Pulse in the Tragus

What was I thinking?

The stairwell made a natural chimney and drew smoke from all over the first floor.

I had to move if I wanted to breathe.

The air was already starting to get thick as I made my way to the closet-within-a-closet that had been my hidey-hole.

I tore a strip from one of the old drapes and took it to the nearest bathroom to saturate it in water. When I was certain it wouldn't hold any more, I tied the cloth over my mouth and nose. It helped a bit.

Back to the closet for a quick equipment check.

Nothing I couldn't live without.... The cellphones.

An idea quickly formed in my head.

I turned on one of the phones and scanned for an unsecured WIFI connection within range. They used to be a lot easier to find...; got it.

I quickly connected both phones and then activated their video chat features.

Holding both phones in front of me I saw four of me, each not quite able to make eye contact.

One more adjustment and I had a wireless surveillance system.

I put one of the phones so that it had a clear view of the top of the stairs and I took the second one and my hammer and headed for the third floor work room and that open window.

It was getting harder to breathe.

Each step on that flight of stairs felt like a flight all by itself. By the time I reached the third floor, I felt like I had run up the stairwell of a medium sized office building.

I looked up toward the skylight and could see smoke starting to accumulate along the ceiling.

I kept close to the floor as I made my way toward the back of the house. All the time, one eye glued to the screen of the second phone.

Nothing.

This guy was good. He wasn't just going to give himself up.

Back now in the third floor work room: my own version of a killing jar.

I needed a place to hide, so if he made it this far, I could be certain it would be no farther.

There was a little half-height closet stuck under the roof line. It was the sort of place where you might put your suitcases and holiday decorations. It wasn't good for much else, but it was good enough for me.

I crawled in and pulled the door closed behind me.

It was pitch black inside closet except for the flickering glow of from the cellphone.

It was pretty impressive, the amount of detail that little camera could capture.

I could tell, for example, that the fires I had started had really taken hold. The bowed wall behind the staircase, with its heavy texture of parging, reflected the orange and yellow flames burning two floors below and also the cast shadows of the stair railing and hard edges between it and the flames.

Every so often a lick of flame would wander into the camera's field of view.

Every so often something would fall from the walls or the ceilings and the rush of air would send a cloud of smoke billowing up through the stairwell.

What didn't get sent up the stairwell was my quarry.

Where was he?

Even with the damp cloth over my face, it was getting stuffy in that closet.

The image from the second-floor camera was becoming more abstract as the flames got bigger and the smoke thicker.

It was strangely beautiful and hypnotic: light and dark danced in partnership with color and contrast; order with chaos; beauty with danger.

What was that?

A shadow passed close to the camera.

I saw something, but I don't know what it was and there was no way to roll back and take a second look.

Could have been something, could have been nothing.

No way to tell.

I dropped one hand from its death-grip on the phone and sent it on a journey into the dark to find the well-worn handle of the hammer. When the time came, it would come quickly.

I knew I was breathing heavily because the cloth I had tied to my face a few minutes earlier, was now mostly dry and virtually useless.

I could feel my pulse in the tragus of my ears. I almost didn't hear the sound of the approaching sirens.

If I Had a Hammer

I had no idea how long the window had been unlocked.  For all I knew, the owners had left it open, or the agent may have opened it on their last walk-through, or....

I had to search the house again and carefully.

Christ, someone was in the house and the dog didn't say or do anything.

We were sitting ducks.

Where to begin?

If I started on the third floor, there was always a chance that I would end up flushing them out at street level door and I would lose operational intel.

If I started in the basement, they would have fewer options.  I couldn't keep them in the house, but I could slow them down if they tried to leave.

I pulled myself to my feet and headed downstairs.  I wasn't so worried about noise now:  time was the real issue.

The dog looked at me suspiciously as I called him and we continued to the basement.

Crowded in a back corner of the basement, in space that no one had any other use for, was the workshop.

It wasn't so much a shop as a closet, but it was clearly that part of the house where material possessions went to be "fixed."

It was such a mess that the owners were leaving it as a present for whoever bought the house.  It was as if, rather then tackle the aggregated hardware and building materials, out-of-date small appliances and half-used cans of paint, they left the room as a kind of time capsule history lesson.

There were crude shelves, assembled out of old cabinet doors and what ever other pieces of found wood, crammed with dust-coated glass baby food jars; each jar was full of random brads and screws and nails and nuts.

The workbench, made as it was from a cut-down door and a pair of wooden packing crates, was covered in several layers of house parts--door knobs, drawer pulls, hinges and hooks--and specialized tools bought for a single job and then never put up nor thrown away--tile nippers, a keyhole saw, a brush to clean copper pipe fittings.

The peeling labels with the red borders and the scalloped corners had been intended to organize this briar patch of a workshop, but were instead their own benchmark.  They showed how far that effort progressed and how long ago it had stopped. 

I pawed through the piles and stacks looking for anything I could use to secure the house.

Under the bench, I found an old homemade toolbox. It looked like the kind we made in wood shop with low sides, high ends and a piece of closet rod for a handle.  It was full of large, flat-bladed screwdrivers.  Buried under the screw drivers was a rusty wooden-handled curved claw hammer.

It had possibilities.

I stuffed my pockets full of the largest nails I could find.
 
The dog didn't appreciate being in the basement.  He kept brushing up against my leg.

There were a surprising number of windows in the basement.  Many were too small for anyone to get through, but I didn't want to fuss with them.

I made another sweep of the basement before dragging the dog to the first floor.  I closed the door behind me and nailed it shut.  I set the nails as deep as I could.  Somebody wanted the door open they were really going to have to work at it.

And I nailed both sides of the door.  I wasn't going to have my work undone by somebody coming along behind me and pulling the hinge pins and opening the door against the nails.  No sir, this was not my first rodeo.

The first floor seemed epic in scale compared to the basement.  Lots of places to hide.

The dog watched me nail the front door closed.  It wasn't easy to do:  those old houses had thick hardwood doors encased in generations of paint and were not at all accepting of having nails driven through them.

When I was done, I stepped back, pleased with my work.

The dog leaned his head against my knee.

He made a good point:  my plan may have been tactically correct, but it wasn't really dog-friendly.  There had already been too much collateral damage.  

Before disabling the sliding door in the kitchen, I made sure the dog was on the outside.  I told him to go home, but I had never taught him that command, so I didn't know what he would do, I just knew it wouldn't be safe for him if he stayed with me.
 
Now, what to do about all those first floor windows...?
How to keep my quarry in the house? 

I didn't have enough nails.

I had to force him to the upper floors.

And then it hit me.

Back to the kitchen.

In no time, I had what I needed and then it was simply a matter of going from window to window and striking a match.

I could feel the heat of the fire on my back as I made my way to the staircase.

Oh he was free to leave, but he was going to have to go through me to do it.