Darger slid her phone back into her pocket and sighed. She pictured Beck’s happy little family of four, with number five on the way. Maple syrup disasters not-withstanding, Darger envied her. Because Darger? Darger had no one. Which was how she found herself here in this moment, drinking alone.
The bartender plopped a basket of fries down in front of Darger, shattering her thoughts.
“Ketchup?”
“Yes, please,” Darger said, taking the proffered bottle.
She’d been headed down an awfully mopey train of thought and was glad for the interruption. Self-pity wasn’t a good look.
Besides, she had more important things to think about.
She dunked a fry into a swirl of Heinz and considered the case. They’d ruled out Sablatsky, Camacho, and Murphy. So that only left a few million people in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.
And then it hit her: they’d landed on Sablatsky because of the fire outside of Camacho’s house. And then Murphy because he’d been inside The Blue Handkerchief.
They’d assumed after the Camacho fire that the arsonist was targeting the task force. Now she was certain of it. Not only that, but it seemed they had become his sole focus.
Her next thought sent goose bumps scuttling up her arms.
Who would be next?
She couldn’t resist the urge to glance around the bar, but it was mostly couples and small groups. She was one of only a few lone patrons, a thought that had her reaching for her glass again.
* * *
It was a good thing Darger had walked to the bar. By the time closing time came around, she was definitely tipsy, though not completely shitfaced. That would be irresponsible. This thought made her chuckle to herself, which left her wondering if she was possibly a little closer to shitfaced than she’d originally considered.
It took her three swipes of her room card before she got the timing right and opened the door before the green light turned back to red. Why’d they have to make hotel room doors some kind of rocket science, anyway? It was a Marriott, not Fort Knox.
Trying to remove her boots as she walked to the bed, she stumbled and fell against the side of the mattress, thudding to the floor.
She simultaneously wanted to laugh and cry. She settled for thumping her fist into the carpet and grunting.
She imagined the people in the room below hearing the sounds and envisioning some manner of wild sex. But no, it was just a depressed, drunken FBI agent having a temper tantrum.
Darger peeled her boots off the rest of the way and crawled onto the bed, not bothering to even get under the covers.
At some point, while she waited for the room to stop spinning, she fell into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 51
Carl huddles in the dumpster. Shivering. Too scared to move, Jim thinks. Probably rightfully so. The gun in Jim’s hand would be enough to scare anyone, wouldn’t it?
Jim had come to this decision on the ride back to Skid Row. The way he saw it, Carl left him no choice. He’d painted himself — perhaps both of them — into a corner.
Now Jim stands on the hood of his car to peer down on his partner for the night. He’d chosen a tall dumpster. Eight feet high or so. Smooth steel walls to contend with. If Carl wants out, he’ll have to work at it. Jim doubts any full-time crackhead could manage a single pull-up.
The gasoline drizzles down on the homeless man now. Dumping out of the bottle in little spurts with each shake he gives it. Muffled wet sounds rising from where the dribbles slap into the fabric of Carl’s clothes.
And it looks like the bum is crying, but it’s hard to be sure. Hard to tell the difference between what might be tears and the beads of gas streaking down his face, especially tucked down in the shade of the dumpster’s chamber.
A wad of muscles clench in Jim’s gut as he fishes in his pocket for the lighter. And he keeps waiting for Carl to say something. To beg. To plead. To pray.
But the man says nothing. Not so much as a single word. He just slumps there in the metal tomb, blinking, eyes fixed on the middle distance, piercing empty space.
Maybe he’s ready to die. Good to go. Maybe he’s made peace with it. He’s not quite all the way here, anyway, is he? Sleeping on concrete. Living from fix to fix. It’s not much of a life. So let it go.
Mixed emotions churning in his gut or not, Jim can’t help but feel the thrill creep over him as his fingers find the lighter and pluck it free of his pants. A tingle in his chest, an electric chill in his hands. This is the fun part, right? It’s a cold feeling that comes along with this thought, and yet he finds himself verging toward laughter. Lips shimmying with the threat of the giggles just like earlier tonight.
He’s never done it like this. Lit someone up face to face. At close range.
He’s terribly excited to experience the sheer aesthetics of it — to see how it will work, how it will look, what sounds this man will make with the fire adhered to his skin by a sheening layer of gasoline. This will be his most jaw-dropping special effects sequence yet.
Sweat seems to arrive on Jim’s skin everywhere at once. A thin layer of moisture slicks his body. Prepares him.
And he breathes through his teeth now, ragged breaths, his lips parted involuntarily, tip of his tongue running back and forth along the sharp edge of his incisors.
God, it’s sick to be so titillated by something like this. He knows this. Acknowledges it. But it changes nothing.
He leans his upper body toward Carl. Flicks the lighter. Loops his arm down into the dumpster. Presses the flame toward the damp hair.
Brightness shoots through the night. An overwhelming glow enveloping everything. Pure white, or so it seems in the dark.
Jim’s upper body rocks back, avoids the rush of the flame. His eyes water, and everything blurs, smearing and smudging, all the shapes bleeding together into a flailing mindless glow.
The fire hisses. Right there. Its heat a wall in front of him. Writhing. Reaching. Taking.
Carl screams, silent no more. He screams like a child. Shrill. Shredded. Small and powerless and very scared.
Goose bumps plump on Jim’s arms, down his back, rippling across his chest. He pants for breath now like a dog. Moaning a little. Sweat weeping down his forehead, stinging in the corners of his eyes.
And he stumbles back a step, the sound too much. The sound somehow worse than the sight of it, somehow worse than the burning pork smell.
Blinking a few times, he sees the man thrashing in there, torso thumping against the metal walls, the dark of his limbs visible through the flames, whipping and flopping. He looks like one of the bunnies panicking in the wildfires, running deeper into the flames.
Mindless with fear. Lost. No escape.
Now wings flap behind Carl, beating and burning, frantic like the screams pouring out of him, trying to lift him from this fiery grave before it’s too late — or maybe it’s the tears rushing to Jim’s eyes that make him see it that way.
He doesn’t know. He never will.
He wants to rush off the hood of the SUV. Race away from here and never look back. But his feet stay planted in place. Paralyzed.
He watches the burning. Can’t take his eyes away. Blood beats in his head. In his skull. In his brain. Rushing heat inside and out. A violent throb he can only associate with an erection.
And for just a second, he considers slumping forward. Leaning over the edge. Letting himself fall into the dumpster, into the flames. Letting the fire embrace him with its special touch. Consume him. If he wants it, it’s right here in front of him. A short drop. A single second away.
Death.
Carl’s scream cuts out all at once. Jim thinks the man dead for a split second, but no. He squirms still. Lives on though his voice is gone. Kicking and flailing. Limbs somehow thinner than before. Spindly. He looks like a black beetle trapped on its back, succumbing to a child’s magnifying glass.
And even after the figure stops moving some twenty-odd seconds later, the f
ire hisses out its endless exhale. Some great release of energy. Some revelation to behold.
And he is scared of it now. Scared of its power.
No longer Jim. This moment reduces him. Leaning over the dumpster. Watching the corpse continue to burn. It reduces him to Klootey. To T.J. Klootey, a nobody cop. A fucking loser with no friends. With nothing but fantasies of being someone else.
Even stripped down like this, he can’t look away. He can only watch his creation.
Destruction. The sublime.
This primordial heat. Something as primal as blood and skin and sex.
The fire takes everything in the dumpster, reduces it to a shapeless glow, a melting of all forms within, every contour surrendered to the flames.
Chapter 52
The thumping sound coming from the next room over was uncalled for. She’d intentionally turned her usual phone alarm off, figuring she owed it to herself to sleep in. And now it sounded like the jackholes next door were doing parkour on the shared wall.
“Violet?”
The voice was muffled and came in a break between thumping episodes.
Now that was something she hadn’t expected. How did the jackholes know her name?
Several bleary-eyed seconds passed with her staring at the wall before she realized it wasn’t noise from the next room that had woken her. It was someone knocking at her door.
And the voice belonged to Luck.
She scrambled out of bed, smoothing her hair and attempting to clear her throat before answering, not wanting to appear like a groggy cave troll.
She opened the door, squinting against the brightly lit hallway.
“Hey. Sorry to just show up like this, but I tried calling, and you didn’t answer.”
“It’s fine,” she said, ushering him inside, and closing the door behind him. “What’s up?”
“Chief Macklin called me. They found a body.”
“At The Blue Handkerchief?” Darger asked, unable to keep the dread from creeping into her voice.
She should have known it was too good to be true. The fact that no one had died in yesterday’s fire had been the one bright point in an otherwise dreary, unproductive day. But after seeing the fire at the bar firsthand, it had been almost shocking to learn there had been no loss of life.
“No,” Luck said. “This is a separate scene, over in the Fashion District.”
Darger found herself struggling to catch up.
“There was another fire last night?” She brushed a strand of hair from her face. “How did we not hear about this?”
“Not a fire, so to speak. Well, that’s not true either,” he said and then sighed. “Sorry, I haven’t had any coffee yet, and I don’t think I’m making sense. This wasn’t a structure fire. It looks like… well, it looks like he doused someone with gas and set them on fire in a dumpster.”
The ability to speak left her for a moment. She felt the air sucked from her lungs.
“I’m about to head over there now,” Luck continued. “I can wait for you, or you can meet me over there.”
She was already moving to her suitcase.
“Give me five minutes.”
Chapter 53
After the fire, Klootey can’t sleep. Restless energy pulses behind his eyes. Beats in his blood. Works his jaw back and forth over and over.
He drives. Speeds. Goes ripping into the night. Deeper and faster. Like if he builds up enough sheer velocity, he can flee this plane, flee this life. Drive off that sheared edge of the city into nothing, into the void. Leave it all behind.
Trying to touch the darkness.
Is that what it is? Is that what he’s doing when he goes out like he does? Spreading destruction everywhere he goes. Setting the night on fire.
Flashes of the dumpster blaze in his skull. The orange leaping. Lurching and spitting.
Carl turning. Changing. Body going wispy, going frail at the fire’s touch. Black as charcoal.
Fire on his skin. In his hair. Melting his clothes. Adhering the fabric to his body.
Fire dancing. Fire thrashing. Fire flailing and glowing and blistering and breaking down the meat of him.
That oily fire stuck right on him, the gasoline binding it to his flesh, holding it to him. Morphing the shape of his face, sort of smearing the skin down the skull in slow motion.
He shudders remembering it, remembering Carl’s scream. Jesus.
The hair on his arms stands up, skin pulling taut with a chill. He swallows in a dry throat.
And a big breath sucks into him. A wet gasp so big it makes his vision flutter, eyes watering. Some religious feeling coming over him, holding him in its sacred grip.
Awe. He trembles with it, body immediately glistening with sweat. The perspiration weeping down out of reverence, out of wonder, out of astonishment.
It’s time, he realizes all at once. It’s time.
He sits forward in his seat. Blinks the water from his eyes. Not upset anymore. Not wallowing anymore. He knew this day would come, knew that he would feel it when it was right, that it would pick him more than he would pick it, that it would happen to him as much as anything.
He’s paid something, paid some due with the dumpster fire. Suffered something for his art, for his passion, for his life’s work.
And with the price paid at last, he can be done. He can finish this now.
He veers left down a twisting street. Heads out toward the hills again. Out toward the spot he’s picked for this. The shed that will become the point of origin.
He puts the window down. Lets the cool night air rush in to tousle his hair. It chills the left side of his face, makes the muscles around his eyelids spasm.
And his mind is blank. Vacant. At peace, finally.
Here. Two little gashes break up the foliage, barely visible — tire tracks leading out to the sacred ground.
He parks the SUV along the side of the road. Kills the engine. Sits a second in the quiet, in the dark, just breathing and sweating. Some restless tension eventually pushing him forward, pushing him out of the car, into the night. He’ll take the last little way to the shed on foot.
His body feels strange now. Electric. The normal tingles he gets before a fire intermingling with some awkward wad of nerves clenched in his belly. Is he nervous? He must be. He must be. And maybe that’s to be expected.
He’s imagined this moment for years. Waited most of a lifetime for this. Patiently. Waiting for the moment to come to him like a sleepy spider lingering along the edge of its web. The moment arrives without warning, jarring, almost feeling surreal.
Something animal kicks in. Something savage that takes him whole. It prickles over his skin, every little follicle and pore alive with it, slicked and crawling with it. Fierce with it. Makes him grit his teeth.
And now what will happen will happen. For now and for always. It will ever be.
If all goes well, many will die in the coming days. Burned. Melted. Crisped and disintegrated. Horrific deaths like Carl screaming in the dumpster but everywhere, everyone. The whole city consumed by flames, surrendered to the fire.
He will give the city what it deserves. He will give them fire.
The dark closes around him as soon as he’s under the trees, the air thicker here, though still dry. He feels his way along the dirt path, knowing the shed is ahead somewhere but not able to see it for the moment. His feet pick their way, sort of sliding forward over stones and dirt, plunging down the left tire track, and he can feel the scraggly stuff just next to him on both sides brushing against his pantlegs, tangles of brush and shrubs about knee-high, filling in the place between the tire tracks like overgrown stubble.
He feels outside of himself. Apart. Watching the climax of the movie. The hero taking those inevitable steps that will set the finale in motion. Crossing a line. Irreversible.
And the whole thing will be decided from here, the path already certain, all the momentum pushing it where it wants to go, where it must go, the whole thing spinning
on its course as if directing itself, in some way out of anyone’s hands now.
L.A. should brace itself for a special effects sequence like none before it. A stunning technical achievement. Oscar-worthy, if there were any justice in this town, in this world.
He tries to picture the woods going up. Wonders if the wind will do its piece today. It feels right, he thinks. The air warm and dry and moving along, wrinkling his shirt against his front.
And he smiles as he pictures the flames, because he knows now. It is inevitable. Always was.
He paid his price. Offered up his dumpster sacrifice. And now the fire will smile back at him, pay him back many times over. It will rage and hate and kill, express the mess of feelings in his head for him. The ultimate artistic statement.
As he opens the shed door, he pictures all the king’s horses and all the king’s men coming for him soon, coming for his fire. All those fire trucks and police cars, lights twirling, sirens screaming. Camacho and Bishop and everyone. A fleet of news choppers flying overhead to get those raging fire shots they love to show so fucking much. Even the feds in their shiny Lexuses would be after him, after his work. Here in just a few hours, it’d be a total and complete shitstorm.
He’d be the biggest star in Hollywood, the talk of the town. A star, at last. Little laughs puff out of his nostrils at the thought.
Want to try to stop this? Well, come and fucking get it.
Chapter 54
The year Darger graduated from high school, her stepfather had decided to deep fry the Thanksgiving turkey.
“But I always make the turkey,” her mother had argued. “Don’t you like my turkey?”
“Of course, honey. But deep frying is supposed to yield a very juicy bird.”
“And my stuffing. You can’t stuff the turkey if you fry it, can you?”
“Well no, but you can make it on the side. There’s always more dressing than fits in the bird, anyway.”
Despite her mother’s doubts, they went ahead with the deep frying. Her stepfather bought several gallons of peanut oil and a giant turkey-sized pot for the frying. He set up in the garage on Thanksgiving morning, brought the oil up to temperature, and slowly lowered in the turkey. Nearly an hour later, when he pulled the turkey out of the oil, it was solid black. Charred to a crisp. Her mother never let her stepfather forget this incident, and he never again suggested deep frying the Thanksgiving turkey.
Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Page 23