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“Earlier. Drinking in his office. He must have gone home…he must have…” He looked around himself. “But Gia…she’s hysterical.”
“Is she here?” Becca asked.
He put a hand to his head. “Oh, my God.”
They followed his look. Gia Stafford was being held up by a fireman who’d just caught her as she started to fall. She was crying, pulling at her hair, a down jacket covering her shoulders and torso while the hem of her nightgown dragged in the water from the fire hoses.
“They found a body, Scott,” Hudson said. “Dead.”
“No…” He shook his head, unable to take it in.
The crowd had edged closer, and one of the other firemen barked at them to get back. Hudson and Becca stood near a neighboring building and watched in silence for a while as Scott staggered away. They stayed long minutes, immobilized, mesmerized. Becca’s eyes strayed often to Gia, who softly blubbered and clung to anyone who came within reach of her arms.
It seemed to take forever before the flames came under control and the building became a smoking, stinking hulk with areas that glowed inside like yellow eyes in a twisted, blackened mess.
“You people need to leave,” one of the firemen stated grimly to the group as a whole. “Right now.”
Hudson suddenly inhaled a sharp breath.
“What?” Becca looked up at him.
“I think they’re bringing a body out. That’s why they want the crowd to disperse.”
Becca glanced past him to a stretcher being carried by two grimy firemen. A black tarp covered the contents but a charred appendage slipped out. A blackened arm.
She turned away in horror as the odor of seared human flesh made her gag.
“Come on,” Hudson said, “I’ll take you home.”
“No-I’ve got my car-”
Gia’s cries became shrieking wails and two of the firemen hustled her away from the scene though she clawed at them, desperately trying to stay.
“Mr. Walker?”
They both turned to see Detective McNally approaching them, his face grim. Not now. For God’s sake, not now! Couldn’t the damned cop just leave them alone? Becca looked away, aching inside. She wanted to make love to Hudson. She wanted to fuse her body with his and push all this away. She felt like shrieking and crying but she had no energy. Instead emotions churned inside her stomach and chest, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
Beyond her cocoon she could hear Hudson talking to Mac about the fire, could feel his voice in his chest as her face was pressed close to his torso. It was an exchange of information between the two men. The body was still unidentified but from the wristwatch on its arm, recognized by Scott, it appeared to be Glenn’s. No one moved to tell Gia, who was being kept away from the grisly view. Becca felt her stomach heave and she kept its contents intact by pure force of will.
And then a wave came over her. That same inundating sensation that preceded a vision. She clung to Hudson for all she was worth.
/> “Becca?” he asked, glancing down at her.
“I’m…”
Falling, she meant to say, but it wasn’t possible. She crumpled limply in his arms and only his strength kept her from hitting the wet pavement in a heap. Inside her head Becca could see a room. An office of some sort. She reached out one of her own hands and saw she was holding pieces of paper. A white card of some sort and a blue envelope. Words swam into her view, blurry and indistinct. Watery. Squiggles that weren’t words, but maybe were if she could only read them. She saw that it was someone’s name, written in an uneven hand: Glenn.
When she turned the card over she squinted as if she needed glasses and slowly the squiggles turned into words, the words into sentences.
What are little boys made of? Frogs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.
That’s what little boys are made of.
Her heart clutched.
Jessie’s rhyme! Jessie’s taunt. As Becca gazed at the note, the edges began to blacken and curl and suddenly the words burst into flame. She let go of the fiery note, her fingers singed, smoke filling her nostrils, choking her.
“Jessie!” she cried out. “Jessie!”
