Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

Walker didn’t know how to respond. This was much worse than the sketchy details in the newspaper story Gary had dug up.

“How long afterward was the fire?” he asked slowly.

“The very next night. August eighteenth, 1973.”

He nodded. He’d known the date from the article.

“What woke us,” Annie said, her voice soft as the whisper of thought, “were the screams. Screams from the master bedroom at the other end of the hall. My mother’s screams.”

She swallowed, finding strength within her. When she continued, her voice was suddenly raw, as if she herself had been screaming.

“Erin and I sat up in our beds and listened. There was a sharp crack; Albert was in there, and he’d slapped her again. The screams stopped, and she started to beg. She said please over and over. ‘Please, please, please…’

“Then she screamed again, but it was worse this time. It was the worst sound I’ll ever hear.

“From the hallway came a dry crackle, like crinkling newspaper, then a funny odor, a burnt-toast smell-smoke. That was when I knew the house was on fire and my mother was burning to death.”

“How did you get out?”

“It was-” She stopped herself and swallowed whatever words she’d intended to say. “I don’t know. Luck, I guess. The flames hadn’t reached our end of the hall yet. We made it downstairs and outside.”

She paused, as if daring him to press for details. He said nothing.

“Outside,” she repeated. “I remember running across the lawn with Erin, into a crowd of neighbors in robes and nightgowns. Old Mrs. Carroway took us both in her big arms and held us, and someone else asked about our parents, and another person shushed him.

“The fire trucks arrived a minute later. I don’t know how long it was before the firemen got inside, but eventually they found Maureen and Albert in the master bedroom, both of them burned so badly they had to be identified later from dental records.

“It wasn’t hard for the arson investigators to reconstruct what had happened. Two gasoline cans were recovered, one in the living room, the other in the bedroom, still in Albert’s hand. He must have hidden them in the garage or the tool shed. In the middle of the night he’d left the den, gotten the cans, and poured a trail of gasoline through the house, starting on ground level, ending in the bedroom, where Maureen was. Then he’d lit the match.”

She looked at Walker, her eyes haunted, brimful of tears.

“He told us we would all burn. He meant it.”

Walker clasped her hand. “And after that,” he said gently, “the two of you went to live with Lydia, Maureen’s sister, in Tucson… and you found out about the other murder-suicide in your family’s history. Lincoln and Oliver.”

“Yes.” A shudder blew through her like a cold wind. “It was like the whole world was crazy. Like everyone in it was a monster. Anybody, at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all, could snap, go insane, and kill whoever he loved most.”

“But it’s not the whole world. There are plenty of good people.”

Annie met his gaze, and he saw the hurt in her face, the lingering residue of trauma, the unhealed grief.

“My father was a good person, too,” she whispered. “Once.”

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.”