Fire Spirit (10 page)

‘But how did their remains get into the mattress?'

‘That's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar-and-ten-cent question. Maybe, when the first person was burned, they were holding a box containing the second person's remains. Or maybe the remains were scattered on to the mattress
before
the fire started, either by the first person themselves or by a third person unknown.' Jack picked an apple spice donut out of the bag and took a bite. ‘I'll send a sample to Aaron Scheinman for a DNA test,' he said, with his mouth full. ‘You never know your luck.'

‘Hell of a long shot,' said Ruth.

‘It's worth trying. There are several larger fragments which could be bits of tooth. At least we may be able to find out if it's a male or a female.'

Ruth went to the closet and took out a starched white lab coat. She was still buttoning it up, however, when her cellphone buzzed against her hip. She took it out and saw that she had received a text from Amelia. ‘
Sumthin BADS hpn
.'

She tried to call Amelia, but she didn't answer. She must be in class, texting under cover of her desk. So Ruth texted her back. ‘
Call me
!!'

Less than five minutes later, her cellphone buzzed again. It was Amelia, and her voice echoed, as if she were in the restroom. Ruth stepped outside the laboratory door so that she could get a clearer signal.

‘Mommy? I was right in the middle of math and I suddenly had this really terrible feeling.'

‘What kind of a feeling? It's not your period, is it?'

‘It was like I was burning. I got so hot that I nearly fainted.'

‘Maybe you're pining for that Asian flu. You didn't feel too good this morning, did you? Listen, I'll come right over and take you out of school.'

‘You don't have to, really. I know you're real busy.'

‘No, no. Jack can cover for me. I'll be there in ten minutes.'

She drove to Kokomo High and found Amelia waiting for her on the front steps, with one of her classmates, Rita Dunning, beside her. Rita had a snub nose and a ponytail and braces on her teeth and a very short kilt.

‘Thanks, Rita,' said Ruth, as Amelia climbed into the car.

‘That's OK, Mrs Cutter. Wish
I
could have a day off, just for being weird.'

Ruth was about to say something sharp, but Amelia said, ‘Forget it, Mom. I'm used to it. She doesn't mean any harm.'

They drove off. Tyson was standing up in the back, panting hoarsely and thumping his tail against the back of the seat. He always got excited when Ruth picked up Amelia.

‘How do you feel now?' asked Ruth.

‘Not hot any more. But so thirsty. My throat's so dry that I can hardly swallow.'

‘I really think you need to see Doctor Feldstein. There are all kinds of bugs going around right now.'

‘I felt like I was on fire,' Amelia told her. ‘But it wasn't like having a fever or anything. It was more like my skin was burning. You know when we went to Florida that time and I sat in the sun too long and got in the shower? It was exactly like that.'

When they reached the next stop signal, Ruth turned and pressed her hand to Amelia's forehead. ‘You
look
OK. I mean, you're not flushed, are you? If anything, you're kind of pale.'

‘But there's
this
, too,' said Amelia. She reached into her school bag and took out her math work book. It was dog-eared and covered in masses of elaborate doodles, because Amelia was always drawing over all of her books – flowers and fairies and princesses and cats. She opened it up in the middle and held it up so that Ruth could see it.

Ruth was driving, but she managed to glance at it. On the lower half of the right-hand page there were three parallel scorch marks, about an inch-and-a-half long, and one of them was so deep that it had burned right through to the next page, and the page after that.

‘What on earth did
that
?' asked Ruth.

‘My fingers.'

‘What?' Ruth slowed down for another stop signal.

‘My
fingers
did it. I was writing with my left hand and I had my right hand resting on my book and when I lifted my hand up the paper was all burned.'

‘How could that happen?'

‘I don't know, Mommy. But it did. Rita saw it, too.'

Ruth turned into the driveway in front of their house and parked. She took the math book from Amelia and examined it. She even sniffed it, but it smelled of nothing more than burned paper. The scorch marks were soft and smudged, and they were shaped exactly like fingerprints, but how was it possible that Amelia's fingers had made them? Yet Amelia never lied. She didn't know how to.

‘This doesn't make any kind of sense,' said Ruth. She took hold of Amelia's hand and turned it over. ‘Look – your fingers aren't blistered, are they?'

‘I'm only telling you how it happened. I felt like I was on fire and then my book was burned and I heard somebody say, “Andie”.'

‘“
Andie
”,' Ruth repeated. ‘Who said “Andie”?'

‘Inside my head somebody said “Andie”, but it wasn't me. It sounded like a boy's voice.'

Ruth climbed out of the car and Amelia followed her up to the front door, with Tyson snuffling right behind her. Ruth said, ‘You definitely have to see Doctor Feldstein. It could be you need your medication reassessed.'

‘But he did that only about a month ago.'

‘I know, sweetheart, but you're growing up, your hormones are all running wild. Maybe you need to cut down on your beta blockers. Who knows? But you shouldn't be feeling worried all the time, and hearing voices inside of your head, and burning up like that, should you? You're my precious girl, Ammy.'

Amelia hugged her. ‘You're my precious mommy, Mom.'

They went inside. Ruth went through to the kitchen, took a bottle of Gatorade out of the fridge and poured Amelia a large glass, with ice in it. As she put it down in front of her, the phone rang.

‘Ruth? It's Ron Magruder. Jack Morrow told me I'd probably catch you at home.'

‘How's it going, Ron?'

‘Well, we seem to be making some progress. The coroner has finished his preliminary report, and he says that the cadaver is that of a woman aged between thirty and thirty-five. She's given natural birth to a child or children, too.'

‘Still no idea how she got burned up so bad? Because Jack and me haven't, not yet.'

‘Nope. No evidence that any accelerant was used, just like you said. But we think we may have a pretty good idea who she is.'

‘Go on.'

‘We've had three missing persons reports in the past two weeks, but only one of them comes close to the coroner's description. Julie Benfield, thirty-four years old. She's a personal assistant at the Harris Bank. She was supposed to be home by six p.m. Tuesday evening but she never showed. Her Land Cruiser was found at seven fifteen p.m. at Casey's General Store on South Dixon Road with the keys still hanging in the door and all of her shopping scattered across the parking lot.'

‘Sounds like she was abducted. Any witnesses?'

‘None. Nobody saw nothing. Nobody
heard
nothing. Her ex-husband Daniel Benfield is a partner in a local law firm – Jones, Hagerty and Benfield. He was working late at the office on North Washington Street until eight thirty p.m. so we've ruled him out as a suspect. Poor guy wanted to identify the body, but of course it was out of the question. We showed him the wedding band we found on the cadaver and he thinks it's hers but he's not one hundred per cent sure. Val Minelli took a mitochondrial DNA sample from one of their kids so we should know soon if it's her or not.'

‘Does her husband know why anybody should have wanted to kill her?'

‘Nope. Everybody loved her, that's what he said. The divorce was amicable and there was no trouble over access to the children. She was a leading light in the PTA and a member of the Grace United Methodist choir.'

‘This is so strange, isn't it? Because whoever killed her, they really wanted her burned to ashes. Like Val said, it was more of a sacrifice than a homicide.'

‘Well, we still have a lot of questions to answer,' said Ron. ‘We're conducting a house-to-house all the way along South McCann and West Maple Streets, and we're checking through the CCTV footage from Casey's store, to see if there was anybody paying Mrs Benfield any undue attention.'

‘Did Jack tell you about the second remains?' asked Ruth.

‘Yes, he did. He's going to send me the DNA results just as soon as he gets them. But he doesn't expect them for a couple of days and so far I'm trying to keep an open mind.'

‘You mean you're as baffled as we are.'

‘That's not the way I'm going to put it to the media, and I hope the Fire Department doesn't, either.'

Ruth called the Walters Clinic and made an appointment for Amelia to have a check-up with Doctor Feldstein the following morning. As she hung up the phone, she could see Amelia in the living-room, sitting cross-legged on the couch watching
The Simpsons
and laughing. She loved Amelia so much she would have done anything for her. If Amelia had been suffering from a kidney disease, she would happily have given her one of her kidneys. But there was no way to give her the twenty-six genes she was missing.

She called Craig but his assistant said that he had already left the office for a meeting with the bank. She tried his cell but he had switched it off.

‘Mommy,' said Amelia, turning around. ‘Come sit here and watch this with me. It's so funny!'

‘Sure,' smiled Ruth, and walked into the living-room. As she did so, she glanced out of the window. The boy in the faded black T-shirt and the red jeans was standing beside the basswood tree in their front yard, staring at the house. Ruth felt an unpleasant jolt of alarm, as if she had touched a bare electric wire. She stood and stared back at the boy, and there was no doubt that he must have seen her, but he stayed where he was, his arms by his sides, frowning slightly, as if he were trying to make up his mind to come nearer.

‘Sit down, Mommy!' said Amelia. ‘This is a really funny bit!'

Ruth continued to stare back at the boy. He was only about twelve years old, and very thin, but for some reason he made her feel deeply unsettled.

‘Mommy?' said Amelia, and then, ‘What are you looking at?'

‘It's that boy,' Ruth told her. ‘That boy you saw yesterday evening. He's come back.'

Amelia stood up and looked out of the window. ‘I wonder what he's doing here. He looks like he wants something, doesn't he?'

‘Yes, he does. Let's go ask him, shall we?'

‘I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't.'

‘Ammy, he's only a boy.'

‘I know he is, but he makes me feel scared.'

‘Oh, come on. Why does he make you feel scared?'

‘I don't know. But it feels like the door's open. It feels like they're all trying to come through.'

‘Well, you stay here and
I'll
go,' said Ruth. ‘He could be lost, or maybe he's run away from home. He's still wearing the same clothes as yesterday, isn't he?'

‘Mommy,
don't
.'

Ruth laid her hands on Amelia's shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. ‘Don't worry, honestly. I'm sure that he's perfectly harmless. We can't leave him standing outside like that, can we, if he doesn't have anyplace to go? We'll have to call Children's Services, so that somebody can take care of him.'

She opened the front door, but as she did so, Amelia let out a peculiar little moan of dread. Ruth turned back. Amelia was standing in the hallway with her face cupped in her hands, her eyes wide, like Edvard Munch's painting of
The Scream
.

Ruth went back and gave her a hug. ‘Sweetheart, there's no need for you to be scared of him. He's only a boy.'

Amelia looked up at her. ‘Don't let him come close to you,' she said.

‘Why not?'

‘
Please,
Mommy, just don't.'

‘OK, if you don't want me to, I won't.'

‘He doesn't know who you are. That's why he's come here. He thinks you're somebody else.'

‘Who? And how do you know that?'

‘I don't know. But he wouldn't be here, otherwise.'

‘OK, then. I promise you I won't let him come close. Now you just stay there, if he scares you so much. I won't be a minute.'

With that, Ruth opened the door and stepped out. The sun was shining and the front yard was so bright that at first she had to shield her eyes with her hand. The boy had been standing right beside the trunk of the basswood tree, but now that she was outside she couldn't see him.

She crossed the lawn until she reached the tree, but the boy had gone. She went further, on to the sidewalk, but there was no sign of him, not in either direction. She looked back toward the house. The front door was open, and Amelia was peering out apprehensively, but the boy had completely disappeared, as if he had been nothing but a trick of the mid-morning shadows.

She was still standing on the sidewalk when she saw Craig's silver Explorer coming along the road. He turned into the driveway and parked behind her Ford.

‘Hey, you waiting for me?' he asked her as he climbed out.

Ruth shook her head. ‘There was a boy here . . . standing outside the house.'

Craig looked up and down the street. ‘I don't see any boy. What did he look like?'

‘Dark hair, very pale face. He was wearing a black T-shirt and red jeans. The funny thing is, he was out here last night, too, and I saw him in the crowd outside that house on South McCann Street – you know, where we found that burned body on the mattress.'