White Fire

Pendergast went straight to a cluster of filing cabinets. Perusing the labels on the front of each, he chose one, jimmied it open with a swift, sure motion, flipped through the papers, removed a fat accordion file, shut the cabinet, and carried the file back through the house to the front hall, plucking his bottle of champagne from the dining table in the process. In the front hall, he retrieved his greatcoat, scarf, hat, and gloves from where the maid had dumped them on the floor in her panic, secreted the file in the bulk of his coat, and stepped outside.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “the fire is out. It’s safe to return now.”

He strode off into the snowy afternoon, to his waiting car, and drove away.

59

Corrie felt Ted’s powerful arms around her, holding her tight. The tightness of it made her feel safe. Relief flooded through her. She relaxed and took the pressure off her broken ankle as he continued to hold her up. “I’m going to take care of you,” he said again, a little louder.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she sobbed. “That guy in the mine — he’s a goon, hired by Kermode to run me out of town. He’s the one who killed my dog, shot up my car…and now he’s trying to kill me.”

“Kermode,” Ted said, his voice taking on an edge. “Figures. That bitch. I’m going to take care of her as well. Oh, God, will I take care of that bitch.”

She was a little taken aback by his vehemence. “It’s okay,” she said. “God, I’m so light-headed. I think I need to lie down.”

He didn’t seem to have heard. The arms tightened even more.

“Ted, help me sit down…” She twisted a little because he was gripping her so hard it was beginning to hurt.

“Fucking bitch,” he said, louder.

“Forget Kermode…Please, Ted — you’re hurting me.”

“Not talking about Kermode,” he said. “Talking about you.”

Corrie was sure she hadn’t heard right. She was so dizzy. His arms tightened even more, to the point where she could hardly breathe. “Ted…That hurts. Please!”

“Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself, bitch?”

His voice was different now. Rough, hoarse.

“Ted…what?”

“What, Ted, what?” He mimicked her in a high, squeaky voice. “What a piece of work you are.”

“What are you talking about?”

He squeezed so hard she cried out. “You like that? ’Cause you know what I’m talking about. Don’t play the innocent little girl.”

She struggled, but had almost no strength left. It was like a nightmare. Maybe it was a nightmare — maybe all of this was. “What are you saying?”

“What are you say-ing?” he mimicked.

She twisted, trying to break free, and he roughly spun her around, his face almost touching hers. The red, sweaty, misshapen, furious look that disfigured his face frightened her terribly. Both his eyes were bloodshot and leaking water. “Look at you,” he said, lowering his voice, his lips warped with anger. “Leading me on, always teasing, first promising and then saying no, making a fool of me.”

He gave her a sudden, violent squeeze with his powerful arms and she felt a rib crack under the pressure, pain lancing through her chest. She screamed, gasped, tried to speak, but he squeezed her again, forcing the air from her lungs. “The cocktease stops right here, right now.” Spittle splattered her face. His lips, covered with a white film, were now brushing hers, his strangely foul breath washing over her like fumes from a rotting carcass.

She tried to breathe but couldn’t. The combined pain of her ankle, her hand, and now her ribs was so excruciating she was unable to think straight. Fear and shock sent her heart, already racing from the pursuit through the mines, into overdrive. She had never seen a face so twisted and so terrifying. He was completely mad.

Mad. Mad…She didn’t want to think of the ramifications of that — she would not, could not, follow that thought to its natural conclusion.

“Please—” she managed to gasp.

“Isn’t this perfect? You just running into my arms like this. It’s karma. It saves me all the usual kinds of preparation. The universe wants to teach you a lesson, and I’ll be the teacher.”

With that he threw her to the ground. She fell sprawling, with a cry of pain. He followed up with a kick to her injured ribs. The pain was unbearable and she cried out again, gasping for air. She felt the world swirling around, a strange ethereal floating sensation, pain and fright and disbelief overpowering all rational thought. A mist passed before her eyes, and consciousness shut down.

A long, dark time seemed to pass before another searing lance of pain brought her back to herself. She was still in the dingy room. Mere moments must have ticked by. Ted stood over her, his face still grotesquely distorted, eyes watering, lips covered with a sticky bloom of white. He reached down, seized her leg, spun her around, and began dragging her over the rough floorboards. She tried to scream but couldn’t. Her head banged roughly against the floor and once again she felt herself on the verge of passing out.

He dragged her from the back room into the main section of the structure. The vast pump rose above her, a monstrous juggernaut of giant pipes and cylinders. The tall building creaked in the wind. He pulled her alongside a horizontal pipe, yanked off her gloves, took notice of her damaged hand — lips curling into a malevolent smile at the sight — then lifted the other arm and roughly cuffed her wrist to the pipe.

She lay there, gasping, swimming in and out of consciousness.

“Look at you now,” he said, and spat on her.

As she struggled weakly to sit up, gasping in pain, part of her mind seemed to sense that this was happening, not to her, but to somebody else, and that she was watching from someplace far, far away. But there was another part of her mind — cold and relentless — that kept telling her exactly the opposite. This was real. Not only that — Ted was going to kill her.

Having shackled her to the pipe, Ted stepped back, crossed his arms, and surveyed his handiwork. The dark mist that hovered around her seemed to clear slightly, and she grew more aware of her surroundings. Old pieces of lumber littered the floor. A couple of kerosene lanterns were hung nearby, casting a feeble yellow light. In one corner was a cot with a sleeping bag on it, a box of handcuffs, a couple of balaclavas, and several large cans of kerosene. A table held several hunting knives, coils of rope, duct tape, a glass-stoppered vial with some clear liquid within, wadded piles of wool socks and heavy sweaters, all black. There was a gun, too, that looked to Corrie like a 9mm Beretta. Why would Ted have a handgun? Pegs on the walls held a dark leather coat and — perversely — assorted clown masks.

This seemed to be a hideout of some sort. A lair—Ted’s lair. But why should he need one? And what were all these things for?

An old woodstove was burning to one side, the light shining between the cracks in the cast iron, throwing out heat. And now she noticed an odor in the air — a vile odor.

Ted pulled up a chair, turned it around, and straddled it, balancing his arms on the chair back. “So here we are,” he said.

Something was terribly wrong with him. And yet the furious, violent, half-demented Ted of the last few minutes had changed. Now he was calm, mocking. Corrie swallowed, unable to take all this in. Maybe if she talked to him, she could learn what was troubling him, bring him back from whatever dark place he was in. But when she tried, all that came out was a pathetic garble of sound.

“When you first arrived in town, I thought maybe you were different from the others around here,” he said. His voice had changed again, as if his rage had buried itself deep in ice. It was remote, cold, detached, like someone speaking to himself — or, perhaps, to a corpse. “Roaring Fork. Back when I was young, it used to be a real town. Now the ultra-high-net-worth bastards have taken over, the assholes with their social-climbing bimbos,