Blood & Spirits (21 page)

He looks at me and I really must be a mess. Blood on my torn dress and makeup running tear streaked all over my face. It’s a scary thing to be in his gaze and know my imperfections.

“Why don’t you go get cleaned up and change clothes? Then we can discuss how to fix your problems.”

I can’t help but laugh through my tears. I walk over and hug him. Holding onto him is the safest I’ve felt in so long. I’m not in control but everything is going to be right again soon.

***

The soft hum of the Japanese engine purrs into the driveway of the Jefferson House, as Frank pulls the flat black car he’d been relegated to slowly into the garage. He turns the car off and slides out of the seat and walks out of the garage muttering to himself about drinking from guys who weigh less, and how rare it is to find a good guy named Buck.

He crosses the backyard slowly, looking off to the hedge line at the rear of the property. He saw some guys hanging around over by the corner on his way in, and with all that’s been going on lately, he’s a little on edge.

He talks to Julie in the kitchen briefly, small talk about if she should make food or not, and heads upstairs to see if he can get a better look from the upstairs windows out at the back of the property.

He stands silently, like a cat about to pounce, staring out of the only southern facing third floor window. Even at four in the morning on a moonless night he can still see more than he wants to.

From here he can easily observe the front of the old disused bottling plant, about a block away, and intently focus on two people who must think they are hidden from view looking at the house though a camera. They must have a good lens, he thinks as he turns away and pulls the curtains shut.

He could swear that one of those guys looks like that Carl guy Lewis had arrested for his late night shovel exploits. This could really be bad if he was right.

He makes a mental note to call V, when he has a better idea of who they are and what they’re doing, but first he has to make sure that Julie knows to lay low, and be careful.

When he gets back to the kitchen Julie isn’t there. He calls for her, but gets no reply. This is a bad sign.

He draws his pistol and creeps slowly down the hall, looking above, in, and around everything. The black cat nudges at his feet and he pushes it back toward the kitchen.

Coming into the front parlor he gets even more nervous, as he sees the new front door standing open just a crack.

He paces quickly over to it, looking side to side and checks the porch. Again he calls for Julie, this time more softly. Still nothing.

He thinks about how stupid he’s going to feel if she went up the front stairs to look for him when he came down the back. And he starts up the stairs. His crew had been in today and laid all new carpeting on the first floor and up the front staircase. It was a light tan textured plush, and was so thick he couldn’t even hear his footsteps as he crept up the stairs.

The basement door in the hallway opens slowly, making no sound. Frank still heading up the stairs can’t even see it. She creeps out the door and into the hallway, keeping close to the wall next to the stairs.

There’s a banging on the porch outside the front door, as a flower pot falls over in the breeze, but it’s enough to spook Frank and draw his attention to the door.

She steps out from the wall as he’s looking at the door and raises the gun. He never sees it coming.

Frank feels like a hammer hit him in the center of his chest. Then there’s the deafening crack of a .45 at close range. He’s knocked back into the wall as an electric wave of pain that rushes though him all the way to his fingertips and toes.

Julie drops the gun as she begins crying in jagged sobs and apologizing. “Frank, I’m so sorry. I would never hurt you. You have to believe me. I love you, Frank. I’m so sorry.”

Looking down at the hole in his chest, now poring blood like an open tap onto the new light carpeting, he manages to say, “This… this is why we can’t have nice things.”

He drops to one knee, and then falls backward down the stairs.

He can hear splashing sounds distantly, somewhere off in another part of the house; then they get closer. He struggles to open his eyes and then to regain focus.

She’s carrying blue plastic jugs of kerosene around, dumping them out and spattering the walls. The smell is overpowering. He tries to sit up and everything gets a little dimmer.

She takes no notice of him moving as she continues with her work, soaking the building with more than enough kerosene to jumpstart hell.

Julie comes closer, finally, to where he’s laying on the floor with another jug in her hand, and stands looking down at him, her face red and covered in tears. He tries to speak, but only gets out one word.

“Don’t.”

She cries convulsively as she dumps the jug over her head. He tries to reach her but she’s still almost ten feet away and he can’t even lift his hand now. He’s freezing cold and everything seems very dim and far away.

In between breaths she softly says, “I’m sorry, Frank, for all of this. I really am.”

Holding a box of matches up in her hand she manages to say, though her sobs, “Goodbye.”

She strikes a match and the house explodes in flames. Julie becomes a blinding column of light for the last moments Frank sees her. Then everything goes black.

***

Lewis is the first to arrive on the scene, with two cruisers, sirens blaring, behind him. He gets out of his car on the street and is surprised at how completely the house is engulfed. The heat from the blaze is already melting the power lines as he tells the uniformed officers to push back the crowd that’s starting to gather on the street.

From inside the house he hears screaming and then gunfire. It doesn’t seem possible to him that anyone could be alive in there. But it sounds like someone is having a firefight.

There’s more screaming from inside. It’s definitely a woman, and it’s obvious she’s in a great deal of pain.

He looks at the one of the uniformed officers and asks, “How long on the fire department?”

“Fire and rescue are on their way, sir. They say about ten minutes.” He answers Lewis and then runs to stop a group of kids with camera phones from getting close enough to get hurt.

Windows on the third floor start to blow out, and he decides he’s not going to wait ten minutes. Not when he might be able to save whoever that was screaming. He runs up the driveway and sees Frank’s car parked in the garage. Now it is just too much for him.

Across the backyard he sees the water hose. He gets to as fast as he can and soaks down his trench coat. He drapes it over his head and pulls it together in the front over his nose and mouth.

Ducking down as much as he can, he walks up and into the open backdoor.

This was definitely arson. He didn’t need to wait for a report to tell him that, everything is on fire.

The screaming was coming from upstairs but the back staircase had collapsed. He’d only been in this place once before but he was fairly certain if there was nothing blocking his way he could make it to the front stairs.

He ducked out the back door and took a deep breath and then headed back inside. Remembering his emergency training he got low to the floor, and tried as best he could to follow a wall through the kitchen and down the hallway.

The floor was on fire from whatever chemical was used to light this place up and it was seriously slowing him down. Visibility in here was next to nothing, he was running out of air, and worst of all his coat was starting to dry out.

He knew that if he started trying to breathe, he could be dead in no time at all. This was really becoming a race against time, in a man-made hell.

After what seems like hours without a breath he finds the curve to the bottom of the staircase. As he’s turning to go up his feet kick something that has enough give that he thinks it’s a person.

Feeling down by his feet he’s sure of it. This is a body. He drags himself on top of it and it’s his worst nightmare. It’s Frank.

He can see that he’s been shot and he has no idea if he’s still alive or not, but the screaming from upstairs has stopped and he’s almost out of air. He’s gotta get out of here, and he’s taking Frank with him.

He can hear the sirens of the fire trucks coming as he sits up lifting his fallen partner onto his back. They’ll be here in just a minute, but he can’t wait for them. He tries to stand and topples over, off balance. The air is knocked out of him and he takes a breath. He’s not going to die here; Frank isn’t going to burn in this house.

Bracing himself on the wall he just fell into, he lifts Frank onto his back. As he tries to stand again he feels like he must be blessed by a higher power. His hip hit the doorknob. He’s at the front door.

Using his coat over his hand he turns the knob, and starts to pull as hard as he can. He drops Frank on his back and falls on top of him on the front porch. He can breathe. He takes a few breaths lying on the porch, thankful to be alive, and then realizes his coat is on fire.

With every ounce of energy left in him he pulls himself to his feet, throwing the coat inside the open doorway, and starts to drag Frank by his arms down off the porch.

Emergency workers meet him as he gets to the driveway and take both him and Frank in their arms. He turns to face the street and a crowd that is now screaming and cheering for him.

For just a moment he’s glad that the kids are there with the camera phones. They’ll upload this video and he’ll be able to rub it in Frank’s face that not only was he right, he had to save him himself.

They load Frank into an ambulance and try to do the same for Lewis. He refuses to take the ride. This is his crime scene, and he’s not leaving it until he knows more about what happened here. He requests an arson investigator be called, and he’s told there’s already one assigned. If he has it his way it’ll be the same guy who was on it last time. This looks like what Calvin tried before, and he wants to connect the two fires if there’s any evidence to support it.

It takes the fire crew almost two hours to get the fire out. There are several tense moments when things in the house explode, and Lewis is completely in awe when the third floor collapses down into the lower part of the house. The devastation here is massive.

Lewis is sitting, stained head to toe with black soot, with burned clothes and hair, on the hood of his car and he just can’t walk away. He knew they’d come for her. He’d warned Frank. He just hadn’t expected anything like this.

When they finally find a body in the house the gravity of it really hits him. That could have been Frank. I could have been him. He has to go home.

A black cat rubs against his leg as he stands. He looks down at it and says “Don’t play with matches,” as he points to the smoldering remains of what was the Jefferson House.

Leslie waits until she sees the unmarked car pull away, from where she’s crouched hidden in the backyard near the hedge line, before she moves. She runs down the back of the property to the rear of the garage where Frank parks his motorcycle. She walks it quietly into the alley behind the property and starts it up. She has to get to V’s place and let her know what happened.

***

When I hear the motorcycle pull up I assume it’s Frank coming to give me an update on the house and the girls. I look out the window and see Leslie on Frank’s bike and I know something’s gone wrong.

She bursts in the door and I can smell the smoke on her, even after her ride. This is an even worse sign.

Jules comes into the room and Leslie looks at him anxiously. She wants badly to tell me what’s going on but she’s not sure if she should speak in front of the guy she doesn’t know. They’re loyal to a fault, my girls.

“He’s okay. Tell me what’s going on.”

She practically erupts from the mouth. “The Jefferson House is gone. Burned completely down. I went there to give Frank and Julie updates from the hospital, and to find out how things where there, because we were all curious, ya know? When I got there though, I came in the back door and saw Julie shoot Frank.”

“Wait!” This is a lot for me to process and she’s talking at chipmunk speed, so I open her memories and start to watch them as she explains. “Did you say Julie shot Frank?”

“Yes! I saw her do it or I’d never have believed it. She shot him and she said she was sorry, then she started dousing the whole place with gasoline or something. I was still trying to figure out a way to get Frank out of there to the hospital or a doctor or something when I saw her with matches and it finally occurred to me, she’s gonna burn the whole place down.”

She pauses for a breath but her memories are still racing through my mind. My God! How could this happen?

She’s only silent a moment before she lets loose again. “I pulled out the pistol Frank makes me carry but by the time I got the safety off it was too late! Everything was on fire, especially Julie. I heard sirens pulling up outside, but she was still standing over Frank. I didn’t know what she was going to do next so I shot her. She was on fire head to toe and she still tried to shoot me back. It was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever had happen to me in my life.

“Like she didn’t fall.” She stresses the point. “She just tried to shoot me. She only got one round off before her gun exploded in her hands and she ran screaming upstairs. Everything was on fire and I couldn’t get to Frank, or even see him anymore, so I ran and hid. She kept on screaming, V. I can still hear her in my head.”

She burst into tears. “I’m so sorry, V. I should have…”

I cut her off as I put her head on my shoulder. “You did what you could do. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

I hold her and stroke her hair as she cries, gently swaying back and forth, rocking her. As I’m doing this, I can feel part of my mind shutting down, turning off.

I can feel myself becoming more mechanical.

When I finally let go of her I feel next to nothing. I walk her into my bedroom and take out the fifteen grand in cash I keep on hand for emergencies. I give it to her and tell her to put up the girls not in the hospital under assumed names at a hotel across the river. I also tell her not tell any of them what happened just yet. I want to do that myself.