The comment fell flat. It lay in the center of the big conference table and writhed a while, waiting for someone to come to its assistance.
“Hey,” said the cop who was working the slide projector. “We through with this thing or not?”
“Not,” said the ranking cop in the room, a white-haired man with a flat stomach, high, narrow shoulders, and an alcoholic's map of veins on his cheeks. “Just leave it on the screen.” He also had small, deeply set eyes and a mean pug nose that brought to mind the old joke about Polish bulldogs getting flat noses from chasing parked cars. The magnified version of the Incinerator's letter, illuminated with metallic flames and floating spirits, remained on the wall. As before, the first capital initial was larger than the others, a carefully drawn Y arising from a bed of coals. Various people either looked at it or ignored it. There were a lot of people.
“I remember incinerators, too,” Annabelle Winston said. “We had them in Chicago.” Next to her, nodding agreement, sat Bobby Grant, wearing yet another safari shirt. This one had enough pockets to outfit the expedition that found Dr. Livingstone, with spare room to bring everybody home in. He'd removed the gold earring, a sensible move, in preparation for this meeting. On her other side sat a man whose clothes featured more buttons than a nuclear submarine. He had four buttons on each jacket cuff, buttons holding down the points of his IBM-white collar, a tiepin that was a silver button with a little diamond in its center, and a ring that was round and flat on top like a heavy gold button holding his hand on the table. In front of him was a closed attache case. He had a mouth like a snapping turtle and a forehead like a Mercator projection, which is to say that it bulged in the middle. He had to be a lawyer.
“So who's Ahriman?” the ranking cop asked.
“The devil,” I said, since no one else volunteered, “in Zoroastrianism.” People looked blank. “An ancient Persian religion.”
“The Crisper's a Persian?” Until he spoke, I hadn't realized that Willick was in the room, but there he sat at the other end of the table, notebook in hand and chins blossoming over his collar. The question was greeted with a flinty silence, and Willick buried his drooping nose in his notes.
“The Zoroastrians worshiped fire,” I offered into the silence. “Their good god was the creator of light and fire, and their bad god, whose name was Ahriman, was the creator of darkness. They saw the world as a series of twelve-thousand-year cycles of light and darkness, with first one god ascendant and then the other. They kept perpetual fires burning in their temples.”
“They still do,” said a very small, balding man in civilian clothes who was sitting next to the man with all the buttons. He gave us all a bland smoker's smile, unsheathing crooked amber-colored teeth. “I'm Dr. Schultz,” he said to me. “Dr. as in psychologist.”
“Simeon Grist,” I said.
“I know who you are,” Dr. Schultz said, making the teeth go away. The crinkly smile lines around his eyes stayed put, as though he'd drawn them on with a pencil.
“Just being polite,” I said.
Dr. Schultz had forgotten me. “He's an educated man,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the projection of the note. “No grammatical errors, no spelling mistakes, good sentence structure, he's got some familiarity with ancient religions. He uses perhaps frequently. Most people would say maybe.” He subsided, pleased with himself.
“What my client would like to know,” said the lawyer to the room at large, tapping his briefcase for emphasis, “is what you're going to do to capture this maniac.” He put his hand flat on the table again, and the gold ring made a clacking sound that put a large black period at the end of his sentence.
“We're working on it,” the captain said shortly.
“With all due respect, Captain,” Annabelle Winston said, almost pleasantly, “I'm not sure you are. But maybe—or, rather, perhaps—that's because we don't know what it is that you're doing.”
“We're doing everything that can be done,” the captain said flatly. “What do you suggest we should do?”
Annabelle Winston thought for a second. “I'm not a policeman,” she said. “I don't know what you should be doing. But I know what I'm going to do if you don't make me happy. Tell them, Fred.”
“We offer a reward of a million dollars,” Fred the lawyer said. Large cop feet scuffled nervously beneath the table.
“After taxes,” Annabelle Winston said quietly.
“After taxes,” the lawyer parroted, although his eyebrows, skyrocketing toward his hairline, revealed that this was clearly a bulletin as far as he was concerned, “to any citizen who conclusively identifies this . .. this Incinerator.”
“My God, you're turning it into the lottery,” the captain said. Nobody else said anything. Hammond pulled out a cigar.
“Please don't light that,” Annabelle Winston said. “I can't stand smoke.”
I stared at her. I'd seen her smoke. Hammond's face turned the color of rare roast beef. Captain or no captain, it was clear whose meeting this was.
“We're prepared to post the reward at a press conference at two this afternoon,” Fred the lawyer continued. “That will enable the television-news operations to scoop the Times, as I understand it.” Bobby Grant gave a nod of encouragement.
“It's more their kind of story,” he said. “They'll go to town with it. And then, of course, there's the radio news stations.”
“Has this press conference been announced?” That was the captain.
“Not yet,” Bobby Grant said, “but I can have it on the city news wire in five minutes.”
“You're interfering with a police investigation,” the captain said. His face was redder than Hammond's.
“What investigation?” Annabelle Winston asked. “We don't know what that means. Forgive me, gentlemen, but my father died last night, and so did Leo Quint – was that his name, Leo Quint? That makes a total of seven, and where are you? Seven human beings.”
“Ten,” Dr. Schultz said.
The silence that followed was broken by the lawyer unsnapping his briefcase and taking out a pad. He made a note in a lawyer's tiny handwriting. When he was finished, he looked at Dr. Schultz.
“Ten?” he said.
“None of this goes out of this room,” the captain interposed.
“Listen,” Annabelle Winston said, leaning forward to put her elbows on the table. “It goes wherever we want it to go if we're not satisfied with the course of action you propose.”
“Miss Winston,” the captain said with leaden geniality. He sounded as though he were talking to a little girl who'd just asked for a pony for Christmas. “Surely some information is privileged.”
“If the people the Incinerator is burning were privileged,” Annabelle Winston said acidly, “he'd be in jail by now. Let me make our position clear, Lieutenant.”
“Captain,” the captain said.
“It doesn't make any difference to me if you're a choir boy,” Annabelle Winston said without raising her voice. “Shut up and let me finish.” The lawyer tried to pat her wrist reassuringly, and she slapped his hand away. “Either you satisfy me, or we're going to make a laughingstock out of the entire Los Angeles Police Department. You don't think we can do it? I'm Baby Winston. I go to the bathroom and it's news. I buy a hat in New York, and designers in Paris change their plans. I've fought that kind of attention since I was fifteen. Well, now I'm going to invite it. How would you like to see me on the cover of People? I can arrange it, or Bobby can.”
“'Orphaned Heiress on the Hunt,' something like that,” Bobby Grant said with relish. It would look good on his resume.
Annabelle Winston lifted the hand with the emerald, and Grant clamped his lips shut, further eloquence reduced to a bubble of air that pushed his mouth forward like a monkey's. “The offer of a million dollars is on the square,” Annabelle said. “I could spend that on eye shadow and not miss it. I may only be a girl, Captain, but I've run a multimillion-dollar corporation on my own for three years. I went to
Mr. Grist because I didn't trust your abilities,” she said, looking at me while I tried to figure out how to slide under the table without being missed. “The fact is, gentlemen,” Annabelle Winston said, “as far as this case is concerned, you don't know jack shit.”
I tried to think of something conciliatory to say as Dr. Schultz and one of the lieutenants both pulled out packs of cigarettes and then remembered the ban on smoking. The lieutenant put his pack back, while Dr. Schultz laid his on the table and drummed his nails on it.
“The deal,” the captain said grudgingly, trying to sound like someone with an option. “We might as well listen to the deal.”
“Give us all the information. Give us a full game plan. If I'm satisfied, Captain, I'll be a good girl.” Annabelle Winston gave him a winning smile along with his proper rank. “Just persuade me that you've got an idea that will catch the Incinerator, and I'll fade away. Catch him, you get all the credit. Don't catch him, and I'll fry you alive.”
She looked around the table. “Sorry about the metaphor,” she said. She didn't sound sorry.
Nobody spoke. Then the captain looked at Dr. Schultz and nodded.
“Here's what we know,” Schultz said smoothly. He directed the smile, crinkles and all, at Annabelle. “He started last year at about the same time, the beginning of the fire season. September twenty-sixth he burned a bum named Warren Fields. A transient, same as the others. October nineteenth we had another incident. Same modus operandi, same results. Two men this time. The victims died of third-degree burns. Then nothing. We hoped that the, um, Incinerator was one of the two, that maybe he'd made a mistake and doused himself with gasoline, too, and that the two of them had gone up in smoke, as it were, together.”
“Wishful thinking,” Annabelle Winston said, dropping the words onto the table like rocks.
She got a mournful gaze from Schultz in return. “Well, it seemed to be the case, because that was the end of it. Until this year.” Schultz gazed around the room, looking more defeated than he wanted to look. “Then it started again.” He regarded the note projected on the wall as though he hoped it held hidden clues.
“He waits for the fire season,” I said.
“He's activated by the fire season,” Schultz replied. “The fire season triggers something irresistible in him. Maybe it's the television coverage or the smell of smoke. Who knows why he burns someone one night but not the next? You must understand, Miss Winston, that a serial murderer is the most difficult of all.” Annabelle didn't look particularly understanding, but Dr. Schultz plowed on. “Eighty-five, eighty-seven percent of all murders in the United States are committed by someone the victim knew, usually intimately, and that statistic takes into account the people who are killed during violent crimes, robberies, and so forth. Well, that's relatively simple. You sift through the possible suspects and choose the most likely. Most of the time you're right.
“But the serial murderer, like this Incinerator,” Schultz said, pronouncing the word with evident distaste, “chooses his victims at random. Stranger to stranger, the new murder fad. They have no relation to him. He can kill anywhere, at any time.”
“He doesn't,” Annabelle Winston said abruptly.
“Beg pardon?” Schultz asked. He'd picked up his cigarettes again as though he hoped someone would give him permission to light one.
“He doesn't kill just anywhere. He kills in a very specific district, and he kills only one kind of people. Skid Row and bums. Like my father.”
“Your father was hardly a bum,” Schultz said.
“Dr. Schultz,” Annabelle Winston said, stressing the title in a way that would have made a lesser man leave the room, “you think he made my father fill out a financial statement before he struck the match? You think that bums feel like bums? You don't believe that all of them think that they're going to find their way back to, to, I don't know, clean clothes, and friends, and a decent room at some point in the future? You think that all of them secretly want to be a bonfire?”
Schultz shuffled some papers, taking refuge in facts. “He's educated, probably college educated. Probably comes from a broken home, middle class or lower middle class, almost all serial murderers do. At some point in his childhood, he had a traumatic experience with fire. Traumatic, in this case, means—”
“I know what traumatic means,” Annabelle Winston said. “ 'Activated' was a new one to me, but I've been analyzed to the point of death.”
Schultz permitted himself a superior smile. “The analysand,” he said, “usually knows less about analysis than the doctor.”
“I know bullshit when I hear it,” Annabelle Winston said, “and I'm listening to it now.” She touched her lawyer's shoulder. “Fred,” she said, “why don't we leave? They haven't got anything.”
“He lives alone,” Schultz said, a trifle desperately. “Or with parents, more likely with his mother, someone who doesn't question his actions. His mother is extremely important to him. He's manipulative, probably has been since childhood. Good at hiding who he really is, his secret identity. In a way, you could say he's playful.”
“Playful?” It was the captain, and it was scornful.
Schultz anxiously pressed his thinning hair down onto his scalp. “He's been fooling the world for as long as he can remember. He enjoys it. He's a trickster and he thinks of himself as more intelligent than anyone else. He loves making all of us sit up or roll over, whichever he wants.” He seemed to lose his place and glanced down at his notes. “And he kills men. That's very significant.” He paused, waiting for someone to ask him why.
“Why?” I finally asked. I was feeling sorry for him.
“Male serial murderers—they're almost all male— kill women,” he said gratefully. “That makes him very unusual. It's also unusual that he kills people at the very bottom of the social ladder, so to speak. Most serial murderers kill up, by which I mean they take revenge on members of a class that's above them.”
“How do we know it's not a woman?” Annabelle Winston asked.
“Hermione,” Hammond said unexpectedly from the end of the table.
“And who's Hermione?” I asked.
“That's to come,” the captain said, glaring furiously at Hammond.
“It's to come right now,” Annabelle Winston said. “Otherwise we're walking.” To emphasize her point, she stood up.
“The lady with the blanket,” Hammond growled.
“She has a name,” Annabelle Winston said. “Does she have a location?”
“She's here,” the captain said to the table, “in protective custody.”
“Mr. Grist will need to talk to her,” Annabelle Winston said, sitting. “If you know he's a man, she must have seen him.”
“I thought you quit,” Hammond said, sounding betrayed.
“I did,” I said.
“I didn't accept your resignation,” Annabelle Winston said. “And if you quit, what are you doing here?”
It was a good question. “I had to bring the letter down anyway, and I'm nosy. I figured I might as well hang around for the meeting, since you'd invited me. But I'm afraid that I really do quit.”
“Actually, I don't think you do,” the captain said.
“Um,” I said, feeling like a hiker whose compass had just reversed itself. “Captain. Captain, ah ... I'm afraid I didn't get your name.”
“Finch.”
“Right, Captain Finch. Nice to meet you.” Finch's stare said that he'd just as soon have met me via a head-on collision. “I don't share Miss Winston's opinion of the LAPD. I think you're going to catch him. And I don't really like the kind of exposure I'm getting. I especially don't like the fact that the Incinerator knows where I live, and I'm not crazy about knowing that he's trying to figure out whether I'm friend or fuel. Anyway, as I say, I quit.”
Captain Finch gave me a narrow glance as he weighed the consequences of shooting me and then turned for help to Dr. Schultz.
“Well,” Schultz said, with some discomfort, “with al
l due regard for the police officers present, I share Miss Winston's feeling.” He gazed at me and worked on his facial muscles until he was smiling. “We may not catch him without your help.”
Now everybody in the room was looking at me. I may have been the center of attention, but I wasn't popular. “And why am I so important?”
“Because he's talking to you,” Schultz said. “It's exactly what we haven't had until now. It's why we haven't caught him. Look at the tone of that letter. He's joking with you about not answering the first note. 'As long as we're chatting,' he says. 'We might be brothers,' he says. He's having fun, but this man is obviously starved for someone to talk to. You're a link, Mr. Grist, the first human link we've had to him. We can't lose you. It's that simple.”
“It's nowhere near that simple,” I said. “I'm not a telephone, and I'm not willing to be your open line to someone who's burned ten people to death. Not when I might be number eleven. This is not a line of fire I want to be in. Excuse the metaphor, as Miss Winston said a few minutes ago.”
“Why do you know about Ahriman?” Dr. Schultz asked.
“One of my degrees is in comparative religion.”
Dr. Schultz's eyebrows went up. “One of your degrees?”
“I have four,” I said. “That's what I did before I became an investigator, I was a professional college student. A teacher, too, briefly.”
“So we should be calling you Dr. Grist,” Schultz said fraternally. He had a heavy hand with the butter.
“I'll leave the titles to you. Call me anything you want, but call me at home. I really quit.” I pushed back my chair and stood up.
“You can't go,” Finch said.
“Watch me.”
“Willick,” Captain Finch said.
I laughed. “Willick?” I said. “You're threatening me with Willick?” Willick stood up, looking hapless. “Choose somebody else,” I said. “I never hit a man wearing a notebook.”
“Please, Mr. Grist,” Annabelle Winston said. I paused, looking down at her. She was wearing less lipstick, and her mouth wasn't the problem it had been on Saturday.
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