Pyro (28 page)

65. DOG DOOR GIRL

         
Dinner grew cold while we kissed on the sofa, colder still while we lay entangled in each other’s limbs, a haze of perspiration on her brow, my cheek next to hers, the gentle rise and fall of her breathing beneath me. Maybe
she
wasn’t in heaven, but I sure as hell was.

It was a strangely chaste encounter.

When I made a move as if to shift my weight, she whispered, “Don’t go. I like you right there.”

“I thought I might be too heavy.”

“I like it.”

After a few moments she said, “You’ve told me so many things about your life. I mean, so many things that didn’t go well. Would you like to hear something that happened to me?”

“I would.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m telling you this because I think it’s in any way comparable to the things you’ve told me about your life, but I haven’t thought about it in years, and it just sort of popped into my head.”

“I understand.”

“You’re going to think this is funny, but it wasn’t when it happened.”

“I’m not going to think it’s funny.”

“Yes, you are. I was a sophomore at the U. My best friend, a girl named Dilys Marlheiser, was from Wenatchee, a former Apple Blossom Princess. We did everything together. I had this boyfriend named Bud Hogan. Bud and I had been going together six months, and we were at a party and I got to talking with some people and lost track of Bud. I went to ask Dil if she’d seen him, but I couldn’t find her either. Finally somebody said I should look in Mark Hager’s room in the basement. Mark was Bud’s best friend.

“I should have known something was up. I went down there and the lights were off. I heard noises, so I fumbled around and found the lights. All Bud had on was socks, and all Dil had on was her bra. We just all looked at each other, and then I turned the lights back off.”

“This is terrible.”

“It gets worse. After the lights were off I began to think maybe I’d imagined it. You know how you see something and you have to double-check? I turned the lights back on. They were these fluorescent lights that took a few seconds to blink on. Neither of them had moved an inch. They were looking at me like owls. I turned the lights off again and ran through the basement in the dark. I ended up at the back door in this little storage room. I tried the door, but it had one of those locks you can’t open from the inside without a key. There was a little doggy door, and I thought if I put one arm up above my head and the other one down at my waist I might be able to wiggle through. That way I wouldn’t have to face Bud and Dil, and I wouldn’t have to run through that party crying either.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. I got about halfway through the doggie door and got stuck. I mean really
stuck.
I yelled, but the music was too loud for anybody to hear me, so I just lay there crying. I was stuck maybe twenty minutes when the lights came on and I heard voices behind me. The voices went away, and a few minutes later I could tell the room was filling up with people and they were talking about me. Finally somebody opened the door with a key. When it swung inward, I swung in with it. There were maybe fifteen people staring at me, including Bud and Dil. Bud said, ‘Jesus, Van. Have you gone crazy?’ “

We talked for a while longer. I’d never conversed with a woman like this, and I’d certainly never kissed a woman this way without it leading to sex. It was a novel experience all around. I remember Towbridge once saying as a joke that if you really wanted to get a woman hot for you, cry. There was some history behind that statement, but I wasn’t going to hear it from Tow any more than he was going to hear about tonight from me.

I said, “I guess I made an ass of myself.”

“Don’t be silly. Everybody needs to cry now and then. And it’s natural to feel bad about killing Alfred all these years later.”

“I never said I felt bad about it.”

“But you do.”

For reasons I cannot fully explain, her attitude infuriated me. Maybe it was her tone of voice. Or the fact that she presumed to know what I was thinking. Maybe I thought she was trying to own me. Alfred had “owned“ me. My grandfather had “owned“ me. Maybe I was so private I didn’t want anybody knowing what I was thinking unless I told them. Of course she was right. I felt horrible about killing Alfred, and had since it happened. Still, I couldn’t abide her telling me that. It was adolescent and immature, but it was me. I got up, feeling the poison stirring in me. “I’m
glad
we killed the bastard. I’d kill him again tomorrow. I’d kill him right now.”

“How can you say that? It must have been a freakish—”

“Don’t tell me what to think!”

Maybe it was the shame of having cried in front of her. Maybe I thought she was patronizing me. Maybe I didn’t want to get close to her only to have her dump me later. Maybe I couldn’t stand the suspense.

“I was . . . I was only trying to . . .”

I walked to the window and faced the water. I waited a long time without moving. A very long time. The wind picked up outside, and I could hear the waves slap at the pilings under the condominium. I didn’t turn around. She spoke to me twice, and twice I didn’t reply or turn around. Nobody could go mute like I could. Later, I heard her getting her things, heard the front door open softly and close just as softly.

Only somebody like me could twist something like what we’d had into something like this.

Later, much later, I dialed Vanessa’s number, thinking to put an apology on her voice mail, something along the lines of, I’ve had a lot going on in my life and I really liked her and wanted to keep seeing her, but . . .

“Hello . . . Is that you, Paul?”

I hung up.

It was a wonder I hadn’t mucked things up sooner. People talked about free will, but if there was such a thing, I didn’t know where to find it.

66. BLOWTORCH WOMAN

         
Marsha Connor called at noon to tell me there’d been a huge break at FIU.

“Paul. You didn’t hear this from me. Understand? Because this is all top secret, and I’d probably lose my job if anybody found out I was talking to you.”

“Nobody’ll find out.”

“Swear?”

“My lips are sealed, Marsha. What is it?”

“They caught that blowtorch woman in Oregon. I believe she was going by the name of Jaclyn Dahlstrom. They caught her and some guy using one of Steve Slaughter’s credit cards. I guess he cancelled the others, but he forgot a JCPenney card, and she tried to max it out in the jewelry department. They’re holding her on outstanding warrants for fraud.”

“And?”

“We sent two people down to interrogate her, and guess what?”

“Keep talking.”

“She was seeing some guy up here. He came up from Oregon after he got out of the penitentiary. Earl Ward. We double-checked Ward against a list of people they interviewed twenty-five years ago around the time your father was killed. We had to get the case notes from a retired firefighter. Guess what?”

“Marsha, can you just tell it?”

“I’m sorry. FIU interviewed Ward twenty-five years ago. Two different times they caught him in neighborhoods where they’d been having fires. One of those fires was at Twenty-eighth and Jackson.”

“That’s just a few blocks from the Pennington place.”

“Right. His mother used to work for Pennington. They’re looking for him now. But check this out. A few hours ago his mother said she caught him all dressed up in her clothing. So they’re not sure if they’re looking for a man or a woman.”

“Where does he live?”

“Now don’t go getting any ideas. He’s not home anyway. His mother says when she told him we were nosing around, he took her car and she hasn’t seen him since. I can’t believe we have the pyro.”

“What was he in prison for?”

“He killed a fifteen-year-old girl in Oregon.”

“When?”

“You’ll love this part. A week after your father died. That’s why there weren’t any fires for twenty-five years. Because he was in the cross-bar hotel. He might have gotten out sooner, but he was linked to a series of fires inside.”

“Thanks, Marsha.”

By three o’clock it was on the local news. While there were plenty of pictures of Earl Ward as a man, there were none of him as a woman, nothing except the composite I’d cooked up with a police sketch artist. Using his makeup skills and a new wig, Ward could easily change his appearance again.

By seven I’d learned that Earl Ward’s mother lived near Station 33 close to the Renton city limits. I knew I had the right place, because as I drove past it I saw a city vehicle parked out front. A stakeout. They didn’t have him yet.

67. SORTA HANDSOME PYROMANIAC SEEKS
BIG-BOOBED NYMPHO

According to Earl Ward

         
The day gets worse as it goes on.

My feet have blisters from all that running in heels. My chest continues to ache where the guy poked me with the pole. There are black and blue marks that have begun to turn yellow and purple. It’s pure-dee nasty what Wollf did to me. I don’t know how these people can call themselves civilized.

I can’t get over the feeling of impending doom. It horrifies but also impels me to greater exploits.

Today starts off like every other. I wake up to hear my mother nagging that she’s already had lunch two hours ago and I need to find a job. I check my wounds, have breakfast while perusing the papers, and borrow Mom’s car on the pretext of following up on a job application to Boeing. Mom seems to be the only human being in the Northwest unaware that Boeing is laying off by the thousands.

It’s almost six-thirty and plenty dark by the time I put two dollars worth of gas in the car and read
The Stranger
whilst sitting by the window in the Starbucks at Twenty-third and Jackson. I’m two blocks from his fire station. The fire trucks come by while I am there.

It is almost impossible to quantify just how godderned exciting it is to be this close to all those big, strong, mustachioed firemen. And women, although only a few of the women have mustaches. Ha ha. Old Earl can still make a joke. Just like that bastard who was trying to kill me. I’ve heard them laughing together.

I love to watch those powerful machines drive by, the sounds of the sirens blasting against the buildings in the street. Mom says when I was small I used to wake up crying every time the sirens came past our house. That was the thing about the joint. Twenty-five years without a siren.

He was planning to kill me. Lieutenant Paul Wollf. So I’m treating it just like the joint. You find yourself with a mortal enemy, you eliminate him before he eliminates you. Wollf is a dead man. Period.

I check out the sex ads in the back of
The Stranger
but don’t find anything I can afford in terms of either emotional commitment or finances. I might place my own ad. How about this? “Redheaded cross-dresser seeks hot sex with psycho mama who can appreciate an experienced heating expert.”

I climb into Mom’s Dodge Dart and wheel around the neighborhood looking for targets, setting the good ones hard in memory when I spot them.

Somehow I end up in front of the old woman’s place. She spots me out the window, her dyed hair in the doorway now. I walk up the steps to the porch, where she is opening the front door. “Ma’am. I’m a friend of Jaclyn’s. I just stopped by to see if she was in attendance.”

“Jackie left a long time ago.”

“Pardon me?”

“I had to let her go. She doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Do you happen to know where she went?”

“I’ve no idea. Now, you’re going to have to go. I only came out to tell you to move that car.”

Jaclyn gone? Was it possible?

Driving aimlessly, I while away the next two hours scoping out targets, then I go home and park in front of the house. I enter and sniff the fetid odor of cats.

“What have you done now?” Mom asks.

“I told you. I had to check up on that job application. If you don’t come in once in a while, they forget about you.”

She glares at me. “No. Not that. The police called. They want to talk to you.”

The veins in my brain begin pulsing. “To me? Why?”

“All I know is they want to talk to you.”

“Which police, Mom? “

“Don’t you grab me.”

“I’m sorry. Okay.” I let her go. I had to have more information. This could be something as easy as my parole officer getting a bug up his butt, or it could be worse.

“Which police? You have to tell me.”

“Some man wanted to know if they questioned you twenty-five years ago about some fires. I said twenty-five years ago you were in prison.”

“How long ago did they call?”

“Why, just before you walked in.”

I dig through her purse and take all her money. Her cigarettes. I grab a handful of clothes, my bag of makeup, two wigs, then I make a U-ey in the street. When I get to the top of the hill, I check the rearview mirror. I believe I see a pair of headlights stop in front of our house, but they might be at the neighbor’s.

There is a liquor store and U.S. Post Office at Twenty-third and Union. I park two blocks away on a side street and walk to the liquor store. I don’t have to wait fifteen minutes before some lunkhead leaves his motor running while he goes in to buy a bottle. It is a Ford Exploder. By eight-thirty I have another set of plates on the Exploder and have transferred my personal belongings from Mom’s car.

It is time to put the finish to all of this. It isn’t like I don’t know who I need to stop.

I’ve been a nice guy up until now, but now they have nobody to blame but themselves. Period. I can kill, I can maim, and by golly, they’ve got my dander up, so I’m going to do both. Maybe I’ll go down, but I’ll go down in a blaze of glory. You betch’er butt.

This is for sure.

No more little fires. From now on they’re only going to see big fires from this heating expert. Period.