chapter 47

word count: 2158

erik looked on in disbelief,, as adam walked to the end of the complex, and disappeared around the corner.. he immediately ran in the house and found his mother,, mixer in hand, diligently blending up a batch of duncan hines brownies.. 

“mom!!! mom!! adams gone!!”  erik gasped, clearly trying to catch his breath.. “he just took off, and he told me he would kill me if i followed him!!”

“he told you what?” lisa inquired, turning off the mixer,, sure that it’s whirr had obscured whatever it was she thought she had just heard.

“he said, “don’t follow me or i’ll kill you!!”  erik repeated adam’s words verbatim..

“oh my god.. i can’t believe he could say such a thing. i mean, i believe you and everything, but what on earth could he have been thinking??”  lisa’s mind raced faster than she could put the thoughts together.. 

“did he tell you where he was going?”

“no. he just said not to follow him,, and then walked away.. he just walked away, and kept on going..”

“ok, let me think.. we better go look for him.. i don’t wanna have to call grandpa and tell him adam just walked away, and we did nothing to stop it!!” 

together they jumped in the car and took off in the direction in which erik had seen adam disappear.. as they rounded the corner, they saw adam sitting, all alone on a cement bench at the bus stop.. lisa pulled the car up alongside him,, and rolled down the passenger side window.. 

“adam?? adam honey, what’s wrong?? what are you doing??” she pleaded with the sincerest of interest.. 

adam sat unmoved,,  glaring at erik with steely eyes.. 

“come here, honey,, and tell me what is going on,, ok?”

“nothing’s wrong. i just wanna go see my friend.”

“well, that’s totally ok,, you can go see your friend.. but couldn’t you have at least told me that you wanted to go?? i’m sure we could have worked something out. you scared me to death, just running off like that.” lisa paused, but when adam offered no reply, she continued..

“come on and get in the car.. we can call your friend, and if it is ok with his mother, i can drop you off over there for the night.. how would that be?” 

“well, i guess that would be ok.. but only if we can go to the dairy queen first.. we usually meet up there,, and i wanna see if he’s there.”

“ok.” lisa agreed tentatively, “but why don’t you come on and get in the car,, and we will call his house first.. i have my cell phone right here,, and  if he is not at home,, i promise i will take you to the dairy queen to look for him.”

 “well, ok,,” adam said, as he reluctantly got up off the bench and started toward the car,, his eyes still burning a hole straight through erik.. “but i would still rather just go to the dairy queen myself.”

once she had adam safely in the back seat, lisa dialed the number adam provided her with, and then handed the phone off to adam..  

“elliot?” adam spoke into the cell.. “what are you doing?”

the one sided conversation continued.. “nothing.. something happened to my mom and dad.”

“it’s a long story. i’ll tell you when i get there.”

lisa interrupted. “let me talk to his mother.”

“is your mom there?? the lady who is watching me wants to talk to her.”

“ok. well,, let her talk to him then.” adam concluded and handed the phone back to lisa.

“his mom’s not home,” he informed her, “just his step dad.. he’s going to get him.”

lisa waited patiently till john got on the line.. 

“hello??”

“oh, hi. i am lisa snodgass,, my father is hank bower, he works for  adam’s dad.. through some strange chain of events, both of adam’s parents had to be admitted to the hospital today, and...”

“no. no, i don’t know all the details.. all i know is adam’s father asked my dad to look after adam in his absence,, and since my dad is on the job, he left him with me till a more permanent arrangement can be made..”

“no problem.. i know exactly where that is.. “ lisa concluded the call, and dropped the cell on the front seat, as she pulled away from the curb.

the three of them rode in silence, as lisa made the short drive to elliot’s house.. she pulled up in front of the address she had been given, and said, “just call me tomorrow,, when you are ready to come home,, well i mean back to my house..”

her words fell on deaf ears, as adam exited the car without a word, and proceeded to slam the door shut behind him.. 

***

a great degree of planning had already gone into brenda’s plan to reduce the miller home and all of its contents to ashes.. not only had her years of experience on the job served her well,, as many a murder investigation begins with the discovery of a body at a crime scene that has been set ablaze in effort to eliminate any physical evidence that a homicide had in fact been committed,, but she had done her own extensive internet research as well..

knowing that she must work under cover of darkness,, in order to avoid detection,, brenda headed home to dress appropriately,, prepare her ‘kit’,, and wait.. 

her heart raced as she gunned the 92 bronco and pulled out of the hospital parking lot.. she still could not believe her good fortune.. the only thing that could have made today any better was if she had learned that buzz had become incapacitated as a direct result of the damage she herself had inflicted upon him that dark night when she had ambushed him in his own driveway.. 

whereas she couldn’t help but wonder by whom, how and why, buzz had been poisoned, as it related to her desired end result, none of that really mattered.. she couldn’t help but chuckle at the fact, that she had a silent partner in crime,, and that the part they were playing in her own agenda,, could only work to her advantage..

the fact of the matter was, that she was taking great pleasure in the fact that somebody else hated buzz enough to kill him.. not only did it reinforce her desire to ruin him and everything that he held dear,, but it lessened the chances that any suspicions raised by his ultimate demise, would ever fall on her..  after all,, she legitimately had nothing at all to do with the poising,, (although she secretly wished she had) and she remained steadfast in her belief that buzz would never have revealed the fact that they had carnal knowledge of each other to anyone.. to do so would have resulted in nothing short of career suicide.. 

and if there was anything about buzz, of which she was thoroughly convinced,, it was the fact that his prominent position within the department,, and the resulting reverence he enjoyed as a leader in the community, meant more to buzz than life itself.. there was absolutely no way he would ever knowingly do anything that would put any of his beloved renown in danger.. 

she laughed out loud, as she exited her vehicle, and thought to herself, ‘he should have fucking thought about that before he very literally screwed me over!!!’

***

at last the bewitching hour was upon her, and brenda was nothing, if not overly excited to get started.. dressed in black from head to toe, she carefully hoisted a black back pack to her shoulder and headed out the door.. 

she circled the block, just once so as not to attract any suspicion,, and made sure that the neighboring community was fast asleep before she turned off her headlights, and eased her bronco into the shadows of the miller family driveway.. she pulled on a back ski mask, grabbed her backpack,, and silently exited the vehicle,, headed toward the back of the house.. 

it was easier to remove the screens, and find an unlocked window than even she had imagined it would be. brenda lowered her backpack thru the open window and onto a waiting piece of furniture, she was soon to discover was buzz’s kid’s bed. she pulled herself up,, and slipped thru the window with ease, before pulling the screen tentatively back into the window box, closing the window,, and locking it securely behind her. 

she paused momentarily to reach into her backpack, and removed the laptop computer on which she had done all her research in planning this ever so perfect case of arson,, as it would never due for it to be found in her possession in the unlikely event she ever became suspect… she placed the laptop on athe kid's student size desk,, and made her way into the hall.

she had been to buzz’s house enough times to know the lay out by heart,, so she quickly made her way to the basement door and descended the stairs.. as she entered the laundry room,, she was pleased to be greeted by an abundance of dirty clothes that laid in a pile directly below the laundry chute..  that little wifey of his had evidently not been on top of the laundry in quite some time.. 

brenda had to work quickly.. she unzipped her backpack to reveal four balloons that she had painstakingly filled with gasoline earlier in the evening. each of them was connected to a length of twine with which she proceeded to use to attach the balloons to the laundry chute and the ceiling just over the pile of dirty laundry with duct tape..

satisfied that their strategic placement would not allow for more than one of them to burst at a time,, and in so doing run the risk of outing the flame before it really got going,, she proceeded to blow out the pilot lights on the hot water heater, the furnace, and the gas dryer, thus allowing for a slow stream of natural gas to fill the room..

she knew she had to act fast, so she chose two cotton pillowcases (as her research had revealed that cotton burns faster than any other form of fabric) from the pile of dirty laundry,, knelt down and ignited them one at a time,, allowing each to become fully engulfed in flame before she tossed her now empty black backpack on the pile of laundry and made her escape up the basement staircase..

it was a well laid out plan.. by the time the flames reached a sufficient height to melt the latex on the gasoline filled balloons, thus dispersing the accelerant that would produce a blaze intense enough to ignite the sources of natural gas she had exposed and create an explosion (of what brenda fantasized would be of epic proportion) she would be safely out the door,, in her vehicle,, and if her calculations were correct,, well on her way home..

unfortunately,, there was one item of extreme importance,, something that she could not possibly have known about,, and therefore could not have taken into consideration,, as she contrived what she was positive would result in this perfectly executed crime.. 

as luck would have it, just the day before,, adam and elliot had tracked tar (“god knows if anyone could find the one patch of wet tar in the whole city, it would have to be you two!” jeannie had frustratingly informed the boys as soon as she discovered it) all over the kitchen floor when they came in from school,,  and headed immediately for the kitchen in search of an afternoon snack..

jeannie had used an old hand towel and a great deal of kerosene to painstakingly remove the tar from not only the boys shoes,, but her ordinarily sparkling kitchen floor as well.. 

just as she was finishing up,, buzz had bellowed for her,, and in her haste to ward off any impending outburst that her tardiness might provoke from him,, she had inadvertently dropped the kerosene soaked towel down the clothes chute,, instead of sealing it in a plastic bag and disposing of it properly in one of the trash cans in the garage.  

before brenda had even made it up the basement steps,, the flames from the pillowcases had ignited the kerosene laden hand towel,, which burst into huge leaping flames,, and proceeded to melt through all the latex on the balloons,, causing the entire pile of dirty laundry to explode into flames.. 

as brenda reached for the knob on the back door of the house,, the volatile flames made contact with the slow flowing natural gas,, and the miller home exploded with such velocity,, that the door of their refrigerator would have to be extricated from a the wall of a neighboring garage..