to be as clean as the antiseptic surfaces in a hospital surgery.
“Valerie and Mike were their kids. After a year or so it almost got to
seem like they were my kids, the ones me and Sharon never had. Maralee
cried for Jim a long time, almost two years, before she began to
remember she was a woman in her prime. Maybe what started to happen
between her and me would’ve upset Jim, but I don’t think so; I think
he’d have been happy for us, even if I am eleven years older than her.”
When he finished wiping the refrigerator, Hampstead inspected the door
from the side, at an angle to the light, apparently searching for a
fingerprint or smudge. As if he had just heard the question that Julie
had asked a minute ago, Hampsted said,
“The fire was two months ago. I woke up in the middle of the night,
heard sirens, saw an orange glow at the window, got up, looked out. –
-.”
He turned away from the refrigerator, studied the kitchen for a moment,
then went to the nearest tile-topped counter began to spritz and wipe
that gleaming surface.
Julie looked at Bobby. He shook his head. Neither of them said
anything.
After a moment Hampstead continued:
“Got over to the house just ahead of the firemen. Went in through the
front door. Made it into the foyer, then to the foot of the steps,
couldn’t get up to the bedroom, the heat was too intense, the smoke. I
called their names, nobody answered. If I’d heard an answer maybe I
would’ve found the strength to go up there somehow in spite of the
flames. I guess I must’ve blacked out for a few seconds and been
carried out by firemen, ’cause I woke up on the front lawn, coughing,
choking, a paramedic bent over me, giving me oxygen.”
“All three of them died?” Bobby asked.
“Yeah,” Hampstead said.
“What caused the fire?”
“I’m not sure they ever figured that out. I might’ve heard something
about a short in the wiring, but I’m not sure. I think they even
suspected arson for a while, but that never led anywhere. Doesn’t much
matter, does it?”
“Why not?”
“Whatever caused it, they’re all three dead.”
Park”I’m sorry,” Bobby said softly.
“Their lot’s been sold. Construction starts on a new house sometime
this spring. More coffee?”
“No, thank you,” Julie said.
Hampstead surveyed the kitchen, then moved to the stainless-steel range
hood, which he began to clean in spite of the fact that it was spotless.
“I apologize for the mess. Don’t know how the place gets like this when
it’s just me living here. Sometimes I think there must be gremlins
sneaking behind my back, messing things up to torment me.”
“No need for gremlins,” Julie said.
“Life itself gives us all the torment we can handle.”
Hampstead turned away from the range hood. For the first time since he
had gotten up from the table and begun his cleaning ritual, he made eye
contact with them.
“No gremlins,” he agreed.
“Nothing as simple and easy to handle as gremlins.”
He was a big man and obviously tough from years of military training and
discipline, but the shimmering, watery evidence of grief brimmed in his
eyes, and at the moment he seemed as lost and helpless as a child.
+ IN THE CAR again, staring through the rain-spattered windshield at the
vacant lot where the Roman house had once stood, Bobby said,
“Frank finds out that Mr. Blue Light knows about the Farris ID, so he
gets new ID in the name of James Roman. But Mr. Blue eventually learns
about that, too, and he goes looking for Frank at the Roman address,
where he discovers only the widow and the kids. He kills them, same as
he killed the Farris family, but this time he sets fire to the house to
cover the crime. that the way it looks to you?”
“Could be,” Julie said.
“He burns the bodies because he bites them, like Park told us, and the
bite marks help the police to tie his crimes together, so he wants to
throw the cops off the trail.” Julie said,