Todd Ritter - Death Night

Kat listened without opening her eyes. Although they were far away, she could tell the sirens belonged to the fire department and not her police force. The ones on the fire trucks were louder and deeper—the baritones to her patrol cars’ tenor.

Sliding out of bed, she went to the window and saw the reason for the sirens—a fire, glowing orange and eerie in the distance. She couldn’t tell how large it was or pinpoint its exact location. All she knew was that she needed to be there, no matter how much she wanted to crawl back into bed. Pausing only long enough to yawn, she started to put on her uniform a mere hour and a half after taking it off.

She was mostly dressed by the time her phone rang. As expected, it was Carl Bauersox, her deputy, sounding much more energetic than she did. On the night shift, he was used to being alert at this hour. Kat was not.

“We’ve got a fire, Chief.”

“I know,” Kat said. “I hear the sirens. What’s burning?”

“The museum.”

He was referring to the Perry Hollow Historical Society and Exhibition Hall, a collection of documents, artifacts, and photographs that dated back to the town’s founding and beyond. Because of its unwieldy name, and because most of the town’s history resided within its walls, people simply called it the museum.

“Is it bad?”

“Looks like it,” Carl said. “It’s a big draw, too. We’re going to have a crowd control problem on our hands in a minute.”

This didn’t surprise Kat. Fires weren’t common in Perry Hollow, and she was sure a good portion of the town would come out to gawk. They certainly couldn’t sleep. Not with all those sirens echoing down the streets.

“Hold them off as best you can. I’ll be there soon.”

When she was finally on the road, her own sirens blaring, Kat noticed that the fire was visible from all over town. Even from six blocks away, she could see the licks of flame flashing over the rooftops of neighboring buildings. A thick column of black smoke, rising straight up into the night sky, punctuated the blaze like an exclamation point.

Crossing Main Street, she noticed plenty of residents staggering along the sidewalk in tossed-on sweatpants, sneakers, and robes. All of them were headed in the same direction she was, drawn mothlike to the flames. Crowd control problem, indeed.

She brought her Crown Vic to a stop a block away from the museum, parking sideways in the middle of the street. It wasn’t much of a roadblock, but it would be enough to keep any cars from trying to come through. Plus, it was easy to move out of the way to let in fire trucks from neighboring towns, if it came to that.

Kat hoped it wouldn’t.

Leaving her patrol car, she hurried down the street, finally getting a good look at the blaze. It wasn’t as big as she first thought, but still bad by Perry Hollow standards. It looked to be contained to the front of the building, a three-story Queen Anne with all the frilly trimmings. Fire ate away at the steeply pitched roof and munched swiftly toward the ornate turret in its center. Flames leaped from the front windows and curled in the crisp autumn air, making Kat think of Satan’s fingers beckoning a group of sinners to Hell.

Filling the street in front of the museum were two of the Perry Hollow Fire Department’s three fire trucks. A ladder truck and a standard pumper, they formed a wide V on the lawn. In the center, members of the volunteer squad—all five of them—had already unfurled their hoses and were now blasting away at the blaze. The jets of water rose high into the air, arching over the front lawn before diving into the flames.

The squad’s third truck, trusty Engine 13, was a 1973 Ford used for brush fires. Despite its age, it was the truck that saw the most action. Brush fires were the norm in Perry Hollow. House fires were not—a fact made noticeable by the sheer amount of onlookers standing on the other side of the street. While Kat had overestimated the force of the blaze, she had underestimated the size of the crowd. Half the town, it seemed, was there, huddling together and gazing at the flames.

Carl tried his best to keep them at bay, but they were an unruly lot. The young men and teenage boys in the crowd were especially eager to get closer to the fire. Kat intercepted two boys, the same age as her son, who had slipped past Carl and made it halfway across the street.

“Where you headed, boys?”

One of them—a freckle-faced kid with a snide smile—answered. “To see if the firemen need our help.”

“They don’t need anything but for you two to keep at a safe distance.”

Kat ushered them back to the curb, yelling to get the attention of the rest of the crowd. “Everyone take a step back and stay there. This isn’t a basketball game, people. Courtside seats are not available.”

She sidled up to Carl, who was visibly relieved to have reinforcements.

“Just in time,” he said, wiping sweat from his perpetually clean-shaven face. “They were starting to overrun me.”

“They’re just excited. There hasn’t been a fire in town since—”

She cut herself off. Not that it mattered. Carl knew what she was going to say anyway. The last major fire in Perry Hollow was at the sawmill the town had been built around. Abandoned for more than a decade, it had gone up in flames a year earlier, with Kat and two others still inside. One of them had been Henry Goll, the unexpected costar of her dream. He and Kat almost died in the blaze. The person with them perished, although that wasn’t such a bad thing, considering that he had been trying to kill them.

Feeling the heat of the current fire on the back of her neck, Kat realized that it was the one-year anniversary of the mill blaze. No wonder Henry had been in her dream. Her brain was trying to remind her that it was now October 31. Exactly a full year since the great Halloween fire that destroyed a piece of Perry Hollow history.

Kat faced the burning museum. Although she hadn’t been inside it since grade school, seeing yet another part of the town’s past go up in flames saddened her. At least she wasn’t trapped inside this time. If there was a silver lining to be found, that would be it.

Another bright spot was the fact that the blaze already seemed to be under control. The fire on the roof had receded, leaving the museum’s grand turret untouched. The flames at the windows, those devilish fingers, had retreated indoors, allowing the firefighters to march closer and focus on the hot spots.

But as the fire got smaller, the crowd on the other side of the street grew larger. There must have been fifty people there, with still more on the way. They stood in a tight pack, eyes on the fire, murmuring to each other with a combination of concern and excitement that always seemed to occur at scenes of public chaos. Kat spotted a lot of familiar faces in the crowd and nodded or waved. She saw Burt Hammond, Perry Hollow’s mayor, sporting a black suit and a face so pale it made him resemble a wax statue. Standing with him was Father Ron, who had been the priest at All Saints Parish for as long as Kat could remember. Nearby were Jasper Foxx and Adrienne Wellington, both of whom owned stores on nearby Main Street. Dave Freeman, whose lawn bore the brunt of the onlookers, passed out Styrofoam cups to the crowd. His wife, Betty, followed, filling the cups with coffee she poured from a thermos.

Pushing past them was a tiny woman with a big perm, a parka thrown over her pink nightgown. Kat recognized the parka—not to mention the hair—as belonging to Emma Pulsifer, vice president of the Perry Hollow Historical Society. Seeing Kat, Emma rushed forward with a manic energy that verged on hysteria.

“Chief Campbell, have you seen Connie?”

Kat knew of at least four Connies who lived in town. “Could you be more specific?”