by Hines
“It’s not even sore at all,” he said, rotating his arm. “I don’t think I need a bandage.” He pulled his shirt on, turned his too-wide smile her way once more.
She nodded, brushed a hand through her hair, feeling hot and uncomfortable in his gaze.
He handed her cash, including a rather large tip, and she accepted the money without looking at his eyes. She couldn’t. Not now.
He paused. “You better get something to eat soon,” he said. “You look rough.”
“Yeah,” she said, turning away, crossing her arms in front of her as if trying to cover herself from sight. “I hope I’m not coming down with something.”
Behind her, she heard the squeak of the front glass door opening.
“Take it easy, Grace,” he said.
She pulled her arms closer, hugging herself, then turned to face him one last time. “You too,” she said. “Thanks.”
She kept the fake smile on her face until he disappeared from view. A copy of today’s Seattle Times was still sitting on the floor by the front door, where she’d kicked it to the side when opening shop. She grabbed the Seattle Times, sat on one of the wooden chairs just inside the door, and opened up the paper. A small bar on the front page proclaimed that there were “no new clues in firebug case.” The Seattle Times had obviously fallen into the typical pattern of tracking a big story: big headlines when there was some breaking event (photos of blazing infernos were a plus with an arson case); small sidebars with filler on days when they had no real news to report. But always keep a mention on the front page.
She scanned the small article, skipping to the end to find the information she knew was there. Every story about the firebug ended with a mention of the tip line set up by local law enforcement, working with FBI assistance.
She noted the number before she ran to her bag and found her cell phone.
A pleasant female voice answered after the second ring, simply saying, “Task Force.”
Grace paused, suddenly realizing she had nothing real to tell the tip line. She panicked and hung up. What was she going to say? “Hey, I know who the firebug is, because I gave him a tattoo this morning with some of my magic ink, and it told me he was the one setting the fires.” Then the Task Force would check out her background, discover a heroin bust on her record, treatment at the clinic for an overdose, and quickly write her off as Just a Junkie.
No, she needed something on Dane, something concrete she could take to the police.
This dragon, she knew, just might swallow her whole.
54.
Late that afternoon she was outside Dane’s duplex apartment, an unassuming cedar structure tucked among trees and overgrowth on the edge of Tukwila, not far from SeaTac. As she sat and watched the duplex, the rumble of jets ascended and descended overhead, artificial thunder.
She’d started by calling the seafood restaurant where Dane complained about working, a local joint called Northern Bay.
The girl on the line gave a huff when she asked about Dane. “It’s his day off,” she said with irritation, as if this was a bit of information that should be painfully obvious to anyone.
She thanked the girl and hung up. Made sense to come in for his ink on a day off. She’d looked through the contact database on her computer, coming up with his file and jotting down the address.
Then she’d driven to the street, parked down the block. And this was where she had been since. Dane’s car sat in the driveway in front of the garage door, a beat-up heap that had once been silver, with rust eating holes in the fenders.
She’d seen Dane pop outside once to pick up the mail from his box, but he’d been inside, out of view, since. That meant six hours with nothing to show for it. It would be dark soon, and she was starting to worry someone had noticed her, sitting alone in a car all day. Maybe she’d be reported as a stalker.
A thought occurred to her as she sat there, smelling the heat of the day dissipate around her: concoct some kind of story to lead police to Dane’s apartment. Say she’d been inside his duplex, seen a stack of gasoline cans in the garage. He parked his car in the driveway, after all, which likely meant his garage was filled with deep, dark secrets.
But then, how many anonymous tips must the Seattle Police Department receive in a day? She’d have to report anonymously, after all, because—well, because she lived her whole life anonymously. True, they had the tip line, and they were likely to follow each and every lead that poured in, but how quickly? Not tonight, for certain, and something told her Dane was getting ready to do something tonight. He would do that, because he had a fresh tattoo of a phoenix on his shoulder, further fueled by the odd energy of the Black Tar ink. He would want to celebrate the occasion, mark it with something special. And what could be more special to a pyromaniac than a grand display of fire?
As Dear Old Mom might say, Dane had some dead blood in him.
She would wait. It was all she could do.
55a.
Light in her eyes awakened her, and she shook her head, fighting off the sleep and the dreams of dragons. She was in a spotlight, she realized suddenly; someone had reported her finally.
Then the lights were gone, past her, and she realized the light didn’t come from a spotlight. It had come from headlights brushing by her parked car.
It took a few moments to clear her head. Muddy, she was muddy. Maybe from the dead blood, maybe from withdrawal. She turned her head to the side, straining to get a good view of the car that had passed, leaving a stench of dirty oil in its wake.
Dane’s car.
She didn’t see him at the wheel, too dark for that, but she recognized the rusty car, bathed in the sick orange glow of the streetlights. It moved to the next street intersection and turned.
Panicky, Grace turned the key in her own car, started the engine, wheeled around to follow. A glance at the clock on the dash told her it was almost midnight. The last time she remembered checking the time, it had been about ten thirty. She must have dozed off at some point. And by dozing, she’d nearly let Dane get away.
She turned at the intersection, came to the main artery, and his car came into view again. Oily smoke belched from its exhaust, looking so much like the dragon tails she knew and loved so well.
She turned to follow, unsure how much distance to keep between them. At this time of night, traffic would be light, and it would be easy to spot someone tailing you.
She was relieved when she saw him making his way to the I-5. At least that would make him easier to follow; the I-5 had traffic on it any time of day. Or night.
Her hands felt jittery. She wasn’t a cop. She was making this up as she went along. Really, she didn’t know if she should actually follow him or if she should just try to break into his house, call, and report a fire. She smiled. That would have been good. Ironic.
She couldn’t do that, though. He was the phoenix now, rising from the ashes, in search of more flames. At midnight, he wasn’t heading to work at a restaurant; he was heading out to do his true work.
She had to follow him. She had to stop him. Junkie Girl the Superhero, out to keep the streets safe once again. Maybe this, above all things, was what the numbers, the Black Tar ink, had been pointing toward all along.
Her true work.
She turned and glanced at the purse on the seat next to her as she passed another bank of streetlights on one of the interstate’s exits. It reflected a powdery pink in the artificial light.
Once she’d been Janet the Pretend Wife and Mother, long before she’d become Grace the Tattoo Artist and Heroin Junkie. That path had come to its first fork eight years ago, and she’d ended up in Seattle for reasons she still didn’t fully understand. That fork in the path had led her to the hotel room next door, a .38-caliber revolver, and a strange note of jotted numbers.
Terrified by what had happened to her in that room, she’d returned to Red Lodge. She’d scrambled her way back up the face of the cliff, returned to her family.
But seeds had
been planted inside her then, hadn’t they? Those seeds—the numbers and the revolver—had grown some bitter fruit, and it was time for her to harvest it.
Darkness folded over them as they drove north for several minutes, and by the time Dane turned onto the exit at Northwest Eighty-fifth Street in Ballard, half an hour had passed. Almost twelve thirty in the morning.
Dane pulled into the parking lot next to an old iron sign that said Villa Apartments. Next to the old sign a new one hung on a chain-link fence: Coming soon: Lake Villa Condos.
If Dane didn’t know she was following him, she’d be pushing her luck by pulling into the lot right behind him. She continued down the street and parked in front of a section of older homes, then got out of the car and hurried back under the cover of night.
Now inside the fence, she looked for Dane’s car but couldn’t see it; she saw a few lights on poles by the covered parking lot, but they weren’t working. Bulbs burned out long ago, she guessed.
Ahead, weak lights illuminated the front doors of the building, which was little more than a glorified four-story motel; black iron railings hid front doors and windows on each of the four levels, and the main entry into the building—two dirty glass doors—opened onto stairs that connected all four floors. It was the kind of place where more meals were cooked on hot plates than in ovens, and Grace thought she could almost smell the aroma of some fatty meat wafting toward her even now, at this time of night.
As Grace stared, Dane appeared at the door, paused a second, then opened the door with a key. Within moments, he’d disappeared inside the building. Her last view was the back of his head, descending stairs that obviously led to the basement.
None of this was going as planned, she thought, as she ran across the unmowed grass to the front door. Maybe because none of it was planned in the first place, at least not from her end. She was quite sure Dane’s end had been well planned, dreamed about for days. Likely even as he sat in her chair this morning, dozing while she tattooed a dark phoenix on his shoulder.
She tried the door and found it locked. Well, duh. That’s why Dane had used a key. Somehow, he’d stolen a key from one of the apartment residents or maybe even made his own copy. For all she knew, he’d once lived in these doomed apartments.
Her heart hammered in her chest as she looked around. On the pebbled concrete wall next to the door, a call box with apartment numbers on each of the buttons hung crookedly in its metal frame. She punched a button at random but neither heard nor felt the buzz she should. She punched a few other numbers, but none of them worked. Evidently the call box had gone the way of the parking lot lights; what else would she expect at a complex that was going to be torn down and turned into condos?
Okay, now what? She could try to break in, she supposed. The door was glass, and the frame seemed flimsy; if nothing else, she could maybe put a rock or something through the glass. Such an action would attract the attention of Dane, of course, but she couldn’t do anything about that.
Wait. Her cell phone. She pulled it out of her purse, dialed 911, told the operator a fire had started at the Villa Apartments. At least she could give rescue workers a head start.
She turned off her phone and slipped it back into her purse. If she could figure out a way to avoid the fire altogether, stop Dane before he started . . .
Maybe she could try getting the attention of someone in a ground-floor apartment, see if they’d give her access to the inner courtyard and the stairs. She glanced down the row of windows; a few apartments down, she saw lights behind pulled drapes in one of the windows.
Grace turned and ran for the apartment; seconds later, she heard the front door open behind her. She turned, ready to sprint back to the door before it closed.
Instead, she was looking at the face of Dane. Even worse, he was looking at her.
He furrowed his brow for a few seconds, then tried a smile. “Grace? Is that you?”
She took an involuntary step back as he moved toward her. “Yeah,” she said, trying to look nonchalant, trying to put on that funny-to-randomly-see-you-here look. “Just, uh . . . dropping by to see a friend here.” She pointed at the poured concrete building behind him.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said, and his eyes seemed to twinkle in the low light. Behind him, a dull whump rattled the front doors.
He made a comical face, rolled his eyes to look at the door behind him. “Ooh, that didn’t sound good,” he said.
She could barely see his face, but that grin—that manic, unbearable grin—shined at her in the low light.
“I know who you are,” she said. “What you are.”
Behind him, smoke had begun working its way up the stairs from the basement and was filling the area behind the glass doors. Grace stared at the smoke uneasily. The parking lot lights and the call box had been broken; would the alarm system inside the building make it three for three? She guessed it would, if the building had any kind of alarms at all.
“Oh, you don’t know me at all,” he said. “Dane’s not even my real name.”
“I’ve called the police,” she said. “They’re on the way.” Not quite true. She’d called the fire department, but the police would surely accompany them.
He shrugged. “Time to move on,” he said, moving away from the door and trying to disappear into the night. A phoenix in search of its ashes. He stopped, turned her way again. “I’ve been in Seattle too long anyway.”
She scrambled, finding the gun in her purse. “Stop!” she screamed, pointing the gun at him and dropping her purse without meaning to. She thought about picking up the purse but opted instead to put both hands on the gun grip.
Dane smiled at her. “Please,” he said. “You expect me to believe that’s loaded? To believe you’ve ever even fired it?”
Smoke was billowing out of the apartment complex now, and she needed to make a choice: keep Dane at bay or try to help people inside the apartment.
Or . . . maybe both.
She dropped the aim of her gun, pulled the trigger, fired a round into his upper thigh. He dropped instantly, howling in pain.
Keeping the gun trained on him, she walked over to where he lay on the grass, blood seeping from a black hole in his leg. She leaned close to his ear and spoke through gritted teeth. “You don’t know me at all,” she said. “Grace isn’t even my real name.”
She pulled the front key to the apartment from his hand, ran to the apartment complex, and retrieved her purse from the dewy, sparse grass. Then she unlocked the twin glass doors on the front of the building and did her best to prop them open.
Inside, she heard smoke detectors beeping in a couple of apartments, but no fire alarm.
He disabled the alarm and the sprinklers, a voice inside said. And suddenly, she knew that was correct.
Okay, she should start with the top floor, because it would be most difficult for them to get out. She ran up the four flights of stairs and began going down the row, ringing doorbells and pounding on the doors as she did. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps as she went, and she felt tears squeezing from her eyes. Not just from the smoke.
People began coming to their doors, but by the time they did, she was already at the next door. Her lungs felt like they were torn, and she wasn’t sure what she’d say, anyway. The gathering smoke did all the talking necessary.
Two other people joined her, pounding on doors and ringing the doorbells of apartments where no one had answered yet.
She went to the third floor and repeated the process, recruiting more help, then on to the second and first.
She paused briefly to see if Dane was still on the grass outside. He was sitting there, his belt now wrapped around his leg, but his face had a look of utter and complete wonder as he stared at the smoke boiling from the building.
Maybe he was a phoenix, but she’d chased worse. She’d chased dragons.
Flames began to eat their way out of the basement, working their way into apartments on the first floo
r. Most of the doors to those apartments were hanging open now, the occupants moving safely away from the building. But two doors remained shut.
She couldn’t see what was happening on the other floors, but she had to trust that the people who had joined her were making sure everybody got out.
She went to the nearest closed door on the ground floor once again, rang the doorbell several times, pounded on the flimsy door.
She heard something inside that made her whole body go cold, even though the heat of flames continued to spread around her.
A child crying.
“Hey!” she screamed at a man running away from the building in a T-shirt and boxers.
He stopped and looked back at her.
“Give me a hand!” she said. “I hear a kid inside.”
He looked like he was debating for a moment, then he ran over to where she stood. Up close, she could see the sweat on his face.
“Help me get this door open,” she said. She rang the bell and pounded on the door several more times, rattling it in its frame.
The man looked around. “How about a garbage can?” he asked. “We could use it to bang down the door.”
She nodded, tried to put her shoulder into the door. Inside, the child continued to sob, and Grace felt her own tears beginning to stream down her cheeks.
The man in boxers returned, dragging a large steel barrel behind him. She ran to him, helped him lift it.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s bust the door down. One, two, three, go!”
Together they rushed the door, using the can as a crude battering ram. The door gave a huge shudder, and a crack appeared near the bottom hinge, but still the door held.
The smoke thickened, and the man in boxers coughed a few times. “Again!” he said between coughs, and Grace lifted and counted again.
“One, two, three, go!”
They hit the door a second time, and it jumped away from its hinges, hanging lazily open a few feet.
Grace pushed at the door and rushed in first. Now every drop of blood in her system felt like dead blood, because the child’s crying had stopped. She wished she had a flashlight.