A dark figure hurried into the light of the intersection below. His shoulders were dipped slightly forward from the weight of the two five-gallon gas cans he was carrying. He crossed into the shadows alongside the Bird’s Nest.
The arsonist had come back. This time he’d brought ten gallons instead of one puny quart. He hadn’t come to scorch part of an outside wall. He’d come to burn the place down.
For one long, insane moment, Mac thought to stay where he was and enjoy the view as the bastard lit the sky. Let the flames lick at the curtains and the old, dry paneling; let the oils explode in the kitchen; let the whiskey bottles crack and spill their alcohol until all the flames came together to send the whole place up in one grand finale of a million fiery cinders.
And then let Luther Wiley’s people at the bank wrangle with the insurance company. Let everything be over.
Except Mac would be blamed. The fire would be seen as a desperate act to collect insurance to fund his future.
No.
No more indictments, no more shadows, no more stigmas.
The figure appeared at the back of the restaurant, a shadow black in pantomime against the light spilling from the open kitchen door. He’d stepped back, to look up at the lights coming from Mac’s office upstairs, to be sure Mac was inside.
He wasn’t just there to burn. He was there to kill.
He disappeared from the light. A second later, a creak came from the restaurant. The arsonist had opened the kitchen door and gone inside. He was going to torch the Bird’s Nest from within, to make Mac’s death look like a crazed suicide.
He felt for his cell phone. Only keys were in his pockets. He’d left his phone on his desk upstairs.
His truck sat alone in the parking lot, close to the building. The Shell station was just a few blocks away. They could call the cops and the fire department.
He came out of the weeds, running toward the truck.
He hadn’t run since college. He pounded down the overpass and across Big Pine Road, wheezing, his heart thudding like a pump gone bad. There was no traffic, no cars to stop for help.
Focus on the truck; get to the Shell station.
He slammed against the south wall of the Bird’s Nest, gasping. His heart was a jackhammer, his lungs teabags too weak to suck air. Just an instant’s rest, a last sprint to the truck, and he could be gone. He tugged out his keys.
The siding rumbled against his back; brilliant orange shot out the back door, followed by the heat of a thousand Hells.
He ran toward the truck.
The fireball shot into the night sky behind him. Glass, glittering yellows and oranges and reds, rained down everywhere. He threw up his hands to protect the back of his head.
The fireball found him, ten yards from his truck.
BOOK IV: INDEPENDENCE
SEVENTY-FOUR
The Fourth of July
The rubble of the Bird’s Nest still smoldered at eight o’clock in the morning, despite the rain that had come down steadily since before dawn. The wood and the dirt and the air still stank of the gasoline, though the fire had fed from it for almost an hour before they could extinguish the flames.
Ever-folksy Clamp Reems, puffing his fool’s corncob pipe, faced the reporters gathered under a hastily erected square canvas shelter. Besides Jen, there were only six, including the television pair that had scrambled from Rockford when the news came over their scanner. A small diesel backhoe idled behind Clamp, waiting to resume its careful probing. Clamp had just allowed as to how no one knew anything yet, and he had time for only two or three questions.
Though the day was dark with rain, Jen wore enormous black sunglasses beneath her broad brimmed hat. She touched at her cheek. It was dry, for now.
She glanced again at Roy Powell, holding an umbrella that ludicrously matched the khaki plaid lining of his double-breasted Burberry raincoat. He’d called her at two in the morning to give her the news. She’d made him promise to not let the Peering County Sheriff’s Department head the investigation. True to his word, he got two state troopers dispatched to the scene immediately and stood with them now, waiting for the state’s crime scene team to arrive. He was a decent man. He knew about her sister, Laurel.
She’d gotten to the Bird’s Nest at two-forty, when the flames were still high. At four-eighteen, she’d watched the body being taken away, and remained to watch the others watch – Clamp and the cops and the firemen and Roy Powell – as the backhoe continued to pluck gingerly at the debris for signs of more corpses. Only four hours later, when Clamp moved to stand beneath the makeshift shelter and profess amazement to the press, did she get out of her car.
‘What are your feelings about the death of Mayor Bassett?’ the grizzled veteran from the Des Moines Register asked. She’d seen him before, over the years. He was tenacious.
‘I prefer to believe Mayor Bassett is alive and doing just fine.’ Reems took a fast puff from his pipe, trying for his usual confident Colonel Cornpone, but his voice was higher than normal. Oddly, he kept glancing south, to the overpass, where there was nothing going on at all.
‘Please don’t fence with me, Deputy,’ the reporter said. ‘There was a body in the rubble. Bassett’s truck was the only vehicle in the parking lot. It’s Bassett.’
‘Let’s be patient and hope for the best.’ There was no doubt: Reems’s voice had a squeaky element of nervousness that she’d never heard before.
‘Mayor Bassett was quite vocal about the way the Betty Jo Dean case was botched,’ another reporter said. ‘He inferred you were involved in the desecration of her corpse.’
Reems sent another puff of smoke up to the brim of his hat, where it hung for an instant, the only cloud in an otherwise guileless face. ‘We get along fine. In fact, Mac is going to introduce me at today’s festivities.’
Again, he spoke as though Mac were alive. The corncob, the present tense; it was the innocence of a clever man.
‘If not Bassett, who was pulled dead from here this morning?’
Clamp lowered his pipe conspiratorially. ‘Some might argue it was a hired man, an arsonist, but don’t print that.’
‘Insurance?’ the television reporter asked.
‘This is off the record,’ he said, glancing at the overpass before looking directly at the television camera, ‘but there are rumors poor Mac is having financial difficulties. Best we wait for the investigators to do their jobs.’ He put the pipe to his mouth and sent up more smoke. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me-’
Three decades of bile rose up fast in Jen’s throat. ‘Were you aware Bassett was going to announce big news at the courthouse today?’ she asked. It was a stretch, but that didn’t matter now.
‘What?’ The word came out dry, a rasp. Clamp tugged the pipe from his mouth.
‘Bassett inferred that instead of introducing you, he was going to conduct his last press briefing.’
‘About what?’
‘Come on, Deputy. It could only have been about Betty Jo Dean.’
‘That was a long time ago, Miss Jessup.’
‘You had so many leads.’
‘All of them were lousy. We ended up chasing our tails.’
‘Yes, but now there’s the news that the head is not hers.’
‘If you’ll excuse me-’
‘A question on another topic?’ she shouted.
‘One more. That’s all.’
‘It’s about my sister, Laurel.’
Reems put a confused, tentative smile on his face for the tele-vision camera. ‘I don’t believe I’ve met your sister.’
‘Supposedly, you investigated her death the same week as the others back in 1982. She was run off the road. Then again, you might not remember. So many people were being murdered around here.’
‘Now wait a-’
‘No, you wait. Laurel was looking into the killings-’
Reems gave a jerky wave to the backhoe operator. The diesel fired up. The press briefing was over.