The fire marshal demanded, "Is that why you set fire to the place you worked at? To get out of working so hard for a stricter boss lady than you could abide?"
Before the terrified girl could answer, the fire marshal called out, "Whatever you're doing, keep it up, Jacobs! I could swear you have the Injun sign on that stubborn cuss now!"
One of the slicker-clad and gum-booted figures outlined by the flames called back, "I can't say whether we floated that oil out the back way or whether its just burned its fool self away. You're right about it being stubborn. Never fought so much fire sprouting out of one frame house in all my days with the department!"
The fire marshal, as well as most of those others, moved closer to the smaller but still dangerous fire, leaving Longarm the chance to question the girl more calmly as well as thoroughly. He'd been lied to by experts, some of them even prettier, so he knew he could be fooled. But her story began to hold more water as he made her repeat it more than once, trying in vain to poke holes in it before he smiled down at her and conceded, "If you're fibbing you're mighty good at it. I admire anyone smart enough to tell a simple tale and stick to it. You say you were coming down the street from that forbidden party a quarter mile away, saw the place already afire, and just ran to get help. I hope you can see how easy it will be for la policia to check your story with others who might have been at that same party. While we're at it, how come you told them before the fire woke you up in bed?"
She muttered something about being ashamed of herself for sneaking out to go dancing.
He said, "There's a swell poem you should've read about the tangled webs we weave whilst trying to deceive. But Mister Robert Burns never wrote in Spanish, and in any case I've noticed heaps of Anglo folks make that same mistake. You should have seen right off how tough it would be for a lady to get dressed up in the attic of a burning building and then make her way downstairs safe and sound while everyone else got trapped inside!"
She stared hopelessly down at her handcuffed wrist as she sighed and said, "I knew I should have told the truth as soon as they said I was lying, pero, as you say, we tangle ourselves up with everyone yelling and the air filled with the reek of burning flesh. Now that you know the true story you will tell them for to let me go, no?"
It was a good question. Longarm told her to stay put while he asked some others. Then he headed across the puddles and hoses to see what else might be going on, having to work his eyes harder in the trickier light. For by now the fire had about burned itself out, leaving little more than two brick chimneys and some blackened and smoking timbers standing. So it was by the weaker glow of a nearby street lamp that he was able to fathom the grim task the slicker-clad firemen were performing now. The wet cotton sheeting over the contorted forms they were lining up in the muddy front yard told a man just about what was going on. Longarm wasn't sure he wanted any more details. By the time that frying bacon smell was gone, a body had been literally burnt to a crisp.
The fire marshal and Sergeant Nolan were consulting as they stood in a puddle at the foot of one sheet-covered litter. As Longarm joined them the fire marshal pointed down at what seemed like a sheet-covered pretzel and growled, "That's what's left of Widow Dugan. Remind me I don't aim to get cremated like no Hindu when I go!"
Longarm shrugged as he swept his eyes over the other contorted forms, observing, "Oh, I dunno. A dead body can get mighty disgusting no matter what you do with it before it turns back to dust, like it says it's supposed to in the Good Book. A corpse ain't disgusting quite as long if you leave it in the damned fire instead of wetting it down and hauling it out this soon. They don't twist up that way if they're already dead when the flames get to 'em and ... Now that sure is a peculiar thing to study on, third litter from the end."
The fire marshal and Sergeant Nolan had been to events as grim as this one in the past. But the fire marshal nodded knowingly and said, "Already considered that one. Widow Dugan didn't offer hired rooms to many drifting drunks in her day. If you'd like to be charitable, it's possible he was overcome by smoke in his sober sleep and never woke up like the others."
Longarm cocked a thoughtful brow and demanded, "Let's talk some about them others. I make it half a dozen, and that hired gal back to your engine says that sounds about right. All but the one twisted up like unborn babies, the way folks wind up when they've been burned alive while feeling it considerably."
Nolan swore at Mexicans in general. The fire marshal swallowed hard and said, "Goddammit, we know what the poor old gal and her roomers went through. Until just recent, the front door had been padlocked on the outside. We're saving the lock and latch we salvaged for the Mex gal's trial, and it's a crying shame the only way she'll get to die under our sissy constitution won't pay her back a tooth for a tooth for what she put these poor folks through! We found all but that peaceful-looking one piled up in the vestibule, all tangled as they hammered in vain to get out and just curled up and died, like you said, whilst the flames licked at their flesh and laughed at their screams."
Longarm moved over by the oddly dignified remains as he asked where they'd been found. The fire marshal called out to a nearby member of his department, who called back they'd found that one atop some bedsprings in the stairwell. "He must have been sort of welded to the springs and followed 'em on down when the second story collapsed."
Longarm hunkered down, took a deep breath, and lifted the wet cotton from the figure's head. It was even worse than he'd been set for. He'd expected little more than a blackened skull. The glass eye glaring up at him from one ash-filled eye socket took him by surprise, and together with that one gold tooth somehow made the half-cremated man seem uglier, perhaps because they lent distinctive features to what would have otherwise been a featureless charred skull.
Looming over Longarm for his own first look at this particular victim, Sergeant Nolan proved he rated his stripes when he took a few thoughtful moments and declared, "Faith. I know many a man with one gold tooth up front like that, and there's more than one poor drifter with a glass eye. But would you like to strike a match a bit closer to that handsome face?"
Longarm did it, but he didn't like it much. The heat or perhaps the collapse of the ruins had cracked the glass eye staring wildly up from the charcoal remains, but you could see it was almost jade green.
Nolan nodded. "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be Brick Flanders in the charred flesh. Sure, they'd told us he'd been seen around Denver last month, and Widow Dugan has taken in disreputable roomers before!"
Longarm shook out the waterproof Mexican match and moved the damp sheeting further out of the way as he muttered, "Let's hold our fire till we see if this one's wearing that famous ring."
As Longarm thumbnailed another light further down the charred corpse Nolan confided to the fire marshal, "They say Brick boasted of having taken a family seal ring from a Union officer at Chambersburg. Himself having ridden as a Confederate irregular before he went entirely bad and all and all."
The fire marshal naturally asked who in thunder they could be jawing about. So Nolan explained, "The green-eyed and red bearded cuss was wanted for everything but singing 'The Yellow Rose of Texas.' So how might we be coming with that signet ring, Longarm?"
The federal deputy got rid of that second match as he rose to his full imposing height and replied, "He lost his famous beard in the fire, and it didn't do his cock and balls a lick of good either. But that distinctive ring on one claw, together with the gold tooth and green glass eye, makes me strongly suspect this burnt bastard has to be Brick Flanders or somebody a whole lot like him."