It was Westlake who had interrupted his deputy’s pointless snivelling. The strength of his hate and curiosity had given him back a little pride.
‘Who are you, scumbag?’
The young man who had been a soldier looked at him for a moment in silence.
The planes will come from that direction …
Then he said his name.
The sheriff opened his eyes wide.
‘That isn’t possible. You’re dead.’
He clicked the Zippo. The two men stared at the flame in terror.
He smiled, and for once was pleased that his smile was a grimace. ‘No, you sons of bitches. You’re dead.’
He opened his hand more than necessary and let the Zippo fall to the floor. He didn’t know how long the fall of the lighter would last for the two men. But he knew from experience how long such a short journey could be.
No thunder, for them.
Only the metallic noise of the Zippo hitting the floor. Then a hot bright whoosh, followed by a tongue of flame that advanced on them.
He stood listening to them scream and watching them squirm and burn until the smell of roasting flesh spread through the room. He breathed it in, savouring the fact that this time the flesh wasn’t his.
Then he opened the door and went out on the street. He started walking, leaving the house behind him, the screams accompanying him like a blessing as he moved away.
Soon afterwards, when the screams stopped, he knew that the captivity of Sheriff Duane Westlake and his deputy Will Farland was over.
Too Many Years Later
CHAPTER 7
Jeremy Cortese watched the dark-coloured BMW move away, and wished it would blow up. He was sure that, apart from the driver, none of the people inside would be much of a loss to the world.
‘Go fuck yourselves, assholes.’
Having got that off his chest, he went back into one of the two huts on the site. Actually, they weren’t so much huts as sheet-metal boxes mounted on wheels and put there as a barrier to mark off the work area.
He resisted the temptation to light a cigarette.
The technical meeting that had just ended had upset him, aggravating the bad mood that had been dogging him since the beginning of the day.
The previous evening, he had gone to Madison Square Garden to see the Knicks go belly-up, losing to the Dallas Mavericks. He had come out feeling bitter, as he always did – leading him to wonder why he still insisted on going to games.
That old feeling of being part of a crowd, celebrating a shared passion, just wasn’t there any more. Whether his team won or lost, he always returned home thinking the same thing.
And alone.
Going in search of memories is never an easy matter. Whatever you dig up, it never really works. You can’t fully recapture the good memories, and you can’t kill the bad ones.
But he kept going back, feeding that instinct for self-harm that every human being, to a greater or lesser degree, carries within himself.
Several times during the game he had looked around at the bleachers until he gradually lost interest in what was happening in the game.
With a sad tub of popcorn in his hands, he had seen fathers and sons overjoyed at a slam dunk from Irons or a three-pointer by Jones and screaming in chorus with the rest of the fans, ‘Defence! Defence! Defence!’ when the other team attacked.
He had done exactly the same in the days when he went to games with his sons and felt that he meant something in their lives. But that had turned out to be an illusion. The truth was, they meant something in his.
When one of the Knicks had put in a three, he, too, had risen to his feet by sheer force of habit, rejoicing with a crowd of perfect strangers and using it as an opportunity to repress the tears rising to his eyes.
Then he had sat down again. On his right was an empty seat and on his left a boy and a girl with eyes for nobody but each other, clearly wondering why they were here instead of in bed, having a lot more fun.
When he’d come here with his sons, he’d always sat between them. John, the younger of the two, usually sat on his right and seemed equally interested in the game and the comings and goings of the people selling drinks, candy floss and all kinds of food. Jeremy had often compared him to a furnace that could burn hot dog and popcorn the way an old steam locomotive burned coal. More than once he had thought that the boy wasn’t really interested in basketball and the real reason he liked going to the stadium was his father’s generosity when they were there.
Sam, the older one, who was more like him, both physically and in character, and would soon be taller than him, was really fascinated by the game. Although they had never talked about it, he knew that his dream was to be a star of the NBA. Unfortunately, Jeremy was convinced it would remain a dream and nothing more. Sam had inherited his big bones and the kind of build that with time would tend to spread outwards rather than upwards, even though he was in the school team and regularly beat his father when they shot hoops behind the house.
Mortifying as that was, his pride as a parent always made Jeremy happy to be humiliated like that.
Then the things that had happened had happened. Actually, he didn’t feel any sense of guilt, and didn’t see why he should.
It had simply been a piece of demolition.
He and his wife Jenny had found themselves talking less and less and arguing more and more. Then the arguments had ended and only silence had remained. Without any real reason, they had become strangers. At that point, the demolition was over and they didn’t have the strength left to start rebuilding.
After the divorce, Jenny had moved closer to her parents and now lived in Queens with the boys. They had stayed on good terms, and in spite of what the judge had ruled, she allowed him to see his sons whenever he wanted. Except that Jeremy couldn’t always get away and before long the boys were seeing less and less of him and were less and less enthusiastic when they did. Their excursions had become less frequent, and going to games had stopped altogether.
It seemed that demolition had become his speciality, both at work and outside.
He shook himself free of these thoughts and tried to get back to the present.
Sonora Inc., the hugely successful construction company he worked for, had acquired two adjoining four-storey buildings on the corner of Third Avenue and 23rd Street, paying a considerable sum to the owners and decent compensation to the few families who still lived in those buildings. In their place there would be a forty-two-storey condominium, with a gym, a roof swimming pool and other facilities.