Child of Fire (31 page)

“What’s that?” Cynthia asked.

“I found it in the street. It must have come from the van.”

A little woman I hadn’t spoken to yet grabbed my wrist and looked at the lining. “That belongs to my little brother, Benjamin.”

There was a general expression of astonishment. Arlene came over to us. “Vera, do you think he shot at us?”

Vera scowled down at the hard hat. “He’s always losing things. I knew he was in debt to that damn casino, but I never thought he’d go this far, or that Phyllis would ask him to.”

“We don’t know who was behind that shooting,” I said, “so don’t start rumors. Now let’s go. Vera, you’re taking the injured to the hospital, right? Cynthia and I will take Mrs. Farleton there in a bit. We have a stop to make.”

“I’m going with you,” Arlene said. She had a stubborn look in her eye.

“There isn’t room,” I told her.

“My car can squeeze in four,” Cynthia said.

“I know,” I told her.

“I’m going,” Arlene said.

“She is, or I’m not,” Miriam said.

I threw my hands into the air. How could I argue with these people?

I took the gun from my pocket. One of the women gasped, and I felt a little twist of nausea at her fear. I led Vera and the other women to Vera’s station wagon, where they all squeezed in beside one another. As they pulled away, I imagined Luke Dubois sneaking through Miriam’s back door and killing them all while I was out front. I ran back to the house and found them waiting for me.

I stood facing Miriam. I had her full attention. “Your husband seems like a good man. Do you love him?”

“I do.”

“What about all this?” I waved at the house, the furnishings, everything. “Do you love all this, too? Because it’s time to choose.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s time for you and your husband to get out. You’re going to have to leave a lot behind. Artwork, knickknacks, all sorts of stuff.”

“I can do that,” she said. “Staring down the barrel of a shotgun clarifies things.”

“Get your financial stuff,” I said. “Bank records, credit-card papers, mortgage papers, insurance stuff, what ever. And get photo albums and old love letters, too. Everything else you should leave behind. Expect it to be burned to the ground before you get back.”

She nodded and hurried up the stairs. Arlene started to follow her, but I caught her arm. “I have two questions for you: Do you have a reliable car? And if so, can she borrow it? They can’t run away in a tangerine Yukon.”

“Yes,” Arlene said. “Yes, of course.” She went off to help Miriam.

Cynthia and I stood in the living room. She smiled at me and squeezed my hand. I took a deep breath and relaxed. I was glad that she was helping me. I hoped that I wouldn’t have to cut the iron gate off of her, or worse.

Within five minutes, Miriam came back downstairs with a banker’s box in her arms. On top of that was an old leather-bound Bible. “I’m ready.”

“We’ll put them in the back of Arlene’s car. Arlene, we’ll meet you at the hospital. Ready?”

We went out the front door and loaded up the back of Arlene’s Forester. While Miriam pushed the box into place, Arlene tapped my elbow. “Who are you?”

“Raymond Lilly.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question.”

“I’m aware of that.” Miriam shut the hatch. “Go quickly, please.”

Arlene climbed in behind the wheel and pulled away. I made Miriam get into the backseat of the Audi and stay low. I felt silly rushing around like movie spies, but being shot at changes things.

“Where to now?” Cynthia asked.

“We need Annalise.”

“Your place, then.” She pulled away from the curb, and we drove quietly for a few blocks.

Miriam broke the silence. “Do you think Phyllis tried to have me killed?”

“I’m not convinced it was her. The hard hat was a little too obvious. And from what I’ve seen, her guys all carry the same snub-nosed .38.”

“I heard she got a deal on them because she bought in bulk,” Cynthia said. “She’s a real cheapskate.”

“But it was her sort of van,” Miriam said. “And I’m sure some of her men have guns of their own at home.”

I knew how easily a vehicle could be stolen. “It’s pointless to speculate. What matters is that we get you and your husband to safety.”

Five minutes later we had arrived at the motel. My room had been tossed and all of my clothes torn to shreds. I would have to make do with the bullet-hole shirt for a while longer. My detective novel had been destroyed, too. Bastards. Now I wouldn’t find out who the killer was.

Annalise’s room was empty, but it had also been tossed, and everything in it torn apart. Miriam peered over my shoulder into the room. “Mercy,” she said. “Do you think something has happened to her?”

“I’m not worried about her,” I said. “I’m worried about us.”

The van was gone, too. I wished she had given me a
damn cell number I could use. I needed her, and I had no idea where she was or what she was up to.

Cynthia tugged on my sleeve. “Are we done here?”

I could have asked the manager where she’d gone, but I didn’t trust him to give an honest answer.

I was on my own.

“Here,” I said. Cynthia pulled into a parking lot. “Leave the engine running,” I said. “I’ll run up and run back.”

“What are you planning to do?” Miriam asked.

“If you see trouble, peel out of here without me, understand?”

Cynthia nodded. She and Miriam began scanning the street. I turned and ran into the building that contained the offices of
The Mallet
and Peter Lemly.

In the lobby, I scanned the directory. There was an actuarial on the second floor and marriage counselors on the third. The fourth was the editorial offices of
The Mallet
.

The elevator looked slow and confined to me, so I took the stairs, vaulting up them as quickly as I could. I nearly knocked over a middle-aged couple coming down from the third floor. I mumbled an apology and squeezed past them.

At the top of the stairs I saw the door for
The Mallet
, est. 1909. It wasn’t locked, and I let myself inside. There were three doors along a short hallway. The farthest door was marked
EDITORIAL.
I put my hand on the knob and hesitated. The air was very still. Peter wasn’t here, and I wanted to sprint back down to the car. Instead, I opened the door.

I immediately smelled blood. I walked toward the desk and window at the far side of the room. There was
a pair of fresh blood splashes on the glass, and the desk had been knocked crooked.

Peter was behind the desk, mostly. His arm lay in the far corner, his hand still clutching a nine-millimeter. His head lay a few feet away beside a single spent bullet casing. I wondered if he had managed to hit his target.

I backed out of the room, wrapped my hand in my shirttail, and pulled the door closed, then wiped my fingerprints from the knob. I did the same to the knob on the door to the stairs.

I ran down the stairs, out the door, then hopped into Cynthia’s car. “Any trouble?” I asked her.

“No. You?”

“Oh, yes. Peter Lemly is dead.”

“Oh, shit,” Cynthia said.

“Shouldn’t we call someone?” Miriam asked.

“Like who? The cops are probably the ones who killed him.”

“An ambulance, of course. What if he’s just badly hurt?”

I turned around and looked in her eyes. “Miriam,” I said. “He’s very, very dead.”

She snapped her mouth shut and stared out the window. Cynthia raced through town and pulled into the county hospital lot. She parked as close to Arlene’s car as possible.

Within five minutes, we were all walking down the hallway toward Frank’s room.

Just outside his door, I saw a tiny, bald black man of about seventy. The top of his head came up to the bullet hole in my shirt, and he wore huge, black-framed rectangular glasses that make his eyes look like apricots. He held a long, black rifle in both hands.

Across the hall, a bird-thin woman of about sixty sat on the same padded bench Cynthia and I had sat on the
day before. She held a World War II–era carbine across her lap.

The tiny man thrust out his chin and slid his finger over the trigger. “Stop right there, young man,” he said in a high, nasal voice. “You stop there.”

“Lord in heaven, Roger,” the thin woman said. “Can’t you see that they have Miriam with them?”

He squinted at us through his gigantic goggles, then scowled. Letting people into the room must have felt like a loss of much-loved authority.

I glanced at the far end of the hall. Two hospital security guards leaned against a door. They were watching Roger and us but were obviously unwilling to approach closer.

At that moment, Arlene pushed past the guards, with Rev. Wilson and a doctor close behind. Miriam, Arlene, and the doctor bent their heads together for a conference. The doctor’s voice was low but emphatic. He was unhappy about something, and I was pretty sure I knew what it was.

Rev. Wilson turned toward me but kept his gaze pointed off to my right. “Emmett was here just a few minutes ago, but he’s gone now.”

“He wouldn’t surrender his weapon,” Roger announced. “Or submit to a search.”

“And he smelled funny,” the bird woman said.

I imagined he would, if he hadn’t had time to wash off Peter’s blood. “What about his brothers?”

“There’s been no sign of them,” Wilson said.

I remembered the spent casing by Peter’s body. I went to the doctor, who was objecting most strenuously to something. “Hey, Doc,” I interrupted. “Have any of the town police been admitted to the emergency room today?”

“I’m a cardiologist.”

“Don’t be annoying, please. If one of them came into
the ER, the whole hospital would have heard about it, right?”

The doctor obviously wanted to continue his argument with Miriam, but she was paying attention to me. He sighed. “Right, and no.”

I hoped Peter had missed with his shot. “Thanks. Now run along and get us a wheelchair, would you? We’re taking the mayor out of here.” He blinked at me as he tried to generate a suitably outraged reply.

I heard a low growl behind me.

I turned. Luke Dubois stood by the door we had just come in. Standing next to him was a wolf.

Shit. Too slow. If only I hadn’t stopped for Peter Lemly, I might have gotten them away in time.

“Everyone stand where you are,” Luke said, looking pleased with himself.

The other wolves I had seen in Hammer Boy had been tinged with red or gray fur. The one beside Luke was black, and it was big. I remembered Wiley’s dark mop of hair, and knew this one was him.

“Not protecting your secret anymore, Luke?” I said. “It must hurt to have killed Wilma over something you’re just throwing away now.”

Luke was startled, but he didn’t break down in tears or anything. “I didn’t … I would have never … we don’t have to be afraid,” he said, turning the subject toward something he wanted to talk about. “All this time we thought we had to be afraid, but we don’t. And we’re not giving away our secret. Not today, at least.”

That wasn’t good. We were in for a bloodbath. “Roger,” I said, keeping my voice low, “shoot that damn wolf.”

The gun went off almost before I finished the sentence. It was brutally loud in the tiled hallway, and despite myself, I flinched.

A bloody hole appeared dead center on the black
wolf’s head. Roger was a good shot. As I watched, the hole closed over. The wolf barely staggered.

“You see?” Luke said. “All this time we’ve been afraid, and we didn’t have to.”

Damn. Peter
had
shot one of them. We needed silver, and they knew it.

I heard screams behind me. A red wolf had knocked down one of the security guards and was tearing apart his forearm. The grayish wolf had already gone for the throat of the second man, who struggled weakly against the attack, red blood squirting onto the tile floor.

“Get into the room!” I shouted.

Cynthia barreled into the door. I heard her shouting at someone inside not to shoot her.

Roger worked the bolt of his rifle. His face was set, as though he was trying to work out a complicated puzzle.

The gray wolf charged us. The birdlike woman stepped toward it and lifted her rifle. There was another shot, but the wolf leaped on her, knocking her to the floor. It sank its fangs into her neck just below her ear. She didn’t get a chance to scream.

Roger grunted. The black wolf had landed on him. I kicked it in the ribs just as it snapped at his throat. Roger’s gun went off. Luke, still standing at the end of the hall, collapsed backward onto the tile floor. The wolf tore into Roger’s throat.

I rushed at Miriam. The red wolf came at her first. Arlene and Rev. Wilson both lunged at the creature. Wilson and the wolf went down. The reverend was not going to last long.

Arlene grabbed Miriam and shoved her toward the door to Frank’s room. They collided with me. Rather than fight my way around them toward the reverend I let myself be pushed into the room. I ran when Rev. Wilson, the guards, Roger, and the old lady could not, and I was glad to do it.

I slammed the door shut and threw my shoulder against it. There was no lock. Someone slid a chair under the doorknob. I looked up and saw that it was the cardiologist. I hadn’t seen him enter the room, but here he was, holding the door with me.

“What’s going on?” he asked me, his voice low and breathless. “What is that officer doing with those dogs?”

“Killing us, if he gets the chance.”

I turned and looked around the room. Frank was lying on his bed, tubes up his nose. Standing beside him were a fat middle-aged man with rake-thin arms and a fat elderly man with a handlebar mustache. Both were carrying identical doughboy-era rifles. Along with them were Cynthia, Miriam, and Arlene. Miriam was fussing over Arlene’s hand, but the rest were looking at me.

“Is everyone all right over there?”

“It’s Arlene,” Miriam said. “She’s been bitten pretty badly.”

“You have a patient, Doc.”

Cynthia fetched a rubber doorstop from the corner and kicked it beneath the closed door. Blood started to flow under the door. “I saw what happened when the old guy shot the wolf. It wasn’t hurt at all.”