by Arjay Lewis
“Whom,” McGee said.
“What?” Tice said.
“It’s ‘give orders to whom,’ not who. Syntax,” McGee said.
“Yeah, and fuck you,” Tice said as he headed out the door.
McGee came over to my bed and sat in the same place Tice had just vacated. He looked at my head.
“You OK?”
“I’ve been better,” I said with a vague smile. My face felt puffy—had I landed on it as well?
McGee’s shoulders relaxed. “Been quite a night. And Tice is right. If I don’t make some headway soon, I’ll be walking a beat.”
I smiled. “They don’t have foot patrol in Mountainview.”
“So, worse, they’ll stick me on a bicycle,” McGee muttered. “What can you tell me?”
Stumbling as I went, I related the story to McGee, from the candles extinguishing and the one becoming a blowtorch, to the immolation of Wendy on the front porch. Bill wrote it down in a long, thin notebook he pulled from his jacket pocket.
“Could her dress have caught fire? Or she spilled something on herself?”
“No,” I said, “she just burst into flames, and it was familiar, like I’d seen it before…” Then it struck me. “Like Mishan in my vision.”
“What?”
“It was the same way that Mishan burned in my vision. The same technique, whatever it is.”
I sat up, which caused pain to wash over my head again. “She said her old boyfriend was very possessive. Jack. She yelled the name Jack just before she died.”
“Jack…huh,” McGee said. “I’ll do some legwork with her picture, see if anyone recalls her going with a guy by that name.”
“They broke up about a year ago. And there were places in town she was known.” I quickly related the coffee house and club she’d taken me to on our first date.
McGee dutifully took down the information, nodding as he wrote.
“I have something that might interest you,” he said, with a glance to the door. “Maybe a lead on how this was done. There is word, in a certain marketplace, that you can purchase an incendiary launcher.”
“A what?” I asked.
“An incendiary launcher. From what I’ve heard, it’s a small unit that uses CO2 to fire sodium metal projectiles. When it hits a person, the water in the body is enough to set it off, causing a fire that keeps burning until every bit of water in the victim is used up.”
“My God. Who came up with that?”
“I only have rumors, but the inventor is one Lonny Briback.”
I jerked, causing another wave of pain with the addition of nausea. “Lonny the Match?” I said, shocked.
“You have it. I am—if you’ll pardon the pun—hot on his trail. I have to go. I contacted the Baines’s. They’ll pick you up when the hospital releases you.”
“I could go now…” I said.
“Nope, they want to run an MRI on you, make sure your brain is where it belongs.”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“You look like hell. Take the weekend off,” he said as he got up and walked to the door. “I hope we’re getting close, Len, and I wouldn’t have even started looking for Lonny if it weren’t for you.”
“McGee!” I said, stopping his exit. “Wendy—when you run tests on…what’s left, we made love.”
“Did you wear a condom?” McGee asked.
“No.”
“Are you crazy? Do you know what diseases are out there?” McGee said.
“It all happened so fast—I didn’t plan…”
“So, you left a DNA sample in the victim. Great! I’ll let Casey Latrell know, after all he’s the ME. That is if there’s enough of her left to test,” he said, shaking his head. “What were you thinking?”
I turned red. “It’s been four years. I was drunk…”
With a faint wave, McGee walked out the door. I lay there feeling stupid. I was drunk.
How much had I used that excuse over the last seven years? Sometimes on a daily basis. When I’d lived with Susan Haring back during my Psychiatry 101 classes, it was a mantra that I used almost daily to explain all my bad behavior. And here I’d fallen off the wagon again and immediately shifted into the gear marked “stupid.”
But this was worse.
This time, my drinking allowed someone to die. I’d blocked out any of my talents that could have warned us. All at once, I could identify with any drunk driver who’d been in an accident where someone got killed.
If I’d been sober, I might have saved her, or a least done something. The image of her as she burst into flames repeated itself in my mind, and I was overcome by sadness and guilt.
I spent the day recovering from my first hangover in a year, which the drugs the hospital gave me only exacerbated. Then they insisted on a battery of tests, and my staunch defender, Jon Baines, told the hospital that I was covered by the university’s health plan.
I saw a neurologist, and finally, they sent me to be scanned by an MRI machine, which I tried to talk them out of. I already knew what the results would show.
I was in my room with Jon when the radiotherapy physician came in with a laptop. He was a young man of about twenty-five, with glasses and perfectly cast in the role of computer nerd. His name tag read Doctor Robbins.
He introduced himself and went haltingly into an explanation that I would need a battery of tests.
“Thanks,” I said, “but no.”
The young man looked from me to Jon and back, as if unsure of what he’d heard. “But don’t you see, you’ve got a very overactive amygdala. This could be a form of epilepsy or worse.”
“Doctor, thank you for your concern. But my professor, Doctor Kohl, and I have done a series of tests using the MRI at Berkeley in California. My overactive amygdala is not a new condition, and I’m fine.”
“But you don’t understand. I have never seen anything like it. Your brain could expand some of our current knowledge—”
“The answer is no, Doctor. And I’m feeling much better. I’ll be leaving today.”
“That’s against medical advice,” the young doctor snapped, afraid that he was losing his guinea pig. “You should really have this checked out, for your own good.”
“He said no, Doctor, and that’s final!” Jon said.
The young doctor took the hint and retreated.
Jon turned to me. “This overactive…”
“Amygdala.”
“I know—premed—remember? Is that why you’re psychic?”
“Doctor Kohl believes there is a connection. It’s the part of the brain that makes sense out of the things we perceive.”
“So, if you perceive things other people can’t, maybe your brain works differently.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. When we did the tests, I was trying to find out why my…gift turned on all at once the night Cathy died.”
“Any explanation?”
“Not a one.”
Jon shrugged his shoulders. “Then we’d better get you out of here. Jenn wants to spend the day fussing over you.”
It was after dark when we left the hospital, and once I got back to Jon and Jenny’s, all I wanted to do was sleep. Jenny made clucking noises and got me some herbal tea. I drank it dutifully, if unenthusiastically, and went to bed.
eleven
Wendy stared in horror at the distant figure and screamed as flames engulfed her body. Only this time, I could see him as well. In the distance, near some kind of car, he stood in the darkness. His eyes glowed brightly, like a pair of twin suns. Then he turned those eyes on me, and the air around me grew scorching…
I leaped out of bed, fully awake, as I panted in fear. It took me a moment to remember where I was. Yes, the Baines’s house—it was—had to be—Sunday.
I was in a T-shirt and boxers
. I retrieved my cane, which Jon had rescued from the hospital, and stood up. I had no idea where, but my new suit jacket was gone. I left the hospital in just the shirt and pants. Tice was probably out checking it for accelerants even as I lay in the hospital bed.
I grabbed the metal snake head of my cane and touched the latch just under the neck. With a soft click, the sword slid free of the stick and into my hand, two feet of stainless steel.
I looked at the gleaming blade, which I’d sharpened before I left California. I ran my finger along the edge. Only one side was honed, more like a saber than an epee. But if I needed to use it, it was there. Of course, I could probably just swing the cane and bop an adversary in the head with the metal snake—it would likely be just as lethal.
I put the sword back in its sheath, threw on the borrowed bathrobe, and made my way to the kitchen.
As I walked in, Jon was sitting on one of the barstools with his arms around Jenny, who was standing. They were kissing deeply, Jon’s hands caressing her back. Jenny saw me and pulled away.
“L-Len!” she said, a bit red. “You’re up.”
“Did I arrive at a bad time?” I asked.
“Two minutes later might’ve been worse,” Jon said as he stood, giving Jenny a lusty tickle.
“Jon!” she squealed, then broke into giggles. Jenny all but skipped to the stove and announced. “I’m cooking! Tell me what you want. Eggs, pancakes, I could even pull out the ol’ waffle iron!”
Despite their bravado, I couldn’t fight the notion that I’d intruded into their first chance for real intimacy since my arrival.
“Actually, Jenny, don’t bother for me. I need to get some air. There’s a café just a few blocks away.”
Jon stood up. “I could drive you!” he said, too brightly.
“No, I need some time,” I said. “Been a tough couple of days.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it, Lenny?” Jenny asked. “I mean, the hit on your head—and that poor woman.”
I stood frozen for a moment. The full realization sank in. Once more, someone I’d been involved with, become intimate with, was dead. I couldn’t help but believe it was my fault.
“No, I just want to be alone right now. Jon, you should spend a little time with your wife.”
Jenny gave me a grin as if to say thanks.
“Take your cell!” Jon bellowed as I went to my room and put on my clothes. In a few minutes, I stepped outside, where it was a little chillier than the day before.
I had put on jeans with a sweater vest, a shirt open at the collar, and my tweed jacket. But it felt good after spending the previous day in the hospital. I still had the bandage wrapped around my head, making me look as if I’d just returned from a war somewhere. I put that out of my mind and focused on one foot as it moved in front of the other. I picked up speed and began to walk faster, headed toward town. Soon, I reached the café and headed toward the blocks of fashionable shops.
I was curious to see what was left of Mishan’s place of business. No, it was more than that—I was fixated on seeing it, as if it was the most important thing in the world. I was going a different way than when I drove with McGee, but I was sure it was correct. It was like a giant magnet pulled me there. I trusted it to lead me correctly.
I walked past a supermarket, and up ahead was a block cordoned off with yellow tape. I slowed my pace. McGee had been right; the entire row of shops was badly burned.
I walked a few more steps and could see where Mishan’s Jewelers had been the other day. Now it was an empty black pit, as the fire had burned away even the flooring. Peeking in the hole, I could see the safe had fallen into the basement, and black, oily water stood in fetid pools.
I looked past the store at the parking lot beyond, where the asphalt was cracked and broken. There were two cars, one burned but still whole, the gas tank on the other one must have caused an explosion because it was only a metallic skeleton that vaguely resembled a car.
“This isn’t possible,” I said out loud.
It would have taken an enormous amount of heat to do this much damage in such a short period of time. Even if McGee’s rumor about a sodium projectile explained it—could it burn with that much intensity?
I looked across the street, turned, and began to walk again. I was almost hit by a car, but the driver sounded his horn, which stopped me. I waited until traffic cleared and crossed, as I sought something from the thread of the memory of my dream.
I’d seen a figure standing across the street. The man with the red eyes. Perhaps I could reach out, get a feel for him. I decided to occupy the same space where he’d occupied in my vision. It might have been an emotionally powerful moment for him, which could leave an energetic residue. I looked along the sidewalk and stepped carefully, attempting to place myself in his exact space. Then I reached out as best as I could, trying to focus on the remembered vision.
I needn’t have worried. As soon as my foot was in the right location, I experienced a jolt like electricity climbing up my leg. I jumped back, stunned. Then I stepped back into the space, this time with both feet. My legs were quivery, and I felt almost as if I’d left my body.
I looked at the empty hole that was Mishan’s Jewelers, yet in my view, it was recreated and was whole again, though it showed the ravages of the first fire.
Everything had moved into the sepia tones, and the building once again stood. Then I saw a face as it peered through the sooty glass of the door.
It was my face.
Then there was a flash of energy emanating from where I stood, like a tidal wave that undulated to the building, and as it hit, the structure burst into flames. It came from where I stood, from a presence filled with such anger that it couldn’t be contained.
I spun in space, caught in that anger, so fiery, so hot with hate that I believed I could burst into flames as well.
“Are you all right?” I heard a voice say in my ear.
I had fallen to my good knee on the ground, holding myself up with my hands on the sidewalk across from the fire site. I was being helped up by a young African-American man, maybe twenty. He was large and beefy, and I immediately sensed that was a football player at GSU.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” I said, as I forced my head to clear. My hand went to the bandage around my head to explain. “I must have passed out.”
He assisted me. He was solid, with dark skin and the most amazing blue eyes. His hair was short and closely cropped, and he had arms that could’ve picked me up and carried me like a rag doll. He must have weighed 330 pounds, but all of it muscle.
“You need to get to the hospital, sir?”
It’s exceedingly rare to hear a young man with manners who gives a hoot about some guy who fell down on the sidewalk.
“I’m all right,” I said as he set me on my feet. “But thank you.”
“Be careful around here. The sidewalk is a little broken up from the fire,” he said as I got my cane under me.
“Do you know anything about it—the fire, I mean?”
His face broke into a grin. “I was here.” He grew serious. “It was terrible, sir.”
He pointed at a big and tall men’s store just down the block. “I came out of that store, only place around I can get clothes.”
He traced his route with his finger at the sidewalk. “I was about here when it started, flames shooting out like a firebomb went off or something.”
“Did you see a man—white guy, dressed in black, thin nose?”
He paused for a minute, then a flash of recognition crossed his face. “You mean the dude with the sunglasses. Yeah, he was standing here, and when the sirens started, he took off.”
I thanked the young man and assured him I was all right. But I felt drained. The psychic experience had worn me out, and I was desperately thirsty. I slowly trotted back to the café. It took about twice as much time a
s when I was going the other direction.
I sat at one of the small round tables, in a padded chair with a wrought iron back. I ordered a latté, some kind of egg sandwich that was on the chalkboard menu, and got a bottle of water, which I gulped down right away. That helped.
I reviewed what had just happened as I tried to keep the ideas clear in my mind. It was an unusual experience, yet had a familiarity to it. It was rather like the unstable energy I would tap into at the haunted houses, with Doctor Kohl.
Yes, that was it, the feeling of being lost in someone else’s experience. This happened to me at Scudder House, where I went so deeply into the experience, I still had little recollection of the events. It was only when I heard my voice on the digital recording that I realized I’d even spoken the revelations that led to the discoveries that followed.
This occurrence was similar. Though I didn’t lose myself completely, I got lost in a mental impression left by someone else. This didn’t point to Lonny the Match or some type of physical explanation. This suggested someone who possessed a strong psychic ability, possibly equal to my own.
Or perhaps superior.
“When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said through the persona of Sherlock Holmes. But this was far too improbable.
Or was it?
Could the murderer be someone with a gift like my own? Perhaps his was the ability to start fires. It made sense of the two murders, where each fire blazed from nowhere at incredible temperatures. He killed Mishan for what—money? From the anger—was there a betrayal of some kind?
Betrayal—that could be the reason Wendy died. If the man with this power was indeed her former lover, sleeping with me would motivate him. Jealousy is described as hot, a burning desire. These words are common parlance, but what if there was deeper meaning behind them?
If so, why return and reduce what was left of Mishan’s store to a black pit? If he’d felt betrayed, maybe Mishan’s death wasn’t enough. My research into arsonists suggested a certain immaturity, and revenge is the most common motive.