Weekends Can Be Murder, page 27
Including Brassard, there were nine PPS officers on the island. Selena had seen two on the dock and counted four more on the bluff. That meant three had to be inside the house, one with Larry in the furnace room and the other two searching for them. And one of the searchers was Brassard.
Selena hurried over and hooked the elbow of the nearest dark blue uniform, recognizing Detective Constable Rivas when she turned around. “Are you in radio contact with Sergeant Brassard?”
“Yes, of course,” Rivas replied.
“Tell her we know where the missing men are and how to get them out. She’s looking in the wrong place. And she’s probably in danger as well.”
Twenty-Four
There was a faint ozone smell in the air. Something electrical was sparking. Images of infernos tried to invade Larry’s thoughts. He swallowed hard and willed his mind to remain in the present.
They’d split up to search, but only after Larry had persuaded Constable Maresh to reholster his gun. A shot fired down here could hit a fuel tank and set off an explosion.
“Harald? What have you done, man?” Baker’s voice called out. “Talk to me.”
“I am your employer,” came the slurred, indignant response from behind one of the generators to their left. “You will address me as Mr. Pyke.”
As Larry turned toward the source of these words, he took a breath… and his heart dropped. He inhaled again, carefully, to confirm. Smoke. Just a hint of it. Nothing he could see or taste, not yet. But soon. The fire had already started, dangerously near a quantity of accelerant.
How far away was the nearest fire boat? Were there any fire extinguishers on the property? Or buckets, to form a hand-to-hand brigade? The irony of not being able to put out a fire on a small island surrounded by fresh water was not lost on him. But Larry couldn’t help imagining how much worse things would have been if they hadn’t found Court when they did, or if he hadn’t warned them in time to evacuate the building.
The walls were quiet now, but they wouldn’t stay that way. With all the wood framing this structure, a fire would become a roaring beast in no time. They needed to leave quickly. Even if they survived the smoke, a flashover could take out this part of the basement, igniting everything at once and cutting them off from their only means of escape. The paint cans on the other side of the wall would detonate in the heat, spraying that area with sparks and fiery debris as toxic black clouds filled the air. Meanwhile, flame would race along hidden passages like a flash flood, revelling in a feast of oxygen and fuel…
“Found him!” Maresh announced, yanking Larry back to the moment. Making him suddenly aware of the cold sweat breaking out on his face, and grateful for the poor lighting that concealed it from the others.
Harald sat slumped against the wall, directly beneath a breaker box. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, taking a swig from the bottle in his right hand.
Terrific. More accelerant. Just what they needed.
Larry glanced up and saw tendrils of fire snaking along the wall toward the ceiling. In a matter of minutes, all those exposed planks and studs would be ablaze. The air in the basement would become unbreathable.
With effort keeping his voice level, Larry told him, “You’re drunk. And you’re right. We shouldn’t be here. But we’ve taken an oath not to let people die if we can prevent it. So, we’ve come to rescue you. Get on your feet, Harald. There isn’t much time.”
“No.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Think about your mother, Harald,” said Baker. “How devastated she’ll be if she loses you as well as Arthur.”
Pyke uttered a bray of laughter. “That’s rich, since I’m the one who killed him. When she finds out, she’ll make the rest of my life a living hell. I’d rather burn now and get it over with. You found Court? Sure, you did. I should have killed him too. This was all his fault, you know. He ruined everything.”
“What do you think?” Maresh asked Larry. “Can I taser him?”
“With all that alcohol in his system? He might explode.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” said Baker. He walked over and landed a knockout punch to Pyke’s left cheek. “Now we can carry the stupid son of a bitch.”
“Yeah,” Larry replied, twisting the cap tight on Harald’s bottle of gin. “Go make sure we can get out the way we came.” As Baker trotted back to the hidden entrance, Larry told Maresh, “There’s fire inside the walls. I don’t suppose you have a breathing mask in one of the pockets on that belt of yours.”
“Sorry, I don’t. Do you think the house would let you die?”
“If it were just me, no. But since Harald just confessed to killing his brother, it might have decided he should die, making us collateral damage.”
“I have bad news and worse news,” said Baker, returning out of breath. “The secret door has sealed itself up. We’re trapped here.”
“Trapped, perhaps, but not helpless,” Maresh said, brandishing his handset.
House, what are you doing? Do you want us all to pay for what he did? Is that what Arthur would have wanted?
A brief radio conversation later, Maresh turned to the others and said, “Sergeant Brassard says there’s an old-fashioned freight elevator on this side of the building, directly to the outside. She’ll raise and lower the platform. We just need to find the inside entrance.”
“Okay, if it’s identical to the one in the kitchen, we’re looking for an ordinary closet door,” Larry told them. “Check the south wall for a knob or a handle.”
Mentally, he crossed his fingers. There was a reason not to use an elevator during a fire. With luck, they could get out before the conditions became unsurvivable.
The smoke was thickening, becoming a grey cloud of hot soot slowly descending from the ceiling. Once again, they split up to search, breathing shallowly and keeping low to the ground.
“Umm,” said Baker a moment later. “I think the house has just shown me the door.”
Together, Larry and Maresh dragged the still-groggy Harald across the floor to Baker’s location. There was a knob on the wall, a metre off the floor. Larry extended a tentative hand and touched it. Warm but not hot. A promising sign. He opened the door and cursed inwardly. The platform was smaller than he’d hoped.
“Hey, it could be worse,” Baker told them. “We could be rescuing Gareth Wylde.”
Seriously?
Working quickly, they loaded Harald onto the elevator. There was room for one more body. For just a moment, Larry hesitated, feeling the icy fist of fear inside his chest. Then, as though with the flip of a switch, the disorderly world around him untangled itself, and he knew what he had to do. What every firefighter who was fit to wear the uniform did automatically, in spite of their fear.
He put civilian lives first.
“Baker, go!” As Larry closed the door, Maresh sent a radio signal to Brassard.
A moment later, all the lights went out. An acrid, suffocating wind hit Larry like a moving wall, knocking him off his feet. There was smoke everywhere, and no time to do anything but react. He shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it. Then he twisted onto his stomach, feeling around blindly for Maresh, but touching only poured concrete floor.
Don’t inhale, Maresh! I’m coming for you! he thought. House, if you’re paying attention, we could really use your help here!
Larry’s eyes and throat were burning. He struggled to crawl. At last, his questing fingers found the fabric of Maresh’s shirt. Then, just as he managed to grab a fistful of it, everything went dark.
Twenty-Five
The house had been built to endure, and that was what it had done. For more than a century and a half, it had weathered the cold of winter, the heat of summer, and the storms in between. It had shared the warmth of the family’s happiness and the bitterness of each loss. But the one thing it had always feared was fire.
Fire rose from within
Like a ravening beast
It sank fangs and cruel talons into the house’s flesh.
It cracked and devoured its bones
robbed it of breath
darkened its senses
scattered its memories.
There would be no more memories,
for there was no more family.
No more reason to endure.
Only peace and oblivion,
and rest,
at last.
Twenty-Six
“Larry, I know you’re in there. Open your damn eyes.”
Selena’s words were angry, but her voice held notes of fear. He was lying somewhere hard and at the same time being gently rocked, another contradiction. And something was in his mouth and pressing against his face. It took him a moment to recall what had happened. Then he realized that he must be receiving oxygen. Against all the odds, he’d survived.
Carefully, he opened his eyes. It was a painful exercise. His eyelids felt as though they were lined with sandpaper. Squinting, he saw stars in the night sky. Then featureless silhouettes took shape in the moonlight, one to either side of him.
No, he corrected himself, moonlight was silver, and this light was gold. And flickering. Rafferty House was on fire. He could hear the beast roaring in the distance.
Good. Stay there.
“Welcome back, Mr. Holmes,” said a female voice he didn’t recognize. A hand emerged from the shadows, apparently to check the positioning of whatever was on his face. “I’m Constable Coyne, and in case you’re wondering, I’m trained as a paramedic. You’ve inhaled some smoke. I’ve intubated you as a precaution until the doctors can run their tests. You won’t be able to talk for a while, I’m afraid, at least until the tube comes out and probably for some time after that. But you’re a very lucky man. You could have ended up much worse.”
Privately, Larry doubted whether luck had had much to do with it. The house had already demonstrated how well it controlled its own airflow. It could have generated a breeze strong enough to keep the worst of the smoke away from the area around the elevator, while siphoning away hot gases to prevent a flashover until rescuers could come for them.
Liz was right. There were no coincidences. Rafferty House had saved his life and, hopefully, Maresh’s life as well.
Coyne patted him on the shoulder, then slipped away so the second silhouette could take her place.
It was Selena. “I know you’ve got questions,” she told him, “but I’m supposed to let you rest, so I’ll just give you the FAQ. You’re aboard one of the police boats, still tied up at the dock. Maresh is aboard the other one, in roughly the same shape as you are. Brassard called for a medical helicopter as soon as Baker brought the two of you up on the elevator. It should be arriving any minute. You’ll have to thank him another time for saving your life. He’s under investigation for possible complicity in two murders, but Sergeant Brassard is going to put in a word for him because of his bravery this evening.
“Meanwhile, Harald Pyke is also under arrest, for murder and arson and numerous counts of attempted murder by arson, among other things. Sergeant Brassard plans to throw the book at his wall of power and privilege and see what she can make stick. She says she is optimistic about the strength of her case, thanks to the good work done by the members of the Crime Club. She also told us that if we repeat that to anyone she’ll deny it.
“Last but not least, I hope there was nothing irreplaceable in your luggage, because Rafferty House exploded into flames shortly after you and Maresh were rescued, and it’s been burning merrily ever since. There may be a few salvageable items once the fire boats have done their work, but I wouldn’t count on it.
“On the bright side, no one died in the fire.” Then, leaning closer, and in a lowered voice so sharp it made him wince inwardly, she said, “To repeat something you told me earlier, what the hell were you thinking, Larry Holmes? That your weight might break the elevator, so you’d better stay behind? Really? I nearly had a heart attack when the platform came up the first time and you weren’t on it. I was sure I’d lost you. Don’t you ever worry me like that again or, I swear, I will deck you!”
He lifted his hand to stroke her cheek and found it wet with tears.
I care about you too, Selena.
This had been one hell of a weekend. Exhausted, he closed his eyes again and surrendered himself to sleep.
* * *
Larry Holmes’s room in Pulmonary Care was the busiest one on the hospital floor.
Notified of the incident by the PPS, his platoon captain and fellow firefighters had all come in twos and threes to visit him. There was his sister, Sara, who’d taken the day off work to see with her own eyes that he was going to be all right, and to assure him he wouldn’t be left alone during his recovery. And Selena, of course, who had hardly left his side from the moment he’d been admitted.
Three days after the fire, however, he had a surprise visitor—Sergeant Brassard. As soon as the officer stepped through the door, Selena leaped to her feet and offered her the only chair in the room.
Brassard declined, with a smile. “I knew that I would find you together,” she said. “Partners grow close when they are well-matched.”
She had brought him a large bouquet of fiery orange and yellow blossoms and a get-well card on behalf of the entire investigative unit. Larry was still on oxygen, forbidden even to attempt to speak, so he printed THANK YOU on a pad of writing paper instead.
“How are all the investigations coming along?” Selena inquired.
“They are proceeding as expected. The Pyke murder case has been closed, and the Crown is already filing its charges in that sad affair. As for the rest… we are being thorough, and thoroughness takes time. And patience.” She gave them a philosophical shrug.
Selena had already brought Larry up to date on Harald’s arrest. Once he’d sobered up, Pyke had tried to backpedal, but even if his confession in the basement was inadmissible in court, there was too much physical evidence against him. Confronted with what Rivas had found in the hidden passage, Pyke had finally owned up to killing his brother in the heat of an argument over Harald’s back-room deal with Vollmer. There had probably been more to the argument than that, but the confession and arrest were really all that mattered.
Larry printed ALEC? on his jotpad and tapped it with the pencil to get her attention.
“We have identified a suspect who may have been paid to cause your cousin’s car crash, but nothing that leads back to the source of the payment. Not yet.”
“What about Farley’s murder?” Selena asked. “And the attempts on Gareth Wylde’s life?”
“Those investigations have barely begun. We have a great deal of evidence to process, and statements to sift through, and persons of interest to recall for further questioning.”
“But you can still formulate theories and scenarios, and name probable suspects based on means, motive, and opportunity,” she persisted.
“B’en sur,” Brassard conceded. “But at this early point, it would be nothing but an exercise in logic.”
“In other words, a puzzle to solve, just like the plot of a murder mystery novel.”
The detective’s face now wore a forbearing expression. “Which, of course, you and your Crime Club are uniquely talented to assist with.”
“Not uniquely, exactly,” Selena replied, “but we’ve had a lot of practice at noticing details and discrepancies. Like the difference between wiping away fingerprints from a desk drawer and wiping down a gun. DNA isn’t that easy to get rid of. So, if Court was pistol-whipped unconscious…”
Wait a second… If Court was out cold when the gun was replaced in the desk and Selena’s were the only fingerprints found on or around the drawer handle, then how…?
“…then there should be traces…” Selena’s features puckered into a frown. Apparently, she’d just had the same thought.
Larry printed furiously on his jotpad, then thrust it toward Brassard.
HOW DID COURT KNOW GUN WAS BACK? WHY EVEN CHECK?
Brassard’s brow furrowed as she read it. “Those are very good questions,” she said grimly, and pulled out her phone.
For the past two days as he lay in his hospital bed, something had been gnawing on the margins of Larry’s mind. Again and again, he had reviewed the events of the weekend, struggling to fit all the pieces together, and each time, like with a badly-assembled engine, there were bits left over. However, in light of this sudden recollection, this question, this discrepancy, everything was finally adding up.
Larry turned the page and scribbled some more.
BAKER=FALL GUY FOR FARLEY’S FALL
GEORGINA=FALL GUY FOR WYLDE’S DEATH
Brassard had stepped away to make her phone call. Larry showed his jotpad to Selena instead, and watched her face light up with realization.
Baker was the “bad cop” who had coerced a confession from Court twelve years earlier, putting him in prison for a crime Georgina had probably committed. Wylde was the one who had savaged Will’s writing and ruined his budding career. Killing Wylde and framing Georgina for the murder would have delivered retribution for the wrongs that had been done to both Will and Court.
Either one of them was quite capable of plotting a double revenge, and that included lying to incriminate one or both of their victims. If Baker was meant to be a fall guy, then Will had lied to Selena earlier about eavesdropping on his conversation with Farley. So, whom had she overheard conspiring with the hit man on the other side of the kitchen door?
“Well, Mr. Holmes, it seems we are presented with the opportunity to get those questions answered.”
Larry glanced up and found Brassard standing near the foot of his bed.
She continued, “The constable assigned to keep an eye on Antony Court just followed him into the hospital parking lot. He is carrying a gift bag, so we can assume that he is coming to thank you personally for saving his life, and to be thanked for helping to save yours. I believe you and Ms. Watt may be able to… reach him, shall we say?”
“You think if we ask nicely that he’ll give us a confession?” Selena asked doubtfully.
