Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [122]
Silva punched in the number twice more. The calls weren’t answered.
Panic had been replaced by anger. Now, panic had returned. While fleeing the scene at the Hotel Rouge he’d tried to decide what to do with his house and his other cars should he flee the country. But that no longer mattered. The only thing that was important was to escape, to avoid being hunted down and put away. He could never survive being locked up, not for even one day.
“Emile!” she called in a stronger voice.
“Shut up,” he said, not loud enough for her to hear. “Shut the hell up.” He shook, and wrapped his arms about himself.
“Emile!”
“Coming, Ma-ma.”
He slowly descended the stairs and stood before her.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “I’d like some soup, and some crackers, too.”
“Yes, Ma-ma.”
“That woman wanted to steal things,” she said after him as he went to the kitchen. “I could tell the way she was looking around. I’m so glad you came. You will stay, won’t you?”
“Yes, Ma-ma,” he called from the kitchen.
“Make the soup nice and hot.”
“I will.”
Instead, he quietly opened the door that led to the garage, went in, and picked up a five-gallon red plastic container of gasoline. He opened the overhead door, stepped outside, and poured some of the fuel around the foundation of the house. Then he returned to the kitchen, where he stood silently, the half-filled container in his hand.
“Emile! Is the soup ready yet? I’m hungry.”
He sprinkled some of the gas along one wall and went through a second door to the dining room, where he did the same.
“Emile!”
“Goodbye, Ma-ma,” he said as he tossed down a match. Flames shot up in the dining room, igniting the drapes and turning the white wall black. He ran into the living room and looked at her for a brief, horrified second before racing outside through the front door.
He reached the Porsche and turned to watch the frame house go up. He saw his mother through the front bay window. She tried to stand but fell back into her wheelchair as flames engulfed her, her agonizing cry the last thing he would ever hear from her.
Across the street, Brockman couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He’d received a terse call from Dexter—“The sale is on”—and had moved the SUV closer to the driveway and the Porsche. He’d taken the Heckler & Koch sniper’s rifle from the floor and leaned on the vehicle, the rifle propped on the hood, ready to be fired. He’d decided that if he could get off a clean shot he’d grab the opportunity and call it a day. That opportunity had arrived.
As Silva turned from observing the inferno and reached for the door handle of his car, Brockman centered the crosshairs of the telescopic sight on his chest and squeezed the trigger. His aim was dead-on. Silva screamed. His hands went to his chest as the force of the bullet knocked him backward to the ground. He was dead before he reached it.
The echo of the rifle’s powerful discharge mingled with the sudden wail of sirens. Brockman got back into the SUV, tossed the rifle on the backseat, and started the engine. But before he could slip the transmission into Drive, he was pinned in by three patrol cars, two carrying Virginia state policemen, the third a District of Columbia vehicle with two uniformed cops. Brockman pulled his handgun from its holster and waved it. The officers saw that he was armed and shouted a warning to drop the weapon, raise his hands, and slowly approach. He was tempted to try to ram them but knew it was futile. He followed their orders and stepped from the car, hands up, his face bathed in the hideous glow of orange-yellow flames that by now engulfed the house.
CHAPTER 45
The torching of Rose Silva’s house and her gruesome death in the inferno, and her son’s murder by James Brockman, set off a series of events in both Washington, D.C., and Savannah.
Brixton was kept overnight at the hospital, where he was given a transfusion to replace the blood he’d lost, and Mac and Annabel spent time with him there. A windswept rain had started again and pelted the window of his