Free Testament by David Morrell

hands in his pockets, against the nearest fire engine.
    He walked slowly over, looking once more at the smoke and flames. “It’s just the garage,” he said. “From what I’m told, the house has a good chance to be saved.”
    He couldn’t answer. The wind changed and the smoke came drifting over, burning his nostrils and his throat when he breathed. He watched the bright orange flames bursting through the black smoke on top of the garage. He looked at Claire holding Sarah in the car. He looked back at Webster.
    “So how did they start it?” he managed to ask.
    “Don’t know yet. I came just after the trucks got here. One of the neighbors phoned the fire department.”
    “Did they see who did it? Enough for a description?”
    “I have a man checking on that. Actually I didn’t know about the fire until I got here. The reason I came out was to say that the teacher at the school gave us a description of the man who attacked your daughter, and we ran it through the files, and there’s no policeman on the force who matches it. I don’t know where he got the uniform, but I know he wasn’t one of us.” There were big black flakes of soot on his suit and face. “What’s the matter?” he said. “You look like you don’t believe me.”
    “I can’t tell who to believe anymore. My son is dead, my daughter assaulted, my home on fire. All that and the police won’t protect us, and—”
    “We’ll protect you now all right. The chief admits he was wrong, and he’s assigned a special detail to keep watch on you.”
    “Sure, and what if it’s one of your men who lent this other guy his uniform? What if that one is on the detail?”
    “You’ve got me there. We can’t very well have police come out here to watch the police.”
    “Then I’m right back where I started. Only worse.”

22
     
    “You can see where it started,” the fire chief said.
    The back wall of the garage was burned through in the middle, circled by char that was blacker than any place else except the beams from the roof. The rim of the circle was uneven, with black fingers splayed out in every direction. They waited while the firemen hosed down the smoking, hissing wood once more, and then they stepped carefully in among the pools of water and the rubble. The heat from the wet cracked cement floor came up through the soles of his shoes. Sarah’s bicycle was twisted, its tires melted. The stench choked him.
    “There,” the fire chief said. “You can see what I mean.” He was pointing at the broken glass on the back floor, then up to the charred design around the hole in the wall.
    He took a moment, and then he saw all right. “Molotov cocktail.”
    Mix one-third liquid detergent and two-thirds gasoline in a soft-drink bottle, cap it, and attach a rag . Sure. They drove up fast, got out, lit the rag, and threw the bottle against the garage’s back wall. The bottle shattered. The detergent stuck the gasoline to the wall and concentrated it like napalm. That’s why there was a hole in the wall and charred fingers out from it. That’s where the gasoline splashed and stuck.
    But he wasn’t only thinking it, he must have been saying it as well. Because the fire chief was looking at him, asking, “How come you know so much about it?”
     

23
     
    He had no other choice: they had to spend the night in the house. If they were going to be attacked anymore, he couldn’t let it happen in a friend’s house, or in a hotel where he wouldn’t know the routine and couldn’t be warned by something out of the ordinary. He waited in the car with Claire and Sarah until the fire chief made certain that the fire would not start again. Sarah was in too much pain to walk. He had to carry her into the house, and Claire did what she could to make the place look like it used to be. The stairs, the upper floor were pooled with water. The walls were black and stained with water. He put Sarah on the bed in his and Claire’s room. Her own room down the