Devil's Night (35 page)

It was empty.

The driver’s seat was bare. The passenger seat contained only a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Kat moved to the back of the pickup, checking the bed. It, too, was empty, although she saw a splash of liquid inside. Gasoline. She could smell it.

She backed up to get a good look at the license plate. It said
FYRMAN.
Just as she suspected.

Kat faced the church. From the front, it looked just as dark and empty as it had from outside the rectory. The only thing out of place was the front door. Just like at the library, it was wide open.

Steeling herself with a deep breath, Kat moved to the entrance as fast as her exhausted body would allow. She paused at the threshold, saying a little prayer herself. Then, after whispering a quick “Amen,” Kat stepped into All Saints Parish, not knowing if she would ever leave.

*

The numbness left Henry as soon as they reached the hospital. There, amid the fluorescent brightness and nervous energy of the emergency room, he began to feel things again. Adam in his arms. The floor beneath his unsteady feet. Pain dotting his whole body.

And grief. Henry felt that more than anything else. It was a startling flow of emotion that filled his body and caused him to collapse into the nearest chair.

Deana was dead.

Their child would grow up with no memory of her.

And Henry had again lost someone he had once loved.

A pair of nurses approached, saying they needed to examine Adam. Henry ignored them, hoping his silence would send them away. But they were an insistent pair. One grabbed onto Henry’s shoulders while the other tried to pry Adam from his arms. The baby screamed in response, kicking so forcefully that the nurse almost dropped him.

“We’re fine,” Henry snapped as he grabbed Adam and held him against his chest. “
He’s
fine.”

The pair backed away and let Henry leave the emergency room. He found himself in an empty hallway, where he paced with frustration. Adam continued to cry, although the kicking had stopped. It wasn’t until Henry offered a finger to latch on to that the crying subsided altogether.

“It’s all right, little guy,” Henry whispered. “I’m here. Your daddy will always be here.”

And his mother wouldn’t be, a realization that left tears stinging the edges of Henry’s eyes. He thought about Deana and the raw deal that she had been given. Life couldn’t have been easy for her. She had suffered more than her share of grief, loneliness, and shame. Yes, she had made a terrible mistake a year earlier. And yes, Henry had suffered because of it. But he knew, deep down, that’s all it was. A mistake. He had forgiven her as soon as he laid eyes on Adam.

He also knew that Deana hadn’t deserved to die the way she had. She hadn’t deserved to die at all. The sheer unfairness of her death filled him with an emotion that went beyond grief, beyond anger. It was rage he was feeling. Pure and undiluted.

Making it burn even more was guilt. Deana wouldn’t have been anywhere near that library if it hadn’t been for him. She had insisted on coming along, but the journey was all Henry’s idea. He could have stopped her from coming. He could have insisted she stay home. But he hadn’t, and it was his fault that she was now dead.

The grief, Henry knew, would fade with time. So might the anger. But the guilt would stay with him forever unless he did something about it.

He set off down the hallway, finding a stairwell at the end of it. Making sure not to jostle Adam, he climbed to the second floor, twisting into one hallway and then another. Soon he was outside a hospital room. One he had visited earlier that afternoon. Without pausing, he pushed inside.

Despite the hour, Tony Vasquez was awake and sitting up. Someone else occupied a chair next to the bed. A woman with sad eyes and a downturned mouth. He assumed it was Lucy, the girlfriend of Nick Donnelly that Kat had talked about. Both of them contemplated Henry’s sudden presence, too fretful and exhausted to be surprised.

“You’re Henry, right?” Tony said.

Henry didn’t answer the question. “Have you talked to Kat?”

“A few minutes ago.”

“Where is she?”

“The Catholic church in town. Why?”

Again, Henry didn’t provide an answer. Instead, he held out Adam. “Can I trust you with my son? I’m going to help Kat catch the man who killed his mother.”

1
A
.
M
.

Kat saw the body as soon as she reached the top of the bell tower. It was a man, on his side and facing away from her. Yet one quick glance told her who it was. She could tell because she had been looking for him all day. Because his truck was parked outside.

Now Danny Batallas was dead, lying in a pool of blood that looked sickeningly bright in the beam of her flashlight. When Kat aimed the light toward the back of his head, she saw a deep gash and shattered bone.

Just like Constance Bishop.

The antique iron that had struck them both lay on the floor next to Danny’s feet. Kat rushed to his side and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one.

“Who did this to you?” she whispered. “And why—”

Her voice faded once she saw the propane tank in the corner. It looked so out of place that she was surprised she hadn’t noticed it sooner, even with a dead body nearby. The tank’s cap was gone, and the handkerchief stuffed inside it did nothing to halt the smell of leaking propane. The scent made Kat more light-headed than she already was. It didn’t knock her down, but it was enough to force her to look away.

That’s when she saw the other tank.

It, too, was in a corner. And stuffed with a rag. And definitely out of place in that dark and quiet tower.

Quickly, Kat stood, leaning left to look beyond the enormous bell that hung in the middle of the room. She then leaned right, checking the other side of the tower. Each movement brought a glimpse of another propane tank.

Four tanks. All stuffed with handkerchiefs that served as makeshift fuses. Kat had found pictures of ones just like them in Danny Batallas’s apartment. They were called fire bombs, she remembered. And they were made to do one thing—explode.

She knew she needed to get out of the bell tower, even as a dozen questions raced through her brain. They bounced into her head, one after the other, as she edged around the bell on her way toward the door. Why had Danny been up here? Had he brought the propane tanks? If so, why was he now dead?

But the answer to the last one was clear.

Danny was dead because he hadn’t been alone.

Not now.

Not all day.

Someone had helped him start the fires. Someone who then killed him once the elements were in place to destroy the town’s last remaining historical landmark. Someone who was still inside the church. Kat felt his presence—a silent hum of energy in the darkness.

She spun around and faced the door. He was there. Waiting at the top of the steps. She heard his breathing, sensed the hammering of his heart.

“I know you’re there,” Kat said, training her Glock at the darkened doorway. “You might as well show yourself.”

Movement came from the top of the steps. The shadows separated slightly, revealing the silhouette of a man standing in the doorway. Kat aimed the flashlight in the same direction as her gun, the frantic beam at first catching only bits and pieces of the man. A hand. A shoulder. An ear.

She steadied the light, pointing it squarely at his face. The harsh glow revealed a man she recognized. A man she had seen several times that day.

“I can explain,” Burt Hammond said, squinting in the glare. “Just hear me out.”

He carried a plastic bucket filled with liquid that sloshed around inside it. Kat hoped it was water, but she knew better. Water didn’t smell like that. Water didn’t tickle the inside of her nose. It didn’t make her eyes sting.

The bucket was filled with gasoline. She recognized the odor from a thousand trips to the gas station.

Kat tightened her grip on the Glock. “Hands up. Right now.”

Burt dropped the bucket, gasoline splashing over its side. Two pale palms rose in the darkened doorway. The flashlight glinted off his sweat-slicked face. His eyes, twitching and fearful, pleaded with her.

“It doesn’t have to end this way,” he said. “Please. Just listen to me.”

“We’ll talk at the station. You can tell me how you knew about the casino.”

“I can tell you now.” Burt’s voice was a mixture of terror and eagerness. He wanted to talk. To explain himself. To maybe even bring Kat around to his way of thinking. “A friend of mine told me about it. David Brandt. He works in real estate. We were playing golf last week and he mentioned that he had sold the old Perry Mill tract to a billionaire in Italy. I pieced together the rest.”

“And Rebecca Bradford? You’re the one who saw the book on Constance’s desk. You’re the one who sent it to Lucia Trapani.”

Burt nodded nervously.

“When Constance called that stupid meeting for tonight, I knew that’s what she was going to talk about.”

“So you killed her before she got the chance.”

“I did it for the historical society,” Burt said. “We had so much debt, Kat. We were drowning in it. I knew that this could be the thing that saved us. If Constance stayed quiet about what happened on that land, then we might get some money. A win-win situation for everyone.”

But, Kat knew, his plan had backfired. Lucia had arrived early, meeting Constance instead. When their meeting was over, Constance had called Burt during the fund-raiser at Maison D’Avignon. He’s the one who’d pulled the fire alarm there, using it as an opportunity to sneak away unnoticed and run through the neighboring backyards to the museum. Depending on his pace, it would only have taken him a few minutes.

Burt kept talking, spilling out a desperate torrent of words. “I was going to try to reason with Constance. But she was not a reasonable woman, Kat. She was angry. More angry than I’d ever seen her. She kept yelling that I had betrayed her. That I had betrayed this town. She pushed me, too. Shoved me right into one of the exhibits. She told me that she was going to reveal all the terrible things that had happened on that land. And I couldn’t let her do that. There was too much at stake. So when Constance turned around, I grabbed the first thing I could get my hands on.”

“An iron,” Kat said.

“Yes.”

“You hit her with it.”

Another “Yes” from Burt, this time more ashamed. “I just wanted to stop her. I didn’t mean to kill her.”

“But you did. At least, you thought you did. And to cover it up, you grabbed a kerosene lamp, smashed it to the floor, and set the museum on fire.”

“I didn’t want to, but I had to. Evidence was everywhere. My fingerprints were everywhere.”

Then, Kat knew, he’d rushed back to Maison D’Avignon, getting there just as the fire trucks sped past on their way to the museum.

“What about the other fires? Why did you set them?”

Kat didn’t bother asking Burt
if
he had set them. She already knew that. The shame burning his cheeks told her so.

“Last night, watching the museum burn, it hit me that maybe the fire was the best thing that could happen to the museum. Yes, I knew we’d lose some things. Some very precious things. But it was heavily insured. It would be rebuilt. It would come back better than ever. I knew it would. And watching those flames dance, I also knew that the town, the whole town, could do the same thing.”

“But you’re trying to destroy it.”

Burt laughed—an ironic, crazed chuckle. When she heard it, a dagger of fear jabbed Kat in the gut.

“Destroy it? Don’t you see, Kat? I’m saving it.”

“From what?”

“Itself.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Perry Hollow. It’s recovered since the mill closed.”

“But it’s sinking again,” Burt hissed. “You see it, Kat. I know you do. Fewer visitors. A couple of shops closing here and there. And the town will continue to decline unless someone makes a drastic change.”

“Burning down a few old buildings isn’t going to do that.”

Burt nodded again. Trying to placate her. Trying to pander. “You’re right. But a casino will. Funded by the one of the world’s richest men. That will change the town completely. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the town can be reborn. But first it has to be approved, and you and I both know that’s a tough sell. Or it would have been. But not now.”

Kat understood now. She understood completely. Burt knew the casino plan would have many detractors, who’d fight it tooth and nail. So his goal was to hurt the town, to cripple it so badly that even those against a casino would have no choice but to approve it for the money its construction would bring to Perry Hollow.

Burt continued, babbling madly. “Imagine how quickly it’ll be approved now that we need the resources to rebuild the hotel and rec center. The library. The church.”

That last word shoved the dagger of fear deeper into Kat’s body. It was clear that Burt wasn’t finished yet. That there was still one more building to go. He needed to do what he had tried to do at the museum—erase his sins with the cleansing power of fire.

“Did Danny help you start the fires?” Kat asked. “Or was he just a convenient scapegoat?”

“He threatened me last night. He really said those things about burning down the town. He was capable of it. I knew that when I hired him.”

Burt had done a background check. Of course. Kat felt like an idiot for not realizing it. He had known all along about the arson in Danny’s past.

“So you called him around seven this morning. I saw it on his phone.”

“I told him he was a suspect in the museum fire,” Burt said. “I assured him that I knew he was innocent, but that he needed to lie low for the day. I told him to get out of town. Not to come in to work. Not to answer his phone. But before he left, I suggested he do a computer search of ways to start fires, maybe print out a few things, to see if he could come up with any ideas about who might be doing it.”

And, Kat knew, to leave a trail of incriminating information in his wake. Burt was smart enough to know that someone needed to take the blame for these fires. Who better than a young firefighter with a few arsons under his belt?