Tin City Tinder (A Boone Childress Mystery) (24 page)

Now it stood ajar.

I bent down to one knee, pressed against the wall. With Cedar literally breathing down my neck, I peeked inside.

The front office was dim.
 

A receptionist counter separated it from three offices behind it. The middle door stood open, and light shone from the high open window. Mercer stood in front of the window, his body a hunched silhouette, as he flipped through the open drawer of a filing cabinet.

I crept in and stayed low.
 

Cedar followed me on hands and knees.

“Camera,” I whispered.

Cedar pulled it from a pocket then set the flash function to off. She set it in my palm and gave me the thumbs up.

Slowly, I worked my way down the counter.
 

The light behind Mercer made it hard to get a good shot. The deputy’s face was hidden in shadow.
 

I needed a better angle.

Hurry up
! Cedar pantomimed to me.

I am
! I mimed back.

I kept moving, the muscles in my thighs on fire. I wanted desperately to stand up, but doing so would alert Mercer. Near the copier at the end of the corner, I finally got the shot.

Mercer turned into the light. He pulled a packet of materials out of the drawer. I hit record on the video function and watched as the deputy stuffed the material into a manila folder. He slammed the drawer shut, then pulled the office door closed behind him.
 

I ducked and waved for Cedar to do the same.
 

Mercer crossed into the dim light and reached for the outer door as the camera reached its storage capacity and sounded a warning chime.

Mercer turned and saw Cedar hunched up against the reception counter, arms wrapped around her knees.

“Hi,” Cedar said. “Can you point me to the ladies room?”

“Ladies room, my ass.” Mercer pulled his gun. “Now what am I going to do with you, little miss nosey butt?”

Cedar puckered up. “Give me some sugar?”
 

The tips of Mercer’s lips curled up. “I got a better idea.”

14

Mercer shoved a plastic vial into Cedar’s hand. He tore strips of duct tape from the roll and wrapped them around her hand so that she couldn’t release the vial. Then he taped the hand to Cedar’s thigh.

I stayed behind the copier. It had been my hiding spot from the instant that Mercer had seen Cedar. I hid there the whole time that the deputy had Cedar up. It killed me to hold back, but I had to wait for an opening.

Never open fire when you’re outgunned.

Through the walls, I could hear Landis’ muffled voice on the PA system, announcing the runners up for Miss Allegheny.
 

Nervously, I stroked my chin and tapped my chest. The tips of my fingers touched the chest plate of Luigi’s listening device.

That’s it, I thought.

I detached the listening fork from the slot on the plate, pushed one of the buttons, and pointed the receptor at Mercer. The sound of his breathing filled the buds in my ears.
 

I jerked back, almost hitting the wall behind me.

Whew. The sound was coming in loud and clear. I hit another button on the device and waited.

“You know what that is, girl?” Mercer said.

Cedar shook her head,
no
, and I clicked a third button, directing my signal to override the wireless microphone that Landis was using on stage.

“Of course you don’t,” Mercer said. “Because you’ve never seen anything like it before. Invented it myself. It’s a sodium fuse, like the ones I used to burn down those houses for Landis. Want to know how it works?”

I eased an ear bud off and listened to the sound of the muffled voice on the PA.
 

Mercer’s voice was being piped to the whole town.

The crowd stopped applauding to listen.

“The sodium sits at the bottom of the plastic tube,” Mercer explained to Cedar. “The mineral oil’s in the middle. The water’s on top. All I do is pull this cork out of a little hole in the middle here, like this, and the oil drips out. When it’s gone, the water comes down, and boom! No more nosey little bitch.”

“Halt!” I stood up and pointed the listening fork at myself. “Deputy Mercer, I’m placing you under citizen’s arrest for arson, murder, and trying to blow up my girlfriend.”

“Citizen’s arrest?” Mercer pulled his gun. “Not in this lifetime. Tell you what, you sit right down next to your girl. She’s got something to show you. Believe me, boy, it burns a lot hotter than kerosene and barn straw.”

Mercer stepped out into the hallway. He slammed the door, and I heard the key turn in the lock.
 

I expected to hear footsteps, but instead, Mercer’s shadow crossed the space under the door.
 

He was making a run for it.

I yanked the duct tape off Cedar’s mouth. “You okay?”

“Stop up the hole! In the tube! Stopper it!”

The oil had almost dripped out of the plastic tube.
 

Only an eight of an inch remained.
 

I slapped a finger over the hole Mercer had uncovered. The water sloshed above the thin line of oil, coming perilously close to the sodium below.

“Hold it steady,” Cedar warned me. “Tilt that thing, and I lose my hand.”

“You’ll use a lot more than that.”

“Sodium’s not that reactive, Boone.”

“This isn’t sodium. It's cesium. Mercer doesn’t know his chemicals.”
 

“Wait! Cesium can—“

“Blow us to smithereens. Unless we find a way to get rid of all of the water first.”

Cedar licked her lips nervously.

“Your lips are chapped,” I said.

“Who cares?”

“I do! Lip balm! Got any in your purse?”

“Front pocket. Why?”

“The balm is pure petroleum.”
 

With my free hand, I fished the tube out of the pocket. I stuck the lid in my teeth and twisted the cap off, then spat it out.
 

It bounced off Cedar’s nose.

“First you rip half my face off with the duct tape, then you spit lids at me.”

“Shh,” I said. “This isn’t easy. First, I have to move my finger, and before the oil drips out, I have to squeeze this petroleum jelly inside the tube.”

“Could be worse.”

“How?”

She nodded toward the hallway. “There could be smoke coming under the door.”

White smoke roiled across the floor.

“Yep,” I said. “That’s worse.”

“The smoke stinks like a road flare,” she said.

“He uses flares to light his thermite.” My brow filled with sweat. I wiped it on my shirtsleeve. “But the building has sprinklers, so we’ll be okay.”

“You’re forgetting your chemistry. Water—“

“Won’t stop thermite. You’re right.” I set the opening of the tube next to the spot where my skin blocked the hole in the plastic tube. “On the count of three, we go. And Cedar?”

“Yeah?”

“If I blow off your hand, I’m sorry.”

“Worry about not blowing off my face.”

One, I counted.

I kissed her full on the lips.

Two.

I kissed her again.

“Stop kissing me and—“

Three
.

In a single motion, I pushed my thumb aside and squeezed with all my strength.
 

A few ounces of petroleum jelly squirted out. The oil chamber pushed the water back into the top of the tube. I squeezed again for good measure, but the job was done.

Cedar was safe.

“Thank god.” I fell on my ass and breathed in, taking deep gulps.

The fire alarm sounded.

The sprinklers went off.
 

Water showered down on our heads. Within seconds, we were soaked, and water was pooling on the floor around us.

As the fire alarm rang, the sound of sirens cut through the air, I stripped the lengths of tape off Cedar’s thigh and unwrapped her hands.

More smoke poured in.

Aa bright red glow formed at the doorway.
 

With Cedar’s hands now free, I lifted the tube carefully off and stuck a piece of duct tape around the tube. I pushed it into a cactus plant on the receptionist’s counter, then slipped on the wet floor.
 

I fell to one knee.
 

My hands slapped the bar, and a finger caught the lip of the cactus pot.

It teetered on edge.

Ready to fall.

“Gotcha!” Cedar grabbed the cactus pot. She set it on the floor. “How about we get the hell out of here?”

“Excellent idea!”

The only exit from the suite of offices was the door, but when I reached for the knob, it was white hot.
 

No surprise.
 

A thermite fire was on the other side of the door.

“Windows!” she yelled. “You take that office! I’ve got this one.”

I tried the first office. “Locked!”

Then moved to the next.

“In here!” Cedar called.

I ran inside, sloshing through the rising flood of water.

Cedar lifted the window a few inches. “It’s stuck!”

I grabbed the shash, and we slammed it open.

Outside, the courthouse green was in a state of bedlam. Tanker trucks from all over the county roared down the roads around the square. Firefighters ran toward the building while pulling on their turnouts.

People clustered around the bandstand. A bevy of debutantes clung to the back railing, trying to avoid Sheriff Hoyt as he was slapping the cuffs on G.D. Landis, who was seated in his wheelchair, screaming for his son.

“Up here!” I yelled. “Mayday! Mayday!”

“Boone-san!” Luigi ran toward the window. “The building is on fire!”

“I know that!” Smoke poured past me and out the open window. “We’re trapped! We need a ladder truck!”
 

“No time!” Cedar yelled. “The fire’s at our backs!”

The ladder truck was bulky and long. The trees, buses, and hundreds of chairs on the green would slow it down too much.

“Boone!” Abner yelled. “Stay there! They’re bringing a trampoline.”

A trampoline.
 

They wanted us to jump.
 

From a two story window.
 

“I don’t think I can do that, Boone!” Cedar yelled.

“Me, neither!”

“I have acrophobia!” she shouted.

“Me, too! Let’s take our chances with the fire!”

“I’m serious!”

“Me, too!”

Down below, the firefighters gathered. They stretched the trampoline ring out. Lamar was barking orders to the others, and I saw that the whole Allegheny squad had taken hold of the ring.

“Let’s go!” I yelled. “It’s now or never!”

Cedar looked down and froze.
 

She couldn’t move.

I pushed her off the windowsill.

As she fell, Cedar screamed, “You asshole!”
 

Her butt hit the center of the ring, and the trampoline collapsed inside, wrapping her safely like a cocoon.

“Your turn!” Lamar called up to me.
 

“I’m good!”
 

“Boone Childress,” Cedar yelled as they reset the trampoline for another go. “Jump down here this instant!”

I licked my lips nervously. They were chapped.

I had to jump.
 

No two ways about it.

I lifted a foot, bent my knees, and told myself to go.
 

My feet stayed stuck to the sill.

Behind the door, the receptionist’s counter exploded. The door flew open, and the super heated air rushed toward me. The force of the blast blew me off balance.

And out of the window.

I screamed like a little girl and landed in the trampoline with a huge humph of air.

At first, I saw only stars.

Then Cedar was leaning over me, smiling. The sky was a deep, rich blue, the color of a wide-open sea.
 

It felt like home.

Cedar cradled my head in her arms. “I love you, you big idiot.”

“I love you, too,” I said and pulled her onto to the trampoline as our lips met.

“Next time we're caught in a fire,” she said. “You better not push me.”

"Next time we're caught in a fire," I said. "Don't take so long to jump."

EPILOGUE

By the end of May, there was little evidence that the farm where Athena and Troy Blevins grew up ever existed. A bulldozer had swept away the bones of the fire that had destroyed it, along with shell of the heating oil tank that had been buried beneath it.
 

It was above that tank that Peter Mercer had placed a pot of thermite and then ignited it with a delay fuse like the one he had stuck into Cedar’s hands. The fuse lit the thermite, and the thermite burned white-hot straight into the tank, where it ignited a decade’s worth of sludge and leftover oil. The explosion unearthed the remains of Athena and Troy’s Great Aunt Ellen, who was buried closest to the house.

Now, the aunt was being re-interred, along with the rest of the bodies that had been removed by Stuart and Early. The man paying for the work was Trey Landis, who had donated the site to the Allegheny County Historical Society as an apology for the trouble his father had caused.

“Trouble he caused?” I asked Cedar.

We stood in the shade of live oak watching a crew of graduate students from Carolina Tech processing each set of remains.

“That’s how he’s phrasing it in the paper,” Cedar said. “Damage control.”

“Trouble is a pleasant euphemism for all the crap Landis did.”

The process had taken a day a half so far, and Abner expected at least two more days. Yesterday, Dr. K and Mr. Blevins had been on hand, along with Allegheny VFW and my family. A preacher had blessed the work before they started, and he would return later to bless the graves once the work was finished. Mr. Blevins had left right away. Dr. K had stayed most of the day, but when it came time to identify her own family, she was overcome and had to depart.

Together, we walked over to a tent that had been set up as a break area. There were four colors filled with ice and drinks and another loaded with snacks. Two platters of cookies were stacked on one of the folding tables, still covered in plastic wrap. Barefoot Bennie’s catered in breakfast, lunch, and dinner.