Dying Embers

by B. E. Sanderson

  Adopting her best sympathetic-agent expression, Jace tried to put the woman at ease. “If you’ll bear with me...” One glance at the notes, a deep breath, and then she leapt in. “Your father’s death appears to be the first in a long streak of similar murders. With cases like these, often the first provides clues the others can’t—clues to the murderer’s identity for instance. Things that might not seem connected at all to you may actually help us quite a bit.”

  “I’ll do what I can, but maybe you can answer a question for me first.” Liza paused and her doe-eyes grew wet with unshed tears. “Why is he doing this?” Liza whispered.

  “Why is who doing what?”

  “The murderer. Why is he doing this?”

  After spending the past twenty-four hours adjusting her own thinking from a ‘he’ to a ‘she’, shifting back felt like grinding gears from fourth to reverse. “I’m sorry. I should explain. We no longer think the killer is a man.”

  “A woman? A woman did this to Daddy?” The blood drained from Liza’s face. One hand fiddled with the hem of a t-shirt proclaiming her love of the Packers. “I always knew it’d catch up with you someday,” she said into the air as if his ghost hovered nearby. “I just thought it’d be in Hell.”

  “You knew what would catch up with him,” Jace said as gently as she could.

  The woman’s watery eyes moved from Jace to Ben and back. “He brought this on himself, you know. I tried to tell Ma that, but she wouldn’t believe me.” Liza’s eyes clenched shut. Her next words were almost too soft to hear. “At least I didn’t think she believed me until she killed herself. Maybe she took his guilt on herself and felt like she deserved to share in his punishment.”

  Gently, Jace laid one hand over the woman’s trembling digits. “What was he being punished for, Liza?”

  She stopped mumbling and her eyes flew open. “I’m sorry. I forgot…” Guilt washed over her expression and minutes passed before she spoke again. “I don’t suppose it matters any now. If I keep this secret, I’m almost as guilty as they are.”

  “What secret?”

  Looking down at her lap, Liza appeared to notice she’d twisted her t-shirt into a knot. She smoothed it before answering.

  “My father… Arthur Fleming, I mean… had a thing for girls.”

  “He cheated on your mother?” Ben asked, but Jace had a feeling she knew the answer even before the victim’s daughter confirmed her suspicions.

  “Not adult girls,” Liza said, and each word fell from her lips like a sickness being purged. “Little girls.”

  Chapter Nine

  The interview took a few hours longer than Jace expected, but once it was through, she almost lost the will to look for Arthur Fleming’s killer. How a man could live his entire life, most of which as a child molester, in one town without getting caught escaped her.

  Never the same girl more than twice, and if their parents even hinted at something amiss, he charmed his way out of it. Because of his job, he even went to other towns and found his prey.

  The bastard had even tormented his own daughter for most of her life. No wonder she hadn’t been happy before her parents died, and no wonder neither she nor her siblings showed the grief typically present after losing both parents.

  Jace didn’t blame them. She couldn’t exactly bring herself to feel bad about Arthur’s death either. If she could bring him back from the dead, she would—just to kill him again herself. She didn’t know how she could hunt down someone who had killed him for her.

  Driving toward the hotel, Ben touched her arm. “I realize I don’t know you very well, but I’ve been a cop long enough to know that look.”

  She tried to wipe away whatever thoughts were showing and stared him straight in the eye. “What look?”

  “The one that says the asshole got what he deserved. Hell, I’ve had that same thought a time or two myself.” He gave her forearm a little squeeze. “Along with the idea that assholes like him don’t deserve our time and effort.”

  She shook her head, denying his words even as she admitted their truth to herself. “Every victim gets the same treatment,” she quoted from training. “You have to admit, though, Arthur Fleming got what he deserved.”

  “Can’t disagree there, but his killer still needs to serve her time. You know that or you wouldn’t be spouting the rulebook at me.” He shook his head. “Arthur Fleming may have gotten his just reward, but let’s forget him for a second. Remember we have seven other men who deserve to have their killer caught. They couldn’t all have been child molesters.”

  “Couldn’t they?” In her heart, she knew he was probably right, but what if he wasn’t? What if the whole lot of them were sex offenders of the worst kind, and they were chasing the woman who had stopped their crimes?

  “Justice deserves to be carried out, regardless. I don’t know what they teach in the big league these days, but at the police academy, they taught us not to judge the victims. Whether they’re criminals or not, they still get the same justice as everyone else. We can cheer from the sidelines when some drug dealer gets whacked, or some thug gets shot by a vigilante, but we don’t get to just forget those crimes were committed.” He patted her thigh, a gesture that at any other time she found annoying, but for some reason felt comforting coming from Ben. “If it makes you feel any better, tell Frank to look into the other victims. I’m betting none of them were like Arthur. I think maybe Arthur became the first vic because of what he did. Maybe the others did something this chick thought made them worthy of death, too, but they couldn’t have all molested her. The last one wasn’t old enough to.”

  He was right. She was just so angry. When she first read Fleming’s file, she felt sorry for the man. He looked like teddy-bear—not a monster.

  The rest of the drive they spent in silence. Jace couldn’t bring herself to agree with Ben, even if she knew he was right. And she couldn’t erase the feeling that if she caught Fleming first, he’d wish he was on fire in a ravine.

  Settled into another featureless motel room in yet another unmemorable town, she let Ben’s words drift away. If she held onto them, she’d never get anything done. A quick call gave all the new details to her Dallas office, sending Frank and Lynn scrambling to delve deeper into the victims’ pasts. If any of the others shared Arthur’s crimes, they’d find proof of it.

  She didn’t know what she’d do if her teams discovered all the victims had been scum, but whatever she felt about their actions, she’d do her job. Even if she felt like shit afterwards.

  #

  Only one light burned in the windows of the house in the woods. From her perch in a prickly spruce, she could see Devin bent over a set of maps. Charting the movements of some furry little beast, no doubt. Either that or deciding where to go camping.

  Above him, the little boy’s window had gone dark hours before. At the back of the house, his wife turned out their bedroom light only moments ago. Emma waited the whole damn day for him to be alone, but no such luck. Now, it was too late to coax him out to his car and send him to the fiery pit he deserved.

  Absently, her hand strayed toward the pouch hanging over her shoulder and pinching the bejeezus out of her left breast. The weight and the pain served as a reminder of the mission she had to complete. Her fingers closed around the bottle of industrial epoxy. They hovered over the spritz-bottle full of gasoline. Below her, she’d hidden a three gallon container with enough liquid to make a pretty bonfire if his car didn’t cooperate.

  This time, Emma couldn’t risk the fiasco she had with Kyle. She’d make certain Devin would make a lovely blaze, whether his tank read empty or not.

  Taking a swig from her canteen of energy drink, she settled against the sticky bark. “Just after the sun comes up,” she said aloud, not fearing anyone would hear her in the middle of BFE. “The little boy goes off to school. The woodsy bitch goes to town to replace the milk I dumped down the sink earlier.” Emma almost felt bad about the boy taking the blame for the missing beverag
e, but by the time he got home from school, his punishment would be forgotten in the midst of his father’s sudden disappearance.

  “After the wife leaves,” she continued, “the fucking asshole gets a visit from an old friend.” She giggled, then stifled herself as Devin peered out into the darkness. Emma thought about imitating some woodland creature, but her old boyfriend, Paul Bunyan, would never fall for that old movie gag. Keeping quiet should convince him he was hearing things. Before long, he took one last look at his work, turned out the light, and joined his wife for the night.

  The thought of the two of them in bed together almost made her forget her promise to let the mother live. That woman’s fingers twining through Devin’s ample chest hair; her hands splayed across his tight belly. Her sins were as great as the father’s, but Emma would allow the simpering twit’s heart to beat beyond tomorrow. For the little boy’s sake, of course. No child should have to suffer that way.

  No child should ever have to suffer, but sometimes suffering was inevitable.

  Arthur Fleming’s face swam into her field of vision and floated ten feet off the ground. His eyes still held the surprise of seeing her again after two decades. He hadn’t recognized her at first, but one quick reference to his crimes sent his eyes wide. They were wider when she forced him at gunpoint to sit in a pool of epoxy.

  Fitting that the adhesive he once came to her hometown to sell had been the means she used to kill him.

  She’d made him drive to his own death site—which had been especially fun with his hands glued to the wheel. She smiled at how the skin ripped off one of his palms when they took a left turn. The epoxy made taking corners a little difficult, but Arthur’s plight taught her to map out only the straightest of routes for her next victims.

  Arthur’s scream echoed in her ears, singing her to sleep at night. It was much better than his voice haunting her nightmares for all those years before.

  “If you tell anyone what you know about me, Emmy, I swear I’ll come back and kill you.”

  She never told anyone, but in the end, she had gone back to kill him.

  He had been the first checkmark in the list she created while some preacher gave Will’s eulogy. His monotonous drone made shifting her focus to the business at hand so much easier. Her husband’s betrayal gave her a benchmark against which she could measure the other men in her life. The men in her past hadn’t comprised a terribly long list—even if her mother said otherwise—but there were enough of them to sort through and determine which ones deserved a fiery end.

  At least on her first go around. Once they were taken care of, she’d see about the minor infractions. The professor who wouldn’t give her a better grade, even after she offered him her body—he could probably use a little penance. The officer who routinely gave her speeding tickets, even though she could’ve given him the fastest ride of his life, deserved a comeuppance. If she thought about it long enough, she could find many men to add to the list. Once she’d taken care of this first batch.

  Sitting in the tree, she thought she heard the faint rumble of Devin’s snore. He wasn’t the worst on her list, but his cut hadn’t been a minor wound to her. If it weren’t for this woodsman’s betrayal, she never would’ve fallen into Will’s arms.

  Before they were even married, she understood Will was a rebound relationship. She knew those never worked but, tired of the dating game, she accepted her eventual fate. She accepted so many things over the years; she couldn’t count them all. Emma probably would’ve even accepted a divorce, but one thing she could never accept—his infidelity. A promise is a promise, and until a court of law released him from his promise, he should’ve damn well kept it.

  Snapping off a dead branch, Emma began peeling bits of bark off in strips. Her gloveless hands were soon lined with tiny cuts and abrasions, but they were nothing compared to the pain Devin would feel tomorrow.

  Maybe he would cry like Hugh did. She should’ve known Hugh would break down to girlish weeping. When they were together, his emotions always lay just below the surface. That should’ve been her first clue. It should’ve been his, too. As far as Emma was concerned, Hugh should’ve known he didn’t like women before he ever made her fall in love with him.

  He knew she wasn’t experienced; he knew she wasn’t worldly. He’d grown up in Chicago, for Christ’s sake. If anyone should know about such things, it should’ve been someone from a city like that. The night he came out of the closet, he swore he loved her, but he could never love her that way. Well, that way was the only way she knew how to love.

  She could’ve understood his aberration if he’d given her time. Her love had been strong enough for both of them. She’d known they would have a wonderful life together, even if it meant years of sexless affection. The final straw for her love came only a week after his announcement. When she saw him with his hands down another man’s back pockets, she wanted to rip his heart out there and then.

  Except she was a good girl, and good girls don’t show how badly they hurt. Enough years had passed she wasn’t a good girl anymore. The time finally came for her to show just how much she hurt.

  #

  As a member of the hotel staff wheeled in a whiteboard for her to work from, Jace wondered if booking separate rooms had been the best of ideas. Right now, she could use another brain to bounce ideas off of—even if she suspected Ben thought she was nuts.

  With one hand on the phone, she thought about whether to call and risk waking him. Just as she was about to say ‘screw it’ and ring his room, a knock sounded. Wondering if the employee had forgotten something, she pulled the door open.

  “You really should ask who it is before you go letting people into your room, you know,” Ben said.

  “You really should call before you come over. I could be expecting company for all you know.”

  He let out a snort of laughter, which nearly sent her blood pressure skyrocketing. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not trying to impugn your femininity.” The humor in his voice still didn’t decrease her irritation. “Think about it. Who would you be expecting in a strange town this late at night? It’s not like you were running around making friends earlier, and we haven’t been apart long enough for you to visit the bar downstairs.”

  His rational argument deflated her anger like a balloon left in the sun. He didn’t think she was alone because he found her unattractive or old—just too busy. “Okay. Fine. I was just about to wake you up and have you come over anyway.”

  A wicked gleam sprang into his eyes, and he waggled his eyebrows at her. “Yes?”

  His antics finally coaxed a laugh out of her. “To work on the case. I was just about to call Frank and see if we can’t get something constructive done before morning.”

  “Doesn’t this Frank guy ever sleep?”

  “If he does, I don’t know about it.” She picked up a paper cup and made her way to the pot she just finished making, hoping against hope this place had better coffee than the Laze E. Daze. “He’d probably say the same about me, come to think of it.”

  “Don’t go doing any polls of my co-workers,” Ben said. “I don’t want to know what they’d say about me.”

  Several pots of coffee and several hours later, Jace stared at a board where the pen marks outnumbered the white spaces, and still they were no further along than before. “You’d think two brains would be better than one. Why aren’t we getting anywhere with this?”

  He yawned and stretched, trying to rub the tiredness out of his eyes. “I think my brain is fried. Most days I’m in bed too early and up too early. This all-nighter thing is better left to college students and party-hounds.”

  “And problem-solvers,” she corrected.

  “Speaking of which, I’m still not following this theory of yours. You think all of these guys hurt her, but not in the way that Arthur did. How many times can one woman be raped?”

  Jace shook her head. “I’m not talking actual textbook sexual misconduct. You know how some women
spend years being beaten and then one day they snap?”

  “You think this is battered wife syndrome?” The tone of his voice and the slant of his eyebrows told her he wasn’t buying that as a reason for a cross-country killing spree. Neither was she, but she had to consider all the options.

  “When we catch her, her lawyer may try to use something along those lines to defend her, but this is way beyond that.” One step after another, she began creating a path in the carpet. “When a woman kills the man who’s been abusing her for years, that’s one thing. This chick snapped, and now she’s taking out men she probably hasn’t seen in years.”

  “Either that or she’s been one busy lady.”

  “Could be, but I doubt it,” said Jace. “Say she’s spent years harboring a grudge against any number of failed relationships, imagined slights, real hurts… One day something happens to send her from coping with the shit-storms life threw at her—like most people—to letting all those little things twist her into a methodical killer.”

  He sat up straight on the end of the bed. “And the more she does it, the more she likes it.”

  “Exactly. It may have started out as her attempt at justice, but now it’s just revenge.”

  “Wha’d I miss?” Frank broke in so suddenly Jace jumped. He had them on hold long enough, she forgot he was there.

  “Profiling. No major breakthroughs yet. What did you find?”

  Papers rustled across the phone lines. “I just got done digging into Hugh Bower’s life. Man, what a trip. Looking over the notes, it all boils down to he was the poster child for ‘out and proud’.”

  Jace’s face fell. Her theory hinged on this killer being a woman abused somehow, and if one of her victims was a homosexual, she could probably kiss that theory goodbye. “No women in his life?”

  “Not as far as most people know. Lynn tracked down his mother. She didn’t even know her son was dead. Can you beat that? Anyway, she said he came out while he was away at school. Blames ‘the whole faggot thing’… That’s a quote by the way… On his short stint at Northern Wisconsin University.”