by J L Aarne
When Thomas sat down across from him, he was calm and unruffled; the only sign of his recent loss of temper the touch of high color on his cheeks. He glanced with baleful disinterest at the menu before him and put it aside. Rainer set his down on top of it.
“Did you make him cry?” Rainer asked.
Thomas’s lips twitched with reluctant amusement. “Almost,” he said. “He’s probably crying while he cleans out his locker. Did you order?”
“I waited for you,” Rainer said. “Think he’d sell me a gram of coke before he leaves?”
Thomas frowned at him. “That’s not funny.”
Rainer shrugged. “It’s a little funny.”
“My waiters shouldn’t be gossiping about that shit with my customers,” Thomas grumbled, looking around for their waiter. Whether to fire him or order, one could never be sure.
“I’m not a customer,” Rainer said. “I’m your brother.”
“And that’s another thing—”
“I met Jasmine on my way in,” Rainer said, cutting him off.
Thomas noted the tone of his voice and his focus instantly sharpened on him. “Did you?”
“Seems she’s ever so anxious to speak with you about plans for Christmas.”
“Ugh.” Thomas shook his head.
He saw their waiter at a nearby table and snapped his fingers to get the young man’s attention. Bobby nodded imperceptibly; he would be right there as soon as the couple whose order he was taking made up their minds and decided on the salmon or the monkfish.
Thomas turned his head to find Rainer still staring at him and sighed. “What?”
“Out of curiosity, what are your plans for Christmas?” Rainer asked.
Thomas recognized Rainer’s anger and the jealousy fueling it, but wisely did not accuse him of being jealous. Rainer didn’t give a shit about Jasmine or anyone else Thomas might decide to have sex with right up until they got in his way or in any way inconvenienced him. It would not occur to him in a million years that someone could be more important to Thomas than he was, but if the possibility suggested itself, that person became a threat. Rainer only had one definitive way of dealing with threats to himself.
The thing was, there was no one more important to Thomas than Rainer was. There had been times when he wondered if that devotion was reciprocated, but he hadn’t had to worry about it in years. Rainer’s devotion was without question; an obsessive thing. It was also one of those things they talked around if they mentioned it at all.
“Christmas is over three months away,” Thomas said.
Rainer tilted his head a little to one side.
“I’ve got a lot of time to think about it,” Thomas said.
A muscle along Rainer’s jaw tightened and he stood up.
Thomas caught his wrist and squeezed. “I’m going with you to Mom and Dad’s like I do every year,” he said. “Rainer, sit down.”
Rainer stared down at his wrist in Thomas’s hand. Thomas didn’t let him go, his thumb and callused index finger lightly stroked the bone of Rainer’s wrist and the tension gradually went out of him and he sat back down. Thomas laced his fingers through Rainer’s and held his hand over the table.
Bobby appeared at their table and cleared his throat meaningfully.
Thomas and Rainer looked up but they continued to hold hands across the table for a minute. “We’ll have the hanger steak, medium rare,” Thomas said. He glanced at Rainer, who just nodded his assent. “And bring us two beers. The dark lager.”
Bobby took their menus and disappeared with their orders. Both brothers watched him for a second and wondered at the nature of the back-of-the-house gossip they inspired, neither of them concerned much by it.
“I didn’t even talk to Jasmine when she was here,” Thomas told Rainer.
“I know,” he said. “She told me.”
“She thinks you like her,” Thomas said.
“I don’t feel anything about her,” Rainer said.
He was lying, of course. That might have once been true but was true no more.
Thomas changed the subject. “How was your day?”
Rainer laughed. The transition between topics was so pointed that he couldn’t help but be amused. “Fine. Busy. I have essays to finish grading for Tuesday and we’re reading murder ballads on Monday.”
Thomas smiled. “That should be… something.”
Rainer made a disgusted face. “Nah, they’re badly written and they all rhyme like… well, they’re just bad. Interesting in context though.”
Rainer taught a special, semester-long class that focused on the prominent figure and symbolism of death in poetry on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It was a class non-English majors could take to fulfill their English requirement and English majors could take as an elective.
The waiter returned with their beers in tall glasses. He set them down without a word and disappeared again.
“Oh, I was going to tell you, an FBI agent came by my office on Monday,” Rainer said.
Thomas nearly choked on his beer. “You were going to tell me that, huh?”
Rainer and Thomas talked every day, on the phone when they didn’t see each other in person. He hadn’t mentioned it before. It hadn’t slipped his mind, he just hadn’t decided yet what he intended to do about it.
“Yeah,” Rainer said. “Asked me some questions, mostly about why I changed my major from medicine and wrote about Jack the Ripper in my dissertation. My name came up, that’s what he said.”
Thomas blinked at him. “And you seem… excited about it. Rainer, what the hell does that mean, your name came up?”
“Oh, one of the girls killed in the Jack the Ripper killings a couple years ago went to school with me. She was a sophomore though,” Rainer said.
Thomas sat back. “You idiot.”
“It’s nothing, Thomas. Don’t get upset,” Rainer said. He picked up his beer and sipped it. What he really wanted was a cigarette, but even he couldn’t get away with that in a restaurant like Thomas’s place. “We had a nice chat. He doesn’t know anything. Well, nothing he can prove. Then he went away and I haven’t seen him since. Which is a shame. He’s rather nice to look at.”
“I thought the police already talked to you about that after it happened,” Thomas said. “Rainer, it isn’t nothing if the fucking FBI is doing it again now.”
Rainer shrugged. “Maybe not nothing, but there’s no evidence.”
“You don’t know that,” Thomas said. “They find evidence in all kinds of shit these days. Fibers and footprints and fingerprints on eyeballs and fucking teardrops, for Christ sake.”
“I am not that careless and even if they could take DNA from tears—which they can’t—I’m not a real weepy sort,” Rainer said.
It was as close as he had ever come to a straight-up confession, but Thomas was too worried about the FBI visiting him because his name had come up to dwell on it. “God, Rainer, be careful,” he said. “Be so careful.”
Rainer sucked his bottom lip between his teeth thoughtfully. “I was actually thinking I might have a bit of fun with him,” he said. “Assuming, of course, the good agent doesn’t just give up and go away for good. Perhaps even if he does. I have been so bored lately, Thomas.”
Thomas sat forward with his elbows on the table and lowered his voice. “Don’t be stupid. What are you planning to do?”
“I thought I’d light a lamp for him,” Rainer said, a slow smile spreading over his face.
Thomas sighed and rested his head in his hand for a moment before dragging his fingers through his hair. “Fuck.”
Rainer drank his beer and tried to feel bad about it. There was a man at a table near theirs, little, maybe five-foot-six, impeccably dressed in pinstriped Armani, hand-painted silk tie, nails buffed and polished, Swiss timepiece on his wrist, ugly, chunky rings on two of his fingers. He was giving the waiter a hard time. He wanted the pork loin, but he did not want it the way everyone else was getting it—as described in the men
u. He gestured with his hands as he explained to the waiter the makings of some sauce he wanted with it. The waiter glanced anxiously toward the kitchen and the rest of his station while nodding along.
“I’m sorry, Thomas,” Rainer said.
Thomas laughed humorlessly and shook his head. “No, you’re not.”
He was right, Rainer wasn’t sorry. Not the way most people would be sorry. He wasn’t sorry about finding his interactions with the FBI entertaining rather than intimidating. He wasn’t sorry about what he was going to do or what he had already done. It was not in him to deeply feel sympathy or empathy, but as much as he could, he felt it for Thomas. He was sorry for the worry and distress he caused him. He preferred Thomas to be, whenever possible, happy.
“But you’re something,” Thomas said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t even apologize for it.”
Rainer shrugged. “I’m careful,” he said. “I just want to have a little fun.”
“You’re arrogant. But I’m not going to talk you out of it. I’d be wasting my breath anyway. Just remember, you fuck up and you go to prison.”
“I’m not afraid of prison,” Rainer said.
He was more afraid of being stopped and prevented from doing what he wanted—needed—to do. Of being separated from Thomas and losing his career. He liked his life and had a lot to lose.
“You should be,” Thomas said. “You take a look in the mirror recently? Guys like you in prison end up with their asses looking like an inside out burrito.”
Rainer blinked at him. Then he laughed. “Aww, Thomas. You’re worried about my ass turning into Mexican takeout. Not the sort of thing a five-star chef like yourself wants to nosh on, hmm?”
“I’m worried about your ass—and the rest of you—turning into the resident fuck-hole at Chino, Rainer, yeah,” Thomas said. “Which is what will happen if the good looking FBI agent gets his cuffs on you.”
“Thomas, I’m not going to prison,” Rainer said. “And if I did, do you really think I’d allow anyone to make me into their girlfriend?”
“You are so missing the point,” Thomas said.
Rainer took his hand before Thomas could touch it to his forehead or drag it through his hair again. “I’m sorry I said anything about it,” he said.
Thomas clenched his fingers in Rainer’s hand. “No. Just… Look, don’t get arrested.”
“Of course not. Where’s the fun in that?” Rainer said.
Thomas huffed out an exasperated sigh, but he returned Rainer’s smile with a faint one of his own. “Fine. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Okay. How was your day?” Rainer said.
It was just that easy for him. Thomas coughed a soft laugh and sat back, picking up his beer to sip. “Busy,” he said.
They talked about Thomas’s day after that until their food came. He was considering some new options for the menu. He despised being asked to meet with important people who ate lunch at his restaurant just so they wouldn’t be offended and would continue to speak highly of it, but he did it. Then he told Rainer all about it and they sometimes laughed.
They were not people who were impressed by wealth or fame. Though they were not themselves exceptionally wealthy, their parents were. As children, they had gone to the best schools, had every advantage in life, vacationed in exotic places, met famous and infamous people, and they were not easily affected by such things. Their father was the well-known architect, Mikael Bryssengur and their mother, though less well-known, was award winning poet, Deirdre Bryssengur. Movie stars and money were not interesting, though movie stars were sometimes funny.
Their food arrived and they ate in comfortable silence. The steak was prepared with a demi-glace, served with caramelized shallots, wild rice risotto and roasted fingerling potatoes. They had a second beer with the food. After the meal, they shared a dessert of rich cherry liqueur sorbet with chocolate-hazelnut wafers.
“You coming over tonight?” Thomas asked him.
Rainer shook his head and ate a paper-thin wafer. “Maybe this weekend. I have to grade those interpreting lit papers. It’s a huge class.”
Thomas licked sorbet from the back of his spoon. “No time for lamp lighting then.”
Rainer smiled. “Not yet.”
Thomas touched his napkin to his mouth and pushed his chair back. “I need to get back to work,” he said.
Rainer stood, too and went around the table to kiss him goodbye. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“If you don’t, I’ll call you,” Thomas said.
“I know,” Rainer said.
Chapter 6
There was a lull in crime that September, so Ezekiel’s team did a lot of what was essentially busy work. They finished reinterviewing everyone mentioned in the Jack the Ripper copycat files and documented it all, reported it to the lead detectives in the case, and moved on. They hadn’t learned much more than what the detectives already knew; they certainly didn’t have any new suspects. Late October would undoubtedly be busier. Halloween brought out all kinds of craziness.
Monday, Ezekiel’s team was finishing up with the copycat case and Ezekiel had divided them up into pairs to look at the case file on the killer everyone was calling The Lamplighter, which had been given to him over the weekend. The media had lost interest in it lately, but the cops still wanted to find him and the mayor’s office was getting pressure about it from the families and the governor and passing that pressure down the line to the police.
The police had then passed the case off to Ezekiel and his people because, after more than a year, they didn’t have a clue how to catch the nutcase. The whole thing was cold, which made catching him seem even less likely unless the killer murdered someone else. Cops didn’t like to say aloud that they were hoping for another victim, but that was basically what everyone was hoping for. Without another one to possibly give them more evidence to work with, the case was dead in the water.
When The Lamplighter had been dropping bodies, speculation about what sort of person he might be had been water cooler gossip for Ezekiel’s team. They watched the news, rolled their eyes at the things they heard and wondered when they would be invited in on the case. When they finally were, it was only because the police didn’t have anything to go on and were taking a gamble that Ezekiel and his team could tell them something they didn’t already know that might point them in a new direction.
“This guy is a firebug, obviously,” Agent Teresita Gonzales said, looking at one of the pictures of charred remains. “Look at this guy. He’s a charcoal briquette.”
“He probably started with smaller fires,” Agent John Kenner said. “I agree with Terry. This guy, when we find him, he has a long history of fire-starting. Maybe as far back as when he was a kid.”
“But why kill the homeowners?” Agent Mason Schechter asked. He was the youngest member of Ezekiel’s team, only twenty-seven. “I mean, look, okay, I get the pyromania thing. I mean, he’s got to be getting something out of that, but if it’s just about the fires, why kill the people, then set the house on fire? He could burn the house down when they’re gone. It increases the risk a lot.”
Agent Albert Brockden, at fifty the oldest member of the team, made a throat clearing sound to get their attention. “Schechter makes a good point,” he said. “I also find it strange that the accelerant of choice is a gasoline-lamp oil mixture rather than just gasoline. There isn’t often much of a fire to speak of. The only instance where the fire caught the house and spread enough to burn it down was with the final victim.”
“Which suggests it’s not about the fire?” Schechter said doubtfully.
Ezekiel sat at the head of the table and listened without comment. He had read the file the evening before when he hadn’t been sleeping and he had his own thoughts about it, but he liked to get their eyes on it fresh before he said anything. Sometimes one of them saw something that he hadn’t or made a new connection he wouldn’t have.
Crewes had been reading one of the coroner’s repo
rts and she set it down. “The fire isn’t the point,” she said. “It’s not about the fire. It’s about the people. He kills them and then burns them to destroy the evidence.”
“Oh, come on,” Gonzales said. “Then why do it the way he does it? Make a big show out of the fire. He turns them into a receptacle for the fire—you know, a lamp?”
“Don’t know, maybe he likes the fire, too, but look, if it was about the fire, wouldn’t he just use gasoline, like Brockden said?” Crewes said. Her voice remained calm in the face of Gonzales’s antagonistic reaction to her. “Gasoline burns hot and fast. You get more flash and bang out of it. Not only that, but he’d have spread the accelerant around the house before he lit it up, but he didn’t. He never splashed it around the living room or anywhere, just doused the body in it and tossed in a match. I’m telling you, the fire is incidental.”
“Bullshit,” Gonzales said.
She sat up straighter like she was about to say more. She had that pugnacious look on her face that Ezekiel had seen so often in Beatrix Crewes’s presence right before she said something to let her know just how wrong she was and how worthless she thought her opinion. Before she could get going with that, Ezekiel said, “I think Crewes is right. We have a serial killer here who starts fires, not a firebug who kills people.”
They all turned their heads to look at him. Gonzales glared at Crewes, but she let it drop. Crewes smiled pleasantly back at her.
“The fires originated in the bodies,” Ezekiel continued. “The murders were done first. There’s even one—Sally Bernstein—who was not a resident of the house where she died. It was empty and on the market. He picked her up somewhere else, brought her to the house, which he could easily have known was empty, and killed her. He spends some time with his victims, too. The fire destroys a lot; we can’t tell exactly what he does to them before he kills them, but we know at some point he opens them up and takes out the organs. There are charred remains near the bodies. This all suggests a deeper interest in the murder. The victims are bound on the tables, so they’re alive when he gets them up there. He devotes time to it. He brings his own tools. He stays with them. The point of the fire is not to burn down the building; it’s to burn down the body.”
