Arsonist

by Victor Methos

  “They’ll all die and it’s your fault.”

  “No, it’s not. If they die, then they have to die. It’s God’s will, not mine. But you’ll die too. In a gas chamber with me looking in your eyes through the glass.”

  “Make a fucking choice,” he spit out.

  “No. Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

  The man roared in frustration, and leapt to his feet at Stanton like an animal. He tackled him over the equipment and they hit the ground hard. The man struck him twice and Stanton grabbed him by the collar and flipped him over. The man brought up a knee into his groin and then spun to his stomach, pushing himself up with his arms. Stanton brought up the firearm but the man had already spun around and brought his forearm down against it, sweeping it away and to the floor.

  Stanton tried to strike him with an elbow and the man ducked and took him down to his back again. Stanton wrapped his legs around the man’s hips and tried to prevent him from having a good position above him. He lifted his hips and they spun on the ground. Stanton jumped up but lost his balance and stumbled backward as the man crawled on all fours and grabbed his legs, lifting them and causing Stanton to fall back against the wall.

  The man was on top of him now and pummeling his face with his fists. He was grunting like a pig as he struck and the grunts grew louder and turned to screams.

  Stanton’s face was a pulp of bloody, slick flesh. He felt teeth loose in his mouth and coughed as blood poured down his throat and over his chin. He was dazed and felt a pounding in his head that nearly blinded him. Heat was in his head just off to the side, heat where heat shouldn’t be. He rolled to his side.

  The man stood up, out of breath, and heard a metal clink as he tried to bring his left hand up. He looked down to see the handcuffs that were locked on his wrist and on a small exposed pipe against the wall.

  “No,” he screamed, “no no no no no.” He began pulling and ravenously jerking his hand, attempting to get it loose. The flesh on his wrist began to bleed. Realizing it was futile, he jumped at Stanton.

  Stanton rolled again but felt the man grab his shoulder. He turned his head back and bit into the man’s fingers. There was a scream as he let go and Stanton rolled again over the floor, out of reach.

  Stanton watched as the man was screaming and hollering and pounding the metal pipe with his feet and free hand. He reached down and tried to bite his wrist, not realizing the pain that would result. Stanton looked over to the laptop that was on the floor in the center of the room.

  He crawled over, spitting blood in an attempt to keep it out of his mouth. He got to the laptop. It was a blank background image of a green hillside. It was the desktop. The images of Emma and the family were still on the two monitors. Stanton took out his cell phone and flipped through his contacts before dialing a number.

  It rang four times before a male voice answered, “Hello?” He was out of breath and Stanton could hear a female voice in the background.

  “This is Jon. I need you to do something for me,” Stanton said, speaking slowly and cautiously, the S’s slurring from the blood that was still pooling in his mouth.

  “Jon Stanton? Jon, it’s fucking Sunday. I don’t work Sundays, man. You got the TV on or something? What’s that screaming?”

  “I don’t have much time, Billy. Please.”

  He sighed. “Fine, what is it? And stop fucking eating I can barely understand you.”

  “There’re two monitors set up somewhere. They’re attached to a laptop. I need to find…I need to find out where the monitors are set up.”

  “Hm, well, what program’s running on the laptop?”

  “It’s just showing a desktop.”

  “Any minimized windows?”

  Stanton glanced to the bottom of the screen and saw an icon of a flying carpet with a genie on it. “Yes. I opened it. The program is Magic Carpet.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s easy. On the bottom of the home screen in MC there should be a settings tab. You see it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Click on it. Now there should be a locations icon on there. Click that.”

  “Got it. It’s a bunch of numbers.”

  “It’s in longitude and latitude. Just type the numbers into Google Maps and it’ll give you an address.”

  “I don’t know if this has Internet. I need you to do it.”

  “Can this wait? I got someone here. And what the fuck is that screaming, Jon?”

  “Do it now,” Jon said, as he spit a large glob of blood on the floor, “or I will come down there and put a bullet through your Mac.”

  “All right, all right, chill out. What’re the numbers?”

  Stanton read the numbers. Billy hummed and mumbled something to himself as they came up. He read the addresses off. One was about twenty minutes north. Another was…on this street.

  “Thanks,” Stanton said.

  “No prob but you—”

  Stanton hung up and called dispatch. He sent a unit to the address up north and then rose to his feet. He called Slim Jim and told him what was happening. SWAT was called out.

  The man was now on the floor, sweat pouring from him as he laughed. “They won’t put me in prison. They can’t kill me either. I have two Axis One disorders. I’m not competent to stand trial. They’ll put me in a state hospital and I’ll get out. And I’m coming to pay you a visit, Jon. Sleep with the lights on.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Stanton ran up the steps and slipped once, hitting his elbow hard against the stair. He got up again and continued up the stairs and went outside. The house he was in had the number 2275 and the address he needed was 2304. He walked up the street until he found it. A group of boys was across the street and they eyed him as he ran up the lawn and to the door.

  It was locked and Stanton began kicking it near the doorknob. It wouldn’t open. He fired two rounds into the knob and kicked it again and it broke open. In the living room, hunched over, sat Emma Lyon.

  Stanton ran to her and threw his arms around her. She began to weep as he moved to untie her. Gallons of liquid were set up around her; five containers in all with what looked like nylon rope sticking out of their openings. Stanton removed the nylon rope from all of them and followed the rope to another room where a fuse was slowly burning down. He stamped out the fuse and went back to the living room. Emma wasn’t there.

  He went outside and saw her on the lawn vomiting, but nothing was coming up. He went beside her as sirens droned in the distance, growing nearer with every second.

  CHAPTER 50

  Jaime Spencer sat in the dining room booth with her boyfriend Travis and they shared a piece of key lime pie with two cups of coffee. The restaurant was upscale, far more than she was used to, but Travis had a good income through his contracting business and had pledged that she wouldn’t need to scrape by any longer. The restaurant had swirling yellow and black lanterns hanging from the ceiling that matched the lamps on the table. She watched the movement as Travis spoke with the waiter.

  “What are you thinking about?” he said when the waiter had left.

  “I can’t wait to move. I’ve lived in California all my life.” She looked out the large windows to the beach that was less than twenty feet away from the restaurant’s entrance. “I’ve never even left the state. Did I tell you that?”

  He took a sip of his beer. “No, but you’re a woman full of mysteries. That’s why I’m crazy about you.”

  She smiled and rubbed his hand. Jaime had been feeling a sense of contentment that she hadn’t felt in decades. It was calming and it began in her belly and moved up in warm waves over her face and down her arms to the tips of her fingers. Her whole life she had been striving for something. Trying to find something. She had never been able to define what it was exactly that she was looking for or why she needed it. Now she felt like the urge wasn’t as powerful. She hadn’t found what it was that she had been looking for, somehow she knew that, but at least it wasn’t consumi
ng her. And Travis was a decent man; an honest man in a legitimate business. Sure, he was much older than her, but that hadn’t really been an issue so far.

  “I have to run to the ladies room.”

  She rose and gave Travis a kiss on the forehead as she headed past the booths and down a hallway to the women’s restroom. She glanced under the stalls and saw that she was alone. In her purse was a small vial of cocaine. She took the vial and tipped it against her wrist, pouring a small line, and snorted with one nostril. It felt silky going up. It was pure and nearly uncut.

  Jaime wiped her nose and went back to the restaurant. She walked down the hallway and turned toward the booth and saw a man sitting across from Travis speaking with him. She thought it might have been a friend of his and then she saw the prominent nose set against the large boxer’s cheekbones.

  Stephen Gunn looked up at her and smiled. “Hi, Jaime. How are ya? I was just talkin’ to Travis here. Seems you never mentioned me? Must’ve slipped your mind, huh?”

  She glanced up at the door, thoughts racing through her mind.

  “Have a seat,” he said. She didn’t move. “Jaime,” he said forcefully, “have a seat.”

  She gripped the edge of the table and sat down next to Travis. Gunn was smiling as he picked up her coffee cup and sniffed and took a sip.

  “I didn’t think I’d see you here,” Jaime said as casually as possible.

  “Because you thought I was dead, right?”

  She cleared her throat, her face turning red as Travis glared at her.

  “Listen,” Travis said, “I don’t know who the hell you are or—”

  “You wanna tell him, Jaime? Tell him who the fuck I am. What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

  She placed her hands on the table and noticed that they were trembling. “I don’t know what you think you’ve heard, Stephen, but it’s not true.”

  “Really? Travis here was just tellin’ me you got two one-way tickets to Seattle. Ain’t that right, Travis? Now why would you be goin’ to move to Seattle I wonder?”

  “What are you going to do?” Jaime said nervously.

  “You set me up, you whore.”

  “Hey,” Travis said. “You can’t—”

  “Shut the fuck up, old man. This doesn’t concern you.”

  “He has nothing to do with this,” she said. Travis tried to say something but Jaime stopped him by placing her hand on his shoulder. “What are you going to do with me?” she said to Gunn without looking at him.

  “Come outside.”

  Gunn rose and Jaime could see the 9 mm in his holster. She stood up and followed him out of the restaurant into the noonday sun, telling Travis to wait for her. Gunn was limping and had a cane, but other than that he appeared in good health.

  “Did you fuckin’ think those crack heads could take me out?”

  “It wasn’t me. I had nothing to do with that.”

  Jaime felt the sting of the back of Gunn’s hand across her cheek.

  “Don’t fuckin’ lie to me!” he shouted.

  Fear and panic gripped her. Normally, she was smooth and used her sexuality as a weapon. She had never needed to carry a gun for that very reason. But now, as she stared at the fury in his eyes, she knew there was nothing she could say. He was going to kill her.

  She turned and ran, Gunn shouting behind her. She glanced back to see him pull his firearm out. As she turned back around, she hit something and her head snapped up. She saw Jon Stanton standing on the beach, his arms on her shoulders as Gunn limped over through the sand.

  “This don’t got nothin’ to do with you, Jon.”

  “Put your gun away, Stephen.”

  “That whore set me up.”

  Jaime, terror choking her, managed to spit out, “You rape me, you beat me, you take over my house. I can’t even sleep at night because I think my door’s gonna open and you’re going to rape me in my sleep.”

  “Rape you? When have I ever fuckin’ raped you? You’re a damn whore. You fuck people, that’s what you do.”

  “Stephen,” Stanton said calmly, “put the gun away.”

  Gunn didn’t move, the 9 mm hanging limply at his side. Stanton pulled out his Desert Eagle.

  “You fuckin’ kiddin’ me?” Gunn said. “You gonna pop me?”

  “I don’t want to do this. But I won’t let you kill her.”

  “She tried to fuckin’ have me shot, Jon.”

  “I know. And you should’ve told me and had her arrested. This isn’t the way it works.”

  “Oh fuck you. I am so sick of your sanctimonious bullshit. You think you’re so fuckin’ high and mighty? You think your Jesus looks down on you happy at what you’ve turned out to be? How many men you killed, Jon? How many widows are out there cause a you? What kinda man kills that many people and thinks he can lecture others about what’s moral?”

  “A flawed one. That’s all I am, Stephen. A flawed man trying to be good. I don’t want to do this. Put your gun away.”

  Gunn didn’t move, but his lower lip curled. Then he tucked the gun back into its holster. “We’re through, you and me,” he said.

  As Gunn stormed away, Stanton turned to Jaime. She was going to say thank you but something didn’t fit. Something was off and she didn’t feel it would be appropriate. But he didn’t wait for her to say it anyway. He replaced the gun in its holster and turned away from her without saying a word. He walked to the edge of the beach where the water was breaking on the shore and took something out of his pocket. It shined in the sunlight and she guessed it was a badge.

  He cocked his arm back and flung it into the ocean as far as it would go. It flew through the air and landed with a small splash. Stanton turned from it, looked once to her, and then walked away, off the beach.

  EPILOGUE

  Emma sat at a booth by the window of the small café. It was sunny out and the weather appeared calm in a cloudless sky. She sipped coffee and read on her iPad. The waiter came by a couple of times but she told him she was waiting for someone. She looked out at the street and watched the cars as they passed by, looking at the faces of the drivers. When she was young she would play a game where she would try to guess what they did for a living or where they were going. If they had a wife or husband waiting for them somewhere.

  When she grew older, she began guessing how they would die. She stopped playing the game after that.

  She saw the front entrance open and Jon Stanton walk in. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with sandals and appeared far tanner than even a week ago. He came to her table with a smile and sat down across from her, picking up a menu without saying anything.

  “How was surfing?” she asked.

  “Fine. The waves were good and there wasn’t any wind. I’ll have to take you as soon as you’re ready.”

  “I’d like that.”

  The waiter came back and Stanton ordered a fish sandwich with fries and a Diet Coke. He reached across the table and held Emma’s hand as he looked out the window at the sky. Emma studied his face. When they had first met, she noticed that he would crinkle his brow in a look of concentration. The look appeared permanent, as he would sometimes have it even when he was relaxing. It was gone now.

  She thought he had never looked happier.

  “We should go somewhere,” he said. “Just go to the airport and get on the first plane we find. No matter where it’s going.”

  She smiled and ran her finger over a scar he had on the back of his hand. “I’d like that too.”

  He leaned over the table, and kissed her.

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  BY VICTOR METHOS

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  To contact the author, learn about his latest adventures, get tips on starting your own adventures, or learn about upcoming releases, please visit the author’s blog at http://methosreview.blogspot.com/

  Copyright 2012 Victor Methos

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  Please note that this is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All events in this work are purely from the imagination of the author and are not intended to signify, represent, or reenact any event in actual fact.