by Steven James
He didn’t turn, and that other hand remained hidden.
“Drop the lighter and let me see both hands.”
He pointed. “Back from beeeeeed.”
I edged back slightly so I wouldn’t appear to be a threat. “Now, show it to me.”
He did.
A bottle of lighter fluid.
“Put that on the ground.”
But instead, he sloshed the fluid around inside the bottle. It sounded nearly full. “Maybe you keep telling me what to do, maybe I pour this on my head. Maybe then I light the fire.”
“Easy.” I decided to defuse things by asking him questions rather than giving him orders. “Tell me about these items on your altar, where did—”
“Shrine. My shrine. My shriiiiiine.”
“The things on your shrine, where did you get them?”
“Found ’em.”
“Where?”
“All of ’em.”
“Sir, where did you find them?”
He jammed his response into one word: “Notsirnotsir.” He shook his head emphatically. He jabbed a thumb toward his chest. “Anthony.”
“Anthony, I’m Patrick. What can you tell me about the things you found?”
No answer.
“Did you hurt someone to get them?” I avoided the word “kill.”
He took a step forward.
“No, Anthony. Stay there. Not another step.”
He waved the lighter at me. “What if I light the flame? Burning, burning, burning.”
He snapped open the cap to the lighter fluid bottle.
“Anthony,” I said firmly. “That’s enough.”
“Burning.” He lifted the bottle high, tilted it down toward his head.
“Anthony, stop!”
He squeezed it, raining lighter fluid onto his hair and then his shirt.
Even from where I stood, I could smell that it really was some type of gas.
He was just far enough away so that if I rushed him, I anticipated that he would have enough time to flick the lighter and ignite it before I could stop him, and I didn’t want to take that chance.
He held the lighter close. “Maybe I light it.”
“Easy.” I held up an open hand and patted it softly against the air to signal for him to calm down. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“Away!” He flicked the lighter to life. “From. My. Bed!”
I eased back two more steps. “There. See, Anthony? We’re good.”
He extinguished the flame.
“How did these hoodies get in here?” I asked him.
“Blaaaaaack hoodies.”
“Did someone give them to you?”
“He was hurt.”
“The man who gave them to you was hurt?”
A nod.
“Do you know who he was?”
“Traded clothes. He gave me black hoodies.”
“Anthony, do you know his name?”
“Running, running, running.” As he spoke, with each word he sent a stream of lighter fluid splashing out across the mattress. “Running.”
I needed to stop him, but he was evidently unstable.
Be firm, but not too verbally aggressive.
“Anthony. I’m telling you,” I said unequivocally. “Put down that lighter fluid. Do it now.”
He paused, suddenly appearing confused. With a look of disorientation, he eyed the lighter and the bottle quizzically, as if he were trying to figure out how they’d even gotten into his hands in the first place.
“Set them down,” I repeated.
Anthony shook his head emphatically. “No, no, no, no. I do not like when the dogs come. I do not like the dogs!”
“Do you know someone named Igazi?” I said.
“Iiiiiiih . . . Gaaaaaaah . . . Zeeeeeee . . .” As he repeated the name, he stretched out the syllables, turning each one into its own word.
He said it again.
It became his mantra.
“Iiiiiiih . . . Gaaaaaaah . . . Zeeeeeee . . .”
“Is that the man who was running? The man who gave you the hoodie?”
“Iiiiiiih . . . Gaaaaaaah . . . Zeeeeeee . . .”
He squeezed the bottle again but this time flung the thick stream of gas at me, catching me by surprise. I leapt aside, but not quickly enough, and the gas splattered across my pants leg and the bottom part of my shirt.
“Stop it, Anthony. I need you to—”
“My home.” He sprayed more at me. “Go away.”
The hoodies were almost within reach, but not quite. It didn’t appear that they’d been drenched yet, so if he ignited the lighter fluid, I still might be able to save them from the fire.
I bent to try to grab them, but he managed to splash more of the gas onto me as I did, and when I had to move backward to get out of the way, I came up empty-handed.
He began to indiscriminately drench the shrine, the mattress, the clothes on the ground. The pile of books.
“I need you to tell me about the man you traded clothes with,” I said.
Every time I edged forward to stop him, he targeted me again and I had to step back. Though I was quick, I ended up with a lot more lighter fluid on my clothes than I was comfortable with.
“Go away!” Anthony shouted. “He can’t know!”
“Who? Who can’t know?”
He tapped the side of his head, and his words were a mixture of breathy confusion and more harsh coughing. “Here. He’s here. Here, here, here.”
I didn’t know if Anthony was high or schizophrenic, or had maybe been drugged. Whatever the case, he appeared to be paranoid and hallucinating, and that’s never a good combination.
“Come with me, Anthony. Let’s go. We’ll get you some—”
He surprised me by letting out a mad, erratic ripple of laughter and splashed the fluid wildly back and forth, back and forth across everything. “Here, here, here!” he yelled.
“Do you know who’s killing these people, Anthony?”
“Killing them!”
“Who is?”
“Killing them. Iiiiiiih . . . Gaaaaaaah . . . Zeeeeeee . . .”
I pointed to the painting of Christ that was now saturated with lighter fluid. “Did you put the girl’s picture on there?” I would have grabbed it if I could have gotten any closer to the shrine, but at this point, that wasn’t going to be possible.
“Pretty girl. Mooooooo . . . veeeeeee . . .”
“What do you know about the movie?”
In reply, he thumbed the flame of the lighter to life, and held it close to his face. The tongue of fire tossed nervous shadows up across his scraggly beard and weathered skin. His gaze was surprisingly clear and alert and not clouded or rheumy, like I would have guessed.
“Put it down, Anthony.”
But something in his appearance changed, a sad, final look fell across his face, and I sensed that this was it.
Like dusk falling.
Like darkness crawling across the countryside.
He’s going to do it. Stop him!
I dashed forward, but before I could get to him, he tossed the flame onto the mattress and a plume of fire erupted between us.
The scorching rush of heat sent me scrambling backward.
It wasn’t going to be possible to save Anthony’s shrine or any of the evidence on it, but maybe I could salvage the hoodies so we could test them for DNA. As far as I could tell, from where they were, they’d escaped most of the lighter fluid.
I reached for them and drew them to safety, but there was still some lighter fluid on the ground and as I moved closer, the flames decided to slither toward me at that moment and caught hold of my left pants leg, then rushed up my leg and leapt to my shirt.
I yanked the burni
ng shirt off and tossed it aside. I was about to do the same with my pants, but I wouldn’t have been able to do so with my shoes on, so I grabbed one of the hoodies and wrapped it around my leg to stifle the fire, then dropped to the ground, kicking over the crate that held the water jug.
It crashed down beside me and I grabbed it, slammed the spout fiercely against the wall to break it off, then used the gushing water to put out the rest of the fire on my pants.
I assessed myself and realized that the worst damage had been to my left side.
Between the flames on my shirt and the fire rising up from my leg, the skin was reddened and even blistering in a few spots.
It didn’t appear to be severe enough to put me out of commission, but the burns were definitely deep enough for me to notice.
For now, adrenaline was masking the pain, but that wasn’t going to last forever.
Anthony’s outline was visible on the other side of the flames and his mantra-like words cut through the noise of the hungry, crackling fire. “Burning,” he called.
I tried to identify if he’d been injured or if his clothes were on fire.
“Burning—”
But I couldn’t tell.
“Burning—”
Not from where I was standing.
“Pretty girl!”
He let out a wild, half-choked cry, but in the screeching echoes of the tunnel I wasn’t able to tell if it was birthed from madness or pain.
“Anthony?” I shouted. “Are you hurt?”
He said nothing as the flames coursed higher, but simply moved backward like an apparition merging with the night, and he was gone.
I didn’t like that Sharyn’s face had been pasted onto that image of the crucified Christ.
I didn’t like that Anthony knew about the movie.
And I especially didn’t like his words: “Burning . . . Pretty girl.”
Whether he’d been injured or not, with the flames roiling between us, there was nothing I could do right now to check on him.
I grabbed the hoodies and my flashlight and retraced my steps to the locker room to call Sharyn and warn her that this guy knew about her movie star days.
37
“What?” Sharyn gasped. “Wait—someone tried to burn you alive?” She was at the 9th Precinct’s station and the briefing had started, but when she saw that the call was from Pat, she’d excused herself and slipped into the hallway to answer it. “What are you talking about? Back up. Are you alright?”
“I’m okay. I’m not sure if he was trying to burn me alive or if it was just about what was in the tunnel. He had Scarlett Farrow’s photo. He knew about the movie. Do you have any idea who that man was or why he would’ve had a photograph of her down there?”
Sharyn noticed how, even now, Pat was being careful not to mention that she was Scarlett, perhaps in the event that the call had somehow been compromised. “No. I don’t,” she told him.
But that wasn’t quite true.
Maybe she did.
“Is it possible he wasn’t really a homeless man?” she asked.
“It’s possible. Why?”
Could it be him? Has he been released?
But how would he know I’m here in Detroit? No one knew that—
Except Simone. Whom you haven’t heard from since May.
On the one hand, it seemed almost incomprehensible to her that the man who’d attacked her on her twenty-first birthday might be out of prison. He was supposed to be serving twenty-five years, but on the other hand, prison overcrowding and “good behavior” often resulted in early release.
The prison officials didn’t have her new identity. Scarlett Farrow was famous enough that word might very well have leaked out about who she’d become. So, through the years, Sharyn had kept her past hidden even from the department of corrections. Consequently, the warden wouldn’t have been able to call and notify her even if he’d wanted to.
But if Dylan was free, that would mean . . .
You have a new name. A new life. It’s just not possible that he’s behind this.
But what if it is? What if it all revolves around him?
Or around you?
“Sharyn, why did you ask if it was possible that he wasn’t a homeless man?”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Twenty tops. I’ll explain when I see you.”
“You don’t need to come.”
“You said you got burned. How serious is it?”
“Just a little on my side. It’s nothing.”
“Remember when you told me I was good at reading people?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m reading you and you’re lying. Listen, the dance studio where Olivia has her ballet camp is probably only ten or fifteen minutes from the school—you’re there, right?”
“Yeah.”
“If Kevin is at the studio, he can be at the school before I can, probably even before an ambulance. I’ll call him, have him take a look at the burns.”
Pat was slow in responding and Sharyn guessed he was trying to come up with a polite or reasonable way to decline the offer, but finally he said, “Okay. Listen, I’m heading back down to see if I can salvage any evidence, or see if the guy is still down there.”
“Wait for help to arrive.”
“I’ll be careful. He might have been burned, and if he was, I don’t want to wait before checking on him.”
“If he’s still there, he might—”
“Trust me. I’ll be alright. And listen, watch yourself. It’s not good that this guy burned up Scarlett’s picture like that—or that he even had it on that shrine of his in the first place.”
“I’ll watch myself. I’m coming. I’ll call Kevin. Don’t do anything stupid.”
38
Blake and Mannie didn’t run into any trouble at the Windsor border crossing, and now Mannie guided the car into the parking lot at the Midtown hotel where they would be staying.
Inside the room, Blake reviewed the Atlanta airport CCTV footage and data files that Terry had accessed for him. Mannie went to the restaurant on the ground floor to get them something to eat.
From his conversations with Fayed, Blake knew that the man whom the jihadist had sent into the States was named Ali and wasn’t an Arab. Fayed had also mentioned that there was some sort of glitch at the airport. So Blake was able to narrow down pretty quickly non-Arabs named Ali who passed through security in Atlanta and find the footage of the person he was looking for—the man who was given a secondary screening where he used an inhaler.
Which, from all that Blake knew, made sense.
Though the act of using the inhaler was innocent enough in itself, given what it initiated and all that would follow, Blake found it chilling to watch the scene.
Simple.
Deadly.
Game-changing.
By the time Ali was cleared, the last flight to Detroit had already departed.
Blake dialed to the footage of the baggage claim area and also the rental car desks to see who picked Ali up, or if maybe he drove away on his own.
Using the Federal Digital Database’s facial recognition, he analyzed the people leaving the airport and those approaching the rental car desks.
Although he and Mannie were here in Michigan to find Fayed and repay him for what he’d done to Maria, they were also here to find and stop the man who’d been released from prison earlier that spring.
The one who’d killed that woman at the cabin in Minnesota.
The one who’d killed so many women before he was sent to prison fifteen years ago.
The one who’d most likely orchestrated the grenade attack on the Detroit police precinct and was now no doubt searching for the movie star who’d dropped out of public life all those years ago.
The object of his obsession.
Blake wasn’t sure what name Dylan would be using these days, or exactly how to find him if he was in the area, but he knew it wouldn’t be unheard of for him to have visited military surplus stores and perhaps karate studios or gyms if he truly had been in this area for several months.
There.
The computer identified a match.
Ali approached the Alamo desk.
Okay, yes.
So he did rent a car.
Blake thought that if Ali was driving to Michigan rather than flying, that might give him and Mannie some time to focus on the search for Dylan in the meantime before his arrival. The main meeting with Fayed wasn’t scheduled to happen until tomorrow, so that meant tonight he could give his attention to finding his little brother.
Dylan Neeson.
Dylan had been adopted and thirteen years separated them, but in a certain sense that’d just served to solidify their relationship. Blake had raised Dylan from the time he joined their family when he was five until he joined the Army when he was eighteen, so he felt more like his father than his brother.
And so, just like a father feels responsible for his children, Blake felt responsible for the actions of this man.
Even from an early age, it’d been clear that Dylan was not a normal boy.
His biological father had never been in the picture and his mom had been a meth addict who was beaten to death in front of him by her dealer two months before his adoption. The man had locked the door before he left, maybe hoping that the boy would die in that apartment.
But he had not died.
Dylan had been stuck in there with her body for nearly four days before a woman in a neighboring apartment smelled something strange and sent the super to see what was wrong.
When Dylan was eight years old, Blake found out what’d happened to him and the boy’s mother, so Blake had tracked the dealer down. It took almost three months to find him. He’d just been released on parole when Blake paid him a little visit and taught him a lesson that, in his dying breaths, his dying screams, he apparently learned well.
As Blake worked on him, he said, “I didn’t come here so you could beg for forgiveness or plead for your life.”