The Hidden Man (26 page)

“Randall,
the stalker
lit the fire.”

Blackburn held Shane’s gaze with a sad smile. “I appreciate what you’re doing, Shane. But I lit the fire. You know those new matches I like, you can strike them on any rough surface?” He pulled out little silver box. “I saved two matches out of this little match safe here. Janine gave it to me. Pure silver. Two fires at each end of the basement. Paint thinner, canvas sets.”

Blackburn resumed walking. “I used a call box on the street to get the fire department rolling as soon as I left.”

“Oh,” Shane replied, trying to digest what he was hearing. “So…you’re the reason that they got there early? You saved the place then, right? You called it in early to make sure that it didn’t spread? So without you—”

“Without me, there wouldn’t have been a fire! I set it.”

“Oh you set it. I see. And now…you can get the car back, and have everything be all right with the department,
because
you set the theatre on fire?”

Blackburn said nothing. They kept walking.

The mist became a steady horizontal spray, worse than the most aggressive fog. The silence between them would have been awkward, but it was relieved by the watery drone of the wind. The distance to the new City Hall was only a few blocks. They covered it in minutes.

Shane could sense the depth of Blackburn’s turmoil, but he was having a hard time picturing what he had been told. It made no sense at all. He tried to think of anything else that could have an effect like this on Randall, who was in most ways the strongest man he had ever met.

Nothing came to mind. He could see that the story of whatever Randall had done and whatever reasons he had for doing it would have to unfold on its own. They finished the short walk in silence.

LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT

THE CITY HALL STATION

V
IGNETTE SHIVERED UNCONTROLLABLY BENEATH
a hellish drizzle. She had expended the last of her core body warmth, and so her remaining wisps of energy could only move her limbs in clumsy, jerky motions.

By this point she was so frustrated and angry that she would have screamed for the sheer release of the emotions, if her body were in any condition to accommodate her. Every terrible scenario she had ever overheard during nine years of living in the home of a police officer leaped to the front of her imagination and tormented her.

After the long night, those images of disaster gradually metamorphosed into tragic scenes that she ought to have prevented, but did not. Jumbled bits of voices and images fractured, mixed, and re-formed into artificial memories based on her worst fears.

It was her fault. The Eastern Whore had only managed to get herself selected for murder because Vignette had left her alone, shirking her duty in the public bathroom. It did not console her to know that her presence at that moment might have done nothing more than provide the attacker with another victim. The voices in her new false memories continued to feed fatigue-borne fears.

She could have prevented it, somehow. The fact that she was Randall Blackburn’s adopted daughter meant that she should know more about such things than the average young woman her age. She could have demonstrated some of that knowledge, but she had not. Therefore, she had not only failed Janine Freshell, but also failed Randall yet once again.

Because of her, he was going to go for another swim in the sewer for the pleasure of his commanding officers. No one had spoken a word out loud to her but she was already damned sick and tired of the accusations bellowing in her imagination.

Yes!
Vignette wanted to bellow it.
Yes, I hated her!
She wanted to throw every ounce of her energy into her throat and cause everybody within half a mile to stop and listen.

Yes, I left the room to avoid her! And no,
hell no,
I had no desire to risk my life for her. Are you insane? Why would I do that, for a woman like her?

“It would be obscene!” she hissed under her breath, without realizing that she spoke out loud.

Her inner turmoil rolled with such power that she could not imagine where its energy came from. She remained alone in the rain-deepened darkness, but inside felt as if she were being torn apart by dogs.

She could see everyone accusing her this time, and not just the police officers. She could see Shane staring at her in disgust, shaking his head, turning his back. She saw Randall, losing his temper and getting violent with her at last, the way she had always known he would do someday—like any other male human of that size. Men did it because they could.

Why would he not rage at her, now? Why not do her harm? What was there, really, preventing him from snatching her away and dragging her home and assaulting her behind closed doors, just the way that the Helpers did back at St. Adrian’s?

He called himself their “father.” But really, what would stop him from doing whatever he wanted to punish her, to hurt her in the deepest way he could? The question hung there.

Nevertheless, it disappeared completely when she turned at the corner and started back toward the station; she was just in time to see Randall and Shane emerge from the fog just a few yards away from her. They were coming right up the street and heading for the station. Neither one had seen her yet.

So they were alive, moving under their own power, and apparently not injured. Only an instant had passed, but this much was already cause for celebration. Vignette felt it right away. Muscles that she did not even realize she had been clamping down on suddenly relaxed and stretched out. A huge inhalation came upon her, inflating her lungs on its own power. She gave a deep sigh of relief.

However, they were only going to be “all right” for another few seconds, before one of the emerging officers spotted them and ran to them with the news. They both looked tired, nearly beaten.

A movement caught the corner of her eye, and she turned to see that another pair of cops was just walking out the main entrance and heading down the steps. Their path would take them so close to Randall that they were sure to recognize him.

She called out to them, but the wind gusts blew her voice away like a dry leaf. She stepped up her pace, running as fast as her exhausted body and her cramping muscles and her chilled temperature and her damned rain-soaked skirt would allow.

“Randall!” she cried out again. Her voice remained tiny against the wind. She called again, then again, rushing toward them.

The two cops were getting closer, although they did not seem to have noticed her or Randall, yet. They were too close.

“Shaaannne!” she screamed, feeling her legs give out. Her foot caught in the hem of her skirt. Her body pitched forward into the sidewalk on her forward momentum. The crash to the ground was hard.

But she ignored the pain, because Shane spotted her just as she was falling. By the time she looked up again, he and Randall were already hurrying toward her.

She rose to all fours and tried to stand, but her legs immediately buckled again. Now the pain and frustration took control of her, quickly replaced by near hysteria.

Randall reached her, and she latched her arms around his neck, wailing, out of control. When he realized that she was soaked through and shivering, he started to lift her and carry her into the station, orders or not.

She cried louder, got him to put her down, and stood with her arms around his neck and her feet barely touching the ground. The sobs tore through her and she had no power at all to stop them. She cried for the pain coming his way, and for having to be the one to deliver the news. She cried for fear of losing his love for her, and for her sense of guilt over hating Miss Freshell the way that she had.

And right there in that lousy freezing rain, she struggled her way through what she had to tell him. She could tell that she was doing a miserable job, sobbing and breaking down, probably slowing up the story more than Shane would have done.

But as it happened, she helped him as much as anyone could have, because her great distress focused his mind on the difficulty of getting the story out of her in bits and pieces. It slowed the flow of information and padded its impact. Instead of taking a blow to the chin from a bare-knuckle fist, he got one wrapped in a boxing glove.

He remained calm enough to gather her up and take the three of them home in a taxi. His silence was deep throughout the ride, but Vignette could not help but notice that at least he had not struck out at her yet. So far, she had not spotted that crazy mad look that men get in their eyes when they are going to hurt you.

She knew that it was bad, to be worried about her own relationship with Randall at such a terrible time. It was selfish. But she was also nurturing a tiny spark of hope so beautiful and so thrilling that she did not even want to think about it. She just wanted that secret hope to be left alone long enough to grow into a reality, and for the reality to be that somehow Randall would find it in himself not to turn his back on her because his fiancée had died in her company. It felt like wishing for the moon.

THE NEXT DAY

THE BLACKBURN-NIGHTINGALE HOUSE

S
INCE IT WAS SATURDAY
morning, Shane took over making the coffee and breakfast, letting the big man sleep in. He knew that Randall had returned to the station the night before, for questioning in the murder case. He had finally arrived back home in the wee hours. Shane would have been happy to let him sleep through until Sunday. He set things up so that Randall could eat if and when he wanted to, putting out bowls of fruit and cheese while he brewed the coffee and made up a pot of oatmeal.

Vignette came downstairs at the first aroma of breakfast. She and Shane met eyes long enough to acknowledge each other’s presence, then she silently took a seat at the kitchen table while Shane moved around her.

He realized that there was actually some comfort, on this strange morning, in her usual morning role as the brat who has already learned how to dismantle and reassemble the engine of the Ford, but who refuses to learn how to cook. Shane’s usual disapproving annoyance at her felt good to him now. That sense of easy familiarity was like fresh air.

The case of the Freshell murder was no mystery to him; he witnessed the son stalking Duncan at the restaurant. Clearly, the raging man had also seen Duncan with Freshell. So no matter what sort of thoughts the killer had in his mind at the time, he had initially turned his focus onto Miss Freshell simply because of her proximity to Duncan.

No one had asked Shane’s opinion, but to him it seemed clear that she had set in motion the very chain of events that ended with her death. But now, fresh out of bed, it was all too much to talk about.

Everyone in the house drank coffee or tea with breakfast and usually did little else until that first cup. Shane and Vignette had not finished theirs yet, but the weight of the unasked questions and their useless answers was already tiresome.

After nine years of mornings together, their connection was nearly telepathic. And so from the mere silence and the fact that neither one glared at the other, along with the fact that they both remained in the kitchen instead of leaving, they both silently realized that neither wanted to fight.

Shane was glad for Vignette’s gentle side, for that rarely visible side of her that behaved as if she had actually been raised somewhere within a real civilization. The silence between them felt eloquent to him because of that, more so than words.

By then he knew that he and Vignette would be able to get through the morning together. Randall could sleep for as long as he needed to.

Upstairs in Randall’s large bedroom, his smoldering internal condition was nothing at all like sleep. He sat in a stuffed chair in front of the doorway to his screened balcony, staring into the view without seeing anything.

He had built that balcony himself, years before. It was done in anticipation of sleeping out there during summer nights. There had just never seemed to be a reason to actually do that. When it was used at all, it was his place to enjoy the rare feeling of thinking without interruption.

There was no respite in that today. The same words that had tormented him the evening before, while he sat below the stage and waited for the instructed hour, came back to haunt him now.

This is what they think of you.

He failed to walk away from the task. Even while he was putting each match’s flame to the canvas flats, he saw that he had foolishly allowed their coercions to work on him. It all came down to the loss of his career, a falsely shamed reputation, an arranged arrest and conviction, effectively destroying his life from the ground up. It would obliterate his little family at a time when it seemed to him that they needed one another as much as ever.

Shane and Vignette were both young adults now, but he could not imagine them doing well on their own, not yet. With just a few more years to grow into themselves, to finish casting off the worst effects of the brutal experiences of their early years, they might each grow into fine lives.

Of course none of that would matter anymore if he went to prison. An even deeper burn came from the knowledge that his sanity would never survive a false imprisonment and the destruction of his family.

Still, it was not the burning of the building under orders and encouragement from above that held him tied in knots, now. The poisonous element was that for the rest of his days, he would never escape the knowledge that he had taken a chance with the life or the lives of innocent people—no matter how remote that chance may have been. The only thing that would have been necessary for a real tragedy to ensue was for some unexpected person to be in the area.

Then Detective Randall Blackburn would have been a killer, a common murderer. Nobody at the station house showed any interest in that during the hours of his debriefing. His lieutenant-level tormentors repeatedly assured him that he nearly ruined everything with his “safety” tactics. Officers outside in the hall who caught snips of conversation probably assumed that he was in there explaining the details of how he spotted the fire. Instead, he spent every moment fighting to control his anger until the lieutenants’ sneering disrespect was replaced by that of his captain. The captain was so angry over the risk that Blackburn had taken with his tactics that he threatened to retract his prior offer and have him arrested anyway.

Blackburn’s last-minute concession to his conscience had been to set the fire down beneath the stage, instead of the backstage area. Down there, he trusted that the lesser air supply would slow down the fire’s advance. Then he sneaked out and hurried to one of the new police call boxes to report the fire. It would be hard for him to explain, if somebody on the fire department questioned how it was that the fire got reported before it was visible from outside. He would have to make up something. Tell them he smelled smoke.

He successfully minimized the fire, which was easily extinguished. But the smoke damage was barely enough to justify sealing the building. It would provide a plausible rationalization for declaring the entire place condemned, but just barely. No thanks to Blackburn, it would be quietly slated for demolition in what would be advertised as an abundance of caution against undetected fire damage.

The fishy circumstances would quickly wash away amid the public excitement over the exposition. The news representatives were not going to print anything that could not be explained. Key players had all been rewarded or threatened into silence.

And so this challenging incident of civic corruption was guaranteed to pass undetected. There were, after all, other things screaming for priority in the public attention span. The city was trying to hold an international party while a great war was spreading all through Europe, threatening to pull the United States into the mess along with everybody else. The civic authorities counted on the fact that people had a lot of other things to think about.

Fortunately for Blackburn, the captain reminded him, his tracks were being efficiently covered by the authorities in spite of his cautious performance.

Except that he felt as if he were the one who had fallen into the fire. He was burned and blackened in ways that he could not escape. At the worst of the damage points, he felt nothing, like the burn victim whose flesh is charred black. There was only ash remaining in the places where he had always found pride in his life. He was used to the feeling of living his life as a good man. All of that was in ashes.

A soft knock came from outside his bedroom door. He tried to respond and found that his vocal cords felt as if they were asleep. He resented any intrusion at this moment, and the feeling was heightened by his frustration at not being able to come up with some decent way of keeping either of them from coming in.

It did not matter what he might have said, because it was Vignette knocking. She took advantage of his brief silence to test the doorknob, discover that it was unlocked, and walk into his room without waiting for an invitation.

He turned to look at her with a small sigh and tried to make a smile of some kind, but was not sure what it must have looked like. She suddenly smiled so large, so quickly, that he realized it was in reaction to her own thoughts and not to whatever facial expression he had just tried to imitate.

She kept a bit of distance, the way she always did, and leaned against the edge of the tall bookshelf next to the doorway. She spoke to him in a near whisper that he recognized as her most tender tone of voice. She used it on frightened stray animals. Her voice already told him that she grasped his condition.

“I knew that she wouldn’t want me to let you sit here alone like this, without knowing.”

He raised his eyes to meet hers for a moment, but it hurt too much and he had to pull them away.

“I finally had to accept that she loved you. The last thing we talked about was her plans for your marriage, and she sounded so wonderfully happy.” Vignette snickered and added, “She talked about you like you are the finest man ever born and she couldn’t believe her luck in finding you. I told her I’ve been driving the women away ever since we all moved in, and she laughed and thanked me!” She shook her head and laughed a little, just to think of it.

Blackburn was instantly caught up and so completely mesmerized by the pictures she was painting in his imagination that he did not speak. He felt their eyes connect again and a wave of the girl’s love washed over him. It broke his heart and spared the rest of him. Tears rolled down his face without stopping. His masculine habits barely restrained his facial muscles. They prevented his sobs by pushing them back down where a man was expected to keep those things.

Vignette grew serious and gazed directly at him. “I want you to know that I don’t think I could have helped her. I really don’t, Randall. I’ve thought it all out.”

He found his voice. “All right, you listen to me. I’m thankful that you weren’t around. I know this was the same guy who went after Duncan. And Duncan knew all about him. He was just so ashamed of him that he never gave us the real information that we could have used to keep him safe.”

He stood up, feeling about a hundred years old while he walked over to her. She flinched the way she always did when he hugged her, but then she relaxed a little.

He whispered, “You were never going to take down a man like that. Don’t you worry about any of that other nonsense. I’m glad you weren’t there, Vignette. That’s all. I love you too much to ever want you to risk yourself like that.”

He felt Vignette take in a long breath. For once she didn’t try to push away. She stood and returned his hug.

“It gets lonely downstairs.” Shane spoke from the doorway. Blackburn grinned and motioned him in. He released Vignette and went back to the stuffed chair. His energy was spent by that small exertion.

“I was just telling Randall about the fine things that Miss Freshell was saying about him,” Vignette announced.

Shane glanced at her in a flash of surprise, but he immediately erased it. He kept quiet and listened while she went on.

“Her book was using James Duncan for the main character, because he was famous and all, but she was going to make Randall the real hero. You know, as if to say that the fancy guy was just the one who had to be protected, but it was Randall who was the one who really does things. In the story. Not that it was finished yet. These were her ideas. Sketches of ideas. Apparently that’s how you write those romance novels. You sketch things out in advance. Or that’s how she does. Did. She just admired you so much, that frankly, it was something to see. She was besotted. That’s the word! ‘Besotted’ with love over Randall Blackburn!”

“Not that we can understand why,” Shane added, grinning.

Vignette laughed at that and quickly added, “Of course not. It’s a mystery!” They both turned to Randall to see if he was catching the wave.

He could not get there with them. His insides were charred. He did not know how to pretend.

“Listen to me, both of you.” He spoke softly, but his tone was strong, resolute. “What would you have done, if they had hauled me away today?”

“Why the hell would they do that?” Vignette interrupted.

“Later. Right now, just tell me. What would you do? Those little inheritance payouts might keep body and soul together, if nothing goes wrong with the economy, what with all of this war talk. But how long will that be enough? You get old enough, people don’t want to give you chances anymore. You can’t get started. Nobody wants to give you a break, because they figure that if you haven’t done things right by then, maybe you’ve got something wrong with you. That way, no matter how well you approach them, they’re going to look at you and see trouble. How would you two keep yourselves from coming to that?”

“Well, Randall,” Shane began, “I don’t see why anybody needs to come over here and arrest
you,
so I—”

“Forget about why they do it. Just say they do, for any reason.”

“All right, then. I
have
been working at The Sea Mist for almost a year.”