He grabbed the ladder’s upright with his good hand, fumbled for the first rung, and began his descent, hearing the tethered animals starting to get restless.
Halfway down, just clear of the inferno overhead, he stopped for a moment to adjust to the stable’s contrasting gloom. There, hanging by one hand, praying for salvation, he watched in stunned disbelief as all around him one bright rope of fire, then two, then three, magically appeared on the walls from the ceiling and dropped like fiery snakes to the floor, shooting off in different directions and leaving lines of fire in their wakes, stimulating a loud, startled chorus of bellows from the frightened creatures below him.
The fire spread as if shot from a wand, in defiance of logic or comprehension, racing from one hay pile to another. Bobby watched, transfixed. The cows had panicked in mere seconds and were now, all sixty of them, struggling and stamping and heaving against their restraints, lowing and roaring as the encircling fire, progressing with supernatural speed, changed from a series of separate flames into the sheer embodiment of heat.
One by one, the animals broke loose. Stampeding without direction, corralled by fire, they began generating a stench of burning flesh in the smoky, scream-filled vortex of swirling, lung-searing air. A broiling wind built up as it passed by the dying boy, the trapdoor directly above him now transformed into a chimney flue. Bobby Cutts clung to his ladder as to the mast of a sinking ship, weeping openly, the fire overhead filling the square opening with the blinding, blood red heat of a falling sun.
His hair smoking, all feeling gone from his burning body, he gazed between his feet into the twisting shroud of noise and flames and fog of char, no longer aware of the contorting bodies of the dying beasts slamming into his ladder, splintering it apart, and uncaring as he finally toppled into their midst, vanishing beneath a flurry of hooves.
Chapter 2
Jonathon Michael stood under the open sky in the remains of the stable, dressed in heavy boots and coveralls, swathed in an acrid atmosphere of burned wood, insulation, and the sweet smell of cooked meat. The word “Police” was embroidered in block letters between his shoulder blades. He was empty-handed, his arms crossed, his expression pensive. After eighteen years as a state arson investigator, he’d learned that the first best rule in this work was to do nothing, or at least nothing physical. Time and again in the past, he’d seen others steamroll in, get distracted by the flashiest evidence, and reach the wrong conclusion-or at best waste a huge amount of time getting around to the right one. Truth be told, he had done just that more than once in the early days.
But not lately. He’d closed every case he’d handled over the last ten years, and while Vermont couldn’t brag of the arson stats of New York or Boston, it still had its share of wackos, insurance defrauders, and just plain pissed-off people. And the state’s rural nature didn’t necessarily mean a low average IQ among its crooks, either; some of the ones he’d arrested had done excellent, subtle work, making the end result look for all the world like a simple mishap.
So Michael took his time. He usually arrived without fanfare and out of uniform, walking around unnoticed and alone. Eventually, before he was done, he’d talk to the firefighters who battled the blaze, to the cops who controlled traffic and managed the crowd, to neighbors and friends, even sometimes to the press photographers and reporters, and finally to the family, all in the pursuit of telling details. Also-at some point in the midst of it all-he’d process the actual scene, occasionally taking days to do so. The pecking order for this complicated, often diplomatic procedure varied from case to case and usually, as now, was helped along by others, especially the Vermont Forensic Lab, which today was still on its way. Inevitably, however, sooner or later Michael found himself where he was right now: standing alone in the middle of a water-soaked, blackened, artificial swamp, trying to think through what might have led to its creation.
Traditionally, barn fires were among the worst. For the most part old, dry, wooden structures, barns were match heads to begin with, before they were stuffed with hay and chemicals and tractors and gas and oil and anything else highly flammable. By an overwhelming margin, when it came to investigating barn fires, Jonathon Michael found himself the tallest thing standing in a clotted field of tangled char.
This one was the rare exception. For reasons he hoped to discover-through his own reconstruction and from witness accounts-this barn had not been reduced to a cellar hole. It wasn’t salvageable by any means-the entire hayloft overhead was missing, for one thing-but there were remnants of the building still standing, if only to an eye as practiced as his, which meant that he had a great deal more to work with than usual.
This was especially good news, since the primary reason he was standing here instead of running preliminary interviews was the strong possibility that a young man lay dead at his feet somewhere.
Joe Gunther carefully replaced the phone.
Gail Zigman glanced up at him. “Trouble?”
“Yeah,” he answered tiredly. “A possible arson way up northwest, St. Albans area.”
She raised her eyebrows. “They called you?”
“Someone died,” he answered.
Her face softened. “Ah,” she murmured, once more struck by how often death played an intimate third to their relationship. She and Joe had been together for a long time now-decades, in fact-long enough to give her pause occasionally.
“You going?” she asked him, a coffee mug halfway to her lips.
He stretched and arched his back, causing the newspaper spread across his lap to slip onto the floor. “Yup. Not much choice. Sorry.”
She took a sip and then shook her head. “No, no. I understand. I have work to do anyhow.”
They were tucked into her small Montpelier condo, where she now spent most of her time. She’d recently been elected to the Vermont State Senate-a low-paying, part-time job in a citizen legislature that functioned only half of each year, although such a description didn’t do justice to either the job’s real demands or Gail’s ability to transform potentially light labor into something all-consuming. Gail Zigman was nothing if not passionate, and did few things halfway. As a result, her large home in Brattleboro-which she’d briefly shared with Joe a few years back-had become little more than a place to touch base. Certainly, Joe, if he wanted time with her, had learned to drive here for it, usually rationalizing the trip by also checking in with his Vermont Bureau of Investigation headquarters in nearby Waterbury.
Joe got to his feet and went in search of his shoes by the front door. “This’ll probably take a while-maybe a few days. I’ll give you a call.”
“Sure,” she answered. “No problem.” She added, suddenly concerned, “This is safe, right?”
He looked up at her, one shoe in his hand, and smiled. “Yeah. Probably an insurance thing gone wrong. Maybe a feud. We’ll just be cleaning up the mess. Nobody shooting at us, at least not till the lawyers show up.”
She nodded at the feigned humor and let him get back to his task, but the small smile she offered was entirely false. He’d almost died a couple of times on the job, once in a car accident and once when a knife thrust put him in a coma for weeks-not to mention too many lesser injuries and close calls to count.
Reacting to these thoughts, she, too, rose from her chair and crossed over to him, putting her arms around his waist and giving him a tight hug.
He chuckled tentatively and rubbed her back, burying his nose in her hair and breathing her in as he loved to do. “You okay?” he asked. “What’s this about?”
She pulled back and looked into his eyes, her expression serious. “Nothing. I’ll miss you. Do call.”