Breathing hard with sweat dripping from his brow, Garcia materialized at her side. “Front door wouldn’t give an inch. Fire’s coming out of all the first-floor windows facing the street.”
Bernadette slammed the pedestal against the door twice, with no results. “Then Luke is dead.”
Garcia dragged his arm over his forehead. “He’s downstairs for sure?”
Panting, Bernadette dropped her battering ram. “He came out of the house to get the paper before the fire started.”
“Shit. Did you see him reading it?”
“Yeah. It pissed him off. Why?”
“Nothing,” Garcia said. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Matthew is upstairs,” she said.
“Rigs are coming up the block.”
Bernadette bent over to retrieve the concrete column. “Matt will fry before they get here.”
“Forget that thing.” Garcia positioned himself in front of the door, cranked his foot back, and brought it down next to the busted lock. The door didn’t give. “Son-of-a-bitch!”
Bernadette heard screaming overhead and then two cracks, one immediately after the other. She darted into the yard and looked up at the window. Fire was pouring out of the hole. She retrieved the battering ram and ran to Garcia with it. “Did you hear that?”
“I heard!”
She passed the concrete column over to him and pointed to a first-floor window. “Do it!”
Running and carrying the column like a pole-vaulter, Garcia charged up to the window and released the pedestal. It sailed through the glass, and the flames instantly shot out. “Crap!” spat Garcia.
Bernadette looked up at the second floor. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she yelled to the broken window, “Matt!”
Garcia said, “Maybe he made it downstairs.”
“He’s dead. They’re both dead.” Bernadette turned away from the house and suddenly noticed the alley was filled with people. A man on a motorcycle. Two teenagers on bikes. An old lady wearing a down coat over her robe and slippers. A couple of construction workers. Where had they all come from? It wasn’t even dawn. Why hadn’t they tried to help? They were all wide-eyed and silent, staring across the fence at the burning house as if it were a horror movie. She marched over to the back fence and waved her arms around. “Clear out! There’s nothing to see! Go on! Get away from here!”
The crowd didn’t budge, its collective attention torn between the screaming blonde and the burning house.
Bernadette picked a rock off the ground and started to crank her arm back. Garcia came up behind her and took the rock out of her fist. “Are you nuts?”
“They’re acting like it’s a freak show!”
“Forget them!”
She looked past him at the mansion. Flames were shooting out of every window. “How could it spread so fast?”
Garcia ran a hand through his hair. “It’s an old house.”
“Filled with old stuff,” she added. The brothers’ inheritance had made a fine funeral pyre.
From the street, a ribbon of water arced onto the roof. Garcia put his hand on her shoulder. “We can pull back.”
Her eyes traveled to the window where she’d last seen Matthew VonHader alive. “He was afraid to jump. It wasn’t even that far.”
“Come on,” said Garcia, steering her away by the elbow.
They started walking together along the side of the house. “This is unbelievable,” she said. “It started right before you got here. I was standing on the porch, and I smelled smoke.”
“The doc didn’t notice you when he came out for the paper?”
“I hid behind some of the junk on the porch. I didn’t know why you sent me here, and you told me to wait.”
“Now I wish I hadn’t,” he said glumly.
“You think he would have let me in? Poured me a cup of coffee?”
“No. Probably not.”
They moved to the front of the house, navigating around hoses and men. The firefighters had busted down the front door, but flames were shooting out and keeping them back. Garcia flashed his ID to a burly fire captain. The man thumbed over his shoulder at the house. “Any idea how many we got inside?”
“Two adult males, one of them with a gun. He may already have finished his brother and himself. We don’t know for sure.”
“Dandy,” said the captain, leaving them and joining his crew in front of the house.
The two agents stood off to the side. More onlookers lined up along the sidewalk across the street. Two more police squads and another fire truck were pulling up. A television crew was setting up a shot from a neighbor’s front yard across the street.
With the back of her hand, she wiped the perspiration off her forehead. “Why did he do this?”
“The fact that they were jailed made it into the late edition of the news,” Garcia said as he stared up at the engulfed house. “Front page. Shrink and his brother questioned in the death of disabled father. Not a long piece. Just enough.”
“How’d the paper get the story so quick? Who dropped the dime to the reporters?”
Garcia answered both questions with a single shrug.
“Did it include the sick family background?” she asked.
“No, but he saw it coming. The water torture. Abusive parents. All of it would have been laid out. Intimate, embarrassing, private stuff.” He paused. “At the same time, I’ll bet money that the media misses the public circus at the tower.”
“What makes a good news story?”
“This does.”
“Why is that?”
“Neat pictures,” he said as flames shot through the roof.
For twenty minutes, they stood and watched wordlessly while firefighters ran back and forth with their hoses and axes. The sun hadn’t yet come up, but the entire block was bathed in light, an unearthly red glow cast by the blaze and the emergency vehicles.
“Do you believe in hell?” she asked, her eyes glued to the frantic ballet.
“Yeah, I do,” he said.
“So do I,” she said.
Chapter 43
TWO BODIES WERE carried out of the smoking shell. The agents intercepted the twin gurneys as they were being wheeled to the Ramsey County medical examiner’s hearse parked on the street. Garcia whipped out his badge and showed it to the ME investigator. “Can we have a last look-see?”
“Sure thing.” The investigator nodded to the men at the head of the gurneys. They positioned themselves at the top of the carts, their backs blocking the view of the photographers and nosy neighbors. Each man reached down and slowly unzipped his bag partway.
Bernadette and Garcia looked from one sooty corpse to the other. Luke had put a bullet through his own temple, but not before nailing Matthew in the chest. The elder brother had looked after his younger sibling to the end.
“We’re good,” Garcia told the gurney crew. “One of our people will meet you over at the lab for the autopsy.”
“You know about the letter?” asked the ME investigator.
“CSI showed us,” said Bernadette.
While his men zipped the bags up over the bodies, the ME investigator took out his notebook and clicked his pen. “Can you help us out on locating next of kin?”
“My agent tells me the doctor’s spouse and children are at their Scottsdale place,” said Garcia. “Elizabeth is the wife’s name.”
“Lucky for them they weren’t home,” said the investigator, scribbling. He shoved the pad and pen back into his jacket. “Wasn’t the bureau involved in a bad deal last night, too? Some weird-ass business with a fella getting shot and then going off that tower on the West Side? I didn’t get the call, but I heard one of your agents …” His voice trailed off as he got a good look at Bernadette’s eyes.