CHAPTER 60

Antichrist attacks with fire, and shall be punished with fire.

Martin Luther

Homer had a dream that night about fire. It was an astonishing dream. There was God, awful, immense, towering up and up, filling the cosmos, his face dark and hidden under a flaming diadem. His crown was a vast ring of church spires, smoldering, blazing, sending up columns of black smoke against the stars. Rousing himself sleepily in the morning, Homer made up his mind to spend the day in the Boston Public Library trying to learn something about arson.

He didn’t find much that was of interest, beyond the fact that arsonists began young. As infant pyromaniacs they played with matches. They set fire to mattresses and wastebaskets and later on they lit bonfires in the drawers of their teachers’ desks. In ripened maturity they ignited automobiles and houses and people.

That was your garden-variety arsonist, the kind with a passion for flaming infernos. There was another kind, the respectable owner of a failed enterprise, who set his property ablaze as a matter of business. People like that experienced no thrill from sticking around to watch the flames mount to the heavens, they hastened from the scene to establish alibis a hundred miles away.

Which kind of arsonist had set the Church of the Commonwealth on fire, and perhaps also Rosie Hall’s car with the cadaver in the front seat?

Doggedly Homer abandoned the library and set out to find the headquarters of the Boston Fire Department on Southampton Street. His destination lay somewhere between Boston City Hospital and the Southeast Expressway. By the time Homer found it he had acquired a bashed fender and endured humiliation and contumely from the drivers of other cars, whose lanes he had wandered into in desperation, trying to turn left when he was on the right side of the highway, and right when he was on the left.

“Sure,” said the officer behind the information desk, “we’ve got a whole department of archives. Third floor, down the hall on the right. Sergeant Drum, he’s in charge.”

The room was full of file cabinets. A pink-cheeked kid in a blue shirt looked up from a computer as Homer walked in. “Sergeant Drum?” said Homer.

“That’s me.”

Homer introduced himself, and flashed his long-defunct card from the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County. “What I want to know is, do you have any sort of system, so you can trace fires that have similar characteristics?”

Sergeant Drum stood up. “Sure, we’ve got a system. Categories, you know? Warehouse fires, car fires, space heaters, insurance scams, everything cross-referenced. Like what have you got in mind?”

Impulsively Homer said, “Churches, have you got a history of fires in churches?”

“Oh, you bet. Churches burn down all the time. Painters using acetylene torches to remove old paint, flame gets under the clapboards, place burns down. Careless use of candles, you name it. Here, just a sec.”

He pulled out a file drawer and unfolded a printout. “See here, Baptist church, Shelburne, ten years ago, March seventeenth. Entire edifice one hundred percent destroyed, suspected arson, thirteen-year-old juvenile arrested, indicted, convicted, conviction suspended on appeal. Same kid, a year later, First Baptist, Thornton, ninety percent destroyed, fourteen-year-old served six months in a house of correction.”

“My God, what was the kid’s name?”

“Not listed here because it was a juvenile. Unfortunately the juvenile arsonist file”—Sergeant Drum made a face—“well, it no longer exists. My predecessor punched the wrong button and the whole thing went poof.” He clapped his hands to show the finality of the disaster. “I mean, that’s why I’m here. The poor klutz got fired.”

“Do you remember it, I mean in your head?”

“Sorry, I was in grade school at the time.”

“Well, maybe there’s somebody older who was here then, who might remember?”

“Wait a sec. I’ll get Heinrich, Fred Heinrich, he’s really old, been here since day one.” The pink-cheeked sergeant bounded out of the room and came back a moment later with Heinrich.

Homer had expected a bent and crippled old fossil. He was shocked to see that Sergeant Drum’s idea of an old man was this strapping fortyish youth in a pair of pink athletic pants tied around the middle with a drawstring.

“Well, I sort of remember,” said Heinrich. “It was architectural, that’s all I recollect. The name of the kid was kind of architectural.”

Homer pounced. “Castle? Was his name Castle?”

“Castle? Well, I’m not sure. Was he a juvenile ten years ago?”

Homer tried to remember the vague face of the organist he had met only once, a year ago, among a crowd of other people on the scorched balcony of the Church of the Commonwealth. Surely the man had been bald. Did some men go bald in their twenties? “I don’t think so, but I’m not positive.”

“Wait a minute,” said Sergeant Drum, “I’ll see if he’s in the regular file.” He bent over his file drawers again and snatched out another printout. “Hey, here he is, James Castle.”

“That’s it! James Castle!”

“House fire, One-two-one Mount Vernon Street, nineteen April, 1992. Inspector from the insurance company declared it was of accidental origin, problem with wiring, they paid up.”

“Anything else under Castle?”

“One other thing, Church of the Commonwealth, last year, fatal fire, one victim, careless smoking by pastor, Castle present at the time. That’s all on Castle.”

Homer racked his brain for more people with architectural identities. Then, with a pouncing sensation in his head, he remembered one. Softly and tenderly he said the name of the girl with the mysterious juvenile police record, the woman who might have been present in the Church of the Commonwealth after Kraeger and Castle had left it on the night of the fire. “Rosalind Hall?”

Sergeant Drum ransacked the file drawers again, and extracted another printout with a flourish. “Say, now you’re talking. Look at this, two entries, a couple more churches.”

Homer tried to restrain his excitement. “I thought you said the juvenile entries were lost.”

“These aren’t juveniles,” said Drum. He held up the printout for Heinrich to see.

“They’re not exactly arson,” said Heinrich, staring at it. “This one, Preston Falls Methodist, Christmas Eve service, five years ago, candles on the organ, music caught fire. Didn’t amount to much. Smoke damage to the ceiling, that was all.”

“My God, what’s the other one?”

“Wedding,” said Heinrich. “Candles again. Damnfool brides, they’ve always got to have candles.”

“Where was it?”

“Malvern,” said Sergeant Drum, running his finger along a line. “Church of the Holy Redeemer, destroyed a bunch of music. Organist couldn’t see without a whole row of candles, knocked over a couple. Same female, Rosalind Hall.”

“Interesting,” said Heinrich, “both fires started with candles. Arsonists, they usually establish a pattern. Like you’ve got your kerosene arsonists, they always use kerosene. Other people, they stick to a cigarette lighter, or maybe an acetylene or propane torch. Or like they ignite a bunch of oily rags, try to make it look like spontaneous combustion, only they use an accelerator, throw it out to spread the fire, you can tell what they’ve done. Those church fires a while back, in Shelburne and Thornton, that was really clever. The kid dissolved some kind of incendiary chemical in water, sprinkled it around, so when the water evaporated long afterward, the stuff caught fire when nobody was there. It was polka dots, like. Polka dots of combustible material. It flamed up in spots where the stuff was sprinkled.”

“Polka dots,” exclaimed Homer. “You mean those two church fires that were set by some kid with an architectural name? The one whose records were wiped out by mistake?”

“That’s right,” said Heinrich. “I was present at the Shelburne fire. I remember seeing the flames coming up in a lot of different places, just like, you know, polka dots.”

“What about the fire at the Church of the Commonwealth?” said Homer. “Was that polka dots too?”

“Don’t know. That end of the building was really ablaze by the time Engine 33 got there from Boylston Street. They managed to save the rest of the church, by some miracle. Great bunch of guys, Engine 33. They had a tower unit there too from Purchase Street and everything from Columbus Ave. One fatality though, right?” Heinrich shook his head. “Too bad.”

Homer left the headquarters of the Boston Fire Department half frustrated, half excited. Something was heaving and tumbling in his mind like a cat in a bag. Before long he knew what it was, the trash can in Rosie Hall’s back entry. It was full of ashtrays and candles.

Had she been throwing away the evidence of her interest in incendiary materials? Had she entered the church late at night, after Kraeger and Castle were gone, bringing along her innocent little candles, and set fire to the balcony?

Afterward, poor dear, she had been deeply distressed by the charred body of the sexton. The dear girl had only meant to cause a pretty blaze, she hadn’t really meant to kill anybody, and it weighed upon her mind and tormented her soul, and finally she couldn’t stand it any more, so she ran away.

Homer couldn’t help a bitter laugh as he drove cautiously back to Storrow Drive. Poor old Alan Starr with his fixation on the sweet girl in the photograph! Perhaps she was a pyromaniac, a killer, a careless abandoner and kidnapper of babies, a really ghastly woman after all.