Pyro (14 page)

31. DON’T MOVE AND YOU WON’T GET GOT

According to Earl Ward

         
One time at Powder River the guys smuggled in some videotapes. We sat around one afternoon ogling them. I never saw X-rated movies before.

I certainly never saw nothin’ like that.

And not again until tonight standing below the old woman’s porch peeking through a window where the shade doesn’t quite meet the sill. Seeing what no boyfriend should see his girl do. Period.

Don’t think I didn’t see him park his little red car in front of Mrs. P’s. Why he’s driving that new Escort and I’m puttering around in a 1974 Dodge Dart which I have to sneak from my mother is another story entirely. Nothing in life is fair.

Tonight you had a date.

Which pisses me all to hell. That you’re with some asshole firefighter when I’m out here in the dark.

Not
any
firefighter either, but the one from my nightmares.

One of these days I’m going into the library to look it up, to make sure the guy who died back in ’78 was named Wollf, ’cause I’m pretty sure I’m not mistaken. I get into the library, I’m going to look up the book on crazy guys too. Lately, my brain has been playing tricks on me.

I figure it this way: There’s no way I could go to Oregon for twenty-five years and come back and a month later I’m staring in the face of the man they
claim
I killed.

It’s all so ass-backwards.
I’m
the one they were trying to throw in.
I’m
the son of a gun they were contriving to fry in that fire, and they say it’s
my
fault when one of them takes a dose of flash? Me? A kid against two grown men?

And now this guy shows up looking just like the man in my nightmares.

Sometimes I wonder if this is how you lose your sanity, with just one little idea that couldn’t possibly be true. And then one more. And pretty soon your brain is crammed with ideas that couldn’t be true.

I guess when they start coming true—like now—that’s when you know you’re ready for a ride in the four-point restraints.

I’ve never much cared for the idea that somebody you killed could come back to life. Anytime I see that plot in a movie, I leave the room.

But think about my experience. I had that terrible month when the firefighter went into the basement and didn’t come out, and then a few days later I’m in the Portland pokey for doin’ Mildred. Okay. Some of that night with Mildred might have been my fault. We got a little carried away. Both of us. She lied and I got upset. But
she
started it.

Can you imagine in this day and age namin’ your kid Mildred? No wonder she had problems.

Standing out here in the dark in front of Pennington’s place, I wish for one godderned minute I could shut off my brain so it wasn’t all the time driving me crackers.

I watch him get out of his red car and step up onto the front porch like some sort of high-vaulter or something, watch as he knocks on the door and turns around and looks out in the dark like he owns the world. People with that much confidence are always assholes.

And then, as he stares into the darkness, I get the feeling he’s staring at me.

I’m hidden and it’s dark, but still, it’s a scary feeling. Don’t move and you won’t get got. It’s what I do now, and it’s also, my friends, pretty much my basic philosophy of crime. Period.

Don’t move and you won’t get got.

The door opens and you appear, bless your heart, and you look so godderned cute, like you did that time you visited me in Salem.

And then he walks in like he owns the place, so tall he’s almost hitting his head on the doorway. Nelson used to hit his head on top of the cell doorway. Only he’s not as big around as Nelson. But you know what? I saw the way he carried Mrs. P out of there last week and I’m thinking he could take Nelson.

From my hidey-hole I can see through a crack under the blinds.

You’re in the living room. He’s walking around looking at pictures.

And then he comes over and looks out the window and I hear his voice through the glass. He has one of those radioman voices, the kind I wish I had. He’s standing close, and looking out at the dark. He’s so close to the window and so close to discovering me I think I’m having a heart attack. He looks so much like the man in my nightmares my heart begins pounding in my chest. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Now you’re on the couch.

You plant a smooch on his cheek. I got this cell phone I swiped from a woman in Kmart was slapping her kid around. I start pressing buttons and I kneel in the dark by the base of the house, where it smells like spiders, and I press more buttons and pretty soon it rings and then finally you come on the line. “Hello? Hello?

“Hello?” you say one more time. I can hear you breathing. And you can probably hear me breathing. I’m thirty feet away outside the window. And I’m beginning to get sexed up. Then you disconnect.

I’m looking through the window again and you’re coming back into the room, only this time you do something that astounds me. You hike up your dress and sit on him. I mean, sit on him. Then something else happens. I start touching myself. Mother always said it would make me go insane. I guess she was right.

The two of you are taking your clothes off now and I’m thinking to myself, what I need to do is stop this.

And then you’ve got your blouse off and I’m not thinking about anything now but you. Period.

I’m twenty-five feet away and even though you’ve turned the lights down I can see everything about you is perfect. Everything except him.

This has to stop!

I pull out the phone. I can’t get the numbers in sequence. I’m fumbling and punching buttons and panting, and then I’m back up at the window and I can’t take my eyes off you and I never do get the number right. The phone inside the mansion never does ring.

I want to break the window out or maybe bust in the door, but I sit quietly in the bushes playing with myself and going insane.

You sex fiends don’t know who you’re messing with here.

Both of you are going to be sorry you did this to me.

I know things.

With a dose of flash there’s no one better.

I know where that bastard works. That’s the thing. I know he works on a truck company. And I know what a truck company does at a fire. Period.

Oh my, oh my.

Yes, mama. I have an idea now. He’s gonna be one sorry little cowboy. Yes, sir. By the time I’m done, he’ll be a briquette just like his daddy.

32. NAKED AND DROOLING

         
I put my shirt and shoe back on and thought about the situation. She was young and in apparent good health. After I laid her on the couch, I made a knuckle with my right fist and pressed it against her breastbone, rubbed hard, a sternal rub it was called; it aroused most faking patients. She wasn’t faking.

In the kitchen I found the pill bottle, a prescription sleeping pill made out in Patricia Pennington’s name. I don’t know how many she dropped into the drink, but the directions said no more than one pill a night.

In the corner of the kitchen I found two suitcases, a coat and purse atop them.

She hadn’t said anything about taking a trip, but then, she hadn’t said anything about slipping me a mickey either. In her coat pockets I found a stick of gum, an eight-foot length of rope, and a pair of handcuffs.

I dumped the contents of the purse onto the countertop.

There was a driver’s license issued in the state of Washington under the name of Jaclyn Dahlstrom. Another driver’s license issued to a Judith Devlin. Same stats. Blue eyes. Blond hair. Five-two. A hundred thirty pounds. Inside a paper bag wrapped in rubber bands I found thirty-one credit cards issued to seven different males.

Except for an accident of observation, the old woman might have come home to find me drugged senseless in her living room, naked and drooling.

I took Jaclyn’s keys and went through the house, across the courtyard, and up the stairs to the bungalow where the floor was littered with dirty clothes. Drawers left open. Dishes on countertops.

In the bedroom I turned down the covers on the bed, then dodged back across the breezy courtyard into the main house and carried her limp body to the bungalow.

After I’d tucked her in, I began cleaning up. I wasn’t doing it for her. More for the old woman. Our mother had left messes like this so many times.

As near as I could tell from drivers’ licenses and credit card photos, her victims were all middle-aged men, an aggregation of losers I’d been slated to join.

I should have called the cops and turned her in. I should have handed over the pile of purloined credit cards and IDs. I should have done a lot of things.

I didn’t.

She was too much like Susan. Too much like my brother. Too much like me.

The next morning I mailed the IDs and credit cards to the Seattle Police Department anonymously, then I called Vanessa Pennington and left a message saying I needed to speak with her. I wanted to warn her about Jaclyn, but I didn’t want to leave it on a tape.

Three days later she still hadn’t called back.

33. BULL ELEPHANTS AND BIKINI BOTTOMS

         
Friday the thirteenth we were back at work relieving B-shift. The day was cold, clear, and crisp, frost lying heavily on the grass. We had a lot to think about. Over the past week the fires had been growing steadily in number and severity. Our arsons had hit
The Washington Post
and
The New York Times.
CNN and most of the other network news channels had taken up the story.

Officials from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms estimated there were no fewer than six arsonists prowling our Seattle neighborhoods. One pundit suggested the rain made people crave fire.

In a single period between midnight and 0330 hours on Wednesday there had been eighteen fires over several sections of the city. In the University District a citizen vigilante patroller fired shots at another citizen patroller he mistook for a fire-setter. Two of the bullets struck the wall of a home with children sleeping inside. Luckily no one was injured.

Well-meaning citizens had reported fires that turned out to be steam from dryer vents, exhaust from idling cars, smoke from their neighbors’ fireplaces, and in one instance a man with a cigar.

The city was careening down a greased slide into full-blown panic.

There had been arsons each of the four nights we’d been off. The worst had been in the north end in a marina, where five pleasure craft sank and one boat owner jumped into the frigid waters of Portage Bay fleeing the flames.

Both Seattle papers were obsessed with the situation. The
PI
’s headline read, fires continue to threaten city—multiple arsonists snipe at region. Down the page were more boldface banners. north end man shoots at neighbor; gun sales up.

It was widely accepted that most of the arsonists in the city were copycats and that our pyromaniac had started it; or
my pyromaniac,
as I was beginning to think of him.

Friday morning when I reported to work, everybody in the station was talking about the fires. After exchanging gear on the rig with Joe Williams, I signed into the daybook and went to the beanery, where I heard Dolan ask, “Who fell off the roof?”

Rideout had just come into the room. “Lagersted. Jon Lagersted. He’s from my class.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s got a coupl’a broken ribs. He fell about fifteen feet and landed on a new Lexus. I guess he smashed the hood all to hell.”

The driver on the truck on B-shift said, “They’re sending firefighters out in cars at night. Arson patrol. Takin’ one guy out of each battalion.”

“They’re takin’ recruits, right?” Towbridge said.

“They’re takin’ everyone.”

“What are we supposed to do when we catch someone?” asked Dolan. “Are they going to give us guns?”

“It’s strictly to discourage people,” Lieutenant Williams said.

“What do you think is going to happen when you have unarmed firefighters tackling someone who knows he’s going to prison?” asked Dolan. “They might as well have us out there flagging down bull elephants with bikini bottoms.”

“It’s more of a deterrent than . . . what’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Sitting duck?” said Dolan. “Except that’s two words.”

Everybody laughed. The room was crowded, all seven of the B-shifters huddling together the way crews did after a particularly busy shift, reluctant to abandon the camaraderie they’d honed over the past twenty-four hours.

Slaughter walked into the room and said, “I spent most of yesterday helping out down at FIU. Here’s what I found out. In a nutshell, this guy here in the CD started it. Before Thanksgiving it was only little stuff. As soon as it hit the papers and local newscasts, it began spreading to other parts of town. That moron in the Northgate area. Three teenagers in Greenwood.” Slaughter was confident in front of a group; even as a recruit I’d admired his magnetism. If my life depended on it, I couldn’t stand in front of a crowd and talk the way he was.

“Maybe it’s just somebody who knows the north end needs live fire training,” said Towbridge. We all laughed at that. Anyone who worked south of the Ship Canal, where most of the city’s fires occurred, enjoyed thinking that people who worked north of the canal were rusty when it came to basic firefighting skills. That wasn’t always true, but we got a lot of mileage out of it.

“Anyway,” Slaughter continued. “The truth is whenever one of these guys gets a little publicity, the kumquats start coming out of the woodwork. Remember Paul Keller in the early Nineties and all his copycats?”

Even though we’d never spoken of it, I was sure Slaughter knew my father had been the sole department casualty in another set of arsons twenty-five years ago.

“You haven’t even heard the bad part,” said Lieutenant Williams. “They had a chiefs’ meeting yesterday and decided some of these people need help cleaning their yards.”

“Are you shittin’ me?” Dolan asked. “They want
us
to clean people’s yards now?”

“It gets worse,” said Katie Fryer. “There’s a stack of flyers in the other room. They want you to deliver them door-to-door. They want you out there at least eight hours.”

“Eight hours!” Towbridge said. “Somebody’s got their head up their ass.”

“Then tonight they want you out in your rigs driving around,” Katie added. “Unless you get tapped for the fire patrol.”

Dolan was furious. “Who the hell do they think is going to put out the fires?”

Towbridge added, “We’ll be so exhausted we won’t be able to put out a match with a size-twelve boot.”

“I’m just glad it’s
you
guys,” Katie Fryer said as she stood up and stretched, pulling red suspender straps tight against the outer rim of each voluminous breast. Towbridge looked away.

In the watch office we found a box of fifteen hundred flyers.

Dolan kicked the carton. “This is going to kill us.”

At 0815 hours Slaughter and his engine crew grabbed a stack of flyers and left.

They weren’t on the air five minutes before they picked up a medic response to 2611 South Dearborn, a nursing home we visited at least once a week. At 0830, Rideout said, “Are we going out?”

“Soon.”

Towbridge, sitting near the window reading a slab of the morning’s sports section, gave me an amused look. He knew as well as I did that protest came in many forms—work slowdowns being one of the most time honored.

Dolan said, “This is a feel-good program, so the fire chief can go to a news conference in three days and say he’s distributed X number of flyers. Cleaned up X number of yards. It ain’t gonna stop anything.”

It wasn’t as if we didn’t have other things to do. Rideout had drills to complete. Towbridge was rusty too. We had EMT recertification coming up and needed to study for that. The previous truck officer on Ladder 3 hadn’t finished his building inspections for the year. I hadn’t been on a truck in six months and wanted to go over the Hurst rescue tools again. Dolan wanted to take the truck down to the fire department garage to have the alternator looked at.

We went out at 1010 hours. We’d only handed out fifteen flyers when we got our first alarm of the day, our client a four-hundred-pound man who’d fallen off the toilet and gotten wedged between the commode and the tub. Personal service, it was called, putting a guy back on the shitter.

At noon, when we went back to the station for lunch, our fax machine had eight requests for assistance with yard cleanups in our district. During lunch more came in.

I ran into Slaughter outside his office door. “You get a chance to ask the FIU guys about the Shasta cans while you were there?”

“I didn’t.” He brushed past me as if I were an irritant instead of a coworker.

“Steve, this isn’t about you and me. This is about an arsonist who might end up killing somebody.”

“No. This is about you and me.”

“So what you’re saying is if I don’t fire Rideout, you and I are going to have a hard time working together?”

“You got it.”