A Fire in the Night Read online

  A FIRE IN THE NIGHT

  A NOVEL

  CHRISTOPHER SWANN

  To Mom.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my agent, Peter Steinberg at Fletcher & Company, for his advice and encouragement.

  Thanks to my editor, Jenny Chen, for making me a better writer. Thanks also to Madeline Rathle, Melissa Rechter, Rachel Keith, and the rest of the great team at Crooked Lane Books.

  Thanks to Henry and Dorothy Conkle for being my grandparents, and for letting me work summers in the real Carolina Mountain Shop.

  Thanks to my mother, Nancy Swann, for answering my random questions about Cashiers, Highlands, Whiteside Mountain, and the surrounding area. Love you, Mom.

  Thanks to the Hudson Library in Highlands, North Carolina, for supporting me and other authors. I took a few liberties with the layout of the library for dramatic purposes.

  Thanks to Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School for continuing to support my writing habit.

  Thanks to my neighbor Mark, retired U.S. Marine, for answering my questions about the Marines and mercenaries.

  Thanks to Brian Panowich for his friendship and unflagging support, and for being a great audience when I shared the idea for this book over dinner at the Dallas Bouchercon in 2019.

  Thanks to my readers for making it possible for me to keep writing books.

  And as always, thanks to my wife, Kathy Ferrell-Swann, for helping to make my dreams come true. I love you.

  The gap of danger where the demon waits

  is still unknown to you. Seek it if you dare.

  —Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney

  CHAPTER ONE

  The cabin sat at the arrowpoint of a narrow lake, moss carpeting the shingled roof in patches of juniper and verdant green. Beneath the moss the shingles were gray and weathered, some bleached nearly white. But the roof still held. A stacked-stone chimney jutted up from the back. The cabin’s windows were dark but clean. The solid front door would not have looked out of place at the entrance to a stone tower. To the left, a covered porch held a cord of split wood, stacked and seasoned; at the other end of the house, a dusty SUV was parked under a carport. A short stretch of grass sloped from the back of the cabin to the lake, where the lawn curled sharply down to the dark water’s edge, leaving no shore or beach. Rhododendron bloomed at the edges of the lawn and stretched up the rutted, unpaved drive, tall oaks and beech and maple rising full and green above the rhododendron, the entire scene—cabin, lake, trees—sitting in the cradle of three mountains as if in the palm of a gigantic hand.

  The kitchen door opened and Nick stepped out into the carport, holding a bag of garbage. With his free hand he took a machete from a shelf by the kitchen door, then scanned the ground around his SUV. Satisfied, he walked to a trash bin at the back of the carport and dropped the bag of garbage in. He cocked his head, then headed to the front of the carport and looked up the gravel drive that ran into the trees. The low-gear whine of an approaching vehicle sent two squirrels scampering up a red oak. Presently a white Ford Explorer nosed its way down the drive between banks of dark-green rhododendron. Stenciled on each door of the Explorer was a gold star and the word SHERIFF, underneath which in smaller letters was JACKSON COUNTY. The Explorer emerged from the drive into a small gravel turnaround at the front of the cabin and came to a stop. The engine cut off, giving the illusion that the afternoon quiet had returned. Nick remained under the roof of the carport.

  A man in the brown-and-khaki uniform of a sheriff’s deputy stepped out of the Explorer, closing the door behind him with a solid thunk. He was tall and stick straight, his hands large and knobby. He sized up the front of the cabin, then walked up to the front door and rapped on it. He closed his hands into loose fists as if bothered by their size.

  Nick stepped out from the carport. “Can I help you, Deputy?”

  The deputy, startled, took half a step back. His right hand dropped to his holster, although his fingers didn’t touch the butt of his revolver. Nick saw the deputy sizing him up: faded jeans, gray long-sleeved Henley, dark shaggy hair with threads of silver, the iron-colored blade in his hand.

  “Professor Anthony?” the deputy said.

  “Retired,” Nick said.

  The deputy frowned. “Sorry?”

  “I don’t teach anymore,” Nick said. “So you don’t need to call me Professor. But yes, I’m Nick Anthony.”

  The deputy glanced at the machete in Nick’s hand. Nick lowered the point of his blade to the ground, then leaned it against the wall of the house. “There’s a rattlesnake out here somewhere,” Nick said. “Heard it this past week. Just being careful, is all. What can I do for you?”

  The deputy took a moment to reorient himself, then took a step toward Nick. “My name’s Joshua Sams,” he said. “I think it would be better if we spoke inside, Professor.” He clasped both hands in front of him at his waist, like a penitent.

  Nick said nothing for a long moment. The deputy seemed content to wait. A blue jay gave a harsh cry from a nearby pine.

  Finally Nick turned to the house. “In that case, I’ll make tea.”

  INSIDE, NICK’S CABIN wasn’t terribly unlike any other cabin built by newcomers. A small foyer off the front door, a dining room opening on the right, a hall bathroom and then a bedroom to the left. Passing through the foyer to the back of the house, Nick and Sams entered a great room that included a den, breakfast table, and kitchen. A set of stairs against the central wall shared with the dining room led up to storage and a guest bedroom. A stone fireplace rose in the middle of the back wall; behind that was a porch that stretched the length of the house and looked out at the lake. The house was clean and well maintained but somewhat plain. The only personal touches were a crimson-and-blue oriental carpet in the den, a little tin statue of a knight on horseback on the fireplace mantel, and the books in piles on side tables, stacked on the floor next to the sofa, lined on a low bookshelf backed against the stairs, displaying their spines. These weren’t thrillers or coffee table picture books but hardcovers or trade paperback tomes: The Canterbury Tales, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, A Distant Mirror. Scholarly books, appropriate for a college professor of medieval studies. Aside from the books, the cabin almost looked like it could belong to a family from Atlanta or Charlotte driving up here in their SUV, kids tumbling through the rooms, maybe a dog.

  Almost, but not quite. It wasn’t because of the books, or how spartan the decor was, the furniture functional rather than elegant, the walls mostly bare of paintings or pictures. It had more to do with how quiet and still the cabin seemed, as if by simply walking into it Nick and Sams had disturbed something.

  In his kitchen, a long island between him and the deputy, Nick saw the man taking in the house, then looking through an entryway into Nick’s office, tucked into the back corner of the cabin. Several more books on built-in shelves lined the walls. Sitting on a desk in the office was a photograph of a woman, fair-haired and smiling at the camera, a happy moment captured. Nick could tell by the deputy’s expression that the man recognized the woman in the picture. Nick filled a teakettle with tap water and put it on the stove top, then rattled some mugs in a cabinet. “You like sugar, Deputy Sams? Honey?”

  “Honey and lemon, if you have them,” Sams said.

  “Lemon’s in the fridge,” Nick said. “Fruit drawer, one down.”

  Sams dutifully walked over and opened the fridge, darting another glance at the photograph on the office desk. The inside of the fridge was about as spare as the cabin—a carton of milk, a package of ground beef, a half-empty jar of marinara, a stick of butter, ketchup and mustard in the fridge door. Sams dug around in the fruit drawer, found a lemon that wasn’t yet soft. Nick placed a j
ar of honey on the counter next to a pair of mugs, a paper tag from a tea bag trailing from each.

  “Got a knife?” Sams said, holding up the lemon.

  With a nod, Nick indicated a block of knives next to the sink. Sams pulled a paring knife out of the wooden block and, with a clean cutting board, chunked the lemon into wedges. The counter top was wood, but the sink was a massive thing that looked like it had been carved out of a block of dark-gray stone.

  “Soapstone,” Nick said.

  “What?”

  “The sink. My wife liked soapstone, so we put in a farmhouse sink. Took four guys just to carry it into the house.”

  “Well,” Sams said, wiping his lemony hands on a dish towel, “happy wife, happy life.” As soon as he had spoken the words, he froze, his face blooming with shame. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was thoughtless.”

  Nick shook his head. “No worries,” he said. “And the saying is true. Generally.”

  They looked at one another for a moment, the silence broken by the teakettle’s whistle.

  WHEN THEY HAD finished preparing their mugs of tea, Nick led Sams to the breakfast table and sat at one end, his back to the office area. Sams sat next to him, facing the window that looked out on the lake. Beyond, Whiteside Mountain rose into the blue sky, a tiered shelf of stone cliffs. “Beautiful view,” Sams said. He sipped from his mug. “Thank you for the tea.”

  Nick’s mug sat to one side, untouched. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  Sams nodded as if Nick had brought up a difficult point. “I’m afraid I’m the bearer of bad news,” he said. “I would have called first, before coming out here, but—”

  “I don’t have a phone line,” Nick said, finishing Sams’s thought.

  Sams nodded again, then put his mug down on the table and gazed steadily at Nick. “It’s about your brother, Jay.”

  Nick gazed back, unblinking. “Is he in trouble?” he asked.

  “No,” Sams said. “I’m sorry to have to tell you. He died.”

  That hit home. Confusion, shock, and anguish played over Nick’s face. His gaze was unfocused for a moment, and then his eyes locked on Sams. The tone of his voice changed from polite to somewhere just shy of a command. “What happened?”

  “There was a house fire,” Sams said. “In the middle of the night. Your brother was doing some remodeling, putting in wood floors in his house. Had some cans of polyurethane, a couple of rags. Looks like there was a bad electrical outlet. Spark caught those rags on fire, pretty soon the whole house went up. That’s the initial assessment, anyway.” Sams said this last part lightly.

  Nick’s eyes bored in on Sams as if tunneling through him. “You said ‘initial assessment,’ ” he said. “Is there any reason to suspect something other than an accident?”

  “Can you tell me where you were yesterday?” Sams asked.

  Nick stared at Sams for a moment, then sat back and cleared his throat, disgusted. “I was here,” he said. “Lex Matthews came by to replace a gutter. He saw me. Made sure to show me the new gutter was working. I can get you the receipt if you like.”

  Sams shook his head. “That’s not necessary.”

  Nick tilted his head as if to look at Sams from a new perspective. “You already spoke to Lex,” he said. “You think someone set fire to Jay’s house?”

  “The police in Tampa said—”

  “Tampa?” Nick said. “Jay was in Tampa?”

  Sams frowned. “Where did you think he was?”

  “Last I heard he was in San Diego.”

  Slowly, Sams asked, “When’s the last time you saw your brother?”

  Nick leaned back in his chair. He was exhausted, worn. “It’s been a long time,” Nick said finally. “How did you find me, anyway?” When Sams said nothing, Nick continued, “Like I said, I haven’t seen my brother in a very long time. We weren’t … close. We have different last names. And if there was a fire, I’m guessing any records or address books burned up.”

  Sams considered him for a few more seconds. “Your brother’s lawyer,” he said. “In Tampa. He called the police after the fire, said your brother had listed you as his next of kin. Had your address too. Tampa PD called us, we said we’d touch base with you. They may have some questions for you.”

  Nick nodded absently, and then a thought struck him. “Was he alone? My brother? He’s married—”

  “I’m sorry,” Sams said. “His wife Carol died in the fire as well.”

  Nick turned his head to look out the back window, but all he saw was a blank emptiness beyond the glass. He heard Sams sipping from his mug.

  “How did they die?” Nick asked.

  The question caught Sams off guard. He coughed, then cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he said. “Went down the wrong pipe. Like I said, there was a fire. The whole house—”

  “Were they burned or did they asphyxiate?” Nick asked.

  Sams paused, his enormous hands now clasped together on the table. “They haven’t completed the autopsies yet,” he said.

  Nick nodded and closed his eyes briefly. “Can you let me know if you learn anything else?” he asked. He opened his eyes, and he knew Sams could see the pain in them.

  To his credit, the deputy didn’t flinch. “Absolutely,” he said. Sams stood, and after a moment so did Nick, their chairs scraping across the wooden floor. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” Sams said.

  Which one? Nick thought about saying in a burst of fury. Then, quick as a heartbeat, the thought was gone. He held out a hand, and Sams took it and shook.

  “There is one more thing,” Sams said. “The Tampa police only found your brother and his wife in the house.”

  Nick looked at him blankly. “I’m not following,” he said.

  Carefully, Sams said, “They didn’t find your niece.”

  Nick swayed for a moment as if physically buffeted by the news. “My niece?” he repeated.

  Sams considered him. “Annalise. Just turned sixteen. You didn’t know?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Nick shut the door behind the deputy and then stood in the foyer, head bowed, eyes closed. After several moments he heard the deputy’s SUV start up, then the crunch of gravel as Sams drove off, the sounds of the vehicle fading away into the trees. Nick thought about sitting down right there on the floor, maybe lying on the cool wooden boards. Instead he went back to the table, gathered the mugs, and washed them out in the kitchen sink.

  A niece. He was an uncle. Had been, apparently, for sixteen years. Goddamn it, Jay, he thought. He was too weary to cry. Over the past year he had cried enough for a lifetime. He wondered distantly if perhaps he was no longer capable of tears.

  Something shifted in his heart, rode beneath his skin. He stood in his kitchen for a moment, trying to understand what he was feeling. Sometimes his own emotions were a foreign language he had to decipher. Then the answer came: anger. He was angry. At Sams, for disturbing his morning. At Jay, for not telling him about his niece. For dying.

  He wasn’t sure if the mug slipped out of his hands or if he dropped it. The mug shattered in the soapstone sink. A piece flew up and stung his cheek. When he put a hand up to his face, his fingertips came away red.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake, he heard Ellie say in his memory. She would say it in an exasperated way at certain mishaps, even though she was usually smiling when she said it.

  That’s what I’m going to name your canoe, he would say. The FFS Ellie.

  She had always talked about getting a canoe, letting Nick paddle her around the lake while she trailed her fingers in the water. It was one of the few things he had not gotten for her, toward the end.

  I am not going to cry, he thought. I am not going to cry in my kitchen over a broken mug and another reminder of my dead wife. But it was too late, and he gave in to the tears, weeping over the sink, his palms flat on the counter, shoulders shaking almost gently.

  ACROSS THE LAKE, the mountain cliffs had cooled to gray as the sun slipped behind them i
nto the west, and when the sun set the cliffs vanished. Moonlight and starglow would often coax them out of the darkness, but it was a new moon and a front had moved in from Tennessee, bringing a cool breeze underneath a heavy mantle of clouds.

  Nick dropped another log onto the fire and watched the wood kindle, heard the water in the log squeak and hiss from the heat. Although it was June, the evenings could still be cool, and he preferred a fire. His laptop sat on a nearby ottoman, ostensibly so he could continue work on his newest project, a book on the Crusades that had stalled and proven difficult to revive. Instead, Nick poured a tumbler of whiskey, inhaled the scent of smoke and vanilla and sharp apple, and set the glass on a coaster next to his armchair. He gazed at the glass. It was a long-running contest—the idea was to try to convince himself that tonight would be the night he would take a sip. He wasn’t an alcoholic, didn’t have a drinking problem. It was more a kind of practiced asceticism, an active resistance to temptation. After a while, Nick picked up the glass and carried it to the sink. Not tonight.

  He poured the whiskey down the drain, and as he did so an image flashed in his memory: a spilled canteen, water gurgling out into the dirt. With an effort he willed the image away, focused on the problem at hand.

  One day. It had taken one day for the police to reach him. He knew part of that delay would be because he didn’t have a phone—he’d had the landline disconnected after Ellie died. He felt a swirling sense of guilt. He hadn’t been completely honest with Deputy Sams. He had not seen Jay in almost twenty years. But he had spoken to him by phone. Nick shut the door firmly on that memory; he didn’t need any more ghosts. But he wondered why Jay had listed him as his next of kin, and why Jay’s lawyer had felt compelled to call the police. With Jay and Carol’s daughter—Annalise—missing, maybe the police had made a bigger effort to find relatives.

  Something circled at the back of Nick’s mind, like an errant bat. He sat patiently until it revealed itself.