Child Of Fire Part 22

"It wasn't like he voodooed their minds or anything. And he never blackmailed them, as far as I could tell. He just wanted something and other people wanted him to have it. When he bid on a plot of forest, whoever was handling the parcel awarded it to him. It was like he made them want what he wanted them to want. He just bent them to his will, without any effort at all. And he always knew how to handle people. He knew how to use the Dubois brothers, and when to hold them off. He could play Reverend Wilson like a radio."

I twisted that around in my head until I sorted all the wants. "Isn't Charles the Third doing the same thing with his toy company? Isn't he putting out products that people are snapping up?" I remembered what Able Katz had told us: Hammer's toys weren't supposed to be a huge hit, but they were. I could have gone further, talking about the way the local townsfolk defended him like he was their king, but I wanted to see Cabot's reaction.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. You know what's funny? I never would have pegged little Charlie to be the tyc.o.o.n type. Now he's this reclusive business genius, spending all his time hiding in the tower, but I never thought he had it in him. He was such a fat, dorky little kid."

I remembered the high, round room I'd seen at the top of the Hammers' house. That must have been the tower. If I'd known, I would have slipped out of the library and confronted him. I made a mental note to tell Annalise about it. "Fat kids grow up," I said.

"No, no, I don't mean it like that. He wasn't just fat. He was lazy and stupid. He never got a joke unless you explained it to him. Kids bullied him on the playground. He was that kind of kid. He used to talk about helping the poor or saving the whales, but he never had more than a vague idea how to go about it, and he never... okay. Once, he decided that he was going to help some of the older folks in town. You know, retired lumber workers and their wives, they get sick or property taxes go up, and it's trouble.

"So little Charlie decided to start a food drive. He must have been fourteen or so, and he's as big as a whale. Everyone jokes that he's going to be eating half the food himself, though not to his face, of course. But most people like the idea and chip in. We stored the food right downstairs in this building. It was quite a stack-I was surprised by how much support the kid got.

"But Charlie lost interest as soon as it started to be successful. He spent his afternoons playing video games on the couch while the cans and stuff collected dust.

"In the end, I distributed it myself. Those folks were really grateful to get the deliveries, and a couple of them asked when there would be another. I had to tell them that I thought it was a one-shot deal. They were pretty disappointed. Poor folks. Stuck in this town. This f.u.c.ked-up town.

"So, I didn't think the kid had a successful company in him. But he's just as good at it as his father."

"Why didn't you continue the drive yourself?"

"What's that?"

"The food drive. If it helped so many people, why didn't you take over?"

"Well... that's not the point I wanted to make."

"I understand your point. Your nephew was this big loser who suddenly turned into a successful guy, and you didn't."

"Well, not that I'm a loser... wait. Scratch that. I am a loser. I've always been one. But I've had my family to back me up. Until now. c.r.a.p."

"What changed for him? What changed for your nephew?"

I didn't expect him to say Must be that spell book his daddy gave him, but I hoped for something more than this extended bout of self-pity. Instead, he said: "G.o.d only knows. My kids certainly don't have it."

He was wearing a wedding ring. "You're divorced?" I asked.

"No. No, I'm still married to their mother. We love each other very much."

I wasn't interested in that. "How many kids do you have?"

"Four. Ages eight through fifteen."

"Cynthia said you live in a studio apartment."

"Well, yeah, I do, but they don't. They live on Whidbey Island."

"Is that right?" I asked. Cabot s.h.i.+fted in his chair uncomfortably. He didn't like the way I was looking at him. If he'd known what I was thinking, he'd be even less pleased. "When did this happen?"

"A couple years back after school ended. My wife has never been happy here, so I bought her a place up there. Everyone is transitioning nicely."

"Why do they live so far from you?" I asked. I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

He scratched at his chin. "They have a good school district there." He shuffled some papers on his desk. "I want my kids to grow up in the best environment possible."

I leaned forward. A dangerous spark of anger had caught in my belly. "Cabot, you want to know what you should never do? You should never lie to me. Especially when I have this gun in my pocket."

He blinked a couple of times. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"This town. This f.u.c.ked-up town," I mimicked. "Charles the Third has his first seizure, that you know of, in what-April? May? And a couple weeks later you s.h.i.+p your kids to the other side of the mountain."

"Well-"

"While your company is gasping for its last breath."

"Okay-"

"You bought your wife a little place on Whidbey Island, where the real estate costs-"

"All right! All right! That's not the whole story."

"Tell me the whole story."

I could see that he wanted to tell me to get lost. He glanced at the pocket of my jacket. I still had the gun, and I had slugged him unconscious once already. "It's for their own safety," he said. "I have enemies in town-"

I slammed my hand down on his desk and jumped from the chair. I stood over him, and he stared up at me with wide, startled deer's eyes.

I could see it in those eyes. He knew about the kids. He knew about the fires. He remembered them.

Two years it had been going on, and he hadn't done a thing except move his own family to a safe place.

"I think..." I didn't know what I was going to say. It was like I had another person inside me, making all my decisions for me. "I think I'm going to kill you."

"What?" His eyes grew wider.

"I've got the gun. I'll lay the newspaper in front of you and put a bullet into your head. Everyone will think it was suicide."

"Now, wait a minute-"

"You wait a minute. You're spreading bulls.h.i.+t like it's sweet b.u.t.ter, and you think I should sit here and gulp it down?"

He lunged for me. I punched him in the throat.

He fell back against his chair, choking and gasping for air. I could have killed him with that punch, but I'd pulled back at the last moment. Had I pulled back enough, though?

"Don't-" Cabot wheezed at me. I figured that if he could talk, he would live. I was a little disappointed.

"That's just the start of what I'm going to do to you if you lie to me again." Cabot looked up at me and I saw it in his face. He was ready to tell me everything. "Tell me about the kids."

"There..." His voice was hoa.r.s.e. He took a deep, shuddering breath. "There isn't much to tell."

"Tell me anyway."

"One day, my youngest came home early from school crying. She said that one of the kids in her cla.s.s caught fire and burned to death, right before her eyes. This was the middle of May." He paused to rub his throat and take another deep breath. "I thought she was playing a game, but she insisted it was true. Her friend Carrie had caught fire while sitting at her desk.

"I went to her teacher and spoke with her in the cla.s.sroom. One of the desks in the back of the room was scorched black, and there was a black trail leading out of the room and down the hall. The teacher acted like she couldn't see the scorch mark. She claimed that the desk had been empty all year long, and that there was no student named Carrie in her cla.s.s.

"I'd met Carrie. She'd come over for playdates. There was a drawing on the wall signed with her name, in scrawling Crayola letters. The teacher couldn't see the black marks, couldn't see the drawing, and didn't remember the little girl.

"I thought she was crazy. I went to the school board, but they told me the same things the teacher had, and asked me if I had seen a doctor lately.

"Well, I went to Carrie's house to speak to her parents. Neither one of them could remember their own daughter. It was as though I'd had this memory of a little girl with bobbed red hair inserted into my brain. And my daughter's brain, too.

"It wasn't the last time it happened. Two weeks later, my kids started telling me that their friends were disappearing, and no one remembered them. Finally, I brought my lunch to the school and sat in my car, watching the playground. In the week I sat there, I saw two kids burn up. The other kids would freak out when it started, and then, when it was over, go back to playing as if nothing had happened."

"What about the worms?"

"I don't know. I don't know what they are, or what they mean. But I was freaking out, so I sent my wife and kids away, hoping they'd be safe. So far, they are."

"Are you so sure about that? What if you had five kids before, but you just can't remember one?"

"Do you think I haven't thought about that? But I'm sure. I'm sure."

I didn't like the sound of that. "That's it? That's all you did about those kids? You talked to a couple people?"

"That's all I could do! I talked to Emmett and Frank and Reverend Wilson. They looked at me like I was losing my mind. My kids were getting into fights in school because people thought we were going nuts. All we could do was to wait for it to blow over. What else was I supposed to do?"

Something, I wanted to say, but I held my tongue. "And you swear you don't know anything about those worms?"

"Nothing. I don't know what they are. How do you know about this? Everyone else forgets all this."

I wished Annalise had left me her sc.r.a.p of wood. I would have liked to know if Cabot was infected, enchanted, or brain-damaged like Harlan. "Stand up."

He pushed his chair back and stood.

"Empty your pockets."

He began to turn them out, dumping everything inside them onto the desktop. Wallet, key ring, gas receipt, bottle opener... all very bland and boring. But none of it looked like magic to me.

I leveled the gun on him. "Strip," I said. "Start with the s.h.i.+rt."

He started to grumble, but he did it. He unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt and hung it over the back of the chair. As he turned, I saw a tattoo on his back.

"Hold it," I said. I turned him toward me. Well, well. There, tattooed on his back, was an iron gate. It was identical to mine.

"Where did you get this?" I asked.

"My father put it there when I was a baby. He put it onto all my kids, too, before he died."

"Why?"

"I don't know. It's supposed to be some kind of good luck. It bugs me sometimes, though."

I thought about the twinge I'd felt outside the building just a couple of minutes ago. "When does it bug you?"

"Every couple of days, I guess. It feels like someone pokes it with a stick or something."

"Did it bug you when you saw that little kid catch fire?"

"Well..." He hesitated. I knew he was going to lay out another lie. "It's possible, I guess. I don't remember."

"What about when Charles had his seizure?"

"How long is this conversation going to take?"

"We're getting to the important stuff right now. What about Charles?"

"Nothing that I remember." If he was lying, he was getting better at it.

"Where's the book?"

"What book?"

"The book! The book!"

"I don't know what book you're talking about!"

I shoved him over the desk and slammed his head against the blotter. He started to resist, but I placed the barrel of the gun against the back of his head. I hoped no one was going to walk in at that moment.

"Please!" he said. "You're not really going to do it, are you? You're not really going to kill me?"

"What do you think about all those burned-up kids?"

"I think it's horrible. I have nightmares-"

"But not so horrible that you kept trying to stop it."

"What was I supposed to do? People thought I was crazy! I'm a Hammer-I can't be the town joke!"

That was almost it. That last sentence almost made me squeeze the trigger. I wasn't even angry anymore. I just felt cold and bitter. Cabot seemed like a dirty little mess that needed to be wiped up. All I had to do was squeeze the trigger.

"Please," he said simply.

I pulled him off the desk and shoved him into the chair. "You have a chance to live, if you really want it." "I want it! I do!" "We'll see. Where's the book?" "I don't know about any book! I swear!" He made it sound like the truth, but I wasn't convinced. "Wrong answer. Let me explain something, Cabot. I'm here to put a stop to these fires, and I don't care who I have to step on to do it. If you're not going to answer, you're in my way."

"But I really don't know. I swear." "Tell me about your father and the thing he put on your back."

"I was just a baby! I don't remember that!" "What about your own kids? You weren't a baby then, were you?"

"He took each of them for one night. He sent Carla and me away. In the morning, they had this mark on their backs. Carla didn't like it, but I told her to stuff it. It's family tradition, and I was afraid we wouldn't get a penny out of him otherwise."