Deadline(115)

            From the front of the house, Shrake was yelling, “Get out of there! Virgil, get out of there.”

            Virgil took one more step, holding his shirt to his nose and mouth against the smoke, and saw that the living room had become a furnace, six-foot-high flames eating through the old knotty-pine walls. Both Shrake and Jenkins were screaming at him, and he backed up, decided that running was better than walking, and ran out of the place.

            The woman was shouting, “Get Wayne, help Wayne, get Wayne.”

            She’d moved to the edge of the yard and was peering in horror at the tiny one-room upper floor, and windows began popping around the house. No sign of D. Wayne Sharf. Shrake ran around to the far side of the house, and a second later, shouted, “Virgil! Virgil! Here!”

            Virgil ran that way. The upper floor had a window in it, which was open, and dangling from the window was a thick bright-yellow nylon rope, the kind sold to apartment dwellers as fire escapes.

            “He set it on purpose,” Shrake yelled.

            Jenkins shouted, “Give me some light,” and dashed into the woods, to the east of the cabin. Virgil still had his jacklight and lit the place up again, and at the farthest extreme of the light’s penetration, saw the back of D. Wayne Sharf rapidly fading into the trees. Virgil ran after Jenkins, hoping to give him enough light to keep up the chase. Jenkins was a fast and nimble runner, and was pulling away from the light when he suddenly broke left, toward the creek, and Virgil pivoted that way. Then Jenkins burst through some trees and fell into the creek, with an impact like that of a breaching whale.

            Farther down the road a set of headlights swung off the highway and accelerated toward them, suddenly braked, swerved, and did a three-point turn. Virgil had a clear-enough sight line to see D. Wayne Sharf break from the tree line, run alongside the car for a few steps, yank open the door, and throw himself inside.

            The car accelerated away, turned left on the highway, away from Trippton, and was gone.

            Shrake had run down to the creek and shouted at Jenkins, “Backstroke, backstroke!”

            Jenkins stood up in knee-deep water and said, “Fuck you,” and, “Somebody’s got to call the fire department.”

            Virgil turned to look at Sharf’s cabin, which looked like a burning haystack, flames shooting up into the sky. He fished out his phone, but failed to get a signal. They were three hundred yards from the mouth of the valley, and he said, “You guys go collect that woman. I’m going to run down to the highway and see if I can get a signal.”

            But at that moment a man and a woman ran into the road from the opposite side of the valley, saw the three of them, and yelled, “We called the fire department, they’re on the way.”

            The three of them jogged past the neighbors, and Virgil said, “Call the sheriff, tell them that Virgil Flowers said we have a situation here.”

            “You sure do,” the woman said, and, “You’re a police officer?”

            “Yes. Tell him we need a couple of cars.”

            —

            WHEN VIRGIL, Jenkins, and Shrake got back to the cabin, the Chihuahua was gone, and so was the woman.

            “They’re on foot, so they’ve gotta be around here someplace,” Shrake said.

            Jenkins had taken his wallet out of his pants pocket and was pulling out damp pieces of paper, spreading them on a rock next to a weed garden. “Goddamn job, I’m gonna quit. That fuckin’ dog bit me twice. I’m putting in for disability leave, or maybe retirement.”

            “If you do that, you won’t be able to beat up people,” Shrake said.