If that was all Cindy intended to do, Timmie could live with it. But Timmie knew with dead certainty that she fully intended to take her father and Murphy along for the ride.
Who do you save first?
No, Daddy. No.
Timmie knew it was probably pointless, but she walked around the back of her house to get in. No creaky step for her. She pulled open the creaky screen door to the kitchen instead, counting on the fact that Cindy had unlocked the way in.
She had.
Timmie could hear the refrigerator humming. She could hear the clock ticking in the living room. Overhead the fluorescent light flickered, and the window that lit her sun catchers had disappeared into a rectangle of night. The house seemed so still, as if it were just lying dormant. Timmie knew better. Carefully avoiding the spots that would groan, she tiptoed across the floor, all the while conscious of how much time she was using up. Measuring her breathing, her movements, by the ticking of that clock. Keeping perfectly quiet, she leaned around the doorway to see into the dining room.
Nothing.
No bodies, no Cindy, no fire.
No, not quite nothing. Standing there in the stale air of an empty house, Timmie caught the first whiff of a familiar odor. Not much. But then, not much was needed. All Cindy had to do was drop a couple of fabric softener sheets into a pool of brand-new bourbon, and this place would go up like bananas Foster.
Where was her father? Where was Murphy? How long did Timmie have before Cindy started flicking her Bic?
And most important, what could she do to stop her?
Timmie had no gun. They'd taken that away with Jason. She had no pepper spray or dogs. She did, however, have a lifetime batting average of .310. Timmie turned toward the front door for her weapon and suffered her latest shock. It was gone. Her best Louisville slugger, autographed by Stan "the Man" Musial himself. And damn it if Timmie wasn't sure she knew exactly who'd walked off with it.
Somehow, that settled her. If there was one thing a trauma nurse was, it was resourceful. And Traumawoman was resource itself. Holding her breath against discovery, Timmie crept back into her father's room and raided his memory closet. Well, if she couldn't have Stan the Man, she could at least have Marty Marion.
"You might as well come on down," she said into the echoing rooms. "The police will be here in a minute."
Cindy's voice floated, disembodied, down the stairs. "I know."
Timmie thought she could hear distant sirens already, but that might have just been wishful thinking.
"Where are they?" she asked.
Cindy laughed, and the sound bounced down the stairs. "That's for you to find out. You're so damn smart."
Timmie rubbed the back of her neck and choked up again. "All right, then, how about this. Why?"
There was a long pause upstairs. A breathy sound that might have been a sigh. "I just wanted to help," she said.
"By killing gomers?"
"That was Landry's fault," she insisted, suddenly petulant. "That son of a bitch. I loved him!"
"He wasn't even here when you started killing those old people, Cindy."
"Well, all right, that was Alex."
"Alex asked you to kill his patients for him?"
"He couldn't do that. But he told me how much they were going to cost the unit. How tough it was going to be to make ends meet for a third time. How worried he was about it."
"He told you that?"
"Yes! I was there for him a long time before you were."
By now, Timmie knew better. But now wasn't the time to argue.
"And you called Murphy so that Landry would get into trouble? Or did you just kill Alice to cost him all that money?"
Silence. "I told you. He was using me."
"What about your father, Cindy? Who asked you to kill him?"
There was a shuffling sound. A familiar clicking that sent ice skittering through Timmie's veins. "You could have at least thanked me," Cindy said, her voice small and sad. And then she tossed the first of the softener sheets straight down the stairwell.
Timmie screamed and ran, but it was too late. Cindy had dripped the bourbon down the side of the staircase, and it caught like a gas trail. As Timmie grabbed a bolt of fabric to beat it out, Cindy dropped another. And another. She walked right down the steps, floating sheets over the side of the railing like flash paper flowers.
Timmie gave up on the fabric. Paper had started to catch. The curtains were no more than a few feet away, and they were old. The pool of bourbon seemed to reach back under the hall closet door, where all her father's business papers had been kept. It was already too late. And Cindy, dropping sheets, was smiling.
Timmie leaped for her. Cindy clambered away, dropping another sheet she'd lit from the shiny silver Zippo in her hand. The paper caught fast, the smell acrid and thick, the flames licking upward toward old wood.
"It's too late," Cindy chanted, pulling another sheet free. "Which one do you save? You really gonna let Mister Murphy die just because you can't say good-bye to your father?"
"Cindy, stop it now," Timmie begged, crowding her back toward the stairs. "Help me get them out."
Cindy lifted the sheet high, flicked the lighter so that the flame shuddered in the depths of her dark eyes. "You still don't get it," she said. "I just wanted to be your friend."
And then she lit the sheet.
She was going to toss the thing right at Timmie. Timmie never let her. Winding up like she was going for the left field corner, she swung the bat straight at Cindy's arms.
Cindy didn't see the bat until the last minute. Her eyes popped. She dropped the lighter, threw up her hands. Caught the bat midforearm and screamed as her bones crunched.
Timmie didn't even wait to see what Cindy was going to do. She dove for the lighter, which was skating across the floor toward another pile of papers. Grabbing it, she scrambled back to her feet and shoved the shrilling Cindy aside to get up the stairs.
The stairs were already involved. Flames licked around the edges like logs on a hearth, and the smoke roiled up toward the second floor as if it were a chimney. Timmie choked and blinked, blinded by the sudden heat. She heard a terrible scream from below her and knew that Cindy had been caught by her own trap. But it was too late to worry about Cindy now.
Who do you save first?
It depended on who she found first.
Her bedroom was empty. Timmie searched her bed, under her bed, around the floor, into the closet. The smoke was getting too thick to see, and she was crawling.
"Daddy! Murphy, where the hell are you?"
On her hands and knees, pulling her shirt up over her nose and mouth, squinting through inky, oily blackness, the fire below moaning with delight. It was too fast, let loose in a house made for a holocaust.
"Daddy!"
She scooted into Meghan's room. Crouched lower. Heard the sirens and couldn't wait. She didn't even realize she still had the bat in her hand until it bumped into something. Something soft. Something big.
She had to bend close to recognize him. Silvery hair, soft blue eyes. Hands tied with the same duct tape that closed his mouth. She almost sobbed with relief. She almost dragged him out without looking for Murphy.