Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [132]
“Sit with the girls? Where were you going, Steph?”
“Morgan, would you mind waiting in the girls’ room?” After Morgan was gone, Stephanie said, “I’m going to Canyon View.”
“Alone?”
“I thought you were . . .” She kissed me. “I talked to a librarian at the North Bend Library who said Achara had been there until closing. Know what she was doing?”
“Tell me.”
“Sitting in front of that big wall of picture windows. Sitting and staring at the mountain for hours. Does that sound like a woman researching a problem?”
“That sounds like a woman trying to make a decision.”
“That’s exactly what I thought. You don’t think she took the gasoline to your house and torched the place, do you?”
“I think she was deciding whether or not to betray her employer. Donovan must have caught wind of her intentions. He drove her to the gas station, gave her some song and dance about needing the gasoline can filled up, then took her out to my house and did whatever he had to do to make it happen. Knocked her out. Strangled her. Dragged her inside. Poured gas all over. Remember how surprised Donovan was when he saw us last night? He thought he killed us—or me at least—in that fire.”
“Then he’s the one who left the note on the door of the fire station. He had some woman call the fire investigators and leave those messages.”
“That’s what I think,” I said.
“I can’t believe he would do that. I can’t believe my aunt had anything to do with this.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know about it. You said she hasn’t been in charge that long.”
“When you met my aunt at Tacoma General, did you tell her about the syndrome, that there were other people who had it in addition to Holly?”
“I told her there were people in North Bend going down. She could have figured out the rest—”
“—If she already knew about the syndrome and what causes it.”
I threw the covers off and swung my feet over the side of the bed. “I’m going. You stay here.”
“You don’t know what to look for.”
“You stay here with—”
“You want to get stubborn? You’ve come to the factory. There is no possible scenario where I stay.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing . . . I already paid the baby-sitter.”
We looked at each other for half a minute. I could love this woman like I’d never loved any woman. I could love her until we were both a hundred and five. I could love her until the earth crumbled. “At the first sign of trouble, I want you out of there.”
“I never bail out. It’s my trademark.”
“At the first sign of trouble. That’s an order. As the designated guardian of my children.”
“Okay. Yes, sir. You feel strong enough to do this?”
“I’ll make it.”
56. EXCEPT FOR BURGLARS AND LOCKSMITHS
After ten minutes of driving around the wooded neighborhood, we ascertained that Canyon View was locked but empty, found a strip mall abutting the back of the property, parked the Pontiac behind a row of buildings, shimmied up a rockery, and climbed a low fence. Below us was the roof of the strip mall, which consisted of ten or twelve single-story occupancies fronting a busy thoroughfare.
Stephanie produced a five-battery flashlight and other paraphernalia from a small gray bag. “Where’d you get all that stuff?” I said.
“I went to a store down the street from the hotel while you were sleeping.”
“A burglar store?”
“Yeah.”
Blundering through the darkness, we found a culvert with a small stream trickling along the bottom of it, then a natural embankment at the top of which was a Cyclone fence with a sign, red lettering on a white background: PRIVATE PROPERTY—KEEP OUT—VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. The fence was far enough from the road that we could no longer hear the occasional car, nor see the glow of lights from the auto dealership across the street.
Stephanie had brought latex gloves for both of us, along with an assortment of tools: a small pry bar, flashlight, wire cutters, duct tape, and a screwdriver. I climbed the fence and used the wire cutters to sever the razor wire running along the top, cutting my thumb in the process.
Managing to get both of us over the fence and onto the Canyon