A snick, a rasp, and a small flame bloomed suddenly in the black. The yellow flare chased shadows, showed him pieces of a nightmare scene out of one of Rakubian’s Goya paintings.
Burke was sitting in Pop’s old Morris chair, turned so that she was facing toward him. Sitting there almost primly, knees together, the flame jutting from a cigarette lighter held up in front of her and steady now because her hand was steady. It threw off enough light so that he could make out the horsehair sofa nearby, distinguish the small, unmoving, blanket-covered mound on the cushions. He saw something more, too, that froze his blood and brought a stillborn cry into his throat.
In the flickery glow, everything gleamed wetly: the floor, the window drapes, the chair, the sofa, the blanketed mound, her upraised arm and high-necked blouse and composed face and white-rimmed eyes staring out of shadowed black. She’d soaked it all, soaked Kenny, soaked herself with the gasoline.
Not just murder, suicide too.
Burning in the fires of hell.
She said in a clear, calm voice, “So you found me after all. But not in time, Hollis.”
“For God’s sake, don’t—”
“Too late. Too late.”
“No!”
She said, “Suffer!” with a kind of fierce joy, and flung the lighter at the sofa.
Hollis lunged that way in the same instant, dropping the .22. The lighter struck the backrest, bounced onto the blanket covering the boy, and then, still lit, skittered to the floor. Flame spurted, surged, whooshed up and out at him. Frantically he tore the burning blanket off and hurled it aside. Kenny, Kenny! Hollis grabbed him and swung him up—his small body wasn’t wet, she’d only doused the blanket—a moment before the cushions became a nest of fire.
The woman screamed.
He spun around, crouching, cradling Kenny’s limp form against his chest, covering the child’s head and face with his free arm. The racing flames had swept back and up, consuming Pop’s chair, consuming Valerie Burke. She came out of the chair as if propelled, sheeted with fire, shrieking her torment. He twisted aside as she lurched toward him, saw her whirl the other way and carom off the fireplace bricks with her arms spread wide—demon’s dance, blazing vision from the pit.
The fire was all around him now, spreading with incredible speed. He staggered in the direction of the door, gagging on oily smoke and the stink of cooking flesh, the heat singeing his hair and eyebrows, his body hunched and both arms wrapped protectively around the child. His shoes felt as though the soles were burning; sparks stung his face, his neck above the coat collar. He couldn’t see. He bumped into something—the door!—and groped around it, tasting the cold breath of the night outside, the crackle-thrum of the flames and Burke’s banshee screams swelling in his ears. Then he was through, out, running and gasping into the night.
The wind cooled his feet, his face; he could no longer feel the fire at his back. Or hear the shrieks. He began to shiver. He slowed then, stopped, and for the first time glanced back. He’d covered more than fifty yards, uphill into the trees—a safe enough distance.
Kenny.
He lifted the boy, turning his head so he could look closely at his face in the reflected glow.
Alive … thank God!
Breathing more or less normally except for little whimpers and coughs. The fire hadn’t touched him—no burn marks, not even his hair singed. Didn’t look as though Burke had harmed him in any other way. His features had a scrunched look, eyes squeezed shut in fitful sleep. She must have given him a drug of some kind that was now beginning to wear off.
Relief had weakened Hollis’s knees. He wobbled a couple of paces to his left, hugging his grandson close, close, and leaned heavily against the bole of a pine. Through wet and stinging eyes he stared at the cottage. It was an inferno now, all roiling smoke and high-licking flames that stained the night sky ocher and blood-red. Before long there would be nothing left but blackened bones and ash. He felt no sense of loss or regret. Yours in every way, Pop, never really mine.
Yellow-red blossomed in the dry needles that had collected on the garage roof. Pretty soon wind-flung sparks would ignite the crowns of the closest pines and this whole section would burn. For that he did feel regret. Over the beat of the conflagration he was aware of sounds behind him, cars stopping on the highway, voices shouting. He stayed where he was a few moments longer. Afterimages of the horror he’d just witnessed and lived through lingered in his mind, yet he was filled with a strange kind of peace.
Survival. Everything else stemmed from it, depended on it. Love, hate, all the emotions; the lives we lead, who we are. He’d given it to Kenny tonight, to Cassie and Angela and Eric in other ways. God willing, Stan Otaki would give it to him and he’d have plenty of time to atone for all the mistakes he’d made.
He turned his back on the burning past, on the death throes of their evil time, and moved on to what lay ahead.
About the Author
Bill Pronzini has published seventy-nine novels, thirty-eight of which feature the Nameless Detective, Americas longest-running PI series, begun in 1971. He is also the author of four nonfiction books and three hundred fifty short stories, and the editor of numerous anthologies. Among his many awards is the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, presented in 2008—a distinction he shares with his wife, crime novelist Marcia Muller, the 2005 Grand Master recipient. The couple lives in Northern California.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2001 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust
Cover design by Neil Alexander Heacox
ISBN: 978-1-4976-2915-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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In an Evil Time Page 23