A Devil's Bargain by Jonathan Watkins

Author:Jonathan Watkins [Watkins, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Three blocks east of Winkle’s Tavern and one block south, an abandoned house was burning to the ground. Darren stared at it while Theresa brought his Lexus to a stop. The road ahead was cordoned off and a street cop was waving the lines of traffic west, away from the two-story conflagration. Behind him, firefighters stood around in the street and on the lawn, but none of them were making a move to grab a hose.

“They’re just letting it burn,” she said.

Darren watched black gouts of smoke belch out of the windows. Part of the roof had collapsed and orange flames wagged up through the hole. Even with the windows up and the sounds of traffic around him, he could hear the violent crack of timbers splitting from the heat.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Darren looked away from the fire and said, “What? Nothing.”

“You looked gone, Fletcher. You never seen a Detroit house fire?”

“Sure. No. I was just thinking about something.”

He’d been thinking about a three-bedroom, single story house in Ann Arbor that had also burned to the ground, five years before. That fire had been arson.

James Klodd, the child killer he’d saved from his just desserts by getting a search warrant thrown out of court, had committed one final act of violence before slinking off to the shadows. He’d burned his own house down.

Nobody had ever offered a proper explanation for it. The cops on the case called Klodd a psycho who was trying to cover up any evidence in the house by setting fire to it all. A psychiatrist Darren had paid to analyze the cold case would comment that she firmly believed that Klodd’s destruction of his house was a deeply unconscious attempt to destroy his own feelings of guilt and torment over the crime he’d committed. “A sort of Baptismal fire, if you get my meaning,” she’d told him and he’d cut her a check right then just to be done with her.

Darren knew, though. He had known from the moment he first heard that the killer’s house was now a mound of ash: James Klodd torching his own home was him giving the middle finger to Darren. Everything the monster had done since the day Darren had set him free had been designed to twist the knife and say, “You. You did this. This is the direct result of your handiwork.”

First was a phone call to Darren’s office from Klodd’s home number, with nothing but an ominous silence on the line when Darren answered—a long silence designed to allow Darren the time to come to the realization that it was the closest anyone would ever get to James Klodd’s confession.

Two hours later a fellow attorney called and told him to turn on the news: James Klodd’s house was burning down.

A month after that, the first green envelope had arrived in his mail. No note. Just a child’s tooth inside. Seventeen more envelopes had followed over the years.

But not anymore, he thought. It had almost been a year since the last one had arrived.

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