by Ray Flynt
At Kinko’s, a clerk behind the counter directed him to the self-service copy machines, and as he ambled that way Brad congratulated himself on not staring too intently at the man’s facial piercings. Bible in hand, Brad lifted the cover on the copier and studied how best to position the book for copying on regular sized paper. Brad opened the Bible to page 41, the site of Wilkie’s first word, and placed the Bible face down on the glass. He inspected the control panel, which looked more complicated than the machine he was used to at home, and selected the proper paper size, collating and enlargement settings then pushed the start button. Nothing happened.
“You gotta stick a credit card in here,” a young lady at the next machine said, tapping a small box mounted on a pole next to the machine. She wore a baggy Villanova sweatshirt, and it looked like she was copying a thick term paper. Her long blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail, and her piercing limited to a diamond stud on the left side of her nose.
“Thanks,” Brad said, as he pulled out his wallet and retrieved his American Express card, inserting it into the machine’s card reader. He realized it had been awhile since his days spent in a copy shop, back when the staff recorded page counter numbers on each machine before and after each use. In his college years he’d never thought of a copy center as a place to meet girls, and glancing again at the young woman next to him, for a fleeting second wished he were twenty years younger.
Brad pressed the start button. The machine whirred to life, and out popped a perfect copy of Genesis, Chapter 42, with big written in pencil next to verse 28. He studied the copy and decided it looked fine.
“Are you like a minister or something?” his Villanova copying-neighbor asked.
Brad smiled back at her, grateful for her help. “Something,” he replied, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions.
Ten minutes and less than three dollars later, Brad inserted the freshly copied pages into the Bible and returned to his car. On the trip home he passed St. Matthew’s Cemetery, on the opposite side of the road from the cathedral, and he decided to stop.
Brad couldn’t remember when he’d last visited his mother and sister’s grave. He drove his Mercedes along the winding narrow road toward the northwest corner. His family was among the first to be buried in the newly opened section eleven years ago, but now he found the downward sloping hillside dotted with headstones. Brad parked the car and walked in the direction he recalled as their gravesite. Clouds blocked the sun and a brisk wind swept up the hill, but Brad didn’t feel cold. He spotted the mahogany-colored marble marker with FRAME chiseled into its shiny surface. The plot had room for four graves and at the foot of two of them were flat stones engraved with his mother’s and sister’s names—Edith Lucille and Lucille Harriet—along with their birth and death dates. He had forgotten Lucy was named after his mother and Aunt Harriet. He wondered, sadly, how soon it would be before his father would be laid to rest next to his mother.
Brad eyed the fourth grave in the plot, and decided he wasn’t ready to think about how it might be filled.
Brad knelt down and pulled a few weeds that had sprouted near the edge of his mother’s stone, and vowed to return and plant some flowers on their graves. A flat shiny stone, perfect for skimming across a pond, lay just above Lucy’s name. He wondered if a lawnmower had kicked it up on the surface of the marker, or if someone had placed it there—a sorority sister or maybe an old boyfriend? If so, he felt guilty that someone else visited more frequently than he did.
The last seventy-two hours had focused his mind on shortcomings and failures, Brad realized. He could do with a little introspection, but now the press questioned his reputation and motives as a detective. Stirring his emotional pot had resurrected old doubts and surfaced new challenges. As he stared down at the graves, Brad understood he couldn’t turn back the calendar and undo what Wilkie had done to his family, but God, how he wished he had never gone to Wilkie’s execution.
Chapter Nine
Brad went for a long drive after he left the cemetery, hoping to sweeten his sour mood and make sense of Allessi’s demand for the Bible. He did his best thinking in the car with the sunroof open, fresh air pouring over him, and the radio tuned to his favorite classical music station. At dinnertime, after running a few local errands, he returned to his office. He laid Wilkie’s Bible on his desk and searched through it one more time, the eraser end of a pencil in hand.
Brad carried the photocopied pages from the Bible to his bedroom, the master suite that his parent’s had used when they lived there. His dad had installed a safe in the wall above the dresser. Brad swung open a hinged painting and dialed the safe’s combination, two in a clockwise direction and two more counter-clockwise, until the door snapped open. Like his dad, Brad didn’t keep much in the safe, except for a passport, a list of credit cards, and a copy of his will, preferring to use a bank’s safe deposit vault for truly valuable items. He remembered how his dad used to joke that if a robber ever ordered him at gunpoint to open the safe, the look on his face would be matched by the robber’s once he saw how little there was to steal. Brad placed the copied pages from Wilkie’s Bible in the safe and closed the door. He twirled the locking mechanism, a lucky spin his dad used to call it, and replaced the picture.
A half-hour later, while rinsing off under the shower, Brad thought he heard the sharp-pitched squeal of his security alarm. He quickly turned off the water, and listened. Then jumped out of the shower and grabbed a towel as he ran to check the security panel in his bedroom. A liquid crystal display alerted him that 911 had been called. Since Brad hadn’t activated the intruder security system, he knew the automatic activation meant a fire. Brad jumped into the pair of pants he had worn earlier and yanked on a sweater. He raced down the stairs barefoot. He didn’t smell smoke when he reached the foyer, so he dashed into the kitchen and down the back hall toward his office. A smoky odor greeted him near the office door, and he couldn’t recall lighting the fireplace that day. He groped for his keys in his pocket, fit the proper one into the lock, then felt to see if the door was hot before opening it.
Flames leapt up to the left of his desk, and a large area of carpet seemed fully engulfed, as the room filled rapidly with smoke. Brad noticed an odor other than smoke—petroleum-based he thought—which triggered his suspicion of arson. Glancing toward the French doors he saw a broken pane of glass above the lock in the middle set of doors. Though the heat intensified as he approached his desk, Brad grabbed a flash drive from his computer, and then opened a drawer and retrieved several disks of back-up computer files. That’s when he noticed the Bible missing from his desktop, and a clearer picture of the crime emerged in his mind.
Yellow-orange flames lapped at the office ceiling from beside his desk, and with each breath he inhaled more smoke and less breathable air. Brad made his way to the French doors gasping for breath. He spotted shards of broken glass on the floor, and paused to inspect the door’s locking mechanism. Brad reached for his handkerchief to cover his nose and mouth. He found it harder to see as the smoke filled the room. His chest felt suddenly heavy and Brad knew that if he didn’t leave the office soon they’d find him collapsed on the floor.
He pushed on the handle of one of the French doors and stumbled onto the patio. Sirens warbled on the driveway side of his office and the rumble of truck engines sounded near. “Back here,” Brad shouted before sputtering into a cough and falling on his knees. Three men rounded the corner axes in hand and toting fire hoses. They ignored him and began fighting the fire, though he thought he heard one of the firemen call civilian down on his radio.
Brad couldn’t recall how much later, but he realized he was lying on a stretcher laid on the ground. Two emergency workers knelt beside him. He felt woozy and his eyes weren’t focusing clearly. “I’m okay,” he muttered, coughing and straining to catch his breath. He drew a hand to his chest.
Brad heard a man’s voice say, “We’re going to put this on your face.” Then they slipped a mask over hi
s nose and mouth. He inhaled, at first savoring the fresh oxygen, then sputtered as his lungs expelled noxious air. Brad struggled to sit upright.
“It’s okay,” a woman said. “Relax and breathe normally.”
A few minutes later Brad pulled the mask off his face. “I think I’m okay,” he said standing up. Though he felt a little wobbly, he tried not to let it show. More aware of his surroundings, Brad watched as the fireman aimed their hoses at the persistent flames. Light gray smoke wafted from all three wide-open French doors. Brad thanked the medical personnel before one of the firemen barked at him, “We need you outta here, buddy, so we can work.”
Barefooted, Brad meandered gingerly around to the front of his house. He sat on the stone curb beneath one of the ornamental gaslights, which lit the driveway. He noticed the gray stone and white trim on his mansion pulsating pink from the lights of the fire trucks and ambulance. An unmarked police car, sporting a portable flashing dome light on the driver’s side, pulled into the driveway.
The warbling sirens had attracted a crowd. Brad's neighborhood consisted of over-sized estates in a variety of styles, each on several acres of land, shielded from curious eyes by manicured barriers of trees and shrubs. Children didn’t understand the concept of privacy that their parents had paid landscapers to secure. They cut pathways through the bushes to facilitate playing with the neighbors’ kids. Via these informal footpaths neighbors approached the chaotic scene.
Brad's neighbors had given names like Fletcher and Haywood, and the fire in Frame's office was the biggest news to hit the neighborhood since the New York Stock Exchange extended its trading day. They clustered in small groups on the cobblestone drive swapping rumors and hoping for news from fire personnel scurrying between their trucks and the mansion's west wing.
A moment later he saw his neighbor Gertrude Lindstrom rolling toward him in her wheelchair, with her husband Emerson walking briskly to keep up.
“Are you alright?” Gertie asked, looking rather grim.
Emerson offered him a clean handkerchief, and Brad realized his face must look awful. He swiped the cloth across his forehead removing a grimy film of soot, then folded the cloth to a clean spot before wiping his cheeks.
“Check in my purse, Em,” Gertie pleaded. “I usually carry an ammonia capsule in my purse.”
“I’m fine, Gertie,” Brad said. Over her shoulder Brad noticed Emerson pointing at his chin, and Brad dabbed the handkerchief, once more removing dirt from his face. Gertie still stared at him apprehensively. Brad remembered his hair. He had run directly from the shower to the office, and imagined how bad it must look. Touching his still damp head confirmed his worst fears, and he reached into his pocket for a comb.
“There, Gertie, do I look more presentable?”
She cocked her head, asking, “Don't you think you ought to lie down?” As usual she favored the left side of her mouth when she spoke. Her right hand lay motionless on a blanket in her lap, and her winter-white complexion stood out beneath a dark, thinning pageboy-style haircut.
“Now, Gertie,” her husband cautioned, “he knows how to take care of himself.”
“I'm sorry if I tried to take over,” Gertie said, as Emerson tucked a shawl around his wife’s shoulders.
“Some people intrude,” Emerson Lindstrom intoned, pausing like a veteran stand-up comic, “My wife Gertrudes.”
Emerson might have expected a drum roll and rim shot, but Brad didn’t react. Gertie appeared unaffected by his sarcasm, acting as if she didn’t hear her husband. Emerson pursed his lips like a little boy who'd been caught eating candy before dinner, and winked in Brad’s direction. A few years had passed since Brad had seen him, and Emerson’s rugged face seemed etched more deeply around the eyes and mouth. Tiny blood vessels were visible on his nose and cheeks, and white hair covered his head.
“We called 911 on my mobile phone,” Gertie explained, nodding toward the zippered pack slung on the left side of her motorized wheelchair. “Em was taking me for a walk, and I told him I thought I smelled smoke, and then we saw a big black puff of it coming from your place. At first, Em thought you had a fire in the fireplace. But then agreed it looked suspicious and we called 911 on my mobile phone.”
“You already told him that,” Emerson said, for which she scowled at him.
She continued, “Then we came over here to see if you were okay.”
“We weren't sure if you were home,” Emerson said, gesturing toward the estate, “but we heard the fire trucks coming right after we—”
Gertrude interrupted him. “It didn't take us that long to get here. I was sitting in our garden, when Em came back from tinkering on his Hudson. He promised me a walk this evening, but then he went off to work on that old car, and I'd just about given up on the idea since it was almost dark, but Em insisted.”
A chilly breeze laden with the smell of smoke swept across the cobblestone driveway. Gertrude Lindstrom tried to use her good arm to pull the blanket down around her legs, but Emerson jumped in to help her.
Brad saw an old Ford circa should-have-been-in-the-dump-by-now pull into his driveway. With fire trucks and emergency vehicles filling the drive, the car backed into a service truck parking area near the entrance. Brad watched as Sharon jumped out of the car. Sharon slammed her car door so hard that Brad winced wondering if it could remain on its hinges. Her boyfriend Mark emerged from the driver’s side.
A fireman, rolling up a hose, yelled at her as she ran toward Brad. “Hey lady, stay back behind the truck.”
“I live here!” Sharon shouted, trying to be heard over the rumble of the fire truck motor.
“I don't care if you're the Pope,” the man pointed, “go around the other side of the trucks.”
She obeyed and a few seconds later Brad saw her approaching him and the Lindstroms from a different direction. Sharon Porter screamed, “What's going on? I just got back. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he assured her. “Somebody set fire to the office.”
Her mouth gaped.
Mark Bertolet caught up with her. An easy-going character in his late 20’s, his occupation appeared to be perpetual student. If he got a job, Brad thought, at least he could afford a new car.
Brad introduced Sharon and Mark to the Lindstroms, and recapped for them how he discovered the fire.
“Is that your ‘67 Fairlane?” Emerson asked Mark.
“Yeah, pretty cool don’t you think?” Mark beamed at the prospect of discovering a fellow car enthusiast.
“You sure you weren’t hurt,” Sharon asked, eyeing his hair and possibly a few remaining smudges on his face.
Brad shook his head.
“Mr. Frame,” a police officer called out as he approached.
Brad stood up to greet him. “Yes.”
“I'm Lieutenant Norton,” the investigator crisply identified himself. “The fire department is almost finished. They'll keep a man posted outside your gate overnight in case the fire should flare up. Arson is a definite possibility. We suspect an accelerant was used. We'll cordon off the area with crime scene tape, and come back in the morning when we can sift the ashes for clues.”
Brad nodded. “I smelled something suspicious when I first noticed the fire.”
“I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to stay out of that building, Mr. Frame, until we've finished. It was your office?”
“Right,” Brad responded, concerned because the officer had used past tense to describe the office. “I don't think there's any reason why I need to get in there before tomorrow.”
“If you don't mind, I’d like to ask you a couple questions.” The Lieutenant scanned the group assembled in the driveway, adding, “I'd be happy to question you privately.”
“No. There's no problem.” Brad pointed at his neighbors. “Lieutenant, do you know the Lindstroms, Gertrude and Emerson?” The officer smiled and tipped his hat. “And this is my associate Sharon Porter and her friend Mark Bertolet.”
“Perhaps we should hea
d home, Gertie,” Emerson offered.
Gertie flashed her husband an unmistakable I'd-really-like-to-stay-and-hear-this look.
“There's no need for you to leave,” Brad said. “Go ahead with your questions, officer.”
“Do you have any idea who may have wanted to do this to you?” Officer Norton asked.
Brad scratched his eyebrow as he thought about the question. “You know I'm a private detective?”
Norton nodded.
“Over the years I’ve made a lot of enemies. There might be someone who'd like to get even.”
“How about a case you're working on now?” the officer probed.
Brad shook his head.
“There's been some controversial publicity about you Mr. Frame.”
“So?” Brad snapped, and he felt Sharon’s hand on his shoulder. Maybe he should let her answer the questions. He knew Thompson’s articles would come back to haunt him.
“Could this incident be related to that?” Norton asked in even tones.
Recovering from his momentary defensiveness, Brad responded, “I really couldn't say.” Though he knew, based on what he’d seen in the office, the arson had everything to do with the publicity surrounding Wilkie’s Bible.