Bill Pronzini - With an Extreme Burning

In any case, it was going to be all right. You had to believe that. Whoever the asshole was, he'd be found out and that would be the end of it. Then maybe Cecca and Dix would get together. It would be the best thing in the world for both of them. They'd make a cute couple, too. When you got right down to it, they'd make a cuter couple than Cecca and Chet or Dix and Katy. Funny how things worked out sometimes, for some people. They had to suffer through the worst kind of tragedy in order to find a new and better happiness. That was soap-opera stuff, of course, the same sort that was on All My Children , the day-shift nurses' favorite lunchtime program, but it was the truth nonetheless.

The sun was already half gone. For a couple of minutes there were wine-red streaks shooting out around it, then they bled away and so did all the other colors as the sun disappeared completely. Then there was nothing left but ashy gray and a thin band of yellow along the horizon. Shadows were gathering along the shoreline and in the patch of woods below. Almost dusk. And time to start back, like it or not.

Reluctantly Eileen got to her feet, stretched a kink out of her lower back, and picked her way down through the ferns to the footpath. She hurried through the woods, as she always did. There was nothing in any stretch of woods to make her tarry; trees didn't interest her in the least. Reagan had been a crappy president, but she'd never understood why people got so upset at his “Seen one tree, you've seen them all” line. She slowed to a leisurely pace again when she reached the road. More night shadows now, the sky darkening overhead. Dusk. Her second favorite time of day after sunset.

The Milbanks were home: lights on in their cabin, their car parked in front. She debated stopping long enough to say good-bye, see you next summer, but she didn't do it. Time enough for that in the morning.

She came around the slight bend in the road to where the lighted windows of their cabin became visible. It was almost dark now. Any second the outside lights—blue and white baby spots that Ted had mounted on the front and side walls—would come on; they were on a timer switch.

She walked even more slowly, savoring these last few minutes of her outing, the almost-night.

Out on the lake somewhere, a boat engine made a low, throaty whine. From another direction she heard faint snatches of music from a radio abruptly turned up loud, that rap crap the boys liked. An owl hooted and another one answered it. A mosquito buzzed her ear.

The night-lights came on, just briefly, almost a flicker—

And the cabin blew up.

It just … it … there was a terrific explosion that assaulted her eardrums, caused the roadbed to tremble under her feet … the walls bulged and burst, the roof vanished in a huge spurt of flame and smoke … it was as if a giant house-size match had been struck …

Ted Kevin Bobby!

Stunned disbelief gave way to horror; her head seemed to fill and swell with it. Her legs wouldn't work, and then they would, and she was running frantically, into gusting waves of heat that robbed her lungs of air and set her gasping.

Drops of fire rained down around the raging shell of the cabin, landed on nearby trees and caused them to erupt in flashes of yellow-red. Roiling smoke choked the new darkness. The lake reflected the blaze so that it, too, seemed to be burning.

Ted what happened

Bobby Kevin

Oh my God no

Someone, she couldn't tell who, materialized ahead of her. Wasn't there, then was … running out of the flames, away from the flames, except that he he

He was on fire, wearing spines of fire on his back, shoulders, arms, and he was

Screaming

No!

Running, stumbling, falling, getting up, racing toward the lake, trailing fire, and not for a second did he stop screaming.

She veered toward him on a converging path. The swelling pressure smothered thought, made her head feel loose and enormous, like a balloon at the end of a string.

He reached the beach before she did, plunged across it, hurled himself into the dark water. Thrashed around wildly, churning the water to froth. The cries stopped and the flames went out with a hiss she could hear above the pulse of the inferno. A cloud of steam rose like a bloody mist, stained crimson by the fireglow.

She staggered through the rocky sand and into the water, cold, and groped for him, touched his back, hot, hot. He was still moving but feebly now, facedown … drowning. Her hands, strong hands, nurse's hands, caught hold of him and dragged him backward, out of the lake and onto the beach. She sank to her knees beside him, eased him onto his back—

Kevin

Her baby Kevin

His face oh Jesus his poor face

Raw blistered red and black the hair all burned off

But still alive breath bubbling in his throat

Kevin

He whimpered, the same sound he'd uttered in his crib when he was little, and she gathered him into her arms and held him gently, fiercely. The fire hammered and crackled behind her … Ted, Bobby … and a long way off there were people shouting. But it was Kevin she heard. He whimpered again and she began to rock him, to croon to him.

“Hush baby hush it's all right. Mama's here. Mama's here …”

The thing in her head, the horror in her head, swelled and swelled—

And then it burst.

PART TWO

Fast Burn

FOURTEEN

They said it was a freak accident.

They said there was no doubt of that.

They said the cabin had a propane water heater in a small windowless basement area and that the pilot light must have blown out somehow and the safety valve had been defective, allowing the gas to leak out. When that happened, the heavy propane spread out in a trapped layer across the floor. It was the timer mechanism for the exterior night-lights, which was also in the basement—a photoelectric sensor arcing through a relay switch when the timer activated it—that had caused the explosion. Propane was extremely volatile. Once enough of it seeped out, a single tiny spark was all it took for ignition. A tragic accident, the kind that happens now and then when people aren't careful.

“They're wrong,” Dix said angrily. “Wrong as hell. It wasn't an accident, it was cold-blooded murder.”

Police Lieutenant Adam St. John was silent. He had a lean, fox face that didn't reveal much of what he was thinking, and an irritatingly phlegmatic manner. He sat rolling an unlit cigarette between his fingers, alternately shifting his gaze between Dix and Cecca, sitting pale and tense beside him. He was trying to quit smoking, he'd told them last week. Toying with the cigarette was his way of easing himself out of the habit.

At length St. John slid his chair forward, laid the cigarette carefully on his desk blotter. He said, “Lake County has a highly competent team of arson investigators. They spent all morning going through what's left of the cabin, and the head of the team assured me there's been no mistake. It was a propane leak that caused the explosion.”

“I'm not disputing that,” Dix said. He ran a hand over his face, felt stubble here and there; he'd shaved that afternoon but he hadn't done much of a job of it. His eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep. “I know a little something about propane heaters; my father had a couple of different kinds. The pilot light could have been blown out deliberately and the safety valve tampered with to let the gas escape. There'd be no way for the arson investigators to determine that from the burned-out wreckage, would there?”

“No, I suppose there wouldn't.”

Cecca made a dry throat-clearing sound. “Every year, on their last night at the lake, the Harrells drove to Lakeport for dinner at a restaurant called Oliveri's. It was a ritual; everyone knew about it. If you check, you'll find they did it again yesterday.”