Fire Spirit

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Does her husband know why anybody should have wanted to kill her?’

  ‘Nope. Everybody loved her, that’s what he said. The divorce was amicable and there was no trouble over access to the children. She was a leading light in the PTA and a member of the Grace United Methodist choir.’

  ‘This is so strange, isn’t it? Because whoever killed her, they really wanted her burned to ashes. Like Val said, it was more of a sacrifice than a homicide.’

  ‘Well, we still have a lot of questions to answer,’ said Ron. ‘We’re conducting a house-to-house all the way along South McCann and West Maple Streets, and we’re checking through the CCTV footage from Casey’s store, to see if there was anybody paying Mrs Benfield any undue attention.’

  ‘Did Jack tell you about the second remains?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘Yes, he did. He’s going to send me the DNA results just as soon as he gets them. But he doesn’t expect them for a couple of days and so far I’m trying to keep an open mind.’

  ‘You mean you’re as baffled as we are.’

  ‘That’s not the way I’m going to put it to the media, and I hope the Fire Department doesn’t, either.’

  Ruth called the Walters Clinic and made an appointment for Amelia to have a check-up with Doctor Feldstein the following morning. As she hung up the phone, she could see Amelia in the living-room, sitting cross-legged on the couch watching The Simpsons and laughing. She loved Amelia so much she would have done anything for her. If Amelia had been suffering from a kidney disease, she would happily have given her one of her kidneys. But there was no way to give her the twenty-six genes she was missing.

  She called Craig but his assistant said that he had already left the office for a meeting with the bank. She tried his cell but he had switched it off.

  ‘Mommy,’ said Amelia, turning around. ‘Come sit here and watch this with me. It’s so funny!’

  ‘Sure,’ smiled Ruth, and walked into the living-room. As she did so, she glanced out of the window. The boy in the faded black T-shirt and the red jeans was standing beside the basswood tree in their front yard, staring at the house. Ruth felt an unpleasant jolt of alarm, as if she had touched a bare electric wire. She stood and stared back at the boy, and there was no doubt that he must have seen her, but he stayed where he was, his arms by his sides, frowning slightly, as if he were trying to make up his mind to come nearer.

  ‘Sit down, Mommy!’ said Amelia. ‘This is a really funny bit!’

  Ruth continued to stare back at the boy. He was only about twelve years old, and very thin, but for some reason he made her feel deeply unsettled.

  ‘Mommy?’ said Amelia, and then, ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘It’s that boy,’ Ruth told her. ‘That boy you saw yesterday evening. He’s come back.’

  Amelia stood up and looked out of the window. ‘I wonder what he’s doing here. He looks like he wants something, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he does. Let’s go ask him, shall we?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t.’

  ‘Ammy, he’s only a boy.’

  ‘I know he is, but he makes me feel scared.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Why does he make you feel scared?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it feels like the door’s open. It feels like they’re all trying to come through.’

  ‘Well, you stay here and I’ll go,’ said Ruth. ‘He could be lost, or maybe he’s run away from home. He’s still wearing the same clothes as yesterday, isn’t he?’

  ‘Mommy, don’t.’

  Ruth laid her hands on Amelia’s shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. ‘Don’t worry, honestly. I’m sure that he’s perfectly harmless. We can’t leave him standing outside like that, can we, if he doesn’t have anyplace to go? We’ll have to call Children’s Services, so that somebody can take care of him.’

  She opened the front door, but as she did so, Amelia let out a peculiar little moan of dread. Ruth turned back. Amelia was standing in the hallway with her face cupped in her hands, her eyes wide, like Edvard Munch’s painting of The Scream.

  Ruth went back and gave her a hug. ‘Sweetheart, there’s no need for you to be scared of him. He’s only a boy.’

  Amelia looked up at her. ‘Don’t let him come close to you,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Please, Mommy, just don’t.’

  ‘OK, if you don’t want me to, I won’t.’

  ‘He doesn’t know who you are. That’s why he’s come here. He thinks you’re somebody else.’

  ‘Who? And how do you know that?’

  ‘I don’t know. But he wouldn’t be here, otherwise.’

  ‘OK, then. I promise you I won’t let him come close. Now you just stay there, if he scares you so much. I won’t be a minute.’

  With that, Ruth opened the door and stepped out. The sun was shining and the front yard was so bright that at first she had to shield her eyes with her hand. The boy had been standing right beside the trunk of the basswood tree, but now that she was outside she couldn’t see him.

  She crossed the lawn until she reached the tree, but the boy had gone. She went further, on to the sidewalk, but there was no sign of him, not in either direction. She looked back toward the house. The front door was open, and Amelia was peering out apprehensively, but the boy had completely disappeared, as if he had been nothing but a trick of the mid-morning shadows.

  She was still standing on the sidewalk when she saw Craig’s silver Explorer coming along the road. He turned into the driveway and parked behind her Ford.

  ‘Hey, you waiting for me?’ he asked her as he climbed out.

  Ruth shook her head. ‘There was a boy here . . . standing outside the house.’

  Craig looked up and down the street. ‘I don’t see any boy. What did he look like?’

  ‘Dark hair, very pale face. He was wearing a black T-shirt and red jeans. The funny thing is, he was out here last night, too, and I saw him in the crowd outside that house on South McCann Street – you know, where we found that burned body on the mattress.’

  ‘Maybe he’s stalking you,’ said Craig.

  ‘Why would he be stalking me?’

  ‘Maybe he’s got a crush on you.’

  ‘Oh, get serious. He’s only about twelve.’

  ‘I used to get crushes on women when I was twelve. I was desperately in love with Jane Fonda for about six months.’

  He looked toward the house and saw Amelia behind the front door. ‘What’s Ammy doing home? And come to that, what are you doing home?’

  Ruth told him. He went inside and put his arm around Amelia and asked her if she was feeling better.

  ‘I am now that boy’s gone.’

  ‘What’s the poor kid ever done to you?’ Craig asked her.

  ‘He’s not a poor kid. He’s a creepy kid.’

  ‘Well, we can’t have any creepy kids giving you the willies, can we? If you see him again, just you tell me, and I’ll chase him away.’

  They went through to the living-room. Craig immediately went to the drinks table and poured himself a large glass of Jack Daniel’s.

  ‘Craig,’ Ruth admonished him.

  He raised his glass to her in salute. ‘I know. But after the morning I’ve had . . .’

  ‘Martin wouldn’t lend you the money?’

  ‘He didn’t even say he was sorry,’ Craig told her. ‘He just said no. And how long have he and I been friends?’

  ‘What did he think of your business plan?’

  ‘He said it was great. Well thought-out, carefully costed. A year ago, he would have given me as much as I wanted, if not more.’

  ‘So what happens next?’ Ruth asked him.

  ‘Well, I think I have three options. I could either hang myself, shoot myself, or lie down on the railroad tracks and wait for the next Norfolk Southern freight train to come along.’

  ‘Things can’t be that bad.’

  ‘Why do you think I haven’t gone back to the studio?
Miller Homes called me this morning, from Fort Wayne. I was talking to them last month about a new housing development out on Orchard Ridge. Seventy-five houses, seventy-five custom-fitted kitchens.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Canceled. Same as Muncie Properties and Keiller Housing and Davis Nugent. I’ve been cold-calling developers all day. I even called Kanakee Homes in Peoria.’

  ‘We’ll get through this somehow,’ said Ruth. ‘We’re not the only family that’s suffering.’

  The Simpsons finished and Amelia went upstairs. When Ruth was sure that she was out of earshot, she went over to her school bag and took out her math book. She opened it and held it up so that Craig could see the scorch marks.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Craig. ‘Don’t tell me Ammy’s been smoking.’

  Ruth said, ‘No. These aren’t cigarette burns. A cigarette tip has a mean temperature of six hundred degrees Celsius and it would have created much darker and narrower marks. Besides, I may not have a nose as sensitive as Tyson’s but I would have smelled the tobacco tar.’

  ‘So . . . what caused them?’

  ‘Ammy’s fingers. That’s what she told me, anyhow. She says that when she was burning up, she had her hand resting on the page, and when she lifted it up the paper was scorched.’

  Craig frowned. ‘That’s not possible.’ Then he said, ‘Is it? I mean, you’re the fire expert.’

  ‘Jack was talking yesterday about spontaneous human combustion. You know, when people catch alight for no explicable reason.’

  ‘You don’t think—’

  ‘No, I don’t. I don’t believe in it. Well, I shouldn’t believe in it. But, you know, Ammy’s so different. Maybe her fingers can give out intense localized heat, just for a second or two. Some people are natural conductors. But her fingertips weren’t blistered. They’re not even red.’

  Craig looked at the marks even more intently. ‘There has to be some explanation. You could take this book into the lab, couldn’t you, and run some tests on it?’

  At that moment Amelia came back downstairs again. Ruth hid the math book behind her back but Amelia said, ‘It’s all right, Mom. I know what you’ve been talking about. I really don’t mind. I get it all the time at school.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ said Ruth. ‘We’re worried about you, that’s all.’

  ‘I heard the voice again,’ Amelia told her.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Only a minute ago, in my room. It was the same voice, inside my head. It said, “Andie’s ashes”.’

  ‘“Andie’s ashes?” Are you sure?’

  Amelia nodded, and kept on nodding, like a dipping duck. ‘It was him. I know it was. The Creepy Kid. I don’t think he means me to hear him, but I do.’

  Ruth went to the living-room window and looked out at the front yard, and Craig came up close behind her and laid his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I can’t see him,’ she said. There was nobody out on the street except for an elderly man in dark glasses and flappy gray shorts, walking an overweight spaniel.

  ‘That’s because he doesn’t want you to see him. But he hasn’t gone away.’

  The phone suddenly warbled, right next to her, and it made Ruth start. Craig picked it up and said, ‘Cutter’s Kitchens. Craig Cutter here. How can I help you?’

  He listened, and then he passed the receiver over to Ruth. ‘It’s Jack. He says they’ve found another one.’

  SEVEN

  She lugged her heavy metal case along the corridor and into the open door of the victim’s apartment. Tyson trotted close to heel behind her, but already he was sniffing and snuffling and letting out little sneezes of excitement.

  Bob Kowalski was standing in the living-room talking to a young woman detective, Sandra Garnet. Detective Garnet was red-haired and freckly, with upswept eyeglasses and an olive green suit that was a little too tight across the rump, but she was very pretty and chatty and Bob Kowalski always said that he would have asked her to marry him if he hadn’t been married already, and she hadn’t been fifteen years too young for him.

  ‘The vic’s in the bathroom,’ said Bob. ‘Just as badly burned as yesterday’s unfortunate young lady, but at least we’re pretty sure who she is.’

  Ruth looked around. She knew that this apartment complex on West Rainbow Drive, on the south-east side of Kokomo, had been built less than four-and-a-half years ago. Craig had been contracted to fit the kitchens, and it had been one of his first really big contracts.

  It was poignantly obvious that the victim had lived here alone. A single pair of worn pink slippers was peeping out from under the couch, and on the kitchen counter stood a single yellow coffee mug with the name Tilda painted on it. Along the window sill there was an arrangement of framed photographs of a chubby, smiling young woman, some taken with a grumpy gray-haired woman who looked like her mother, and others with a group of girls in blue blazers and white blouses. No photographs with men.

  Detective Garnet said, ‘The deceased is too badly burned to identify one hundred per cent, but it’s almost certain that it’s Tilda Frieburg, who rents this apartment. She’s a twenty-three-year-old tele-salesperson who works for Allstate Insurance, 452 West King Street.’

  ‘What the hell happened in here?’ asked Ruth. The glass-topped coffee table was shattered, with two of its legs splayed out, and the rug underneath it was rucked up. Several colorful cushions were scattered on the floor, all of them spattered with blood. In the far corner of the room, beside the door that led to the bathroom, rested an apple with teeth-marks in it. The beige carpet was stained with damp, and there was a strong, acrid odor in the room.

  ‘It looks like Ms Frieburg was attacked by one or more assailants,’ said Detective Garnet. ‘And that funky smell you can smell, that’s pee. At some point somebody urinated on the floor, either Ms Frieburg or the person or persons who assaulted her, so we have copious amounts of DNA. We don’t yet know who the blood belongs to, but that won’t be too difficult to identify. We have Ms Frieburg’s hair from her hairbrush and we’re contacting her doctor for her blood group. We’ve located her orthodontist, too.’

  Jack came out of the bathroom, wearing a rustling blue Tyvek suit and latex gloves. ‘Hi, boss. Come and get an eyeful of this.’

  Tyson was inhaling the smell from the carpet enthusiastically, but Ruth said, ‘Come on, boy. Heel.’

  Val Minelli was still taking pictures in the bathroom, so the room kept flickering with photographic flash. It made the body in the bath look as if it were jolting and jerking in a vain attempt to jump out.

  ‘Ever see anything like this?’ said Jack. The young woman had been charred all over, and she was crouched in the same pugilistic position as the cadaver on the mattress on South McCann Street. Unusually, her eyes were open, although both eyeballs were amber. Her face was blackened and her lips were scarlet and raw, so that with her eyes wide open she looked like a hideous parody of a minstrel.

  Ruth knelt down on the bath mat. There was a dirty gray tidemark all around the tub, which showed her that it must have been filled with water when the fire first ignited, to a depth of at least seventeen inches. The bath was empty now, except for some thick gray sludge at the bottom, underneath the cadaver. But down the sides there was a succession of streaky gray rings, like geological strata, and this told her that the water had not been emptied out through the waste pipe, but had boiled – and boiled with such ferocity that it had all evaporated. When she leaned forward she saw that the plug was still in.

  Ruth stood up, opened her case, and took out her camera, too. She took pictures of the cadaver, and the bath, and the entire bathroom. The tiled walls were thickly coated with smoke and human grease, and so was the floor.

  ‘Any footprints?’ Ruth asked Val.

  ‘Only three, by the door, and they were made by the super who found her. Ms Frieburg had complained about her fridge rattling, and he came in this afternoon to fix it for her. Thought she’d be at work.’

  Ruth sto
od staring at the cadaver and the filthy bathtub in which it lay, and she felt totally baffled.

  ‘How do you cremate somebody in a tubful of water?’ she asked Jack. ‘How do you raise the water up to such a temperature that it all boils away and you’re left with nothing but a barbecued body? This is an American standard bath so there must have been at least forty-five gallons of water in here, even if the victim was a little on the chubby side.’

  ‘Maybe the perp found a way to use magnesium in some form, or sodium. Both of those react violently with water when they combust, don’t they, and cleave all of the oxygen out of it? Your famous exothermic reaction.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon see when we analyze the residue,’ said Ruth. ‘But I still can’t imagine how it was done. And how did this poor young woman get herself so thoroughly broiled, as well as boiled?’

  She let Tyson go sniffing around the bathroom, but he could find no trace of any accelerants. Eventually he lay on the floor, looking disconsolate, while Ruth and Jack finished taking photographs and samples.

  Detective Garnet came in. ‘Some goddamned conundrum, ain’t it?’ she said. ‘Do you think it could have been the same perpetrator as yesterday?’

  ‘Wouldn’t like to say for sure,’ Jack said, dryly. ‘I mean, you don’t often get two incinerations one after the other, only a few miles apart from each other. But stranger things have happened. Could be that some nut job saw yesterday’s burning on the news, and thought that this poor young lady deserved the same fate.’

  ‘So far as we know, Tilda Frieburg was pretty well liked,’ said Detective Garnet. ‘She had no ongoing relationships with any men, or women for that matter. In fact, one of her friends said that she had never had any relationships with anybody.’