Making her way slowly and circuitously across town, traffic re-routed as State Street is closed for Freakfest, the city’s annual Halloween party, Detective Nora Fox pulls up in the street outside Brogan’s and goes in, and of course the place is jammed. Even so, at the door she catches the Dolly Parton lookalike, what’s her name, Karen Cassidy, catches her eye straight off where she stands at the bar, and Nora gives her the chin uplift, meaning hello, we need to talk, and the pint-size bottle blonde not alone does not acknowledge, she turns her back on Nora, and is very, very busy mixing some drinks. Nora, for want of a more felicitous expression, has had enough of this shit, and powers her way through the partying hordes like a football tackle in a bad mood. By the time she gets to the bar, she is in a bad mood herself, so when Karen Cassidy emerges from behind it with two exotic looking drinks, a sparkler fizzing in each one, and says, ‘I told you before, lady, I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ it’s nothing more than reflex for Nora to pluck the sparklers out of their glasses and douse the fizzing ends in the drinks.
‘The name is Detective, Dolly,’ Nora says.
A little crowd is gathering around them now.
When Karen looks like she’s going to do something very stupid indeed, like toss one of the drinks in Nora’s face, Nora grabs her by the wrists and pulls her face close.
‘Listen to me. They’re going to burn your boss to the ground, him and his wife and his kids, and they’re going to do it tonight, do it now, and you won’t raise a finger to stop them, all because of some misplaced bullshit sense of loyalty and protectiveness. I know there’s someone he stays with, another family member, someone who minds the kids for him. Tell me who it is.’
‘Who is “they”?’ Karen says.
‘People from his past. People who’ve already murdered two men. People who don’t care what they do, to Danny, to Claire, to those kids.’
And Karen bites her lip and squints through her false eyelashes and says, ‘Donna, his sister. In Cambridge. I’ll get you the address.
Once everyone is in through the gates of the Brogan property on Arboretum Avenue, Dee leads Barbara and Irene into the house, telling them they’re going to find their parents. Then Dave Ricks and Charlie T secure the gates with chains and rocks. There’s a picnic table with benches attached in the garage. Dave and Charlie T haul it out and set it up in the middle of the backyard. Then they carry Claire and Danny out of Donna’s car. They are both still unconscious, although Danny is showing signs of life. Dave and Charlie T sit the Brogans up at the table, facing the back of the house, so they have a clear view of the tower where Claire has her den, and they tie their hands and feet to the bench and the metal struts that affix the seat to the table. Then Dave gets a can of gasoline from the trunk of his car and starts to anoint the backyard with it.
Meanwhile, Dee is ushering the girls toward the tower, which is the only room that has any furniture left, although of course that’s not why she wants them up there.
‘Where’s Mommy?’ Irene says.
‘Where’s all our stuff?’ Barbara says.
‘This way,’ Dee says, sending them ahead of her up the spiral staircase, and sure enough, they go because they think they will find their stuff, and their mommy, and their daddy, and once they’re up, Dee shuts the trap door on them and runs the bolt on it. The sound of Irene can be heard almost immediately, wailing and howling from above.
It’s difficult to discern what emotion flickers across Dee’s face as she descends the stairs, what new Dee face this might be. Grim Resignation, perhaps. It is as if she has been playing a part her entire life, and this is the final performance. When she emerges from the house, Dave Ricks hands her a full-face witch’s mask with pointed hat, and Dee pulls it over her head quickly, as if it is a relief to be able to hide inside it.
As she does so, Dave lights a fire cracker and sets the lawn ablaze, the flames in spider and skull and snake patterns, just like long ago.
Detective Nora Fox has discussed the case with her sergeant, Don Burns, and he has referred it to Les Christopher, the West District Captain, who hums and haws about getting Cambridge PD involved. Nora says what they need is the Emergency Response Team and the captain says deployment of a SWAT team is going to need more than what they’ve got, which, all due respect, is hunches and guesswork, and Nora says in the time it’s taking they could be there and Christopher says, well then, go. Go. Nora Fox and Ken Fowler ride together, and they cover twenty miles in fifteen, just under twenty minutes, and when they get to Donna Brogan’s house overlooking Lake Ripley, the Halloween lights are on and there’s nobody home.
‘Colby,’ Fowler says quickly, neither of them wanting to confess their blunder to Don Burns or Les Christopher, and as they turn the car around and head back toward Madison, Nora calls Officer Colby, who is in State Street on Freakfest duty, and she authorizes clearance from his sergeant to release him so he can go check out the Brogan house on Arboretum Avenue.
Oh, it is a spectacular now. The backyard is ablaze, and Dave with his werewolf head moves between skull and spider and snake, light on his feet; you would be forgiven for thinking he was dancing. Danny has come to, his face a mess, his nose swollen, maybe broken, matted blood on the back of his head. At first, when he sees the flames in front of him, he thinks he is having a nightmare. And this feeling does not change when he understands that it’s all too real, when he looks up to the tower window and sees his daughters framed within it, their faces contorted with panic and fear. He rocks the bench, straining against the ropes that bind him tight, and his movements bring his wife to her senses. When Claire sees where they are, and where the girls are, she begins to scream.
Officer Colby can tell before he gets out of his cruiser that there’s a fire. The big wrought-iron gates are barricaded and he can’t get in, but there’s nothing stopping him dialing 911, which he does, and specifying that he’s a police officer (because the number of crank and panic and otherwise unnecessary calls on Halloween always puts the switchboard operators on their guard) and requesting an immediate call out, with danger of a forest fire in the Arboretum.
Then Colby goes to the trunk of his vehicle and gets an axe and lays into the centre of the gates, working to remove whatever obstructions are blocking entry. When brute force doesn’t work, he finds footholds in the brickwork to the side of the gates and scales up and on to the wall, and it is there that a masked Charlie T, who has heard the policeman trying to breach the gates, shoots him dead. Colby’s body drops on the inside of the wall, and Charlie nods his El Diablo head.
Dave takes Claire’s screams as his second cue, and produces two fire bottles from his SUV and lights one and offers it to Dee, but she shakes her head, her latex witch’s head. Dave, in his werewolf mask, shrugs and flings the lighted bottle at the house and the flames shoot up the ground-floor wall and catch on the patio doors and the house is on fire.
Claire has stopped screaming, is sobbing, unable to let her head fall because she is trying to maintain eye contact with her children in the tower. Danny is shouting something at Dee, it’s hard to make out what, hard to hear above the roar of flames.
Dave, with his werewolf head, stands amid the flames like the conductor of an orchestra, like an ancient fire starter, swaying in the haze of heat and light and smoke. Danny is still shouting, and Dee, with her witch’s head, comes closer. Danny is gesturing with his head, shaking it in the negative and then pointing it toward Dave, and Dee turns to Dave, and then back to Danny and shakes her head, and Danny goes through the same routine again, his head bobbing faster and more vigorously, and we can almost hear what he’s saying but not quite, something about Dave throwing the fire bottle and not him, and this time Dee stays with Danny for longer, a witch staring at a man with a bloodied, battered face, and all the while Claire is breathing fast and deep, trying not to cry so Danny can be heard.
Barbara and Irene, at the window, as the smoke raises and the flames approach the sill. Their little faces.
Now Dave, with his werewolf head, lights a second fire bottle and walks toward the picnic table and offers it to Dee. Claire screams at the sight of it. Dee takes the flaming bottle and turns to Dave and says something to him. He raises his hands in the air, as if to dismiss her. She catches his arm, and there is an exchange between them, her voice harsh with passion, his hoarse with jubilant disdain, the yard aflame behind them, the witch and the werewolf center stage in a Halloween inferno. He shakes her hand away and puts some steps between them, and gestures toward the window in the tower, and then at Danny and Claire, and then opens his arms wide to span the entire scene, as if this should be answer enough for her. Dee’s head is bowed and she turns away, as if conceding the point, and then she swings right around and hits Dave full in his werewolf face with the bottle, and the glass smashes and the flaming gasoline envelops his mask and his head so quickly you can barely hear him scream. Dee wheels off, one of her own hands on fire, and runs toward the garage, flapping her arm to try and extinguish the flames.
Charlie T, still in his horned devil’s head, is standing, gaping. The burning gas spreads in an instant, until Dave’s body blazes. He staggers around the yard, a wolf on fire, crazed with pain, limbs flailing. Charlie T lifts his gun and shoots him twice.
Dee is nowhere to be seen. The sound of sirens can be heard in the distance. Charlie T takes a knife from his coat and cuts the cords binding Claire and Danny. Claire runs immediately toward the blazing house. As soon as Danny has his hands free, he lurches at El Diablo, who counters with the Steyr, swinging it in front of Danny’s face and then holding it on him. Danny stands a moment longer, then turns and follows Claire into the flames. Charlie looks around the yard, then in the direction of the back gate through to the Arboretum, and moves briskly out that way, and so, away.
The fire has not really caught at the front of the house. Claire shoots up the spiral stairway and pops the trapdoor, and the children come tumbling, and Claire lifts them down and passes them to Danny, trying to make them stop hugging her and clinging to her so she can let them down, trying to stop herself hugging them and clinging to them so she can stop feeling so very, very afraid.
They come out on to the lawn, the Brogan family, kissing and crying and coughing and not wanting to let each other go. There’s a fire truck at the gates, and the cops are there too, and no one can get in; they’re honking their horns and shouting out the Brogans’ names. Danny loosens his hold on the others and walks across to the gates, and starts to unwind the chains and remove the rocks, and then he hears Claire cry out, telling him to stop. He turns back and goes to her. She’s holding the girls close, her cheeks blackened and tear-stained.
‘Let it burn, Danny,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘Let it burn.’
‘Your stuff,’ Danny says. ‘All your memories. And the letter from your folks. To tell you who you really are.’
‘Who I was,’ Claire says. ‘I know who I am. Let it all burn.’