The Arsonist's Handbook

by L. A. Detwiler

  His tears sliding down his face, he crumpled into the chair. He was weak, and he didn’t care if they saw it. There was no denying it.

  Anna slumped into the chair beside him, encouraged by Mrs. Caretta, who was crying, now, too.

  “Our son is dead,” she muttered, no tears falling. It was sinking in as much as it could. They’d been at the table with their sweet boy that morning. They’d drowned in the frostiness between them, only pulled out temporarily by their shared love for their boy. Now, there was nothing between them except grief, loss, and a question of how they ever got over it.

  Anna tapped her red fingernails on the table, a morse code to a dying relationship, a dying man, a dying family. He answered back with words that were breathy and ragged.

  “I’ll make it right,” he offered, the words articulated as if he were punching on a keyboard. It was a telegram tapped out in a dense, dark night.

  He would have to make it right. He would do what it took to make it better for her, for the universe. Not for himself, but for them. For the family he had betrayed. Peace and happiness were not theirs to own any longer, but perhaps justice could at least soften the blow for Anna. It would give her a fortress to build a new life upon, a life without him.

  But as Anna buried her head in her hands and let out a pained howl that could alert the whole neighborhood, he sank into himself.

  How? How could he ever make it right?

  The bastion crumbled before his eyes, and the mighty warrior he once was slit his own throat. No one heard a thing as his armor slid to the ground.

  Chapter Ten

  Jameson

  The hours tick by on the Coca-Cola clock in the kitchen as I await her arrival. My tense posture makes it seem like I’m awaiting the return of the Messiah or something like that. I used to sit in this very spot as a boy when I’d wait for her to come home with food from the diner, with stories, with a smile for me. Those days have long gone, though. I’m grown now. She doesn’t think I need her as much now. Maybe I don’t. Tonight, though, I do.

  I can’t shake the feeling of that story. I spent a better part of an hour online searching for more information on the fire in Elmwood. I’ve looked at the few pictures the media has put out there. I’ve thought about the arsons happening and how this could be another.

  No matter how hard I try to rationalize it all away, though, I come to the same conclusion. He’s still here. I know it. My father’s still here.

  I guess that’s why I’m waiting. I keep hoping that maybe she’ll know something, that she’s seen the signs, too. It’s ludicrous to think even if she has, she’ll say something. His name is an expletive in this house, his existence something to be denied in its entirey. The only thing I’ve ever learned about him is from the relics I’ve found, the journal, and from my imagination.

  Still, my hands shake with anticipation. I need something to confirm it, something to verify that what I feel in my bones is true. I’d ask for a sign from the universe, but I’ve been down that disappointing road before. So now I wait for the woman who is more stranger than family to me and hope that she’ll give me the assurance I need.

  She’s an hour late from the diner, and she comes in looking haggard and worn. She glances at me, and I wonder if she’s thinking about those times when I was younger. When we would eat dinner together late at night after her shift. The midnight pancake dinners, the times when she made a little extra money to afford chocolate chips for in them. The nights we’d eat cinnamon sugar toast when we couldn’t afford anything else. Back when we were more family than strangers. When we were different.

  “Hey,” she says weakly, and I respond the same.

  “Did you eat?” she asks, reaching in the fridge for a pack of deli ham and some cheese she picked up yesterday.

  I nod, even though it’s a lie. I’ve been too absorbed in a world of flames and familial bonds to eat.

  “How was work?” I ask politely, wanting to get the niceties out of the way but hoping to warm her up for the conversation.

  She shrugs, and I wait for her to tell me a story about Joe or the diner. She doesn’t. She takes off her apron that is splattered with remnants of food, a complement to the stained curtains behind her at the window and the overall dingy quality of our house.

  “Anything interesting happen?” I push, and I see her retreat into herself. It’s a visible hunching over, a palpable pulling back. I’ve done it enough myself to recognize it.

  She sighs. “Jameson, I’m tired, and it’s late. Really late. Both jobs are a lot, you know? I’m going to get a bath and go to bed.”

  I bite my lip as she shoves a slice of ham into her mouth and then stalks to the edge of the room.

  “Wait,” I shout before I can change my mind. My hands are still fidgety with anticipation. I’m grasping at straws, but desperate men do desperate things.

  “Did you hear there was another fire? Elmwood this time,” I reply.

  She freezes in the archway to the kitchen, underneath the clock. For a moment, all that can be heard is the ticking of the hands as they rhythmically click in the eternal circle. It is late. Really late.

  I hear her inhale raggedly. She doesn’t turn to face me. I stare at the back of her disheveled hair, her petite frame.

  “And?” she asks, but her voice is a faint whisper.

  “Just odd. So many fires in one place. I mean, it’s been quite a string of arsons, you know?”

  She doesn’t move, and I wonder if her face is contorted or scrunched. I wonder if there’s a tear in her eyes as she reaches up to swipe at her face.

  “Well, hopefully, they catch him soon,” she murmurs before she stalks out of the room. I hear her exhale forcefully on her way back the hall, her feet stomping on the hardwood floor. I smile to myself, leaning back in my chair.

  I know. I don’t need her to confirm with a verbal affirmation or admittance. I know. It’s in the way she shakily carries herself, in the way my words stopped her in her tracks. It’s in the breathy quality to her simple phrase, the half-hearted emotion between her words.

  My father’s an arsonist.

  Mom does know. She has to.

  And, more importantly, my father’s back, doing his great work.

  I reach into the fridge to claim a piece of ham for myself, my appetite roused as I realize the work ahead of me now. I know what I need to do. I know what path I have to follow at all costs. I know, finally, how to get my father back after all this time.

  Desperate men and all that.

  Rule 3: You don’t need a reason to burn.

  As I said before, in the beginning, I tried justifying my burnings. Someone who overcharged me. Someone who had threatened my family. Someone who was said to be an abusive prick. But here’s the thing—there will always be a reason. And there will always be a reason lacking. Justice and Karma are all in the eyes of the perceiver.

  And eventually, I found that when I ran out of reasons to justify my actions, I still needed to burn. I still hungered to watch the lapping flames incinerate their target. I would find a reason—or I would make one.

  As a child, I was too emboldened by my passion to worry about it. After that first fire, I would burn for the sake of burning. Mother would often chide me for playing out back with matches, for slowly and carefully holding a moth over the candle’s flame, glee in my eyes as I watched its body alight. As I grew older, I played bigger. The neighbor’s cat, a rogue opossum. Nothing was too big, too innocent, to find its way into my burning pit back in the forest.

  But society changes you. Rules and regulations try to mold you into an upstanding citizen, the loving person who doesn’t do things like destroy for no reason. It tries to shape who you are. For a while, I listened. For a while, I stepped away.

  Nonetheless, I’ve come to learn you can’t change a person’s course of desire. You can’t force someone into a mold, tell them to stop loving what they love. It doesn’t work on moths, who are always drawn to light and flame. It does
n’t work on an arsonist’s heart.

  Eventually, thus, I stopped trying.

  At first, I would justify my scorchings. Would tell myself I was like the Robinhood of fire, doling out vigilante justice at its due course. But then, once the flames lit, the passion in my heart ignited again. I’d missed the excitement, the fire singeing my eyes. I missed it so damn much. And so, over time, my burning got bigger. My skill got stronger. And my need for justification faded away.

  I started to burn for the sake of burning on a bigger scale—and I’d never been happier. I didn’t need a reason to burn. But here’s the thing—sometimes, a reason does present itself. And when it does, let me tell you, those fires rage more magnificently than any of them.

  The fires of revenge, after all, scorch hotter and more gorgeously than any of them. If you find a reason to burn, thus—you must follow it.

  But if you can’t find a reason—that’s okay, too. Sometimes you just burn to burn. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. Not everything in life, after all, can be boxed in. I’ve come to believe that the best, most beautiful things in life traipse outside the edges of labels, of classifications, and of rules.

  It’s on the outside that you can be wild, untamed, and free.

  And isn’t that where beauty resides?

  Chapter Eleven

  Pete

  Grief was a casserole for Pete, layered with betrayal, shame, and the burdensome knowledge that his son was dead—and at his hands. And if he happened to forget the truth, Anna made sure he remembered.

  The twenty-four hours after the fateful phone call that transformed his already messed-up life were the heaviest, darkest, and perhaps the most inconsequential, in some ways. He spent most of the hours holed up inside of himself, lost in a world where his son was burnt to a crisp as he trashed his life in a dilapidated motel room with a whore. Now, there wasn’t a picture, not a single relic of the life he once had, to prove that it even existed. Overnight, the already tenuous tie he had with Anna snapped for good.

  “Pete, the police are back,” Mrs. Caretta murmured into the guest bedroom, where he had stayed and managed to doze for what seemed to be twenty minutes. Anna had denied the offer, heading to her mother’s home across the water in Mapleton for the night.

  He didn’t stir, and Mrs. Caretta rapped softly. “Pete, they need to talk to you. They said it’s important,” she whispered, her voice a delicate pearl on a sea of grief.

  He exhaled, wishing he could keep his eyes closed and bolt from the truth. Life didn’t work that way, however. So he dragged himself up and dragged onward, to face more of the harsh realities of a life he had destroyed. To go on living while his son was dead.

  He hadn’t been prepared for that fact, although he assumed no one ever was.

  ***

  They’d wanted to take him to the station, but his despondency coupled with a moment of rage told them it would be better to let him stay in the comfort of the Carettas’ kitchen. They’d stepped out to give the officer and the chief investigator time to talk to him. Over a cup of lukewarm coffee, he stared at the two men across the glossy wooden table that was marked with scratches and scuffs.

  “We have some questions we have to ask you,” Officer Bartley started, his voice stoic and clear. “You understand we have to get to the bottom of this. With all of the arsons happening in Elmwood—”

  Pete’s ears perked up at this, his heart falling. “You think this was arson?” he asked, a new kind of terror and grief taking hold of him. It was one unforgivable mistake if his son had died in an accidental fire because he wasn’t there. It was another entirely if it had been a malicious act he hadn’t protected him from. Tears welled.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions, Mr. Andrews,” Bartley said. “I need to investigate all avenues. Now, we’ve already talked to Maria.”

  “How is she?” He realized he’d wrapped her, an innocent woman, up in this as well.

  “She’s okay. Shaken. Guilt-ridden as can be expected. But she’s going to be okay.”

  Unlike your son. Pete thought he could detect in the unspoken words that hung in the stagnant kitchen.

  “Mr. Andrews, where were you last night, the night when the fire broke out? Just start from the beginning.”

  Pete played with the gold ring on his finger. “Out.”

  The officer paused, staring at him with skepticism. “We need more than that, you know.”

  Pete nodded, tears welling. Suddenly, it felt like he was being interrogated.

  “I was out. At a motel a few towns over. Crosscreek. I needed to get away, you know?”

  “So you hired Maria to watch your son, watch the place?”

  “Yes,” he offered.

  “What time did she arrive?”

  Pete ran a hand through his greasy hair. “Seven, I think.”

  The officer jotted down notes. Pete could hear the pen grazing the paper, but he couldn’t see the words.

  “And you know her well?” the officer questioned.

  The question startled him. It was an innocent question, but a note in the officer’s voice layered it with something more.

  “She works with me,” he said.

  “So your relationship—it’s platonic?”

  “Of course it is. What the fuck are you insinuating?” Pete slid his chair back from the table, preparing to leap up. His mind raced with all sorts of thoughts. Did the police think Maria was behind this? A scorned lover out for revenge? Did they think he’d put his son in the hands of a lunatic? His head pounded with the possibilities of the tales they were trying to weave. It pissed him off. Somewhere, a psycho who had murdered his son, who had destroyed his life, was on the run. They should be out there finding him, burning him, destroying him. Pete clenched his jaw as fury racked his body. He bit his lip, his jaw quivering. Officer Bartley raised a hand.

  “Easy. I’m just asking the questions I need to ask. We all want to sort this out, Mr. Andrews. And we know you’re grieving. But these investigations are time sensitive, and we need to sort through the evidence.” Bartley’s mustache wiggled as he wiped at his nose, the move vile and repulsive suddenly. Everything about the weathered, doughty man disgusted Pete. He seemed so incompetent, unworthy of taking the case.

  Pete inhaled, unfurling his fists. He forced himself to calm down and nodded. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if he got locked up for going crazy on the officers. It wouldn’t help his case. This wasn’t the time. He needed to get through the questions quickly so the officers could refocus on what mattered. Still, a churning fear started to ripple in his stomach. If they pieced together what he was doing out of town, the story could get twisted. It could easily become something much darker, and the thought frightened him. All of his dirty laundry was suddenly apt to be aired. How could one night change so much, bring so much of the past back to the forefront of his life?

  “I need to know about the family dynamic, Mr. Andrews. With your wife. We know she was out of town for business when this all happened. How would you describe your relationship?” The officer’s words brought him back to the present dilemma.

  He wanted to retort that it was none of their business. But it was now. That was the thing about tragedies like this—suddenly all of your business wasn’t yours anymore. One more piece to the jumbled fucking puzzle of shit that had become his life.

  “Things are complicated between us. But we love each other. And we both love Tanner,” he asserted. It was true, the last part. They loved their son.

  His son—

  “Shit,” he murmured, tears falling as he swiped at his eyes. He didn’t know why he felt guilty about crying. If there were ever a time for tears, wasn’t it now?

  The other man present, the investigator or some pretentious title Pete couldn’t remember, handed him a napkin from the center of the table. He’d been standing back a bit, behind the officer, like a backup singer behind the real star. He’d been taking copious notes but had yet to say a word. The
thought suddenly quaked Pete at his core. Nevertheless, he obligingly grabbed for the napkin in the man’s outstretched hand. The three men sat in an uncomfortable silence save for the honking of Pete’s nose and the rattling of the thoughts in his mind.

  They couldn’t possibly. They couldn’t possibly think—

  Pete had seen enough shows, though, to know. The family was always a suspect. The husband was always a prime suspect. There was always a sinister story lurking beneath the surface, the officers knew. Or at least that was what all the hottest crime shows told everyone. They made everyone paranoid and think that there was a darkness to every plotline.

  Maybe there was, in truth.

  “Look, I know you don’t know me. I’m not perfect. But I didn’t do this if that’s what you’re thinking. I love my son. I would never hurt him. I would’ve never left if I thought—if I knew—” The tears were real. He didn’t have to try to muster them up for effect. He didn’t think he had any more tears in him, but his eyes proved him wrong.

  “Mr. Andrews,” Officer Bartley interrupted, cutting off the sentiment. His chiseled jaw didn’t loosen or show slack, his training kicking in. “Do you have any enemies? Anyone who would want to harm your family?”

  “No, of course not,” he replied, perhaps too hastily. But it was true. Who would do this?

  Sure, he wasn’t perfect. Five years ago, there had been that customer who was pissed because he wouldn’t help cook their books. There had been the typical dispute with the neighbor down the street over snow removal and icy sidewalks. And there was Anna’s step-aunt who had left abruptly one holiday dinner over disputed politics thanks to Pete. But no one who would go to this level, who would kill their son—

  The interrogation continued, pointless questions and attacking tones. Pete wanted to grieve in silence but suddenly found himself on the hot seat. Nonetheless, as the conversation continued, an eerie thought crept into his head. One he’d like to push away. One he’d never speak aloud.