Everything Burns

by Vincent Zandri

  “My neighbors heard me scream,” he says. “They’re calling the police.”

  “Nobody cares,” I say, still moving toward him like I’m about to stomp on him. “Go ahead, Bourenhem, scream again. See what I do to that pretty little face. I’m going to kick it so hard your grandmother’s mother is gonna feel it.”

  He’s still staring at me when the back of his head connects with the far, exposed brick wall that separates his apartment from First Street. End of the line.

  “You did a real nice job on Lisa’s house,” I say. “Just so you know, I haven’t touched a thing. When the cops go through it with a fine-toothed comb, they’ll lift your prints off of everything you touched. Including her fucking underwear, you creep.”

  “You are out of your mind,” he says. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re going on about.”

  “I’ll give you this, Bourenhem, you have serious artistic skills. Wow, a writer and an artist. That image of my skull getting blown off by a shotgun blast is terrific.” Standing over him, I press my black combat-booted right foot onto his bare foot and press down hard, make it bend in a way God never intended.

  “Oh Christ,” he cries. “Stop it.”

  “Tell me why you broke into Lisa’s house this morning and I’ll think about not breaking your ankle. Was it to rattle me? Scare me? Intimidate me? Or just plain burn me up?”

  “I did not break into Lisa’s house,” he insists through gritted teeth. “Why would I do something insanely stupid like that?”

  “Because you must be insane.”

  “You’re the insane one. Lisa warned me about you a long time ago. You get crazy fucking jealous, she said. You play with fire. You nearly burned your home down when you were a kid and then you tried to torch Lisa’s house when she and I first became a couple. You’re not like the main character of The Damned. You are the main character.”

  I press harder. He winces. For a second or two, I get the distinct feeling he might pass out.

  He says, “I went to see Lisa at the medical center right after I left you at her house this morning. If someone broke in, it wasn’t me.”

  In my mind I see the Honda 4x4 parked in the medical center lot. The Honda belonged to him after all.

  “That your alibi?” I say. “A visit with Lisa? I wonder if she’ll back it up.”

  “After I dropped the flowers off, I decided, screw it, Reece will probably toss the flowers away. So why not just pay her a visit in person? We’re all adults here. Most of us, anyway.”

  “You’re lying and insulting me.”

  I see him reach into the back pocket of his black skinny jeans.

  I press harder.

  “Stop, please, stop,” he whispers, his teeth clenched in pain. “I’m just trying to get at my cell phone.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Lisa will vouch for me.”

  “Go ahead and call. Fire away, Bourenhem.”

  “If you get off my fucking foot.”

  I slide my foot off his ankle.

  Immediately he pulls his knee into his chest, grabs his bare foot, rubs the pain out of it. Then, thumbing a single button on his smartphone, he speed-dials my present, and his former, significant other.

  Chapter 25

  I stare down at him while he awaits an answer that I’m convinced won’t come. Lisa just had her infected tear ducts surgically repaired. She will still be under the influence of a waning anesthetic, not to mention the waxing pain from the operation. No way she can answer the phone, much less vouch for this asshole.

  I can hear the rings coming through the little iPhone speaker pressed up against his ear.

  Then, “Lisa, I’m so sorry to be bothering you right now.” I’m shocked she’s answered. “But I have a visitor standing inside my apartment. A visitor who knows you as intimately as I do.” He shoots me a look from down on the floor with his bug eyes further enlarged by his thick eyeglasses. “It’s your husband. Well, correction, ex-husband and current love interest. Seems there’s been a break-in at your casa and he wildly assumes that I might, in fact, be the perpetrator. Surprise, surprise.” He pauses while she responds. “Okay, I’ll put you on speaker.”

  He thumbs the digital commands that engage the iPhone’s speaker system.

  “Reece,” comes the tinny but groggy voice of Lisa. “What on God’s earth is happening? What happened at the house and why are you harassing David, of all people?”

  . . . harassing David, of all people . . .

  “I’m not harassing him, Lisa,” I say. “It’s true, a break-in occurred sometime this morning while I was out. I’m not going to get into details, but the method of the break-in indicates to me that the person behind it could only be David. I’m sorry, but that’s the way I see it.”

  “Really? Well, David was kind enough to sit with me for much of the late morning.” That hurts, but I let it go. “Have you called the police, Reece? Maybe you should get in touch with Blood, once and for all. Is the dog okay?”

  “No. I mean yes. Or, what I mean is, Frankie is fine. But I haven’t called the police, nor have I gotten Blood involved. Not yet. I wanted to leave them out of it for now while I spoke with David.”

  “Maybe you should be talking to the police instead of letting your jealousy get the best of you and lobbing false accusations.”

  My body feels like it’s melting into Bourenhem’s dirty wood floor with each groggy word Lisa speaks. Each admonition. Maybe that’s why I haven’t commanded Blood’s presence. Because upon discovering the flipped house, he would have wanted me to call the cops, not take matters into my own hands.

  “Tell you what, Lisa,” I say, my eyes connecting with Bourenhem’s, “my mistake. Go get some rest. I’ll take care of the house. I’ll call the police.”

  “Was anything taken?”

  “Not that I can see. Some plates were broken, and some paintings were pulled off the wall. But I think I arrived home unexpectedly and Mr. Bourenhem here fled the scene in a panic.”

  “Damn it, Reece,” Lisa says. “He was with me. And it’s crazy to think he’d do it in any case.” She gasps. “Oh God. You haven’t hit David, have you?”

  I look at him and he looks at me. The little trickle of blood on his lower lip is beginning to dry and cake.

  “No, he didn’t hit me,” David says into the phone while wiping the dried blood away with the back of his free hand. His eyes never leave my own. “He hasn’t touched me.”

  “Good, that’s a relief. Just call the police, Reece. We’ll talk about all this later when I can keep my eyes open.”

  The line disconnects. David thumbs “End.”

  “I’m going to get up,” he says. “Please don’t try and knock me down again.”

  “I won’t.”

  I do something I never would have considered just ten minutes earlier: I hold out my hand for him. He looks at it, then grabs it. I yank and help pull him back up onto his feet. For a brief second we both stare at our hands clasped together. Then, realizing what it is we’re looking at, we pull our respective hands away.

  “No need to show me to the door,” I say, turning, walking.

  “Reece,” he says.

  I stop, turn around. “What?”

  “I truly mean you no harm. I love Lisa. I spent what seems a lifetime with her and Anna. You just don’t walk away from something like that. I want to somehow be a part of her life . . . their lives . . . no matter how small that part might be. Do you understand?”

  Over his right shoulder, I take notice of his floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. They’re crammed full of paper- and hardback novels. I can’t help but notice that there’s an entire section of a shelf devoted to my books. All five of them.

  He notices me noticing them. He gazes over his shoulder at the books, then turns his attention back at me. “I wasn’t lying,�
�� he says, his bottom lip no longer bleeding, but swelling up. “I’m a big fan.”

  A desk made from an old wood door set upon concrete blocks is set beside the bookshelf. The desk supports a laptop computer connected to a printer, with stacks of manuscript pages. Now that I’m able to take a good look, I can see that the place is covered in manuscripts. There are stacks of typewritten paper on the floor, on the dinner table in the kitchen area, on the kitchen counters, and on something else too. What looks to be a genuine pine casket.

  “The casket,” I say. “Where the hell did you get that?”

  “Ordered it special,” he says, not without a smile. “It’s identical to the ones Drew Brennen burns his victims in in The Damned. Pretty fucking cool, huh?”

  I don’t know whether to be proud of this moment or entirely weirded out.

  “How many novels have you written?” I say, my eyes scanning all that paper. “Looks like you’re trying to catch up to me.”

  “Trying being the key word here,” he says, his eyes suddenly glazing over, like a heroin addict who’s just shot himself up. “So far, no one will publish a single word.”

  “Keep trying. Light enough matches, something’s bound to catch fire.”

  There’s a kind of light in his eye that I haven’t seen until now. “I’ll say it again, bro,” he says. “I really am a fan.”

  “If you’re a fan, then why disrespect me by still going after Lisa?”

  He cocks his head over his shoulder. “Would an author of your caliber respect me if I laid down like a dead dog, just because I was told to lie down?”

  He’s got a point.

  “Listen,” I say. “I’m sorry about today, about pushing you down.”

  “No harm done.” When he smiles, there’s blood on his teeth.

  I unlock the deadbolt and leave Bourenhem’s apartment to the memory of that great big bloodstained smile burning itself into my brain.

  Chapter 26

  I fire up a smoke as soon as I get back behind the wheel of the Escape. I breathe in the smoke, feel my heart rate speed up and then settle gently, and wonder how I ever managed to quit this lovely disgusting habit in the first place.

  I’m back to playing with the lighter, making a new flame every couple of seconds, when, out the corner of my left eye, I see someone coming up the cross street.

  It’s a woman.

  She’s of medium height, beautifully constructed, with shoulder-length blonde hair cut in a style not altogether different from Lisa’s. She’s wearing a green wool overcoat over a short skirt, black tights, and black leather boots. Thick round sunglasses cover her eyes. She’s got a wide canvas bag strapped to her shoulder like it’s possible she’s off to her studio. But her studio is located in the basement of the old brick building she teaches Advanced Oil Painting in, at the university across the river in downtown Albany. My guess is she’s on her way for a coffee or a quick drink somewhere on River Street, the historic one-way lane behind First Street that parallels the Hudson River.

  Rachael.

  I haven’t laid eyes on her since we split up.

  Instinct takes over and I find myself rolling down the window to call out for her. But then I catch myself. She loved me and I loved her in return, but the pain of being with me when I still had love for another woman was too much for her. She had to make the break and make it as clean and as definite as possible. No communication of any kind.

  The last time I heard her voice was over the phone. She said she never wanted to see me or speak with me again. She’d blocked me from all her social media and blocked my phone number on her Verizon account. She told me, in no uncertain terms, that if she spotted me walking in her general vicinity, she would call the police. I’d never given her reason to call the police, but somehow, I sensed a seriousness in her threat. It’s because of that seriousness that, in the two months Lisa and I have been back together, I haven’t once attempted contact with Rachael. If only David Bourenhem would do the same.

  Smoking the cigarette and flicking the lighter, I watch her blonde hair blowing gently in the wind as she turns left at the cross-street corner, walks the two hundred or so feet to the next corner, crosses the empty street, and then disappears from view.

  Time to get my head out of my ass, concentrate on the present.

  I drop the half-smoked cigarette out the partially open window, return the lighter to my bush jacket pocket, then pull my smartphone out, dial 911. The dispatcher asks me the nature of my emergency. I tell her my girlfriend’s home has been broken into. She asks me if I’m inside the home now. If so, she says, I should exit as quickly as possible in order to avoid a violent confrontation with the perp or perps.

  I resist the urge to tell her it’s too late for that. That I’m not in the house anymore. I’m not even in the same town. But I know then she’ll ask why I decided to leave the scene of a crime.

  Instead, I recite Lisa’s address and she tells me a squad car is being dispatched to the scene forthwith. Thanking her, I hang up, knowing I have only about ten minutes to beat the cops to Lisa’s home sweet home.

  Chapter 27

  It takes me only seven and a half minutes to cross the river and get back to Lisa’s house. But it’s still not quick enough to beat the Albany Police Department to the place. A blue and white squad car is already parked in the driveway, its front doors open, rooftop flashers all lit up, tinny two-way radio blaring indiscernible words.

  Two cops are standing beside their respective open doors. When I pull in behind them, they both turn to get a look at me.

  I kill the engine and get out. “Can I help you, officers?”

  “You the owner?” says the driver of the squad car. He’s clean-shaven and burly.

  “I’m not the owner. But I’m the one who called 911.”

  “Why would you leave the scene?” the second, thinner cop says. “You decide to call 911, then go for coffee?” He cracks a smile.

  “No,” I say, wishing once again I’d waited to call until I was at least on this side of the Hudson. “I needed to take care of something.”

  The cops shoot one another a look. I’m not a cop, but the look makes it obvious to me that I am now under suspicion as the perp responsible for the break-in, who therefore called 911 in order to make it look like I wasn’t the perp. If nothing else, those cop-eyes mean I’m at least under suspicion for being an asshole.

  “Have you been inside?” I say.

  “Joint’s locked up tighter than a snare drum,” says Burly Cop. “We did a quick perimeter search. No windows broken, no door locks jimmied. Figured we’d wait until a responsible owner showed up and then check the inside.”

  My keys in hand, I lead the two cops to the front door and let them inside.

  We scour the entire house, Burly Cop taking notes on a spiral notepad as we go. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine that the true perp or perps managed to enter the place without forced entry. Whoever did this had a key, or at least access to one.

  There’s something that bothers Burly Cop. “Out on the back deck,” he says, “someone was using your barbecue to burn garbage. There’s ashes all over the place. The fire that produced the ashes can’t be more than a few hours old.”

  In my head, I see myself burning the photos from Lisa’s underwear drawer. I feel a similar kind of burn fill my body.

  “There’s been a rash of garbage can burnings in the park behind the house here,” Burly Cop goes on. “He struck again just this morning. Could be the same jerk who’s lighting stuff up out there could be responsible for your break-in.”

  I nod. “Seems logical.”

  A minute or so passes before a plainclothes detective shows up and starts taking pictures of the place with a small digital camera. He focuses not so much on the destroyed objects—the artwork that’s been pulled off the wall, the smashed china, th
e tossed couch—as on the stuff that, in his words, remains “unmolested.”

  “Good choice of words,” I tell him, but the compliment flies right over his closely cropped head.

  Eventually he gets down to asking me who I am and what the nature of my relationship is with the owner of the premises.

  I tell him.

  He smiles. “Well, that’s unusual but cool,” he says. Making a 360-degree observational rotation on the balls of his feet inside the living room, he adds, “I’ve read your novels. The Damned is a damned good read. Disturbing, though. A home invader whose MO is to burn his hostages alive in pine caskets. Fuck you come up with shit like that?”

  “Fire! Fire!” says the Town Crier . . .

  “Tell you what, though,” he goes on. “You could use a lesson in proper police procedure. Check out Michael Connelly. Now there’s a writer who knows his cop shit.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” I tell him, as though not stung by the Connelly crack.

  The detective’s a tall, wiry man with a head of thick gray hair cut jarhead short. He wears an old-fashioned gray trench coat and, under it, a spit-and-polish navy blue blazer over a brown shirt and gray tie, the ball knot of which hangs perfectly centered under his muscular neck. He hands me a business card. I glance down at it in my hand. It says, “Detective Nick Miller, Homicide.”

  “Homicide,” I say. “I don’t get it.”

  “No murders yet today,” he explains. “But plenty of break-ins. Truth is, Mr. Johnston, we’re understaffed, underfunded, and underappreciated, so every now and then I get to play with Criminal Investigations whether I enjoy it or not. And to be perfectly frank, I’m not the least bit crazy about the nature of this break-in.”

  “I get to ask why?”

  “It smells personal.” He sniffs in and out, as if he can actually take in the personal nature of the crime.

  “Isn’t it always personal when someone messes with your private stuff?”

  He shakes his head. “No, not really. Inanimate objects are inanimate objects, no matter who owns them. Usually these matters have to do with some junkie looking to hock one of those said objects so he can score some crack or whatever the drug du jour is.” He pauses as he once more makes one of those complete revolutions, eyeing the living room like an artist sizing up a newly finished canvas. “Not this one, though. This house was flipped by someone who’s been here before. Been here plenty of times.”