Double Life of a Cell Block King novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Katie's Choice

Pell Street was full of people in nightclothes holding garden hoses.

The fire had started at the back, in the kitchen, and it had eaten the pantry and the yellow tablecloth before the first truck arrived.

Now the firefighters were soaking the roof, and the whole block smelled of wet smoke.

Katie stood on the sidewalk in a green velvet dress and a borrowed coat, with her hands over her mouth.

I stood next to her, and I could not think of one thing to say.

The old woman from next door sat in a lawn chair with the beagle in her lap.

"I told them," she said to nobody. "I told them the minute I smelled gas."

"Where's the ledger?" I asked.

"It was in my flour bin, where you left it." She lifted the canvas bag that smelled of bread.

"I took it out an hour ago and packed it in here. I'm eighty-six, I'm not stupid."

She handed me the bag.

I held it against my chest.

Down the block the landlord's men had a man pinned on the curb.

He wore a dark jacket, and a red gas can lay beside him, and a boot rested between his shoulder blades.

"Found him going over your back fence," the landlord called. "He's got a phone too."

I looked at the phone in his hand.

It had the same contact in it, saved as D.

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