“I’m sorry . . . I thought you were a rich snot.”
“I am a rich snot,” Jeremy said, smiling.
“Why are you helping me?”
Jeremy thought for a moment. “Well, you know.” He didn’t know how to put it into words. “You, me, we’re all human beings. We have to do right by each other.”
There was a long pause. Jeremy listened to the muffled sound of the fire’s roar. He didn’t hear any sirens. He told himself he wouldn’t be able to, over the other noise. Finally Randy spoke again. “If you get out of this and I don’t, will you do me a favor?”
“You’re getting out of this. Don’t worry.”
“Will you?”
Jeremy squeezed his eyelids tightly closed. He could feel the hot tears pressing against them. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Tell Becky Castle I’m sorry.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
Jeremy placed his hand over Randy’s shoulder and pressed hard. Randy’s hand fluttered up and patted Jeremy’s hand. They waited, in the damp and stifling dark, two boys under the blanket. Less afraid because neither of them was alone.
9:10 P.M.
Ed Castle’s beeper went off the same moment Lyle MacAuley’s radio crackled to life. Lyle muttered an excuse-me and walked into the hospital hallway.
“What is it?” Suzanne asked quietly. Becky had finally fallen asleep again. She lay folded into her bed like the little girl she had once been. Her fragile whiteness would have blended in with the sheets if not for the purpling bruises blooming across her face.
“Fire,” Ed said, checking the code.
“Do you have to go?”
“Lemme call in and check.” He crossed to Becky’s bedside phone and dialed the dispatch number. It rang, and rang, and rang again. Finally, the line picked up, but before he could say a word, he heard a blurted, “Holdplease” and was left listening to a recorded message giving him alternate numbers to call if he was looking for the town hall, the animal control officer, or the department of motor vehicles. By the time Dispatch came back on, he had worked up a good mad.
“Harlene, what the hell is going on over there? In all the years I’ve been a volunteer, I’ve never had to wait on a fire response call.”
“Who is this?”
He raised his eyebrows. He thought Harlene could recognize every volunteer firefighter by voice. “Ed. Ed Castle.”
“Sorry.” She sounded flustered. He started to worry. He had never, ever heard Harlene flustered. “We got two major fires. The Reid-Gruyn mill and the new resort. Meet your team A.S.A.P. You’ll be supported by Corinth, Glens Falls, and Hudson Falls.”
“Wait—” he said, but she had already clicked off. He was left staring at the phone in his hand.
“Ed?” Suzanne looked questioningly at him.
“The Reid-Gruyn mill’s on fire. And the new resort.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Sounds like they’re turning at least two counties out to respond.”
“The new resort?” Suzanne sucked in a breath, turning toward their daughter. “Oh, lord, Ed. What if Becky . . . ?”
He caught her in a quick one armed hug. “Don’t think about it. We’ve got her here. Whatever else happens, she’s safe now.”
Lyle MacAuley came back in from the hall. “You hear the news?”
Ed nodded. “Any idea what happened?”
Lyle’s face was an outcropping of Adirondack granite. “Chief thinks some sort of ecoterrorism. Who knows, nowadays.”
Ed turned toward his wife. “Suze—”
“Just go,” she said. “We’ll be here waiting when you get back.”
9:20 P.M.
He kept calling and calling Jeremy’s number, but the boy didn’t answer. Shaun was starting to get worried. He had gotten the hell out after the explosion and now was milling around the portico. He wasn’t sure what to do. Maybe he should get into the car with Courtney and head over to Reid-Gruyn. What the hell had Jeremy been on about? An explosion? It had sounded as if it were at the mill, but there was no way that could happen. Could it?
A firefighter shouldered him out of the way. “Excuse me, sir.” They had started arriving a few minutes ago, hook and ladders and water trucks and emergency response vehicles. Lights whirling, hoses unrolling, men and women stomping around in bulky turnout suits. The fire fighter turned at the door and held up a megaphone. “Folks,” he said, his voice electronically amplified. “Please move away from this area. Please move back into the parking lot. Please stay away from the fire equipment so we can do our jobs.”
Like the nearby parking lot was safe. Shaun could see the burned and smoking ruins of one car already. He retreated downslope, instead, crossing the border of large riverstones demarcating the garden area, treading carelessly on the decorative heathers planted below the curving drive. He tried calling the foreman’s desk on the mill floor, but no one answered. He tried Jeremy’s number again. The cool edges of fear stroked his spine and coiled in his belly.
Then he saw Jeremy’s car pull into the lower parking lot. He plunged through the newly landscaped garden, churning up plants and clots of earth. The BMW drove closer and closer to the portico, stopping only when it was blocked by a line of cones. Shaun galloped toward Jeremy, thanking God, promising to mend his ways, whatever they might be. His ankle almost turned on one of the riverstones, and he had to hop over them to catch his balance. The door swung open. “Jeremy!” he called out.
Millie van der Hoeven stepped out.
She seemed as shocked to see him as he was to see her. Then she laughed, a painful, racking laugh. “You thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you?”
He was speechless.
“You thought you had me tied up tight in that godforsaken warehouse. One fire, and you get rid of the only witness who could link you to my brother’s murder.”
One fire?
“I was going to . . . I don’t know, punch you in the gut or something. Bite you again. Let you know what a miserable, despicable failure you are. But you know what? I don’t need to count coup on you.” She turned away from him. Toward the car.
“What—” His voice cracked. “What are you going to do?”
She stopped. Looked at him disbelievingly. “What do you think I’m going to do, you murdering bastard?” She spun on her heel.
He scooped up a fist-sized rock. It was dark down here, below the light and tumult at the resort’s entrance. But even in the dark, he could still throw. He was always good at throwing the ball.
The stone hit her hard, right behind her left ear. She went down with a thud. He strode over to her. Heaved her off the ground and threw her over his shoulder. He didn’t hesitate, as he had done this afternoon. Clearly there was only one course. And what could be more fortunate than a deadly fire close at hand? Shaun moved past the fire trucks and emergency vehicles, toward the far side of the hotel. All he had to do was get inside, somewhere away from the main entrance, and dump her into the flames.
It took him no more than five minutes. Skirting the light and the action, he discovered a side door that had been propped open with a chrome-and-rubber stop. He swung Millie from his shoulders into his arms. It was heavier and a lot less comfortable, but it would present the illusion of a man carrying a woman to safety.
He walked down the hall. He could hear the fire—a smashing, sucking, howling noise. The air was hot and heavy with smoke. He passed a door, opened onto a meeting room, and recognized where he was. The hallway leading to the ballroom. Could he slip into the conference room beside the ballroom and give her a little shove through the door?
“Hey, you!” The voice was weirdly muffled.
Shaun looked up. A firefighter, his face obscured by mask and eye shield, blocked the end of the hall. He had an ax in his hand and an oxygen tank strapped to his back. “You need to get out of here. This area’s not safe.”
Shaun nodded. He turned and walked in the opposite direction. He’d wait outside the d
oorway until the firefighter moved on, then bring her back. Maybe go upstairs, put her above the ballroom. Bash her a few more times and call it smoke inhalation. Even if the fire didn’t get her, who would know?
“Hey!” the muffled voice again. “That girl.”
Shaun looked down. Millie’s head had lolled back, and her long blond hair was swaying above the Oriental runner.
He kept walking.
“Stop!”
He walked faster. Behind him, he heard the thud of running feet. He broke into a run, but even his athlete’s body couldn’t function at peak with a hundred and forty pounds of young woman in his arms.
The firefighter’s tackle knocked him to the carpet. The girl bounced and rolled, coming to rest on her back, her head tilted to one side.
A hand grabbed his jacket and flipped him over. The firefighter set his ax, blade side down, against Shaun’s sternum. With his other hand, he shoved the face shield up and tugged his oxygen mask down.
Shaun frowned. It was . . . it was . . . He blinked. It was Ed Castle, the guy who supplied his pulp.
“What,” Ed Castle said, “are you doing with my daughter’s college roommate?”
9:40 P.M.
Russ had finished getting a radio briefing from Lyle MacAuley on the three-alarm fire that was consuming the old mill on the Reid-Gruyn property. He turned to the newly arrived Mark Durkee and Noble Entwhistle. “What’s the flammable version of ‘It never rains, but it pours?’ ” Mark shrugged his shoulders. “Okay,” Russ said. “We’re going to need some crowd and traffic control here. I want you to—”
Someone grabbed his shoulder. He looked around at John Huggins. “Hey,” Huggins said. “I got a radio squawk from one of my guys. He’s calling for paramedics and the cops.” He pointed toward the edge of the hotel. “Go around there. The second door. It’ll be open.”
Huggins strode away before Russ could acknowledge the information. “You heard the man,” he said, pointing to Mark. “Let’s go.”
From the corner of his eye, Russ saw two paramedics from the Corinth squad shouldering their rolled pallet and medical kits. He let Mark lead, trusting his younger, keener night vision to find them footing.
They found the door. The firefighter who called them in was close by.
“Lookit who I found,” Ed said.
Mark knelt by Millie. “She’s got a bloody laceration at the back of her skull,” he said. “But she’s alive.”
Russ looked at Shaun a long moment. Then he looked at the man holding the ax. “Ed,” he said. He paused. He didn’t know what to say. “Thank you,” he finally got out.
Ed nodded. “It was her hair caught my eye. Like Becky’s.”
Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “Mark,” he said wearily. “Will you cuff Mr. Reid and inform him of his rights?”
9:45 P.M.
Clare and Deacon Aberforth sat in Hugh Parteger’s car together, keeping warm.
“Do you think they’ll stop it?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m sure they will.” She looked through the window at the carnival of lights and hoses and moving reflective stripes. She sighed.
“I wonder if I’ll be able to get back to my room?”
“You can bunk in the rectory tonight, Father.”
He smiled at her for the first time. “You know, before all this, I would have said that was totally unacceptable.”
“And now?”
“And now, I think I’ll just say, ‘Thank you.’ ”
Clare leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.
“Ms. Fergusson.”
She opened them again.
“I suspect you and I disagree on quite a number of things, including homosexuality, the proper degree of episcopal control of a parish, and, for all I know, the doctrines of immutable grace and virgin birth.”
“I may be a liberal, Father, but that doesn’t mean I’ve fallen under the sway of Bishop Spong.”
“No. No, I suppose not. And we are called to remember what unites us in Christ, not what divides us in the world.”
“Amen,” she said. The car’s heater kicked in again, and her skirt rustled in the blower’s blast.
“What I’m trying to say is, I recognize I must seem like a hopelessly outdated fossil to you.”
She prudently kept her mouth shut.
“But I have lived a good number of years. I’ve seen quite a lot of the world. It may surprise you to know that I served in the marines as a young man.”
“You’re kidding.”
“In Korea.”
“I’m impressed.”
“And I’m a widower.”
She paused. It was difficult to imagine Willard Aberforth in a marital relationship. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m not saying this to garner your sympathy but to let you know that I’ve attained a good deal of knowledge about human nature. And about men and women.” He looked at her. His black eyes were a good deal less intimidating than they had been earlier. It was hard, she guessed, to keep your back up around someone wearing striped pajamas.
“I saw you, earlier.”
She was silent.
“When I was at the bar, after you left, the man you . . . were with . . . came through the lobby. With a woman who acted very much like a wife. Was I mistaken?”
“No. You must have a good eye for body language.”
He sighed. “Unlike you, I cannot offer confession and absolution.”
“No,” she said.
“But I can offer a quiet, listening heart. And whatever insight my years have left me with.”
Clare closed her eyes. She felt . . . taut, as if her skin were stretched around this secret she was stuffed with. She tried to live her life with integrity. But integrity required her to be integrated. To be one whole person, whether alone in her house or in front of an entire ballroom full of people.
She opened her eyes. Beyond the crazy emergency lights she could see the mountains. And the moon.
“When I met Russ Van Alstyne, I thought of him simply as a friend,” she started. “Our relationship seemed like”—she thought for a moment—“a meeting of true minds.”
9:55 P.M.
He found her sitting in Parteger’s car, her skirts practically up to her nose, deep in conversation with an old guy in pajamas and an overcoat. He knocked on the window. She rolled it down.
“Guess what?” he said.
“After tonight? I wouldn’t dare try.”
“We’ve found Millie van der Hoeven.”
She smiled brilliantly. “Oh, Russ, that’s wonderful. Finally, some good news.”
“She’s been resting up in one of the ambulances, but before she goes, she’d like to meet you.”
“Me? Whatever for?”
“I told her about you being on the search party and talking with her brother and all. Will you come?”
She looked at the old fellow. “Will you excuse me?”
“Of course,” he said.
She maneuvered her skirts out of the car. She was still wearing Russ’s tuxedo jacket. “I see you found a replacement,” she said, fingering the heavy parka he was wearing.
“I borrowed it.” He turned his back, to show her the words FIRE CHIEF in reflective letters.
“Why am I not surprised you found one that says ‘chief’?”
He smiled to himself.
“Did you find your Mom okay?”
“Yeah, She and Nane and the rest of the ACC gardeners were already outside when the crates blew. They’ve all gone to the Kreemy Kakes diner to talk the evening over.”
“How are the firefighters doing?” she asked.
“Not bad. The ballroom, the kitchen, and the conference room next to the ballroom are a complete loss, and there’s serious structural damage to the floor above them, but they’ve managed to contain it.”
“Thank God.”
“Was Millie behind the bombing? Or the PLA?”
“No.” He didn’t
elaborate on what the van der Hoeven sisters had already told him.
He pointed to where the Corinth ambulance was parked. Several people milled around the open back doors. “Are those the corporate honchos from GWP?” Clare asked.
“Yep. Millie and her sister insisted on signing the documents transferring Haudenosaunee before they left for the hospital.”
“Wow. That’s dedicated.”
Ahead of them, the delegation from GWP finished bowing and shaking hands. Russ and Clare hung back a moment until they had cleared out. Then he urged her forward. “Millie, this is Reverend Clare Fergusson. Clare, I think you’ve already met Millie’s sister, Louisa.”
Clare shook hands with Millie, who reclined on the ambulance bed with a bandage on her head. Louisa sat next to her sister, holding her hand. One of them looked like a San Franciscan socialite, and the other looked like she’d come out of a brawl in a lumber camp, but their resemblance to each other—and to their late brother—was notable.
“Millie, I’m delighted to meet you. And find you safe and relatively sound.”
Millie touched her bandage tentatively. “Thank you. Chief Van Alstyne told us about all you did to help me. And my friend Becky.”
Clare shook her head. “I was just one of the search team.” She hesitated. “I’ve already told Louisa, but I’m so very sorry about the loss of your brother.”
Tears filled the young woman’s eyes. She nodded.
“I understand your car is one of tonight’s casualties,” Louisa said. “Please allow us to make restitution.”
Russ thought of the twisted, smoking wreck that was her Shelby Cobra. “Oh,” Clare said gamely, “I have insurance.”
“Nevertheless.” Louisa looked at her sister. “And we’d like to explain to you,” she looked at Russ, “why we believe Gene was solely responsible for tonight’s carnage.”
There was a long pause. Clare looked at Russ. He shrugged. Millie had disclaimed the IEDs earlier, and he was pretty sure further investigation of the physical evidence was going to prove her statement, but he didn’t know what this was about.
To Darkness and to Death Page 38