Knockdown: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery (35 page)

“Help! Someone, fire, help!”

Above, the stars shone clear and bright in the indigo sky. A horn honked somewhere, and a dog barked. But if anyone heard her, they gave no sign of it, and no cars went by in the street.

Below, the fresh air hit the fire, whose light now filled the cellar, orange-and-red flames dancing behind the crouched form of Steven Garner Jr.

Rather, Garner and a mouse. Even from here, in the firelight she could see it was dead, its tiny form inches from his face.

Maybe it had been injured earlier in the propane blast. Or maybe it had suffered a teeny heart attack; she didn’t care.

Garner went on staring at it, transfixed. “Damn it, Steven, I’ve had about enough of you.”

Somewhere in the distance a siren began wailing, but she had no way to know if it was coming here. Wincing—somewhere along the way she’d sprained her ankle, and her head felt like bombs were going
off in it—she made her way yet again back down the cellar steps and across the floor toward him.

Just not all the way. Because for one thing, she couldn’t see the gun; where the hell was it?

And for another, as she approached, the beam still hanging over his head
moved
.

First downward. Then up again, maybe a half-inch. Clearly, it was getting ready to do something.…

To fall. And above it, the whole house waited to come down, too. “Steven. Do you hear me? Listen to me now. You have to come toward me. I mean it, Steven, there won’t be any more—”

Chances
. His gaze flickered at her. He seemed about to obey.

But then some crazed script in his mind started playing again. “Don’t,” he whimpered. “Don’t put it on me. I’m scared of it, I’ll be good, please don’t—”

His voice rose to a scream before subsiding in a pathetic whine. “I will,” he whispered fiercely at her, “be
good.
”

“Yeah, great. That’s great, Steven.” Dust filtered down from the fractured mess hanging hair-triggerishly above.

She backed cautiously toward the fresh air gusts puffing in through the bulkhead. Each time a breeze came in and down, those flames silhouetting Garner’s form leapt higher.

Now she could hear the crackling sounds, flames munching the dry, stick-thin pieces of lath that had once supported plaster. A low
whump!
from above said the blaze had expanded upstairs.

Abruptly the cellar flames spiraled, inferno-like through the door above into the kitchen. He looked up sharply, seeming to remember who she was.

And aimed the gun at her.
So
there
it was
. She thought he’d fired three times, earlier.

One a misfire. No way to know if it would malfunction again, or if …

But there was no point thinking about that. “Look at me,” she said.

He did. “You know, there’s something I’ve always wondered,” she told him, easing a little closer.

To him
and
the gun. Not to mention that damned fire, and an imminent old-house avalanche that would bury them both, now or in the very immediate future.

But if she could get near enough to fling that mouse corpse away from him, she could still get them both out of here.

And she had to. She’d abandoned him to his fate once. But not this time.

Not again. “It’s about afterwards,” she said. “When you and your dad left my office that day, remember? Sunny and warm, that day. I remember you were wearing a baseball cap.”

That day … it was the only subject in the world that still interested him. A tear leaked from his eye, drew a track in the grime on his face.

She eased closer, readying herself to grab him.

CROUCHED BEHIND THE FALLEN BEAM, HE WATCHED HER
approach. Oh, she thought she was clever. She thought she could fool him.

“Do you remember, Steven?” she asked. “Coming to my office with your dad? You must have other fond memories of him, too.”

He could see her trying to hide her fear of the gun he held. The sight, and even more, what she’d just said, nearly made him chuckle.

He felt his lips curl back in fury. From the outside, he imagined the expression resembled a smile.

“You do remember,” said Jacobia Tiptree, seeming pleased.

Yeah, I remember
, he thought. Because of her, his father had been taken, the one who had controlled him, kept him supervised and confined.

The one who, alone among all the rest, truly understood his unusual son: what he was, and what he might do.…

The one, the
only
one, who’d kept him
safe
.

Yeah, he remembered, all right. He remembered every little thing about that day, and afterwards. He lowered the gun.

Stupidly, she crept nearer still.

Stupidly … and conveniently.

“… 
BECAUSE, STEVEN, HERE’S THE THING. IF I MADE THE
wrong decision that day, I’m sorry.”

His face didn’t change. But then, she thought, why should it?

So she was sorry. Big whoop, as Sam might’ve put it if he was in as bad a mood as Steven looked to be at the moment. More important, though, was the situation they were in right now.

Leaking gas, collapsing house, a fire in the cellar, and …

Oh, yeah. An angry guy with a gun. “Steven, I realize you’re still pretty mad at me. And I don’t blame you. But we need to get out of here.”

He watched her alertly. “Now, I’m going to turn around and go in a minute. But I thought …”

She moved forward again; he shrank back. “I thought maybe I could help you out of there first. And we could go together.”

Still no change in his expression, a fixed smile that showed his teeth. Then it occurred to her that maybe it wasn’t a smile.

That it was a grimace. The mouse corpse on the dropped beam lay motionless, stiffening, she supposed, by the minute.

The battery lamp’s glow kept fading. By its dying light she scanned the area around him, saw that he wasn’t trapped.

Not physically. She should get out right this instant; the creaking and groaning overhead made that clear, as did the fire.

But … “Steven, when you and your dad left my office that day …” she began again.

Because if she could distract him, maybe then she could …

Before she could finish the thought, though, a grinding and crunching of metal from just overhead stopped her.

She cringed back with a shriek, breathing plaster dust; he didn’t move. When the sound ended and the dust cleared, the old pipes crossing the ceiling overhead had fallen.

“Steven, did you go to a ball game? Did you have a couple of hot dogs for lunch? Or did he—”

Did your dad haul you along to the racetrack with the five hundred bucks I gave him?

Because that was the question she needed answered. Had she in fact been the last hope of a guy who was wising up, at last? Or had she been right? Had he taken the five hundred and blown it at the track, just as he would’ve gambled away the fifty grand if he had gotten it out of her?

She looked up. Steven Garner Jr. was still watching her.

Then from outside came the whine of … what? A distant engine, she realized, unable to place it at first.

Plane
, she thought, puzzled, then remembered the military aircraft scheduled to visit Eastport airspace. The flyover …

Jet fighters, detouring on their way back to base to show respect for a fallen comrade and his grieving family—

The engine sound increased. Alarm pierced her; they didn’t have minutes left, as she’d hoped.

They had seconds. “Uh, Steven? We’ve got to get out of here
fast
.…”

The plane was overhead. Its roar made the old house tremble. Dust sifted down; something crashed upstairs, glass breaking.

Windows, she realized; all the remaining—

Steven raised the gun he held.
Gotcha
, his smile said. She had a fraction of an instant to wonder if he really had been too frightened of the dead mouse to move.

Or if all along it had been a trap.
“Steven!”
she shouted, scrambling back. Stumbling and falling, getting up and calling him to follow, but he still didn’t move, his smile unwavering.

A smile of triumph. The plane’s sonic boom, when it came, was a
thunderclap so loud that even underground, she felt it like a punch to the chest.

And so did the old house. The whole structure shivered, the sound wave’s concussion rocking it on its foundation. Any window that hadn’t already shattered fell out of its frame and broke; a river of bricks poured suddenly through the cellar door.

The attic pancaked thunderingly down into the bedrooms, and then into the kitchen and parlors: thudthudthud. The massive old beams in the cellar ceiling
groaned
.…

And snapped, one by one in a horrifying cascade over her head, roaring toward her. The last time she saw Steven Garner, he was steadying his aim, still grimly trying to draw a bead on her.

Then she hurled herself toward the bulkhead doors as behind her flames crackled and flared.

Ahead, dark night spread above the cellar doors’ opening, a blessing if she could reach it.
If
 …

Hand over hand, she hauled herself up the concrete steps. A wave of faintness made the world spin; she crawled through it. Behind her lay only silence and the fire, burning briskly.

A few inches more … She lay with her shoulder propped on the doorframe. Another try might do it, get her out of here and into the cool, dark night.

If the house didn’t fall, if the fire didn’t burst out over her. If the smoke, now thickening so much faster, didn’t suffocate her.

And if the propane still leaking down there somewhere didn’t explode again, this time for real. She got her arm up underneath her, pulled both her feet up onto the highest concrete step she could manage, and gulped in a few big breaths.

The task was to get her body
over
the doorframe, then roll away. A voice came from below. “… fifth.”

Garner. Somehow the smoke hadn’t killed him yet. He spoke again, coughing. “Alakazam … in the fifth.”

“Steven?” she called again as she dragged her legs at last over the doorframe, landed hard on the packed earth outside.

Yes. Thank you
, she exulted inwardly. Everything hurt. She steeled herself to roll away on the grassy earth.

To get as far as she could from whatever would happen next.

But then it hit her, what he’d said. Which was when she knew the answer to the question she’d asked him.

And one thing more.
Why didn’t I think of that?
she wondered as the astonishing truth dawned on her.

But there was no time to think anything more. Flames burst from the bulkhead opening,
spewed
out, their heat caressing one side of her face.

A siren howled somewhere as her rolling body hit something. The cold, wet grass surrounded her, feeling icy on her hot skin. Blindly she clutched the grass and hung on hard to it.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “So sorry.”

Then she began crawling again, until a sound made her look back. A high, thin howl, like a giant teapot whistling—

Fire exploded through the roof, a red fountain shooting at the sky. The house sagged hard; what was left of the front wall fell into the street in a shower of sparks.

She kept on crawling, deep into the thick bushes edging the yard. Sirens screamed up out front, beacons whirling and radios spitting.
Help
, she thought, and went on dragging herself toward them until, through the din, one sharp
pop!
came from the cellar.

Just one. But it was enough. A dull thud slammed into her eardrums, rattling her bones from within. She felt the blast in the earth she held to, clinging on with her fingers: a huge, low pulse of energy rolling beneath her.

The world erupted in flames.

Y
OU KNOW,” SAM SAID THOUGHTFULLY, GAZING OUT AT THE
water, “sometimes I think maybe the universe is only an experiment. Like a trial run, sort of?”

Three days had passed since the events in the old house on Washington Street. Just that afternoon, they’d let her out of the hospital, one arm still wrapped in burn bandages and the other in a sling, her shoulder badly sprained.

In the light of the streetlamps running along the paved path by the water downtown, Sam resembled his father: tall, handsome, deeply
skeptical. “So the big Whatever It Is can decide what to leave in and what to leave out,” he said.

Jake smiled, then winced in pain at the slight movement. Her swollen eye had reopened, though it still looked like she’d gone nine rounds with a prizefighter.

And most of her hearing had returned. “Anyway, I don’t get it,” Sam said, changing the subject. “If his dad’s still alive, why was he trying to get revenge at all?”

She looked down at her hands. “Sam, I told you. I’m not sure that his father is alive. The mob guys might really have killed him. Steven sure thought they did, I know that much. But—”

Alakazam in the fifth
. “But it turns out you can look up old race results online.”

Ellie had done it, after learning from Jake that Aqueduct and the Meadowlands were Garner’s likeliest haunts, closest to the city. And the Meadowlands was a harness track.…