Final Scream

by Lisa Jackson

  “I am! Going over it again isn’t going to change anything. You know what happened—”

  “I don’t know shit, lady, so cut the crap!” His boots hit the floor with a thud. “Look, I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but I’ve seen better liars than you and busted them, like that.” He snapped his fingers so loudly the sound seemed to ricochet around the cinder-block walls. “Whether you realize it or not, you’re in deep trouble here; deeper than you want to be. Now, let’s get down to it, okay? No more bullshit. I hate bullshit. Don’t you, Gonzales?”

  “Hate it,” Gonzales replied, barely moving his lips.

  Wilson grabbed the file again. He felt as if he were losing control. He didn’t like it when he lost charge of any situation. Especially one in which he thought his career was on the line. If he solved this case, hell, he’d be able to run for sheriff himself and oust Floyd Dodds, who needed to retire anyway. Floyd was becoming a real pain in the ass. But if T. John didn’t solve the case…oh, hell, that wasn’t even a possibility. T. John believed in thinking positively. Even more, he believed in himself.

  He glanced at the clock mounted over the door. The seconds just kept ticking by. Through the window, the last rays of sunlight settled into the room, causing shadows to creep along the walls despite the harsh light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs. They’d been at this for three hours and everyone was growing tired. Especially the woman. She was pale, her skin stretched tight over high cheekbones and sunken gold eyes. Her hair was a fiery red brown that was pulled off her face by a leather thong. Tiny lines of worry pinched the corners of what might have been a pouty, sexy mouth.

  He tried again. “Your name is Cassidy Buchanan McKenzie, you’re a reporter with the Times and you know a helluva lot more than you’re telling me about the fire at your daddy’s sawmill.”

  She had the decency to blanch. Her mouth opened and closed again as she sat stiffly, her denim jacket wrapped around her slim body, her makeup long faded.

  “Now that we’ve got that straight, you might want to tell me what you know about it. One man’s near-dead at Northwest General in CCU, the other in a private room unable to talk. The doctors don’t think the guy in Critical Care is gonna make it.”

  Her lips quivered for a second. “I heard,” she whispered. She blinked, but didn’t break down. He hadn’t supposed she would. She was a Buchanan, for Christ’s sake. They were known to be tougher than rawhide.

  “This isn’t the first fire to occur on your daddy’s property, is it? It seems to me there was another fire in another mill years back.” He climbed to his feet and began to pace, his gum popping in noisy tandem to the heels of his boots clicking against the yellowed linoleum floor. “And if I remember right, after the last one, you up and left town. Said you’d never come back. Guess you changed your mind—oh, hell, everyone has that right, don’t they?” He flashed a good-old-boy smile. His best.

  She didn’t even flinch.

  “But now listen to this. It’s what bothers me. You gave up a job most men and women would kill for, came back home married to one of the McKenzie boys and guess what? Lo and behold, we have another hot-damn fire the likes of which we haven’t seen in—what—nearly seventeen years! One guy nearly killed in the explosion, the other guy hanging by a thread.” He threw up his hands. “Go figure.”

  Gonzales shoved himself away from the door, exited for a few minutes and returned with cups of coffee.

  Wilson turned his chair backward and straddled it. Leaning forward, he glowered at her. She held his gaze. “We’re still trying to figure out exactly what happened and who was there. Fortunately your husband was carrying a wallet, otherwise we wouldn’t have recognized him. He’s a mess. His face is swollen and cut, his hair singed, his jaw broken and one leg’s in a cast. But they managed to save the injured eye, and if he works at it, he may even walk again.” He watched as the woman shuddered. So she did care about her husband…if only just a little. “The other guy we don’t know. No ID. His face is busted up pretty bad, too. Swollen and black and blue. He lost a few teeth and his hands are burned. Hair nearly singed clean off. We’re havin’ a helluva time figuring out who he is and thought you might be able to help us.” Leaning back in his chair again, he picked up his cup of coffee.

  “What—what about fingerprints?”

  “That’s the hell of it. John Doe’s hands are burned; no prints. At least not yet. With all those broken teeth and messed-up jaw, dental impressions are gonna take some time…” Wilson narrowed his eyes on the woman, and he scratched thoughtfully against the stubble of two days’ growth of beard. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think the bastard burned his hands on purpose; you know, to throw us off.”

  She grimaced. “You think he started the fire?”

  “It’s possible.” Wilson picked up his mug, took a long swallow and scowled.

  “I told you I don’t know who he is.”

  “He was meetin’ your husband at the mill.”

  She hesitated. “So you said, but I…I don’t keep up with my husband’s business. I have no idea whom he met or why.”

  T. John’s eyebrows quirked. “You got one of them marriages—you know, he does his own thing, you do yours?”

  “We were thinking about separating,” she admitted with a trace of remorse.

  “Is that so?” Wilson swallowed a smile. He’d finally hit pay dirt. Now he had a motive—or the start of one. And that’s all he needed. “The fire chief thinks the fire was caused by arson.”

  “I know.”

  “The incendiary device, well, hell, it could be the spittin’ image of the one used seventeen years ago when the old gristmill was torched. You remember that, don’t you?” She winced a little, her lips losing some color. “Yeah, I guess you couldn’t very well forget.”

  She looked away, and her hands trembled around the thin Styrofoam. Of course she remembered the fire. Everyone in Prosperity did. The Buchanan family—all of them—had suffered a horrible, tragic loss, one from which most of them had never recovered. The old man—Cassidy’s father—had never been the same; lost control of his life, his company and his willful daughter.

  “Maybe you’d like to come to the hospital, see the damage for yourself. But I’m warning you, it’s not a pretty sight.”

  She leveled steady whiskey-colored eyes at him, and he was reminded again that she was a reporter as well as a Buchanan. “I’ve been demanding to see my husband ever since he was injured. The doctors told me I couldn’t see him until the sheriff agreed—that there was some question about him being a suspect.”

  “Well, hell, let’s go!” Wilson said, but as she started to climb to her feet, he changed his mind. “Just a couple more things to clear up first.” Her spine stiffened, and she slowly settled back in the worn plastic chair. She was a cool one; he’d give her that. But she was still lying. Hiding something. T. John reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. Within the clear plastic was a charred chain with a burned St. Christopher’s medal attached to it. The image of the saint was barely recognizable, twisted and blackened from the heat and flames.

  Cassidy’s mouth rounded, but she didn’t gasp. Instead she stared at the bag as T. John dropped it onto the battered old table in front of her. Her hands gripped her cup more tightly, and she drew in a quick little breath. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Funny thing. The John Doe was holding it in his fist, wouldn’t let it go, even with as much pain as he was in. We had to pry it from his fingers, and when we did, guess what he said?” Wilson asked.

  She glanced from one detective to the other. “What?”

  “We think he yelled your name, but it’s just a guess because his voice wasn’t working right. He was screaming his lungs out, but not making a sound.”

  Cassidy swallowed though she hadn’t taken a sip of coffee. Her eyes seemed to glisten ever so slightly. He was definitely making headway. Maybe with the right amount of pressure she’d crack. “I guess maybe he
thought he needed to see you…or maybe he did see you there, at the mill that night.”

  T. John’s dark gaze fixed on the woman.

  She licked her lips nervously and avoided his gaze. “I already told you I wasn’t anywhere near the place.”

  “That’s right, you were alone in the house. No alibi.” Wilson turned to his partner, and picked up the plastic bag. “Has this been printed?”

  Gonzales nodded slightly.

  “Funny,” Wilson said, staring at the woman as he pulled out the darkened silver chain. “Wonder why a guy who was being half-burned to death, would hang on to this damned thing—you know, like it was real important?”

  She didn’t answer as Wilson let the plastic bag fall softly back to the table and allowed the St. Christopher’s medal to swing, like a watch in a hypnotist’s hands, in front of her nose. “Wonder what it means?” he asked, and he saw the tiny spark of fury in those round eyes again. But she didn’t say a word as he dropped the blackened links onto the table and they slithered together.

  She stared at the charred metal for a minute, frowning, her throat working. “Are we finished? Can I go now?”

  Wilson was pissed. This woman knew something and she was holding back, and here he was sitting on the biggest murder and arson case in his nine years with the department—his ticket to ousting Floyd Dodds. “You’re not changing your story?”

  “No.”

  “Even though you don’t have an alibi?”

  “I was home.”

  “Alone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Packing? You were planning to leave your husband.”

  “I was working on the computer at home. There are time logs, you can see for yourself—”

  “That someone was there. Or that someone took enough computer courses and knows how to get into the guts of the machine—the memory—and change the entry times. Let me tell you, you’re pushing your luck.” He snapped up the chain and dropped it into the plastic bag. “You know, whatever you’ve done, it will go easier on you if you ’fess up. And if you’re protecting someone…hell, there’s no reason for you to take the rap for something you didn’t do.”

  Her eyes shifted away.

  “You’re not…protecting your husband, are you? Nah, that’s silly. You were gonna split anyway.”

  “Am I being charged?” she demanded. Two spots of color caressed her high cheekbones and beneath her jacket she straightened her thin body, a body that must’ve dropped five pounds in the twenty-four hours since the fire.

  “Well, not yet, but it’s still early.”

  She didn’t smile. “As I said, I’d like to see my husband.”

  Wilson sent his partner a look. “You know, I think, Mrs. McKenzie—you don’t mind if I call you that since you’re still legally married—I think that’s a damned good idea. Maybe you should see the other guy, too; there’s a chance you can tell me who he is, though in the shape he’s in I doubt if his own mother would recognize him.”

  Gonzales shifted against the door. “Dodds won’t like it—not without him there.”

  “Let me handle the sheriff.”

  “It’s your funeral, man.”

  “I’ll give old Floyd a call. Make it official, okay?” Wilson stretched out of his chair. “’Sides, he don’t like much that I do.”

  Gonzales still wasn’t convinced. “The doctors gave strict orders that the patients weren’t to be disturbed.”

  “Hell, I know that!” Wilson reached for his hat. “But how can they be disturbed? One guy’s so far gone he’s nearly in a coma and the other…well, he’s probably not long for the world. This here’s the wife of one of the men, for God’s sake. She needs to see her man. And maybe she can help us out. Come on, Mrs. McKenzie, you wouldn’t mind, would you?”

  Cassidy tried to control her ragged emotions though a thousand questions ran in long endless paths through her mind. She hadn’t slept in nearly two days, and when she had managed to doze, horrifying nightmares of the inferno at the sawmill blended into another terrifying fire, that hellish hot beast that had destroyed so much of her life and her family seventeen years ago. A shudder ripped through her body and her knees nearly gave way as she remembered…oh, God, how she remembered. The black sky, the red blaze, the white-hot sparks that shot into the heavens as if Satan himself were mocking and spitting at God. And the devastation and deaths…please help me.

  She noticed the detective staring at her, waiting—and she remembered he’d asked her a question—something about going to the hospital. “Can we go now?” she asked, steeling herself. Oh, God, please, don’t let him be in agony! Tears threatened her eyes, riding like drops of dew on her lashes, but she wouldn’t give Detective T. John Wilson the satisfaction of seeing her break down.

  She should have asked to have her attorney present, but that was impossible as her attorney was her husband and he was clinging tenaciously to his life. Though she hadn’t been able to visit him, the doctors had told her of his injuries, the broken ribs and jaw, punctured lung, cracked femur, and burned cornea of his right eye. He was lucky to be alive. Lucky.

  Pushing herself to her feet, she slid a final glance at the tarnished silver chain still coiled, like a dead rattler in the clear plastic bag. Her heart seemed to rip a little bit, and she reminded herself it was only a piece of jewelry—not expensive jewelry at that—and it meant nothing to her. Nothing.

  The hospital noises were muted. Rattling carts and gurneys, the sound of doctors being paged, quiet footsteps, all seemed to melt away as Wilson held the door open for her and she stepped into the hospital room where her husband lay unmoving beneath a sterile white sheet. Bandages covered half his face including his right eye as well as the top and back of his head. The flesh that was exposed was bruised and lacerated. Stitches tracked beside his swollen nose and yellow antiseptic sliced across the scratches on his skin. Dark beard stubble was beginning to shade that part of his jaw that was visible and all the while an IV dripped fluid into his veins.

  Cassidy’s stomach lurched and she gritted her teeth. So this is what it had come to. Why was he at the mill that night? Who was he meeting—the man who lay dying somewhere in the labyrinthine rooms of this hospital? And why, oh, God, why, had someone tried to kill him?

  “I’m here,” she said quietly, walking into the room and wishing she could turn back time, somehow save him from this agony. Though they’d stopped loving each other a long while ago, perhaps never really had been in love, she still cared for him. “Can you hear me?” she asked, but didn’t touch the clean sheets covering his body, didn’t want even the slightest movement to add to his discomfort.

  His good eye was open, staring sightlessly toward the ceiling. Its white had turned a nasty shade of red, and the blue—that clear sky blue—seemed to have dissolved into the surrounding tissue.

  “I’m here for you,” she said, conscious of the detective standing near the door. “Can you hear—?”

  Suddenly the eye moved, focusing on her with such clarity and hatred that she nearly jumped back. Her husband stared at her for a long, chilling minute, then looked away as if in disgust, his gaze trained on the ceiling once more.

  “Please—” she said.

  He didn’t move.

  The detective stepped forward. “McKenzie?”

  Nothing.

  She said softly, “I want you to know that I care.” Her throat clogged painfully on the words as she remembered their last argument, the cruel words they’d hurled at each other. The eye blinked, but she knew it was useless. He couldn’t hear her. Wouldn’t. He didn’t want her love now any more than he ever had, and she was just as incapable of giving it. “I’ll be here for you.” She remembered her marriage vows and felt a deep rending in her heart, an ache that seemed to grow as she stared at the broken man who had once been so strong.

  She’d known from the start that their marriage had been doomed, and yet she’d let herself believe that they would find a way to love each other.
/>   But she’d been wrong. So wrong.

  She waited and eventually the eye closed, though she didn’t know if he was sleeping, unconscious, or pretending that she wasn’t in the hospital, that she didn’t exist, as he had so many times in the past.

  Cassidy walked out of the room on wooden legs. Memories washed over her, memories of love gained and lost, of hopes and dreams that had died long before the fire.

  The detective was in step with her. “You want to tell me about the chain and the St. Christopher’s medal?”

  Her heart jolted. “I…I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and despite the soaring temperature felt a chill as cold as November. “It didn’t belong to my husband.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She hedged because she wasn’t certain. “To my knowledge, he never owned anything like that. It…it probably belonged to the other guy—the one who was holding it.”

  “And who do you think he is?” Wilson asked.

  “I wish I knew,” she said fervently, not allowing her mind to wander to another time and place, another love and a shining silver chain with a St. Christopher’s medal dangling from its links. “I wish to God that I knew.”

  They walked the length of one corridor and took the elevator down a floor to CCU. Wilson couldn’t convince the nurse on duty or the doctor in charge to let them see the man who had been with her husband, so they passed through the exterior doors to the outside of the hospital, and there, in the simmering afternoon heat, Wilson handed her a photo of a charred man, his face blistered, his hair burned off. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to retch. “I already told you. I—I don’t know him. Even if I did, I don’t think, I mean I can’t imagine—”

  “It’s all right.” For once Wilson’s voice was kind, as if he did have some human emotions after all. “I said it was a long shot.” He took the crook of her elbow and helped her walk across the parking lot to the cruiser to which he’d been assigned. Glancing back over his shoulder to the whitewashed hospital, and the wing in which CCU was housed, he shook his head. “Poor bastard. I wonder who the hell he is.”