A Flame in the Wind of Death

by Ann Vanderlaan

  The final step gave away her position, quietly squeaking under her weight. She quickly moved off it, but the damage was already done.

  Matt joined her at the top of the stairs. The second floor was dim, only a single light was on in a bedroom down the hall; the rest of the floor was quenched in twilight. Near the top of the stairs, a one-gallon metal kerosene can stood near the wall, the lid missing. Leigh nudged it gently with her toe. Empty.

  “Come on in, Trooper Abbott.”

  Leigh jerked, the gun wavering only for a second as she swung toward the voice, gripping her firearm in two hands. “I know it’s you, Simpson. I know you’re responsible for the fires.”

  “I knew you were onto me. Aaron called me and told me you were asking questions. That’s why I came here.”

  “Where’s Dr. McAllister?”

  “He’s here with me. He’s got a gun under his chin, so no fast moves or he dies.”

  “I’m coming in,” she said. “Don’t hurt him.”

  “Too late for that.” There was a note of satisfaction in Simpson’s voice that made her heart race in alarm.

  Turning quickly to Matt, she laid her palm on his chest mouthing Stay here. Unless Simpson had seen them, he might think she was alone and they might be able to use that fact to their advantage.

  She half expected him to balk, but he was already a few steps ahead of her, silently moving past her to press his back against the wall near the open doorway, staying outside the light that flooded out onto the carpet. Leigh nodded in approval. Now she just needed to find a way to keep Simpson distracted so Matt could come through the door.

  Easing forward, gun extended, Leigh stepped toward the open doorway.

  It was a bedroom, richly furnished like the rooms below, a large king-sized bed dominating the space. It was the small puddle of blood, soaked into the plush beige carpet in a brilliant splash of color that caught Leigh’s eye first. Her stomach dropped—was she already too late?

  Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the room.

  The first thing she noticed was the smell. A vaguely familiar, sickly sweet odor. Gasoline? Why use that in here when he’d used kerosene on the stairs? Then Matt’s words from only moments before came back to her—Kerosene is easily available and will make a damned big fire without the explosive danger of something like gasoline.

  He’d used both accelerants to ensure a catastrophic fire.

  They were in very big trouble.

  Flynn Simpson stood near the foot of the bed. An older man, wiry, thin and balding, stood in front of him, his eyes blinking dazedly as he swayed slightly. His head tilted back at an awkward angle, forced into position by the barrel of the gun pushed into the soft flesh under his chin. A slow stream of blood trickled from a gash on his temple, winding down his cheek and jaw to drip off in a steady slow rhythm. It splashed hollowly onto a red plastic gas can, tipped onto its side at Simpson’s feet.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  One quick glance around the room told Leigh everything she needed to know. Bedding. Draperies. Carpet. Pillows—all branded with wet splashes. The fumes in the room told her the rest, nearly making her head swim.

  The gasoline was his pièce de résistance. All it would take was a spark. The house would go up in a heartbeat and they’d all be trapped. Or blown into splinters, the kerosene consuming anything else that remained after the explosion.

  A shudder ran through her as memories tumbled unbidden over each other, flashing through her mind in Technicolor. Fire behind the windows of the church and licking up the tower. Charred flesh, dark and horribly curled, lying on damp grass. Blackened muscle, peeling back to reveal stark white bone. An unrecognizable face, contorted in a scream of agony.

  She brutally pushed the memories away. If she became paralyzed by fear, they were all dead. She needed at least ten minutes until Bree and the fire department arrived.

  Leigh fixed her sights on the middle of Simpson’s forehead. She didn’t dare take the shot, but she wanted Simpson’s attention focused on her. She inched further into the room, hoping to turn Simpson so the doorway—and Matt’s potential entrance—wasn’t directly in his line of vision.

  “Looks like we’re at a stalemate here, Flynn. If you shoot Dr. McAllister, I’m going to have to shoot you, then I’m the only one who walks away. Why don’t you put down the gun and we can talk this out?”

  Simpson shook his head, a mulish set to his mouth. “No. You put the gun down. I don’t have any desire to hurt you. You haven’t done anything to me.”

  “The firefighter in the Saint Patrick’s fire didn’t do anything to you, but he died.”

  Remorse layered with sorrow flickered over his face. “I never meant for anyone else to die. They just should have let it burn. There was nothing they could do for the priest. He’d already found his justice.”

  “Is that what you’re doing? Meting out justice?” While she talked, Leigh’s gaze slid to Dr. McAllister, trying to judge his coherency and whether he could help himself in any way. With a sinking heart, she realized the man was only barely conscious. He’d need all the help she and Matt could give. “This isn’t the way to go about it. I know what they did to you and why you want revenge. If you want justice, I can get it for you.”

  Interest and hope swirled briefly in Simpson’s eyes but then slowly faded. “No, you can’t. Even if you charged someone, it would be years before it went to trial and by that time I’d be trapped inside my own skin. I’d literally be a piece of evidence.” His voice went hard. “I’ve been a spectacle and an object of pity all my life. It won’t happen again. They were killing me slowly, so I was going to kill them first. Besides, it would always be my word against theirs. You have no idea what I went through.”

  Leigh let all the sympathy she felt for him fill her expression and her voice. It wasn’t hard. She didn’t approve of his methods, but what had been done to him was cruel beyond measure. “I don’t, because I’ll never be able to experience what you did. But I know what your mother did to you, how she changed your life forever.”

  Simpson’s hand jerked, belying his calm.

  Got his attention. Now keep it and win his trust.

  “Your mother suffered from Münchausen by Proxy,” she continued. “She had a child with a rare disease and she played you and the doctors for the attention it brought her.”

  “She ‘suffered’?” Simpson nearly spit the word, his fingers tightening in a white-knuckled grip around the butt of the gun. With a spurt of horror, Leigh realized her mistake. “You make it sound as if she wasn’t responsible for her actions.”

  Leigh held out a hand, placating. “Of course she was. You were the victim, Flynn. In your mother’s desperate bid for constant attention, she put your safety, your quality of life, at risk.” Keep stalling. Eyes locked on the finger on the trigger under McAllister’s chin, she went for a different tack. “How old were you when you figured it out?”

  “When I . . . ?” Simpson trailed off to stare at her blankly.

  “You were only a child when it started. Look at the type of abuse: Biking and skateboarding accidents, a dog too big for you to handle. Dental appointments, immunizations. It was subtle, but unmistakably vicious.”

  Simpson swallowed jerkily. “How do you know all that?”

  Leigh ignored him and pushed on. “Dr. McAllister was an adult. He should have seen the incidents for what they were. And then you told Father Brian about your concerns and he didn’t help you either. But this isn’t the way.”

  “What other choice did I have?” Simpson’s voice cracked on the last word. “No one would listen. No one cared. Not until Aaron.”

  “Is Aaron involved in this too?”

  For the first time, panic flashed in Simpson’s eyes. “No. He’s innocent. No matter what evidence you find, he’s not responsible.”

  “What evidence would I find, Flynn? You can tell me. We’re going to work this all out.”

  “He’s a realtor. He had a key to the
antique shop on the wharf because the owner was getting ready to sell and he needed to be able to show it. I knew where it was and I took it. He had nothing to do with it.”

  “How did you get your mother to meet you there?”

  “I asked her to come down and see it. I knew she’d quit the coven and had time on her hands. I told her she’d be perfect running a boutique store where only the best of the best shopped. By the time she agreed to come down, she was already planning her career as the darling of the wharf. And, of course, when she came she brought that damned dog,” he snarled. “I hated that dog from the first time it bit me.”

  And the dog certainly paid for it. “Why did you pick that shop?”

  “It was accessible and basically unconnected to her. That location and the fire completely erased her identity, giving me time to move on to my next victim. I never meant to get away, you know. I just wanted time to kill them all. I always knew how this story would end.”

  Leigh noticed Simpson’s right arm start to shake with the strain of holding the gun at such an awkward angle. She moved further into the room, trying to give Matt more leeway. “And how will it end?”

  “With my death.”

  Alarm shot through Leigh. A murderer who didn’t care about his own outcome was a dangerous man indeed.

  “It doesn’t have to end that way,” she said soothingly, easing another inch to her right. Out of her peripheral vision, she caught a glimpse of Matt creeping around the door frame, still out of sight of Simpson, but clearly reacting to his threat of suicide.

  “Stop!” Simpson barked.

  Matt and Leigh both froze.

  “Move another inch and I’ll shoot him right now. And there are enough fumes in here that the gunshot could set the whole house ablaze.”

  Leigh knew it was the adrenaline rushing through her veins that caused a tremor in the hand that gripped her gun, but she resolutely steadied it. “Okay, Flynn, it’s all right. I’m not going anywhere.” Not daring to look at Matt for fear of giving him away, she dropped her left hand casually out of sight behind her thigh, signaling him to wait. The situation was simply too volatile. If Matt suddenly appeared they could catch Flynn off guard and overwhelm him, or he could kill the doctor and start an inferno. Then there was no telling how many of them would die.

  She latched onto the one weakness she’d seen in Simpson thus far. “You know, Aaron is still in trouble. He alibied you for Thursday night when you know very well you were at Saint Patrick’s killing Father Brian. He put himself on the line for you.”

  A sad smile curved Simpson’s lips. “He loves me. He’d do anything to protect me. But he lied because he thought I was protecting him.”

  Leigh was baffled by the sudden turn in the conversation. “Protecting him? Why would you need to do that if he wasn’t involved?”

  “He’s not. But he was out with his lover on Thursday night.”

  His lover? “And you were okay with this?”

  “He only did it for the sex.” Simpson’s voice was flat and matter-of-fact. “I can’t . . . participate like that in our relationship anymore. I know he sees other men. He tries to hide it from me, but I know. He’s young and healthy and has needs. I have his heart; they can have his body. He thought I was home that night and was making sure he was alibied because he had access to the antique shop. He didn’t realize that he was alibiing me instead.”

  “So was he out with his lover when you killed your mother?”

  Simpson shook his head, his right shoulder slumping as guilt settled over him like a dark cloak. “No, I slipped him a sleeping pill early that night. Once he was out, I got the key and went down to the wharf to meet my mother. I told her it had to be late as her seeing it ahead of time wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up, so we met at midnight. She loved it. It was like she was playing spy. So we spent some time going through the shop.” The light left his eyes, leaving his face frighteningly blank. “Then when she turned away I hit her with an antique candlestick and she dropped like a rock. Her demon dog went nuts, so I bashed its head in too.”

  “Then you stabbed your mother with her own athame. But there’s something I don’t understand. If she was killed shortly after midnight, why did you wait so long to start the fire?”

  “Because the shop is right by the marina and several restaurants. And at this time of year with all the tourists, I didn’t dare start it until after everything was closed and everyone had gone home. It was crucial that the fire get a good start. If it was noticed too soon, the fire department might put it out and her identity might have been discovered sooner. So I waited for hours, until I was sure that all was quiet and no one would see me slip out the back. It worked like a charm.”

  Leigh tried to imagine the patience required to sit in the dark with the dead body of your mother, waiting for just the right moment. Maybe all those years waiting in doctors’ offices had taught him the art of stillness.

  “Did you talk her into bringing the athame with her?”

  “No, I already had it. I’d taken it from her house the week before one afternoon I knew she’d be out getting her hair done. She told me she’d boxed up all her things and never gave them a second thought. She never even noticed it was missing.”

  “The boline as well?”

  “And her wand. That’s how McAllister was supposed to die. Her fancy sculpted metal wand, slicing right through his heart. Which would be justice since his affair of the heart sealed my doom.” At those words, the doctor suddenly found the strength to struggle, squirming in Simpson’s unsteady hold. Simpson cruelly pushed his head further back, compressing his windpipe with the gun, leaving him gasping for air and twitching helplessly.

  Leigh used the break in the conversation to listen, hoping to hear sirens. Nothing. She forced herself to ignore the older man’s plight, trying to keep Simpson in the conversation. “An affair? With your mother?”

  “Yes. They were having an affair even though he was married. At first I think the appointments were an excuse to see more of her, so he didn’t worry too much about why I kept having them, but later, as things started to fall apart between them, he stayed silent. My theory is that she threatened to expose the affair if he exposed her . . . habits.” Simpson’s gaze skimmed over the expensively furnished room. “Big house, fancy wife . . . if she found out that he was carrying on, she’d have taken him to the cleaners and he’d have lost everything. So he stayed silent and I was just collateral damage. I was always collateral damage,” he sneered. He jabbed the gun harder against McAllister’s throat and the older man spluttered and groaned. “The wand is hidden at home and I couldn’t take the chance that you’d circle back there and catch me if I went for it. Lucky for me, I was smart enough to start carrying a gun after our last conversation. I had a feeling that you weren’t buying the Witchcraft angle.”

  “There simply wasn’t enough evidence to support it.”

  “I didn’t need evidence,” Simpson snapped. “Just time.”

  “Were you keeping the red phosphorus at home too? Is that why you’ve switched to kerosene and gasoline?”

  “How did you—”

  “I know all about it. I know you ordered it through the Boat-works, but kept some back for yourself and no one ever noticed. You didn’t need much, just enough to start the reaction in the balloon. It was really brilliant. If our fire marshal and her men weren’t so good, I think it might have been missed. How did you learn that trick?”

  “I had a buddy in college whose father was a firefighter in Malden. He used to pass on interesting stories sometimes. They had an arson case a decade or more back that used that same trick. It was simple and original enough that it stuck with me, and had the added bonus of a time delay, allowing someone who wasn’t fast or graceful on their feet time to set it and disappear. Who knew that it would be such a useful piece of information years later?”

  Far off in the distance came the sound of a siren.

  Desperation flashed in Simpson’s ey
es. “Who did you call?”

  “Cops and firefighters. Take your pick. It’s over, Flynn. Let’s end this peaceably.”

  “No. Let’s end this like I planned.”

  Dread filled Leigh when his eyes went flat and dull, all emotion simply evaporating. Her gaze flicked to Matt and she gave him a sharp nod. GO!

  It all happened at once.

  Matt came through the door, crouching low and headed straight for Simpson. Simpson jerked in surprise and McAllister took advantage of the younger man’s delayed reaction to break free and throw himself toward Leigh, knocking the gun from Simpson’s weak grasp with his shoulder. But McAllister’s sudden move put him directly in Leigh’s line of sight, blocking the shot she was about to take despite the risk involved. In a flash of panic, she stopped herself from killing the wrong man—and perhaps causing an explosion in the process—just in time. But McAllister was stunned and unsteady on his feet, and he reeled toward Matt who lunged to the side to get out of the way while still trying to catch the older man.

  “Freeze!” Leigh yelled, finally getting a clear shot at Simpson. Simpson stood stock-still by the bed, his right fist extended outward, as if willing the gun on the carpet at his feet to leap back into his hand. Leigh held her gun on him, steadily clasped in both hands.

  “Matt, you okay?” she asked, not taking her eyes off Simpson.

  “I’m fine. And I’ve got McAllister. He took a good knock to the head and is probably concussed.”

  “Get him out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  “We’ll be right behind you. You need to help Dr. McAllister. Go,” she insisted.

  There was a moment of silence—Leigh could imagine the battle going on in Matt’s mind—and then he started to walk Dr. McAllister toward the door.

  “Now, Flynn, let’s just—”

  That’s when she saw it.

  Simpson had opened his hand. Clutched in his fingers, suspended over the gasoline-soaked bedding was a squat, silver lighter.