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"Bodies?" Cash asked, finally calm enough to talk and think. "Doc Smiley lived
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by himself. Didn't have any relatives or anything."
"Another one?" Smith asked.
"Another what?"
"Old loner."
"Naw. This guy was weird, but he was okay. A doctor.
Refugee. Came over from Europe someplace when the Rus-sians took over....
Hmmm."
"What is it?" Railsback asked.
"Just wondering if there is a connection. The old lady disappears just when
Smiley's house burns down.... Nan, couldn't be. That's too far out. She was a
lot older than him. Been here eighty years longer...."
"Worry about it later. Let's show over there before some-body starts wondering
what we're up to. Hey, Dad. Come here a minute." He had everyone turn in their
raid gear. "Put that stuff in Tucholski's car, then move it around front. Then
keep an eye on the place till we get back. Let's go, you guys. We might as
well walk. We won't get a parking place much closer."
He was right. The fire-chasers had parked up everything from Russell on south.
It was bad.
The firemen were still hosing the rubble to cool it. Though most of the
brickwork remained standing, the house was a complete loss.
The battalion chief led them around to a basement entrance his men had
wrecked. "In there."
Half the wooden parts of the structure had collapsed into the basement,
carrying with them furnishings from all three floors. Charred floor joists and
wall studs lay tangled like giant pickup sticks. Smoke and steam still rose,
and the bricks still held a lot of heat. A man couldn't spend much time close
enough to look inside.
There had been cities in Germany and France that had looked like this.
Had Cash not thrown up already, he would have now. Smith did. Iron-gut
Tucholski, who claimed to have seen it all, gagged. Hank refused to let Beth
close enough to see.
Parts of two bodies, burned till little but steaming skeletons remained,
protruded from beneath the wreckage. One seemed to be that of a child.
"Smell's enough to gag a maggot," Hank observed. He held a wet handerchief
over his face. To the battalion chief, "How long before you can start digging
them out?"
"Going to be a couple hours before we're sure it's cool enough, and that it
won't flare up again. And we'll have to scare up a crane.... Jesus, it's going
to be a job. Somebody really torched it. Whole place must've been soaked down
with gas, it went up so fast. We're just lucky this was a corner lot and the
one next door was vacant."
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"You sure it was arson?"
"Positive. Smell the gas?"
Railsback sniffed. So did Cash. Both wrinkled their noses. The stench of burnt
flesh seemed to override all other odors. "Must take a trained sniffer," Cash
gasped.
A creak and groan came from above. A half-dozen rafters plunged into the
basement, kicking up a cloud of ash.
"Back!" someone shouted. "Get back! The whole damned thing's going."
He was wrong. It was just a chimney, but the crash was enough to scatter the
crowd. Hose teams rushed to soak live coals exposed by the falling bricks.
"Better keep your people back, Lieutenant," said the bat-talion chief. "The
whole thing might collapse. Or we might not have the natural gas all the way
off.... Wish the tourists would go home."
Cash thought they were well behaved. Awe seemed to have held all but the
boldest at a safe distance. The youngsters were the troublesome ones.
He and the other officers formed a little skirmish line clique before the
ruin, staying out of the fire department's way, ask-ing neighbors their
opinions about what had happened. More police, hospital, and civil defense
types kept showing up. The arson squad descended like a swarm of locusts.
Ten o'clock came. Railsback and Cash were still there. Annie, Tran, and Tran's
sons had done yeoman service run-ning coffee and sandwiches. Tran had even
pitched in to help excavate the bodies. The work didn't seem to bother him.
Plenty of practice, Cash supposed.
There were four of them. Not enough remained to tell much just by looking, but
they seemed, by size, to have been young.
"You know," said Railsback, "I'll bet they're the ones who started it. I been
talking to people. They say this Smiley was always having trouble with kids.
They might've been going to show him with a little fire that got out of
control and trapped them."
"Yeah? Where's all the mothers crying, 'Oh my baby?' The only trouble he had
was kids using his yard for a shortcut."
"What kind of guy was he?" Hank asked, watching the last plastic bag disappear
into the last ambulance.
"I don't know. What do you mean? I knew him for thirty years, but not very
well. He was a private sort of guy. Saw him more at the neighborhood
association meetings than any other time."
"I just wondered. Can't tell what it was anymore, but he had a lot of strange
stuff in his basement."
Cash shrugged. He hadn't noticed. But he hadn't done much looking. "He says he
was a doctor in the old country. I don't think he ever practiced here. Never
did anything but hang around his house and go to stamp-club meetings. He was
some kind of expert on rare stamps. The whole third floor of his house was
filled with stamp albums and books about stamps. Like to drove me crazy
talking about it the one time I went over there."
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"You see anything strange?"
"No. Except for the stamp collections the house was the same as any other
place on the street. I never went in the base-ment, though."
"Hospital-type stuff. Yeah. That's what it was."
"Now you mention it ..." The basement had looked a lot like a ruined intensive
care ward.
"Think he might have been in the abortion business before it was legal?"
"Without us ever getting a hint?"
Railsback shrugged. "I'll believe anything anymore. Not much we can do here
now. Shit! I forgot about the Old Man. Smith or Tucholski say anything about
taking him in?"
"I don't think so." Cash was too tired to think. And he still had to go back
to the station for his own car. He handed Hank the keys to the police vehicle.
"Why don't you get the car, check on your dad, then pick up me and Beth at my
house?" Beth had fled thither after her first glimpse of a burned corpse.
"Okay."
As Cash strolled homeward with Tran, the major asked, "What became of your
partner? His wife and your daughter-in-law were at your house when I returned
from work. They were upset."
"Oh, I don't need that."
"Pardon?"
"I'm wiped out. I don't think I can cope with Carrie tonight." He quickly
explained what he and John had done, and that John had vanished. Just like
O'Brien, four hoods, and a twelve-year-old detective.
"And now the woman's disappeared too?"
"Slick. But I got a good idea where she went. Hank gives me fifteen minutes
tomorrow, I'll find out for sure. She's got a brother or uncle or something in
New York that she doesn't know we know about. She'll go there."
Annie had managed to get rid of Carrie and Nancy some-how. He didn't ask, just
collapsed into a chair and listened bemusedly to Beth and Le Quyen, who were
carrying on an animated conversation. Friday would be another along day, and
during it he would have to tell Carrie the truth.
And Teri, too.
His life was closing in. His job was polluting it, and he was losing his zest.
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