“Maybe I will. I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“You always will be, dear.”
“I’m too tired to think what that means. The only thing I have to do tomorrow is to call the police detective.”
“Did you see Mr. Horton?”
“Cane. Edmund Cane. Of Horton’s. Yes.”
“Did he tell you anything about the desk?”
“No, except that he never told the FBI anything about it. But someone must have.”
“Told them what?”
“I’m too tired to think what that means either. Oh, Dorothy, what was Derek doing? What was going on?”
“Someone must know.”
“I keep thinking about the conversations I had with him. Especially the last one.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Just a game we had started. It was about how we lived our lives, but it was mostly just an exercise in repartee. That’s what I thought, but suddenly I wonder what he really meant.” He turned off the light. “How I wish I could have one more talk with him.”
“So, Charles, how do you like the game now?”
“I don’t, Derek. It’s quite unfair that you’ve put me up to it. I’d rather not be playing.”
“I think you need to be. We’ll see if the principles you’ve spouted all these years will stand up to a real test.”
“Is that the point, Derek? Is that why you put the papers in the book? To embroil me in all of this?”
“It seems to have worked.”
“But surely you didn’t expect to be killed. Was it just a common burglary, or was it one of your victims?”
“You’re only imagining me, Charles. You know I can’t answer that.”
“Were you really a blackmailer, Derek? Was that the game you were playing, and your ‘situation’ at the office?”
“You don’t sound content, Charles. You must be losing our game.”
“But you’re dead, Derek, so I don’t think you’ve won it.”
“No. It isn’t pleasant here. The circles go deeper and deeper and I still haven’t found my depth.”
“Who killed you, Derek?”
“Have I passed that circle yet? I believe I have. The murderers. Yes, that was one or two back. I hope I’m not headed to the ninth circle, to the circle of traitors.”
“Who was the other person you were blackmailing? The person who tried to buy your desk? The person Patrick White had helping him. Who was it, Derek? Was that who killed you?”
“Patrick White? Yes, he’s down here now, too. I don’t know where they’ll put him. There’s a circle for everyone. I hope I’m not in for the traitors, the betrayers. That’s the worst judgment of all, way down at the very bottom of the Inferno. Am I a traitor? Did I betray you, Charles? Is that why I’m still going down?”
“No, Derek. You’re no traitor. I forgive you.”
THURSDAY MORNING
“Charles.”
“The Inferno.”
“Charles!”
“What?”
The room was dark. Dorothy was beside him. He sat up awake.
“You were dreaming. You were saying something.”
The clock said 3:40.
“I know who it is,” Charles said.
“What?”
“I know who killed Derek.”
The telephone rang.
Or was it sirens? He was still disoriented. He found the screaming telephone.
“Hello?”
“Is this Charles Beale?” the voice said.
“Yes, it is.”
“This is Alexandria Emergency Services. We have a call that your building on South Fairfax street has a fire.”
“In the building?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve dispatched trucks.”
“Fire?”
Dorothy gasped.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Mr. Beale, the Fire Department trucks are just leaving now. They’ll be there in two minutes. Stay away from the building.”
“Yes, yes. But I have to go.”
He put down the telephone. Dorothy was up from the bed getting dressed very quickly.
They did hear sirens.
He ran. The streets were empty and black. He didn’t even think of driving until he was already on the sidewalk running, panting, then walking, then running and coughing and pushing.
The streets were black and red and blue and white. The colors flickered ahead. An infernal world was before him and he raced to it as fast as his slow, uncooperative legs could.
He turned the last corner and it was all before him, bright and screaming.
The grinding lights filled everything and they were still coming.
There was sound, sirens as demonic as the lights.
He was close and he didn’t know how to stop running. But he was halted by a wall of smoke and everything else was unreal; the smoke was real. And the smoke was born of burning.
The smell told him what was burning, not just bitter and choking but horrible with the taste of forest and of old linen. He stumbled closer.
He was stopped by arms and voices, and then he couldn’t move at all but was made stone by the smoke and red light that was inside.
Dorothy stood beside him.
The white spotlight glare made the beautiful old building grotesque and drowned the red light inside. There was only smoke. He choked on the smoke.
It was gray and poured out in an upended waterfall, gushing from windows and streaming from everywhere else. Terrible smoke, full of fragments of pages; they were tiny glittering sparks, scattering everywhere. Scattering everything. Everything that they were.
All of the books.
The men were breaking open the front door. The flames in the window flared and forced out huge planets of smoke. The whole street was smoke.
Water poured in, but the flames were unquenchable. All the windows were full of flames, every story of the building was in flame. Every story in every book was in flame.
The top floor was in flame. Angelo’s window was filled with smoke.
Men with hoses pushed through the smoke at the front door.
Something central inside surrendered and broke apart and fell, and waves of heat and smoke and fire crashed
