Nothing again.
"Okay, we go up."
The second floor looked as though it had just been cleaned for the benefit of company. Gone were the bits of dust Cash had spotted during his previous visit. Hank looked puzzled. Cash's fear began welling up anew. It was too late. Way too late for John…
"Third floor now. Be damned careful."
Cash began shaking. Once again he crouched in a dark and dusty corner while Death stalked him across a cruel French December morning…
He didn't know he had fired till Hank grabbed the shotgun. "What the fuck's the matter with you?"
Feet pounded up the stairs.
Smith shoved past, hurtled into the room ahead, yanked curtains aside. "Ah, shit. A cat. You of fed a goddamned cat, Norm."
Old Tom, Miss Groloch's sidekick, was splattered all over the bronze-flowered wallpaper.
Cash threw up.
What else could he do to screw up?
"Hey, you guys," Beth called from below. "You all right? Come on down."
"What're you doing in here?" Railsback demanded. "Get back down there and see if anybody heard that shot."
"We've got an emergency call."
"Nothing in the attic," Tucholski reported. "Looks like she's cleared out. Took the body with her."
"We'd better get out too. Hope nobody's noticed us yet."
That would be too good to be true, Cash thought.
"What is it, Beth?" Railsback demanded.
"Dispatcher called. They want us at that fire. They turned up some bodies, and the fire department says it looks like arson."
"Bodies?" Cash asked, finally calm enough to talk and think. "Doc Smiley lived by himself. Didn't have any relatives or anything."
"Another one?" Smith asked.
"Another what?"
"Old loner."
"Naw. This guy was weird, but he was okay. A doctor.
Refugee. Came over from Europe someplace when the Russians took over… Hmmm."
"What is it?" Railsback asked.
"Just wondering if there is a connection. The old lady disappears just when Smiley's house burns down… Nan, couldn't be. That's too far out. She was a lot older than him. Been here eighty years longer…"
"Worry about it later. Let's show over there before somebody starts wondering what we're up to. Hey, Dad. Come here a minute." He had everyone turn in their raid gear. "Put that stuff in Tucholski's car, then move it around front. Then keep an eye on the place till we get back. Let's go, you guys. We might as well walk. We won't get a parking place much closer."
He was right. The fire-chasers had parked up everything from Russell on south.
It was bad.
The firemen were still hosing the rubble to cool it. Though most of the brickwork remained standing, the house was a complete loss.
The battalion chief led them around to a basement entrance his men had wrecked. "In there."
Half the wooden parts of the structure had collapsed into the basement, carrying with them furnishings from all three floors. Charred floor joists and wall studs lay tangled like giant pickup sticks. Smoke and steam still rose, and the bricks still held a lot of heat. A man couldn't spend much time close enough to look inside.
There had been cities in Germany and France that had looked like this.
Had Cash not thrown up already, he would have now. Smith did. Iron-gut Tucholski, who claimed to have seen it all, gagged. Hank refused to let Beth close enough to see.
Parts of two bodies, burned till little but steaming skeletons remained, protruded from beneath the wreckage. One seemed to be that of a child.
"Smell's enough to gag a maggot," Hank observed. He held a wet handerchief over his face. To the battalion chief, "How long before you can start digging them out?"
"Going to be a couple hours before we're sure it's cool enough, and that it won't flare up again. And we'll have to scare up a crane… Jesus, it's going to be a job. Somebody really torched it. Whole place must've been soaked down with gas, it went up so fast. We're just lucky this was a corner lot and the one next door was vacant."
"You sure it was arson?"
"Positive. Smell the gas?"
Railsback sniffed. So did Cash. Both wrinkled their noses. The stench of burnt flesh seemed to override all other odors. "Must take a trained sniffer," Cash gasped.
A creak and groan came from above. A half-dozen rafters plunged into the basement, kicking up a cloud of ash.
"Back!" someone shouted. "Get back! The whole damned thing's going."
He was wrong. It was just a chimney, but the crash was enough to scatter the crowd. Hose teams rushed to soak live coals exposed by the falling bricks.
"Better keep your people back, Lieutenant," said the battalion chief. "The whole thing might collapse. Or we might not have the natural gas all the way off… Wish the tourists would go home."
Cash thought they were well behaved. Awe seemed to have held all but the boldest at a safe distance. The youngsters were the troublesome ones.
He and the other officers formed a little skirmish line clique before the ruin, staying out of the fire department's way, asking neighbors their opinions about what had happened. More police, hospital, and civil defense types kept showing up. The arson squad descended like a swarm of locusts.
Ten o'clock came. Railsback and Cash were still there. Annie, Tran, and Tran's sons had done yeoman service running coffee and sandwiches. Tran had even pitched in to help excavate the bodies. The work didn't seem to bother him. Plenty of practice, Cash supposed.
There were four of them. Not enough remained to tell much just by looking, but they seemed, by size, to have been young.
"You know," said Railsback, "I'll bet they're the ones who started it. I been talking to people. They say this Smiley was always having trouble with kids. They might've been going to show him with a little fire that got out of control and trapped them."
"Yeah? Where's all the mothers crying, 'Oh my baby?' The only trouble he had was kids using his yard for a shortcut."
"What kind of guy was he?" Hank asked, watching the last plastic bag disappear into the last ambulance.