring up at her.

  ‘Him? He’s not a ghost, Ammy. He’s just an ordinary boy, and I’m getting pretty tired of him hanging around our house.’

  She pushed her way out of Amelia’s bedroom and ran downstairs. She crossed the hallway and pulled open the front door. Craig was watching TV in the living-room and he called out, ‘Hey! Ruth? Ruthie – what the hell’s going on?’

  She didn’t stop to answer him. She ran down the steps and across the front lawn until she reached the tree. And again, just like the last time, and the time she had tried to catch up with him on South McCann Street, he wasn’t there. She stopped, and looked around, and listened, but she couldn’t even hear the sound of sneakers slapping along the sidewalk as the boy ran away.

  She was still standing there when an old black Buick Riviera came softly burbling along the street. It slowed down as it passed her, and she could see three men inside it, who seemed to be staring at her. The Buick’s windows were coated in brown dust, but she could see that their faces were very white, as if they were wearing masks.

  She stepped backward, away from the curb, but as she did so the Buick gunned its engine and drove away. She saw its red brake lights as it stopped at the intersection with North Courtland Avenue, but then it took a right and disappeared.

  Craig came out of the house. Ruth looked up at Amelia’s bedroom window and she could see her staring down. She waved, but Amelia didn’t wave back.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Craig asked her. ‘You haven’t seen the Creepy Kid again?’

  ‘He was here, I swear it.’

  Craig looked up and down the street. ‘So where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know. It must have been a trick of the light, that’s all.’

  ‘Maybe I should call the cops?’

  ‘No, don’t do that. We’d only be wasting their time.’

  ‘OK. But if you see him again . . .’

  They walked back to the house. Before she closed the front door, however, Ruth took a quick look back at the street. She was sure that she could see a figure standing close to the trunk of the basswood tree, but then it might have been nothing more than a complicated shadow, or an optical illusion, an imaginary boy made out of their mailbox and the next-door hedge.

  Upstairs, she went back into Amelia’s bedroom. Amelia had drawn the drapes now, and was taking out her clothes, ready for the morning: her bobbly red sweater, her long brown skirt.

  ‘He wasn’t there,’ Ruth told her. ‘By the time I got there, he’d gone.’

  ‘You shouldn’t go near him, in any case,’ said Amelia.

  ‘Why not? Do you think he’s dangerous?’

  ‘It’s all because of him. That’s why the door’s open. That’s why all of these people want to come through.’

  ‘Ammy—’

  Amelia came up to her and there were tears in her eyes. ‘Mommy, I can’t explain it. I know it’s happening, but I don’t know why.’ She pressed her hands over her ears and said, ‘There’s so much noise! So many people talking and shouting and crying and trying to get through.’

  Ruth held her tight. ‘Don’t you worry, sweetheart. Whatever it is, we’ll find a way to close that door again.’

  She glanced toward the bedroom door. Craig was standing in the corridor outside. All he could do was raise his eyebrows and give her a sympathetic shake of his head.

  EIGHT

  They went to bed early, with two large glasses of Shiraz. Craig watched CSI: Miami, while Ruth tried to finish the cryptic crossword in the Kokomo Tribune. During a commercial break, Craig said, ‘So, like – even Ammy herself doesn’t know why she’s feeling so anxious?’

  Ruth took off her reading glasses. ‘Maybe it’s her meds. But she’s growing up, Craig, and Dr Feldstein always warned us that girls with William’s Syndrome grow up quicker than other girls. Apart from that, she’s so different, and when you’re that age, you never want to be the odd one out.’

  ‘Maybe you should talk to Dr Feldstein about that therapy.’

  ‘Well, I can talk to him about it, for sure. Whether we can afford it is another question altogether.’

  She went back to her crossword. Craig sat and looked at her for a while without saying anything.

  ‘What?’ she said, taking off her glasses again.

  ‘Nothing. It’s just that I hate to see her so fretful. She’s not being bullied, is she?’

  ‘Not so far as I know. Come on, Craig, we always knew this was going to be difficult. All we can do is support her, and listen to her, and teach her to turn her disadvantages into assets.’

  Craig thought about that, and then shrugged. ‘I guess God has His reasons for everything, even William’s Syndrome.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ruth. ‘But sometimes I wish I knew what the hell His reasons were.’

  ‘Ruth!’ said Craig. His father had been a Methodist minister, and he was still sensitive to blasphemy.

  She picked up the remote, switched the sound on again, and returned to seventeen across. Dead body in a vehicle.

  After a minute or two, Craig said, ‘Why does he always pose like that?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘David Caruso. The guy who plays Horatio. Why does he always pose like that, with his sunglasses on top of his head and his hands on his hips? How would you like it if I went around posing like that?’

  ‘You can go around posing like that if you want to. It’s a free country. But I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t choke myself laughing.’

  Craig was about to retaliate when the phone rang. Ruth picked it up, and a voice said, ‘Ms Cutter? This is Trooper Kelly Farjeon, ISP. Sorry to tell you there’s been a ten-fifty on the Davis Road at the intersection with Jewel Road, involving your son Jeffrey.’

  ‘Oh my God, what’s happened? Is he hurt?’

  ‘No, ma’am, I’m happy to say. He’s pretty damp, though. Looks like a steering-link broke and his car went off the highway and ended up in a lake.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘The tow truck’s just arrived to pull the car out. Soon as we’ve supervised that, we’ll bring him home to you.’

  ‘Thank you, Trooper. You’re sure he’s OK?’

  ‘Nothing hurt apart from his pride, ma’am.’

  Jeff was brought home about twenty-five minutes later, wrapped in a thick brown blanket. He had an angry crimson bruise across the bridge of his nose, and a face like thunder, but apart from that he appeared to be unscathed. He handed the blanket back to the State Trooper who had given him a ride, and then stamped upstairs to his bedroom.

  ‘How about his car?’ asked Craig.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s headed for the Carter Street parking facility,’ said the trooper. He meant the thirty-acre scrap metal site on the east side of Kokomo, by the railroad spur. ‘You should go out there tomorrow, talk to the foreman. If you’re lucky he’ll give you twenty bucks for it.’

  ‘Thank you, anyhow,’ said Ruth. ‘I’m relieved Jeff wasn’t injured, that’s all.’

  ‘So are we, ma’am. But there’s a few ducks out there suffering from shock.’

  When the trooper had gone, Craig and Ruth locked up the house again and went upstairs. Craig knocked on Jeff’s door and said, ‘Jeff? Everything OK?’

&
nbsp; Jeff didn’t answer so he opened the door and they stepped inside. Jeff was lying on his bed in his crimson Indiana Hoosier hooded sweatshirt and scrub pants, with his iPod in his ears, texting furiously on his cellphone.

  They waited until he had finished his message and then Craig made a lifting gesture to indicate that he should take out his earphones.

  ‘I’m OK, OK?’ Jeff protested.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Craig. ‘Do you mind telling us what exactly happened?’

  ‘You really want to know? We were driving south on Davis and I was hanging a right on to Jewel when there was this, like, bang!, and we went clear off the highway and straight through all of these bushes and, like, ker-sploosh!, we drove right into this frigging lake that somebody had left there.’

  ‘Language,’ said Ruth, sharply.

  ‘You want to hear language?’ Jeff retorted. ‘You should of heard what Lennie and me were shouting out when we started to sink. If that lake’d been any deeper than four feet we would of drowned.’

  ‘The lake was only four feet deep?’ Ruth asked him.

  ‘It was still wet, Mom, and I still drove my car right into it.’

  Ruth looked at Craig and she was trying very hard not to laugh. But Craig’s expression was serious. He sat down on the end of Jeff’s bed and said, ‘Listen, we’re sorry for what happened to you, and we’re really glad that you and Lennie didn’t get hurt. We should have made sure that you had a decent car to drive.’

  Jeff said, ‘Forget it, Dad. I know you don’t have the money. I’ll just have to get a job, like you said.’

  ‘Believe me, Jeff, if we did have the money—’

  ‘I know, Dad. I know. You’d buy me a brand-new Mustang Bullitt, in midnight black, with black-tinted windows and a Magnaflow exhaust, right? But you don’t have the money, so you can’t, so forget it.’

  Craig continued to sit there for a little while longer, while Jeff replaced his earphones and closed his eyes. Ruth could see how hurt Craig was, how inadequate he felt, and she stroked the fine gray hair at the back of his neck.

  ‘Come on,’ she coaxed him. ‘Let’s go back to bed. You don’t want to miss Special Victims Unit, do you?’