Dust Devil (58 page)

“
Yeah,
right. Like I believe that shit, boy!”

“
Hoag?”
Bubba called as he exited the office building and spied Renzo and the
sheriff standing toe-to-toe in the parking lot. “What in the
hell’s going on out here, Hoag?”

As
the sheriff glanced instinctively toward the sound of Bubba’s
voice, Renzo made his move, swiftly kicking the revolver from Hoag’s
grasp and then attacking him with brutal vengeance. At that, growling
an imprecation, Bubba came running; and in moments the three men were
locked in a furious knock-down-drag-out, beating one another
viciously.

The
warehouse was darker than the factory had been, its windows higher
and not quite so large as those of the plant. So it took Sarah’s
eyes a moment to adjust to the dimmer light, to the moonbeams that
filtered in hazily, illuminating the swirling clouds of fertilizer
dust stirred by the torrid breeze that whispered through the
warehouse.

“
I
know you’re in here, Coal Lump Kincaid.” Evie’s
voice sounded from out of the shadows somewhere, echoing in the huge
building. “I can smell the stench of coal dust and dago sweat,
you slut! You know I’m going to get you in the end, so why
don’t you just save us both a whole lot of trouble and show
yourself? I’ll be quick if you do. I’ll shoot you in the
head, the same way I did Morse, so you won’t even know what
struck you, won’t feel any pain
at
all, will be dead before you ever even hit the ground. But if you
don’t come out, I’ll kill you like I did Lamar—and
you won’t die so fast or easy. You should have seen him! He
looked like a little black puppet, dancing on its strings. Is that
how you want to die, Coal Lump?”

Sarah
didn’t make the mistake of answering, knowing Evie was only
trying to goad her into talking so her position in the warehouse
would be revealed. As she huddled behind the stacks of fertilizer and
pesticide bags that concealed her from Evie, Sarah’s heart
drummed horrendously in her ears and she was stricken by the horrible
sensation that she was going to wet her pants. Adrenaline pumped
furiously through her body, and she trembled violently. The pungent
smell of the fertilizer and pesticides gagged her, so she felt as
though she were going to throw up at any moment. Tears stung her eyes
from the irritating dust, and from her fear. Worst of all was the
fact that she could feel a sneeze building up in her nose. With every
ounce of her will, she tried desperately to hold it back. But it
wouldn’t be contained, bursting from her in a small, noisy
exhalation only partially muffled by her palm.

At
the sound, Evie, creeping through the warehouse, whirled and fired.
In that exact moment, some instinct warning her frantically, Sarah
leaped to her feet and ran as hard as she could, her lungs filling
with the fertilizer and pesticide dust, feeling as though they were
going to burst. The bullet struck the voltage box that was mounted on
the warehouse wall, boring through the steel casing and drilling into
the thick wiring inside, causing a shower of sparks to erupt and
spray violently from the box. On the floor, just to one side of the
box, sat a hundred-gallon container
of
gasoline that was kept for emergency use at Field-Yield, Inc., to
power the generator or in case one of the company’s pickup
trucks should somehow accidently run out of fuel on the road. As the
temperature today had risen to well over a hundred degrees in the
shade and was still close to that in the huge, sweltering warehouse,
the gasoline in the can had vaporized, building up a tremendous
amount of pressure. Now, as the sparks from the voltage box spat
forth frenziedly, they ignited the gasoline vapors.

And
when that happened, the warehouse exploded.

“
Oh,
my God!
Sarah!”
Renzo
cried hoarsely, his head jerking up wildly, his heart in his throat
as the big, heavy doors of the warehouse were suddenly blasted open
to release a torrent of flames, smoke and debris into the
night.
“
Sarah!”
Involuntarily,
his fists tightened savagely on Bubba’s torn shirt as the two
of them froze in midfight, their eyes locking, Bubba’s widening
in horror and disbelief as he abruptly understood.

Leaving
Hoag where he lay sprawled, bleeding and groaning on the asphalt, the
two men began desperately to run.

The
explosion had knocked Sarah down, slamming her flat against the hard,
concrete floor of the warehouse and ripping the breath from her
lungs. Her ears rang horrendously from the blast, so she couldn’t
even hear the fire alarm that had started to shriek, and her head
pounded sickeningly, making her feel imbalanced, as though she
couldn’t get her bearings and were going to vomit from the
sensation. For a long minute, she could only lay where she
had
landed, numbly fighting the waves of dizziness and nausea that
assailed her mercilessly, not quite certain what had caused them. In
some obscure corner of her mind, she understood that she was in shock
and hurting, that a portion of the warehouse had blown up and that
flames were even now sweeping wildly through the rest, irrepressibly
fueled by all the fertilizer present.

The
heat was horrible, as though she had died and gone to hell and were
being consumed by an inferno. The acrid, billowing smoke burned her
eyes, nose and lungs. She coughed violently, realizing dimly that if
she didn’t somehow get to her feet, escape from the warehouse,
she would rapidly be overcome by smoke inhalation. As the fumes rose
to the rafters, the sprinkler heads in the ceiling spurted to life.
Briefly, water showered down to combat the fire. At that insatiable,
wholly unexpected demand, two miles away in Cooper Northrup’s
beleaguered water-treatment plant, the old, inadequate equipment
wheezed and groaned and, with a last, ragged gasp, ground slowly to a
pathetic halt. In the blazing warehouse, the sprinkler heads
sputtered a few pitiful trickles of water, then dried up.

“
Sarah!
Sarah!”
Like
a madman, Renzo battled his way through the flames to reach her, his
heart lurching horribly to a stop as he spied her prone, still
figure. Then, to his everlasting relief, her eyelids fluttered open
and a tiny whimper of disorientation and pain issued from her throat.
“
Sarah!
Oh,
thank God, you’re alive!” Feverishly, he swept her up
into his strong arms to carry her from the warehouse.

“
Evie...she
moaned as her head lolled against his shoulder. “It
was...Evie...all the time. You have to...save her, too...Renzo....”

“
Bubba!”
he shouted furiously at that, his voice rising above the roar of the
fire as he strode swiftly through the crackling flames, spurred on by
the ominous creak of the rafters above them. “Bubba! Evie’s
in here, too! Damn it, Bubba! Do you hear me? You’ve got to
find your sister!” To Renzo’s relief, Bubba heard. Seeing
Sarah in Renzo’s arms, he turned, his face ashen and frantic as
he disappeared into the blaze, in search of Evie.

Chaos
and cacophony reigned in the parking lot of Field-Yield, Inc., which
was now crowded with a multitude of vehicles that had appeared in
response to the alarms and the raging inferno. The town’s fire
trucks and water trucks were out in full force, the firefighters
rushing to hook up their hoses and begin dousing the blaze. Thaddeus
Rollins and Otis Krueger had been discovered and were being treated
by the paramedics who had arrived in the ambulance Bubba had summoned
earlier. Dwayne Truett was yelling orders right and left, while Hoag,
having finally dragged himself to his feet, slouched miserably in the
backseat of his patrol car, still groaning from the beating he had
received—and somehow knowing in his agonized gut that his days
as the sheriff in this town were numbered.

J.
D. Holbrooke had appeared on the scene and stood a little to one
side, as though in a trance, unable to believe his eyes at the sight
of the burning warehouse, at the thought that Bubba was inside. The
media vans of Channels
5,
7 and 12 were disgorging their camera crews, so there would be film
at eleven; and K-104 on the FM dial had a reporter calling in live
reports from the parking lot, as did a few other radio stations.
Virgil Bodine was speaking quickly but competently into his
voice-activated, pocket tape recorder, making notes for
the
Trib.
Hearing
the news, Liz and Parker Delaney had come, together with a number of
the town’s other citizens, who continued to flock to the scene,
drawn by a morbid curiosity inherent in Man. Additional officers and
firefighters were attempting to prevent spectators from pouring into
the parking lot, so that many of the cars were lined up along the
highway.

It
was into this confusion that Renzo bore Sarah, both of them to be set
upon immediately by a barrage of television and radio reporters, who
shoved cameras and microphones into their faces, spitting a stream of
questions and demanding answers. Fearful that J.D., Hoag and Dwayne
would somehow succeed in suppressing what she now knew, Sarah weakly
but fiercely bade Renzo to stop, to let her speak. Then, clinging
tightly to his neck, she cried, “It’s toxic waste!
Field-Yield, Inc.’s been dumping toxic waste into the old
quarries! It’s what’s leaching up into everybody’s
backyards! It’s poisoning us all! I have proof! I discovered it
in FYI’s computer system tonight! It’s why Sonny
Holbrooke, Lamar Rollins and Morse Novak were murdered! Evie
Holbrooke killed them—all of them, including her own brother—so
nobody would learn what her daddy was doing! I have it all on tape!”

The
crowd went crazy at her words, the low, buzzing drone of anger and
disbelief speedily growing to riotous proportions as people began
dazedly to comprehend what Sarah had said. The media rushed to
confront a stunned, utterly destroyed J.D.—and then an equally
stunned, incredulous Bubba, who came staggering from the burning
warehouse, Evie in his arms, only moments before the hideously
straining and groaning rafters at last gave way and the entire
building collapsed with a thunderous roar.

High
above the clamor rose Bubba’s shouts of “I didn’t
know! Sarah, you’ve got to believe me! I didn’t know!”

Evie’s
thin, eerie, childlike wails of “Daddy! I did it for you,
Daddy! I did it all for you!” were almost lost in the
cacophony.

Bubba’s
face held such a mixture of shock, disbelief and terrible sadness as
he gazed at his poor, disconsolate, bewildered sister that Sarah knew
he was telling the truth. Her heart welled with pity and pain for
him. He
had
loved
her, in his fashion.

“
I’m
glad, Bubba. I’m so very glad you didn’t know,” she
said with heartfelt sincerity.

And
understanding that, accepting it for what it was—her parting
gift to Bubba—Renzo, his voice low, hoarse, throbbing with
emotion, uttered, “Oh, Sarah...” The words trailed into
silence as she kissed him wildly, fervently, in that way speaking all
that was in her heart, crying and clinging to him for dear life as he
carried her to the roadster and gently settled her inside.

The
powerful engine roared to life. Then the Jaguar sprang forward into
the summer darkness, hastening down the long, winding, dusty road
toward home.