by Hadena James
It was also a city that was crying out to be rescued. They offered incentives to artists of all kinds to move within the confines. The City Council offered restoration grants to refurbish rundown houses. Bonuses and tax breaks were offered to businesses of all sorts, from “mom and pop” convenience stores to computer companies willing to headquarter their tech support within the office complexes.
The day was not shaping up very well. I’d interviewed witnesses that had driven me crazy. We’d discovered a disciple of The Rising Star very dead and someone was going to have to notify the next of kin. It didn’t require a genius to figure out that it was probably going to be another church member. Vigilante justice had killed our serial killer and it had almost resulted in Gabriel’s death as well. Now, we were going to Detroit to search for a serial killer that was targeting an unknown victim pool. As far as we knew, the houses were the targets and the people were just incidental.
My least favorite part though was going to be the trip between Podunk, Minnesota, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, where our plane was currently sitting in a hangar, waiting for our arrival. In the past, road trips had been interesting. We’d had snack foods, music, and conversation. With the addition of Fiona, these things had stopped.
Fiona was horrified by eating in the car. She also didn’t approve of our snacking choices. My love of beef jerky caused her to throw up. Lucas’s desire to munch on potato chips resulted in long bouts of bitching because the crunching was too loud and it created crumbs around Lucas’ body. Xavier had also learned that his favorite snack was absolutely off limits. His love of cookies incited lectures about preservatives and diabetes. As for Gabriel, well, Gabriel drove and heaven forbid he try to eat and maneuver a car. Drinks were also not allowed, because they might spill.
The problem with Fiona wasn’t that she was anti-social. It was that she seemed to enjoy being hateful to us. Oddly, as much as I wanted to Taser her, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I knew it was because she was a woman. If Malachi had bitched like that, his ass would have flopped like a fish every time he opened his mouth. Same went for Xavier, Lucas, and Gabriel. However, I had to be strongly provoked before I would do that to a woman.
I waited a whole eleven minutes into the car ride before cracking my window and lighting a cigarette. Xavier no longer complained about my car smoking. At times, he quietly encouraged it. I think he preferred cancer to Fiona.
As I sucked the smoke and cold air into my lungs with the first drag, Fiona started in. Her voice became whiny and higher pitched, as if she was talking through her nose. She was seated in the front, because riding in the back seat made her carsick. This was fine with me. It meant I didn’t have to sit near her. It also meant that Gabriel got the brunt of her irritation.
She whined, complained, and nagged at Gabriel, Lucas, and Xavier the entire time I smoked my cigarette. Normally, when I smoked, I tore the butt off when I finished, tucked it into my pocket, and tossed the tobacco-filled remnants out the window. The habit annoyed Trevor to no end, because he was constantly pulling out the cigarette butts after my clothes went through the washer and dryer. Trevor no longer had reason to complain though. I now carried a portable ashtray. It was a cup style and if I dropped my cigarette into it, letting it just fall into the hole, it would continue to smoke for a minute or so. Just one more snub at the annoying computer technician that had joined our team and seemed intent on making our lives as miserable as possible.
“Hey, perhaps Fiona should tell the next of kin when the girl with the enormous amount of tattoos gets identified,” I suggested suddenly.
“Why me?” Fiona nearly growled, looking at the small plumes of smoke still coming from my portable ashtray.
“You’re a pagan, she was a pagan. Just seems like it would make sense for someone who can relate to make the notification,” I smiled at her.
“I’m a pagan, not a Satanist,” she answered. “You’re an atheist, you do it.”
“Why does everyone think I’m an atheist?” I looked at Lucas. He shrugged.
“Because you aren’t religious,” Xavier told me.
“So, because I don’t dress up on Sundays and go to a church, I have to be an atheist? That’s rather illogical,” I answered.
“Your indignation is noted.” Gabriel stopped the discussion from the front seat.
We fell into an uncomfortable silence. This was still new. Before, silence had always been easy and created out of a mutual desire for silence. I had questions, questions I did not want to address. Thoughts and scenarios had been raised by Nyleena’s coma. The abyss I constantly stared into but kept at bay, had threatened to swallow me with her gone. I had the guys and Malachi. One could argue that the men in my life were the ones that understood me best, but it was definitely the one who kept my moral compass pointing north.
I had also discovered another part of myself with her gone. I loved British television and movies, but my viewing preferences had been darker with her sleeping. No longer was I breaking out shows like Black Books and Waiting for God. Instead, I had found myself consumed by Wire in the Blood and Luther. The romantic comedies I secretly watched had also not existed during her time under. They were our shows. As much as I enjoyed them, I enjoyed them more with her.
The truth was, I needed a female friend in my life and Nyleena was the only real one I had. There was my sister-in-law, Elle, but she had a mission in life and I couldn’t jump on that bandwagon or relate to anything in her life. I liked spending time with my mother, but I felt that she was always in danger when she was around me, which dampened my desire to spend time with her.
My mind now ran rampant with what I would do should I outlive Nyleena. It was a terrifying prospect in many ways. I felt the miniscule amount of emotional ability I possessed would go first. This would be followed quickly by the loss of my logical processing center. There were two possible scenarios. The first was that I would end up in an institution, unable to manage even the meager daily and social functions that I went through now. The second was that I would join my brother and grandfather inside The Fortress. The darkness would take hold permanently and without Jiminy Cricket, that rush I got from the chase would lead to a killing spree.
I hadn’t even bothered to begin dealing with the reality of Patterson. That was too much for me, especially as I struggled not to think about becoming him in the event of Nyleena’s death. Of course, my last thoughts at night were of either Nyleena or Patterson. I was considering taking a spot on a couch in Lucas’s proverbial office and letting the good doctor sort out my tortured mind.
If I dealt with both on my own, it would probably drive me crazy. Needless to say, I wasn’t handling either well. However, the world was not cooperating. There had been no downtime since I had chased down Patterson with Malachi. After being released from the hospital, I had hopped on a plane and met the team in Tennessee. That was the middle of January. We’d been home a total of four days since our trip to Tennessee. If the interloper hadn’t been in the car, I would have just opened up for all of them to analyze, dissect, and assist. But we weren’t alone, Fiona was here. Now that I wasn’t the only woman, I didn’t get a room to myself. So, even when it was late, and I should have had time to myself to talk with Lucas, I didn’t. She followed me around like a paranoid puppy.
Four
The real problem with beliefs was the need to share, and most of the time, foist them onto unsuspecting others. Sometimes, the sharing and foisting were unintentional. Sometimes, like now, they were completely deliberate, like the rain that threatened our investigation as if sent by supernatural forces.
Most cities smelled better when it rained. Not The Motor City, it smelled worse, like rotting garbage and rusted metal. A heavy breeze wasn’t helping either, blowing straight into the hotel room. However, rotting garbage and rusted metal was better than the crap Fiona was setting on fire.
Our window was currently open, as it was every time we checked into a room. Fiona was going through a clea
nsing ritual. It was a stinky ordeal that required her to burn different types of incense, and then to fling the smoke about the place like holy water. It was supposed to ward off evil spirits or release souls trapped in the room or something.
Technically, she was a Neo-Druid and practiced a form of Druid rituals. I was beginning to believe I understood why the Druids had vanished off the face of the earth. They’d all died of smoke inhalation. The second hand smoke from the incense was worse than anything I could create with a cigarette.
During the cleansing, I had to be in the room, but not move or speak. My presence was required to keep whatever from attaching to me and being brought into the room. My speaking broke the chanting that made the incense more than just smelly.
The cleansing usually lasted about thirty minutes, which seemed like a long time to burn incense and chant loudly. For my part, I was getting used to these strange rituals. Fiona claimed to be a lot of things, including clairvoyant with precognitive abilities. Originally, I had thought these were the same things; Wikipedia claims differently and I had to go with Wikipedia, since I didn’t have a better reference at the moment. Her skills in either department were questionable. So far, she hadn’t stopped me from doing something that was going to result in serious injury. However, she did wake me up in the middle of the night once to cleanse my dreams because they were keeping her awake. I smoked a cigarette and drank some Mountain Dew as she made the attempt. She blamed these actions for the failure of the cleansing.
I tried to stay open minded about her abilities as well as her religious preferences. If I could believe Gabriel met a wendigo, I could believe that burning huge amounts of incense while chanting could rid a room of evil spirits. The problem was, I didn’t believe Fiona could do it. I believed she could clear a room of living people, but not evil spirits or the dearly departed who forgot to leave.
“All done,” she announced as she put out a handful of burning bush-like things that smelled like mold.
“Great, I’d like to go see the crime scenes.” I stood up and left her. If I hadn’t stayed for the cleansing, she would have had to do it twice. I could only stomach so much incense burning in a day and once put me past my limit.
Outside, Gabriel leaned against the wall. He smirked at me as he chewed on a piece of bubblegum. Gabriel was a little bit like me, an addict. We tried other things to quit smoking, but we both agreed that we actually liked the taste and smell. We were in the minority and we knew it, so we tried to do other things, but it was never as satisfying.
“What is she burning in there today?” He pushed off the wall and we headed down the hallway.
“I don’t know; moldy sage or some such. I couldn’t remember if this was the one that warded off evil or passed the dead into the afterlife or kept negativity out of the room or the other dozen spells and incenses she has.”
“What’s with you? You can handle every religion except Druidism?” Gabriel was leading us towards an exit.
“No, I can handle Neo-Druidism just fine. It’s her that’s the problem for me. Have you ever woke up and found someone burning a handful of twigs that smelled a lot like thyme, while a coffee maker was percolating over rosemary and bay leaves, and that person chanted in a language you were pretty sure was made up, because they felt you were having a bad dream?”
“Nope,” Gabriel said.
“It would be one thing if she asked me if I minded, but she’s never asked. She just does it. I wasn’t having a bad dream at the time she woke me up, I was having a dream about Mexican food and no serial killers or body parts, so she obviously got the wrong feeling about it. Half the time, our room smells like someone stuck an outdoor Italian kitchen in the middle of the desert. It gets in my clothes and my hair. I smell it even after I leave the room and it’s overwhelmingly strong. It takes forever for me to be able to smell anything else. The smell of decomposing flesh pulled out of the swamp goes away faster than her incense and herbs.” I was working on a plan to fix the problem. Xavier was dummying up some reports proclaiming that her religious rituals were causing migraines, something that was a serious problem in our line of work. I didn’t want to stop her from practicing her religion. I just wanted her to stop practicing it with me in the room.
“Do you want me to tell her to stop?” Gabriel asked.
“No,” I told him. “She has the right to worship as she sees fit. I just don’t want to share a room with her anymore.”
“I’ll have Xavier work on it,” Gabriel told me.
“Well,” I shrugged, “Xavier’s sort of already working on it. However, if you tell him to do it, it would be better.”
“Okay. What do you know about arsonists?”
“They like fire, a lot. It’s a sexual philia. Burning down buildings is a sexual release for them. However, they usually don’t kill people. It’s about the fire, and killing detracts from the purity of the flames.”
“Lucas is rubbing off on you.” Gabriel opened the door to the SUV.
“It has nothing to do with Lucas. Statistically speaking, serial killers are rarely arsonists and vice-versa. Fire is a power all its own. Killing is about control and fires can’t be controlled. Since the two are opposing forces, it is rare to be both a serial killer and an arsonist. At least, not a true arsonist. My first thought would be the fires are set to cover up the bodies, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here, so the killer is using it for another reason. Given that we have both genders as victims, sexual assault is a less likely scenario, but he might still be trying to remove his DNA from the scene.”
“Him?” Gabriel was driving through the deserted streets. It was early morning on a Saturday. The neighborhoods were still slumbering.
“I can’t think of a single female serial killing arsonist, so yeah, it’s a guy.”
“How many books on serial killers have you read, recently?” Gabriel asked.
“Since the year began?” I thought for a minute. “Four hundred and some change.”
“I am ordering you to not to read a single book on serial killers for at least one week,” Gabriel shook his head as he pulled up in front of a house. “Even you need a break once in a while. Read about unicorns or something.”
“I have a book on mythical creatures that I have been meaning to read. I’ll work on that.”
“You might have to read about a hundred of them to fill a week.”
“Mostly, I want to learn more about the wendigo. I remember a demon named Az. I think it’s Zoroastrian, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, from what you described, I believe Az does the exact same things as the wendigo.”
“Crime scene or continued discussion of Zoroastrians?” Gabriel asked, before he cut the engine.
“Hmm, that’s a hard one.” I frowned. I really did want to talk about the demon, Az, and the wendigo. Malachi believed in aliens, but not wendigoes or demons. Lucas was always analyzing the psychological reason behind cryptic knowledge. Xavier got bored and fell asleep. Nyleena could listen, but it creeped her out, but Gabriel, like me, found it interesting. “We’ll talk about Az later. For now, we’ll go look at a burned down house.”
Calling it a burned down house was a bit of a stretch. It was a pile of rubble and ashes. The only part that looked like a house was the walkway to the porch. I’d seen house fires before. The walls were black and charred, the outside paint peeled, or vinyl melted. The windows were broken. None of that was evident here. The glass had melted, not broken from the heat. If there had been sides, they were among the ashes. Even the front porch was gone.
“How does that happen? Is he using jet fuel to start the fires?” I asked.
“Who needs jet fuel when you can go buy a small tank of camping fuel at the store without having to show ID?” The guy was walking up to us. He was older than I was, possibly older than Gabriel was. I was never really sure about age. The first thing I noticed was that he was wearing rubber pants, not cheap, thin plastic, but good rubber, the kind that held up to heat and
sharp objects. “Inspector Vargas with the Detroit Fire Department, I’m the arson investigator.”
“US Marshal Gabriel Henders, US Marshal Aislinn Cain,” Gabriel answered. “Serial killer investigators.”
“I think everyone knows who you are.” He smiled and looked tired. He and Gabriel shook hands. I declined because I didn’t like touching people. He didn’t seem offended.
“Camping fuel? Like kerosene?” I asked.
“Not usually. More like liquid propane. It’s highly flammable and burns very hot. He starts the fires, sets a dozen or so of the bottles around the house, the fire hits them, they begin heating up, then they explode, like a small bomb, but instead of sending out shrapnel, it sends out superheated combustible liquids. By the time the fire department arrives, it’s all about containment. There’s little we can do to save the house.”
“Bomber, arsonist, and serial killer; that’s quite a resume,” Gabriel said.
“I hate bombers,” I told him. I did hate bombers. My back still tingled with the mention of the word. The skin had healed just fine, but the psychological part hadn’t. I was afraid of burning to death and I had come close at a county fair in Illinois because of a bomb.
“Do you want to poke through the ruins?” Gabriel asked me.
“I think I’m up on my tetanus shots,” I told him, already heading in that direction.
I didn’t have an agenda for searching through the burned hulk. Looking for anomalies seemed pointless. The entire fire was an anomaly. That didn’t stop me from poking with my foot at a larger chunk of melted something that might have once been metallic. A puff of soot wafted into the air as I let it fall back down. The ash was very fine, powdery like dry snow. I learned two things; the wood on the house was very dry when the fire started and it had burned very hot. It was the only way to get the powdery ash.
My feet walked around the leftover house while my mind attempted to identify pieces of things that hadn’t turned to ash. The metal objects hadn’t all melted, giving some estimation of how hot the fire had burned at its peak. However, that was a job for the arson investigator, not me.
