Blind Rage

by Terri Persons

  He set the pen and pad down on the coffee table and finished his drink. He carefully tore the sheet out of the pad and folded it in half, running his thumb along the crease. He folded it two more times and stood up to tuck the rectangle into the front pocket of his robe. He’d thought about finding a fireproof place to hide the letter, but he was confident the fire department would douse the fire before his body was incinerated.

  He stepped up to the mantel and reached for one of his mother’s favorites, a tall Victorian pedestal oil lamp with a painted base and original crystal chimney.

  Chapter 42

  A POP INSIDE THE HOUSE MADE BERNADETTE JUMP TO HER FEET. She went to the door, knocked twice. No response.

  The smoke she smelled was too acrid to be coming from a fireplace. She went over to the windows to check. The lace curtains were enveloped in flames. “Jesus Christ!” she gasped, backing away from the glass.

  She ran to the front door and put her hand over the doorknob. “Shit!” The knob was already too hot to touch, even with gloves on. She pounded on the wood with her fists. “Fire! Get out!”

  Bernadette darted back to the windows but couldn’t see anything past the flames. “Luke!” she yelled to the glass. “Matt!”

  She ran back to the door, lifted her foot, and brought it down on the lower panel.

  Garcia was bounding up the porch steps. “Cat!”

  Taking a step back, she raised her foot higher and kicked the door next to the lock. “There’s a fire!”

  Garcia saw the flames through the glass. “Crap!” He flipped open his phone and called for help.

  She brought her foot down on the wood a third time, and it bounced off. “You take this fucking thing!” she yelled.

  He replaced her in front of the door while she ran to the other side of the porch. She lifted a bust off its pedestal and ran to the windows. Swinging the statue upside down by the neck, she heaved it through the middle panes. The sound of breaking glass was followed by a roar as flames rolled out of the hole. “God Almighty!”

  Garcia cranked his foot back and brought it down against the middle of the door. The wood didn’t budge. “Try the back door!”

  Bernadette pushed open the screen door, jumped off the steps, and ran around to the rear of the house. She went up the back steps and jiggled the back door’s knob. Locked. She pounded on the wood with both fists. “Fire! Get out!”

  She heard glass breaking above her and ran down the steps and into the middle of the yard. A wooden chair came sailing out of a second-floor window and landed on the ground, exploding in a dozen pieces. Dressed in a T-shirt and boxers, Matthew VonHader stuck his torso through the broken window while smoke billowed out from behind him. “Help! Please help me!”

  Bernadette heard sirens in the distance. “Help’s coming!”

  He started coughing. “The smoke…I can’t…I don’t want to burn!”

  “Stay low! Close the door and stuff a rag in the bottom!”

  He turned away from the window and returned a moment later, coughing harder. “I can’t…see anything!”

  “Jump!”

  He looked down with saucer eyes. “No!”

  “It’s not that far! Jump!”

  Coughing and shaking his head, he answered, “I can’t!”

  “Tie a sheet to something and climb down!”

  He backed away from the window. Bernadette kept her eyes glued to the dark hole and became worried when he didn’t immediately reappear. “Matt!” she yelled up to the window. “Matt!”

  Bernadette swept the yard with her eyes and in a far corner spotted a birdbath perched on a concrete column. She ran over to it, shoved off the bowl top, picked up the pedestal, and carried it to the back of the house. Using the pedestal as a battering ram, she slammed the bottom end against the middle of the door. The wood didn’t move. She raised the concrete as high as she could and brought the bottom of the column down on the doorknob. The hardware fell off. She set the pedestal down, caught her breath, and picked it up again.

  Breathing hard with sweat dripping from his brow, Garcia materialized at her side. “Front door wouldn’t give an inch. Fire’s coming out of all the first-floor windows facing the street.”

  Bernadette slammed the pedestal against the door twice, with no results. “Then Luke is dead.”

  Garcia dragged his arm over his forehead. “He’s downstairs for sure?”

  Panting, Bernadette dropped her battering ram. “He came out of the house to get the paper before the fire started.”

  “Shit. Did you see him reading it?”

  “Yeah. It pissed him off. Why?”

  “Nothing,” Garcia said. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Matthew is upstairs,” she said.

  “Rigs are coming up the block.”

  Bernadette bent over to retrieve the concrete column. “Matt will fry before they get here.”

  “Forget that thing.” Garcia positioned himself in front of the door, cranked his foot back, and brought it down next to the busted lock. The door didn’t give. “Son-of-a-bitch!”

  Bernadette heard screaming overhead and then two cracks, one immediately after the other. She darted into the yard and looked up at the window. Fire was pouring out of the hole. She retrieved the battering ram and ran to Garcia with it. “Did you hear that?”

  “I heard!”

  She passed the concrete column over to him and pointed to a first-floor window. “Do it!”

  Running and carrying the column like a pole-vaulter, Garcia charged up to the window and released the pedestal. It sailed through the glass, and the flames instantly shot out. “Crap!” spat Garcia.

  Bernadette looked up at the second floor. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she yelled to the broken window, “Matt!”

  Garcia said, “Maybe he made it downstairs.”

  “He’s dead. They’re both dead.” Bernadette turned away from the house and suddenly noticed the alley was filled with people. A man on a motorcycle. Two teenagers on bikes. An old lady wearing a down coat over her robe and slippers. A couple of construction workers. Where had they all come from? It wasn’t even dawn. Why hadn’t they tried to help? They were all wide-eyed and silent, staring across the fence at the burning house as if it were a horror movie. She marched over to the back fence and waved her arms around. “Clear out! There’s nothing to see! Go on! Get away from here!”

  The crowd didn’t budge, its collective attention torn between the screaming blonde and the burning house.

  Bernadette picked a rock off the ground and started to crank her arm back. Garcia came up behind her and took the rock out of her fist. “Are you nuts?”

  “They’re acting like it’s a freak show!”

  “Forget them!”

  She looked past him at the mansion. Flames were shooting out of every window. “How could it spread so fast?”

  Garcia ran a hand through his hair. “It’s an old house.”

  “Filled with old stuff,” she added. The brothers’ inheritance had made a fine funeral pyre.

  From the street, a ribbon of water arced onto the roof. Garcia put his hand on her shoulder. “We can pull back.”

  Her eyes traveled to the window where she’d last seen Matthew VonHader alive. “He was afraid to jump. It wasn’t even that far.”

  “Come on,” said Garcia, steering her away by the elbow.

  They started walking together along the side of the house. “This is unbelievable,” she said. “It started right before you got here. I was standing on the porch, and I smelled smoke.”

  “The doc didn’t notice you when he came out for the paper?”

  “I hid behind some of the junk on the porch. I didn’t know why you sent me here, and you told me to wait.”

  “Now I wish I hadn’t,” he said glumly.

  “You think he would have let me in? Poured me a cup of coffee?”

  “No. Probably not.”

  They moved to the front of the house, navigating around ho
ses and men. The firefighters had busted down the front door, but flames were shooting out and keeping them back. Garcia flashed his ID to a burly fire captain. The man thumbed over his shoulder at the house. “Any idea how many we got inside?”

  “Two adult males, one of them with a gun. He may already have finished his brother and himself. We don’t know for sure.”

  “Dandy,” said the captain, leaving them and joining his crew in front of the house.

  The two agents stood off to the side. More onlookers lined up along the sidewalk across the street. Two more police squads and another fire truck were pulling up. A television crew was setting up a shot from a neighbor’s front yard across the street.

  With the back of her hand, she wiped the perspiration off her forehead. “Why did he do this?”

  “The fact that they were jailed made it into the late edition of the news,” Garcia said as he stared up at the engulfed house. “Front page. Shrink and his brother questioned in the death of disabled father. Not a long piece. Just enough.”

  “How’d the paper get the story so quick? Who dropped the dime to the reporters?”

  Garcia answered both questions with a single shrug.

  “Did it include the sick family background?” she asked.

  “No, but he saw it coming. The water torture. Abusive parents. All of it would have been laid out. Intimate, embarrassing, private stuff.” He paused. “At the same time, I’ll bet money that the media misses the public circus at the tower.”

  “What makes a good news story?”

  “This does.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Neat pictures,” he said as flames shot through the roof.

  For twenty minutes, they stood and watched wordlessly while firefighters ran back and forth with their hoses and axes. The sun hadn’t yet come up, but the entire block was bathed in light, an unearthly red glow cast by the blaze and the emergency vehicles.

  “Do you believe in hell?” she asked, her eyes glued to the frantic ballet.

  “Yeah, I do,” he said.

  “So do I,” she said.

  Chapter 43

  TWO BODIES WERE CARRIED OUT OF THE SMOKING SHELL. The agents intercepted the twin gurneys as they were being wheeled to the Ramsey County medical examiner’s hearse parked on the street. Garcia whipped out his badge and showed it to the ME investigator. “Can we have a last look-see?”

  “Sure thing.” The investigator nodded to the men at the head of the gurneys. They positioned themselves at the top of the carts, their backs blocking the view of the photographers and nosy neighbors. Each man reached down and slowly unzipped his bag partway.

  Bernadette and Garcia looked from one sooty corpse to the other. Luke had put a bullet through his own temple, but not before nailing Matthew in the chest. The elder brother had looked after his younger sibling to the end.

  “We’re good,” Garcia told the gurney crew. “One of our people will meet you over at the lab for the autopsy.”

  “You know about the letter?” asked the ME investigator.

  “CSI showed us,” said Bernadette.

  While his men zipped the bags up over the bodies, the ME investigator took out his notebook and clicked his pen. “Can you help us out on locating next of kin?”

  “My agent tells me the doctor’s spouse and children are at their Scottsdale place,” said Garcia. “Elizabeth is the wife’s name.”

  “Lucky for them they weren’t home,” said the investigator, scribbling. He shoved the pad and pen back into his jacket. “Wasn’t the bureau involved in a bad deal last night, too? Some weird-ass business with a fella getting shot and then going off that tower on the West Side? I didn’t get the call, but I heard one of your agents…” His voice trailed off as he got a good look at Bernadette’s eyes.

  Garcia and Bernadette stared at him, and he clamped his mouth closed. Without another word, he and the gurney crew turned around and finished their trek to the hearse.

  “I wonder what he heard about ‘one of your agents,’” Bernadette said out of the side of her mouth.

  “Who gives a shit?” snapped Garcia.

  “Right,” said Bernadette, watching as Luke and Matthew were loaded into the hearse. They’d be sharing the morgue with Charles Araignee.

  “NOW WHAT?” asked Bernadette as she and Garcia walked toward their cars.

  He nodded to an empty bus stop. “Let’s sit down for a minute.”

  They went over to the bench and dropped onto the wooden seat. “I’m beat,” she said.

  He stretched his legs out in front of him. “Me, too.”

  In a front yard across the road, a woman raked leaves into an orange garbage bag while a little boy in a cape ran circles around her. “When’s Halloween?” Bernadette asked.

  “Why do you keep asking that?” Garcia asked with irritation. “It’s soon. A week or so.”

  “I guess I’d better get some candy.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “As far as I know, kids don’t trick-or-treat downtown.”

  “That’s too bad. I like Halloween. We used to go to a barn dance when we were kids, with costumes and everything.”

  “I don’t have any hay on hand, but you can come over to my place and pass out treats if you want. Tip back a few beers and grill some brats while we’re at it. Make a night of it.”

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  “Great.”

  “Do I have to wear a costume?”

  “Not unless you really want to,” he said.

  She stretched out her own legs and smiled, resisting the urge to make a crack about coming as a French maid. She cleared her throat. “Uh, I hate to ask…”

  “Go ahead.”

  “That thing at the tower. How much trouble am I in?”

  “I’m gonna try like hell to keep this away from the OPR,” he said, referring to the Office of Professional Responsibility. “The OPR gets its mitts on it, you could be talking some serious beach time.”

  “A suspension?”

  “Do you want me to lie to you?”

  “Yes, please,” she said meekly.

  “Let’s talk about this later,” he said.

  She liked that strategy. Bolting up, she announced, “I’m starving. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  He got up off the seat. “How about a joint on Grand Avenue?”

  A gust of wind slammed her, and she hunched her shoulders against it. “I don’t care where we go as long as it’s heated.”

  “The one with the walleye basket on the menu. I can’t remember the name of the place, but there’s a neon fish in the front window.”

  “Tavern on Grand. It’s between Dale and St. Albans, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Meet you there,” she said.

  “My treat,” he said, and dashed across the street to his car.

  WITH ITS log cabin decor—made complete by a chandelier constructed of antlers—Tavern on Grand was the quintessential Minnesota restaurant. They were well ahead of the lunch rush, so she and Garcia had their pick of tables. They took a booth in a dark corner, with Bernadette’s seat facing the wall. She practically ripped the menu out of the server’s hands.

  “I’ll give you a minute,” said the waitress, a pretty twenty-something with long black hair and wearing a short black skirt. She moved on to another table.

  “What are you getting?” Bernadette asked Garcia.

  “The walleye,” he said, unbuttoning his coat. “It’s the house specialty. Comes with the works: potato, coleslaw, roll. They have this jalapeño tartar sauce that is out of this world.”

  “I’ll get the same,” she said, setting down the menu.

  He slid out of the booth, took off his trench, and dropped it onto the bench. “I’ve gotta use the head. Order for me if she comes back.”

  She unzipped her leather bomber jacket and pulled off her gloves. “What do you want to drink?”

  “Pop. Any kind, as long as it’s not diet.”
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  After he left, she continued perusing the menu. She might want an appetizer. The crab artichoke dip sounded great, and so did the stuffed mushrooms and the potato skins. She turned in her seat and searched for the server. She was on the other side of the room taking orders from a table filled with flirty young men. Bernadette returned her attention to the menu. Maybe instead of the walleye, she’d get the ribs.

  “The jalapeño tartar sauce is to die for.”

  “I know,” she said, looking up from the menu at the man standing next to the table. As he slid into the booth to sit across from her, she inhaled sharply and felt all the warmth drain from her body. Leaning across the table, she whispered, “What are you doing here? How did you get here? How can you be here?”

  Creed looked at her with mock innocence. “What do you mean?”

  “This isn’t your haunt. This is miles from downtown, nowhere near our office.”

  “I used to eat here. Our ASAC’s right, by the way. The walleye is hard to beat.” He nodded at the menu sitting on the table between them. “The New York strip isn’t too shabby either.”

  “How can you be here?”

  He threw his arms up and rested them over the top of the bench. “Haven’t you figured it out? That pile of concrete on Robert Street isn’t what’s haunted.”

  Looking over at the waitress, Bernadette was relieved to see her still occupied with the other table. She turned back around and hissed, “What are you saying?”

  He tipped his head toward her. “You’re haunted, missy. You’re my connection to the land of the living.”

  She didn’t want to know anything more; all she wanted was for him to leave before Garcia returned. “Save it for the office.”

  “You don’t seem very appreciative of the fact that this could open doors for you.” He grinned slyly. “You’ve got a friend in high places.”

  “Please.”

  “Let me say one word. Well, a couple of words. Charlene Araignee.”

  She sat frozen.

  “Write it down,” he said. “You’ll have to go back about thirty years or so.”

  She swiveled her head and saw Garcia heading to the table. Snapping her head back around, she whispered, “I’m begging you. Please go now.”