Company Man (49 page)

All she'd have to do would be to strike a match and the house would explode, killing herself and the children in the basement and Audrey too. But why hadn't she done it yet?

Audrey had an idea now.

Cassie Stadler was filling the house with gas, had been for a while. Maybe she was just waiting for the entire house to fill up. So she could get the biggest bang possible.

Yes. That's what she was waiting for.

The children. That was the first thing. She had to free them.

A pounding on a door somewhere nearby told her where to go. A door in the hall. She heard the kids, or maybe it was just Lucas, pounding and pounding.

Swiftly she turned the deadbolt with a loud, satisfying click, and she pulled the door open. The boy tumbled out, sprawled to the floor.

“Hush,” Audrey whispered. “Where's your sister?”

“Right here,” said Lucas, and the girl came streaking out, weeping, her face red.

“Go!” Audrey whispered. “Both of you.” She pointed to the open door. “Run!”

“Where's Dad?” Julia cried. “Where is he?”

“He's all right,” Audrey said, not knowing what else to say. She had to get them out of here. “Go!”

Julia took right off, pushed open the screen door and began running across the lawn, but Lucas didn't move. He looked at her.

“Don't fire that gun,” he said. “That'll set it off.”

“I know,” she said.

 

“What was that?” said Cassie.

“What?”

“That sound. The alarm. Someone just came in the house.”

“I didn't hear it.”

Cassie turned slowly, looked from one entrance to the other, all the while flicking her eyes back to Nick, making sure he didn't advance toward her.

“You know,” she said, her eyes trained on him, “it's funny, the way I went through stages of thinking about you. First I saw you as the destroyer of families. You sure destroyed my dad's life when you fired him, so I had to let you know you weren't any safer than anyone else.”

“The graffiti,” Nick said, realizing. “‘No hiding place.'”

“But then I got to know you a little better, and I thought I'd been wrong, I decided you were a good man. But I know better now. Sometimes you gotta trust your first impressions.”

“Put the lighter down, Cassie. You don't want to do this. Let's talk, let's figure things out.”

“You know what fooled me? When I saw what a good daddy you were.”

“Please, Cassie.”

Behind her was the entrance that led to the back hallway. He became aware of a slight change in the light, a shadow. A movement.

A figure slowly approaching.

Nick knew enough not to break eye contact with Cassie.
He looked into her red-rimmed eyes, while in his peripheral vision he could make out a woman moving stealthily along the wall, advancing toward the kitchen.

It was the police detective, Audrey Rhimes.

Don't break eye contact
. He forced himself to look into Cassie's desperate heavy-lidded eyes, bottomless pools of anguish and madness.

“Not like my daddy. He was scared of me, he followed me everywhere, wouldn't leave me alone, but he'd never do for me what you did for your kids.”

“He loved you, Cass, you know that.” His voice was shaking a little.

Keep your eyes on Cassie
.

Detective Rhimes was advancing ever so slowly.

“You were so scared that night. I could see it from where I was standing, in the woods. I could hear it. The way you told him, ‘Freeze,' and, ‘One more step, and I shoot!'” She shook her head. “I don't know what they told you about him, but I can just imagine. Schizophrenic, right? You thought
he
was the one who killed your dog. You didn't know he was just trying to hand you a note saying he was innocent, right? You thought he was pulling out a gun. So you did the right thing, the brave thing. You protected your family. You protected your kids. You squeezed the trigger and you shot him down, and you did what a dad should do. You protected your family.”

Oh, Christ. I took her father away from her and she knew it all along. Before we met, she knew it
.

I took her family, and now she's going to take mine
.

A terrible chill ran through his body.

She nodded, raised her left hand, the lighter hand, and Nick flinched, but she only rubbed her left forearm against her nose, sniffling. “Yeah, I was there that night, Nick. I was there first. He was following me, always following me. He knew I was paying another visit to your house. I
saw
you, Nick.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Detective Rhimes inch ahead, closer, closer, but he didn't dare shift his eyes even a millimeter.

“He just kept coming at you and coming at you, didn't he? And no matter how much you told him to stop he kept coming because he really didn't understand.” Her voice deepened, in an eerie imitation of her father's voice: “Never—safe! Never—safe!” She shook her head. “I'll never forget the look on your face afterward. I've never seen a man look so frightened. And so sad.”

“Cassie, I—God, I'm so,
so
sorry, I don't know what else to say. I'm going to face up to what I've done. I'm going to answer for it.”

“Sorry? Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not
mad
. Don't apologize. It was beautiful, what you did. You were protecting your family.”

“Cassie, please…”

“Of course you had to do it. Oh, don't I know it. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful. It was a liberation, you know. It freed me. My daddy was in a prison of his own mind, but I was a prisoner, too, until you freed me. And then I met you and I saw what a strong man you were. A good man, I thought. You needed a wife, and your kids needed a mommy, and we could all be a family.”

“We can still be a family.”

She shook her head, knife dangling at one side, toying with the lighter in the other. A rueful smile. “No, Nick. I know how these things work. I've been through it time and time again, and I just”—her voice cracked, her face got small and wrinkled, and she began to really cry now—“I just can't go through it again. I'm tired. I can't do it again. Once the door slams shut you can't open it again. It's never the same. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Nick said, moving closer, wearing an expression of gentle empathy.

“Stop, Nick,” she said, holding up the lighter warningly as she stepped back. “No closer.”

“Things can change, Cassie. In a good way.”

Tears were streaming down her face now from her smudged eyes. “No,” she said. “It's time,” and Nick could hear the rasp of her thumb on the flint wheel.

Audrey listened closely as she advanced toward the kitchen. She could hear everything the two said, and it was strange how insignificant, all of a sudden, it was to have Nicholas Conover's guilt confirmed from his own mouth.

She thought of that passage from Matthew, the parable of the unmerciful servant. She thought of the sign taped to her computer monitor that said, “Remember: We work for God.”

She understood what she had to do about Nicholas Conover. The weapon that had killed Andrew Stadler had been stolen years earlier by Eddie Rinaldi, who now lay dead on the lawn.

You can't convict a dead man.

Things would be sorted out later.

But for now she had to stop Cassie Stadler.

The problem was that this situation fit no pattern she had ever trained for. She slid along the wall, felt it cold against her cheek. Gripped the smooth paint of the doorframe molding.

Did Conover know she was there?

She thought he did.

She could hear the steady high-pitched tone, and she saw where it was coming from. It was a combustible gas detector, which measured the concentration of gas in the air. The
steady tone meant that the gas in the air had reached optimal combustibility—she forgot the exact percentages, but she knew it was a range on either side of ten percent. Cassie Stadler was waiting until the air up here had reached the most dangerous concentration of propane gas, no less and no more.

You must always think several steps ahead, she told herself. What if, as she stole up on Cassie, relying on the element of surprise to take her down barehanded, she startled the woman, causing her to strike the lighter?

That had to be avoided at all costs.

She slid past the hall table, careful not to jar it and thus knock the alabaster lamp to the floor. Finally, she entered the room, and she didn't know what she was going to do next.

She listened hard, and she thought.

 

The flint didn't spark on her first try. Cassie frowned, tears coursing down her cheeks.

The gas detector shrilled, and meanwhile she sang softly in her lovely, lilting voice: “Oh, the rock cried out, I'm burning too—I want to go to Heaven the same as you.”

“Cassie, don't do it.”

“This was your decision. You made this happen.”

“I made a mistake.”

She looked above Nick's shoulder, saw something. “Luke?” she said.

“Cassie,” Lucas said, walking across the kitchen straight toward her.

“Luke,” Nick said. “Get out of here.”

“What are you doing here, Luke?” Cassie said. “I told you and Julia to stay in the basement.”

Audrey Rhimes had somehow gotten into the house through the back door; that was the alert tone sounding, she knew to unlock the basement, let the kids out. But where was Julia?

Lucas must have taken the back corridor around, through the family room to the kitchen's other entrance.

“You locked us in,” Lucas said, coming right up to her, standing to one side of her. “I know you didn't mean to. But I found the spare key.”

What the hell was he doing? “Luke, please,” Nick said.

But Lucas was ignoring his father. “Cassie,” he said, touching her shoulder, “remember that poem you helped me with—that guy Robert Frost?” He smiled, warm and winning and appealing. “‘Hired Hand' or ‘Hired Man' or whatever it was called.”

Cassie didn't move Lucas's hand off her shoulder, Nick noticed. She turned to look at him, her expression seeming to soften just a bit, he thought.

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” Cassie said, her voice hollow.

Lucas nodded.

His eyes slid toward Nick's for just a fraction of a second.

Nick saw it.

Lucas wasn't ignoring him at all. He was
signaling
to his father.

“Remember what you told me?” Lucas said. His luminous blue eyes held hers. “There's nothing more important than family. You said that's what it's all about, finally, in the end. That's what makes us human.”

“Lucas,” Cassie said, and there was a slight shift in her tone, and at that instant Nick dove at her to knock her to the ground—

—but Cassie spun, snakelike, off to one side, the speed of a jungle animal, all lithe arms and legs. He slammed against her, knocking the knife out of her hand, but she managed to sidestep him. The knife went clattering across the tile.

She sprang to her feet and held the lighter aloft, displaying it for both men to admire, and she said, “You Conover men. What am I going to do with you?” She made a strange grimace. “I think it's time. We have to go now. A world must come to an end.”

A sudden movement from behind Cassie.

Must hold her attention
.

“Cassie,” Nick said. “Look at me.”

Her opaque eyes locked with his.

“I'm not hiding anymore, Cass. Look in my eyes and you can see it. I'm not hiding.”

Her face was radiant, flushed and gleaming, more beautiful at that moment than Nick had ever seen her before. She was transfigured. A remarkable serenity had settled over her features as she thumbed the flint wheel.

And something flew out of the background and smashed down upon her head, the white alabaster lamp, and as the stone cracked into her skull, Cassie crumpled to the floor with an
Unnnnh
sound as the lighter skittered under the refrigerator.

An eerie burbling sound escaped her lips.

Audrey Rhimes's face was streaked with sweat. She looked down at the lamp still in her hand, apparently stunned by what she'd just done.

Nick stared in shock. Mixed with the powerful gas smell he could detect the faint scent of Cassie's patchouli perfume.

“Run!”
she shouted. “Get out of here
now
!”

“Where's Julia?” Nick said as he started toward the exit.

“She's outside somewhere,” Lucas said.

“Go!”
Audrey screamed. “Anything—the slightest spark—can set this gas off. We've all got to get out of here immediately and let the fire department clear the house.
Now!
”

Lucas vaulted ahead of Nick, crashing against the front screen door before he managed to get it open, then held it open for Audrey and his father.

Julia was standing on the front lawn alongside the driveway, a good distance away.

Nick raced to her, grabbed her and hoisted her up to his shoulder, and kept on running, Lucas and Audrey close behind. They all stopped at the edge of the property just as Nick heard the loud wail of sirens.

“Look!” said Lucas, pointing back toward the house, and Nick immediately saw what he was indicating. It was
Cassie, standing unsteadily at the window, watching them, a cigarette dangling out of her mouth.

“No!”
Nick shouted, but he knew she couldn't hear him and wasn't listening anyway.

There was a blinding flash, and in the next instant, the house erupted in a massive brilliant fireball.

The ground shook, and fire engulfed the house almost instantly, entirely, throwing up a great column of sparks and billowing gray smoke, and seconds later the windows popped and the glass in the French doors shattered as the door frames and the window frames flew into the air, and then the flames began to plume out of every orifice, blackening the stone walls and chimneys, lighting up the clouded sky a terrible orange, and waves of heat came after them, searing their faces as they ran. Julia shrieked, and Nick held her tight, as they all ran down the long driveway.

Nick didn't stop until they had reached the road, when, winded by carrying his daughter, he had to stop. He turned back to look at the house, but all he could see now were the plumes of fire and smoke. The sirens of the fire trucks had gotten no louder, no closer. Nick knew they'd been halted at the security gate.

There would be very little left for the fire department to salvage.

He squeezed Julia harder as he said to Audrey Rhimes, “Before I come in to…face charges…I'd like to take a little vacation with my kids. Just a few days together. Is that possible, you think?”

Detective Rhimes stared at him. Their eyes locked. Her face was impassive, unreadable.

After what seemed an endless pause, she nodded. “That should be okay.”

Nick looked at the blaze for a moment, and then turned to thank her, but she had already started walking down the driveway toward the police car that was just pulling in ahead of a convoy of fire trucks. The blond detective was behind the wheel.

He felt something clutch his elbow, a trembling needy
grip, and he saw it was Lucas. Together, dazed and speechless, they watched the inferno for another few minutes. Though the afternoon was overcast and gray, the fire blazed so brightly that it illuminated the sky a dusky orange, the color of sunrise.