White Fire (10 page)

She suddenly realized there had been no patter of nails on the floor, no shaggy, friendly dog wagging his misshapen tail in greeting. “Rex?” she called out.

Nothing.

With a shrug, she got a glass from one of the cabinets, walked over to the fridge—decorated, as usual, with Sarah’s stupid Nicki Minaj photos—poured herself a glass of milk, then took a seat at the table in the breakfast nook. There was a stack of books and magazines in the window seat, and she pushed a few aside—noting as she did so that Sarah had finally taken her advice and begun reading
Watership Down
—and plucked out her copy of Schmalleger’s
Criminal Justice Today
. As she did so, she noticed that one of the chairs of the kitchen table had been knocked over.

Sloppy.

She found her page in the book and began to read, sipping her milk as she did so. It drove her father—a high-profile Hollywood lawyer—crazy that she wanted to go into law enforcement. He tended to look down on cops and prosecutors as lower forms of life. But in point of fact he was partly responsible for her interest. All the cop action movie premieres she’d attended—produced or directed by her father’s clients—had left her fascinated with the job from an early age. And starting next fall, she’d be studying the subject full-time, as a freshman at Northeastern University.

Finishing her milk, she closed the book again, put her glass in the sink, and walked out of the kitchen, heading for the stairs up to her room. Her father had the connections to keep her from getting summer jobs with the California police, but there was nothing he could do to prevent her winter break internship here in Roaring Fork. The very idea of it made him nuts.

Which, of course, was part of the fun.

The huge, rambling house was very still. She ascended the curving staircase to the second floor, the landing above dark and silent. As she climbed, she thought once again about the mysterious FBI agent.
FBI
, she thought.
Maybe I should look into an internship in Quantico next summer…

At the top of the stairs, she stopped. Something was wrong. For a moment, she wasn’t sure what it was. And then she realized: Sarah’s door was wide open, faint light streaming out into the dim hall.

At sixteen, Sarah had reached the age where adolescent privacy was all-important. These days her door was closed at all times. Jenny sniffed the air, but there was no smell of weed. She smiled: her sister must have fallen asleep over a magazine or something. She’d take the opportunity to sneak in and rearrange her sister’s stuff. That was sure to get a rise out of her.

Quietly, she crept down the hallway, approaching her sister’s room on silent feet. She came up to the door frame, placed one hand upon it, then slowly leaned her head in.

At first, she could not quite process what she saw. Sarah lay on her bed, tied fast with wound wire, a dirty rag stuffed into her mouth, a billiard ball at its center—Jenny noticed a number, seven, engraved into its yellow-and-white surface—and secured behind her head with a bungee cord. In the faint blue light, Jenny saw that her sister’s knees were bleeding profusely, staining the bedcovers black. As she gasped in horror and shock, Jenny saw Sarah’s eyes staring back at her: wide, terrified, pleading.

Then Jenny registered something in her peripheral vision. She turned in mid-gasp to see a fearful apparition in the hall beside her: wearing black jeans and a tight-fitting jacket of dark leather. The figure was silent and utterly motionless. Its hands were gloved and gripped a baseball bat. Worst of all was the clown mask—white, huge red lips smiling maniacally, bright red circles on each cheek. Jenny stumbled backward, her legs going weak beneath her. Through the eyeholes on each side of the long pointed nose, she could see two dark eyes staring back at her, dreadful in their lack of expression, in awful counterpoint to the leering mask.

Jenny opened her mouth to scream, but the figure—springing into sudden, violent motion—reached forward and quickly stuffed an awful-smelling cloth over her mouth and nose. As her senses went black and she sank to the floor, she could just hear—as the darkness rushed over her—a faint, high-pitched keening coming through Sarah’s gag…

Slowly, slowly, she regained her senses. Everything was fuzzy and vague. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. She was lying on something hard and smooth and that seemed to encircle her. Then, looking around in the darkness, she understood: she was in the tub of her private bathroom. What was she doing here? It felt as if she’d been asleep for hours. But no—the wall clock above her sink read ten minutes to one. She’d only been out for a couple of minutes. She tried to move—and realized she had been bound, hand and foot.

That was when the memory of what had happened came rushing back, falling upon her like a dead weight.

Instantly her heart accelerated, pounding hard in her chest. The rag was still in her mouth. She tried to spit it out, found she could not. The tight rope chafed at her wrists and ankles. Crime-scene photos she’d seen came into her mind, flashing quickly by in a terrible parade.

I’m going to be raped
, she thought, shuddering at the recollection of that leering clown mask. But no—if rape was what he was after, he wouldn’t have tied her up the way he did. This was a home invasion—and she’d walked right into the middle of it.

A home invasion.

Maybe he only wants money
, she thought.
Maybe he only wants jewelry. He’ll take what he can get, then leave, and then…

But it was all so horribly stealthy—so diabolically calculating. First Sarah, now her…

…
What about Mom and Dad?

At this thought, stark panic bubbled to the surface.

She struggled violently, jaw working, tongue pushing against the cloth wedged into her mouth. She tried to rise up, and an agonizing pain that almost caused her to faint lanced through her legs. She saw that her kneecaps had been beaten like her sister’s, white edges of broken bone jutting up through torn, bloody flesh. She remembered the baseball bat clutched in one black-gloved hand, and she moaned in fresh panic, thrashing against the bottom of the tub despite the awful pain in her knees.

All of a sudden, sounds of fighting erupted from down the hall: her father yelling, her mother crying out in fear. Jenny listened in unspeakable horror. Furniture was overturned; there was the sound of breaking glass. Her mother’s screams spiked in volume. A heavy thud. Abruptly, her father’s shouts of anger and alarm changed to cries of pain. There was an ugly crack of what sounded like wood on bone, and his voice was abruptly cut off.

Jenny listened to the dreadful silence, whimpering under the gag, her heart beating even faster. And then, a moment later, came another sound: sobs, running feet. It was her mother, racing down the hall, trying to escape. Jenny heard her mother go into Sarah’s room; heard her scream. And now a heavier tread came down the hall. It was not her father’s.

Another cry of fear from her mother; the sound of feet pattering down the stairs.
She’ll get away now
, Jenny thought, hope suddenly rising within her like white light.
She’ll hit the alarm, she’ll run out, call the neighbors, call the cops…

The unfamiliar tread, faster now, went stomping down the steps.

Heart in her throat, Jenny listened as the sounds grew fainter. She heard her mother’s step, running toward the kitchen and the master alarm panel. There was a cry as she was apparently cut off. The thunk of an overturned chair; the sound of glassware and dishes crashing to the floor. Jenny, struggling against her bonds, could hear it all, could follow the chase with dreadful articulation. She heard her mother’s footsteps, running through the den, the living room, the library. A moment of silence. And then came a low, cautious sliding sound: it was her mother, quietly opening the door to the indoor pool.
She’s going out the back
, Jenny thought.
Out the back, so she can get to the MacArthurs’ house…

All of a sudden there was a series of brutal crashes—her mother gave out a single, sharp scream—and then silence.

No…not quite silence. As Jenny listened, wide-eyed, whimpering, the blood rushing in her ears, she could make out the unfamiliar tread again. It was moving slowly now, deliberately. And it was getting closer. It was crossing the front hall. Now it was coming back up the stairs: she heard the squeak of the tread her father kept saying he’d get fixed.

Closer. Closer. The steps were coming down the hall. They were in her bedroom. And now a dark figure appeared in the doorway of her bath. It was silent, save for labored breathing. The clown mask leered down at her. There was no longer a baseball bat in one of the hands. It had been replaced by a plastic squeeze bottle, glowing pale gold in the faint light.

The figure stepped into the bathroom.

As it came closer, Jenny writhed in the tub, heedless of the pain in her knees. Now the invader was hovering over her. The hand holding the squeeze bottle came forward in her direction. As the figure began silently squeezing the liquid over her in long, arc-like jets, a powerful stench rose up: gasoline.

Jenny’s struggles became frantic.

Painstakingly, Clown Mask sent the looping squirts of gasoline over and around her, missing nothing, dousing her clothes; her hair; the surrounding porcelain. Then—as her struggles grew ever more violent—the invader put down the bottle and took a step back. A hand reached into the pocket of the leather jacket, withdrew a safety match. Holding the match carefully by its end, the figure struck it against the rough surface of the bathroom wall. The head of the match flared into yellow life. It hovered over her, dangling, for an endless, agonizing second.

And then, with the parting of a thumb and index finger, it dropped.

…And Jenny’s world dissolved into a roar of flame.

12

C
orrie Swanson entered the dining room of the Hotel Sebastian and found herself dazzled by its elegance. It was done up in Gay Nineties style, with red velvet flocked wallpaper, polished-brass and cut-glass fixtures, a pressed-tin ceiling, and Victorian-era mahogany tables and chairs trimmed in silk and gold. A wall of windowpanes looked across the glittering Christmas lights of Main Street to the spruce-clad foothills, ski slopes, and mountain peaks beyond.

Even though it was close to midnight, the dining room was crowded, the convivial murmur of voices mingling with the clink of glassware and the bustle of waiters. The light was dim, and it took her a moment to spy the solitary figure of Pendergast, seated at an unobtrusive table by one of the windows.

She brushed off the maître d’s pointed inquiries as to how he could help her—she was still dressed from jail—and made her way to Pendergast’s table. He rose, extending his hand. She was startled by his appearance: he seemed to be even paler, leaner, more ascetic—the word
purified
seemed somehow to apply.

“Corrie, I am glad to see you.” He took her hand in his, cool as marble, then held out her seat for her. She sat down.

She’d been rehearsing what she would say, but now it all came out in a confused rush. “I can’t believe I’m free—how can I ever thank you? I was toast, I mean, I was up shit creek, you know they’d already forced me to accept ten years—I really thought my life was over—thank you,
thank you
for everything, for saving my ass, for rescuing me from my incredible, unbelievable
stupidity
, and I’m so sorry, really,
really
sorry—!”

A raised hand stopped the flow of words. “Will you have a drink? Wine, perhaps?”

“Um, I’m only twenty.”

“Ah. Of course. I shall order a bottle for myself, then.” He picked up a leather-bound wine list that was so massive, it could have been a murder weapon.

“This sure beats jail,” said Corrie, looking around, drinking in the ambience, the aroma of food. It was hard to believe that, just a few hours ago, she’d been behind bars, her life utterly ruined. But once again Agent Pendergast had swooped in, like a guardian angel, and changed everything.

“It took them rather longer than I’d hoped to complete the paperwork,” said Pendergast, perusing the list. “Fortunately, the Sebastian’s dining room is open late. I think the Château Pichon-Longueville 2000 will do nicely—don’t you?”

“I don’t know jack about wine, sorry.”

“You should learn. It is one of the true and ancient pleasures that make human existence tolerable.”

“Um, I know this may not be the time…But I just have to ask you…” She found herself coloring. “
Why
did you rescue me like this? And why do you go to all this trouble for me? I mean, you got me out of Medicine Creek, you paid for my boarding school, you’re helping pay my tuition at John Jay—why? I’m just a screwup.”

He looked at her with an inscrutable gaze. “The Colorado rack of lamb for two would go well with the wine. I understand it’s excellent.”

She glanced at the menu. She was, it had to be admitted, starving. “Sounds good to me.”

Pendergast waved over the waiter and placed the order.

“Anyway, getting back to what I was talking about…I would really like to know, once and for all, why you’ve helped me all these years. Especially when I keep, you know, effing up.”

Again that impenetrable gaze met hers. “
Effing
? I see your penchant for charming euphemisms has not abated.”

“You know what I mean.”

The gaze seemed to go on forever, and then Pendergast said: “Someday, perhaps, you may make a good law enforcement officer or criminalist. That is why. No other reason.”

She felt herself coloring again. She wasn’t quite sure she liked the answer. Now she wished she hadn’t asked the question.

Pendergast picked up the wine list again. “Remarkable how many bottles of excellent French wine in rare vintages have found their way into this small town in the middle of the mountains. I certainly hope they are drunk soon; the altitude here is most unhealthy for Bordeaux.” He laid down the list. “And now, Corrie, please tell me in detail what you noticed about the bones of Mr. Emmett Bowdree.”