Fire Spirit (18 page)

‘We need help,' she intoned. ‘We need help.'

‘You're cold,' he repeated. ‘But you don't have to be cold, ever again.'

He clung on to her tighter and tighter, so that she felt as if she were being crushed.

‘Stop!' she gasped. ‘Stop, you're hurting me! Oh God, you're hurting me!
Stop
!'

But then the boy detonated into flames – instantly, as if he had been doused in gasoline and set alight. He stared straight into Mrs Lutz's face, his eyes wide open, and he screamed at her in agony and terror.

Mrs Lutz screamed, too. Bruised and broken as she was, she struggled and kicked to get herself free, and she managed to roll over on to her back. But the blazing boy was holding on to her much too tight, and now he was burning so fiercely that her skin began to shrivel. Her hair caught alight, and turned from a white pompadour to a high plume of orange flame, as if she were a candle.

Mrs Lutz's face reddened, and then blackened. She began to shudder, her bare heels hammering on the floor of the bus as the fire seared her nerve-endings. But as her nerve-endings were burned away and she lost all sensation, she stopped shuddering, and both of her arms slowly rose up, to embrace the burning boy as if he really were her grandson, and both of them had been baked together in God's own kitchen.

She thought,
this doesn't hurt any more. Nothing will ever hurt
me any more. I'm so happy
. She saw her late husband's face, turning toward her as they walked together beside Mississinewa Lake, with the sun shining so brightly off the water that she was dazzled. She said, ‘
Ted,
' or at least she thought she said it. Then she died.

By now, however, the bus seats next to them had caught fire, too. Within less than a minute, the interior of the bus was filling up with toxic black smoke, and the three passengers who were left conscious and alive began to cough and retch. Mr Thorson managed to stand up and beat at the window five or six times with the heel of his shoe, but he was far too weak to break the glass, and he collapsed, trying to cover his stoma with his hand so that he wouldn't breathe in smoke through his throat.

Mr Kaminsky managed to crawl on his elbows all the way along the aisle to the front door of the bus, but it was tightly closed and he had no idea how to open it. He lay with his head hanging down in the stairwell until he, too, succumbed to the smoke.

Now the fire raged hotter and hotter, until the entire bus was blazing like a funeral pyre. Flames leaped twenty feet up into the branches of the trees, and the rain crackled like sparklers on the Fourth of July. The burning bus was first seen by a dog-walker, who called the Fire Department on his cellphone while his brown spaniel stood and stared at the fire, transfixed, with the flames dancing in his eyes.

TWELVE

C
raig tapped his knife on his wine-glass and said, ‘Hush up, everybody! I have an announcement to make.'

They were sitting at the kitchen table, eating a supper of peanut-crusted chicken with creamed potatoes and collard greens. Ruth had decided that it was time they all ate supper together, even though Jeff had grumbled that he had arranged to go out bowling with his friend Lennie, and Amelia wanted to eat alone in her room, finishing another plaintive song about a boy who didn't know that it was going to rain and that his girlfriend had left him for ever.

Ruth wanted her family close to her because she could feel something in the air, something
wrong
– and it was a feeling she couldn't shake off. It was partly the inexplicable nature of the fires that she had been investigating. She couldn't stop thinking about them – how they could have started, how they could have burned so fiercely and yet caused so little peripheral damage. But it was also Ammy's persistent anxiety about ‘people coming through from underneath,' and the repeated appearance of the Creepy Kid, although she couldn't understand why one dejected-looking boy should disturb her so much.

Craig tapped his glass again. ‘Shush, will you, and listen up!'

‘Don't tell me,' said Jeff. ‘We've gone bankrupt and we have to go live in the Sycamore Stump.'

Even Craig couldn't help himself from smiling. The Sycamore Stump was the remains of a hollowed-out tree, supposedly more than one-and-a-half thousand years old, which was preserved as a tourist attraction in Highland Park.

‘No,' he said. ‘It's much better news than that. For all of us – but especially for you, Jeff. This morning, ladies and gentleman, I signed a contract to fit eight new kitchens out at Logansport.'

‘Sweetheart, that's
wonderful
news,' said Ruth. ‘Maybe things are starting to look up at last.'

‘Well, let's hope so. Eight kitchens is only eight kitchens, but I guess it's better than no kitchens at all. But the main point is, I was talking to Gus Probert, the project manager, and I told him about your accident, Jeff.'

‘Great. I bet you both laughed your asses off.'

‘I can't lie to you – we did, as a matter of fact. But when we stopped laughing, he said that he was just about to trade in his wife's car, and would I be interested if he threw it in as part of the kitchen-fitting contract. Seems like he can get some kind of a tax break if he does.'

Ruth passed the basket of cornbread across to Amelia. ‘You mean, he'll give you the car as part of the deal?'

‘That's right. He'll write it off as transportation expenses, something like that.'

‘What kind of a car is it?' asked Jeff, suspiciously. ‘Not some girly Toyota?'

‘No . . . it's a 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix SE, white. Three-point-one-liter V6. Great condition, he says, for a car that's over ten years old, and only seventy-three thousand miles on the odometer.'

Jeff tossed the hair out of his eyes. ‘What? And I can have it?'

‘If you want it, sure.'

‘If I
want
it? Are you
kidding
me? When?'

‘I can go pick it up for you tomorrow evening.'

Jeff didn't know what to say. He looked from Craig to Ruth and back again and all he could do was shake his head in happy disbelief.

Amelia pulled one of her airy, who-cares faces and said, ‘So long as you don't go driving
this
car into a lake.'

After supper, when they were clearing the table and stacking the dishwasher, Ruth said, ‘You sure cheered somebody up tonight.'

‘Hey,' said Craig, holding her close and kissing her forehead, ‘what are dads for?'

‘Well, you cheered me up, too. I am
so
pleased about that contract at Logansport.'

‘That's what
husbands
are for.'

‘What about lovers? What are they for?'

Craig kissed her again. ‘Sometimes it seems like nothing is ever going to go right. You know what I mean? Sometimes you feel like you're stuck down the bottom of a well like that girl in
The Ring
and you're never going to be able to climb out of it. But I decided, that's it, I'm going to start climbing, no matter how difficult it is. I have you, and I have Jeff, and I have Ammy, and I'm never going to give up. Ever.'

Ruth reached up and touched the scar on his cheek. His eyes were as gray as rain clouds. ‘I think fate was smiling on me when I met you,' she said. ‘You mean everything to me, you know that?'

‘How about another glass of wine?' he asked her. ‘Maybe we could take it up to bed and watch TV. Or something.'

‘Sure. “Or something” sounds highly tempting.'

While Ruth covered the remains of the chicken with Saran wrap and put it in the fridge, Craig opened a bottle of Zinfandel and poured out two large glasses. They were about to switch off the lights when Jeff came into the kitchen, already shrugging on his oversized gray windbreaker.

‘OK if I go round to Lennie's? I just got to tell him all about my new ride.'

‘Can't you phone him? Or text him? It's raining buckets out there.'

‘No way. I need to see his jaw drop when I tell him it's a Grand Prix.'

Ruth said, ‘All right. So long as you're back by eleven.' She couldn't help being reminded of what Jack had said that afternoon about the cremated remains in Tilda Frieburg's bathtub.
I wanted to see your face in live action when I told you.

Jeff opened the front door, and as he did so a strong gust of wind blew into the hallway, almost as if a malevolent spirit had swept into the house. Then he slammed it shut, and he was gone, and the house was quiet again, except for Ammy singing upstairs in her room.

Craig said, ‘Come on. Let's go upstairs.'

Ruth sat down in front of her dressing-table, staring at herself. She felt tired, but Craig's words had cheered her up, and renewed her determination.
I'm going to start climbing, no matter how
difficult it is
. And now that he had managed to find more work, she felt that their life might come back together again, the way it used to be.

She was still sitting there, wiping off her eye make-up, when the phone warbled. Craig answered it, and said, ‘Yes? Oh. OK, Jack. Sure.' He came into the dressing-room wearing only his shirt and his socks and handed the phone over to Ruth. ‘It's Jack Morrow.'

‘Jack?' said Ruth. ‘What's happening?'

From the blustery noise in the background, she could tell that Jack was outdoors.

She could also hear the throbbing of diesel engines, and people shouting.

‘Sorry to interrupt your evening, boss. There's been a bad one in Bon Air Park. A bus full of seniors has burnt right out. Multiple fatalities.'

Ruth closed her eyes for a moment. ‘OK, Jack. Give me fifteen minutes.'

‘Take as long as you like, boss. These people aren't going anyplace.'

When she arrived at Bon Air Park, she found it crowded with police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, Fire Department support vehicles, two panel vans from the Howard County coroner's department, TV trucks, press cars, and more than a hundred police, firefighters, paramedics, CSIs, reporters, cameramen and onlookers.

Smoke was still swirling between the trees, even though it was raining harder than ever. The raindrops sparkled red and blue in the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles, so that from a distance the crime scene looked like a funfair. Ruth parked on North Jay Street and walked across the wet grass, with Tyson loping close to heel.

She found Jack waiting for her by the police tape, in a glistening khaki waterproof, with only his nose protruding from his hood, so that he looked like some elvish character from
Lord of the Rings
. Detective Ron Magruder and two other detectives were there, too, shoulders hunched, all looking wet and miserable.

‘Where's Bob?' asked Ruth.

‘On his way here now. He was in Muncie, for a funeral.'

‘Well, he's not the only one,' said Detective Magruder. ‘So far as we can tell, we have at least six cadavers here, probably more.'

Ruth ducked under the police tape and walked up to the burned-out bus, followed by Jack and Detective Magruder. Tyson lifted his nose and started to sniff, but Ruth said, ‘Stay.'

The blackened carcass of the bus had been draped in gray tarpaulins. Heavy rain could wash away critical evidence in a matter of minutes, especially smoke and ash and accelerant, and it could distort the patterns of carbon residue which were essential to understanding how a fire had spread. Jack said, ‘The cops are bringing a forensic tent. Once they've done that, we'll be able to get in there for a really thorough check.'

Although it was partly covered, Ruth could see that the bus had been completely incinerated. Its tires were charred, right through to the reinforced steel belting, and the gas tank had exploded, so that the rear body-panel had been blown into a grotesque sculpture, like a shrieking woman flinging her arms above her head.

Detective Magruder said, ‘This was the Spirit of Kokomo free bus service for seniors, on a regular run. I've sent an officer to City Hall to locate the list of reservations. That should give us all of the names and addresses of the passengers, as well as the route, so we can check who got picked up before the bus drove into the park, and who was lucky enough not to.'

‘Can I take a look inside?' asked Ruth.

‘Sure,' said Detective Magruder. He dragged over an aluminum stepladder and propped it up against the side of the bus. Then he dragged aside one corner of the tarpaulin, so that Ruth could climb up the ladder and shine her flashlight into the interior of the bus.

If the crime scene looked like a funfair, the inside of the bus was its ghost train. Four blackened figures were tilted at various angles in seats that had been burned right through to the springs. All four of them had their arms lifted like performing monkeys, and all four of them were grinning at Ruth as if they were delighted to see her, even though they were dead. Ruth didn't believe in an afterlife, not as fervently as Craig, anyhow, but she sometimes wondered if the dead took comfort in their cadavers being found, and their remains being treated with reverence. She had once come across the papery, mummified remains of a three-year-old girl. She had been hidden in a tiny closet under the stairs of a house near Houston Park, and her body had only been discovered when the house had burned down to first-floor level. Maybe she had been playing hide-and-go-seek, years and years ago, and nobody had ever found her. Ruth had thought how lonely she must have been, even after she had died of dehydration.

Jack said, ‘You probably can't see them, but there are three or maybe four more victims on the floor of the bus. They've all been burned to pretty much the same degree, CGS level two. It looks as if the fire might have started in the second or third row of seats, that's where the damage to the floor and the upholstery is the most intense.'