“Where do you keep Smooch’s crate?”
Zoe cradled the phone and pointed again, this time toward her bedroom.
As I crated Smooch, I identified the second scent. It was the smell of road trips and boat docks, benzenes and hydrocarbons, evil and intent. Gasoline.
Leo returned with a groggy Audrey at his side, moving with greater speed, no longer motivated solely by my urging.
“Fire Department’s on its way,” Zoe said. She grabbed her purse, keys, and the crate, while I lifted Boo, tucking him under the arm that didn’t hold the extinguisher. A few quick strides and I was at the front door, placing my palm against it. Warm, not hot. Still, I gestured Zoe and the kids toward the back door. There, Zoe joined me in placing a hand against the wood. Cool to the touch.
“Got everything?” Leo and Zoe nodded, but Audrey peeled away from her brother and ran to me, wrapping herself around both my legs.
“Mommy?”
“We’ve got to leave, Peanut. Go with your brother.”
But she buried her face in my stomach and her grasp tightened, her arms twin bands of tape holding me in place. This was it. This was her limit. Apparently, fire be damned, the only way she was leaving was in my arms.
I handed Leo the dog and scooped up Audrey, tilting my chin toward the door. Zoe nodded, twisted the knob, held her breath, and threw the door open.
Outside, the tang of gas was stronger. The flames weren’t yet visible, but I knew they were there, waiting to trace the line of gasoline that led to a puddle on the back stoop.
I yelled for Leo to be careful not to step in it, the sudden vision of burning pajama legs speeding my heart and my step. Not real. But it easily could be. I pushed through it, forcing myself and my family forward.
We left a wide berth as we approached the front yard, and now we could hear it. A soft crackling, like the snap of small bones. Still no flames. A beast in hiding, but its breath growing thicker in the air.
When we turned the corner, we finally saw it: a small pile of what might’ve been rags had been set ablaze in front of the house, though the fire was spreading quickly beyond it. I caught the shimmer of gasoline, a pool on the front doorstep identical to the one in back. Then flames leapt into it. Dancing. Bloating. Consuming.
I placed Audrey on the ground and pulled the extinguisher’s pin, aiming the nozzle toward the house, where fire licked the exterior wall, and squeezed, but the flames reached with gas-soaked tentacles in both directions. I swept the extinguisher from side to side. It was like trying to stanch the flow from an artery with a cotton ball.
A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk, most in nightclothes but some already dressed. I ignored them, my finger tight on the trigger until the last of the spray dripped from the nozzle. A neighbor stepped in with a second extinguisher, another with a garden hose.
Together, we hobbled the fire. Firefighters were on their way. It was probably enough to keep the blaze from spreading. But I wasn’t sure.
I dropped the now empty extinguisher and walked toward the charred lump that had been the fire’s source. Closer now, I saw it was a pile of clothing. Most had been torched, but a scrap of denim remained recognizable.
Jeans, the same wash Sam had been wearing the night he had disappeared.
I knelt down. On the jeans, I smelled no gasoline, and they had been placed apart from the other items. There was no way for me to tell if the jeans really were Sam’s, but the deliberate way they had been staged made me think they were.
At the least, they were a message. Shaking and reeking of smoke, I had a message of my own I was very eager to deliver.
32
I didn’t wait for the firefighters, or the police. After extracting from Zoe an assurance that she and the animals would find someplace safe, someplace I didn’t know about, I gathered the kids and headed to a hotel across town. Not to stay myself, but to meet a man I hadn’t seen in six years.
On the way, I called Detective Rico. Dawn had just started to reach across the sky with fingers still more gray than blue, but Rico answered on the second ring.
“Hello?” If not for the moment he took to clear his throat, I wouldn’t have guessed I had interrupted the detective’s sleep.
“My friend Zoe’s house was set on fire.”
“Good morning, Cassie.” He coughed, clearing more phlegm. “So it’s a fire today, is it? Everyone okay?”
“We’re fine.” I gave him the address of Zoe’s townhome. “After our conversation last night, I didn’t want to be accused of keeping anything from you.”
“No, we wouldn’t want that.” Any trace of sleep had slipped from his voice, that familiar edge back. In the background, I heard the squeak of coils decompressing as he stood from a bed or a couch.
“Of course there’s no way to tell for certain, but I’m pretty sure Sam’s jeans were left there for me to find. Near a pile of clothing used to start the fire.”
“I don’t suppose you’re still at the scene?”
“Not right now, but you know how to reach me.”
“You’re currently number three in my contacts.” I wasn’t certain he was joking. “Just don’t go changing it again.”
The way things were going, I couldn’t promise that. “Did you get that video I sent you from the coffee shop?”
“I did. You got that photo for me?”
“About that . . . I’m not going to be able to drop it off after all.”
“Oh?”
“It’s at Zoe’s house.”
Though the photo was evidence, and though I hoped the fire hadn’t breached Zoe’s threshold, part of me wanted the photo to burn.
“I think we need to talk in person.”
“Probably, but it can’t be now.”
Somewhere in Rico’s house, a child laughed. I was suddenly jealous, wanting that levity for my own children.
“Can you drop by the station at nine?” Rico phrased it as a request, but I could tell it wasn’t one.
“I’ll see you at nine.” If I can make it.
He picked up on my hesitation. “I really need you to be there, Cassie.” A pause, then, “And bring Leo.”
I started to ask why he needed to talk to Leo, but Rico cut me off. “Gotta go.” Suddenly distracted. “See you and your son at nine.”
Intuition told me it wasn’t his family that pulled him away. The detective’s behavior reminded me of Sam’s the morning he’d gotten that call from Brooklyn. I tried not to dwell on how that particular situation had turned out.
A bank of gray clouds crawled across the sky, and a frigid wind had started to blow. Despite the chill, I stood outside the door to my father’s hotel room, unable to knock.
“I’m cold,” Audrey said. Still in her pajamas, the jacket I’d grabbed for her was too thin for a November morning. She burrowed into Leo, using him as a windbreak.
On the way to the hotel, the kids had asked questions about the fire, but they had quickly realized I had no answers. Once at the hotel, I hadn’t been sure whether to leave the kids in the car, unaccompanied and vulnerable, or bring them inside to meet a grandfather Leo barely knew, and Audrey didn’t know at all.