From where she sat, Velvet had a perfect view of the garage—three cars, one heavy-looking Mercedes, one boxy-looking Volvo station wagon, and one white Jeep Cherokee, since everybody in Highland Park seemed to think they couldn’t live without four-wheel drive. She wondered what the chances were that the rich left keys in their cars, and decided they weren’t too good; the rich had invented paranoia, what with their alarm systems and electric gates and big dogs. She glanced around nervously for dogs, but found only evidence of kids—bright yellow and red plastic tricycles, ragged-looking dolls, dismembered pieces of toys she couldn’t identify. If they had a dog, they kept it in at night.

  An outside light snapped on, bathing the corn row in harsh white. She dropped flat and pressed her cheek to the cold dirt as the back door opened. Someone clumped down three steps and across the flagstones to the garage. She lifted her head and clawed hair out of her eyes to watch a tall guy in a blue shirt gather up an armload of firewood. He was whistling something that sounded like a commercial, or opera.

  Velvet heard wood creak and turned her head the other way, her other cheek now in the dirt. A dark shape dropped over the top of the gate and landed lightly, knees bent, in the shadows.

  “Oh, Christ,” she whispered, and bit her lip. The guy in the garage dropped a stick of firewood and bent over to pick it up; his whistling broke off and started again as he straightened up.

  Agent Dimples came a step closer into the light; he was smiling slightly, not even out of breath. He’d put on gloves, and in one hand he had the gun he’d pulled on her at Robby’s apartment. He was watching the garage, but he was also looking around the back yard for potential hiding places. Any second now, he’d look at the corn row.

  No time for subtlety. Velvet opened her mouth to scream.

  The back door opened, and a little girl said, “Daddy?”

  Velvet’s scream hitched in her throat like a gag. She swallowed hard and stayed very still, cheek pressed to the ground, wind pressing like cold fingers on her exposed face.

  “Coming, sweetheart. Go on back inside, it’s cold out here.”

  Think, Velvet screamed at herself. Do something. Anything. For god’s sake, don’t just lay there!

  She realized she was looking at a playhouse hidden behind the corn, a little princess house with miniature glass windows and heart-shaped shutters. She started to crawl for it, moving slowly, and eased her head and shoulders inside, curling her legs and feet in behind. The kid had furnished the place with some good blankets and pillows—Mom would probably have a cow when she found out—and Velvet wrapped herself up and sat next to the window, looking out at the guy in the garage.

  He’d put down his firewood, and was looking toward the wall where Agent James waited. She watched him pop the door on the Mercedes and get something out of the glove compartment.

  He picked up his firewood, walked to the back door, and slammed it shut behind him. Through the glass door, Velvet saw him say something to the dark-haired woman at the table, whose face went blank and then tight with fear. She got up and left the room.

  She hadn’t seen him move, but all of a sudden Agent Dimples was standing there in the corn rows, scuffing a shoe in the outline where Velvet had pressed her face in the dirt. She wiped at the grit on her cheeks and pulled the blanket over her head as he looked at the playhouse. Dark. Her sweat smelled like Scotch, she couldn’t get her breath, was he coming? Was he right there, looking at her, aiming the gun—

  She screamed when she heard the shots, two quick loud explosions, and waited for the pain.

  When she stripped the blanket off her head and pushed her hair back, she saw Agent Dimples face down in the dirt, blood spreading black under him. The rich guy stood in the doorway, holding onto it with one hand, like his knees weren’t quite ready to do the job. Behind him, the kids were screaming, Mom was running and grabbing and hugging.

  The rich guy had a gun in his hand. Velvet watched it fall from his hand and bounce on the steps. It spun to a stop a couple of feet away, shiny as a roach.

  The guy sat down and started to cry, big gulping gasps of air she felt all the way across the yard. While his head was down, while the kids were screaming, she clambered out of the blankets and snaked out of the playhouse, ran to the gate, and pushed it open enough to wiggle through.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. She ran.

  Incident Five

  DALLAS, TEXAS

  Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC)

  Minnie Abramson woke up crying.

  In itself, that didn’t scare her; she often woke up crying. Sometimes she felt so lost, so strange … nothing seemed right anymore, not the way it had been when she was a child. In her dreams she was eight, skipping down the sidewalk in a blue dress, proud of her new black patent leather shoes. She skipped rope with Verna Henderson. The sun had been hot and tasted like lemons.

  It had all been so different then, the neighborhood full of good Christian people, full of kids who weren’t afraid to play in the street or in the yard. The ice cream truck had come around every couple of days, and sold blue ices and chocolate Fudgsicles. The driver had worn a crisp white suit and his truck played popular songs like a giant music box.

  Minnie looked across the room—not her room, just an apartment, she’d moved out of her room and her house five years before—and made sure the chain was still cm the door. She’d done her best with the room, scrubbed and cleaned and kept everything neat as a pin, but it just never seemed to help. It wasn’t her house, wasn’t her room.

  She laid in bed and sobbed into her pillow for all the lost things, for the ice cream truck, for the jump rope, for the heavy whack of her braided hair on her back as she skipped. From down on the street she heard jungle sounds booming, all drums, no music, and remembered how her mother had always been so careful to keep the radio turned low, because the neighbors might be sleeping. Now everybody just turned their own radio up louder and louder to cover up the noise.

  She felt sick, but not sick to her stomach—hot, maybe feverish. She climbed out of bed and put on a fluffy pink zip-up robe, put on her faded fraying houseshoes, walked slowly across to the kitchen. Hot tea. She’d have some hot tea and lemon and honey, and that would make her feel so much better, she just knew it would.

  She put the kettle on to boil and sat down at the table, rubbing her forehead. Her skin felt like crepe paper, old and frail. She looked at her gnarled aching hands, and felt tears welling up again, useless tears, hot as the water in the kettle.

  “Oh, Minnie,” she sighed, and patted her white hair back into place. She usually wore a satin cap over it at night, since she couldn’t afford to go to the beauty shop more than once a week, but she’d forgotten and now it was a wreck, curling every which way. “Don’t be such a silly billy.”

  When the kettle whistled she filled up a cup and put a tea bag in it, found a plastic bottle of lemon juice and added two drops, then a thick stream of honey. Doctor said she wasn’t supposed to have honey, but on nights like this, she decided doctors weren’t always right, and anyway she didn’t have it very often.

  The tea tasted just right, tart and sweet. She sat back in the rickety wood chair and looked out the window at the bright glare of downtown; they were playing with the blinking lights on that silly old ball at Reunion Tower again, she could never figure out what it was supposed to be. It looked like the world now, then it didn’t look like anything at all. She watched it for a few more minutes until her eyes started hurting, then she blinked and sipped her tea and thought about Verna Henderson, dead these eight years.

  It started like indigestion, a bright burn in her stomach that got hotter and hotter and made her pant through the pain. The pain didn’t last long. She fell forward, pushing the teacup away, and was dead in less than a minute.

  Her body smoldered for an hour, turning gray and black and then falling into ash. Her hands stayed untouched on the table, burnt off at mid-wrist. Her feet, still in the faded houseshoes, fell over to the right and left.

  There was nothing left of the rest of her but ashes and a yellowish film of fat over the ceiling of the room.

  There was a scorch mark on the table where her head had lain, and one in the seat of the wooden chair, but nothing else burned.

  Nothing but Minnie.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Martin

  Mrs. Womack had stopped looking grandmotherly some time ago. As she looked at him from the other side of Agent Carling’s bed, she seemed like some evil old witch dug up from a fairy story, blue eyes gone cold, smile gone mean.

  “This is your fault,” she said. Martin looked down at Carling’s too pale face, at the tubes going into her arm and mouth and nose. “Don’t bother to deny it, Mr. Grady. You wanted to play secret agent, and here we are.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He felt the lash of her scorn without looking up.

  “How nice. I’m sure she’ll feel much better once she knows that. As far as I’m concerned, young man, the only reason I haven’t taken you out and put a bullet in your back is because that nice young doctor says she’s going to live through the night.”

  When he finally had the courage to look up, he saw her dabbing her eyes with a tissue, hands trembling.

  “She’s like my own. I don’t suppose you can understand that.”

  Martin reached down and moved a strand of auburn hair away from Carling’s face, touched the curve of her cheek with one finger.

  “I think I do,” he said. She huffed indignantly and crumpled the tissue in her fingers, over and over, until it was a wad the size of a walnut.

  Agent Jennings looked in the door, gave Martin a cold stare, and addressed his remarks to Mrs. Womack.

  “Ma’am, Agent Mendoza has those results you wanted. Want to look them over?”

  “Have him bring them in, Bryce, thank you. Oh, and get yourself a cup of coffee. I’m sure we’ll be fine.” Mrs. Womack gave Martin a sharp-toothed smile. “Mr. Grady here will protect us.”

  Jennings said, “Yes, ma’am,” and held the door open for Agent Mendoza. Mendoza gave Carling an expressionless glance and didn’t bother giving any notice to Martin at all.

  “You have the report?” Mrs. Womack asked. He crossed the room to hand it to her and then stood in the corner like a Coldstream guard, hands at his sides, eyes on the still form of Agent Carling. Mrs. Womack flipped pages and raised her eyebrows. “My. How very interesting.”

  She let Martin stew in silence while she read, pulling her half-glasses down her nose and holding the folder almost at arm’s length. The benevolent grandmotherly mask was back in place. She smiled at Agent Mendoza.

  “Oh, Antonio, do sit down, dear, please.”

  Mendoza sank into a chair, stiff as a corpse. A nurse came in and bustled around adjusting tubes, checking monitors. Mendoza’s lethally intense concentration shifted to observe her. Martin pulled up a chair to Carling’s bedside and sat, holding her hand. She had neat clever hands. He turned one palm up and winced at the long needles in her forearm, the outlines of forming bruises. He traced her lifeline with one fingertip.

  “I expected you to ask,” Mrs. Womack said, sounding peeved. He stared at the thin blue line of Carling’s vein.

  “I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”

  “Hmm.” She fixed him with a sharp-eyed stare and passed him the folder over Carling’s unconscious body. “Page three. It’s a chemical analysis of the preacher’s clothing.”

  “Give me the short form,” he said, an automatic bureaucratic reflex.

  “Executive, aren’t we?” She paused long enough to let him know who was in charge. “The principal thing is that there is no dichlorhyradine present, although it’s definitely in his tissue samples.”

  “So it starts from the body and works its way out.”

  “I’m afraid you’re jumping to a conclusion, Mr. Grady. You’re assuming that dichlorhyradine is the agent of chemical ignition.”

  “It’s present in every one of the victims. It’s highly exothermic under laboratory conditions—”

  “It’s a byproduct,” she said. “Page three.”

  He waded through about four paragraphs and looked up at her, eyebrows arching a question. She smiled and opened her purse, a large black leather thing. He half-expected her to take out a gun, but she took out a ball of blue yarn and two knitting needles and a pebbly length of scarf-in-progress.

  “Pretend you’re in Catholic school, Mr. Grady. What is present in the clothing?”

  “Um … traces of salt, an alcohol-based mixture that the lab identified as Old Spice cologne, tobacco residue—the preacher liked his cigarettes and—what the hell is this?”

  “Benzine and toluene. Dry cleaning compounds.”

  “Oh.” Martin continued down the list. “Benzoic acid—”

  “A distillate of benzine. Not a very good dry cleaners; all those chemicals are present in far greater concentrations than they should be.” Mrs. Womack counted a row of stitches and started clacking, a dry quiet sound that reminded him of dice. “Go on.”

  “Sulphur dioxide—”

  “Commonly used as a disinfectant and preservative.”

  “Sulfonmethane.”

  “A hypnotic agent.”

  “Hydrochloric and hydrocyanic acids.”

  “Also used as clarifying agents in dry cleaning.”

  Grady watched as Mrs. Womack calmly knitted an entire row.

  “Are you trying to tell me,” he said slowly, “that somebody killed him with dry cleaning fluids? That these chemicals combined will burn?”

  “Not at all.” She started a second row. “But it might interest you to know that Burt Marshall—who died right here in Dallas, Texas—was half-owner of a dry cleaners. And that earlier last year he applied for a patent for a new dry cleaning solution, but withdrew the request within three weeks. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “But if these chemicals don’t burn—”

  “By themselves.” She inspected the row and adjusted it with nudges of her fingers. “Do you think you love Adrian?”

  “Pardon me?” He blinked and sat upright. He had to look down to be sure Carling wasn’t awake. “What?”

  “Do you think you’re in love with her?”

  He opened his mouth to say no, shut it, and tried again. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I do. Let me give you a piece of advice, son. I love Adrian like she’s my own, but I’d never let a boy of mine marry her.” She smiled wolfishly. “She’s too much for you.”

  “What makes them burn?”

  Mrs. Womack looked over at Agent Mendoza, who sat impassive and still in his chair. Without any visible signal, he stood up and left the room.

  “Body heat,” she said, and went back to her knitting. “Most of the early chemicals used for dry cleaning were unstable and flammable, you know—boiling points of as low as ninety degrees. Up to the turn of the century, they were still using kerosene and gasoline to fume clothes. I think our Mr. Marshall stumbled onto what he thought was a new dry cleaning process—but it turned out to have a low boiling threshhold. And once it’s combined with salt from sweat—”

  She shrugged. One of her knitting needles slipped and fell with a clatter to the floor.

  “Whoosh,” Martin said.

  “Naturally, not a market for that kind of thing in commercial applications. As a weapon, though—”

  “Good god. Do we know what dry cleaners—”

  Mrs. Womack went back to her knitting, serene as Whistler’s mother.

  “Elegance Dry Cleaners, Mr. Grady, right here in Dallas. Isn’t that funny? It was right under your nose the whole time. Did you ever get your clothes cleaned there?”

  His mind went blank, and for a second he couldn’t honestly remember whether he had or not. His suit coat itched over his shoulders.

  “Agent Mendoza believes that the surviving partner, Edward Julian, is the one responsible for the burnings. Whether he’s targeting people he doesn’t like, or people who might have caused trouble, or just likes the thrill of it, we don’t know.”

  “What about this terrorist—el Haddiz?”

  “Ah.” Mrs. Womack found this serious enough to put her knitting in her lap, fold her hands, and give him her full attention. “Mr. el Haddiz is quite probably making a deal to buy the formula, or at least some garments treated with the product. You can imagine how effective those might be in some of the warmer climates notorious for political unrest.”

  He couldn’t think of anything to say. Carling’s monitors beeped a steady gentle rhythm. He saw her eyes twitch under the fragile lids and hoped she was dreaming.

  “Did she know any of that?”

  “Some. Not all.” Mrs. Womack picked up her knitting again and adjusted the angle of her glasses on her nose. “I imagine Mr. Marshall’s establishment does a lot of business in uniform cleaning. Police uniforms, for instance. Girl scout uniforms. Marching band uniforms.”

  The scope of it made him dizzy. He shrugged his jacket off and piled it in a heap on the floor, loosened his tie, and put his head down on the cool sheets of Carling’s bed, next to her loose empty hand.

  “My god,” he whispered. Mrs. Womack made a dry sound of agreement. Her knitting needles clacked.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Velvet

  Velvet was three-quarters of the way through a fifth of Scotch by the time she heard the front door rattle. All those damn locks. Fire hazard, that’s what it was.

  Fire hazard. That was so funny it was sick. The Scotch went down warm on her tongue, scorched her throat, added fuel to the bonfire in her stomach. Nice and warm now. In a minute or two she’d forget all about it, all about the dead man in the garden with his dimples all shot off. She’d forget the look on that rich man’s face as he cried.

  Robby got the door open and slammed it, jammed the locks shut as fast as she could. Velvet watched her with unfocused eyes and smiled.

  “Hey. Saw the hockey game. Hell of a game, ’cept for that guy melting the ice.” She was trying to be snide, but it all came out sad instead. She drained the last sip of whisky from her glass and poured out another splash from the bottle on the coffee table.