Heritage of Darkness (24 page)

calling it a night.”

Chloe look up, surprised to find that everyone else was gone.

She did not want to stay in the building alone. She also was kinda on a roll, and hated to stop now. “Is anyone left next door?”

Gwen checked. “A couple of people are still there,” she reported.

“And I’ll make sure the front door locks behind me. See you in the morning.”

Chloe settled back in to work. The solitude and quiet were

soothing. She hadn’t realized how intimidated she’d been by

Gwen’s fast and flawless work. Now, with only herself to set the

pace, she was able to filter out the negative vibes her subconscious had been whispering all week. Her strokes were still clumsy but

maybe, just maybe, she could actually finish the tray.

At eleven o’clock she grabbed a soda from the lounge fridge.

Bring on the caffeine, she thought as she returned to her work. She was jazzed now.

Half an hour later she was ready to try a cornucopia painted

with three colors applied in a single stroke. Chloe did a couple

201

practice strokes with a triple-loaded brush on a scrap of tag board, dashed out with annoyance for a restroom break—she was
such
an idiot; she should have skipped the soda—and settled back down.

She held her breath and leaned close to the tray. With one stroke

the colors blended nicely. She felt quite pleased with herself in particular and life in general—

Until she smelled smoke.

She dropped the brush and jumped to her feet, blood pulsing.

Two trash cans sat near the door, a brown one for miscellaneous

trash and a red one for oily rags. Someone had left the lid on the red one ajar. Smoke was seeping from the crack.

Chloe ran to the cans. She
meant
to push the lid firmly back in place, but it clattered to the floor. Black smoke billowed high above the can. Flames shot up too, greedy for oxygen, crackling with glee.

“Shit!”
Chloe ran to the sink. The only containers in sight were a jelly jar and a yogurt container someone had forgotten to wash.

By the time she’d filled them, the fire had jumped from the red can to a huge roll of the paper used to cover the tables. Flames wicked up the paper tube to the shelf it leaned against, setting someone’s notebook alight. A pile of wadded paper towels on the floor caught at the same moment.

Chloe tossed what water she hadn’t spilled at the blaze. After a

quick angry hiss, flames jumped from the notebook to a stack of

practice tag board someone had covered with lovely C- and

S-strokes. The work was consumed as fire raced along the shelf.

Forget water, she thought. I need a fire extinguisher. Or a

phone—a phone would be good too.

But she didn’t
see
a fire extinguisher or a phone. She ran around the classroom, frantically shoving and kicking her class-202

mates’ stuff aside as she searched for either of those handy little inventions. Nothing.

The room was filling with smoke, stinging her eyes, filling her

nose with an acrid oily stench. The crackling noise was rising.

Flames had moved to the wooden cabinet beneath the sink. More

flames writhed in jagged lines along the floor. It was time to go for help.

Chloe ran to the closed classroom door—why was the door

closed?—and grabbed the handle. It turned in her hand, but the

door didn’t move. She threw her shoulder against it, Hollywood-

style. No luck. She banged on the door. “Hey!” she yelled, hoping

any student still working next door might hear.
“Hey! Help me!”

No response, no sign of rescue. The lounge, visible through a

window beside the door, remained horribly deserted. The smoke

was getting thicker but she could still see writhing flames, hear

their crackle as they found stray bits of combustibles. Chloe’s heart beat a panicked staccato.

“I am
not
trapped,” she muttered. That beautiful, beautiful student lounge was only a pane of glass away. It took two seconds to

consider her options. She snatched up the closest chair. Well, she tried to snatch it up. Vesterheim staff had not skimped on student comfort, and the nicely upholstered chair was heavier than she

expected. She rolled it toward the front wall instead.

Chloe had imagined hurling it through the window, but that

was out. Gasping with effort she wrestled the chair up to shoulder height and banged it against the window. No tinkling glass—not

even an encouraging crack. She slammed the chair harder. Still

nothing, and her arms were already quivering. God, she was
such
a 203

weenie, and if she escaped this fire she was seriously going to work on upper body strength—

Stop whimpering! she ordered herself. The room had more

than one door, right? She stumbled toward the back of the class-

room, and …
yes
! There was a back door. If she hadn’t freaked so quickly, she would have remembered that. Or at least spotted the

neon EXIT sign in the far corner. Mom had asked that any stu-

dents needing to use varnish step outside on the fire escape.

Blessed,
blessed
fire escape, Chloe sang silently as she ran toward the sign glowing red in the smoky haze. When she

slammed against the back door’s horizontal panic bar it gave so

fast that she almost fell.

She found herself in a tiny anteroom, with a second door and

EXIT sign on her left. This one must lead directly onto the fire

escape. She slammed against its panic bar—and yelped in pain as

metal met hip without giving way.

Chloe’s stinging eyes blurred with tears. The door was locked.

But … how could that be? Mom’s instructions had been quite

clear:
Remember, anyone using spray varnish needs to step out on the
fire escape
…
Just prop the door open so you don’t get locked out.
Fire escape doors didn’t have exterior handles or fixtures that locked.

They should always be easy to open from the inside.

Which could only mean one thing: someone had jammed this

door shut from the outside.

204

twenty-two

Roelke reached the garage without arousing any hostile dogs

or vigilant neighbors. He paused by a door in the far wall, out of sight of the Rimestads’ house. He put a gloved hand on the knob,

and it turned easily. He sighed. Too many people thought that a

break-in couldn’t happen in their community, to them.

Then he reminded himself that right this minute, the Rime-

stads’ false sense of security was not a bad thing.

Two seconds later he was inside, the door shut softly behind

him. He pulled his flashlight from his pocket, let his eyes adjust to the gloom, and began a quick look-see.

The garage had been weatherized, and showed no sign that a

car had been parked inside for quite some time. One corner had

been turned into a shop, with two workbenches, piles of wood on

the floor, more wood on shelves, paint cans, a jigsaw, knives and

chisels. In another corner a wheelbarrow, grill, and lawnmower

waited for spring. Metal shelves along one wall were cluttered with suburban detritus: a red gas can, a collection of birdfeeders, hoes 205

and hedge clippers, miscellaneous bits of hardware. Cardboard

cartons with notes marked on the sides lined two shelves: Hallow-

een decorations, dehumidifier, croquet set, Goodwill.

Roelke tapped fingers against his thigh. He’d found no handy

weapons collection displayed on the wall, no boxes conveniently

labeled “antique message tubes,” no fist-sized holes in the drywall suggesting bursts of rage. He was tempted to root around the

closed cardboard cartons, but decided against it. This truly was a fool’s errand—not to mention that he was trespassing, in a town

where he had absolutely no authority. All of which, he reflected

sourly, didn’t suggest anything good about his own mental state.

He slipped back outside and paused, keeping to the shadows.

Away from the street, Rimestad’s tidiness was no longer in evi-

dence. Moonglow revealed paint curling from the doorframe and

cracks in the garage window. A squirrel’s nest visible in a high vent pipe had not been removed, and a wooden trellis had fallen sideways. Several flowerpots lined the wall, skeletal dead blooms pok-

ing forlornly through the snow.

Roelke felt a flash of irritation, aimed squarely at himself. Tom

Rimestad’s lack of maintenance didn’t reveal one damn thing

about the man other than that he was busy. Given his family situa-

tion, Rimestad was doing well to have Christmas decorations up in

front. Roelke imagined himself married to … well, let’s say

Chloe … and how
he
might feel and function if she was terribly ill.

It was not pleasant to contemplate.

A light in the next yard flicked on, startling as a search beacon.

“There you go, Muffin,” a woman crooned. “Do your business

quickly tonight, all right? It’s too cold for Mommy to wait long for her precious Muffykins.”

206

O-
kay
, that was enough for now. Roelke decided to head for the street before precious Muffykins caught his scent and came to

investigate, yapping merrily all the way.

Roelke had reached the front corner of the garage when he

slipped on a bit of ice. Windmilling his arms did not keep him for landing on his ass. Windmilling his arms
did
cause him to whack a downspout, hard. The downspout evidently needed a bit of maintenance too, for one segment fell to the pavement with a metallic

clatter surely heard all the way to the state line.

By the time Roelke was on his feet Muffin had streaked through

the shrubbery, barking maniacally as only small dogs can. A light

over the Rimestads’ front door flicked on. The door opened. Three

people stepped outside. “Who’s there?” a man called.

Roelke swore with silent but mighty force. Then he walked

slowly toward the light, hands held a bit away from his sides:
I am
not a threat
.

“Good heavens!” Chloe’s mother exclaimed. “Roelke? Is that

you?” Marit hurried down the sidewalk toward him.

“That’s Roelke?” the second woman asked. He recognized Sig-

rid’s voice and beehive hairdo.

“Who is Roelke?” Tom Rimestad demanded.

“It’s Chloe’s young man,” Sigrid confided in a loud aside as the

trio surrounded him. She and Marit were already bundled in their

coats and hats. Evidently they’d been about to leave as he did his swan dive on the driveway.

Marit frowned. “But … what are you doing here?”

Roelke was quick, if not steady, on his feet. “I knew Chloe had

your car,” he said, “and I didn’t like the idea of you ladies walking home alone.”

207

That was accepted at once. “How
thoughtful
!” Marit said.

“How
sweet
!” Sigrid said, patting his arm.

“How
good
of you,” Rimestad chimed in. He extended a hand

and introduced himself with a jovial grin. “We got to talking and

completely lost track of time.”

Chloe was right, Roelke thought. If this man is a killer, he does

not look the part.

“I’d been trying to convince these two to let me walk them

home,” Rimestad continued.

Sigrid made a dismissive gesture. “You need to stay with Adelle.

Anyway, now that Roelke—”

Roelke sliced the air with one hand to silence her, catching the

sound before they did, and whirled toward the street. The others

also went still as the distant wail of sirens came closer. More than one siren, punctuated with the unmistakable blare of a fire

engine’s horn.

“Oh, dear,” Sigrid murmured.

Rimestad frowned. “Sounds like they’re stopping downtown.”

It sounds like they’re stopping near Vesterheim, Roelke thought.

“Stay here,” he barked. Without a backward glance he hurried away, icy pavement be damned.



Chloe hurled herself against the jammed fire escape door a few

more times before accepting defeat. Belatedly she shut the class-

room door behind her and crouched on the floor in the tiny ante-

room, heart thudding, skin prickling, her turtleneck soaked with

sweat. During a fire it was best to stay low, where the air was better, 208

right? Maybe the fire would burn itself out. Maybe she’d be OK

here until help arrived.

Nice theory, but it didn’t stave off an immense wave of claus-

trophobia. She was trapped in this little anteroom. The EXIT sign

provided the only light, glowing with ghastly red intensity through the smoke that had billowed into the space with her. She crawled

along the bottom of the outside door, scrabbling with fingers des-

perate to find a space big enough to—to shove something through,

maybe. But no such space existed and besides, it was dark outside, and she was on the third floor of the old building. Slipping a note through the crack would have accomplished exactly nothing.

She pressed her hand against the classroom door. It didn’t feel

hot—yet, at least, and that was something. She crawled along the

wall to the right of the classroom door, trailing one palm along the wall. Nothing. Almost immediately she hit the corner, and turned

again …

And felt another door. Another door!

This one had a doorknob. Chloe tried it, turned it, stumbled

through. She emerged into a narrow, twisting corridor. A cloud of

smoke followed, not wanting to let her go, but it was half-hearted.

Chloe kicked the door closed behind her. She didn’t know