by Todd Borg
Heading straight for Street.
I only had a few minutes.
But if I ran toward the cabin, I wouldn’t get far before my chest was perforated by lead, mushrooming from the point of impact and shredding my insides. The only way Street would survive would be if the dogs could get to the killer, or at least divert his attention from me long enough for me to run away. But if he was waiting for the dogs, watching, with his finger on the trigger, I was out of luck. Maybe I could get him talking.
“FREDERICK!”
“You can’t get to her, Owen! Give it up!” Frederick yelled from the rocks above me.
“You almost pulled it off, Frederick,” I yelled back. “You want to know what was most impressive? It was the bed sheets. You put your own stinking sheets on Winton’s bed, didn’t you? You put your fire books on his shelf. It was your initials in those books, written sideways inside the cover. So you turned them around, added a little ink to the upside down F and the F.M. becomes W.B. Then you put your map book in his mattress where no one would dare look. Very smart. But Winton Berger didn’t deserve to die, Frederick.”
“He’s a casualty of my war against the Forest Service!”
I could visualize Frederick gripping the rifle in his muscular arms. Francisco had said that Frederick worked out a lot. What better disguise was there for a skinny kid with bad posture and a mop of hair than to build himself up, stand straight and wear his hair short and combed up in a little flip. Bad teeth can be capped. Not even Sheila recognized him.
I didn’t suspect until Glennie said she couldn’t find any mention of the newspaper article that Frederick told me about. It was an article that didn’t exist. Everything Frederick told me about the young orphan came from his own memory. Telling me was part of the thrill, the daring boastfulness that the FBI psychologist had said was a trademark of some killers.
I yelled up to the cliff above me, “So, you plan to shoot me with Winton’s other gun, the thirty-ought-six? And after the fire rages through and they find his burned body, they’ll think he shot me and was then killed by his own fire.”
“You’ve got it.”
I had to keep him talking another few minutes. If the dogs could take him down, then I could get to Street.
“Why’d you shoot the mountain lion? Just for kicks? Does it feel good to inflict pain?”
“It’s part of nature, Owen! If the Forest Service let the fires burn naturally, animals would die naturally. Putting out fires lets animal populations build to unnatural levels. Better to shoot them.”
“Why Street, Frederick? She never hurt you. Let her go.”
“You hurt me, Owen! I asked you to leave the fires alone. When you didn’t, I made it clear that you were getting in over your head.
“When I discovered that Winton Berger worked for Jake, I went to the store where Winton’s girlfriend worked. She told me that Winton had been a foster child. Just like me. It was perfect. So I stole the deposit and the stuffed dog. If you had obeyed my warning and dropped the case, I would have triumphed. If you didn’t, Winton gets blamed postmortem and I win anyway.” As he spoke I realized how easy it was for him to create fictitious parents in Costa Rica. Arranging postcards or phone calls was simple and effective.
Frederick continued, his shouted words seeming to hurl down on me like cinders from the fire. “You could have honored my request, Owen! But you didn’t, so Street’s death is going to be your punishment. You’ll have the pleasure of watching the cabin burn with Street inside.”
“It won’t happen, Frederick. They’re sending in tankers and choppers. They’ll have the fire out before then.” I felt the futility of saying it as the wall of fire continued to race up the mountain and the sky began to rain flaming debris.
Frederick didn’t say anything. I worried that he was watching for the dogs. Dogs run fast, but it was a long way around and up onto the cliff. It would be another minute or two before the dogs could get to him. I needed to keep him focused on me.
“Everyone knows you lit the fire, Frederick,” I shouted. “They’ll connect you to the theft at the gift store.”
A loud laugh echoed through the mountains. “No, Owen. In a jar in Winton’s kitchen, they’ll find the store’s deposit ticket and three hundred dollars from the same batch of money I paid the bartender with to send the roughnecks after you.”
“What about Jake’s truck?” I said, stalling for time. “Your fingerprints are on it.”
“If any prints survive the fire, they’ll be Winton’s. I wore gloves.”
I was hoping that Natasha’s nose wasn’t too good. Winton’s body would be somewhere up near Frederick in order for it to look like it was Winton who shot me dead. I was hoping that Natasha would follow Winton’s scent trail to Jake’s truck and assume that Frederick was the target. If she realized at the last moment that Frederick didn’t match the scent of Winton’s baseball cap and backed off, I doubted that Spot would be that smart. Give him a scent trail that leads to a single man in an open landscape, and I was fairly certain he’d make the mistake and assume it was the same person. Frederick had no doubt handled Winton’s body and had his scent on him anyway. It might be enough.
I kept shouting. “It was you sitting in the truck outside of my cabin this morning, wasn’t it? Was Winton already dead by then?”
“Well, what do you think, Mr. Detective? You’re supposed to be smart. I saw all those art books inside your cabin.”
The idea that Frederick had been inside my cabin was nothing like the outrage of kidnapping Street, but it was one more violation. “I think Jake Pooler may have been a lousy father, but that doesn’t mean he or anyone else deserved to burn to death.”
“YES HE DID!” Frederick yelled at the top of his voice. “HE ABANDONED ME AND MY MOTHER! NEVER GAVE HER A CENT! AND WHEN SHE WENT TO HIS HOUSE, HE STRUCK HER ACROSS THE FACE! I WAS THERE! HE DESERVED TO DIE IN THE MOST PAINFUL WAY! AND LET ME TELL YOU, HE FELT MORE PAIN THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE!”
“So is that why you killed your foster mothers? Did they strike your real mother?”
“They may as well have. They presumed to take her place! My mother was as close to perfect as a person can be. No one could replace my mother! She died because of the fire policies of the Forest Service. Her last moments on earth were terrifying! She held me below her, kept me away from the smoke, gave her life for me!” Frederick’s voice cracked.
He continued, “Those other women could never know what it’s like to give your life for a child. They didn’t know sacrifice. They used me. I was just a job! They didn’t love me! They took me in for the money even though they had never known poverty.” He paused.
I looked down at the fire. It was coming too fast. I couldn’t wait any longer for the dogs to get to him.
Frederick started talking again, his voice high and keening, his words plaintive. “What kind of person would do that to a child? Take him in like chattel? The government pays the rent and the foster parent gives the government space to put the unwanted kid. Living with them was like being put in a storage garage. That’s all I was. Chattel in a storage garage! For that they had to be punished...”
His last words were fading in my head as I silently sprinted away along the base of the cliff, heading toward the cabin. I hoped he would keep talking and not look down so that I could get some distance between us. The dogs were no longer in sight, having gone around a curve at the base of the cliff. They were probably clawing their way up the side of the rocks and across the top of the cliff toward Frederick. In the meantime, where would he go? Was he still trying to explode my brains with a bullet? Or would he head back down toward the cabin to use Street as a hostage? If so, I had to get there first. I was already running up the slope at top speed, but I tried to push myself faster.
I came to the snowfield and headed across it, grateful that the snow was firm enough to keep me from sinking in. I crossed tracks where the dogs had preceded me. Instead of following their steep ascent toward the shooter
, I ran on toward the cabin, aware of an increased rain of cinders from the fire below. As the coals fell they trailed streamers of smoke so that it looked like the mountain gods were throwing a birthday party for the coming fire.
A new sound permeated the alpine landscape and it took me a moment to figure out what it was. A low hum seemed to float through the trees. As I ran it grew in volume until it became a dull roar. Finally, I understood that it was the fire itself, roaring as it attacked.
The cabin seemed to get no closer, hovering at a distance no matter how fast I ran toward it. Then, over the fire roar and my own panting, I heard an unnatural voice, carried on the freak air currents.
“MCKENNA, YOU’RE GOING TO BURN WITH EVERYONE ELSE!”
I stopped and looked up the slope that rose to the cliff.
He stood there, a lone, distant figure silhouetted against the dark sky, his rifle aimed at me. The black eye of his scope obscured his face behind it. Down the slope below him but moving up in a blur was Natasha. Not far behind was Spot.
Frederick must have sensed the approaching dogs. He turned toward them and raised his rifle. I watched, horrified, expecting to see the animals hit the dirt. Several puffs of dust popped out of the ground near the dogs. But the dogs didn’t go down nor did they slow down. That’s one of the amazing differences between dogs and men. Shoot at men, they dive for cover. Shoot at dogs, they keep coming at you.
Frederick put down his rifle and held out his arm. I thought I saw a flicker of light against the black cloud. It was then I noticed a red object on the ground next to him.
Gasoline.
He lowered his arm to the grass and the ground seemed to burst into flame.
The flames raced down the mountain in a line, a line, I now knew, he’d drawn by pouring gas out of the can as he walked. Behind the thin line of gas-fired flame, dried grass and shrubs quickly caught and burned.
I stopped, frozen by the sight as the dogs continued toward the man, a growing line of fire separating them.
The dogs never paused.
Natasha powered through the fire as if it didn’t exist. She gave a little leap and flew through the flames. Frederick must have expected the fire to intimidate the dogs, and was not prepared. His rifle was still down and he didn’t have time to aim and shoot. He swung the rifle butt up as Natasha launched her attack.
From my distance I could not see in detail, but Natasha changed direction in the air as his rifle hit her and she went down near the edge of the cliff. She bounced once, tried to scramble on the steep, loose scree, then slid down and off of the cliff.
Spot leaped through what was now a larger line of flames. He reappeared on the other side, moving fast. Frederick lifted his rifle again, preparing to hit Spot as he had the much smaller German shepherd. Spot launched and the man swung his weapon. I couldn’t see where the rifle butt hit my dog, but I could see that it made no difference. Spot hit the man high, teeth to the shoulder, and took him down like a play toy. The rifle arced through the air as man and dog slid down the rock and disappeared from my sight.
As I turned away and ran on through the raining cinders to the cabin, a thought hit me like a punch to the solar plexus.
The line of gas that Frederick had lit afire went straight to the cabin.
FORTY-THREE
I saw the padlock on the outside of the door as I ran up to the cabin. Big and shiny silver, it looked like something on an $8000 mountain bike, impenetrable to ordinary tools. It held shut an industrial-strength clasp that was bolted through the split-log door and would withstand the kicks of a bucking horse.
“Street!” I yelled. “Are you in there?” I rattled the door, smelling gasoline on the wood.
I heard a muffled reply, but couldn’t make out the words over the roar of the forest fire coming up from below. It was enough, however, to satisfy me that she was inside.
Turning, scanning the cabin for a vulnerable opening, I saw the fire line that Frederick had lit. The flames had come down from the cliffs and were coming fast for the cabin. I ran around the cabin, smelling gas on the outer walls. The only window was boarded up with heavy plywood. There was no time to get Street out. She’d be in flames in seconds.
I ran away from the cabin toward the approaching line of fire. Of course, he’d poured the gasoline far from the snowfield so that the snow was of no use. When I was close enough to guess where the invisible gasoline trail was leading the fire, I found an area of relatively loose, open ground, and I dropped to my hands and knees.
I started where I thought I smelled gas and dug like an animal, digging my hooked fingers through the dirt and throwing it out between my legs. My fingers immediately hit hard rocks and woody debris, but I ripped the stuff out of the ground.
The firebreak I made was six feet long and went perpendicular to the approaching fire, but the little trench was only a foot wide and six or eight inches deep. I had no idea if it would work. When I knew I was down to a few seconds, I moved away to an area where I thought there was no gas and dug some more dirt, scooping it up in my arms. I ran to meet the flames racing down the gasoline trail and, just as the fire got to my firebreak, I dropped the armload of fresh dirt on the fire, hoping that it would help to overwhelm any residual gas fumes oozing out from deeper soil.
I stood a moment, panting, adrenaline burning my arteries, as the fire stopped and didn’t jump my little firebreak. I held my jacket up, ready to beat the ground, but it seemed I’d killed the fire for the moment. Frederick was still nowhere in sight. Nor were the dogs. Perhaps all of them had fallen off the cliff.
The forest fire was closer and bigger and would be on the cabin shortly. The falling cinders had increased their tempo. I realized that if one of them landed on the gasoline trail or on the gas-soaked cabin, Street could burn immediately.
I threw myself at the cabin. In a moment I knew I wouldn’t get through the door without a crowbar. I had a tire iron back at the Jeep, but it was a half mile away. This whole part of the mountain was going to be gone in just a few minutes.
Moving to the boarded window, I jumped up and got my fingers around the top edge of the plywood. I scrambled my feet up the log wall and jerked with all I had against the plywood. I could feel the wood bend, but the nails held firm. Maybe the plywood could be kicked out from the inside, but not pulled away from the outside.
Again, I made a complete circuit of the cabin, trying the log walls, feeling for movement that could indicate loose wood somewhere. But there was nothing. If I’d had the Jeep nearby, I would have risked major injury to Street by trying to bash it through the cabin. But trying to tear through a log cabin with bare hands was impossible. I backed up from the cabin and looked around the forest, hoping to find a miracle boulder up the slope, waiting for a small push to send it rolling down through the cabin wall. Or a tree that had broken and was leaning against another tree, waiting for a tiny shove to send it crashing down through the roof. But there was nothing.
I went back around the cabin, looked at all four walls, then up at the roof.
The roof.
I ran to the back of the cabin, toward the corner where the ground was highest. My timing was off as I leaped from a small rock. But I got one forearm and elbow up over the eave. I did a crooked pull-up with my other hand on the roof’s edge and, raking my feet against the log walls, I boosted myself up on the roof.
The corrugated tin roof was nearly rusted through in places. I ran around the roof and found a place where I could get my fingers under an edge of the metal. Finding a loose piece, I jerked and tugged, ripping out some nails until I folded back a two foot section of metal. The old cedar planks underneath were set with one inch gaps between the boards. I tried to see between the gaps, but the cabin below was dark.
I yelled to Street, “I’ll have you out in just a minute, sweetheart!”
I heard her making noise, but it was unintelligible. She may have been gagged. Then again, the roar of the approaching fire was so loud that I would not b
e able to hear words anyway.
As I raised my foot to kick down at the boards, it occurred to me that Street could be below them and be hit by any falling wood. So I kicked softly at first, then harder until the first board gave with a crack. I bent down and jerked it up and out and threw it off the roof. The second board was tougher, but it too came off without falling in on Street.
The light coming through the opening was insufficient to see much inside the dark cabin. I stuck my head down and looked around. Street was sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall. She was no doubt tied up, but it was too dark to see. She shook her head as if trying to get the gag off and the dim light caught the whites of her eyes. I will never forget the terror in her look.
“One second, sweetie.” I reached my foot in and set it on a cross beam that bridged across the rafters. Street made a guttural sound that betrayed panic, reasonable considering the circumstances. But I’d get to her in a moment.
I lowered myself down through the small opening I’d made in the roof, standing on the beam. Then I transferred my hands to the beam and swung down, hanging from the beam so I could drop to the floor.
Although she was gagged, Street gave out the most horrifying scream I had ever heard. I suddenly understood that it was not panic at her situation, but a warning to me.
There was a rule we had when I was on the force in San Francisco years ago. It applied anytime we were confronted with a situation unlike what we’d been trained for.
New Predicament? Don’t React.
Think First, Then Act.
I hung there from the beam, looking around in the dark cabin for someone else. But of course there was no one, the cabin was locked from the outside. Some other danger. Street continued making noise and jerking her head toward the floor below me. I looked below my dangling feet as my eyes adjusted to the dark interior.