Into the Inferno by Earl Emerson

double-wide trailer that was in a constant state of disrepair. He was one of those men who had so much trouble staying organized, he would be living on the streets if not from the periodic help of family. Besides burglaries, Max Caputo had been arrested for shooting deer out of season, bearbaiting, and allegedly killing one of his neighbor’s dogs by feeding it a quarter stick of dynamite.
    You had a neighbor like Caputo, you kept the police on auto-dial.
    He lived like a hermit, taking in the occasional unkempt live-in girlfriend, most of whom didn’t last more than a week and served mostly as drinking companions or drug connections. He was a small, wizened man who appeared to be in his midfifties but who, at thirty-three, was actually a year younger than me.
    When I pulled the fire engine into the circular dirt drive, Caputo’s two Dobermans tried to hang themselves on their chains, standing on their hind legs, barking, two of the most vicious dogs you would ever see. Two years earlier one of our volunteers had been bitten when we’d come out here after Caputo somehow put a crossbow dart through his thigh. Caputo claimed the dog had only
grabbed
the volunteer, prompting Newcastle to quip that he didn’t know Dobeys had opposable thumbs. Six months later when Caputo accidentally shot himself with a handgun, another volunteer got bit.
    Today Caputo was shirtless, covered in blood, sitting on the front step of his trailer home holding his left hand, his fist wrapped in a bloody white T-shirt. A table saw was still powered up and whirring in the yard. When the weather allowed, Caputo kept his power equipment on wooden blocks in the front yard, fending off the rain with tarps stamped UNIFIED FISHING TACKLE . If you’re missing a table saw, we know where it is.
    “I think we were followed,” Ian Hjorth said, glancing out the driveway at the road.
    “Karrie already tried that one.”
    “No. I really think we were followed.” Nobody could play straight man better than Hjorth.
    It was hard to hear anything between Caputo’s yelling at the dogs and their barking.
    Max Caputo had sliced off the last three fingers on his left hand. By the time he’d gotten his dogs chained up and phoned us, he’d deposited a pretty fair blood trail.
    When Karrie took his blood pressure, Caputo fainted. And then, as if the barking had all been a show for their master, the dogs grew silent.
    Ian stanched the flow of blood while I retrieved the fingers from the table saw and dropped them into a plastic bag. After the medics arrived, we helped them get a line into Caputo and put him onto the stretcher.
    We cleaned up the blood on the floor of the trailer, unplugged the table saw, turned off the radio and two TVs that were blaring inside the trailer, fed the dogs, and locked up.
    Before we left, Ian said, “I wonder if I could get those fingers back. You know? If they’re not going to sew them back on?”
    “What do you want with them?”
    “Well, two of ’em I’d tie on a string and hang in the doorway of the garage for the cat to play with. The pinkie I want to put in Ben’s coffee.”
    Karrie said, “Ugh! That’s sickening.”
    I couldn’t help laughing, not at the joke, but at the demented Jack Nicholson look on Ian’s face.
    The station was empty when we got back, no sign of Stan Beebe or his truck. Or of the mayor. I couldn’t believe it.
    After we scrubbed down, I dialed Beebe’s house, but nobody answered. I told Ian where I was going and took a portable radio, intending to seek out Mayor Haston in the city offices next door to the fire station.
    “What happened?” I asked Haston in his office. “Where’s Stan?”
    “He wanted to leave.”
    “And?”
    Haston shrugged. “He wanted to leave.”
    “You let him?”
    “Yes.” Even at the best of times, Haston and I had never been friends. I hadn’t hung out with him when he was a volunteer, and after Chief Newcastle threw him out of the department, I didn’t miss