Frank Herbert: Unpublished Stories by Frank Herbert

Author:Frank Herbert [Herbert, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Frank Herbert, Science Fiction, Short Stories
Publisher: WordFire Press
Published: 2016-11-15T07:00:00+00:00

The Heat’s On

Arson squad Lieutenant Barnie Ellis strode across the fire-blackened hotel room in five angry steps, leaned out the window. He took a deep gulp of the early morning air.

It should have smelled sweet at 4:00 AM. It didn’t. When dirt burns, its stink is pervasive and unmistakable.

Four stories down, on the sidewalk, he saw Fire Captain Coddington talking to a slender man in a dark suit. “Captain!” Ellis bellowed.

The fat fire captain tipped his head back, shaded his eyes with one pudgy hand. “Yeah?”

“Where in the blithering hell is McCoy?” Ellis shouted. He put his arm on the charred windowsill, drew it back again.

“Up there,” called Coddington in a high, wheezy voice. “Or he damn well should be.”

Ellis spread his big hands in an empty gesture, shook his head. “Come on up!” he bawled, and pulled his head back into the room.

He strode across the blackened shell, stepped into the hall. “McCoy!” he yelled. “McCoy!” Where had that eager beaver got to?

Ellis had been jerked out of sleep by the telephone at 3:30 AM—McCoy with a “suspected arson.” That made three times in six months McCoy had suspected arson.

Ellis had dragged himself out of bed, hustled down here, and now—no McCoy.

He looked up and down the dingy hotel hall. Again, he yelled, “McCoy!”

Ellis thought he understood McCoy. The young man wanted to get on the arson squad; it was the reason McCoy had become a fireman in the first place. Ellis sighed. McCoy would find out fast it wasn’t all beer and Skittles.

Especially with eager beavers getting a man out of bed at 3:30 in the morning. Jesus!

Quick footsteps sounded on the stairway. Ellis turned toward the sound. About time. He waited for McCoy to emerge on the stairway.

Instead, a brown felt hat came into view, and then a familiar, lean face—Curt Onstott from the DA’s office.

Ellis met him at the top of the stairs. “Curt!” He knew the tall, thin lawyer well, had worked with him on several cases. “I didn’t know the DA’s office was in on this one.”

Onstott wrinkled his nose. “What’s that stench?”

Ellis swung back toward the fire scene. “A man died in the fire,” he said shortly. “Where’s Captain Coddington?”

Onstott jerked a thumb toward the stairs. “Coming,” he said. “About two flights behind.” The slender district attorney paused in the doorway, glanced around the blackened hole that had been a cheap hotel room. “Well, Barnie,” he asked, “was it set?”

“How the hell can I tell this quick? What’s your office doing on this?”

Onstott was a tall man, but he still had to look up to talk to the bulky Ellis. “We’ve lost two witnesses in fires this past month—witnesses on the same case.”

Ellis froze in midstep. “What case?”

“That damn Tonelli thing—numbers and bookmaking. The man who died here this morning—Yorty—was a key witness.”

Ellis moved farther into the fire room. Half of one wall—where the bed had stood—showed the charred, alligator-hide markings of intense heat. Deep charring reached toward the window. Below the sill lay the soggy, begrimed remnants of lace curtains.

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