فصل چهل و نهم

CHAPTER 49

Locating Francis Dolarhyde’s house was not so easy. The address listed at Gateway was a postoffice box in St. Charles.

Even the St. Charles sheriff’s department had to check a service map at the powercompany office to be sure.

The sheriff’s department welcomed St. Louis SWAT to the other side of the river, and the caravan moved quietly up State Highway 94. A deputy beside Graham in the lead car showed the way. Crawford leaned between them from the back seat and sucked at something in his teeth. They met light traffic at the north end of St. Charles, a pickup full of children, a Greyhound bus, a tow truck.

They saw the glow as they cleared the northern city limits.

“That’s it!” the deputy said. “That’s where it is!”

Graham put his foot down. The glow brightened and swelled as they roared up the highway.

Crawford snapped his fingers for the microphone.

“All units, that’s his house burning. Watch it now. He may be coming out. Sheriff, let us have a roadblock here, if you will.” A thick column of sparks and smoke leaned southeast over the fields, hanging over them now.

“Here,” the deputy said, “turn in on this gravel.”

They saw the woman then, silhouetted black against the fire, saw her as she heard them and raised her arms to them.

And then the great fire blasted upward, outward, burning beams and window frames describing slow high arcs into the night sky, the blazing van rocked over on its side, orange tracery of the burning trees suddenly blown out and dark. The ground shuddered as the explosion whump rocked the police cars.

The woman was face down in the road. Crawford and Graham and the deputies out, running to her as fire rained in the road, some running past her with their weapons drawn.

Crawford took Reba from a deputy batting sparks from her hair.

He held her arms, face close to hers, red in the firelight.

“Francis Dolarhyde,” he said. He shook her gently. “Francis Dolarhyde, where is he?” “He’s in there,” she said, raising her stained hand toward the heat, letting it fall. “He’s dead in there.” “You know that?” Crawford peered into her sightless eyes.

“I was with him.”

“Tell me, please.”

“He shot himself in the face. I put my hand in it. He set fire to the house. He shot himself. I put my hand in it. He was on the floor. I put my hand in it can I sit down?” “Yes,” Crawford said. He got into the back of a police car with her. He put his arms around her and let her cry into his jowl.

Graham stood in the road and watched the flames until his face was red and sore.

The winds aloft whipped smoke across the moon.