Fire Spirit (17 page)

‘No!' screamed Mrs Lutz. ‘
No
!'

But the scowling man slapped her across the face, twice, and then ripped her hospital gown open.

Mrs Lutz said, ‘God will punish you for this. You are going to burn in hell.'

The scowling man pulled her gown right off her, and kicked it away down the aisle. ‘Lady,' he said, ‘I already did.'

ELEVEN

R
uth arrived at the Fire & Arson Laboratory at lunchtime. It was still thundering and it was so dark outside that Jack had switched all the lights on. He was perched on a stool in his white lab coat, reading the sports pages in the
Tribune
and making a mess of eating a ham and provolone submarine from Jimmy John's.

‘Hey – how did it go?' he asked her. ‘Did the doc find out why Amelia's been feeling so antsy?'

Ruth took off her raincoat and hung it up. Then she took off her beret and slapped it to shake off the raindrops. ‘He seems to think her meds are OK, so it could be nothing more than her hormones playing up. But we talked to a shrink, too – Doctor Beech? She wants Ammy to meet up with some guy who's been having the same kind of problems.'

Jack picked up a slice of tomato that had dropped on to a picture of Caleb Abbott, the big hitter from the Kokomo Knights. ‘I know Zelda Beech, she's good. She used to treat Lois.'

He didn't say any more and Ruth didn't press him. She knew that Jack's first wife, Lois, had suffered a severe mental breakdown, and that she had eventually committed suicide, but she didn't know all of the details and if Jack didn't want to tell her, that was his privilege.

‘I just don't know if it's a good idea,' she said. ‘You know – meeting up with somebody who's suffering from the same kind of anxiety. I don't want Ammy to get any worse.'

‘Zelda Beech is good with people,' Jack reassured her. ‘She's not your run-of-the-mill shrink, not by any means. She's very open-minded. If she thinks that her patient will respond to a certain kind of treatment, she'll try it, even if she doesn't necessarily agree with it. Like hypnosis. She was always very wary about hypnosis because she didn't like the after-effects. The nightmares, the sweats, the heebie-jeebies. But she hypnotized Lois when Lois was going through the worst, and it helped her to make some sense of the world. Not that the world has ever made
any
kind of sense.'

‘You can say that again. How's it going with Tilda Frieburg?'

Jack put down his sandwich and smacked his hands together. ‘I was going to call you, but I didn't want to interrupt you while you were talking to the doctor, and in any case I wanted to see your face in live action when I told you.'

He walked across the laboratory and came back with a test-tube half-filled with light gray powder.

‘What's this?' Ruth asked him.

‘Sludge from the bottom of Tilda Frieburg's bathtub. Filtered and dried, tested and analyzed.'

He waited, smiling, for Ruth to react.

‘OK,' said Ruth. ‘Why are you keeping me in suspense?'

‘I enjoy being dramatic, that's all. This powder is in fact cremated remains.
Professionally
cremated remains, just like the cremated remains we found inside the mattress on which Julie Benfield was burned. What's more, they have minute bone fragments in them, exactly similar to the bone fragments we found in the first sample. If I was to give you an educated guess, I'd say that both samples came from the same not-terribly-efficient crematorium.'

‘You're kidding me.'

‘No, I'm not kidding you. But then I'm still waiting on the DNA analysis from the first sample, if any DNA survived the cremation, and I'll have to send away
this
sample, too.'

‘Did you dry out
all
of that sludge?'

Jack nodded. ‘Total weight after drying was a fraction under a kilo. A smidgin more than we got from the mattress.'

‘So if we collected up all of it, or
most
of it, it could have been a child?'

‘I couldn't say, boss. That's an educated guess too far.'

‘If it
was
a child, though, that would mean that each of the two fires involved some cremated kid's remains.
Two
cremated kids' remains.'

‘That's what I mean about the world not making any kind of sense.'

Jack spent the rest of the afternoon testing every item of evidence that they had taken from Tilda Frieburg's bathroom, including her sponge, her soap, her towels and her bathrobe. Meanwhile, Ruth fed into her computer the dozens of digital photographs she had taken, and used them to recreate the progression of the fire from the moment it had started.

It was nearly five p.m. when Jack's phone rang. He picked it up and said, ‘Jack Morrow. Yes, it is. Yes. I see, thanks.' He hung up and then he turned to Ruth. ‘That was Aaron Scheinman. I was right. There
were
pieces of tooth in that sample, and he was able to extract DNA. Our mystery remains were those of a male, of Northern European origin. Aaron's emailing the full report.'

Ruth was staring intently at her computer screen. She had fed in all the photographic evidence, as well as the chemical clues – the carbon particles which had penetrated Tilda Frieburg's sponge, and the hydrogen chloride gas which had contaminated her towels and her bathrobe – but still the fire made no sense at all. There were mineral traces in the sludge from the bottom of the bath, but not magnesium or sodium, which she would have expected from an exothermic reaction – only cadmium and lead.

Jack came over and peered at the screen over her shoulder. ‘Well?' he asked her. ‘What do you think?'

‘I still can't work out how the fire first ignited. There were absolutely no accelerants involved. No chemicals that might have reacted with the bathwater. All we have are cadmium and lead, and since cadmium and lead are what you're left with when you burn PVC, and since we have cremated human remains here, my guess is that this was PVC varnish from a funeral casket.'

‘Which still doesn't explain what happened here. Or what made the fire so intense. Or why it burned for such a short time. Or why the heat was confined to the bathtub and almost no place else.'

Ruth said, ‘I'll run some simulations on the computer. If those don't tell us what happened here, we'll have to try some real-life tests with pig carcasses.'

Jack looked at her. ‘What if it was SHC? How do you simulate that?'

‘Jack, I've told you. I don't believe in SHC. People don't suddenly burst into flame for no reason at all. Especially if they're sitting in forty-five gallons of water.'

‘Just remember what Sherlock Holmes said about eliminating the impossible. When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'

‘SHC is impossible.'

‘Maybe. Maybe not. But right now I can't think of anything else that could have boiled and broiled Tilda Frieburg both at the same time.'

Mrs Lutz opened one eye. The other eye was so swollen that she couldn't see out of it at all. She was lying on her side on the floor of the bus, and Mr Kaminsky's face was so close to her that she couldn't focus on it.

She lay there, not moving, and listened. Somebody in the bus was sobbing softly. It sounded like Mrs Tiplady. Somebody else was groaning – Mr Kaminsky? But what Mrs Lutz was listening for was the laughing man, or the scowling man, or the man with no expression on his mask at all. She wasn't going to move if she suspected that all or any of those three was still around.

She felt bruised all over – her neck, her shoulders, her back, her knees. Her left wrist was tucked up under her ribs like a broken bird's wing, and it hurt so much that she was sure that it was fractured. She also felt a deep throbbing between her legs, where they had violated her, all three of those men.

Five minutes went by. She heard thunder booming in the distance, and the rain was still pattering on the roof of the bus, but apart from the sobbing and the groaning she heard nothing else. Maybe they had finally gone, those terrible monsters. To Mrs Lutz, as she lay there, the most appalling aspect of what they had done to her, and all of her fellow passengers, was that there seemed to have been no reason for it. It had been cruelty for its own sake. She couldn't even believe that they had taken any pleasure out of penetrating her, a skinny seventy-seven-year-old woman with sagging breasts and withered thighs.

She raised her head a little, and tried to shift her elbow so that she could sit up. But the bones in her wrist crunched audibly, and the pain that lanced up her arm was so intense that she cried out loud, a self-pitying wail that sounded more like a wounded animal than a woman.

She lay back, quivering. She couldn't do it. She couldn't move. All she could hope for was that some passer-by would see the Spirit of Kokomo bus standing under the trees in the park and call for the emergency services.

She whispered a prayer that she used to recite when she was a little girl. ‘
Dear Jesus, as you pass along, walking through the adoring throng, please turn your head and see my tears, please hold me close and soothe my fears . . .
'

It was then, though, that another voice joined in. A young boy's voice, a little hoarse but still unbroken.

‘. . .
oh dear Lord
Jesus, give me light, and save me from the fearful night
.'

Mrs Lutz raised her head again. ‘Who's that?' she quavered. ‘Who's there? Haven't you hurt us and mocked us enough?'

There was a moment's silence. Then somebody stepped into her line of vision – a boy in faded red jeans, with scuffed brown sneakers. She managed to raise her head a little further, and now she could see his face. He looked very pale, with tousled black hair and large brown eyes. He was frowning.

‘Grandma?' he said, kneeling down beside her and gently touching her shoulder. ‘Grandma, what's happened?'

‘Son, listen to me,' said Mrs Lutz. ‘You need to go find us some help.'

‘But what happened, Grandma? Are you hurt?'

‘Please . . . all I need you to do is find us some help. Go outside, find a grown-up. Find anybody. Tell them we need the police and an ambulance. You know where this is, don't you? Bon Air Park, near the pavilion. Tell them it's very urgent. Tell them some people have been killed.'

But the boy stayed where he was, stroking her shoulder. ‘Don't worry, Grandma. I'll look after you. Whatever they did to you, I won't let them do it again.'

‘Please,' said Mrs Lutz. ‘Go find some help. Please do it now. Please.'

‘It's all right, Grandma. Remember that time when you fell down the steps and broke your hip? Remember I made you those brownies? You liked my brownies, didn't you, Grandma? You said they tasted like the angels had baked them, in God's own kitchen.'

Mrs Lutz took three deep breaths to steady herself. Then she said, ‘What's your name, boy?'

The boy stared at her, as if he didn't understand what she meant. ‘They shouldna took you away, Grandma. I won't let them do it again.'

‘Listen,' said Mrs Lutz. ‘I am not your grandma. I am just an old woman who has been attacked by some very evil men, and I've been very badly hurt. All of these old people on this bus have been badly hurt, too. At least two of them are dead, do you understand that? They're dead, they've been murdered, and everybody else needs urgent medical attention, right now.'

‘They shouldn't have taken you away, Grandma. Nothing bad woulda happened if they hadn't took you away.'

For the love of God, thought Mrs Lutz. Of all the people who could have found us on this bus, it had to be some kid with an IQ of less than fifty.

‘
Go find help
!' she shouted at him, even though her ribcage was bruised and the pain when she shouted was almost unbearable. ‘
Go find somebody to help us
!
Don't you
understand me
?'

Mrs Tiplady let out a cry. She must have heard them talking and was calling out for help. Mr Kaminsky groaned, and Mr Thorson gave a hideous cackle from the stoma in his throat.

The boy smiled and started to stroke Mrs Lutz's hair. ‘You're beautiful, Grandma. You always said you loved me, didn't you? They shouldna took you away. I'll look after you, I promise.
I
won't send you away.'

Mrs Lutz let her head sink back on to the floor. She felt utterly defeated.

‘
Son
,' she whispered. ‘
Listen to me, son
.'

The boy bent his head close, still smiling at her. She looked into his eyes but she couldn't understand what she saw there. Was he really a retard? Or was he simply playing with her? Maybe the three masked men had brought him here for the sole purpose of giving them false hope. Maybe this was just another part of some sadistic and humiliating joke, some three-act torture.

‘
Son
,' she repeated.

‘What is it, Grandma?'

She took another deep breath, and then she said, ‘Go get some help, son. Do it now.'

The boy ignored her. Instead he lay down on the floor of the bus right next to her, and put his arm around her. ‘I'll help you, Grandma. I'm the only help you need. I love you, Grandma. I always will.'

‘Go get some help,' she insisted. ‘Go get some help.' Then she shrilled at him again: ‘
Go get some fucking help
!'

‘You're so
cold
, Grandma,' the boy told her. ‘I can warm you up.'

Mrs Lutz stared at him, helplessly and hopelessly. Maybe he was deaf. Maybe he simply hadn't understood her – or worse still, maybe he hadn't
wanted
to understand her.