He heard a whoosh as the car flashed over in flame.

Chapter 8.

Eddie sat on the b.u.mper of a red fire-pumper truck and sipped bottled water. The scene smelled of diesel exhaust from the six idling emergency trucks, and charred vinyl and seat foam, scorched paint and wiring, and burnt rubber from the Chevette, no longer Mighty.

Detective Orr was red-faced, as hot as the car.

"Tell me again, Eddie," she demanded, "why you drove through a public park, nearly running over two Lowell High kids on their first date?"

"I missed them by ten feet."

"That was an hour ago. What have you been doing all this time?"

Eddie went through the story again, slowly this time, with all the details. "And then when I got down into the manhole, I tried to call the police station, but my cell phone couldn't get a signal underground."

She looked skeptical.

"It was the first chance I had to call," Eddie insisted. "It's hard to dial and drive for your life at the same time."

"Uh-huh."

"So then I had to feel my way through a conduit pipe on hands and knees for, oh, maybe two hundred feet, until I found another manhole and was able to climb up. It's slow down there, believe me-if you're not b.u.mping your head into junction boxes, you're worried about getting electrocuted any second."

She looked to her notebook. "This van-did you get the license number?"

"No Lucy-I mean, detective, uh..." Eddie thought back and pictured the van. "The front plate had no light, now that I think about it, and I never saw the back of the van clearly. But I'm pretty sure it was cream colored, maybe a Ford. Hmm, I guess I'm not sure of that." Eddie was embarra.s.sed; as a journalist he was supposed to be a professional observer.

The fire department had arrived by the time Eddie had gotten out of the manhole. They had quickly doused the visible fire in the car. Several firefighters had torn out what was left of the seats, to drown the tricky fire that could smolder in the flammable foam cushioning. Police investigators were taking photographs and measurements. Two officers bagged the spent road flare.

Eddie sighed. The Mighty Chevette was his only transportation. It had been an old junker, but Eddie had respected how the car carried on long past retirement age. He felt as if an old friend had died. He tried not to think about his own close call, but the smoldering car and the smoke stench in his clothing kept reminding him. Eddie's legs went rubbery every time he thought about his escape, and he felt a tingle of nervous electricity in his gut.

A young firefighter, barely eighteen, brought Eddie the Chevette's steering wheel. "We saved this," he said. "Thought you might like to have it."

The firefighter had a tiny hint of smile on his face, and Eddie wasn't sure if he was being ironic. No matter-Eddie wanted the memento. "Thanks. I'll take it."

Detective Orr had a few more questions, about the route Eddie had driven, the speeds the chase had reached. Eddie answered honestly and as fully as he could.

When Orr was finished, she snapped her little cop notebook shut and wrinkled her brow at Eddie. She scolded, "Where did you get this knack for nearly getting killed?" It was a question from a friend, not an investigating officer.

Eddie held up the steering wheel and shrugged. There was no answer.

"I need ten more minutes here," she said, "and then I'll drop you off at your house."

Detective Orr walked away. Eddie sipped more water. He had been calm the entire time he had been crawling through the electrical tunnel, and when he was being interviewed by police. But now, as he looked at his charred car and smelled the poison smoke, his hands were trembling.

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. With great difficulty, he retrieved it and checked the caller ID number. Local, but not a number he recognized.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Professor Bourque?" The idling fire trucks were noisy and Eddie wasn't sure he had heard what he thought he heard. He looked around, to see if anyone was playing a joke on him. "This is Eddie Bourque."

"Ay, Professor! It's Ryan, from Intro to Journalism, man! I have a question about the mid-term a.s.signments."

Eddie rolled his eyes. "Oh, h.e.l.l, Ryan. Can this wait? You caught me at a bad time."

"I can see that, that's why I'm calling. What did you have? Some kind of accident? The TV news says you drove through the park. That sounds f.u.c.ked up to me, man, because you don't sound drunk."

Eddie stood. "I am not drunk." He looked around. "Where are you?"

"At home. You're on TV. I'm looking right at you."

That's when Eddie saw the news van parked down the street.

When did Channel Eight get here?

Closer to the action, in the shadows near the sidewalk, he saw that a camera crew had set up a tripod. The camera was pointed straight at Eddie. His stomach tightened. He pictured the driver from the van at home, relaxing after a good night of killing, maybe eating crackers and wombat pte, or sipping blood from a skull-whatever-and watching Eddie Bourque on the eleven o'clock news.

Now he knows he failed. He knows I escaped.

He had no idea what the driver looked like. In Eddie's imagination, the man went to bed in a ski mask. Eddie stared into the camera; he couldn't look away. He felt a paralyzing anxiety, as if his insides had suddenly liquefied and gushed out his feet, leaving a hollow tin replica of himself.

"Oh, dude! You're looking right at me," Ryan said. He laughed. "That's creepy. Whoops! Now you're gone. They're onto the sports. Awwww! The Red Sox got bombed tonight."

"So why are you calling, Ryan?"

"Well, dude-professor!-I was thinking that you might have undergone some sort of trauma in this car accident, and if that was the case-I mean, like, we hope it's not, but if-would the mid-term papers still be due next week?"

Eddie watched the TV news crew break down their equipment. "They're due," he said.

"Aw man, it's just that I'm having a hard time finding a public meeting to go to, and, um..."

"Just find a city board dealing with a topic that interests you and you'll be fine."

"That's the problem, professor!" Ryan said. "The only thing that interests me is music."

"Try the liquor licensing board," Eddie suggested. "Nightclubs go before those commissions to get permits for live music. Happens all the time."

"You mean government controls our nightclubs?"

"Find the conflict," Eddie told him, thinking about the conflict he had just escaped. "And tell both sides."

The next morning, General VonKatz planted his hind legs on Eddie's forehead, boosting himself to get a better look at whatever he was meowing at out the bedroom window.

Eddie had a feeling he would be sore from the car crash, and that it would hurt to move. He stayed still in his bed and moved only his eyelids. The room was dim; it was too early to get up. A gray tail swished above his face.

"General," he mumbled, "the human head is not a stepladder."

Eddie heard a rustling from the front yard.

"Stupid racc.o.o.ns."

The General soon lost interest in whatever was outside, and jumped down.

"Thank you."

Eddie woke sore a few hours later, like a runningback the day after a punishing game. His chest hurt from where he had slammed against the seatbelt. He swallowed five ibuprofen, set the coffee maker to brew his darkest Italian roast, and went out in a t-shirt and boxers for his Washington Post.

The air was cool and a steady breeze bent the top branches of his neighbor's sugar maples. Again, the paper was a mess, and Eddie wondered if racc.o.o.ns could be destroying his morning read. He picked up what he could find of his Post and brought it inside.

At least I'm still around to read it.

He discovered a can of mixed grill in gravy in the cupboard, emptied it on a paper plate and set it on the kitchen table for General VonKatz. Usually, the cat ate on the floor, but what did it matter today? During the minutes Eddie had been trapped in the burning Chevette, he had thought he'd never see the General again.

Today's newspaper scavenger hunt had yielded sports, lifestyle and the main news section. The metro and cla.s.sified were missing. He daydreamed through the paper, distracted by the memory of the man in the ski mask. Who was he? And why had he come after Eddie Bourque with such ferocity? Was it a case of mistaken ident.i.ty?

Who the h.e.l.l did he think I am?

Halfway through Eddie's second cup of coffee, he noticed the General staring at the front door. A second later came a lyrical knock, to the rhythm of "Shave and a Haircut-Two Bits!"

Eddie pattered in bare feet to the window, in time to see a yellow taxi drive off. He went to the door and opened it.

The woman on the top step was maybe forty-five, slim and attractive, but a little gray in the face, as if she had lived a hard life. She had high and prominent cheekbones, and dark green eyes outlined in black pencil and highlighted with aqua-green smears on the upper lids. Gray streaks ran through her wheat-colored hair, which was long and straight, hanging halfway to her waist. She wore new blue jeans, a wide black belt, cream-colored high-heeled shoes, and an orange tiger-striped blouse. A pink duffle bag was at her feet.

"Hi there!" she squealed in a cartoon voice an octave higher than Eddie might have expected from her tired, serious face. "I'm Bobbi." She looked Eddie up and down. "Oooh! Look at them knees-bony as a pony! Does that run in the family? Dear gawd, I hope not." She laughed.

Eddie looked down at his knees, and then squinted at the woman. "Huh? Wha?"

The woman stuck her hands on her hips and gave him an exaggerated look of disbelief.

"Eddie, it's me-Bobbi, your sister-in-law," she said. She held up her left hand and wiggled the digits. There was a gold wedding band on her ring finger. "I'm your brother Henry's wife-we got hitched last spring." She feigned a nasally, upper-cla.s.s accent, "It was the most superb ceremony. The warden let me bring shrimp c.o.c.ktail, at least on my side of the gla.s.s." She laughed again.

"Henry mentioned he was recently married," Eddie said, more to himself than to her.

"Of course he did, hon." She tilted her head and batted her long black eyelashes. "I'm probably all he ever talks about."

"Uhhh..."

She laughed. "Kidding you, Eddie-all your big brother talks about is chess. And, of course, he wants to know where I've gone recently that I can describe for him. He says you're real good at that, too."

Eddie nodded, taking it in, trying to understand what she was doing here. "Yes. Sure."

She stood on tiptoes and peeked over his shoulder into the house. "Isn't this about the time you should invite me in? We are family, after all."

Chapter 9.

The woman who said her name was Bobbi Anderson Nichols Bourque didn't drink coffee. But if coffee was all Eddie had-he checked the cabinets, it was all that he had-she would like it mixed fifty-fifty with milk, and eight sugars. To Eddie, the concoction was a sin against nature, but he counted out the sweetener and fixed it the way she wanted.

Bobbi didn't need the caffeine. Seated at Eddie's kitchen table, she launched into a breathless story about a man she saw on the bus from New York. "He had on that kinda hat, you know the kind, with the floppy brim and the fish hooks coming outta the sides," she said, creating the hat in pantomime above her head.

"Uh, a fishing hat?"

She squealed, "Yeah, yeah! Let me get to that part!"

Eddie, feeling self-conscious, put on khaki slacks as she shouted the story from the kitchen. The point of the story, near as Eddie could figure over the next fifteen minutes, seemed to be that the man had worn a fishing hat on the bus.

The General watched the diversion from the morning routine from under the coffee table.

Eddie was patient during the man in the hat story, and he gleaned some useful information from her digressions. He learned that Bobbi was a divorcee living three miles from Henry Bourque's federal prison in upstate New York. She answered the phones at an advertising agency by day, and tended bar at night. She had met Henry through the mail, somehow, became his pen pal, and then quickly his wife.

When her story was finally over, Eddie interjected, "Did you come all the way to Lowell just to see me?"

She gave a devilish grin and lifted one eyebrow. "Now you are a treat, Edward, but I'm here for my own benefit-and my husband's, of course."

"I don't understand."

"Your brother asked me a long time ago to look up your byline every day."

"He did?"

"When I saw your story on that medical examiner who lynched himself, I knew I had to come."

"Dr. Crane?"

"That's the one." She shifted at the table and leaned closer. Her makeup was meticulous, like it had been applied by Michelangelo. "I read on the Internet that you found him swinging in the breeze." She caught herself. "That's an expression, I don't mean to sound cruel, though I am furious at that so-called doctor."

Eddie looked into his coffee mug. "It wasn't breezy where I found him."

She put her hand on his. Her nails were painted pink. "It's terrible, I'm sure. Suicide always is." She patted his hand. "It was suicide, wasn't it?"

Eddie shrugged, distracted by the memory. "That's what it looked like to me, though I got a cop friend who suspects otherwise."

She put her hand to her lips. "Oh...why would the police suspect that?"

Eddie bristled. Had he said too much? He barely knew this woman. She didn't feel like his sister-in-law any more than Henry Bourque had felt like a brother. "I dunno," he said, trying to shift the subject. "What about Crane's death made you come here?"