shook his head impatiently. “No, it was longer than that. Before the end of the inning. We were watching the Indians game.”
“Were you out here before the fire department got here?”
She looked from the kid to me and shook her head. “No. Well, like, about the same time. We heard the sirens, right? So I went to the window and looked out, and I saw the house was burning. We came outside right when the fire trucks were pulling up.”
My phone was vibrating in my pocket, but I ignored it and stepped closer to her, fighting to hear over the sound of the hoses and the shouting firefighters and neighbors.
“Any idea how it got started?” I asked.
“What? No. I mean, nobody lives there, so it couldn’t have been like a cooking fire or anything.” We were standing close now, our faces huddled together, and her breath came at me with a heavy smell of pickles that made me want to lean back.
“Was there any sort of explosion?”
“I don’t know. Jared had the TV on so loud . . .”
Another man who’d been standing near us, a tall, lean guy with an Indians baseball cap and a scraggly goatee, now interrupted.
“Yeah, there was an explosion. Well, you could hear it go up, at least. Kind of a
I turned to him. “Where were you when it got started?”
He pointed at the house immediately to my left. “Right there, smoking a cigarette on the lawn. I was the one who called it in.” He looked at me curiously. “You with the police?”
“I’m an investigator.”
“Oh, fire department?” he said, and rather than answer the question I threw another back at him.
“How long had you been on the lawn?”
He tugged at the goatee with his fingers. “Oh, ten minutes at least.”
“You notice anything going on across the street? See anybody walking around, maybe sitting in a car watching the place, anything like that?”
One of the fire hoses changed direction now, approaching the house from a new angle, and the breeze caught the spray and carried some of it across the street, brushing over us like raindrops blown off a tree’s leaves. The smell and taste of the smoke was heavy in the air.
“I didn’t notice anything,” the man with the goatee told me as the fire captain shouted that it was time to go inside the house. I turned away long enough to see three of the firefighters approach the porch in full gear, armed with axes.
“The house has been empty for a while, right?” I said.
“Oh, yeah. Couple months, now. I never seen nobody over there, though. Probably was a neighbor kid or something. You know, playing with matches.”
More sirens were coming from the east now, growing steadily louder, and the kid who’d been fidgeting around us the whole time covered his ears with hands. His mother had turned away from me completely to refocus on the scene across the street. My phone was vibrating again, buzzing against my leg, and I held my finger up at the man with the goatee, asking him to wait a minute, then stepped away and pulled the phone from my pocket. The display showed it was Amy’s work number. She hadn’t even left yet.
I answered and said, “I’m down here, Amy. Get in your car and drive instead of calling me for updates.”
“Lincoln, this shit is getting out of control. There’s another one burning now. Clark and West Thirty- sixth.”
“You heard me. We’ve got three houses up in flames, all of them in under an hour. All Neighborhood Alliance properties.”
The sirens were close now, making me wince. I hunkered down on the sidewalk, elbows on my knees, and covered one ear, fighting to hear Amy.
“We’ve got two reporters out now, and my editor asked me to stay here and coordinate with the field reporters,” she said. “Not my choice, but I’m going to have to stay here.”
“This is insane,” I said. “Three of them burning at once?”
“Hate to be a pessimist,” Amy said, “but do you really think it’s going to stop there?”
“Maybe not.” Even as I said it, I realized I was wasting time standing here talking to the neighbors. “Shit, Amy—you’ve got the list of all the Neighborhood Alliance homes right there, the one you sent me.”
“So?”
“Well, it looks like someone’s working their way through the same list, right? Opportunity knocks.”
“You’re going to try to catch up with whoever’s doing this?”
“You said it yourself, Ace—it’s probably not going to stop at three. And there’s a chance I might be able to get ahead of this guy.”
CHAPTER 20
Amy read the list to me and I wrote the addresses down with a pen and paper borrowed from one of the neighbors watching the fire. Then I hung up and returned to my truck. The first house on my list that wasn’t already in flames was on Erin Avenue, a few blocks north of Clark and not far from Mill Park. There was another house on Erin, too. I figured I’d start with the one near the park and then move east.
Soon I was far enough away from the other fires that the sirens seemed distant, and the neighborhood was quiet despite fairly heavy traffic. I made a right turn onto Erin Avenue and slowed down, watching the house numbers and looking for the right one.
Chaos was coming from behind me. I pressed the brake pedal all the way down, bringing the truck to a jarring halt, and leaned out the window, listening. A lot of shouting joined by fresh sirens. A car behind me honked, and I pulled forward about twenty feet before making a hard left turn into a narrow alley. I put the truck in reverse and looked in the rearview mirror, waiting for an opportunity to back out and change directions, but then I said the hell with it and threw the truck into park. I figured the police had more important things to deal with right now than worrying about towing a truck out of an alley.
By the time I reached the sidewalk I could see the smoke. It wasn’t the house near the park, which stood somewhere to my left, but the house that was farther east along the avenue. I broke into a run.
It was a one-story house, smaller than any of the others that were already burning, and this time I’d arrived early enough to see the flames at work. They crackled and roared as they licked out of broken windows and through the eaves of the roof. Inside, something collapsed, and the noise of the flames swelled with a sound of ecstasy, a primal monster bent on destruction.
There were no fire trucks yet, just two cops working out of one battered cruiser, shouting at the crowd to stay back. One man was in the middle of the street, refusing to move, and when the cop ordered him to get back on the sidewalk, he shouted an angry response.
“That’s my house next door, man! If this thing spreads, it’s going to get my house!”
“The fire department will get it under control,” the cop answered, placing a firm hand on the angry man’s chest. “Now, sir, please go to the other side of the street.”
“Hell with that,” the man said, knocking the cop’s hand off his chest and running back across the street and into the house that stood no more than twenty feet from the burning home. The cop swore and ran after him while his partner turned to the crowd, hands up. It was Jack Padgett.
I stood and stared at him as he shouted orders at the onlookers, his partner pursuing the man who’d run for the house. Padgett was in uniform, stalking about the street confidently, tall and strong and angry.
I moved back down the sidewalk and called Joe again.
“There’s another house burning,” I said when he answered, “and guess what cop is down here working the
