Arsonist

by Victor Methos

  The house was warm and she opened a couple of windows before kicking off her shoes and getting a bottle of wine out of the cupboard. She poured herself a full glass and sat down on the couch. She turned on the television and it was turned to Channel 4 News. They were running a story on a pile-up accident on the freeway, involving six cars. She was about to change the station when the next story came up; it was about the arson investigation of two homes.

  She saw the reporter standing in front of a burned-out shell that used to be a home. Police were combing the area behind her. She was speaking about the family: the Humbolts and their six children. Jon Stanton came on screen and spoke of this occurring again and the helplessness of the police. There was a photo on the screen now: a mother, father, and six children. The youngest was one and a half and she was smiling and holding a stuffed animal. Then an elderly woman came on; she was weeping uncontrollably, holding a family photo, trying to describe the last time she had seen her grandchildren. She kept repeating a phrase: “my babies, my babies.”

  Emma noticed a sensation on her cheek. She thought perhaps she had an itch but felt the sensation go further down. She put her hand to her cheek and realized she was crying.

  CHAPTER 31

  Dr. Jennifer Palmer sat across from her patient and wished she was anywhere but where she was right now. Most patients were manageable and even the ones with acute neurosis were able to control themselves in her presence, but this woman was something else entirely.

  She was young, twenty-five, and had deep lacerations running up her forearms. She was now in the middle of describing a sexual encounter she had had last night with an unknown male she had picked up at a club. She had begged him to defecate on her chest and the man had complied.

  Jennifer kept her eyes fixated on the patient but her mind was a million miles away. She was thinking of another patient she had a few years ago. A jolly, overweight male in his fifties, he had begun to have chronic and unrelenting bouts of depression. He seemed jovial enough and Jennifer thought that the depression was a symptom of rage he was feeling at his current work and family life. Before she could get him on the appropriate medications of Xanax and Elavil, he had shot himself at four in the morning in his home. It occurred in the basement in a little corner where he kept an old rocker that he couldn’t bring himself to throw out. Of all the things she could have pondered, only one thing kept coming back to her and she didn’t know why: did he set his alarm clock for four in the morning?

  The girl finished speaking and was bragging about her proficiency at oral sex when the timer on Jennifer’s phone vibrated in her pocket.

  “That’s our time for today, Jessica. I would like to talk more about this next time but I did have a request for you: in the six days before you see me again, do you think you can try to not go to any clubs or bars? Do you think you could do that for me?”

  “Why?”

  “Call it instinct, but I think we may have treated your drinking and partying as a symptom when in fact they may have been the cause.”

  “What?”

  She gave a warm smile. “No bars, no clubs for six days. Can you do it?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “Thank you. Okay, next week then.”

  Jennifer walked her to the doors leading to the reception area and as she said goodbye she noticed Jonathan Stanton sitting on her couch. He appeared more casually dressed than normal; just a T-shirt and jeans with a Calvin Klein jacket. His head was bowed low and he was gazing at the floor, unaware that she had just stepped out of her office.

  “Jonathan, are you ready?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

  “No problem. Please, come in.”

  She shut the door as he sat down and she slowly walked around the office, in the opposite direction of what would have been most efficient, and poured herself a glass of water from a jug into a paper cup. She sipped a few moments and then threw the cup away. She wished she’d had enough time between patients to take a rest, maybe go for a walk or watch some television or read. Anything to empty her mind of the thoughts imposed by the previous patient.

  “How have you been, Jon?”

  “Fine.”

  She sat down. “Tell me what’s going on in your life.”

  “Nothing, really. It’s getting more difficult to see my kids, but I guess that’s expected when they’re becoming teenagers right?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “They’re more involved with friends than with their families.”

  “That’s true for some teenagers but from what you were telling me about your relationship to your sons that doesn’t sound like it’s a normal occurrence.”

  “I think maybe my ex-wife has been speaking to them about me. They don’t look at me the same way they used to. They’re not excited to spend time with me.”

  “When one parent can only spend a fifth of the time they used to with their children, the children sometimes rebel. They protect themselves by trying to cut off their emotional attachment to that parent.”

  Stanton took a deep breath. “I think I may want to fight for custody. The divorce decree didn’t give her full custody; it gave us joint legal and physical. We just agreed that because of stability issues with school and friends that they would live at her house. I’m starting to regret that decision. I haven’t seen them in eight weeks. They’ve been at a camp for four of those weeks, but still. I can’t help but feel they’re avoiding me. I want to fight for them.”

  “How do you think that will make your sons feel?”

  “I don’t know. Hurt I guess. I’ve spoken to an attorney and he says a good way to win is to paint the other spouse as unfit. We’ll have to parade her string of boyfriends and frequent drinking into court. The kids will be there, they’ll have to hear that.”

  “Have you tried just talking to her?”

  “We can’t talk anymore. And unless it involves child support payments, she won’t return my calls.”

  Jennifer nodded softly. “How’s your work?”

  “I saw something the other day that disturbed me.”

  “Disturbed you how?”

  “Well it wasn’t the thing itself, but the fact that I wasn’t disturbed by it that bothered me.”

  “Can you give me specifics?”

  “A young girl was cut up in her bedroom in a particularly horrific way. The other detectives, even the forensics guys, could barely look at her. I heard that the responding officer had to go see the precinct counselor afterward.”

  “How bad was it?” She held up her hand. “Wait, I shouldn’t have asked that, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. It was bad. You’ll probably see something about it in the news. It involved cannibalism and that always makes the news programs.”

  “That sounds awful. Is there a reason you think you weren’t bothered by it?”

  “No. I mean when I first walked into the bedroom and saw her remains I was a little taken back, just by the sheer gore of it, but then I was fine. Why would you think that is? That I’d be okay looking at something like that?”

  “I would figure in your line of work you may grow desensitized to scenes of violence. What do you think the reason is?”

  “I wish it was that.”

  “Sounds like you have a pretty good grasp of what it actually is.”

  “I think…when I see something like that, I can place myself into the place of the victim, but that’s not where my thoughts originally take me.”

  “Where do they take you?”

  “I see how she was picked, what made her special. I see…lust, for her. I felt what he probably felt when he first saw her.”

  Jennifer crossed her legs but didn’t say anything. After a long while, the silence became somewhat unbearable. This was normally one of her favorite periods in a session; patients needed to fill that silence and without any forethought, they would babble. The babbling was the purest picture into their subconscious mind that Jennifer had. But Stanto
n didn’t respond that way. He just sat quietly and waited, to the point that it was making her uncomfortable.

  Suddenly, he stood up. “I think I don’t need any more psychiatry today.”

  “Jon, wait a minute. Please, sit back down. I’d like to explore this.”

  “Not today.” He turned, and left.

  Jennifer took a deep breath and then stood up. She went and sat at her desk and scribbled down a few notes about the session. There was something underneath Jon Stanton’s exterior that was captivating. Her gut told her it might even be dangerous.

  CHAPTER 32

  Stephen Gunn pulled up to the apartment complex and jumped out with such glee he felt like hitting his heels together like some leprechaun. He sprinted up the stairs and got to Jaime Spencer’s door. It was locked and he used his key rather than knocking and waiting for her.

  “Hello?” he said, coming in.

  The apartment was actually clean for once and vacuum impressions were on the carpets. He went to the fridge and took out a beer, drinking half of it down before noticing the note on the counter. He walked over and picked it up:

  Stevie, make yerself at home I’ll be back later Jamie

  He crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage. She had probably gone out to score and would stumble back at one in the morning, used up from a gangbang she probably had to do to score the amount of H or OxyContin she needed to keep her high for the next few weeks. Gunn wondered what the hell he was doing with a whore like her.

  He went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. He closed his eyes and listened to the traffic outside. Kids were playing out there, chasing each other with water balloons and squirt guns.

  Gunn had never been able to play games like that when he was a kid. His father, when he was actually home, was so drunk that Gunn had to intentionally piss him off to take a beating. His father was fat and a pothead; he didn’t have the energy for two beatings in a night. If Gunn could take it, he’d spare his mother and younger sister. But Gunn had been sickly as a child and many of the beatings broke bones and tore ligaments. Injuries he would have to live with until morning when his mom could take him to the emergency room and spend the co-pay without his father blowing up.

  But, the last time Gunn had seen his father, that one moment had almost made those years of pain worth it. In that moment, he let his father know who he was. He beat him for over an hour, so badly that his father had passed out several times. Gunn sat down on their cigarette-stained sofa and patiently waited for him to wake before continuing. Gunn had been sixteen years old.

  A sound was coming from the living room as Gunn dozed off to sleep. It was soft, almost a scratch, and if the kids had been yelling or a car had been driving by at that moment he wouldn’t have heard it. He thought perhaps a dog or cat was clawing at the door and thought about getting some food out and giving it to them; he could use some company right now.

  Then, he heard a click. The doorknob began to twist. The door opened quietly, only a minor creak as it closed again.

  Instinctively, he jumped to the floor and crawled under the bed, pulling out his Glock and aiming out the bedroom door. Jaime wouldn’t have been so quiet, couldn’t have been so quiet. Still, it was probably just one of her junkie boyfriends.

  The footsteps in the hall were light, light enough that he couldn’t hear them until they were close. Then he saw a pair of converse shoes quietly stop in front of the bedroom and then keep going farther down the hall. They came back a minute later and walked to the bedroom closet, opened it, and then closed it again. The bed above him dipped down as the person sat. Gunn heard the beep of a phone and then a male voice said, “Yeah, he ain’t here. Nah, I’m tellin’ you, the mutherfucker ain’t here.”

  Gunn, as quietly as he could, moved his head enough to peek out from under the bed. The man was still talking on his phone and his back was turned to Gunn. Across his lap sat a 12-gauge shotgun.

  Gunn slowly pulled his Glock up across his chest and out from under the bed. He was just slowly going past the metal railing when the barrel tapped the bed from an inadvertent muscle twitch. The man immediately looked down, saw Gunn, and went for the shotgun on his lap.

  Gunn fired two rounds. One hit the man in the side as Gunn slid back under the bed and a shotgun blast went off into the floor. Gunn rolled out on the other side of the bed and fired three rounds to keep the man on the other side of the room. He got up to his knees and fell back down as another blast echoed off the walls.

  On the floor, Gunn aimed for the man’s ankles on the other side of the room. He steadied his hand, and fired. A scream as the man nearly toppled over. He stumbled out of the room, blood trailing on the carpet.

  Gunn jumped to his feet and went after him. He quickly glanced out the bedroom door and saw that the man hadn’t waited for him. He was already out the front door. Gunn ran after him but by the time he was at the front door the man was hobbling to a waiting car. Gunn lifted his weapon, but didn’t fire at the man. Instead he shot one round into the front tire, and then another round into the rear tire which seemed to explode from the sudden release of pressure. The driver got out and ran and the man that had been in the apartment turned with his shotgun aimed at Gunn’s chest.

  Gunn dove behind the railing as it shattered, the plastic in between the metal bars spraying over him in sharp fragments. He fired two rounds, missing both times as shards of the plastic had cut up his face and gotten in his eyes. He rolled backward as far as he could go until he hit a storage closet that the unit across from Jaime’s used. When he went to stand, his knees buckled and he fell to the ground with a thud. That’s when he noticed the small holes dotting his chest.

  His breath was short and he felt like he was about to pass out. He got out his cell phone and dialed 911. By the time dispatch answered, he had blacked out.

  CHAPTER 33

  Stanton tore down the freeway at over eighty miles per hour. He weaved in between cars and when he couldn’t weave he honked and rode their butts and blared his sirens—two small red and blues attached to his windshield and rear window—until they moved. It took him ten minutes to make a drive down to Scripps Mercy Hospital that should’ve taken him twenty. He parked in emergency patient parking and ran inside, flashing his badge quickly to the nurse and demanding the room for Stephen Gunn.

  “He just barely left the ICU. Visiting hours aren’t until—”

  “I want to see him now.”

  “Sir, I can’t let you—”

  “Who’re you going to call if I force my way up and look into every room? The cops? I am the cops. So just give me his room and you’ll save both of us hours of wasted time.”

  The nurse didn’t budge at first and then picked up a chart that was clipped to a clipboard. “He’s in room 162.”

  Stanton walked quickly down the hall and turned left. He passed several rooms with patients lying quietly and watching television. He got down to 162 and peered in to Gunn staring blankly out the only window in the room.

  “What the heck happened?” Stanton said.

  “I’m not tellin’ you,” Gunn said, his voice hardly a whisper, “until you actually swear.”

  Stanton smiled and sat down on a stool next to the bed. “What’s going on, Stephen? Why were you at the complex?”

  “Just getting some pussy, you know me.”

  “Who?”

  “Just a girl. It don’t matter, you don’t know her.”

  “Who did this to you?”

  “I don’t know. Some black dude.”

  “Some black dude? Did you actually go through police training?”

  Gunn attempted a half a laugh and then grimaced in pain. “Don’t make me laugh, it fuckin’ hurts.”

  “Who is it? This wasn’t random. They found a slip of paper in that car you shot up with your name and that address on it.”

  “No shit? Coulda fooled me. This city nowadays, you can’t control the violence. I blame video games.”

  “I’m seri
ous, Stephen. Who did this to you?”

  “It’s none of your business. I can deal with it.”

  “I can help you if you let me. You’re going to be in here another week at least. You got buckshot in your shoulders and upper chest. It barely missed your heart. Someone needs to be out there following up on the car and spent casings. Let me help you.”

  “You fuckin’ Mormons. I swear you’ll never learn that some people don’t want your help. We just want to be left the hell alone.”

  “To get shot up again? What if I’m there next time and they hit me too? What about if it’s in a crowded place and there’re kids? No, nuh uh, you tell me right now what you know.”

  “It’s nothin’ I can’t handle, Jon. You got enough shit to worry about it. Focus on them cases we still got open.”

  Stanton stood up. “Fine, you won’t help me, I’ll follow up on my own.”

  As Stanton was walking out Gunn yelled, “You got one week, Brother Jon. After that I’m outta here and I’m on the hunt. If you want ‘em, you better find ‘em before I do.”

  It was in the afternoon when Stanton finally entered Northern and went to his back office. He collapsed into his chair and put his feet up on the desk before flipping through Pandora and finding the Gregorian chant station. The music was calming and he closed his eyes for a long time and just listened before getting the distinct impression that someone was in the room with him.

  He opened his eyes and saw Childs standing there watching him. “Thought you was asleep.”

  “Just resting my eyes. What’s up?”

  “Sorry ‘bout Steve, man.”

  “It happens. We’re not milkmen.”

  “Does he have any idea who did this?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”

  “Oh, I see, protect the partner and all that shit. Well your partner’s got some fucking serious enemies, Jon. You better recognize what that could mean for your health too. Don’t take no chances, find out what the fuck is going on. He respects you, he’ll open up.”