Fireproof

by Alex Kava

  It was Racine who broke the silence. “So you suppose the bastard’s right here watching and jerking off?”

  That’s exactly what Tully had been thinking earlier, but he knew it wasn’t that simple, especially if this guy had now started to kill and hadn’t even bothered to set the body on fire. Again, he didn’t glance at her, but he did smile. “You’ve been reading way too much Freud.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Maggie parked a block away. Her head had started its familiar throb, same side, same place, drilling a rap-a-tap into her left temple. She stayed behind the steering wheel of her car. Black clouds of smoke billowed over the area. She stared at the flames shooting out the windows and devouring the roof of the four-story building. Even a block away the sight paralyzed her. It kicked her heartbeat up and squeezed the air out of her lungs.

  She tried to slow her breathing. Closed her eyes and gently rubbed her fingertips, starting over her eyelids and moving to her temples. Small gentle circles, trying to ignore the scar.

  This is temporary, she told herself. She was going to be okay. How could she expect to get shot in the head and bounce right back?

  She tried to focus on why she was here. And yet all she could think about was how angry fire always looked. Flames like this reminded her of those grade school catechism books with colorful illustrations of what the gates of hell were supposed to look like. Where killers and rapists were sent. Where evil was punished. Not where loved ones raced in and never came out.

  Not for the first time, she wondered about her father, and now Patrick. How could they go charging into the middle of raging fires when her entire body kept telling her to turn around and run?

  She knew that fear of losing someone else important to her—that dread knotted at the pit of her stomach—had triggered these recent nightmares. That uncertainty riddled her sleep in between her regular bouts of insomnia. Her self-diagnosis spelled out the simple reason. This latest set of nightmares was caused by Patrick’s coming to live with her, the fact that he reminded her of their father, and, of course, his new job, which put him into the same danger that had cost their father his life.

  Tonight for a fleeting moment when Patrick stood in front of the refrigerator and looked up at her—right before she almost bashed in his skull—Maggie was struck by how much he looked like their father. Thomas O’Dell had been only six years older than Patrick was now when he ran into that burning building and cemented Maggie’s image of him forever in her mind, the mind of a twelve-year-old girl.

  Simple enough. Psychology 101.

  She was used to having nightmares. It was one of the reasons she didn’t sleep. Maybe a good night’s sleep was asking too much in her line of work. She chased killers for a living and in order to catch them she sometimes had to crawl inside their heads, walk around in their skin.

  Long ago her mentor, Assistant Director Kyle Cunningham, had taught her how to deal with it through his example. He was a master of compartmentalizing, shoving and stacking different killers and victims into different parts of his mind, separating them from one another and from the emotions and memories they caused.

  He was a master of sectioning his life into separate cubicles. Such a master, in fact, that when he died, Maggie realized she knew little about his private life. Ten years she’d worked with him, admired and respected him, and yet she’d had no idea if he and his wife had any children, a family pet, or a favorite vacation spot. And now that he was gone she couldn’t ask him what to do when some of her carefully sealed compartments started to leak. How was she supposed stop them from seeping into her subconscious? For the last year Maggie had been trying to keep them from flooding her sleep with nightmares. And now Patrick and these arsons …

  She took a deep breath and made herself get out of the safety of her vehicle. She cinched her jacket and shoved her hands into the pockets for warmth. At the last fire, she had hated how damp and chilled she’d gotten. Her clothes reeked of smoke despite putting on Tyvek coveralls.

  What was worse was getting wet, little by little, spray by spray. She’d never considered that investigating a fire scene could leave her feeling like she’d stepped into a rain of cinder and ice water mixed with foam. All of it dripped from the charred skeleton of the building. From the rafters that dared to hang on and the pieces of ceiling that defied gravity. It was like walking inside the dark hollows of a dying creature. One that still hissed and groaned and bled.

  Not that Maggie was squeamish about blood. She’d been sprayed with it, splattered with it, and rolled in it, had even felt her own leaking out. She had dealt with murderers, killers, and terrorists. Had profiled their motives—power, greed, revenge, sexual gratification.

  But arson? This was her first experience with arson and she was having trouble deciphering the motives of someone who set fires deliberately.

  She and Tully had been called in as profilers. Neither was sure why, but then their director had been sending both of them on strange and wild cases in the last year. Maggie guessed there might be some politics involved. There always seemed to be with Assistant Director Kunze. A favor, a payback, some piece of legislation that needed to be passed or some scandal that needed covering up. She never thought she’d be working for a man she not only didn’t respect but also didn’t trust.

  At first glance this case seemed to be that of a typical serial arsonist. He chose a warehouse in the middle of the night when no one would be inside. That fact made Tully and Maggie believe he was a nuisance offender, setting fires for attention, for kicks. He really didn’t want to hurt anyone. Just enjoyed watching the chaos and the sense of power it gave him.

  He’d now chosen another warehouse. But tonight was different. Racine had said there was a body. That changed everything.

  Maggie walked slowly, approaching the scene from a distance, giving herself a big-picture view but also trying to calm herself and reverse the strong instinct to flee. She had to physically coax her entire body—from her rapid pulse to her staggered breaths—to go toward the flames. It didn’t help matters that she could already feel the heat.

  The smell of smoke assaulted her nostrils almost immediately, gaining strength as she approached. She could hear the violent hisses, the crackle and pop as flames ate away chunks of the building, leaving other pieces to crash down. It sounded like trees being timbered—a slight crack followed by a whoosh and then the crash.

  Unnerving sights and sounds and smells.

  Stick to your job, she told herself. Observe. Look for any clues he may have left.

  She walked by an empty lot under construction where the bulldozers and huge equipment with clawed scoops and trucks with dump wagons seemed out of place in this landscape. Her eyes jumped from cab to cab—dark and abandoned for the night. A sign three feet back from the sidewalk announced it to be the future home of something called the D.C. Outreach House. Even if she hadn’t noticed the small print “in partnership with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD),” Maggie would have guessed that in a neighborhood of warehouses and displaced homeless people, the project was most likely another sleep shelter. For now it amounted to several piles of concrete chunks and yellow monster-size equipment.

  She continued up the street, glancing down alleys and into door wells. Her eyes darted up to rusted fire escapes and instinctively her right hand reached inside her jacket. Her fingertips brushed over the leather holster cinched tight against her left side. She settled her fingers on the butt of her revolver as she peered inside vehicles parked along the curb.

  She was close enough to the fire now that the hisses and the whoosh of flames were the dominant sounds on an otherwise quiet night. Traffic had been cordoned off. There was no one on this street. No voices or footsteps. Behind darkened windows there were no silhouettes, no movement, no sounds coming from the warehouses that were closed and locked up for the night. Everyone who had been in the area was now pressed against the crime scene tape’s perimeter about two hundred feet away. I
n fact, there was absolutely no evidence of anyone, and yet Maggie stopped in her tracks. Slowly, she turned completely around.

  He was here.

  She could feel someone watching. A sixth sense. A gut instinct. There was nothing scientific on which to base the claim.

  She stood perfectly still and started once again to examine the buildings. She scanned the doors and windows. Was he looking out at her? Her eyes darted up to the rooftops. She looked at the empty lot she’d just passed. But still she saw no movement, no shadows. She heard no footsteps.

  “Hey, O’Dell,” someone yelled from behind her.

  Her head pivoted to see Julia Racine ducking under the crime scene tape, headed in her direction. But Maggie stayed put, her eyes darting back in the other direction, not ready to leave the empty street.

  From the corner of her eye she saw a shadow peel away from under a lamppost. A flash of movement, nothing more. But now she wasn’t sure. Sometimes the pounding in her temple blurred her vision.

  Annoying. But it is temporary. It had to be temporary, she kept trying to convince herself. And she certainly wasn’t going to let Julia Racine notice.

  CHAPTER 6

  He didn’t much care about fire. It was a cheap way to get attention.

  Sure was pretty, though.

  Almost like fireworks on a dark July night. Lighting a fuse, the smell of sulfur, sparks followed by glittery explosions of color. Like a thousand shooting stars. Good memories.

  He still remembered his momma frying chicken for their picnic basket. He and his brother would spend the entire morning helping to butcher those poor stupid birds—beaks chattering, beady eyes staring up at him even after the head was chopped off and lying on the ground. So very fascinating to watch.

  That’s where his mind was when he first saw her.

  The street had been empty for quite a while. Everyone had gone to watch the flames like moths to the light. They came out of door wells and pulled themselves off warm grates in the sidewalk just to go take a look, and he shook his head as he watched the pathetic parade of the ragged.

  But this woman wasn’t one of them. She didn’t belong here.

  Even before he saw her hand reach inside her jacket he knew she was a cop. She was attractive. No, more than attractive. She was a real looker. Could have been a number of things other than a cop. But he recognized that confidence in her stride, the way she carried herself. Her head swiveled, a constant but subtle motion—up and down, side to side. She took in everything around her as casually as if she were window shopping. She was precise and efficient but with a sort of grace and composure that usually came with the maturity of someone older.

  Yeah, she was good, and yet she still missed him.

  To be fair, who really paid much attention to a construction site after hours? You just didn’t expect anyone to be peeking around the ripper of a bulldozer or standing behind the rubble of pavement it had clawed up that day.

  Besides, he didn’t need to hide. He blended in most places without drawing suspicion. In fact, he could buy this woman a drink at the local cop watering hole and she’d never think twice about his being anything other than an interested citizen paying his respects. He’d done just that many times. He liked hanging out, listening to them. Got some of the best information directly from the cops. Details that would help him tweak his methods or give him fresh ideas for his future ventures.

  Yeah, he liked cops. Respected them. Even admired them. Probably would have been one, once upon a time, if he hadn’t become so successful in his own profession. Now he made too much money to even consider something in law enforcement. He was good at what he did, in demand. He liked his lifestyle. It gave him plenty of freedom for his outside interests, for his restless spirit and his curiosity-induced adventures.

  He watched her walk the entire block, then suddenly she turned around.

  Damn! She was good.

  He stayed in the shadows and smiled. He’d never expected to find someone who piqued his interest here. A most unlikely place. He liked this lady cop. Liked that she could sense his presence. Made it interesting. A challenge.

  She was confident, smart, strong-minded. He liked strong women. He particularly liked to hear them scream.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  Racine was right beside Maggie. Her voice so quiet and gentle, Maggie almost didn’t recognize it.

  She hated that tone, that look of concern. It grated on her nerves and shoved her guard carefully back into place. Since she’d gotten shot last October, too many people approached her like she might shatter or snap before their eyes. And she was getting sick and tired of it.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look so good.” Racine dealt the second blow. At least, that’s what it felt like.

  Maggie’s best friend, Gwen Patterson, had told her to ignore the kid-glove treatment. People were just showing their concern. Getting pissed off by it would only validate their concerns, their suspicions. Actually, Maggie added “suspicions.” Gwen had used “concerns.”

  “I thought I saw someone. Back there behind the lamppost.”

  She saw Racine glance over to the area but her eyes didn’t spend much time there and she looked back at Maggie.

  Oh great! Now they’d all think she was paranoid, seeing things in the shadows.

  “You said on the phone the body was outside.” Maggie needed to change the subject, wipe that look of concern off Racine’s face. “Where is it? Can we take a look?”

  “It’s in between the burning building and the next.”

  Maggie turned and started walking toward the perimeter, making Racine follow and hopefully transferring the detective’s mind back to the scene and off Maggie’s newly revealed vulnerability.

  “We have to wait until the hose monkeys are finished,” Racine said. “Just hope they don’t wash away and trample all the trace. Right now they say it’s too dangerous for us to be there.” Then Racine shrugged and crossed her arms like they were in for a wait.

  Maggie wanted to ask her, Why didn’t you wait to call me or say not to hurry? Her patience ran thin with Racine, sometimes hanging on by a frayed thread. Maggie wasn’t quite sure why the woman still pushed her buttons after five years. After all, they’d become friends … sort of friends.

  In the beginning, Racine’s reckless tactics had grated on Maggie. The young detective was all bravado, taking unnecessary risks, smart-mouthing and bullying her way through the ranks as though she believed it was necessary to compensate for being a woman. All the while it was like she was shouting, “Yeah, I’m a woman, you wanna make something of it?”

  Even now Maggie wondered if Racine, with her jacket left open, was showing off her badge and gun or her full breasts in the tight knit shirt. Or both, as a way of constantly pushing, constantly daring. Racine’s version of Dirty Harry’s “Go ahead, make my day.”

  Maggie had spent her entire career doing just the opposite, trying to draw little attention to herself, wanting to blend in by wearing suits that matched her boss’s style. She spent extra time at the shooting range, worked out, and kept in shape so she could defend herself and cover her partner’s back. She didn’t want special credit. Unlike Racine, the last thing she wanted her colleagues to notice was that she was a woman.

  Now Maggie started to glance around, pretending to assess the scene and trying to hide the fact that she was searching for an escape. She avoided looking into the fire. It could scald your eyes like looking into the sun. She saw Tully and had to hold back a sigh of relief.

  Tall and lanky, R. J. Tully was one of the few men Maggie knew who looked good in a trench coat. And tonight, with his jaw clenched tight and his sight focused just as tightly on something or someone, he looked more like a spy out of a James Bond movie than an FBI agent. Something across the street had his attention.

  Maggie headed in his direction and heard Racine following behind her.

  “What is it?” Maggie as
ked him when Tully finally glanced over.

  He tipped his head back toward the sidewalk, avoiding drawing attention by keeping his hands deep inside his coat pockets.

  Maggie saw what he was looking at immediately.

  News crews scrambled to find parking spaces. Some pulled and carried their equipment, jockeying to get as close to the crime scene as possible. There had to be a dozen of them. But one camerawoman and one reporter were already filming in a prime location, up against the perimeter. The cluster of bystanders behind them was enough to suggest that the news team had gotten there and set up before other people noticed the fire.

  “How long have they been there?” Maggie asked.

  “They were already here when I arrived,” Tully said, and both he and Maggie turned to Racine.

  “Now that I think about it, they beat me, too.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Samantha Ramirez held the camera in position with one hand. With her other she swiped and tucked a strand of wild hair back up into her baseball cap. She’d already tossed off her coat, yet sweat dripped down her forehead. Another line trickled down her back. Being close to the flames for this long made her feel like the Wicked Witch of the West, melting inch by inch. They had plenty of footage, but Jeffery insisted she leave the camera running.

  “You never know what might still happen.”

  That’s what he always said. And usually he was right. That’s how they got lucky capturing an unexpected rescue off a rooftop after Katrina. Sometimes not so lucky, when they drew unpredictable rage. That’s how they ended up recording the skid marks and trail behind Sam as she got dragged into a crowd of young male protesters in the streets of Cairo. The latter should have been enough warning for her to say, “Never again,” if not for the additional footage that showed an equally enraged Jeffery Cole racing after her, grabbing a rifle right off the shoulder of a surprised soldier.