Page 28

7:11 PM.

Betty is starting to think she’ll have no choice but to go to that old hockey building—she’s called up a picture of it on her phone—with a comet-tail of autograph seekers trailing out behind her. They’ll be around her, too, and probably in front as well, holding out their phones and their damned autograph books: Just one, please, Sista, please. It’s not like she can run away from them. Once upon a time, maybe; fifty years and two hundred pounds ago.

Outside the Holman, Holly also hears cheering from the softball field. Inside, there’s shouting, then silence, then more shouting. Gibson speaks in three voices: his own, the child he was, and a deep voice that she supposes is his daddy. So far there have been no gunshots, but she expects them at any time because the man is obviously as mad as a hatter.

Her indecision is driving her mad. Any move she makes could be the wrong one. Her dead mother is making it worse, shaking her head sadly and saying, Bad decisions lead to grief instead of relief, I’ve always told you that.

Holly thinks, I’m fracked. Then she decides that’s too mild. Far too mild. Fucked is what I am. And I really want a cigarette.

At the Mingo, the fight is petering out. It wasn’t much to begin with; these folks are more used to fighting their battles on social media. Ushers are separating the outnumbered pro-lifers from the pro-choicers. Cheerleader Mom is weeping in her husband’s arms, saying, “What’s wrong with these people, what’s wrong with them?”

On the softball field, the cops have gone down one-two-three, and Isabelle Jaynes takes her position on the mound for the first time since college. Her adrenaline is working overtime, and the first warm-up pitch she uncorks doesn’t just go over her catcher’s head; it goes over the backstop and into the overflow fans who are standing behind it. This produces laughter, hoots, and catcalls from the Hoses bench and their fans. Some leatherlung in the Hoses dugout revives an old favorite: “ She’s tryin ta hit the SKYYYLAB! ” This jape produces more heckling from the FD fans and players, to a great degree fueled by beer.

The Guns catcher is a fourteen-year radio patrol car veteran named Milt Coslaw, six-five, a real moose. He’s also the PD’s cleanup hitter. In his blue shorts, his hairy legs look like pillars. He trots out to the mound. The leatherlung, realizing he has a hit on his hands, bellows, “ SKYYYLAB! ”

“You got that out of your system, Detective Jaynes?” Coslaw asks. He’s grinning.

“God, I hope so,” Izzy says. “I’m scared to fucking death, Cos. And call me Izzy. At least until I walk the park. Then you can call me shitbird.”

“You’re not going to walk the park,” Cos says. “Shoot ’er easy while you warm up. Mellow and easy. Like you were throwing batting practice this morning. Were those assholes watching that? You know they were. Save the steam for when you’re loose, because you ain’t nineteen anymore. And whatever you do, don’t show them that dropball until it’s for real.”

“Thanks, Cos.”

“Sure. Let’s get these jakes.”

The big man has settled Izzy down, and she finishes warming up, hardly doing more than lobbing it in. Save the steam , she thinks. Save the dropball . She’s not thinking about Bill Wilson, Sista Bessie, the dead surrogate jurors, or Holly. She’s not thinking about her job. She’s living with one thought and one thought only: Show these jakes who we are .

Betty barely hears the shouts from the ballfield, or the groans and cheers when the lead-off Hoses batter opens the bottom of the first by striking out on a perfectly thrown dropball. She has peeked out once, and saw Red and Jerome still on the bench outside, telling hopeful Sista Bessie fans with pads and cell phones to keep their distance. She thinks, I’ll never get out of here and I have to get out of here and mighty Jesus, mighty Jesus .

In the penalty box, Kate McKay is thinking, I need to prepare to die, but God, there’s so much work still to be done!

Nearby, Corrie and Barbara are thinking much simpler (and perhaps more practical) thoughts: If I could live. If I could see my mom and dad again. If only this was a dream .

7:17 PM.

Izzy dispatches the Hoses team easily, two strikeouts and a grounder. Her catcher, Coslaw, leads off the top of the second and on the first pitch pounds one over the centerfield fence, narrowly missing Mr. Estevez’s vintage Thunderbird. Guns 1, Hoses 0. A Hoses fan throws a bottle at him as he rounds first. Coslaw bats it contemptuously aside.

Betty’s phone suggests it’s about a quarter of a mile from her current location to the old arena on the other side of the park. She can make it by 7:40, but her margin for error is melting away. She wonders if she could send Jerome in her place. Barbara is his sister, after all. But if—no, when —Gibson asks Betty to say something before he opens the door, Jerome is not going to sound anything like a soul singer in her mid-sixties. Also: What if he kills Barbara’s brother?

At the back of the Mingo auditorium, two ushers come in and announce to an already unsettled crowd that there’s something very weird going on with the signs over the lobby doors and out by the street. People begin leaving to look.

AMY GOTTSCHALK JUROR 4 (KATE MCKAY) BELINDA JONES JUROR 10 (SISTA BESSIE) DOUGLAS ALLEN PROSECUTOR (CORRIE ANDERSON) IRVING WITTERSON JUDGE (BARBARA ROBINSON) ALL GUILTY. DONALD “TRIG” GIBSON JUROR 9 GUILTIEST OF ALL.

Some of them don’t understand. Many do. Jerry Allison, the Mingo’s janitor since time out of mind, is one who does, and not just because he listens to Buckeye Brandon. He’s noticed Don Gibson getting a little… call it odd … over the last few weeks. Plus, there’s Gibson’s paperweight, the ceramic horse. Jerry is of an age when he can remember The Roy Rogers Show , Roy’s pal Gabby Hayes, and Roy’s horse.

Trigger.

7:20 PM.

Sitting on the bench outside the equipment room, Red looks at Young Man Jerome and thinks, I should tell him. But then he thinks, Bets can’t get out of here unseen anyway, not with all these people congregated around. I don’t need to tell .

Which is a relief.

7:23 PM.

At the Mingo, the audience that came to see Kate McKay do her firebrand routine is instead gathered around the signboard over the lobby doors or the bigger one facing Main Street. Pro-choice and pro-life attendees are united in their puzzlement. The first State Police cruisers begin to arrive, with no way to know they’re on the wrong side of town. An ecstatic Buckeye Brandon is filming everything and dreaming about his star turn on the cable news networks.

On the field, the game is moving briskly. The first FD batter in the home half of the second, a squirt named Brett Holman, steps in and waggles his bat. On the mound, Izzy takes a deep breath, telling herself to settle, settle. She winds and throws a perfect dropball. The squirt waves three inches above it. The PD fans cheer. The leatherlung on the FD side bawls, “ Show us your SKYYYYLAB pitch, honeybabe! ”

Not likely , Izzy thinks, and throws another perfect dropper. The squirt just about swings out of his shoes, to no result. Coslaw puts one finger between his legs, calling for a straight fast pitch. Izzy has her doubts, but throws it. This time the squirt, expecting the drop, swings under the pitch, actually digging up a puff of dirt with the head of his bat.

“ Siddown, bush! ” a fan on the PD side yells as the squirt trudges back to the bench. The FD fans boo. Middle fingers are displayed. The next Hoses batter steps in.

I can do this , Izzy thinks. She brushes her hair back and leans in for Coslaw’s sign. I can really do this .

She winds and fires. A perfect dropball.

“ Strike one! ” the umpire calls.

In her dressing room, Betty Brady stands up. Fuck the autograph hounds. She can’t just sit in here. She has to go .

Izzy throws another dropper. The batter lets it go past knee-high, but the umpire raises his fist. Darby Dingley leaps from the FD dugout and strides onto the grass, nearly transgressing the foul line, which would have gotten him tossed. His face is almost as red as his too-short shorts. “ You homer! ” he yells at the ump. “That wasn’t even close!” Those on the Fire Department bleachers take up the cry. The PD fans beg to differ, telling the FD fans to shut the hell up. Good sportsmanship has taken a hike.

Holly—still indecisive, now back on the left of the rink doors, still with the revolver drawn and the barrel pointing toward the darkening sky—cocks her head, listening. Sounds are coming from the softball field. She thinks at first they’re cheering, but then changes her mind. That’s not cheering. It’s yelling . Someone—no, a great many someones—sounds pissed off.

In the arena, Trig is also listening. “Daddy? What’s that?”

But Daddy doesn’t answer.

The audience is rapt, living and dying with every pitch. There’s two down, both strikeouts, in the bottom of the second when George Pill, Izzy Jaynes’s wiseass nemesis, steps into the batter’s box. She doesn’t fear him; is actually glad to see him. The dropball is working like a charm, and every time Milt Coslaw calls for the straight hard one, the Hoses have been foozled. I can do this , she tells herself. Her arm feels loose and warm and strong.

George Pill makes a gesture that’s almost McKay-like: C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, throw the fucking ball , and then cocks the bat. Is he sneering at her? Good. Great. He can sneer all the way back to the dugout. She throws strike one.

“ She’s cheating! ” the leatherlung calls. From the foul line, where he’s still glowering, Darby Dingley adds his two cents’ worth. “Check the ball, ump!”

Izzy throws the dropper. Pill flails and misses. The PD side cheers. Now all the FD fans are chanting along with Darby: “ Check the ball! Check the ball! ”

The ump waves them off. He knows the ball isn’t the problem; he checked it himself before tossing it to Izzy to start the bottom half of the second. That sneaky drop pitch is the problem, and it’s not his problem.

The PD fans chant, “ Strike him OUT! Strike him OUT! ”

Betty opens the door of her dressing room and steps into the equipment room.

Jerome, John, and Red get up from their bench and saunter to the corner of the building to see what all the shouting is about. All but the most dedicated autograph seekers—the eBayers, in it for money rather than love—do the same.

The leatherlung: “ She’s cheating! ”

Dingley: “ Check the ball for grease, ump! ”

Lew Warwick, coming to his own foul line on the other side of the diamond: “ Sit down and shut up, Darby! Quit being a poor sport! ”

Dingley: “ Poor sport, my rosy red ass! She’s throwing a fucking SPITBALL! ”

Izzy ignores all the noise. Takes a breath. Looks in for the sign. Cos has one finger down, wanting the straight fast one.

Izzy throws it, and everything goes to hell.

7:28 PM.

George Pill connects and hits a bouncer along the infield grass between first base and the pitcher’s mound. For a moment Pill just stands at home plate, transfixed. Then he runs. The Hoses fans rise to their feet, anticipating their team’s first hit.

The Guns first baseman is a young patrolman named Ray Darcy. He fades toward second and barehands the ball on the third bounce.

Izzy Jaynes knows that if the first baseman is pulled out of position, it’s her job to cover the bag and take the throw. She’s off at the chink sound of the aluminum bat and is standing on the first-base line to take the feed. Darcy’s throw is on the money, and she spins to tag George Pill out, aware he may try to slide under her.

He doesn’t. With a scowl on his face, Pill redoubles his speed, lowers his head, and crashes into Izzy, his shoulder digging into her breasts and his helmeted head into the socket of her shoulder. She hears a dull crrack as her shoulder parts company with her upper arm, and hers is the first shriek that everyone—here and at the Holman Rink—hears. The ball bounces out of her glove and Pill stands on first base, helmetless now, oblivious of the screaming woman on the ground. He’s grinning and—incredibly—making the safe sign. He’s still making it when Ray Darcy hits him with a flying tackle, straddles him, and begins punching his lights out.

The Guns and Hoses players sprint from their benches and light up a full-fledged, fists-flying donnybrook. The field ump tries to get between them and is flattened. The Guns fans begin erupting from the bleachers. On the Hoses side, Darby Dingley is waving his fists above his head and screaming, “ Get em, you firemen! Fucking GET EM! ”

Lew Warwick runs across the field, grabs Dingley, and shoves him onto his butt. “Don’t be an asshole, quit throwing gas on the fire,” he says, but the damage is done.

The Hoses fans pour down from their bleachers, ready to rumble. Some fall and get up, some fall and get stomped on. Gunners meet Hosers at midfield. The loudspeaker squawks and remonstrates before being cut off in a howl of feedback. Calls to reason wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. The crowd, many of them fueled by beer, wine, and the harder stuff, begin to whale on each other. It’s not like the pallid kerfuffle at the Mingo Auditorium; this is serious shit.

In foul territory, just south of first base, Izzy rolls back and forth, cradling her broken shoulder in agony, forgotten until Tom Atta scoops her up.

“Getting you out of here,” he says, and to Ray Darcy, as he goes by: “Stop hitting that fireman, Officer. Fucking poor-sport dickbrain’s unconscious.”

A police car rolls slowly onto the field, jackpot lights flashing and siren gobbling. Hoses fans surround it, halting its progress. Other Hoses fans begin to rock it, and eventually turn it over on its side in left field.

Bedlam.

Betty Brady walks past piles of uniforms and soccer gear and peers out the door. She doesn’t know what has happened and doesn’t care. What matters is the way is suddenly clear. Mighty Jesus has heard her prayer. For the time being, even the autograph hounds seem to be gone, but she knows they’ll be back. There isn’t a second to waste.

She takes a last look around to make sure she’s okay, then sets off at a lumbering jog for the round roof of the rink rising above the surrounding trees, holding her purse to her bosom with one hand. Trailing her is one final and extremely dedicated eBayer, a bespectacled man Holly would have recognized from Iowa City, Davenport, and Chicago. In one hand he’s got a poster of a much younger Sista Bessie standing outside the Apollo Theater. He’s calling to her: Just one, just one .

Betty can’t hear him. The noise of the crowd—angry voices, terrified voices, cries of pain, a din of yelling men and women—redoubles. At the edge of the trees she stops and grabs her vial of heart pills out of her bag. She takes three, hoping they’ll hold off the heart attack she’s been dodging for the last eight or ten years of her life, at least until she does what needs doing.

Hold on, you old rattletrap , she tells her heart. Hold on a little longer . She takes Red’s gun out of her purse.

“Sista Bessie!” the bespectacled eBayer calls. “I’m a huge fan! I couldn’t get a ticket to your show! Would you sign—”

She turns, gun in hand, and although it’s not pointing at him—not exactly—the bespectacled eBayer decides he’s not such a huge fan, after all. He turns tail and runs. But holds onto the poster. Signed, on eBay or one of the other auction sites, it would fetch four hundred dollars.

Four hundred at least .

Before Jerome can enter the scrum (which now covers the whole field) and start pulling people apart, Red Jones grabs his arm. “Betty,” he says. “If she’s gone, I guess maybe you better go after her.”

Jerome looks at him, frowning. “Why would she be gone? She’s still in her dressing room, right?”

“I’d like to believe it, but I don’t think so. She wanted my gun.”

“What?”

John Ackerly staggers through the centerfield gate with blood gushing from his nose and mouth. “Fucking drunks !” he screams. “Some asshole sucker-punched me and laughed and ran the fuck away! I hate fucking drunks !”

Jerome ignores him. He takes Red by his skinny shoulders. “What gun? Why did she want it?”

“My .38. I don’t know why. Something gone wrong with her. I should have told you sooner. Stupid old man couldn’t make up his mind. I was gonna after the Anthem, then I thought, ‘Shucks, all these people wantin pictures and autographs, she’ll never be able to get out.’ But now…” He shakes his head. “Stupid old man, gravy where my brains should be. That gun is loaded and I think she means to shoot somebody.”

Jerome can’t believe it. They go back to the equipment room, leaving the Guns and Hoses fans to sort themselves out. The dressing room door stands open. The sequined bellbottoms and starry sash are heaped on the floor. Betty is gone. Then he can believe it.

He backs out and sees a bespectacled man running toward the softball field, trailing a poster behind him like the tail of a kite. He looks from Red to Jerome and says, “I asked for an autograph and she pointed a gun at me! She’s crazy!”

“Where is she?” Jerome asks.

The bespectacled eBayer points. “I know some celebs don’t like autograph hunters, but a gun ?”

Jerome runs for the trees. Once in them he sees Betty just ahead, sitting on the bench of a picnic table, head hanging down, looking pale and exhausted.

In the arena, Trig is sitting on the bleachers shoulder to shoulder with Kate McKay. The tape over her mouth is soaked with blood and has come loose, helped by her tongue.

“You know,” he says, “you make some good points.”

“Let them go,” she says. Her voice comes out in a rough growl. She tries to nod in the direction of the two young women taped to the penalty booth. Her head is bound too tightly to move more than an inch or two, so she settles for casting her eyes in their direction. “I’m the one you want, the famous one, so let them go.”

Trig has been lost in memories of how he sat on these very bleachers with Daddy. How Daddy would grip his arm hard enough to leave bruises. How he’d sometimes hug Trig during the intermissions. Kate’s voice brings him back. He looks at her with surprise. “How did you get so conceited, woman? Did you grow into it, or were you born that way?”

“I just—”

“You’re not the one I want, you were just there . This isn’t about fame, it’s about guilt . Which is what brought you here, right? Plus some half-assed notion of rescuing your buddy.”

“But… you… I thought…”

“When I say you make good points, I think that’s probably because my father killed my mother.”

Kate stares at him.

Trig nods. “Said she was gone , but I know what I know.”

“You need help, sir.”

“And you need to shut up.” He slaps the tape back across her mouth, but it won’t stay.

“Please, if we could just talk about this—”

He puts the Taurus against the center of her forehead. “Do you want to live another few minutes? If you do, shut up. ”

Kate shuts up. Trig looks at his watch. It’s 7:38.

I don’t think the Black singer’s coming, Daddy. I’ll have to be content with these three. Plus me, of course.

Jerome reaches Betty and drops to one knee beside her. A pistol with a taped handgrip lies on the bench next to her.

“Cain’t,” she says. “Thought I could but I cain’t.”

“Can’t do what?” he asks. “What is it?”

She points at the round gray building, just visible through the trees. “Barbara.”

Jerome tenses. “What about her?”

“In there. Crazy man got her. Gibson. From the Mingo. He said get there by 7:40 or he’d kill her, but I cain’t… legs just give out.”

He’s up at once, but Betty grasps his wrist with surprising force. “You cain’t, either. He wants me to knock and say, ‘It’s me.’ If he hears a man, he’ll kill her.”

For a moment Jerome entertains the idea that this is all some crazy delusion on Betty’s part, maybe even early-onset Alzheimer’s, but it’s Barbara she’s talking about, Barbara , and he can’t allow himself that luxury.

Betty is saying something else, but he doesn’t listen. Jerome takes the gun and runs for the Holman Rink.

7:40 PM.

Trig gets up and walks down to the penalty box. He points the .22 first at Corrie, then at Barbara. “Which of you is first?” he asks. “I think the white girl.”

He puts the gun against Corrie’s temple. Corrie closes her eyes and waits to see if there’s anything on the other side of the known world. Then the pressure of the gun barrel is removed.

“All right, Daddy. If you say so.”

Corrie opens her eyes. Trig is stepping over the wooden ties, heading back to the foyer. He speaks to them without turning around. “Daddy says give her five more minutes. Daddy says women are always late.”

Holly can’t believe what she’s seeing: Jerome.

He comes running out of the trees with a little pistol in his hand. He sees her and stops, every bit as startled as Holly is herself. He’s going to say or shout something—she can see him getting ready to do it—and so she puts a finger to her lips, shaking her head. She beckons to him, realizing as she does it that it’s Kate’s gesture: C’mon, c’mon, c’mon . As he starts toward her, she pushes both hands down in a quiet gesture.

Jerome reaches her and puts his lips to her ear. “You have to say, ‘It’s me.’ I can’t do it. And sound like her.”

“Sound like who?” Holly whispers.

“Betty,” he whispers back. “Sista Bessie.”

“I can’t—”

“ You have to ,” he whispers. “Knock and say, ‘It’s me.’ Or he’ll kill Barbara.”

Not just Barbara , Holly thinks.

Jerome points at his watch and whispers, “We’re out of time.”

7:43 PM.

He decides he doesn’t want to shoot anyone but himself.

Trig goes back into the arena, stepping over the boards until he reaches the paper-stuffed square at center ice. He squirts on a little more of the Kingsford fluid, then takes out his Bic. As he kneels, preparing to strike a light, there’s a hammering on the door. He freezes for a moment, not sure what to do.

Why choose, Mr. Useless? Daddy asks. You can do both .

Trig decides Daddy is right. He strikes a light and drops the Bic onto the crumpled posters. Fire blooms in the square of old dry wood. He looks at the bound women, their eyes wide with horror.

“Viking funeral,” he says. “Better than my mother got. My mother is gone .” And goes to answer the door.

Holly stands in front of those doors. Jerome stands nearby, his lips pressed together so tightly that his mouth has all but disappeared. It seems she waits a very long time before Gibson speaks on the other side, his voice low and confidential. “Is that you, Sista Bessie?”

Holly deepens her voice as much as she can and tries to imitate Betty’s light southern accent. “Yeah, it’s me,” she says, and thinks she sounds horrible, a goony minstrel-show racist doing a caricature Black voice.

There’s another pause. Then Gibson says, “Are you here because you’re guilty?”

Holly looks toward Jerome. He nods at her.

“Yeah,” Holly says in her deepest voice. “Guilty f’sure.”

It’s horrible. He’ll never believe it.

Then, after an agonizing pause, the red light on the keypad turns green. Holly has that one moment, that one signal, to raise her gun before the door opens. Gibson stares at her extremely Caucasian face, eyes widening. He has his own gun, but Holly doesn’t give him a chance to use it. She shoots him twice: center mass, just as Bill Hodges told her. Gibson staggers backward, pawing at his chest, eyes wide. He tries to raise his gun. Jerome shoulders Holly aside and shoots him again with Red’s pistol.

Gibson utters one word—“Daddy!”—and falls forward.

Holly spares him only a glance before looking into the arena. “Fire,” she says, and giant-steps over Gibson’s body.

In the circular rink area, the crumpled posters are blazing and the crisscrossed ties surrounding it are catching, blue flames turning yellow and racing along their lengths. Two women are bound to the penalty box, a third—Kate—to a bleacher stanchion nearby.

Holly runs toward them, stumbles, goes down, and is barely aware of splinters jabbing into her palms. She gets up and goes to the women shoulder to shoulder in the penalty box. If she had a blade she could free them easily, but she doesn’t.

“Jerome, help me! Put out the fire!”

Jerome runs back to the body of Donald Gibson, and yanks off Gibson’s sportcoat. The man’s arms come with it, and Jerome has to struggle. Although he’s dead, Gibson won’t give the coat up. His shoulders roll from side to side, head wagging like some grotesque ventriloquist’s dummy. At last Jerome pulls the coat free and runs into the arena with the coat’s silk lining ripped and trailing out behind him. Holly is unwinding the tape binding Barbara’s arms to the yellow steel pole, but it’s slow, slow.

Kate spits away the bloody tape over her mouth and shouts, “Faster!” in her growling voice. “Do it faster!”

Always the boss , Holly thinks. She grabs swatches of tape in both hands and pulls with all her strength. One of Barbara’s arms comes free. She rips the tape off her mouth and says, “Corrie! Corrie! Do Corrie!”

“No,” Holly says, because Barbara is her priority. Barbara is not just her friend but a loved one. Corrie will be second. The boss will come third… if at all. Holly’s hands are slippery with blood from the splinters. She yanks the longest one out and goes to work on Barbara’s other hand.

In the middle of the floor, by the stuttery glow of the two working battery-powered lights, Jerome throws Gibson’s sportcoat over the fire and begins stomping on it—left-foot, right-foot, left-foot, right-foot—as if treading grapes. Sparks fly up in a cloud around him. Some burn through his shirt, stinging his skin. One of his pantlegs smolders, then catches fire. He bends and beats out the flames, vaguely aware that his snazzy Converse sneakers have begun to melt around his feet. Athletic socks don’t fail me now , he thinks.

Holly manages to unwind the tape around Barbara’s middle. Barbara tries to stand and can’t, tries to piston her legs and can’t. The tape binding her thighs to the seat of the penalty box is too tight.

“Your pants!” Holly shouts. “Can you slide out of them?”

Barbara pushes her trousers partway down, gets some slack in the tape, and tries to pump her legs again. This time she can. Her knees come up to her chest, then to her shoulders. She wriggles out of her pants and her legs are free.

Gibson’s sportcoat is burning and flames are racing every whichway along the boards. Jerome gives up trying to smother the fire and comes to the penalty box, jumping from one crosstie to the next. He goes to work freeing Corrie. To Holly he says, “I slowed it down but it’s on those ties. The sides will be next. Then the rafters.”

The fire is indeed spreading. Jerome is doing his best to get Corrie loose, but she’s been wound up even tighter than Barbara.

“Hey. Young Man Jerome. Take this.”

He turns his head and sees Betty. Her afro is matted and her face shines with sweat, but she looks better than she did on the picnic bench. She’s holding out a pocket knife with a worn wooden handle. “I always keep it in my purse. From when I was on the chicken circuit.”

Jerome has no idea what a chicken circuit is, and doesn’t care. He snatches the knife. It’s sharp, and slices through the tape holding Corrie to the penalty box easily. He leaves her to finish freeing herself and moves on to Kate. The ceiling of the old arena is high, which helps with the growing billows of smoke, but it also acts as an open flue, feeding the fire.

“Help me,” Jerome tells Holly. “It’s getting a teeny bit hot in here.”

But the heat on his back is nothing to the heat on his feet. His sneakers are now misshapen lumps. He hopes that when he takes them off—assuming they get out of this—the hightops will peel away his socks but not his skin. He’s aware they may take some of both.

Holly helps as best she can. Barbara, now free but barefooted and bare-legged, tries to help finish freeing Kate.

“No, no, get out of here!” Jerome yells at her. “Help Betty, she’s almost out on her feet! Go on!”

Barbara doesn’t argue. She puts an arm around Betty’s waist and together they make their slow, stumbling way over the railroad ties to the foyer.

Corrie stands up, then sags. “I can’t walk. My legs are all needles and pins.”

Jerome carries her, shambling along in the Frankenstein clumps of his sneakers but managing to stay on his feet. Flames are racing over the crisscrossed beams, making orange checkerboard patterns.

Kate is also unable to walk. She tries, then sags to her knees. Holly hooks a hand into her armpit and hauls her up, calling on strength she didn’t know she had.

“You keep saving me,” Kate says in her husky, growling voice. Her chin and shirt are a bib of blood. The glimpses of teeth Holly can see between her swelling lips are little more than fangs.

“It’s what you hired me for. Help me.”

They make their way, first to the foyer and then outside with the growing fire at their back. When they are in the blessed coolness of the May night, Jerome goes back in and seizes Donald Gibson’s legs. He drags him out and says to Holly, “There’s another one, just as dead. I don’t think I can get him… or maybe it’s her… until I get these off.” He sits on the ground and begins pulling off one half-melted sneaker.

Holly goes in. The fire hasn’t reached the foyer, but the arena itself will soon be engulfed and the heat is already baking. She grabs one of the legs of the person Gibson must have killed—Chris Stewart. Chrissy. She thinks, I can’t, too heavy . Then Kate is there, and grabbing the other leg. “Haul,” she croaks. Always the boss.

They pull Chrissy Stewart out into the thickening twilight. Barbara is sitting against the side of the Mingo van with her head on Betty’s shoulder. Jerome has managed to pull his sneakers off. His feet are red, but only the left one is raising blisters.

Kate sits down hard, looking at the body they’ve just dragged out of the rink. “This is the bitch who’s been stalking me,” she says. “Stalking us .”

“Yes. Kate, we have to get out of here. That building’s going to go up like a torch.”

“One minute. I need to get my breath, and she surely needs to get hers.” She means Betty. “Good thing she had that knife, or we would have roasted like the chestnuts in that Christmas song.”

Kate lifts Chrissy Stewart’s arm, and examines it. “Cute outfit. Or was, before this. Did he want to be a girl and his church wouldn’t let him? Is that what all this has been about?”

“I don’t know.” What Holly knows is they have to move soon. She goes to the van, and God is good: the keys are in the cupholder. She opens the driver’s door, then turns to look at the others, who are brightly lit silhouettes in the orange glow of the fire.

“We’re getting out of here,” she says. “In this. Right now.”

Barbara and Betty help each other to their feet. Jerome hobbles over with the help of Kate, who is taking as much of his weight as she can.

“What about them?” Jerome points to the corpses.

“Oh God, no,” Corrie says, but she goes to Gibson and grabs him by one arm. She pulls him to the back of the van. “There’s another one… a girl, but… burning now. Cremating .” She moans.

Holly doesn’t want anything to do with either of them. What she wants is to sleep for about twelve hours, then wake up to coffee, a jelly doughnut, and about a dozen cigarettes. But Kate is walking back to him… or her… the person in the pants suit. Holly joins her. They drag Stewart to the van, but neither of them have the strength to throw the bodies in. Jerome does that, grunting with pain as his injured feet take their weight. He shuts the doors, then staggers.

“You drive,” he says to Holly. “I can’t. My feet.”

“ I’ll drive,” Kate says, with a touch of her old certainty.

And she does.

Page 28

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