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Blubbering.

“Oh, Reba, I can’t stand to watch you burn.”

The muzzle left her throat.

Both barrels of the shotgun went off at once as she came to her feet.

Ears numbed, she thought she was shot, thought she was dead, felt the heavy thump on the floor more than she heard it.

Smoke now and the crackle of flames. Fire. Fire brought her to herself. She felt heat on her arms and face. Out. She stepped on legs, stumbled choking into the foot of the bed.

Stoop low, they said, under the smoke. Don’t run, you’ll bump into things and die.

She was locked in. Locked in. Walking, stooping low, fingers trailing on the floor, she found legs—other end—she found hair, a hairy flap, put her hand in something soft below the hair. Only pulp, sharp bone splinters and a loose eye in it.

Key around his neck . . . hurry. Both hands on the chain, legs under her, snatch. The chain broke and she fell backward, scrambling up again. Turned around, confused. Trying to feel, trying to listen with her numbed ears over the crackle of the flames. Side of the bed . . . which side? She stumbled on the body, tried to listen.

BONG, BONG, the clock striking. BONG, BONG, into the living room, BONG, BONG, take a right.

Throat seared with smoke. BONG BONG. Door here. Under the knob. Don’t drop it. Click the lock. Snatch it open. Air. Down the ramp. Air. Collapsed in the grass. Up again on hands and knees, crawling.

She came up on her knees to clap, picked up the house echo and crawled away from it, breathing deep until she could stand, walk, run until she hit something, run again.

49

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

Even the St. Charles sheriff’s department had to check a service map at the power-company 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 backseat 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 facedown 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 fire-light.

“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.”