“What are you, some kind of a martyr? I burn, you burn. You think any of these people are worth it?”
“You value your life.”
“I was created. I came out of the whiteness. The same way you did. We were like Arctic explorers, lost in the snow, and then one day we just appeared.”
Red Mask coughed. It was the first sign of how much physical strain he was under. “You wouldn’t throw your life away, would you? Just to punish me?”
Frank flicked the lighter and a long blue flame curved out of it.
Molly called, “Frank! Be careful! Frank — remember that you’re only — ”
But Frank gradually forced his hand around until the flame was playing directly on Red Mask’s cheek. Red Mask screamed, and thrashed, and kicked his legs, but Frank kept the flame concentrated on his face. His red skin crinkled like cellophane, and Sissy could hear it crackle.
“Get that off me! Get that off me!”
Red Mask managed to yank his left arm free and immediately started to stab at Frank’s shoulder and sides, screaming all the time. But it was then that his face burst into flame, and then his shoulders, and then his arms.
“Frank!” screamed Sissy. “Oh my God! Frank!”
Frank had caught alight, too. His hair was burning, and within seconds the fire had spread down his back, as if he were wearing a cloak made of waving flames.
Frank and Red Mask then screamed at each other in a terrible chorus of hatred and pain. Then they both exploded. A huge orange fireball rolled across the office, and it was them, rolling over and over. They collided with a central pillar and then they stopped, still blazing so fiercely that Sissy had to raise her hand in front of her face to prevent her cheek from being scorched.
There was a second explosion, and then the whole office was filled with a whirlwind of white ash, which spun around and around and filled the air from floor to ceiling. The whirlwind was furious, but almost silent, and after less than a minute it gradually began to die down.
Sissy and Molly and Trevor stood amongst the softly settling ash. It reminded Sissy of the first Christmas she had spent alone after Frank had been killed. She had walked out into the yard and the snow was falling.
“You did it to me again, Frank,” she whispered. She couldn’t stop her eyes from filling up with tears.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Roses are Red
Trevor knelt down beside Officer Gillow. The policeman was groaning and coughing, but he was still alive. Sissy knelt down beside him, too, and took hold of his hand, sticky fingered with blood.
“What’s your name, Officer?”
“Herbert, ma’am, but everybody calls me Duke.”
“Well, you’re going to be okay, Duke. I’m a psychic and I can feel it. You’re going to recover, I promise you.”
“You don’t have to lie to me, ma’am.”
“I wouldn’t, and I’m not. But after you’ve gotten yourself well, you’re going to retire from the police department so that you can run your own business. A bakery, maybe, or a restaurant. You’re going to get married and you’re going to have at least five children, all girls.”
Officer Gillow blinked up at her, his face speckled with ash. “Five girls?” he asked her, and a bubble of blood popped between his lips. “Why don’t you just let me die?”
Molly came back from the other side of the office.
“Poor Deputy’s dead.”
Sissy stood up and took hold of her hand and squeezed it. “Deputy did us proud. And remember, he was only made of paint and paper.”
She didn’t have to add that Red Mask and Frank were only made of paint and paper, too. Their ashes were still tumbling across the carpet.
“Only Deputy could have picked up Red Mask’s scent,” she said. “And only Frank could have burned him. Look how many times Red Mask was shot, and it didn’t affect him one bit.”
“We still have another Red Mask to find,” Molly reminded her. “And the police still don’t have any leads at all on the real Red Mask.”
“Well — finding the real one, that’s up to them,” said Sissy. “We can only find the painted ones.”
They heard pattering footsteps and clattering noises from the stairwell, and somebody shouting, “Breaching ram! Bring up that breaching ram!”
“Do you hear that, Duke?” Sissy told Officer Gillow. “Your buddies are coming to get you. You’ll soon be fixed up.”
A loud banging came from the stairwell doors, and then they heard the locks break open. Trevor came up to Sissy and laid his hand on her shoulder. “How are we going to explain this, Momma?”
“All we can do is tell the truth. Whether they believe us or not, that’s up to them.”
“I just want to say that — Everything I used to say about your psychic stuff — ”
Sissy reached up and patted his hand. “You don’t have to say a word. Even I find this hard to believe, and me, I’ve had conversations with real live dead people. It’s like a dream, isn’t it? Your father, and everything. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and I’ll be back in my bed in Connecticut.”
A half dozen police officers and two young paramedics came weaving their way between the cubicles. The paramedics immediately started work on Officer Gillow, cutting off his shirt, while two of the police officers came up to Sissy and Molly and Trevor. One of the officers was big bellied, with a brush mustache. The other was round faced with flaming red cheeks and looked far too young to be a cop.
“What the hell happened here?” asked Brush Mustache.
Before anybody else could answer, Sissy said, “We were looking for forensic evidence.”
“You were looking for forensic evidence?”
“That’s right. We were checking this office for latent scents when the suspect appeared without any warning and attacked Officer Gillow.”
“You were looking for forensic evidence?” Brush Mustache repeated. “You?”
“Well, not just me. Me and my son and my daughter-in-law.”
“It was authorized by Lieutenant Booker and Detective Bellman,” Molly put in. “I’m an accredited CPD sketch artist, and my motherin-law. she has special forensic expertise.”
The officer turned to Molly, in her flowery blue gypsy blouse and her tight designer jeans. Then he looked Sissy up and down — a seventy-one-year-old woman with wild hair and silver bangles and a black and silver dress with moons and stars on it.
“Special forensic expertise?” he said. “I’ll bet.”
“We had a scenting dog with us,” Trevor explained. “He tracked Red Mask to that closet. Officer Gillow kicked down the door and all hell broke loose.”
“That the dog there?”
Trevor nodded. “Red Mask stabbed him to death, and then he went for Officer Gillow. He was like a crazy person. A lunatic.”
The officers looked around the ash-strewn office. “So where is he now? This Red Mask character?”
“He disappeared,” said Sissy, promptly.
“Okay — which way did he go?”
“I couldn’t exactly say. There was so much confusion, you know. Stabbing, shouting. It was like he vanished into thin air.”
“Did you see which way he went?” Brush Mustache asked Trevor, as if Trevor was his last hope of getting a sane answer.
“I, um. No. Not really.”
“So what’s all this fire damage, all this ash?”
“Some paper caught light, that’s all. It got a little out of hand.”
“Some paper caught light? I see. How did that happen?”
“Listen,” said Sissy. “Is Detective Bellman with you?”