Knockdown: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery (23 page)

He’d figured he might as well just see what was up in the easternmost city, as people around here called it. And boy, had he ever.

In the squad car the plastic perp window between him and the cop was closed, probably because the cop didn’t want to have any conversation, which was fine with Tim. The way the cop drove on the rough, curving road with its bumpy, potholed surface little more than a track where no trees grew, threw him from side to side so hard that if he tried talking, he’d probably just bite his tongue anyway.

At least the cop hadn’t cuffed him behind his back. No reason to—Tim had walked into the police station of his own accord, to surrender. That he’d done it with a false ID was something the cop hadn’t figured out yet, and Tim was starting to think he might be in some trouble over that.

But whatever. He was no angel, he’d been in jail before. There wasn’t much in one that could scare him.

He was tougher than he looked. And it was five hundred in cash, nice new bills. At the jail, he would be obligated to hand the money over, but he’d get it back.

He settled into the cop car’s fraying bench seat. Outside, the night rushed by, dark and foggy and smelling of evergreens and sea salt where it came in the front driver’s-side window. Tim shivered a little in his denim jacket, wishing he had worn more.

Probably he would have to give that up, too, and put on the cotton jail scrubs. Ones with short sleeves, and the blankets in jail were always as thin as a bail bondsman’s smile.

This being the holiday, it could take a couple of days for them to run his prints and cross-check the identity on the Social Security card he’d showed them in the police station.

When they did, they’d find out he wasn’t Steven Garner, and the charade would be over.

He didn’t know what he’d be charged with then; some kind of
fraud, maybe. The stranger hadn’t explained that part, only that Tim wouldn’t have done any damage or violence.

So he wouldn’t be in
that
much trouble. A lot of rigmarole, probably, jail food and stern-faced judges at the hearings and a court-appointed defender, if it all even went that far.

He might have to pretend he was nuts, or maybe he’d just say he’d been drunk.
But hey, easy money
, Tim thought as the squad car turned in at a red-brick building whose dimly lit sign read
WASHINGTON COUNTY JAIL
.

The car slowed, came to a stop at a door marked
INTAKE
. Getting out, the cop pressed a buzzer on the door.

Easy money
.

INSIDE THE HOUSE, WITH THE FIRE CRACKLING UPSTAIRS IN
Wade’s shop, the first thing Jake heard was both dogs pacing back and forth anxiously on the other side of the closed door between the workshop and the rest of the house.

The door that had been
open
a few minutes earlier … but the animals were safe for the moment, anyway, she realized in relief. And right upstairs in the shop hung a fire extinguisher, a brand-new, fully loaded one; she’d put it there herself.

Those two facts were the upside of the situation. But (1) when she tried it, the door with the dogs on the other side of it wouldn’t open, so she couldn’t get into that part of the house, and (2) the house itself was on fire, for Pete’s sake.

Or a significant portion of it was. Stumbling up the stairs through the acrid smoke that was thickening fast, she grabbed for the fire extinguisher. Maybe she could still—

Gone
. Where the extinguisher had hung on the wall halfway up the stairwell, now just an empty hook mocked her through the smoke while a few feet away, bright fire crackled.

Smother the flames with something
, she thought desperately. A mental
picture of a pile of horse blankets, salvaged by Wade from the selling-off of a nearby tack shop’s old inventory, rose in her mind. They were in the far corner below the shotgun-shell-reloading station.…

Coughing and wiping tears from her eyes, she reached the top of the stairs, peered through a dense smoke curtain. Except for the fire itself, the shop was pitch dark. Her frantic fumbles at the light switch were ineffective.

And why is that?
her mind screamed frantically at her, but she had no time for the question now.

Flashlight, I should’ve brought a
 …

The dogs were still on the other side of that jammed door—whimpering now, their pacing heightened to scratching at the doorframe. Was the intruder there, too, somehow not getting bitten?

But that wouldn’t have been so difficult. The intruder might’ve fed the animals; even Prill was a sucker for snacks, and Monday’s friendship could be had for the price of a biscuit.

Meanwhile, with each moment that passed, the fire caught more furiously, first nibbling, then loudly munching whatever debris it had gotten started in: a small pile of something, apparently, because the flames weren’t spreading yet. So if she could find the blankets by feel, spread them atop that rising glow …

An arm came out of the choking smoke, caught her around the waist suddenly, and flung her to the floor, hard. A bright light came straight into her eyes, blinding her, then shifted so she could see.…

“Hello, Jacobia.”
That voice
 …

It was him, she knew. But the face was wrong … a shudder of horror went through her at the sight, the features all elongated and flattened. She started up, but he put a foot on her chest and shoved.

It was a woman’s nylon stocking pulled over his head, the old-fashioned kind; that, or he’d cut the leg out of a pair of pantyhose. Eyes like holes, and the mouth …

“I could kill you now.” The voice was hollow, as if shouted from the bottom of a deep hole.

“Or I could just tie you up and leave you here. To burn,” he added with lip-smackingly ghastly enjoyment. “Burn to a crisp.”

She tried to roll sideways; he leaned down, touching a cool something to her throat.

Knife
, she realized with a fresh burst of fright. It moved against her skin.

“That’s right,” he whispered as flames crackled higher and brighter.

“So many options. And I’ll admit it, I’ve wanted to kill you for so long, it feels strange not to do it.”

He chuckled hideously. “Now that I’ve got the chance.”

In the kitchen, Prill howled pitifully; it was Monday whose bark now sounded fierce, a deep, warning utterance Jake had heard only a few times before from the animal. It was the sound of a dog pushed past its limits in the civilized-behavior department, and Jake would have done a lot to see Monday charging up the shop stairs now.

Maybe she was old, but the black Lab still had a few good teeth in her head, and now she sounded as if she wanted to get some use out of them. Her assailant heard, too.

“Superglue,” he confided cryptically with a repulsive smile as he straightened, holding the very same flashlight that she’d neglected to grab off the hall shelf as she’d gone out.

The stocking over his face turned his every expression into a fright mask.
“A little dab’ll do ya,”
he sang quaveringly.

Not that his appearance had been any great shakes without a sock over it … Another hard shiver went through her as she recalled first seeing him only a day ago: smirkingly pleased by his own creepiness.

As he was now. But the knife, at least, was no longer at her throat. “If you want a door to stay shut,” he went on in a whisper, “super-glue it.”

“Great tip,” she managed. His foot was on her throat now. “What the freak do you want, Garner?”

Only she didn’t say “freak.” He grinned but didn’t reply.

With his foot still firmly planted on her, he glanced back at the fire, now about the size of a blaze in a small fireplace. It still wasn’t spreading,
because he’d piled the flammables in a metal dishpan Wade used sometimes for soaking wood strips to make them pliable.

But sooner or later it would spread, and then it would get to the shelf where Wade stored wood stains, lacquers, and varnishes for restoring old gun stocks on the antique weapons he repaired.

Above that, their shapes clearly outlined in the orange-and-yellow glow from the fire, were more of the liquids he used in gun work: paint thinner and acetone, mason jars half full of the amber fluids, a whole collection of ruined paintbrushes soaking with their bristles aimed down.

Because as he said, the old natural-bristle brushes were better than anything he could buy new. He just had to recondition them. But now …

A furious sob stuck in Jake’s throat: Wade would likely never see anything in here again.
Including me
 …

Mechanized shrieks from somewhere nearby stabbed her ears; they’d been going on for a long time, she realized distantly, only she hadn’t noticed.

A knife at your throat will do that to you.…
It was the smoke alarm, piercingly loud, audible not just here in the shop but out in the street, too.…

And that pulsing white light at the shop window wasn’t the fire. It was the fire alarm’s LED lamp, and something else.

Something outside. Headlights, turning into the driveway …

He saw it, too, and under the stocking his awful grin changed abruptly to something much worse: ugly, deeply malicious, and not the least bit sane.

“Bitch,” he grated at her. His face was distorted with rage. But at the same time he looked confused, and distracted just enough so that she might …

She kicked at him, felt her foot connect. Crumpling with a groan, he hurled the fire extinguisher at her, then staggered and half fell down the stairs, stumbling at the bottom.

On the other side of the door, both dogs went wild; a little longer
and Prill might chew right through it. Groaning, he made it to his feet, as pounding began on the door leading outside.

Through the stocking she glimpsed fright on his face as he realized he might be trapped. But then he saw the laundry room door, and through it the window.

“Jake!” It was Bob Arnold outside.

“Bob, he’s—” But her attacker had already hurled himself at the old window glass; it shattered outwards as he went through it. By the time she reached the shop door and flung it open, his footsteps were thudding away on the other side of the house.

“Bob,” she gasped, unable to get her breath suddenly.

He seized her shoulder with one hand, peering anxiously into her face. The alarm still howled rhythmically upstairs.

“Are you all right?” he demanded, already thumbing his radio with his other hand. She shook him off, pointed.

“That way … I think it was—”

The fire upstairs crackled. Her legs suddenly buckled out from under her as he summoned help.

He dragged her out, away from the house. Already in the distance, sirens began howling. “Bob …”

He ran for his car, which he’d left running, and reversed out of the driveway in a spray of gravel.

Garner
, she thought.
But he was supposed to be
 …

Clambering up, she staggered inside. The dogs hurled their bodies against the still-closed door leading to the kitchen.

But on this side of the door stood a bucket full of water tinctured generously with lemon juice. Bella kept it there for mops that needed emergency sweetening; she hated a sour mop.

Seizing the bucket, Jake ran upstairs. The fire still burned merrily, happy for the moment with its meal of swept-up sawdust, wood shavings, and the bigger sticks and chunks of old scrap wood now beginning to burn in earnest.

But the smoke had found its way to the open screen window a few feet away. So she could breathe now.…

Resisting the temptation to toss the water onto the blaze, Jake forced herself to approach it calmly.
Careful, careful …
Tipping the heavy bucket, she let the water stream onto the fire.

Hot sizzles of steam erupted, startling her. Too much water and the sparks would fly.
Careful
 …

She tipped it more, flooding the remaining embers. Now a wet, sodden mess covered the floor under the window.

A hissing stink boiled up. She put the bucket down, scanned around in the harsh glow of the fire alarm’s battery-powered LED.

No flicker of flame showed from anywhere, and no smoke wisps rose. The air was thick with haze, but it was mostly steam from the water on the burning wood scraps. Through the window came the howl of a fire truck’s siren approaching.

Gazing around once more, she cursed loudly and creatively at the smoke-smelling disarray that just minutes ago had been Wade’s workshop. Then she grabbed a crowbar from the hook where he kept it, went back downstairs—cursing some more at the broken window in the laundry room—and applied the crowbar to the glued-shut door to the kitchen.

The dogs leapt gratefully at her as sirens screamed out front, red whirling beacons strobing the night. Hastily she shoved both dogs into the back parlor and shut the door on them.

Then, imagining with dismay the dirty boot marks, smudgy handprints, and the many other grimy evidences that Bella would no doubt find to exclaim over when she got home, she went to let a crew of excited firemen into the house.

HUSTLING AS FAST AS HE COULD THROUGH THE DARK STREETS
of Eastport, Steven Garner could barely keep from laughing out loud even through his pain. It had all worked so
well
.…

He hadn’t known she’d be alone, of course, until nearly the last minute. But when he’d watched her husband leave the house with his duffel over his shoulder, then followed him downtown to the dock and
waited while he got onto a tugboat, Steven had realized: he was even more home free than he’d expected.

It just went to show that luck really did favor the prepared mind. He hadn’t known how, exactly, he would terrify her, let her know that he could get at her anytime he wanted.…

But he’d known he would, and now simply by taking advantage of the opportunities that had presented themselves, he’d made her understand that he was in charge.

Congratulating himself, he sidled into the dark, overgrown yard of the abandoned house on Washington Street. Pulling the stocking off his head, he wiped at the cold sweat in his hair, the chill fog cooling him after the heat of his exertions.