gasses. These were sucked upstairs along with the smoke, into the bedrooms. The ceiling itself burst into flame, and as the temperature climbed past the 1600-degree level, a fireball rolled up the stairs to ignite the second story.
Travis, kneeling at the rear of the house, checked his watch. It had been eight minutes since he’d first struck the match, and he’d yet to hear so much as a single scream. Too bad. It took some of the fun out of things. Might as well go back home now. He should no longer risk being seen around here.
The sound of a window sliding up…must’ve been from around the side facing the widow’s house, the bedroom off the kitchen. Travis rose and, in a crouch, crept over to peep around the corner. He heard someone inside coughing harshly, deep wracking coughs. The screen popped out onto the ground and he saw a bare leg dangle out across the windowsill.
No way. None of them were going to screw up his average for the night. When he played, he played to win, and tonight he was going to nail them 100 percent. No prisoners, no quarter, no survivors.
He waited until two arms appeared outside the window, and then a head and shoulders. Travis surged around the side of the house like a charging rhino, bringing back his two-by-four like a baseball bat. The kid never saw it coming. Travis swung with everything he had, the end of the five-foot length of board catching the kid in the face with the sound of a bursting melon. It swatted him back through the window as easily as a fly.
He had to see. He just had to see.
Travis dropped the board and latched onto the windowsill, chinning himself up to peer through the open window. He grinned. The kid lay spread-eagle across his bed, face up, a thick flow of blood streaming from his mouth and nose. Such a lovely scene by firelight.
And then it all went wrong.
The kid must’ve been storing fireworks in his room, the ones they’d been shooting off earlier, because something in a box on the floor erupted like a colorful volcano. A burst of green and red sparks showered in front of his eyes, and Roman candles shattered the window and sizzled his cheek. Travis dropped to the ground but by this time it was too late, way too late, and he could barely see to grope his way back home.
He stumbled in through his back door, one hand clutching at his cheek. Beneath his fingers, the skin felt hard and ragged. He made his unsteady way into the bathroom, flipped on the light. Son of a bitch! Two angry raw trenches had been seared across his left cheek, and his eyebrows and short bangs had been crisped, and flecks of ash and soot stained his cheeks and around his eyes. And the pain! It felt like a thousand hot needles were probing at his face. He splashed water onto his face, cool soothing water, to wash away the flashmarks. The rest he was stuck with for a while.
Dizzy, he grabbed a beer in the kitchen, pressing the cold can to his cheek as he returned to his bed to collapse once more. Just rest a few moments, think of what to do next, everything would take care of itself, so long as he could grab a little shuteye.
The last thing he heard before he fell asleep was the cluster of sirens, coming closer, closer, louder.
In the end, it could’ve been the perfect crime. Travis hadn’t been particularly stealthy about it. He could’ve been seen by another neighbor, although this wasn’t the case. In the smoking ruin of the house, investigators found nothing to indicate arson. To the contrary, they found a shattered liquor bottle next to the remains of the couch and a horribly charred body, along with a heavy glass ashtray. Telltale signs of carelessness that had ended in tragedy.
But outside the house they found a length of two-by-four, unburned and clearly not part of the structural framework. Upon closer examination, they found it tainted with a small amount of blood and tissue and mucus.
The perfect crime, if not for the fireworks.
Police and arson investigators began