Everything Burns Read online

  OTHER NOVELS BY VINCENT ZANDRI

  The Remains

  The Concrete Pearl

  Scream Catcher

  Lost Grace

  Permanence

  THE CHASE BAKER SERIES

  The Shroud Key

  THE JACK MARCONI PI NOVELS

  The Innocent

  Godchild

  The Guilty

  THE DICK MOONLIGHT PI NOVELS

  Moonlight Falls

  Moonlight Mafia

  Moonlight Rises

  Blue Moonlight

  Full Moonlight

  Murder by Moonlight

  Moonlight Sonata

  Moonlight Breaks Bad

  Moonlight Weeps

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Vincent Zandri

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477826737

  ISBN-10: 1477826734

  Cover design by Stewart Williams

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014943153

  For Laura

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Prologue

  BOOK I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  BOOK II

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  “Fire! Fire!” says the Town Crier;

  “Where? Where?” says Goody Blaire;

  “Down the town,” says Goody Brown;

  “I’ll go and see’t!” says Goody Fleet;

  “So will I,” says Goody Fry;

  “Burn! Burn!” says Goody Stern. “Burn her! Burn him!”

  —Nursery Rhyme, circa 1920

  “When life gives you lemons, you put the lemons down and go burn down a building.”

  —Unidentified Pyromaniac

  Prologue

  October 1977

  Albany, New York

  The boy wakes to smoke and fire.

  The thick black smoke chokes his ten-year-old lungs as if he were swallowing dirt. It makes his eyes water and sting. Makes the darkness that fills his small second-floor corner bedroom even darker.

  Then there’s the heat.

  A heat like he’s never felt before. But that’s not right. He’s felt this kind of heat on other occasions, under far different circumstances. When his father, after a long day’s work, would build fires in the fireplace he built himself out of fieldstone in the downstairs living room. Sometimes, after coming in from playing out in the cold and the snow, the boy would warm himself by the fire. He would sit on the stone ledge only inches away from the dry wood–fed flames until he could feel the heat seeping through layers of thick clothing. If he sat there for too long, the heat would penetrate the layers and burn his skin until it stung. The fire brought him pain then, but it was a good pain.

  That’s the kind of heat he’s feeling now. Only thing is, the pain that comes with it is not good.

  Some of the heat is making its way through the wall that separates his bedroom from his parents’ master bedroom. More heat is blowing in from the hallway, where the fire burns and creeps. When he looks over his shoulder, he can make out the flashes of firelight that break through the thick darkness out in the hall. The fire gives the hall a strange, flickering glow. Like candlelight dancing against the walls, only bigger, hotter, deadlier. His heart pounds and his smoke-filled lungs ache. He coughs and chokes. He’s just a boy, but he knows that this should not be happening in the upstairs of his home in the night.

  Then comes a scream.

  The scream is louder than the fire and pierces his flesh and bone like a sharp knife. The scream belongs to his mother.

  She keeps screaming.

  Her screams are high-pitched and filled with suffering, like she’s trapped in hell. He knows she’s in pain. He closes his eyes, tries to convince himself that what’s happening is a nightmare, and that if he closes his eyes tight he’ll go back to sleep. If he closes his eyes now, he’ll wake up to sunshine leaking in through his windows in the morning and everything will be okay. His mother won’t be screaming anymore. She’ll be downstairs in the kitchen wrapped in her old blue terry-cloth robe, making pancakes while the first cigarette of the day dangles from her lips. His two older brothers will be dressed and fighting over who gets to drive the pickup truck to high school that day. His father will already be off to work.

  His mother’s screams strike a new, fiercer pitch, jarring his eyes back open.

  This scream is followed by a kind of guttural moan, and then, nothing. The boy lies on his back, his eyes wide open, feeling the wetness from the tears flowing down his smooth cheeks. Even in all his despair he’s a little surprised because the tears dry up as fast as they pour out of his eyes.
The heat has become that intense, the flames that close.

  Suddenly the figure of a man appears in his doorway. It’s the boy’s father.

  “We have to get the hell out of here, Reece!” his father shouts in between lung-choking coughs.

  “Dad,” Reece cries above the roar of a flame that is eating away the walls, “are we going to die?”

  His father enters into the bedroom, wraps his red, white, and blue Superman comforter tightly around him, and lifts his youngest son from the bed. He then cradles Reece in his big arms, presses the boy’s face into his chest to protect him from the fire that is sure to come.

  “Listen to me, Reece,” his father says. “We have to make a run through the fire. You are not to inhale a breath. You understand? When I tell you to, I want you to close your mouth and your eyes and don’t breathe. You got it? Do not take a breath.”

  Reece tries to say something while his face is stuffed against his dad’s chest, yet it’s impossible for him to utter a single word. But then, what difference does it make? He’s far too afraid to speak anyway.

  Turning for the door, his father grips him so tightly, Reece feels like his bones might break. “Ready?” his father shouts above the roar of the flame. “Close your eyes and your mouth. Do it now.”

  Reece does it. At the same time, he feels himself being propelled out the open bedroom door, then down a hallway that is hellishly hot and deafeningly loud. He feels as if he’s been tossed into a furnace, the iron door slammed shut behind him. He hears his father do something he’s never heard him do before. His father screams. The voice is piercing and filled with pain, just like his mother’s voice sounded only a split second before her shrieks suddenly stopped.

  Then he feels himself descending the stairs. Still clutched in his father’s arms, he’s falling fast, until he feels his father’s feet land square and flat onto the stone vestibule floor. The front door is wrenched open and slammed against the interior brick wall, the big opaque glass panel embedded inside it shattering into a million pieces, and just like that, a wave of cool air slaps his exposed head along with the small portion of his face that’s no longer stuffed into his father’s chest.

  His father runs out onto the lawn with Reece now bouncing in his arms, until he drops the boy onto the damp lawn and begins roughly rolling him back and forth, as if they are playing a summertime game of roll-down-the-hill-on-your-side. But this is not a game. It doesn’t take long for Reece to realize his comforter is on fire and if it should burn through the fabric, it will scorch his skin.

  All it takes for the fire to go out is a couple of rolls on the dew-soaked lawn.

  “Breathe now, boy,” his father says from down on his knees, his voice having gone from panicked and loud to an exasperated whisper. “Breathe.”

  Reece opens his eyes and inhales a mouthful of sweet night air. But the sweetness lasts only as long as it takes his eyes to focus on a house that is entirely engulfed in red-orange flame. Emerging from out of the darkness now is a team of firemen who carry hoses and axes. Their faces are covered by translucent oxygen masks, their thick shoulders bearing the weight of heavy oxygen tanks. There’s a squad of fire trucks, police cruisers, and EMS vans parked up on the lawn, their rooftop flashers beaming red, white, and blue light throughout the neighborhood. A never-still light that reflects off the vinyl siding of the cookie-cutter ranches and colonials.

  “What about Mom?” Reece cries out while sitting up, touching a painful place on his head where his hair caught fire. “What about Tommy? And Patrick?”

  He locks his eyes onto his father and is shocked to see what’s become of him. The dark hair on the man’s head is partially burned away, and his right ear and cheek are blackened and blistered like a hamburger patty that’s been left out on the grill for far too long. A long blister has formed on his right arm where the sleeve of his pajamas has burned off. The blister runs the length of the arm. It makes the boy’s back teeth hurt just to look at it.

  “They’re gone, Reece,” his father says as he begins to sob.

  “What do you mean, Dad? How are they gone?”

  “I couldn’t get to them in time. It was just too hot. Your mother . . . I warned her about smoking in bed. I told her what would happen.”

  “Did Mom start the fire? Did she burn my brothers?”

  “She didn’t mean to start it, Reece,” he cries. “But now she’s killed them all.”

  Reece watches his father cry. Watches the man bury his face in his burned hands as the ashes from the fire rise up into the night and disappear into an eternal darkness. His eyes might be glued to his father, but in his head he sees his mother and his brothers burning in their beds. He sees their skin on fire, burning, sizzling, charring.

  Reece listens to his father’s sobs and it makes his heart burn with a sadness so profound, he feels as if his body will melt into the earth. The destruction is all around him. It has become a part of him now and of who he will become tomorrow, and the day after that and the day after that.

  He is haunted by fire.

  BOOK I

  Chapter 1

  October, present day

  Albany, New York

  “You’re sure that going under the knife all by your lonesome is a good idea?” I say as my frantic ex-wife, Lisa, grabs her overnight bag and slings it over her shoulder, careful not to catch her long, lush, dark brown hair under the thick leather strap. “What if something goes catastrophically wrong?”

  Lisa shoots me a look that’s part smile, part smirk.

  “I think it’s you who’s nervous about being left alone,” she says. Then, “Here’s an idea: Why don’t you call Blood and have him stay with you?”

  Blood is my part-time research assistant. A tall, formidable former Green Haven Prison inmate, the muscular black man is one of the smartest and most loyal friends I have in the city. It also so happens that I saved his life one late summer afternoon when we were crossing Lark Street in downtown Albany immediately following some research conducted at our favorite wine bar.

  “Can you imagine my asking Blood to babysit me?” I say after a prolonged beat. “He’d probably tell me to go out and buy a pair of big-boy panties.”

  “You saved him from getting mashed by that car outside the Laundromat,” Lisa says. “He feels he owes you.”

  “That doesn’t mean he has to watch over me like I’m a five-year-old. My dad raised me better than that. He taught me to be self-reliant.”

  “You go with that, Mr. Independence,” she says. “Your dad raised you on his own. He had no choice but to make you independent.” She shifts her head so that she’s now facing the single-story ranch home’s one long corridor. “Anna, let’s get a move on!”

  Then, her eyes back on me, “Okay, I get it, macho man. No Blood. But the question remains: Are you going to be all right staying here alone? This is the first time you’ll be all alone overnight in my house in the two months we’ve been back together.” Leaning into me, to whisper in my ear. “No rummaging through my underwear drawer, big fella.” She takes me by surprise by cupping her hand gently but still alarmingly around my unmentionables.

  “Yikes,” I blurt out, but as she removes her hand, I grab for it. “Hey, don’t stop now.”

  Her hand escapes me.

  “You’ll have to take care of that yourself,” she laughs. “I’ll be out of commission for a few days.”

  “Coming, Mommy,” I hear from the direction of Anna’s room. Eight years and two months old but going on thirty, Anna is our only child together. A self-proclaimed fashionista, the tall-for-her-years, slim third-grader is always late getting out the door for anything, be it the school bus or friends wanting to ride bikes around the neighborhood. After all, she can’t go out in public with long hair that’s not highlighted with yellow and red streaks or clipped up in a crazy ’do that mimics Selena Gomez or Hannah Montana. A
lthough, if I were to mention any of these names to her, she would no doubt stick her index finger in her mouth and, while fake-gagging, retort with something like “Ummm, I don’t think so, Reecey Pieces. Hannah Montana is like soooo long gone.”

  “Maybe Anna should stay here with me, Leese,” I say, fingering the inch-long scar that I earned on the day my childhood home burned to the ground. “We can make homemade pizza for dinner. I promise not to burn it this time. In fact, why don’t you change your mind and stay home tonight.”

  But she shakes her head while going through the pockets on her long brown suede coat, the one we picked up at the leather market in Florence on our honeymoon ten years ago. Searching for her keys or Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses or iPhone or wallet or lipstick or some combination thereof, she shoots me a look with her extra-wide brown eyes. Eyes that still send a wave of warmth up and down my backbone when I peer into them.

  “Reece,” she says, her tone stern, “are you really willing to give up two full days of writing to take care of me? I’m having my tear ducts fixed. That means I’m going to be partially blinded by ice packs for forty-eight hours. Do you have any idea what that means?”

  “Means you can’t see me,” I say, stuffing my hands into the pockets of my jeans. It’s what I do when I’m nervous or feeling guilty or both, which is precisely the case right now. Years ago, I might have lit a few matches, one after the other, in order to calm myself down. At the very least, I would have flicked the flame on a Bic lighter I might store in my pants pocket just like some people might keep a rabbit’s foot or a lucky coin. But now that I’m over the power of fire, I just satisfy myself with keeping my hands busy in other ways.

  “I can’t see you. Brilliant response.” Lisa faux-smiles. “You should be a best-selling novelist. But there’s more to it. I’ll be on my back for hours at a time. Aside from the icing, I must remain perfectly still, or so the doctor tells me.” She finally finds her car keys and her aviators in her coat pocket. She slips on the sunglasses. They make her look as young and beautiful as the day we met at a local Starbucks fifteen years ago. “Plus you’ll have to look after Anna. I know it pains your artistic heart to know that my parents can do a far better job of it. But they can.” She purses her lips, takes a glance at them in a mirror that hangs on the wall beside the closet, but then quickly shifts her focus to her watch. “Anna, now!”