“What the hell is that?” Carling put her finger on a bright spot of white in the screen.

“Watch,” Jennings said, and turned the sound up.

Jim, I’m not sure what we’re seeing now—the crowd is panicking, running for the exits—I think that’s—yes, that’s the paramedics coming down the aisle now—Jim, can you—camera two, can you focus on—yes, thanks. There you see the paramedics approaching, and there’s the man who’s down. You can still see the fire on his back, my God, he’s still burning, it’s unbelievable—

“They didn’t catch the beginning of it,” Jennings said. “Just started showing him when he came down the stairs burning.”

“Where is it?” Carling demanded.

“Dallas. Dallas, Texas. Stars versus the Mighty Ducks.”

On the screen, the picture froze and blacked out, replaced almost immediately by a slow-motion image of a man wrapped in flaring white flames, staggering like a movie monster. A vendor in a blue and white apron fell backward, mouth open in a silent O of astonishment, spilled popcorn a white halo around his head.

Okay, folks, here’s the original picture we had of this terrible tragedy—looks to me like he’s already fully on fire here—could this be some kind of publicity stunt gone wrong, do you think?

Greg, I certainly hope that’s not the case. As you can see from the slow motion, he continues to go down the stairs—sorry about the picture quality—and people are beginning to realize something’s wrong—some of them must think it’s a special effect because they aren’t moving—Greg, what is that, do you think? There, hanging off of him?

Uh, Jim, I don’t think we should go into that right now. That looks like the remains of a sports jacket he’s wearing, wouldn’t you say? Maybe a business suit?

The slow-motion footage cut back to real-time and the jittery motion of a hand-held camera, as it panned the faces of hockey players pressed against plastic, staring. The camera panned down to a team of paramedics working feverishly on a lump of red and black, no more fire, just meat.

Carling said quietly, “The cat’s out of the bag, gentlemen. We’re out of time.”

On the screen, announcers continued a feverish play-by-play.

Uh, Jim, perhaps we’d better update our late-tuning viewers. Folks, we’re at Reunion Arena in Dallas, Texas, where the Stars-Mighty Ducks game has just been tragically interrupted by a man who appeared to burst into flames—

That’s right, Greg, he appeared to burst into flames at the top of the stairs and run down toward the ice, collapsing near the bottom and sparking a panicked rush for the exits—we have people wounded in the crush—we don’t know the condition of the man who caught on fire—Greg, what exactly do we know right now?