The Night Watcher

by Lutz, John

  The sobriquet “Torcher” was used throughout the story; better get used to it, all right. The reporter listed two casualties, a James Healy, in whose apartment the fire had started, and Roy Wilson, who’d died of smoke inhalation in the adjacent apartment. His wife, Edith, had managed to rescue their six-year-old daughter, Eden, but both had been badly burned. Cause of the fire had not yet been determined. FDNY response time was fast, but the call hadn’t come in soon enough. It was only after a heroic struggle up the fire stairs in the rear of the building that tenants on the upper floors could be rescued. Several tenants had suffered from smoke inhalation, and one man had suffered a minor heart attack, but there were no other serious injuries or fatalities from the fire. There was a photo of firefighters leading frightened and stunned tenants from the Whitlock Building’s canopied exit. Stack thought a woman in the background might be Rica.

  Rica.

  He looked at his watch and ate and read faster.

  The rest of the piece was mostly speculation about the dangers of fires in high-rise apartment buildings, how those on the upper floors were in grave danger. Readers were assured that stores in and around Manhattan were stocking up on smoke alarms and fire extinguishers. Sound advice, Stack thought.

  When he was finished with his corn muffin and paper, he stood up, put his coat back on, and took a final sip of coffee.

  Before leaving, he folded the section of paper containing the photo of the woman who might be Rica and tucked it under his arm.

  In a diner not far from where Stack had stopped for breakfast, someone else was sitting over coffee and a newspaper. Both the Post and Times lay on the table, but it was the Post that was being read, evoking a reaction.

  Torcher, was it? Well, that was all right; let them wonder. How could they know they were dealing not so much with a torcher as a watcher? Watching, waiting, weighing, whetting, that was the essence and the planning of it. The fire was the culmination, the flames the destiny and destruction. But it had to be watched all the way through, until ash was becoming ash. So the Torcher watched.

  Not much was all right about the rest of what was in the news account. Certainly not the man in the next apartment, the child and her mother in the burn unit at Roosevelt Hospital.

  Learning about them had been stunning, like an actual punch in the stomach.

  That wasn’t supposed to happen! The building wasn’t all that old; it should have had a sprinkler system. And the people next door—didn’t they have sense enough to install smoke detectors? Especially in the kid’s room.

  It was brutal. It was almost disabling.

  It was also fate. It had to be fate.

  And there was another fate. A mission. Surely fate had arranged for the mission. This wasn’t going to stop the Torcher. It couldn’t. Collateral damage; that was what the military called it. Entry into hell was already built into the deal. Deaths that were accidental wouldn’t change the larger picture, could hardly be held against anyone. Accidents. They were accidents.

  The Torcher had only one purpose now. A single focus. There would be grief. Perhaps crushing grief. But nothing worse than that already borne. There was always more than enough grief to go around in this world.

  That was the truth of it.

  It changed nothing.

  That was the horror of it.

  SEVENTEEN

  “That’s not me,” Rica said, when Stack showed her the Whitlock Building fire photo in the morning Post. “That woman’s twenty pounds heavier than I am.”

  “Maybe it’s the coat,” Stack suggested, as they drove along Broadway.

  It was the same coat Rica was wearing this morning. Her hand slipped beneath its lapel, toward the underarm holster concealed by her blue blazer.

  Stack was quiet the rest of the drive to the Eight-oh.

  In the squad room they went over what new information had come in about the Whitlock fire. An accelerant had been used to start the blaze, which had originated where the body was found in the Healy co-op. The ME’s preliminary report said the victim had been alive when the fire started. The bound and blackened corpse was presumed to be that of the apartment’s owner-occupant, James Healy, but they were awaiting dental identification to confirm.

  “It’s our firebug’s work,” Rica said, seated next to Stack at his desk.

  “’fraid so.”

  The desk phone rang and Stack snatched it up and identified himself. It was Sergeant Redd out at the booking desk. He told Stack that Commander O’Reilly left instructions for Stack and Rica to come immediately to his office when they got in.

  “He’s in a bad mood,” Redd added, “even for him.”

  Stack had to smile. There were few other cops in the precinct house whom Redd would have so confided in. He thanked the grizzled desk sergeant and hung up. “Commander O’Reilly politely requests a confab,” he said to Rica.

  “Gee, maybe he heard there was a fire.”

  “Put away the mock innocence,” Stack told her, standing up behind his desk. “It won’t play well with O’Reilly.”

  “He’ll probably assume I’m serious.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  After Stack knocked perfunctorily and they entered O’Reilly’s office, O’Reilly said nothing as he continued concentrating on what he was writing before him on his desk, making them wait.

  “Sorry,” he said without sincerity, after about half a minute. He replaced the gold-tipped cap on a fancy green pen, then sat back hard in his padded desk chair as if he’d suddenly become limp. “From what I hear about the Whitlock Building fire last night, it seems we got the latest in a series.”

  “It looks that way,” Stack said.

  “That’s the way the Post sees it,” O’Reilly said.

  Rica shrugged. “The Post—”

  Stack felt like grabbing her by the neck.

  “Has lots more readers than you got fingers and toes,” O’Reilly finished for her.

  “Among them the mayor and police commissioner,” Stack added in a neutral voice, trying to defuse the situation before the glare O’Reilly was aiming at Rica caused her to ignite.

  “Pre-fuckin’-cisely,” O’Reilly said, at last looking away from Rica, who seemed unaware that she’d angered him.

  “If the arsonist is our man,” Stack said, “there’s something different about this fire. He didn’t kill only his intended victim. That might mean something, if it was deliberate or an act of callous disregard.”

  O’Reilly stared at him the way strangers regard other strangers across the aisle on the subway.

  “Between the two, I’d bet on callous disregard,” Stack continued. “Most likely it was a simple accident that there was collateral damage. The fire got out of hand.”

  “I don’t know,” O’Reilly said. “This firebug isn’t exactly a humanitarian. You and I have both seen plenty of sickos that’d go out of their way to kill anyone if only it were legal. The kinda people that still torture and kill bugs for sport.”

  Still? Stack wondered if O’Reilly had ever killed insects for pleasure, and at what age he might have grown out of the sport.

  “What about terrorism?” O’Reilly asked.

  Stack had thought about it. “I rule it out. Our firebug goes for a particular victim, when he might try to burn down the entire building. There’s nothing strongly political about the victims. Also, no terrorist organization has claimed credit for the fires.”

  “That’s how I see it,” O’Reilly said. “But we keep our minds open.”

  “Always.”

  “Since we have a serial killer here,” Rica said, “there might be that part of the equation that makes him want to be caught. He might be the type who’d be bothered by his conscience. So far he’s only picked on adults. But this time a little girl was badly burned. Maybe he has a daughter about the same age.”

  “I wouldn’t be too optimistic about any guilty conscience figuring into this,” O’Reilly said. “And I never completely bought into tha
t catch-me-before-I-kill-again psychology crap. I think these scumbags just get more and more compulsive and out of control, and finally it makes them careless and they screw up and get caught.”

  Stack thought O’Reilly might be right. Sociopaths were usually more driven than they were complicated. Of course, there were always exceptions. They were the hardest of all to track and bring down.

  “Soon as the ID’s confirmed,” he said, “we’ll find out what we can about the dead man, Healy. Meantime we can talk to some of the neighbors, see if they saw or heard anything suspicious.”

  “I’ve already got officers canvassing the building,” O’Reilly said. “You’ll start getting the results fed to you this afternoon. There’s another angle here I want you to pursue.” He slid a sheet of paper across the desk toward Stack. “This is a list of known arsonists living in the New York City area. I’ll borrow a couple of suits to help you, and I want everyone on that list talked to and evaluated to see if they might fit these murders.”

  “Makes sense,” Stack said, before Rica could chime in. He picked up the list and looked at it. Sixteen names. It would take a while to find them all—the ones who could be found. But O’Reilly was right; it was a job that needed doing.

  After leaving O’Reilly’s office, Stack and Rica linked up with Eight-oh plainclothes detectives Nancy Weaver and Jake Jones. Weaver was an attractive woman about forty, wearing a drab gray skirt and blazer that would never be allowed in Rica’s closet. She’d come out of Vice and looked like a cop except for a devilish glint in her eye. Jones was a sloppy, grossly overweight guy with about as many years to retirement as he had hairs on his head—three. Rumor had it there was something between the two, but Stack didn’t believe it. Still, there was that glint in Weaver’s eye.

  Stack and Rica took the first eight names on the list and gave the others to Weaver and Jones. Acting individually or as a team, they would check out the names and locate the former arsonists, using whichever method they thought best for each name on the list.

  The first thing they did was run the names through local data banks and VICAP to see what they were dealing with.

  It didn’t take long to learn they were dealing with just about everything. Some of these guys had simply burned down their own homes or businesses for insurance fraud, and others had been setting serious and sometimes fatal fires for decades. Some seemed to be in it for profit, and others for the high that only pyromaniacs, and sometimes arson inspectors, really understood. Stack didn’t think any of them would be surprised that the police wanted to talk with them about the recent rash of fatal apartment fires.

  It was ten-thirty before they had all the information they needed to set out on the street part of their task. They went over the names again with Weaver and Jones, and this time split them up according to geography so a minimum amount of time would be spent driving around the city.

  Weaver and Jones had just left, and Stack and Rica were about to leave the precinct house when Sergeant Redd brought them more information on the Whitlock Building fire.

  Sitting back down at Stack’s desk, the two detectives went over these fresh developments before adding them to the murder file.

  James Healy was James Healy, all right. His dentist had made the positive identification, though some of the base metal in Healy’s fillings had melted from the heat of the fire and made the job more difficult. But according to the dentist and the ME, there was no mistaking the exterior stratification of the upper right bicuspid. Uh-huh. Healy was—had been—single, forty-six years old, and a buyer for a chain of shoe stores.

  “Ever hear of Soles on Nice?” Stack asked.

  Rica nodded. “They’ve got stores here and there around town. Women’s shoes, medium-priced. I never shop there. The stuff they carry’s more for teenagers. You know, platform pumps, see-through sandals, crossover jumpers.”

  Stack nodded his head and grunted. He had no idea what the hell she was talking about. He read further. Immediate neighbors said Healy was quiet and polite and spent a lot of time on the road for his company.

  There were two more items of interest: the accelerant used to start and feed the fire tested out the same as in the earlier murders; and Healy had been bound with strips of cloth before being set on fire.

  When this thing with the known arsonists—which probably would lead nowhere—was finished, Stack would make it a point to meet with the detectives questioning Healy’s neighbors and coworkers in depth. This case was growing and becoming more important, and he didn’t want it to slip out of his hands completely and into O’Reilly’s.

  He looked up, surprised by his thoughts. Was he becoming proprietary and ambitious?

  Maybe. Laura was gone and their marriage would soon be officially ended. All that was left for him was the Job. He’d always taken it seriously. Was there a danger he might take it too seriously? He’d seen other longtime cops do that. No wife or other family that really mattered; no friends other than cops; no life other than the uniform or the badge. It could lead to eating the gun.

  Rica studied him, the expression on his face. What the hell was he thinking?

  “Some oral sex for your thoughts?”

  He stared at her. “Damn it, Rica, stop that kinda talk!” He glanced around, worried. No one else seemed to have heard.

  “Okay,” Rica said. “I was only trying to jolt you out of your dark mood. Kind of like shock therapy. Did it work?”

  “I feel great now,” Stack growled at her. He stood up and grabbed his sport coat from where it was draped over a nearby chair. “Let’s go talk to some firebugs.”

  He strode toward the door, not waiting for her. She hurried to keep up, noticing that asshole Mathers smiling at her and doing something to the inside of his cheek with his tongue.

  Maybe I did go too far, Rica thought. Briefly.

  The first three names on Stack’s and Rica’s share of the list didn’t pan out. All three firebugs had alibis. The third said he was home alone sleeping in his house trailer in New Jersey. A neighbor two trailers down said the suspect had been with him and several other trailer park dwellers the night of the Whitlock Building fire, drinking beer and scarfing down hamburgers and hot dogs. Having a barbecue. The guy had been taunting them, Stack figured. Firebugs liked to do that sometimes, play with fire in more ways than one.

  Before leaving the trailer park, Stack pulled the unmarked onto a gravel driveway that led only to a grassless rectangle where a trailer had been.

  “This is another one of O’Reilly’s wheel-spinning assignments,” Rica said. “He oughta have uniforms doing this kind of work. We should be talking with Healy’s neighbors, his employer. Instead we’re exchanging chitchat with characters who get all sexually satisfied whenever somebody strikes a match.”

  “We got nothing here,” Rica continued. “A waste. A lighter that every time isn’t going to work.”

  “You’re essentially right,” Stack said. He got the list out and unfolded it, studying it. “The rest of our addresses are in Manhattan. Why don’t we split up to save time? I’ll drive to the first one and leave you while you do the interview.” He placed his finger on another address. “This one’s only ten blocks away from where you’ll be. I’ll go there and do that one, then drive back to the first address and pick you up. We can double up on these and get them out of the way so we can get down to more serious business that’s more likely to bring results.”

  “Suits me fine,” Rica said, as Stack put the unmarked in gear. Gravel pinged off the insides of the fenders as he reversed the car, then drove back out onto the street.

  “Stack, you ever think about Laura?”

  “Sure. We were married eighteen years. I’m divorcing the woman.”

  “I mean think of her in that way…the way you used to before you were married.”

  He glanced over at her. “You trying to get me to open up and reveal my inner soul? You think I’ll feel better if I talk things out. Right?”

  “Naw, that
’s psychobabble rot. I’m gonna tell you something I never told anybody else, trust you with it. A few years back I got to thinking about my divorce even though it’d been years before, then some other shit in my life, what mighta been if I hadn’t done this, had done that. I was bothered by my thoughts. I mean, really bothered. I didn’t wanna go to the department shrink, have it on my record, so I went to a private psychotherapist who put me in a cognitive therapy group.”

  Stack was surprised. This was a new side to her. “It help?”

  “Some. The others in the group had thoughts like mine, lots of them suicidal. Then the World Trade Center towers went down, and when the group met later that week everybody was talking about how scared they were about being killed by terrorists. I said, ‘Wait a minute. We got nothing to worry about. We’re suicidal!’ I mean, the week before, all our discussion had been about how to conquer our suicidal impulses, our wanting to be dead, and then there we all were, worrying about getting killed. You see what I mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I couldn’t buy into it. The whole experience gave me perspective. Suddenly. Like that. It did help. You choose some group or some person to talk to, and you never know what’s going to happen, how the breakthrough will come. So why don’t you talk to me, Stack?”

  He gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. “I loved Laura when we got married. Then I began to ignore her because of the Job. She resented it, the uncertainty about whether we’d grow old together, my attention to my work more than to her, all the time I spent away. We grew apart. She no longer wanted to be a cop’s wife. I don’t blame her. That’s it.”

  Rica turned her head and stared at him. “Well, I’m glad that came flooding out. That’s really it?”

  “Pretty much so.”

  “All your fault, huh?”

  “Yes.” He took the car around a corner faster than he’d intended. A pencil on the dash rolled onto the floor. “You still in that therapy group, Rica?”

  “No. I don’t need them anymore. I don’t need anybody because I got me.”