calling it a night.”
Chloe look up, surprised to find that everyone else was gone.
She did not want to stay in the building alone. She also was kinda on a roll, and hated to stop now. “Is anyone left next door?”
Gwen checked. “A couple of people are still there,” she reported.
“And I’ll make sure the front door locks behind me. See you in the morning.”
Chloe settled back in to work. The solitude and quiet were
soothing. She hadn’t realized how intimidated she’d been by
Gwen’s fast and flawless work. Now, with only herself to set the
pace, she was able to filter out the negative vibes her subconscious had been whispering all week. Her strokes were still clumsy but
maybe, just maybe, she could actually finish the tray.
At eleven o’clock she grabbed a soda from the lounge fridge.
Bring on the caffeine, she thought as she returned to her work. She was jazzed now.
Half an hour later she was ready to try a cornucopia painted
with three colors applied in a single stroke. Chloe did a couple
201
practice strokes with a triple-loaded brush on a scrap of tag board, dashed out with annoyance for a restroom break—she was
such
an idiot; she should have skipped the soda—and settled back down.
She held her breath and leaned close to the tray. With one stroke
the colors blended nicely. She felt quite pleased with herself in particular and life in general—
Until she smelled smoke.
She dropped the brush and jumped to her feet, blood pulsing.
Two trash cans sat near the door, a brown one for miscellaneous
trash and a red one for oily rags. Someone had left the lid on the red one ajar. Smoke was seeping from the crack.
Chloe ran to the cans. She
meant
to push the lid firmly back in place, but it clattered to the floor. Black smoke billowed high above the can. Flames shot up too, greedy for oxygen, crackling with glee.
“Shit!”
Chloe ran to the sink. The only containers in sight were a jelly jar and a yogurt container someone had forgotten to wash.
By the time she’d filled them, the fire had jumped from the red can to a huge roll of the paper used to cover the tables. Flames wicked up the paper tube to the shelf it leaned against, setting someone’s notebook alight. A pile of wadded paper towels on the floor caught at the same moment.
Chloe tossed what water she hadn’t spilled at the blaze. After a
quick angry hiss, flames jumped from the notebook to a stack of
practice tag board someone had covered with lovely C- and
S-strokes. The work was consumed as fire raced along the shelf.
Forget water, she thought. I need a fire extinguisher. Or a
phone—a phone would be good too.
But she didn’t
see
a fire extinguisher or a phone. She ran around the classroom, frantically shoving and kicking her class-202
mates’ stuff aside as she searched for either of those handy little inventions. Nothing.
The room was filling with smoke, stinging her eyes, filling her
nose with an acrid oily stench. The crackling noise was rising.
Flames had moved to the wooden cabinet beneath the sink. More
flames writhed in jagged lines along the floor. It was time to go for help.
Chloe ran to the closed classroom door—why was the door
closed?—and grabbed the handle. It turned in her hand, but the
door didn’t move. She threw her shoulder against it, Hollywood-
style. No luck. She banged on the door. “Hey!” she yelled, hoping
any student still working next door might hear.
“Hey! Help me!”
No response, no sign of rescue. The lounge, visible through a
window beside the door, remained horribly deserted. The smoke
was getting thicker but she could still see writhing flames, hear
their crackle as they found stray bits of combustibles. Chloe’s heart beat a panicked staccato.
“I am
not
trapped,” she muttered. That beautiful, beautiful student lounge was only a pane of glass away. It took two seconds to
consider her options. She snatched up the closest chair. Well, she tried to snatch it up. Vesterheim staff had not skimped on student comfort, and the nicely upholstered chair was heavier than she
expected. She rolled it toward the front wall instead.
Chloe had imagined hurling it through the window, but that
was out. Gasping with effort she wrestled the chair up to shoulder height and banged it against the window. No tinkling glass—not
even an encouraging crack. She slammed the chair harder. Still
nothing, and her arms were already quivering. God, she was
such
a 203
weenie, and if she escaped this fire she was seriously going to work on upper body strength—
Stop whimpering! she ordered herself. The room had more
than one door, right? She stumbled toward the back of the class-
room, and …
yes
! There was a back door. If she hadn’t freaked so quickly, she would have remembered that. Or at least spotted the
neon EXIT sign in the far corner. Mom had asked that any stu-
dents needing to use varnish step outside on the fire escape.
Blessed,
blessed
fire escape, Chloe sang silently as she ran toward the sign glowing red in the smoky haze. When she
slammed against the back door’s horizontal panic bar it gave so
fast that she almost fell.
She found herself in a tiny anteroom, with a second door and
EXIT sign on her left. This one must lead directly onto the fire
escape. She slammed against its panic bar—and yelped in pain as
metal met hip without giving way.
Chloe’s stinging eyes blurred with tears. The door was locked.
But … how could that be? Mom’s instructions had been quite
clear:
Remember, anyone using spray varnish needs to step out on the
fire escape
…
Just prop the door open so you don’t get locked out.
Fire escape doors didn’t have exterior handles or fixtures that locked.
They should always be easy to open from the inside.
Which could only mean one thing: someone had jammed this
door shut from the outside.
204
twenty-two
Roelke reached the garage without arousing any hostile dogs
or vigilant neighbors. He paused by a door in the far wall, out of sight of the Rimestads’ house. He put a gloved hand on the knob,
and it turned easily. He sighed. Too many people thought that a
break-in couldn’t happen in their community, to them.
Then he reminded himself that right this minute, the Rime-
stads’ false sense of security was not a bad thing.
Two seconds later he was inside, the door shut softly behind
him. He pulled his flashlight from his pocket, let his eyes adjust to the gloom, and began a quick look-see.
The garage had been weatherized, and showed no sign that a
car had been parked inside for quite some time. One corner had
been turned into a shop, with two workbenches, piles of wood on
the floor, more wood on shelves, paint cans, a jigsaw, knives and
chisels. In another corner a wheelbarrow, grill, and lawnmower
waited for spring. Metal shelves along one wall were cluttered with suburban detritus: a red gas can, a collection of birdfeeders, hoes 205
and hedge clippers, miscellaneous bits of hardware. Cardboard
cartons with notes marked on the sides lined two shelves: Hallow-
een decorations, dehumidifier, croquet set, Goodwill.
Roelke tapped fingers against his thigh. He’d found no handy
weapons collection displayed on the wall, no boxes conveniently
labeled “antique message tubes,” no fist-sized holes in the drywall suggesting bursts of rage. He was tempted to root around the
closed cardboard cartons, but decided against it. This truly was a fool’s errand—not to mention that he was trespassing, in a town
where he had absolutely no authority. All of which, he reflected
sourly, didn’t suggest anything good about his own mental state.
He slipped back outside and paused, keeping to the shadows.
Away from the street, Rimestad’s tidiness was no longer in evi-
dence. Moonglow revealed paint curling from the doorframe and
cracks in the garage window. A squirrel’s nest visible in a high vent pipe had not been removed, and a wooden trellis had fallen sideways. Several flowerpots lined the wall, skeletal dead blooms pok-
ing forlornly through the snow.
Roelke felt a flash of irritation, aimed squarely at himself. Tom
Rimestad’s lack of maintenance didn’t reveal one damn thing
about the man other than that he was busy. Given his family situa-
tion, Rimestad was doing well to have Christmas decorations up in
front. Roelke imagined himself married to … well, let’s say
Chloe … and how
he
might feel and function if she was terribly ill.
It was not pleasant to contemplate.
A light in the next yard flicked on, startling as a search beacon.
“There you go, Muffin,” a woman crooned. “Do your business
quickly tonight, all right? It’s too cold for Mommy to wait long for her precious Muffykins.”
206
O-
kay
, that was enough for now. Roelke decided to head for the street before precious Muffykins caught his scent and came to
investigate, yapping merrily all the way.
Roelke had reached the front corner of the garage when he
slipped on a bit of ice. Windmilling his arms did not keep him for landing on his ass. Windmilling his arms
did
cause him to whack a downspout, hard. The downspout evidently needed a bit of maintenance too, for one segment fell to the pavement with a metallic
clatter surely heard all the way to the state line.
By the time Roelke was on his feet Muffin had streaked through
the shrubbery, barking maniacally as only small dogs can. A light
over the Rimestads’ front door flicked on. The door opened. Three
people stepped outside. “Who’s there?” a man called.
Roelke swore with silent but mighty force. Then he walked
slowly toward the light, hands held a bit away from his sides:
I am
not a threat
.
“Good heavens!” Chloe’s mother exclaimed. “Roelke? Is that
you?” Marit hurried down the sidewalk toward him.
“That’s Roelke?” the second woman asked. He recognized Sig-
rid’s voice and beehive hairdo.
“Who is Roelke?” Tom Rimestad demanded.
“It’s Chloe’s young man,” Sigrid confided in a loud aside as the
trio surrounded him. She and Marit were already bundled in their
coats and hats. Evidently they’d been about to leave as he did his swan dive on the driveway.
Marit frowned. “But … what are you doing here?”
Roelke was quick, if not steady, on his feet. “I knew Chloe had
your car,” he said, “and I didn’t like the idea of you ladies walking home alone.”
207
That was accepted at once. “How
thoughtful
!” Marit said.
“How
sweet
!” Sigrid said, patting his arm.
“How
good
of you,” Rimestad chimed in. He extended a hand
and introduced himself with a jovial grin. “We got to talking and
completely lost track of time.”
Chloe was right, Roelke thought. If this man is a killer, he does
not look the part.
“I’d been trying to convince these two to let me walk them
home,” Rimestad continued.
Sigrid made a dismissive gesture. “You need to stay with Adelle.
Anyway, now that Roelke—”
Roelke sliced the air with one hand to silence her, catching the
sound before they did, and whirled toward the street. The others
also went still as the distant wail of sirens came closer. More than one siren, punctuated with the unmistakable blare of a fire
engine’s horn.
“Oh, dear,” Sigrid murmured.
Rimestad frowned. “Sounds like they’re stopping downtown.”
It sounds like they’re stopping near Vesterheim, Roelke thought.
“Stay here,” he barked. Without a backward glance he hurried away, icy pavement be damned.
Chloe hurled herself against the jammed fire escape door a few
more times before accepting defeat. Belatedly she shut the class-
room door behind her and crouched on the floor in the tiny ante-
room, heart thudding, skin prickling, her turtleneck soaked with
sweat. During a fire it was best to stay low, where the air was better, 208
right? Maybe the fire would burn itself out. Maybe she’d be OK
here until help arrived.
Nice theory, but it didn’t stave off an immense wave of claus-
trophobia. She was trapped in this little anteroom. The EXIT sign
provided the only light, glowing with ghastly red intensity through the smoke that had billowed into the space with her. She crawled
along the bottom of the outside door, scrabbling with fingers des-
perate to find a space big enough to—to shove something through,
maybe. But no such space existed and besides, it was dark outside, and she was on the third floor of the old building. Slipping a note through the crack would have accomplished exactly nothing.
She pressed her hand against the classroom door. It didn’t feel
hot—yet, at least, and that was something. She crawled along the
wall to the right of the classroom door, trailing one palm along the wall. Nothing. Almost immediately she hit the corner, and turned
again …
And felt another door. Another door!
This one had a doorknob. Chloe tried it, turned it, stumbled
through. She emerged into a narrow, twisting corridor. A cloud of
smoke followed, not wanting to let her go, but it was half-hearted.
Chloe kicked the door closed behind her. She didn’t know