Burning Time (43 page)

Her face burned from the searing heat as Grebs torched the brown curtains at the window. Flames ate up the roller
shade and licked at the ceiling. Grebs was at the window facing the garden.

A shot sounded from outside. The fire spread to the cheap rug on the floor.

“Emma, come on.” April had her covered. She reached out one hand. “Come on.”

Outside, April heard the shouts of Sanchez. “Get the hell out of there!”

“Come on, Emma,” April coaxed.

Emma couldn’t seem to move. Blinding light flashed at her five feet away, too far to burn her but close enough to smart.

“Hurry.”

Animal sounds joined the roar of the torch.

“Fucking witch shot me. Fucking
bitch—”

Grebs screamed obscenities. For an instant, April had a clear sight of him through the thickening smoke. She could see that he was bleeding, looking for a way out. There was no way out. The flare died. He smashed the window with the heavy cylinder. Another shot came from outside. It hit the window frame with a little
thuck
.

“Fucking shit—”

He swung around and torched the sofa. Choking black smoke billowed up.

Emma screamed. The rug was burning near her bare feet. April stepped forward and grabbed her hand. It was slippery. She hung on.

“Move.” April pulled her toward the door. Her face burned, and now she was coughing, too. But April didn’t want to leave without nailing the bastard who killed Ellen Roane. The torch spat at her again, forcing her farther back as Grebs moved to the kitchen where the stove was.

“He’s going to blow up the house!” Emma cried.

“What?”

“He did something to the gas line. There’s a leak.”

April pushed Emma behind her as Sanchez charged into the room and grabbed her. April only had a second. The hot gray cloud surged around her, blowing out the broken window. She didn’t want him to blow up the place, and didn’t want him to get away. She held her breath against the suffocating fumes, raised her two hands together, and fired her gun in the line of duty for the second time ever. Grebs screamed. She saw him go down, his jeans and hair on fire. She raised her gun to fire a second time, but Sanchez had come back for her. He grabbed her and shoved her out the door, using himself as a shield as the fire inside roared and spread.

The last thing April saw was Grebs on fire, writhing on the floor when the explosion hit. The blast was enormous. It shook the earth and shattered windows all up and down the block. The roof collapsed above them, and the raging fire shot up into the sky.

Boom
. Shock waves jolted the street, setting an overhead street light swinging wildly in the intersection in front of Jason’s taxi. The car in front of them swerved to avoid a kid on a bike, skidding out of control.

“What the—”

The taxi driver slammed on the breaks, smashing Jason into the plastic divider that separated them.

“What are you doing?” Jason cried. “Go ahead.”

The taxi spun out and stopped sideways in the intersection. Above, the light, still showing green, swung back and forth.

“You blind, mon?” the driver shouted over his rasta music. He pointed to the dense black smoke that was already beginning to spew up into the sky, several blocks ahead of them.

Horns started honking around them. They were blocking the traffic flow into the intersection.

“Go on,” Jason said wildly. They had about six blocks to go. “Go on.”

“No, mon, I don’t want to get near no fire.”

Fire. Oh, shit it was a big fire. Grebs set fires. Jason could see the flames now, shooting up over the tops of the two-story houses. Oh, God. Too late.

“Go on,” he cried. “We’re not there. Go on.”

“Not going no farther, mon. We’ll get stuck in there.”

“It’s only a few blocks. Hurry up.” Jason dug in his pocket and pulled out the wad of bills he had left from his California trip. “I’ll give you five hundred dollars to take me six fucking blocks. Come on. It’ll only take you a few minutes.”

The light turned red. The horns blared. The driver eyed the thick wad of bills. He shrugged.

“Okay, mon. It’s your money.”

Jerk, jerk, jerk. They lurched forward as the taxi accelerated into traffic moving the other way, causing a gridlock. Shrieking fire engines raced into the mess, adding to the chaos of a dozen furious horns honking all around them. Above them, the sky turned black. Jason got out on the side of the car that had a door handle and started to run.

The blast blew out the front wall of the garage apartment, causing the collapse of half the roof. Fire raged out of the jagged opening. A large piece of crumpled aluminum siding fell on the driveway in front of the garage door. Shattered glass littered front lawns and sidewalks all up and down the block.

The stakeout cop who had been tinkering with the car had seen Mike and April go into the garage. He’d followed to provide backup. He hadn’t had time to make it up the stairs. The house shook with a deafening bang. April, Sanchez, and the woman hostage were blown out the door and propelled down the stairs, knocking the stakeout cop over.

Choking on smoke and plaster dust, all four struggled for air. Three of them had landed in a tangled heap on the cement floor. Emma lay curled motionless on her side. April sprawled over her legs. Sanchez’s full weight came to rest on April’s twisted ankle. The stakeout cop smashed against the wall, where two lawn chairs crashed on top of
him. From upstairs came the powerful smell of charcoal, burning electric wires, and charred flesh.

Better get out of here
. April was the first to move. Her ankle throbbed. Her eyes stung with smoke and dust. She couldn’t see anything. She put her hand out to Emma. “You all right?” Of course she wasn’t all right. April had crashed down on her hard. The woman had no clothes on. April could feel the black soot and plaster dust that clung to her sticky skin. Emma’s fingers touched hers. She groaned, but didn’t say anything.

Sanchez was a dead weight.

“Mike?” April cried. “Mike—”

“Uh.” He grabbed the back of the blackened car, struggled to his feet. The heat in there was intense. He held out his hand to April, jerked her up. “We got to get out.”

The stakeout cop untangled himself from the lawn chairs, cursing. “Come on,” he said. He stepped forward and fell on his face. “Shit,” he muttered. “Shit.”

“Mrs. Frank.” April leaned over her. “Mrs. Frank, can you stand up?”

“I don’t know.” Emma’s voice was hoarse and panicked.

“It’s okay, we’ll get you out.” She put her arm around Emma and helped her up, though she could hardly stand herself. Her jacket and pants were peppered with cuts and burns. Her hands and face, too. Her whole body felt scorched and bruised. She ignored it. She figured Emma felt a lot worse. Sanchez supported her other side.

April nodded at him to start moving, and saw that the fire had singed off his mustache and eyebrows. His upper lip was red.

Emma looked from one to the other. “He was going to—” Her blue eyes filled with tears.

“Yeah, but he didn’t get to.”

Soot covered the drawings on Emma Chapman’s face. April could hardly see her through the stinging smoke. It looked like Emma had a clay mask on. That was all right, the woman probably had mud packs all the time. It looked as if her features were still perfect. They hadn’t been damaged. April put a hand to Emma’s hair. It was matted and dirty, but at least she still had it.

“I shot him,” she told April. She was in shock.

April nodded. “Probably saved your life. Come on.”

The stakeout cop was on his feet. The four of them slowly started moving. Only minutes had passed since the explosion. Three firemen in hats and rubber coats came into the garage to help them out. Outside, people were already gawking at the devastation, and the ferocity of the fire. Fire engines and police sirens wailed.

Fire equipment, police cars, three ambulances with their lights flashing were already on the scene. With the help of a fireman twice her size, April hobbled out into the chaos. The first thing she saw was a kitchen sink and part of its cabinet crashed onto the hood of a car in the street. The unmarked car from the Two-O was rubble.

It was dusk. In the fading light, people drawn out of their houses by the blast were complaining, pointing at the fire, shaking their heads. One woman with her hair in curlers rushed toward them shrieking, “Help me. Oh, God. He had a heart attack. He’s in the house. He won’t get up—” A black female fire fighter went to help her.

“Oh, God,” April muttered. It was a mess. What would her mother say about her job now? Never mind the cuts and burns on her hands and feet, or the sprained ankle—if she was lucky. Sai Woo would look on dark side. She wouldn’t say her daughter big hero for saving Noblewoman Trapped in Cave. She would say her daughter
strong enough to blow up whole neighborhood. And still not married. Pah.

“I’m fine,” she protested to the fireman, who wanted to deposit her in an ambulance. She wasn’t getting into any ambulance. She turned back to Emma.

Emma’s fireman had put his coat on her and carried her out because she had no shoes.

Sanchez touched her arm. “You okay?”

April nodded. “What about you?”

“Fine.” He nodded, too.

She knew he wasn’t fine. She could see the blood from many small cuts through the holes in his clothes. His face looked burned and one of his ears was the color of raw hamburger. Well, her ankle hurt like hell and was beginning to swell. It was his fault for falling on top of her, but she didn’t want to mention it now. Maybe some day she’d tell him he wasn’t good in close.

“Thanks,” was what she said now.

“Yeah, what for?”

“Everything.” She saw a car from the Two-O and turned away to help clear the street for the ambulance that was coming in for Emma.

The fireman stood there holding onto her. “Could you put me down? I need to call my husband.” Emma still looked stunned.

“No, you’ll cut your feet.” The fireman cocked his head at the ambulance driver, a guy with a ponytail and a thick gold hoop in one ear.

The ambulance stopped and a white-jacketed medic jumped out of the front seat. “Who’s first?”

“She is,” April indicated Emma.

“Can she stand?”

“Not without any shoes, she can’t. Hurry it up, will
you. I got things to do.” The fireman looked back at the fire.

The medic opened the back doors and held out some white cotton blankets to wrap Emma in so he could give the fireman back his coat.

“My husband’s a doctor. I can’t go to a hospital. Call him. I want to go home.” Emma resisted being put in the ambulance.

“Got to get in, lady. It’s the rules.”

“Don’t worry,” April said quickly. “I know where he is.”

Emma stared at her.

“I called him. He’s on his way. He’s the one who helped us locate you. He’s a great guy.”

Emma started to cry again.

“Come on, it’s okay. In you go, and then I’ll find him for you.”

April helped the two paramedics put Emma into the ambulance. When they exchanged the coat for the cotton blankets, no one commented on the artwork on the woman’s body.

April could hear the shouts of police and fire fighters, yelling at curious people not to cross the lines, not to try to go back to their houses yet. April got out of the ambulance.

Sanchez stood with Sergeants Joyce and Aspiranti, describing what happened, by the look of it. Down the block near the diner, Jason Frank was trying to argue his way past a roadblock.

April hobbled down the street toward him. “She’s over here,” she shouted to Jason. “He’s a doctor, let him through,” she ordered, flashing her ID.

Jason pushed through the uniforms, his face white with fear. “Where is she?”

“She’s in that ambulance.” April pointed at it. She tried
to reach out and stop him, so she could tell him what to expect, what happened to Emma and what she looked like. But he didn’t stop. He wanted to get to his wife and didn’t hesitate, not for a second. April stood there on one foot, staring after him until Sanchez came to get her.

By April’s watch it was nearly eleven o’clock. The lights were on in the two-patient room, and her hospital bed was still cranked up in a sitting position. A male nurse had been in a few minutes before to tell her not to push the button that made it go down. They wanted her to sleep sitting up. Several pillows served as a prop for her ankle, which had a small makeshift splint on it instead of a heavy cast, because of the burns. Puffy bandages covered patches of her feet, ankles, hands, wrists, and head. There were none on her face but two on the top of her head, where the odds were good, she’d been told, that her hair would eventually grow back.

The other bed as empty. There was no way of telling if the lights were on for the expected arrival of another patient sometime soon, or simply because no one had thought of turning them off. April wanted out. She felt as naked without her gun as she did without her clothes. For four hours different doctors and technicians had poked and prodded and x-rayed her. An Indian with a turban had covered her burns with various kinds of antibiotic
grease and dressed them with the special gauze pads that weren’t supposed to stick. There was an IV needle embedded in her arm. She saw no reason for the IV, or for staying the night, and told the balding doctor whose ID tag said he was the orthopedist that all she needed was a cane and a release. But he had not been interested in her opinion.

In fact, she was all too well aware that the hospital staff could do anything to her, and no one from the department would stop them or complain. The police yielded their authority in hospital zones. They stood outside doors marked Do Not Enter, waiting endlessly for treatment and information just like anybody else. It really pissed her off.

Who had taken her things away and locked them up—her badge, her gun, her handbag? Her notebook with her important telephone numbers? She didn’t like this. The steady ache of the burns made her feel feverish, but that didn’t bother her as much as the pulsating pain in her ankle. The ankle was badly swollen and couldn’t support any weight at all. She didn’t have the feeling she’d be using it anytime soon.