“Not bad. The ballroom, the kitchen, and the conference room next to the ballroom are a complete loss, and there’s serious structural damage to the floor above them, but they’ve managed to contain it.”
“Thank God.”
“Was Millie behind the bombing? Or the PLA?”
“No.” He didn’t elaborate on what the van der Hoeven sisters had already told him.
He pointed to where the Corinth ambulance was parked. Several people milled around the open back doors. “Are those the corporate honchos from GWP?” Clare asked.
“Yep. Millie and her sister insisted on signing the documents transferring Haudenosaunee before they left for the hospital.”
“Wow. That’s dedicated.”
Ahead of them, the delegation from GWP finished bowing and shaking hands. Russ and Clare hung back a moment until they had cleared out. Then he urged her forward. “Millie, this is Reverend Clare Fergusson. Clare, I think you’ve already met Millie’s sister, Louisa.”
Clare shook hands with Millie, who reclined on the ambulance bed with a bandage on her head. Louisa sat next to her sister, holding her hand. One of them looked like a San Franciscan socialite, and the other looked like she’d come out of a brawl in a lumber camp, but their resemblance to each other-and to their late brother-was notable.
“Millie, I’m delighted to meet you. And find you safe and relatively sound.”
Millie touched her bandage tentatively. “Thank you. Chief Van Alstyne told us about all you did to help me. And my friend Becky.”
Clare shook her head. “I was just one of the search team.” She hesitated. “I’ve already told Louisa, but I’m so very sorry about the loss of your brother.”
Tears filled the young woman’s eyes. She nodded.
“I understand your car is one of tonight’s casualties,” Louisa said. “Please allow us to make restitution.”
Russ thought of the twisted, smoking wreck that was her Shelby Cobra. “Oh,” Clare said gamely, “I have insurance.”
“Nevertheless.” Louisa looked at her sister. “And we’d like to explain to you,” she looked at Russ, “why we believe Gene was solely responsible for tonight’s carnage.”
There was a long pause. Clare looked at Russ. He shrugged. Millie had disclaimed the IEDs earlier, and he was pretty sure further investigation of the physical evidence was going to prove her statement, but he didn’t know what this was about.
“I feel responsible,” Millie said. “I was the one who brought the land sale up. I knew Gene was attached to Haudenosaunee, but I didn’t realize…”
Louisa looked at Clare and Russ. “I believe it’s common knowledge that Gene’s lived a reclusive life at Haudenosaunee since the fire that destroyed the old camp and took his mother’s life.”
Russ nodded.
“What is not commonly known-in fact, no one outside the family knew-was that… Gene…”
“Gene started that fire.” Millie’s face was as expressionless as her inflection.
“His mother had gotten primary custody of him, and he didn’t want to go. He loved to… tinker with things. Make things.”
“Things that blew up?” Clare asked bluntly.
Louisa nodded. “I don’t think he actually meant to hurt her…”
“Yes, he did,” Millie said. “He hated her, and he didn’t want to leave Daddy and Haudenosaunee. So he waited until she was alone in the old camp, and he set off his firebomb.”
“Good heavens,” Clare said, which was a lot milder than what Russ was going to say. “That’s a pretty big secret to carry around for all those years.” She searched both the sisters’ faces. “Are you sure, though, that means Eugene was responsible for tonight’s violence?”
“He locked me in the tower,” Millie said. “He slipped something in my drink last night during dinner. I don’t know what. I couldn’t remember anything when I woke up this morning.”
“Probably roofie. Rohypnol,” Russ explained. “Makes you extremely susceptible to suggestion and wipes out your memory. He could have told you to walk to the tower and climb the stairs and you wouldn’t recall doing it.”
“He did it to keep me away from the ceremony,” Millie said. “So I wouldn’t get hurt.”
“He didn’t tell
“Lou, I’m sure he had some plan up his sleeve. He didn’t want to hurt you.”
“No,” Russ said, “just the leadership of the ACC and the GWP corporate brass.” All three women looked at him.
“Oh, my God,” Clare said. “This afternoon, when I agreed to deliver the cases of wine for him, Eugene told me to leave the ballroom and come outside at nine o’clock. And bring my friends. He told me he was going to set off fireworks.”
Everyone looked out the open ambulance door, to where the night was alive with whirling lights and color.
“And so he did,” Clare said, so quietly Russ doubted the van der Hoevens heard her.
His phone rang. He excused himself and jumped out of the ambulance. “Van Alstyne here.”
“Russ? It’s Lyle. I’m calling to update you on the Reid-Gruyn fire.”
Russ listened while Lyle told him the news. He thought about Becky Castle, and Ed, and about Shaun and his new young wife, and about Lisa-the-housekeeper. He thought about Mark and Rachel Durkee.
He walked back to the ambulance in time to hear Clare saying, “Let’s be thankful for at least this. No matter what the damage, it’s been confined to things. Things can be replaced. At least no people have been hurt.”
“I’m afraid that’s not true.” The ambulance dipped under his weight as he climbed in. “I just got off the phone with my deputy chief. He’s been monitoring the fire over at the Reid-Gruyn mill. It seems Randy Schoof and Jeremy Reid were caught in the old mill. They’ve both been confirmed dead.”
Millie van der Hoeven burst into tears.
Lisa Schoof sat in the back seat of her brother-in-law’s cruiser. It was dark, very dark, except where it was lit by the light of the still-burning fire. Every once in a while someone would come up to her and ask if she was okay, if she wanted to go to the hospital, if she could answer a few questions. She didn’t reply; even if they opened the door, their voices remained behind thick glass, and eventually Mark spotted whoever was bothering her and shooed him away.
She tilted her head against the back of the seat. She was tired. So very tired.
Once, when she and Rachel were kids, they had spent the day sledding down a hill behind their grandfather’s pasture. They had been cold, then colder, and finally their toes and fingers ached and pinched with the bite of it. But they had dared each other to stay out till dark, and Lisa had found that after a while, the pain went away, and she felt nothing at all.
That was how she felt now. Numb. And tired.
She had thought, when the firetrucks arrived, that would be the end of it. So many of them, and so many men, tossing hoses into the river, sending great sprays of water arching over the old mill. She stood on the scrubgrounds surrounded by Reid-Gruyn workers, the plant emptied out, and someone had said, “Thank God it didn’t start in the new mill,” and she had turned and said, “My husband’s in there,” and they all fell silent and drew away from her.
But still, she believed the firefighters would save him. Him and the man who had gone in to get him out. She believed, right up until the moment when, with a series of cracks and pops that echoed through the night like artillary fire, the joists and braces that had held up the old mill for one hundred and thirty years gave way. The roof collapsed inward with the flaming roar of a dying forest, blasting out great gouts of fire that scattered the firefighters and made the onlookers stumble back in shock and awe.
