Card Sharks by Melinda M. Snodgrass & Roger Zelazny & George R. R. Martin

Author:Melinda M. Snodgrass & Roger Zelazny & George R. R. Martin [Snodgrass, Melinda M. & Zelazny, Roger & Martin, George R. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9780671721596
Publisher: Baen
Published: 1993-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

So ends the narrative of J. Robert Belew, USSF, retired.

The Ashes of Memory

5

"Hannah, don't sit down! Let's movel"

"At least let me drink my coffee; traffic was hell coming from Washington. What's up, Arnold?"

"The call just came in from NYPD. You know that creep Ramblur we talked to the other day - Flashfire? He blew himself up."

"Jesus -"

They arrived to chaos. Ramblur had lived in the basement of his apartment building. A hole had been blown in the corner of the foundation, and half the windows in the building were gone. Black streaks showed where fire had gushed from the apartment, but there looked to be little actual fire damage. Hannah and Simpson, both now in slicks and helmets, walked over the thick snarl of firehoses and into the water-dripping stairwell. Chief Reiger greeted them at the door.

"Well, Ms. Davis! Arnold - how's those kids of yours? Came to see what's left of Flashfire? Come on in.... It ain't a pretty sight."

The chief was right about that, Hannah decided immediately. Ramblur had evidently been at a workbench set along the wall. Most of the damage to the room seemed to be from the initial explosion - there'd been a small fire, but the force of the blast had snuffed out most of the flames. There were shards of glass everywhere and a few unbroken containers of variously colored powders and granules; Hannah opened the screw top lid to one of them and sniffed. She sifted a little of the powder inside onto her palm. "Calcium hypochlorite," she said. "This guy had a regular chemist's shop here. Better tell your people to be careful in here, Chief, and you'd better keep the tenants out. If he has lithium or potassium around, all you have to do is get them wet and we'll have a real beauty of an explosion and fire here again. Where is he, by the way?"

Reiger snorted and pointed across the room. Hannah looked, then gasped involuntarily. Bamblur was unrecognizable. The entire front of the body was a charred mess. The right arm was missing; so was part of the torso on that side. The corpse was in two parts lying close together, severed just below the ribcage; bone poked whitely from the black and red tangle. He'd been flung across the room so viciously that the plasterboard above him was cracked and dented from where he'd hit. The entire mess still steamed. "Bet he didn't even have a chance to say 'Oops!'" Reiger said. Swallowing once, Hannah went over and looked more closely at the remains. She crouched down in front of Ramblur, studying the skeletal, charcoal-black face. The jaw hung open as if in eternal surprise.

"You'd think a pyro with his background and this kind of stockpile would have known What he was doing," she said.

"Maybe he flunked chemistry 101," Reiger said. "Or maybe something slipped."

"Maybe."

Simpson had gone into the bedroom of the apartment. Now he called out. "Hey, Hannah, better take a look over here."

"On my way.

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