His brows, set high in his well-worn face, knitted close. He brushed at his thinning, curly hair, walked to the front door and looked outside. He called back to her, “No trucks, no accidents.” He added that a few people were outside of their houses, looking around.
Maybe, Ruth thought, there had been a crash and a collision had ruptured a propane truck. But wait, propane didn’t smell like natural gas. Ruth knew this because barbecuing was one of their most enjoyable pastimes in the summer.
She walked to the cellar door and opened it. She was hit with the same stink but ten times stronger. “Honey! Come here!”
Arnie appeared in an instant. He noticed the open door. Sniffed. “My God.”
He peered downstairs and started to reach for the light, then stopped, as she was about to say, No! Arnie glanced at the fire extinguisher sitting next to the stove. It was seven years old.
She said, “We should get out. We should get out now.”
“I’ll call. We have to call. Isn’t there a special number you call for gas leaks? How do we find it?” He reached for the wall phone.
“Gas company?” she asked, incredulous. “Forget it, hon! We’ll call nine one one from outside.” She stepped toward her purse. “Come on! We have to get out.”
“I’ll just—”
From the basement door a tide of flame and smoke exploded outward, enveloping Arnie. As he flung his arms up and covered his face, he was blown against the far wall and landed on the floor, crying out in pain.
No, no, no! Ruth ducked beneath the raging tornado of fire that swirled from the doorway, screaming her husband’s name. She crouched and started toward him.
Suddenly a jolt sent her to her knees and the half of the kitchen floor where she was standing dropped three or four feet—the explosion had taken out the joists. As the smoke and flames and dust swirled about them, she could see Arnie—lying on his side, swiping frantically at his burning clothing. He was above her, on the part of the floor that hadn’t dropped. From the gap between the sections of flooring flowed dense black smoke, tongues of flame and red sparks like stinging bees.
Ruth struggled to her feet on the slanting floor, looking around frantically. They couldn’t use the back door now to escape—with the sunken floor, the exit was too high to reach, and was bathed in flames spiraling up from the basement.
The front. They had to get out the front. But first, Ruth needed to climb up to the level that Arnie lay on.
“Honey, honey!” she called. “The front! Get out the front!” But the words vanished in the roar. She hadn’t known that fire could be so loud.
Dodging the whips of flame, she started to climb up to Arnie, who was choking and writhing in pain. At least, she saw, he’d managed to strip off the burning clothing.
She put her hands on the end of the floorboards at his level and started to boost herself up. “The front door. Let’s—”
But at that moment the portion of the floor she was standing on dropped away completely and Ruth plunged into the basement, landing in a ragdoll pile on the concrete, pelted on head, arms and shoulders by boards, the kitchen table, cookbooks and cans of beans.
Fire was all around her now: storage boxes, Arnie’s magazines, Christmas decorations, the girls’ old clothing, furniture. And flames licked the cans and jars of flammables on Arnie’s workbench—cleaners, paint thinner, turpentine, alcohol. They could be exploding any moment.
Ruth Phillips understood she was about to die.
Thinking of Claire and Sammi. The grandchildren, too. Arnie, of course. The love of her life. Then, now, forever.
She ducked as another joist collapsed and slammed to the floor. It narrowly missed her head.
Choking on the smoke, twisting away from the needle-sharp embers and the fists of heat.
But then, Ruth thought: No.
She wasn’t going to die this way. In pain. Not by fire.
She looked around, as best she could through the fog of boiling smoke. The stairs were gone but in the corner, right under the ledge of the floor that remained, where Arnie lay, was her mother’s old dresser. She crawled to it and climbed on the top. She wasn’t strong enough to do a pull-up and roll onto the floor above her. But she kicked off the slippers, for better grip, stretched her leg high and planted a foot on the mirror on top of the dresser, feeling a thigh muscle drawn to the snapping point.
She ignored the pain.
Flames swelled. A can of turpentine exploded and a swirl of pine-scented fire and smoke ballooned beside her. Ruth turned away, felt the sting of fire on her ankles and arms. But her clothing didn’t ignite.
The fire, she saw, was licking a gallon can of paint thinner.
Now. This is it. Last chance.
Gripping the broken hardwood planks above her, she kicked hard and, in clumsy desperation, clawed her way up, rolling onto the kitchen floor beside Arnie.
“Ruth!” Arnie crawled to her. He was down to his boxer shorts. Half his hair was gone, eyebrows too. And there were burns on his face, neck, chest and right arm but they hadn’t incapacitated him.
“Out! We have to get out! The front!”
Keeping low, for what little air remained in the house, they started down the hall but got only halfway to the front door. Because of the smoke they hadn’t been able to see that the living room and front alcove were a mass of flame too. The bedroom windows weren’t an option either. Those rooms were burning as well.
“Garage,” she cried. It was their last hope.
Gripping each other hard, they pushed forward. Just before the heat and flames drove them back—to a claustrophobic, searing death in the narrow corridor—they reached the garage door. Ruth touched the metal knob and let go immediately.
“It’s hot,” she said.
A pause. They both laughed, a bit hysterical. Because of course it was hot. Everything in the damn house was hot.
She gripped the knob again, twisted it and shoved open the door. They crouched. But there were no flames here, just smoke and fumes roiling into the garage from the vents and up from under the baseboards. They plunged inside. It was hard to see through the eye-stinging clouds but the garage was small and—since it was used for storage only, not parking—they could follow the path to the front between rows of boxes and kitchen appliances and sports equipment from days long ago.
Choking and wiping their streaming eyes, they moved steadily to the front of the structure. She felt light-headed and fell once. Ruth then got a breath of better air, low to the floor, then another and, with Arnie’s help, she rose again.
Arms around each other, husband and wife finally made it to the front of the garage. With another laugh, this one of pure relief, Ruth pressed the button of the door opener.
Chapter 24
Just breathe, Detective.”
She nodded to the city medical tech. And tried to follow his orders. Slowly. Okay…Inhale, exhale. The coughing began in earnest once more.
Not okay.
Hacking, spitting.
Try again. Control it…Concentrating on her lungs, the muscles in her chest. Yes, she controlled it. Breathe in, out. Slowly.
Okay. Controlling it.
No more coughing. Good.
“Sounding great, Detective,” the tech said. He was a cheerful man with curly black hair and skin a mocha shade.
“All good,” she rasped.
Then she puked.
Again, again, again.
Sitting on the back lip of the ambulance, she bent double at the waist and evacuated a mass of the filthy mud soup.
Most had gone into her gut, not her lungs, apparently.
After a moment or two of retching, the feeling subsided.
She took the bottle of water that the EMT offered. Rinsed her mouth and poured it over her face. She couldn’t imagine what she looked like from the neck up. She’d shed her clothes and dressed in a set of Tyvek overalls—she kept a carton in the trunk of her car. It felt like her hair weighed thirty pounds. Her fingernails, always short, ended in goth black crescents.
Beside her sat her Glock, which, before she did anything else, she’d cleaned in a mini field strip, including running a patch soaked with Hoppe’s solvent through the barrel. It had been dangerously clogged.