sliding doors.
I had parked the Lincoln in an open area around the side. All the spaces around us had filled in. I got to the car and popped the trunk. Gabby went to load up the bags.
“Let me help you…,” I said, reaching for two of the heavier ones.
“No.” She laughed, her eyes blue and light. “I am old, but I am able to do this, Jay.”
“Okay, okay…” I hoisted a bulky bag containing milk and juice cartons into the trunk and went around and opened the driver’s-side door. I smelled the acrid scent of oil coming from somewhere. I looked but didn’t see anything. “I’ll take back the cart.”
I wheeled it toward the lineup of carts in the front, and a pretty Latino woman happily took it from me.
Heading back, I watched Gabby close up the trunk. Though she was probably sixty, she still looked trim and attractive. Her smile, however brief, always lit her face, and I thought to myself that this was a woman who would have really enjoyed her life if things had been different. I felt sorry for the look of anguish that had replaced her quick smile, and all the pain. She had tried hard to be a good mother to Evan, whatever the outcome. How loyal she had been to Charlie all these years.
She caught sight of me staring at her and briefly smiled.
The same moment I realized something was horribly wrong.
Walking toward her, I caught that smell again, and my gaze fixed on a slick black river of flame traveling toward us on the pavement, one car away.
No…
I ran to try to put it out, but it sped quickly under the blue Ford truck parked in the space adjacent to us, a dangerous stream of fire picking up speed.
That’s when I realized that the smell under my car wasn’t engine oil at all, but gasoline!
My eyes were now drawn to the widening black circle pooled underneath the Lincoln.
No!
I stopped, knowing I was too late, and turned back to my Lincoln in panic.
“Gabby, no…!”
She had climbed back in the car and shut the door. Still a picture of that same happy smile glancing my way.
My own gaze unraveling into horror.
I ran toward her, shouting out her name, a passerby turning, just as the stream of flame met the pool of gasoline underneath my car-suddenly engulfing it in a bright whoosh of scalding yellow heat.
“Gabby!”
I stared, helpless, as a burst of heat shot at me as if the car was an enormous gas grill overloaded with propane. Scalded, I turned away for a second, blinded. When I looked back Gabby had her arm covering her face, a twisted expression of horror on it, frantically tugging at the door, the vehicle erupting around her in flames.
“Gabby!”
I darted over, ripping off my jacket as I went for the already scalding door handle, swatting the flames away from my face.
All around me, people screamed.
The door was jammed. Gabby’s mask of helplessness and fear inside whipped the quickening drumbeat of my own exploding heart.
“I’ll get you out!” I screamed, tugging with my jacket over the fiery handle.
Goddamnit, open, please!
I pulled and pulled, but I couldn’t get my fingers around the handle. Smoke began to rise, starting to fill up the inside of the car. Gabby’s fear intensified and I realized that at any moment the whole thing might explode.
I flung down my jacket and squeezed, and finally the door mercifully released. I threw it open, grabbing on to Gabby’s arm, ripped her out of the seat, as onlookers rushed from the market, pointing and screaming all around.
I picked her up in my arms and carried her over my shoulder, twenty feet away, just as I heard this chilling, enveloping whoosh from behind me and my rented Lincoln erupted into an orange ball of flames.
“Jay! Jay! ” Gabby was screaming.
Then it blew.
The blast knocked me down, and we hit the pavement, hurled up against another parked car. Gabby clung to me, shaking, coughing smoke out of her lungs, unable to look back, guttural sobs coming out of her, from both relief and fear.
“Oh, Jay, oh, Jay, oh, Jay…”
I turned around. My car was engulfed in smoke and flame. A stomach-turning, fuel-like stench was all around. Shocked shoppers ran out of the stores, eyes stretched wide.
“It’s okay, Gabby, it’s okay.” I stroked her, my own heart slamming against the walls of my chest, as I squeezed her close. “ It’s okay…”
But no matter how many times I said it, I looked back at the smoking carcass of my car and knew it wasn’t okay.
The truth came over me. As inescapable as the wall of flames I now watched in disbelief.
This was my car.
I was supposed to be inside. If I hadn’t wheeled the cart back…
The blazing fireball, a bonfire of burning oil and smoke, melting metal and leather…
It was meant for me.
Chapter Fifty-Six
T he police arrived. Two black and white sheriff’s cars and a white county vehicle, lights and sirens blaring. They pushed back the surging crowd, some of whom had helped us.
“I’m a doctor,” I said. “I’m okay.”
A minute later the EMTs came.
No matter how I stared at the melted, smoking chassis, I still couldn’t believe what had taken place.
I was okay. Just some slight burns on my fingers and a scrape on my arm from the tumble. Gabby had some first-degree burns on her face and legs. But she was completely in shock.
I muttered to one of the EMTs that I was a doctor.
They took her off to the ER in Arroyo Grande. I declined any treatment and stayed, taking the police officers through what had happened. I traced the black river of smoking fuel from beneath my own vehicle to a Dumpster around the back of the market where the fire, and whoever had set it, had originated.
Two local detectives came on the scene and took my story. The lead one was a young Latino with a shaved head. He asked if I knew anyone who might want to hurt me.
I didn’t even know where to begin.
I told him I had to speak with Sherwood.
“Detective Sherwood’s with the coroner’s office in San Luis Obispo,” the detective replied. “We’re here to help you. This isn’t his terrain.”
“Find Detective Sherwood,” I said, not backing down.
It took a few minutes to locate him.
“I just heard what happened,” he said when I finally got him on the phone. “Are you all right?”
“I know what it’s all about,” I said, my blood racing, ignoring his concern.
He didn’t answer. Maybe he thought I was raving. Or a little wacky, from the shock.
“Sherwood, I know what my brother did back then. Why they want to hurt him. You can meet me at Charlie’s later. I’ll get him to talk.” I exhaled a breath, grateful Gabby and I were both alive. “We’re going to bust this wide open now, Sherwood.”
