Everything Burns Page 12

  “It was our house, and the truth of the matter is this: I lit a small fire using a pile of newspaper way out back on the wood deck. It was a way of getting attention. A frustrated scream or tantrum, if you will. Trust me, I should know what I’m talking about. Never at any time was there a danger of the house going up or anyone getting hurt.”

  Miller clears his throat. “You really believe that?”

  “I have to believe it.”

  “I understand you also tried to light your childhood home on fire. And here I thought The Damned and all the fires that dude Drew Brennen starts was just fiction.”

  “My second childhood home, if you want to know the truth. The first one my mother burned down with a cigarette. Killed herself and my brothers. They were all burned alive in their bedrooms. Ever since then . . .” I raise up my hands as if the gesture will complete my sentence better than words ever can.

  “Ever since then you’ve harbored a rather unhealthy obsession with fire.”

  “You’ve done your research. My royalties at work.”

  “Yes, I have, Mr. Johnston. I also know that you were twice hospitalized for your, uh, pyromania. Once as a boy, and again as an adult.”

  “That’s right. Electroshock therapy and all. You should try it sometime. It’s like rebooting your brain.”

  He smirks. “You understand someone, probably you, lit a fire on the grill on Lisa’s back deck. Only it wasn’t to roast a few weenies. The fire wasn’t a means to an end, but an end in itself.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Whoever lit the fire wanted to play with fire and that’s all. By my estimation, he went through an entire bottle of lighter fluid. Probably stood there and poured it into the flame, watching it go sky high. Dangerous shit.”

  “That so. There a law against lighting a fire in a barbecue?”

  “Not really. Unless the man doing it is a pyro who’s doing it irresponsibly. But that’s not what bothers me about the fire in the cooker. What bothers me is that we’ve been getting reports of garbage can fires at Little’s Lake, which is situated directly in back of Lisa’s house. In fact, one of those garbage cans was torched just hours before Lisa’s house was broken into and someone started making fires on her back deck.”

  My throat goes tight. So does my chest. I try to keep a straight face, but it’s getting harder and harder.

  Miller goes on. “Tell me something, Mr. Johnston. Did you ever threaten your former girlfriend, Rachael, with fire?”

  “Listen, Miller,” I say, trying not to raise my voice. “I’d never hurt a woman. You got that?”

  He raises his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, calm down, Mr. Johnston. And please lower your voice. We’re just talking here. You say you’d never hurt a woman, but you not only scared Lisa eight years back, you might very well have killed them all. A triple homicide would look very bad on a writer’s dust-jacket biography.”

  I exhale, loosen up my hands, then once more squeeze them into fists.

  “I was going through a bad time. I was drunk and struggling through my first novel after three straight years of writer’s block.”

  “You should have been happy now that you were able to write again.”

  “You’re right, I should have been. But the words weren’t coming easy. It was like pulling teeth, tooth by painful tooth. At the same time, I was also struggling with the sadness, the desperation, that can only come from losing the woman you love to another man.”

  “Fire burns, Mr. Johnston,” Miller sighs. “But love kills.”

  “So what is it you want of me now? An admission that I’ve made mistakes? Made bad decisions? Been a pyromaniac? What about you, Detective? You ever fuck up now and again?”

  He smiles out the corner of his mouth. “Hey, I told you. My wife is dead. I don’t have a girlfriend, and no money, or even a house to burn down.”

  In my head I scream, I’ve had enough of this. I stand.

  He stands, comes around his desk.

  “I’m not trying to give you a hard time, Mr. Johnston. I like you, and I like your books. It’s just that the break-in you reported has personal vendetta written all over it, and I need to turn over a few rocks before I find the right creep living under the right rock. Understand what I’m saying here?”

  “Why just print me and me alone? Maybe it would be a smart thing to drag David Bourenhem down here for fingerprinting. My gut feeling is that you won’t find the rock, but you will find the creep.”

  “You leave the police work up to us. Because a crime writer like you knows that before you drag someone in for prints, you must at least possess probable cause, and whoever flipped Lisa’s house has a key to her new locksets, which Mr. Bourenhem claims he no longer possesses.”

  “Apparently your job is to serve, protect, and believe without question the lies of a sick asshole like Bourenhem.”

  He goes to the door, opens it.

  “Joke all you want, Mr. Johnston. But just keep in mind, I don’t like this situation one bit. I’ve dealt with people like you in the past who possess two personalities. The first, as they perceive themselves when looking in the mirror. And the other, as the world perceives them when they are doing things like lighting houses on fire, or beating people up, or who knows, maybe even murdering them. They tend to possess selective memory and they can be very dangerous both to themselves and to others.”

  “You’re going to give psychoanalysis a bad name, Detective Miller.”

  “Just doing my job.” Now working up a smile, “You’re free to go.”

  He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I head for the door.

  “Oh, and Mr. Johnston,” he says, as I step on through the open door and into the larger booking room.

  Stopping, I give him a look over my shoulder.

  “Please don’t leave town for a while,” he adds. “You know, until this thing at Lisa’s house gets straightened out. Okay?” He points to Burly Cop, who’s standing at the far end of the room, apparently waiting for me.

  I nod.

  “The officer will be happy to give you a lift back home.”

  “Let me ask you something, Miller,” I say. “If I were truly a suspect in the ransacking of Lisa’s home, wouldn’t it have made more sense for me to have just burned the place to the ground? You ask me, just making the place a wreck doesn’t fit my MO.”

  He shrugs narrow but solid shoulders.

  “Maybe you altered your MO to throw us off. That’s how I’d write it if I were a novelist. Unfortunate for me that I’m just a stupid upstate cop.”

  For a few long seconds we just stare into one another’s eyes. Until I turn my back on the detective, knowing that I fit the bill as the number one suspect in the ransacking of Lisa’s house, regardless of my love of fire.

  I leave without saying good-bye.

  Chapter 30

  As soon as Burly Cop drops me off at Lisa’s house, I head inside and pop a cold beer. I drink it down right on the spot, with the refrigerator door wide open. Tossing the can into the sink from across the kitchen floor, I grab a second beer and close the door.

  Now, standing at a counter still covered in scattered knives, forks, Scotch tape dispensers, pens, pencils, rubber bands, and everything else that the now-turned-over junk drawer contained, I pull out my cell phone and stare at the display.

  No calls.

  I wonder how Lisa is doing. If she’s resting at her parents’ house by now. I wonder if she’s awake and if the anesthesia has worn off. If it has, in fact, worn off, then why hasn’t she attempted to call me? Maybe she’s talking to David. Maybe she has been made aware of the restraining order that he’s applied for.

  I pull the red Bic lighter from my jeans pocket, thumb a new flame. Too many things running through my head right now, including one very bad memory, resurrected by both David Bourenhem and Detective Mi
ller. The memory is more than eight years old now, but it still haunts me as if it occurred just minutes ago.

  After weeks of discussing what was quickly becoming our inevitable legal separation, I finally rented a U-Haul and moved all of my stuff into a small apartment in the city. I recall the date I moved out: Monday, September 11—like that other godawful September 11, weather sunny, dry, and pleasant. I remember the day vividly because it was the Monday after NoirExpo, a popular mystery writers’ conference that was taking place in New York City and for which I had worked up the courage to attend. I recall some other things vividly too: from the moment I moved out, I proceeded to drink myself to sleep every night for weeks. Maybe I was feeling sorry for myself, but at the time, I felt that if anyone had a right to feel sorry for himself, it was me.

  I had no publisher, no income, and now I’d lost my wife and daughter. About the only thing I had going for myself was The Damned, which I was making steady progress on.

  Mine was a tale of two emotions. I was miserable over losing Lisa, but excited about writing again. But I would have given it all up to get Lisa back. I still loved her more than anything in the world. I not only obsessed about my love for her, I obsessed over her loss, and about something else too: the fact that she had found another man.

  I recall leaving the house. Recall the van backing up to the garage, recall loading my things into the van and driving away, tears falling down my cheeks. But now, since having spoken with Miller and since having finally met Bourenhem in the flesh, my mind is beginning to fill with images that just don’t make any sense. In my head I see a closed door. I see myself walking toward it. I see myself opening the door. The door opens—but there’s nothing. The flare-up of images . . . memories? . . . ends there.

  Why did I choose to leave Lisa on that one particular day? Why not leave weeks before or months after? Why did I decide to leave on September 11, 2006? All I truly recall is this: As one month of separation began to turn into two, I decided to do something about it. I took a few days to get my act together. I showered up, shaved, and put on some clean clothes. I bought a big bouquet of red roses (Lisa’s favorite) and went straight from the flower shop to the front door of our big house in the suburbs. With her Land Rover parked in the driveway, I knew she had to be home. But when she came to the door, she frowned, told me I might have called first. I nodded, because after all, she was right. But I also told her she would never have agreed to having a quick drink with me if I called first.

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t have,” she said, standing in the open doorway, her long hair blowing back behind her ears in the breeze.

  I handed her the flowers.

  “So what will it be, then?” I said. “Are you up for a quick drink? Real quick, I promise.”

  “Why? What purpose will it serve? Our separation papers haven’t even been signed yet.”

  “Let’s just talk. Please, Leese.”

  Sensing I wasn’t about to give up, she finally agreed to the plan. She also said she needed someone to watch Anna. But as luck would have it, the next-door neighbors didn’t mind at all. We got inside my Jeep and headed downtown to a Mexican joint that we used to frequent back when we were dating and my future as a novelist looked as bright as a flame.

  “You had to choose this place, didn’t you,” Lisa said.

  I smiled as I parked the Jeep in the lot across the street. Lisa looked ravishing with her long dark hair, long black skirt, and sandals. She had a real glamour about her, and I felt like the saddest son of a bitch in the world for having allowed her to slip through my fingers like so much melted candle wax. Looking at her as she got out of the Jeep, I felt like I was seeing her for the first time. Like she was new to me again, and I wanted nothing more than to get to know her, and to be with her always.

  I got us a table outside on a slate patio that was lit up under brightly colored strings of lights that had been strung around a metal, vine-covered arbor. We sipped our margaritas for a while in silence. After a time I took hold of Lisa’s hand. I could tell the gesture made her uncomfortable, but I held it anyway. She had that look on her face. The ten-mile glare in the eyes that told me she was hiding something.

  “I want to come home, baby,” I said. “I need you and I’m sorry. For everything.” My eyes teared up.

  “Reece,” she said, “you’re not giving the separation a chance. We need to be apart for a while. You need to work some things out for yourself. Your life, your career. You’re no good to us as a couple, to Anna as a father, to anyone, if you’re no good for yourself. You need to find some peace and stop tormenting yourself.” She smiled then, sadly. A smile that quickly morphed into a scowl. “From what I understand, you have a book going. It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? To have your own book completed and published. Well, let’s hope it gets published and you can become a huge success and leave us alone.”

  She yanked her hand away from mine, angrily, and suggested I take a field trip somewhere. Europe maybe. Mexico. Anywhere. She just wanted me to get out of town like she never wanted me to see her or Anna again.

  “Go back to writing freelance journalism,” she insisted. “Write some travel stories to make money. Or, I’ll give you the money. Just go. Take your book and your talent and be free.”

  “You’ll give me your parents’ money, you mean,” I said.

  “Does it really matter where it comes from?”

  I supposed it didn’t, and I knew that arguing the point would be futile.

  I took hold of her hand again, squeezed it hard. “Please, baby. You’re my muse.”

  For a second time she pulled her hand away. Only this time, she burst out laughing while she did it. “Don’t give me that muse crap, Reece Johnston,” she said. “You were writing fiction before you met me, but as soon as we got married and settled down, you couldn’t write a goddamned word if someone put a gun to your head. You call that a muse? More like a literary cock-blocker.”

  I couldn’t help but think about the word count I’d miraculously managed to put in on The Damned even in the short time we’d been separated. It also told me that as much as it hurt to admit it, Lisa was telling the truth. But that didn’t mean I was going to give up on her. I loved her too much for that. I wanted her too much, physically, emotionally. I needed her.

  “The writer’s block was all my own fault,” I argued. “Too much pressure to make money. To pay for the house. To pay for you and Anna.”

  “You’re speaking the truth,” she said, staring into her drink. “The pressure was too much for us all. You just need to make it happen on your own, Reece . . . without the pressure of us.”

  “You can say it, Lisa,” I said. “It’s not a dirty word.”

  “Say what?” she said.

  “Family,” I said. “Without the pressure of our family.”

  She sat up, finished her drink, looked at her watch. “Damn. I’ve really got to go.” She stood.

  “What’s the rush?” I said, dropping a ten-spot onto the table. My last ten-spot. Then, through a short chuckle, I said, “You got a date or something?”

  She turned to me. “Something,” she said, and started walking.

  My gut had served me dead right. She was seeing someone tonight, and I knew precisely who that someone was.

  “It’s the writer, isn’t it?” I said. “The one you met on Facebook.”

  “Really, Reece. After all that’s happened, you have to ask that question?”

  Standing under the lights on the patio of the Mexican restaurant, I felt my blood turn to hot oil as Lisa turned her back on me and walked out.

  Back in the Jeep with her, I fired up the engine, backed out of the space, and positioned the vehicle so that it was facing the empty, wide-open lot. I was feeling completely out of balance, as if the entire world had shifted on its axis. My mind was spinning and I felt almost faint. I was feeling ang
ry and alone and desperate. It was the way I felt as a boy as I watched our house burn to the ground, taking my brothers and my mother along with it.

  “Who is this man, the writer?” I said as I shifted the Jeep’s transmission into neutral.

  She exhaled, profoundly. “You know exactly who he is. You know what he’s written. You better than anyone know what he’s capable of as a writer. So just please take me home.”

  I tried to recall the writer, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t picture what he looked or sounded like. All I recalled was her talking about him. Talking about him incessantly.

  “Tell me his name,” I said. “I want to hear you say it.”

  “I’m not telling you another goddamned thing at this point. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself. Now can you please, please, please take me home? I knew this was a bad idea.”

  I wasn’t conscious of it at first, but my booted foot was leaning heavily on the gas as we sat there. The eight-cylinder engine was beginning to rev louder and louder.

  “I see,” I said. “So where are you meeting the writer?”

  “It’s none of your business.” Then, shooting me a glare, “Now can we please go once and for all?”

  By now, my foot had almost completely depressed the pedal to the floor. The engine noise was deafening.

  “Reece,” Lisa shouted. “What are you doing?”

  I threw the tranny into drive. The tires spun, until they caught on the gravel and the Jeep began to race across the parking lot, picking up speed as we barreled toward the exterior brick wall of the building across the lot.

  “Reece, you’re going to kill us!” Lisa screamed.

  I’m not sure if at that moment in time I wanted to kill us both, or truly intended to kill us, but it took all the power and strength I could work up to slam on the brakes. We came to a screeching, fishtailing stop only about a half-dozen feet from the wall.

  “You surprise me, Reece,” she said after catching her breath and through bitter, angry tears. “I thought your method was fire. I’m calling David to pick me up.” Opening her door, she jumped out and ran away into the darkness.