A Fire in the Night

by Christopher Swann

  Sams tilted his head slightly, looked over Nick’s shoulder then back at Nick. “Do you mind if I come in?”

  “Please.” Nick opened the door and stepped aside. Sams entered the foyer, glancing at the machete in the corner. Nick closed the door and walked through to the great room. His boots thunked on the floorboards. “Can I get you some tea or anything?” he called, his voice a bit louder than necessary. He hoped Annalise kept quiet.

  “No, thank you,” Sams said, following Nick. Then he stopped and looked at the sofa. A pillow and folded blanket lay there where Nick had put them earlier. He was planning to sleep on the sofa while Annalise slept in the master bedroom. There was a guest room upstairs, but Nick wanted to be close to Annalise in case she needed him.

  “Got company?” Sams asked.

  “Just doing laundry,” Nick said. He nodded toward an armchair, then sat in his own chair by the hearth. Sams sat down on the edge of his chair, back straight, arms resting on his thighs, fingers intertwined, a man about to deliver a report.

  “What did the autopsy find?” Nick asked.

  “The ME said your brother died of hypoxia,” Sams said. “There was soot in his respiratory tract, other signs of smoke inhalation. He died before the fire burned him.”

  Nick nodded. He felt he was reacting in slow motion, like a victim in a horror movie who couldn’t escape and was numb with shock. He hoped Annalise couldn’t hear what Sams was saying. Asphyxiation was technically better than burning to death, but he didn’t think Annalise would appreciate the difference very much. He barely did himself. Then he realized what Sams had not said. “What about his wife? Carol?”

  Sams shifted on the edge of his chair. “That’s the thing. She did not have any signs of smoke inhalation.”

  Nick lowered his voice. “She burned to death?”

  Sams shook his head. “There were cuts on her arms and torso,” he said. “Knife wounds.”

  “Knife wounds? Someone stabbed her?”

  Sams hesitated. “The ME said most of the cuts were shallow, not life threatening. But they would have hurt.”

  Nick didn’t understand. “Defensive wounds?”

  Sams looked oddly at him. “No. They were too deliberate. Someone cut her on purpose. The ME found what might have been ligature marks on her wrists. Hard to tell with a fire, but she wasn’t wearing any jewelry, so …”

  “They think her hands were tied,” Nick said, finishing the deputy’s thought. He felt so tired, as if he were being very slowly crushed under an enormous soft weight. The next words were hard, but he forced himself to ask. “How did she die?”

  “Her throat—” Sams began, then grimaced and flexed his enormous hands. “Her throat was sliced open. She was dead before the fire got her.”

  They sat there in the living room, looking at one another, for a long moment. Nick spoke first, his voice even lower. “Do they have any suspects?”

  Sams said nothing for a long moment. “They don’t think it was your brother,” he said. “I’m sorry to even say that to you, but it’s routine to investigate people who are close to the deceased. There was a knife wound on your brother’s hand, like someone had stabbed it. The knife went all the way through the back of his hand and through the palm. And there was no knife found on the scene.”

  Nick understood. Unless Jay had tortured and killed his wife, stabbed himself in the hand, and then magically made the knife vanish before setting the house on fire with both him and his wife in it, someone else had done this. Multiple someones, most likely. Nick’s eyes burned with fatigue, and with tears, and he closed them briefly, wiping the tears away with his fingers. And then he remembered the kitchen knife Annalise had thrown at him, the one now in his dishwasher. His blood cooled at the thought.

  “What about … my niece?” he said. He had hesitated just enough, he thought. “Has anyone seen her?”

  Sams shook his head. “Not for lack of looking. They’ve issued a BOLO for her. It’s even more important now that we talk to her. Tampa police have two possible homicides.”

  “You were a policeman somewhere else,” Nick said. “Before here.”

  Slowly, Sams nodded. “The army,” he said. “I was a military policeman before I came back home. How’d you know?”

  Nick shrugged. “You seem pretty familiar with ligature marks and homicide. I’d guess most deputies around here aren’t.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Sams said. “You notice a lot, don’t you?”

  “I was a teacher,” Nick said. “You get to be pretty observant about your students, if you’re any good.” Before Sams could continue, Nick stood, and after a moment Sams stood as well. “About my niece,” Nick said. “Is she a suspect?”

  “A person of interest,” Sams said.

  Nick shook his head. “Do they really think a sixteen-year-old girl could have done this?”

  Sams ran his hands over his knuckles once, twice. “I don’t think one person could have done this,” he said. “But her boyfriend is missing too.” He lowered his head slightly and opened his eyes a bit wider, looking directly at Nick. “If you see her, let us know as soon as possible.”

  Nick walked out with Sams and watched the deputy drive away. He agreed with what Sams had said, that one person couldn’t have done it. He would guess three, at a minimum. At least one to restrain Jay, and one to do the same with Carol. And the one with the knife, the one who had cut up Carol while making Jay watch.

  NICK STIRRED A saucepan of chicken-and-rice soup and tried to process what he had just learned. Jay and Carol had been murdered. Someone had tied Carol’s hands and stabbed her repeatedly, not in a frenzy but in a deliberate way. It would have hurt. And then they’d slit her throat. Jay died later, from smoke inhalation. Where had he been while his wife was being tortured? At some point he’d been stabbed through his hand. But after slitting Carol’s throat, the killers had left Jay alive in the house and set it on fire.

  The knife Annalise had brought with her was still in his dishwasher. If there had been any trace evidence on it, the dishwasher cycle had washed it all away. Nick thought about it, then shook his head. It wasn’t his niece. If she had killed her parents, why then run to her father’s brother, a virtual stranger who would be far more likely to call the police than to help her? But if she hadn’t been involved in her parents’ deaths, she might know more than she had shared so far. And now her boyfriend was missing.

  He broke it down while heating the soup. Burglars didn’t torture their victims and then burn the house down. They did smash-and-grabs, or they held people hostage briefly while they looted a house and then left. More rarely they would shoot their victims. This, however, was calculated. But to what end? Nick continued stirring, his mind setting aside the horror of the situation and analyzing the problem. It could be a warning to others if Jay had upset someone powerful enough to send a team of men to his house. It could be revenge. But this seemed like something else. You might make a man watch his wife being tortured if you were a psychopath. Or if you needed to get information out of him, and quickly. Nick shook his head. Now he was starting to guess, which was always a bad idea. He would give Annalise her soup and listen to her story, and then he would see if things made any more sense.

  Unbidden, the memory rose again like a dead fish floating to the surface—the canteen spilling into the dirt, a fire casting shadows against stones. Nick blinked, his focus returning to the soup on the stovetop. It was about to boil. He turned off the heat and moved the saucepan off the burner so it would cool.

  He had to put the bowl of soup on a plate to carry it because he had left his one breakfast tray in the bedroom with Annalise. Carefully he navigated around the sofa, trying not to spill the soup. It smelled good. Maybe he’d have some too—lately his meals had been a bit sporadic. He reached the door and called Annalise’s name and again used his forearm to push down the lever and open the door. His greeting died on his lips because the bed was empty, the folded jeans and sweat shirt gone.
One of the casement windows was open, giving Nick a view of the lawn leading down to the lake, the water black and still in the coming dusk.

  Nick put the bowl of soup down on the dresser and went to the window. He hadn’t heard it open. She must have overheard him and Sams talking. A faint shoeprint lay across the window sill. Nick poked his head out the window. There was maybe a three-foot drop from the window to the ground. Across the lake, Whiteside Mountain loomed, its cliffs faint in the shadows. To his left, at the far edge of the yard by the rhododendron, a piece of gray clothing lay crumpled on the ground. Annalise’s sweat shirt.

  He almost vaulted through the window right then, put his hands on either side of the window frame and raised his foot to the sill. Then he let go of the frame and lowered his foot and hurried to the front hall, where he picked up his machete. In the kitchen he opened a cabinet and took out a flashlight and put it in his jeans pocket. Then he was out the back door, boots clomping across the porch and down the steps to the grass.

  She had ten minutes on him, maybe more. She was sick and didn’t know the area. But if she had found a path, she could have gained some ground. She could also have fallen into a ravine or tumbled into the lake or come across a bear. And while the days were getting longer, it would be dark soon enough in the valley.

  When he reached the rhododendron at the edge of his yard, he stopped to pick up her sweat shirt, then looked uphill into the darkening woods. No sign of her, even though the rhododendron was broken here, a branch or two snapped back exactly as if someone had pushed through the bushes to get to the trees beyond. He paused, looked at the sweat shirt in his hand. Looked back at the cabin. Then he heard two distinct sounds from the direction of the cabin—a sharp cry of fear, followed almost immediately by a dry, insistent rattle.

  He ran back across the yard, calling her name. She screamed in reply from the far side of the cabin, by the carport. He ran past the porch and rounded the corner to see Annalise on the ground, leaning back on her elbows, staring in terror at the rattlesnake coiled two yards from her feet. It was big, thick as his arm and at least four feet long, maybe five. “Don’t move,” he shouted. She was crying now but didn’t take her eyes off the snake. Its head wavered a few inches off the ground, its tongue scenting the air. Its rattle sent up a sinister beat. Nick slowly approached from the side, holding the machete out in front of him. The snake’s head pivoted in his direction. “Annalise,” Nick said. “Very slowly, start crawling backward.” Annalise continued to cry and did not move. The snake bobbed its head up and down, flicking its tongue at Nick. “Annalise,” he said again. “Look at me. Look at me.” She turned her face toward him, eyes wide with terror, tears streaking her cheeks. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, even as he was thinking he should have grabbed a walking stick, a fallen branch, something long enough to keep the rattlesnake at bay. “You need to crawl away from it. Slowly. Go slowly. I’ll keep it distracted.”

  Tentatively, Annalise pulled one of her legs back, then the other. The snake dipped its head and slowly swung toward Annalise. She scooted backward about a foot, still crying. The snake paused, its head drawn back. Nick stamped his boot. The snake flinched and looked at Nick, its tongue flickering like a dark flame. The rattle sang. “Go,” Nick hissed at Annalise. She crawled away, faster now. The snake moved, a hideous, smooth unspooling. Nick took two quick steps forward and raised the machete. Annalise screamed as the snake struck like a whiplash. It sank its fangs into Nick’s right boot, just above the ankle. Nick raised his leg and kicked it to shake off the snake, but the snake had already withdrawn its fangs and was coiling itself again, the rattle high and shrill. Nick swung the machete up and then back down, striking the snake behind its head. The blade cut through the snake’s body and struck the earth beneath, the impact jarring Nick’s arm so the machete sprang out of his hand. The snake’s head opened its mouth, the inside pearly white, displaying its two enormous curved fangs, and then bit at the air. Its headless body writhed and twisted, the rattle a staccato death beat.

  Annalise was struggling to her feet. “Don’t go near the head!” Nick shouted. “It can still bite.” He backed away several steps and then sat heavily on the ground.

  Annalise stumbled toward Nick, giving the snake’s head a wide berth, and then fell on all fours next to him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Nick said. He was examining his boot where the snake had bitten him.

  “We need to get you to a hospital,” she said. She was pale and looked as if she were about to be violently sick, but she focused on Nick’s boot. “Don’t raise it too high—you don’t want the venom to go to your heart.”

  Nick began unlacing the boot.

  “What are you doing?” Annalise said, her voice rising. “You need to lie down. Where’s your phone?”

  “Don’t have one,” Nick said. He pulled the boot off.

  She stared at him. “You don’t have a phone?”

  “Nope.” He peeled off his sock and looked closely around his ankle.

  She leaned closer to examine his ankle with a mixture of disgust and resolve on her face. “Do I need to suck the venom out or anything?”

  Nick looked sharply at her. “Nobody does that,” he said. “Except on TV. I’m okay. Look.” He wiggled his toes. “Snake boots. They have multiple layers. Fangs didn’t penetrate to my leg.” He started putting his sock back on. “I need you to go around to the other side of the house and get the maul that’s leaning against the woodpile. It’s like a cross between an ax and a sledgehammer. Run and get it for me, please.”

  Thankfully Annalise didn’t ask questions, just got up and left. Nick shoved his foot back into his boot and relaced it. By the time he was finished, Annalise had come back carrying the maul.

  “Thanks,” he said, standing up. He took the maul from her, then cautiously approached the snake.

  “I think you killed it,” Annalise said, although she remained several feet away.

  He shook his head. The snake’s body had ceased writhing and lay still. Its head was also still, the mouth gaping open. “Snakes are cold-blooded,” he said. “Don’t need a lot of oxygen. Right now the snake doesn’t know its head has been cut off. It just feels pain.”

  He steadied himself, raised the maul, and then swung the blunt end down onto the snake’s head. The maul crushed it, a small amount of blood spurting out of its mouth, staining the grass.

  “It’s dead now,” Nick said. He turned to see Annalise staring in horror at the snake’s crushed head, then at him, just before turning to one side and retching.

  ANNALISE WAS BACK in the bed, trying to eat her reheated bowl of chicken-and-rice soup. Nick sat in the armchair by the windows, both of which were now closed. He felt exhausted, but his mind spun in circles around the snake, Annalise, his brother. He watched his niece sitting up in his bed, slurping soup from the bowl.

  “You know how to use a spoon?” he asked.

  She lowered the bowl from her mouth. “Easier this way, sitting in a bed. Don’t spill as much.”

  Nick closed his eyes. He had to talk to her, understand what had happened to her parents, but he just needed a moment.

  “Why did you come back?” Annalise said.

  Nick forced his eyes open. She sat in the bed looking at him. “What?” he said.

  “You were going to look for me in the woods. Why did you come back?” She looked drained, and he was sure by now that the adrenaline rush from the snake had faded, but she also looked like she would sit there waiting until he answered her.

  “I heard you scream,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I was watching you from behind the house. You stopped at the edge of the woods and stood there for a minute, then turned back. I was going to run when I saw the snake and tripped. What made you stop?”

  He tried to remember. “Your sweat shirt,” he said. “It was lying on the ground. You would have put it on because it was getting colder and you’re sick. It�
��s a pullover, so it couldn’t have just fallen off of you when you went into the woods. You dropped it there as a decoy, tried to get me to chase phantoms in the forest.”

  She looked impressed, begrudgingly, and despite himself, Nick felt a brief glow of satisfaction. “Were you like a cop or something?” Annalise asked.

  “No,” he said. “I taught history. What were you going to do if I went into the woods? Take my car and drive away?”

  She nodded. “If I could find the keys. If not, I was going to walk up to the road and then hitch my way out of here.”

  “Because of what the deputy said?”

  She fell silent, looked in her lap. Nodded.

  “Where were you going to go?”

  She shrugged, still looking in her lap. “Away,” she said. “California, maybe.”

  “Why there?”

  “Because it’s about as far away from here as you can get without leaving the country.”

  “And once you got there, then what?” He heard the harsh tone in his voice, saw Annalise look up from her lap in surprise, but he kept going, as if he had released something bitter that needed to flood out. “You go live on a beach? Maybe go to Hollywood and become a movie star?”

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  Stop it, Ellie said.

  “Stop,” Nick said aloud. He put his hands over his face. When he dropped them, he saw Annalise had slid farther down in the bed but was still glaring at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Annalise. You’re scared and you’ve been through a horrible experience, and you don’t know me and I’m just … I’m tired. I’m sorry.”

  She considered him as if weighing his apology. “Fuck you for being mean,” she said. Her voice was weaker now, but it still rocked him back on his heels. “You did save my life and all,” she continued, “but you don’t get to yell at me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He sighed. “And I didn’t save your life. That rattlesnake wouldn’t have killed you. Sent you to the hospital, yes.”