A muscle twitched in his cheek. He said nothing.
“Even though we were little, only seven years old, you wanted us, just as your father had wanted you, just as you’d wanted your mother’s sister. Love and incest-you’ve never been able to separate the two. You wanted us.”
“If I did… so what? So what? ”
“That’s why you set the fire. Not for revenge. You meant to wipe out all three of us-Annie and me and Maureen-so we wouldn’t be there to tempt you anymore.”
“It would have worked. If you’d died-”
“Nothing would have changed. You still would have had the same needs, and you would have responded the same way-by burning other women. Women who reminded you of us, because they were Catholic or they were young or they had the same color hair. The details wouldn’t matter. You would have gone on killing no matter what.”
“I wouldn’t. Dammit, it wouldn’t have been like that.”
“It would. It would have to be. It always will. You think that by killing the object of your desire, you can kill the desire itself. You’re wrong. What you’re trying to destroy is within you, not outside you. It’s part of you. It is you.”
“It’s not.” He shook his head blindly in a last, desperate effort at denial. “You’re the problem, not me. You and Annie. Filth. Whores. I’ll get rid of you, and then I’ll be free, God damn you, I’ll be free. ”
“You can never be free that way-”
But he wasn’t listening anymore. A ripple of spasms in his shoulders, and he pivoted away from her, moving fast toward the front door. Helplessly she called after him. “Oliver? Oliver? ”
At the door he turned. Something trembled in his hand.
A matchbook.
“I’ll be free,” he said once more, his voice muted and faraway.
He took a backward step, removing himself from the flash zone. A wisp of orange light flared between his fingers.
Flick of his wrist, and the match traced a slow arc through the darkness.
The gasoline vapors ignited even before the match hit the floor, triggering a split-second chain reaction that engulfed the lower portion of all four walls in a flexible sheet of flame.
“ Oliver!”
Her scream didn’t reach him. Nothing could reach him now.
Cymbal crashes of shattering glass. Every window in the room disintegrated simultaneously, blown out by the rapid expansion of superheated air.
“ Oliver!”
Still no response, though he must have heard her. He had not moved from the doorway.
Erin had spent her life studying fire and fire starters. She understood what happened next only too well.
The upward rush of intense heat kindled the walls, boiling off the wood’s most volatile contents. In a heartbeat the mist of outgassed turpentine, resin, and oil achieved its flash point, feeding the flames even as the gasoline vapors were consumed.
Convective updrafts teased the fire relentlessly toward the ceiling. Indrafting air from the front door and the broken windows flung exploratory firebrands across the floor.
“Goddammit, Oliver, talk to me! ”
The fire cast a ruddy, wavering glow on his face. He stood motionless, gazing transfixed at what he had done, what he had finally brought himself to do after so many years.
His eyes were wide and glassy. The sparse hairs of his head rustled in the fire’s hot wind.
Flames reached the first of the rafters, caught hold, then hopped from beam to beam. Churning fumes collected along the ceiling, forming a noxious mushroom cloud.
The smoke was what would kill her and Annie. That, or the stinging heat, or the collapse of the roof.
“ Oliver!” She had to make him hear her. “Oh, Jesus, Oliver, don’t leave us here, please don’t, for God’s sake, don’t!” Each breathless shout seemed to jerk the chain tighter around her midsection, the wicked links chewing hungrily at her stomach, her lower ribs. “Don’t let us burn, it’s not the way to solve anything, it’s not the way! ”
The noise around her was thunderous, the Niagara roar of the flames competing with the moans of tortured wood, the pops of metal fixtures springing free of bolts and screws, the sizzle of sparking wires, the whoosh and howl of eddying air currents that spun pinwheels of soot and embers across the room.
Oliver shambled backward, still watching spellbound.
“ Oliver!” she called for the last time.
Abruptly he turned, and then he was running, running into the night.
Gone.
Erin struggled with the chain, knowing she could not free herself, knowing she would be dead very soon, as the lethal heat pulsed around her and the roof beams began to groan.
58
“I did it.”
Gund spoke the words between gulps of air as he sprinted to the barn.
He threw the double doors wide, climbed into the Astro, started the engine.
As he backed out into the open, as he swung the van toward the open gate, as he pulled out onto the side road, he felt strange tics and twitches in his face, peculiar muscular contractions at the corners of his mouth-and in his eyes, beads of dampness, blurring his world.
In the sideview mirror, the receding ranch house glowed with a red, feverish light.
Another ripple of his facial muscles, and the shape of his mouth changed. It took him a moment to understand that he was smiling, really smiling-the first smile he had worn in years, decades-almost the first he could remember.
This, then, was happiness. That word he so often had heard and never comprehended.
“I did it,” he said once more as he eased his foot down on the accelerator pedal.
The smile remained fixed on his face even while the water in his eyes spilled over, warm droplets tracking slowly down his cheeks.
Walker led the three backup units off the freeway at Houghton Road. He headed north, maintaining a steady speed of seventy.
Behind him, the patrol cars switched on their light bars, red and blue dome lights pulsing. The sirens stayed silent.
Ravine Road must be directly ahead. Walker pumped the brake pedal, slowing in preparation for a sharp right turn.
Gund reached Houghton Road, and abruptly the newfound smile faded from his face.
To his left, three squad cars, rooftop flashers twinkling, with an unmarked Ford Mustang in the lead.
Arrest.
Punishment.
No.
With a snarl of rage he steered the van hard to the right.
As the Chevy swung onto Houghton, Gund reached under the dashboard with one hand and released the sawed-off Remington from its mounting.
Walker had run an M.V.D. check on Harold Gund during the drive to the ranch. He drove a Chevrolet Astro van.
