Bentley Little - The Revelation

Ten minutes ago. He hadn't heard a thing. "What about the family?"

"Someone got out, but we're not sure who."

"Was it a kid?"

There was a short hesitation. "I don't think so."

Jim turned the car onto Old Mesa Road. The four travelers on the street pulled over as they heard his siren. He let the radio mike hang. "Sheriff?" Natalie said. "Sheriff?" He flipped the radio off and turned onto Ash. Ahead, he could see the square yellow bulk of the town's new fire engine blocking the road. Smoke was billowing out from the house in front of the fire engine, partially obscuring the scene. A tangle of hoses, like gigantic anacondas, snaked across the partially paved road into the thickest part of the smoke.

A helmeted, uniformed man, probably Ernst, was standing in the middle of the street shouting orders and gesturing authoritatively.

Jim slammed on the brakes and hopped out of the car. He ran straight for the fire chief. "How's the kid?" he yelled.

Ernst looked at him, his face already blackened by soot. "What kid?"

The neighbors were out now, standing in front of their houses in huddled groups, a bizarre mixture of Sunday-suited churchgoers and sleep-garbed stay-at-homes. They were milling around nervously, looking this way and that, talking among themselves in hushed tones.

Jim walked up to the nearest group. He nodded toward a well-dressed elderly man. "Do you know theWilsons ?" he asked.

The man shrugged. "Not too well."

"Any of you?"

"I used to baby-sit Don," one lady offered. She clutched the top of her pink terry cloth robe to her neck, trying to hide her semi nakedness.

"Have you seen Don this morning?"

The lady shook her head. "I just got out here a few minutes ago. I didn't know anything was happening till I heard the sirens pull up."

Jim strode over to another man, standing by himself, staring into the smoke. "You seen anything?"

The man shook his head. "I heard the woman got out. That's all I know."

"Did you see her?"

The man pointed toward an adjoining lawn, where several people were milling about. "I think she's over there. They're waiting for the ambulance to come."

Jim started toward the house next door, but he could see the sheeted figure on the grass between several legs before he even reached the spot. His heart sank as he pushed two people out of the way and looked down on the moaning remains of Don Wilson's mother, her arms, little more than stumps, trying unsuccessfully to shield her charred and blackened face from heat that was no longer there. The sounds that came out of her mouth were barely human, and discolored blood seeped out from beneath peeling folds of burned skin.

He turned away and walked back across the street to where Ernst was adjusting a hose on the fire truck. Orange flames were now leaping out of the smoke. "Chief!" he called.

Ernst waved him away with one short motion of his hand. "You're in the way, Weldon," he said abruptly. "I'll be glad to talk to you, but not right now. We've got a fire to put out."

Jim stepped back and watched as Ernst and another man ran into the smoke toward the house carrying a hose. He heard several voices shouting orders.

He stood alone in the middle of the street, staring numbly. Don was dead, he knew. The boy had never even made it out of the house. He had probably died in his sleep from smoke inhalation. Or else he had fried trying to escape. Jim thought he saw shapes moving through the smoke. It looked like the fire was coming under control. This was no accident, this fire. Someone--something-had wanted Don dead, had known that the boy had come to him and wanted to get him out of the way. He stepped over a puddle, walking back to his car. He was going to make sure that Ernst followed through with an investigation of this fire. A full arson investigation. The fire had been deliberately started, and he wanted some answers.

He stood for a moment staring at the remains of the Wilson house, now visible through the thinning smoke, and remembered the small scared boy sitting in his office, nervously clenching and unclenching his hands, flipping his too-long hair off his dirty forehead. He had not really known the boy, but he had liked him. He'd seemed like a good kid.

He thought unreasonably of his own son Justin. He saw him the victim of a deliberately set fire or some other form of murder made to look like an accident and he shivered. Maybe he should send Annette and the kids down to Phoenix to stay with his brother for a few days. Or a few weeks. Or however long it took for this thing to blow over.

He got into the car and backed slowly out, lights and siren off.

Glancing in the rearview mirror at the chaotic street, at the incendiary destruction, he felt as though something had been taken out of him, as though he were empty. He had not realized until now how much he had been depending on that boy to see him through this crisis, to provide him with more dream-inspired clues, to help him, somehow, solve all of these interrelated cases. He had been expecting the boy to be with him every step of the way, to lead him. Now he was alone.

He was on his own and he would have to use his own deductive powers and abilities to put an end to all this.

And he had nothing whatsoever to go on.

He drove slowly back toward the sheriff's office.

The trip to Phoenix was uneventful. Neither Gordon nor Marina felt like speaking, and they drove down Black Canyon Highway without talking, listening only to the sound of the tires on the washboard road and to the cheerily artificial conversation of the morning deejays on the radio. They left early, so there was no traffic, and they stared silently out at the craggy cliffs, massive gorges, and thick forests of the Coconino as they traveled, both lost in their own thoughts.

They reached the Valley well before noon and spent the morning looking through the myriad expensive Fifth Avenue shops in Scottsdale, talking obviously and self-consciously about third-party events entirely unrelated to the upcoming ordeal.

After a quick and quiet lunch at a fake French outdoor cafe, they drove into Phoenix. To the hospital.

Gordon stared up at the peeling white paint and run-down exterior of the hospital's administration building. He couldn't see the top floor of the structure through his car windshield, but he did notice that several of the third-story windows were broken.

Obscene graffiti was spray-painted on the lower portion of the street wall, and the first floor windows were barred with chain link fence. He had never been to St. Luke's before, and the hospital did not look as he had expected. He looked over at Marina, suddenly apprehensive. "I didn't know the place was this old," he said.

She smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry about it. It's a good hospital." She pointed past the administration building to where a giant complex of new concrete buildings arose. "Besides, that's where we're going. This is just the original hospital. I don't think they even use it anymore."

She was right. Gordon pulled into the parking lot and followed the white arrows painted on the asphalt to the new wing, where he found a spot near the entrance, adjacent to a handicapped space. They got out of the Jeep and walked through the sliding glass doors into the air-conditioned hospital lobby. Marina sat down on a cushiony chair and picked up a magazine while Gordon strode purposefully across the carpeted floor to the front desk. A woman wearing a telephone headset was staring intently down at a series of file cards. Gordon cleared his throat to let her know of his presence. "Excuse me," he said.

The woman looked up. "May I help you?"

"Yes, my wife is here to see Dr. Kaplan."

The woman opened a large notebook. "Does she have an appointment?"

"For one o'clock."