Pyro (21 page)

49. CHASING WOMEN IN THE DARK WITH SPEARS

         
I knew she was the woman who’d run from me at the Red Apple weeks earlier, the middle-aged woman with the heavy makeup. The woman Towbridge told me had visited the station to have her blood pressure taken. She had red hair tonight.

Running like that after standing around for so long with my bottle on, I was stiff, which was the reason I missed with the pike pole.

I lost her in the dark in the backyard.

I came out from between the houses to the street again and spotted her running south down Twenty-second, coattail flapping in the breeze, red hair hanging off her head like a piece of torn carpet.

She had a block lead on me and was running as if she already knew I was going to kill her. Which I was.

As I ran I realized several things. One was that Chief Eddings was calling my name from behind. Another was that I was losing bits and pieces of my mind. That I was beginning to move into a familiar hypnotic state. It was a form of mania. I’d done this prior to every bout of violence. I knew I was going to kill this woman. I knew also that I was going to lose everything over it.

The worst part was, I couldn’t stop myself.

At the corner of Winthrop and Twenty-second my prey turned left.

Without checking traffic, she bolted across Twenty-third Avenue South, a main arterial. A lone car crossed behind her.

Despite the turnouts and big rubber boots, I was gaining.

She crossed onto the property of an elementary school that took up half a city block, slowed, looked around desperately for somewhere to hide, then dashed behind the buildings.

By the time I reached the school, she’d vanished in the darkness.

I’d thought about killing the firebug for a long time, but over the years, my fantasies had centered around killing a man. Not a woman.

The building was long and ran north and south. Beyond the building was a small, fenced playground. Beyond that, woods.

I walked alongside the rear of the east wall behind the building, double-checking any nook or cranny that might harbor a fugitive. Any place from which an ambush could be launched.

So far my prey had done nothing but run, but I had to think that was over now, that I’d either cornered her or worn her out.

I wasn’t worried about hand-to-hand combat. I would win hand-to-hand. Even had I been chasing a man, the money was on me. If I didn’t win on size and strength, I’d win on rage. But what if she had a gun? Now that we were in the dark and blocks from the fire, she might get away with killing me. I would never get away with killing her, but she might murder me and skate.

Behind the single-story buildings that comprised the bulk of the school, I found a large, concrete play area encompassed by trees and a cyclone fence. I keyed my radio. “Dispatch from Ladder Three. I’m at Twenty-three Avenue South and South Winthrop. Behind the school. I need the police. I have a suspect.”

I don’t know why I was on the radio. I had no intention of doing this legally.

It was half a minute before the dispatcher said, “Twenty-two Avenue Command? Did you receive? Are you asking for additional resources?”

“That’s a negative. Forget that transmission.” I recognized the voice on the radio as Eddings.

I said, “Dispatch from Ladder Three. Repeat. I have a suspect at Twenty-three South and South Winthrop. Send SPD.”

I was still talking when she darted out of the shadows fifty yards in front of me, galumphing along like a water buffalo with a sore hoof, charging across the playground.

She used her good-sized lead to hit an opening in the cyclone fencing, ran behind the fencing, perpendicular to and in front of me. Instead of following her to the opening, I decided to intercept, thinking there would be another gap in the fence somewhere along the way, a gap I could reach first.

Then, as I ran and scanned the dark fence in front of me, I realized there weren’t any more openings. I couldn’t go back. I was committed. I would soon arrive at the inside northwest corner of the fence, which meant I would have to run the long way around the wing of the fence to reach her. Which meant she was going to escape.

There we were, jogging side by side, a sheet of cyclone fencing between us. Every once in a while she slapped into a wet branch that jutted out from the woods on her side. I could hear her breathing heavily.

Neither of us had spoken since the beginning.

It was eighty feet before we were at the corner that would box me in and free her. I raced ahead hoping to find a gap in the fencing.

I reached the inside corner and
did
find a hole, not nearly large enough for me to get through, made by kids. I had about two seconds before she would pass.

Our pike poles were constructed with fiberglass shafts and a steel tip formed into a point-and-hook arrangement for pulling ceilings. I inserted the point through the hole.

She was coming up fast, traipsing along the dirt path years of children had laid down, her hair wet and bedraggled, her face spotted with rainwater and perspiration.

When I shoved the pike pole through the opening, the shaft caught her mid-chest and took her down, the wind knocked out of her.

For an instant I thought she might have a skull fracture, but I gave up that hope when she tried to move. I stabbed at her viciously in the dark. She grabbed the shaft, and for a split second we wrestled with the pole.

Then I pinned her against an old tree stump.

The steel tip wasn’t sharp, but she held on to the fiberglass pike pole anyway in an effort to keep me from pushing it through her lungs.

I pressed it against her, telling myself over and over not to kill her. Knowing that in the end I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.

I was trying to talk myself out of something I’d spent twenty-five years talking myself into.

I knew from experience once my brain clicked over on a decision, there were no second thoughts. My brother said it was a criminal’s mind, that the joint was full of people who thought like I did. But what was wrong with taking revenge on the person I believed had tried to kill me and my crew, the person I suspected had murdered my father?

Still, I was having second thoughts.

Extraordinary.

On the other hand, maybe I was only trying to prolong the pleasure.

It made me laugh.

She looked at me as if I were insane.

We stayed like that for a minute, me on one side of the tall cyclone fence, she on the other in the shadows. Me in what passed for light. She couldn’t get up, but I couldn’t leave either. Not if I wanted to hold her.

Finally, with one hand I reached down and switched on the department issue flashlight dangling off my chest, put the beam on her.

She was a mess. Torn nylons. Dirt-smudged dress. Wig twisted to one side, lipstick smeared down one side of her cheek and chin.

“You’re hurting me,” she gasped, trying to work the pike pole away from her chest. In the light I could see her hands. They were a man’s hands.

“Hurting you is what my program’s all about tonight, friend. Just like hurting us was what your program was all about.”

I had no doubt I’d broken ribs, perhaps ruptured internal organs too.

“I gotta . . .” She was gasping like a dog hit by a truck. Going down. Knowing it. “I gotta get . . . some air.” I put more force on the pole.

“Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.” The voice had changed as it strained to suck in air. It was a man’s voice now. Tears poured out of the mascara around his eyes. “Don’t kill me. You’re Lieutenant Wollf, aren’t you? I was there the night your father died.”

I eased up just enough so he could talk.

“How do you know my name?”

It took him four or five shallow breaths before he could get the words out. “You want to hear how your father died?”

Nobody had ever been able to tell me anything about my father’s death. It was one of the Seattle Fire Department’s best-kept mysteries, probably because it represented one of the biggest fuckups in department history.

“Keep yapping.”

“Your father was Lieutenant Wollf? Right?”

“I’m not answering the questions. You are.”

“In 1978 your father worked on Engine Seven. Out of Station Twenty-five.”

I pressed the pole so hard both his feet came off the ground. “Stop,” he gasped. “Stop, or I don’t tell the rest.” I eased up. “Okay. Okay. Your father died in a fire in 1978. Here’s what happened. I was walking down this alley minding my own business when this guy shows up and starts hassling me. Pretty soon he’s beating the crap out of me. That’s when your father shows up. Your father saved my butt, ’cause I think that other guy was planning to kill me. That’s the truth, man. Your father saved my life.”

“Tell me about the first guy.”

“I never knew his name. He was in civilian clothes, but he was a firefighter. Your father knew
him,
and
he
knew your father.”

“Keep talking.”

“This guy caught me outside this basement fire, only he didn’t know it was a basement fire. Didn’t know I’d set anything. All he knew was I was in the vicinity. So he grabs me, shoves me up against a wall and beats me. I was just a kid, man. I was only nineteen.

“He said I set them fires. I never did. But he said I did. He was trying to beat a confession out of me. He didn’t seem to realize we have a bill of rights in this country. This country was founded on—”

“Get on with it.”

“He knocked out one of my teeth. That’s when your father showed up. He told your father to go back to his rig. That he was arresting me. But that’s not what he did. He dragged me over to the fire and tried to throw me in. Can you imagine? You meet a stranger in an alley, you beat him up and throw him into a fire? I mighta done some bad things in my life. I’m not saying I have or I haven’t. But I’ve never done anything like that.”

“What about my father?”

“Your father tried to stop him. Finally, this guy hit your father. That’s when your father went into that window well. Headfirst. Just kind of slid into the window. He never came out.”

“How big was the fire at this time?”

“Not big.”

“What’d you guys do?”

“We watched.”

“What else?”

“We just watched. After a while you could see your father trying to find a way out. But then the fire took off, and he was still in there.”

I began leaning on the pike pole. He resisted for all he was worth, the strain of it evident on his face.

“The other firefighter? What’d he do?”

“He didn’t do nothin’. “

“He must have done something.”

“That’s just it. He didn’t. He just stared. That’s how I got away.”

“You telling me my father was in a burning basement and this cop or fireman or whatever . . . just stood there?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“You’re lying.”

“I ain’t. The Shasta cans. You know who I am.”

“You set the fires tonight?”

“On the outside of the house. I admit that. The other one. I don’t know how that happened.”

“Jesus, you must think I’m stupid.” We looked at each other for a moment or two. “What’d the guy in civvies look like?”

“That was a lot of years ago.”

I jiggled the pike pole. “And you’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

“I’m being honest here, man. The more I thought about what him and your father looked like, the harder it was to bring their faces back. Right now I couldn’t tell you what he looked like if my life depended on it.”

I leaned on the pole. “Let’s pretend it does.”

“Ow. Ouch. Oochee. Okay. He was big. Like I said. Mustache. Glasses.”

“White? Black? Asian? What?”

“He was white.”

“Taller than you?”

“A lot taller.”

“How tall are you?”

“Five-eight. Okay. Five-six and a half. I’m taller in shoes. He had a voice like a football coach. He scared me.”

“You hear either of them call each other by name?”

“Naw.”

I leaned into the pole.

That was when he rolled and twisted away. By the time I got around the end of the fence, he’d vanished.

50. GREEN CHEESE IN THE PARSON’S HAT

Cynthia Rideout

D
ECEMBER 22,
S
UNDAY, 0800 HOURS

         
Last night I thought Wollf had gone nuts. Thirty minutes after taking off after that woman, he came back looking exhausted. As if he’d had some sort of epiphany out there in the dark.

Oddly enough, he wasn’t even mad at Eddings.

Maybe he’s come to expect backstabbing from her.

The rest of the night he acted as though nothing mattered. It was like he was on laughing gas.
Everything
was funny.

Then, before we left the scene, Marshal 5 questioned him for half an hour.

Wollf said the suspect was a white male, unimpressive except for the mauve dress. LaSalle believed this was our perp, while Connor remained unconvinced. She said, “Why would he be in a dress and a wig? I don’t get it. You’re talking two different pathologies here.”

LaSalle snapped, “Why was he in a dress? Why does he light fires? Why does he stand around and watch us put them out? His head’s screwed on backwards, that’s why. He probably bays at the moon and shits green cheese into the parson’s hat.”

Wollf’s chase was already the talk of the department. Opinion was divided among firefighters. About half thought Eddings’s negligence allowed the firebug to escape; the other half thought Wollf was losing his mind. Personally, I thought he’d found the bug
and
was losing his mind.

Towbridge said, “You gonna recognize this guy when he’s dressed like a man?”

“I don’t know. It was dark. He had makeup smeared all over his face. He was crying.”

“You made him cry?” I asked.