by Steven James
The transient, who was either mentally ill or high—or both—was now holding a rusted tire iron. Whether he’d had it hidden nearby or just found it, I didn’t know.
“Hey!” I had to yell loudly to be heard over the clatter of the approaching trolley. The guy was fast, frantic. I ran toward him.
“Stop!”
“Preehl!” he screamed.
Rumbling from the tracks nearby, the trolley was accelerating.
I sprinted toward the transient. “Put it down.” I reached for the plastic restraints I carry in my back pocket. “Do it now!”
This was spinning off bad, bad.
The vagrant turned in a circle, delirious. Disoriented. “Rrrrh-hhhkkk.”
Finally, the customer who’d been standing outside the tobacco store backed away and slipped into the thick shadows beside it.
Good, that’s good.
But you still need to restrain this guy so he doesn’t attack someone else.
I closed the distance to the homeless man, and he threw the tire iron at me, then bolted toward the trolley tracks. His impromptu weapon clanged to the sidewalk beside me as I ran toward him.
Only a few more meters.
The rushing thunder of the trolley became more pronounced here, because just past us, the track descended into a tightly cut trench through the city. A stiff, black metal fence two meters tall lined the sides of the rift to keep people from falling in.
Or jumping.
Oh no.
The transient grabbed the railing and began to climb. I sprang forward to clutch his leg. Almost had it. Almost.
There. I had his ankle.
But then he screamed one last unintelligible word, fiercely kicked my hand away, and threw himself over the top of the railing directly into the path of the oncoming trolley.
10
Even above the sound of the trolley rattling over the tracks, I could hear the wet, grisly sound of the trolley’s impact.
No, no, no.
I ran to the railing.
The engineer was braking the trolley, but it wouldn’t matter anymore to the man who’d jumped. I wondered if the people aboard had felt anything, if they had any idea what had just happened. I noticed something wobbling to a stop beside the tracks. Then I realized what it was.
The man’s shoe.
And it looked like it might still have his foot inside it.
A sour, churning flood of nausea swept through me. Some people grow numb to it all. To the death and blood and violence. You’d think in my job I would have, but it still bothers me. It still breaks my heart and turns my stomach.
I took a deep breath to calm myself and then remembered Tessa.
I swiveled around and ran to our car, part of my mind cataloging the scene.
Entrance and exit routes—K Street and 16th. No mobile traffic.
Check.
License plate numbers—five parked cars, memorize the plates.
Check.
Potential witnesses—trolley riders? Unlikely. In the channel, they couldn’t see out … college kid, store owner? Possibly. Tessa, me.
Check.
Surveillance—no visible cameras.
Check.
Tessa was sitting in the passenger seat, rocking back and forth, both hands covering her face. My phone was still in the car beside her. I knocked on the window and called for her to unlock the door.
When she didn’t move, I flagged down a man in a maroon Ford Mustang who’d just turned onto our street. At first I didn’t think he’d stop, but when he saw me glance at his plates, he pulled to a stop beside the curb.
“What’s going on?” he asked. His eyes landed on the blood seeping out of my arm.
“Do you have a phone?”
“Sure. Yeah.”
“Call 911. Tell them a man jumped in front of the trolley.”
He kept gazing at my arm.
“Do it.”
He dialed.
I had to call to Tessa four or five times before she finally unlocked the door and I was able to climb in beside her. “Are you OK?”
She was shaking.
I pulled her close. Held her tight.
“Did he do it?” Her voice fragile, broken. “Did he jump?”
Good. She didn’t see. Thank goodness she didn’t see.
“Don’t worry about that—”
“Did he jump!”
“Yes.” I had to be straight with her. “He did.”
She began hitting me with small, rigid fists. “He shouldn’t have done it, Patrick. He shouldn’t have.”
“I know.”
“Why did he do it?”
We always want a reason, an explanation, but sometimes there aren’t any. “He was confused,” I said. “He made a terrible mistake.”
I hugged her, tried to calm her. “Now, are you OK?”
“I wish we hadn’t come here.”
“Me too. I’m sorry.”
“Can we go?” She was wiping a tear away. “Please. Let’s go.
OK?”
A man had just died, just killed himself, and since Tessa had covered her eyes and the college kid had bolted, it looked like I was the only one who’d seen what happened. I knew the police would need my statement, so, as badly as I wanted to, I couldn’t leave the scene quite yet. On the other hand, I didn’t want Tessa anywhere near here. I definitely needed to get her back to the hotel.
Just relax and think for a minute, Pat. Think.
I looked up and saw that the windshield was spider-webbed with cracks and spotted with crimson. Beyond John Doe’s blood spatter, I could see that a crowd was already forming along the edge of the tracks, staring down. Pointing. On the other side of the tracks two men trudged past the onlookers. I couldn’t see their faces, but one walked with the measured steps of an older man, and the bigger, younger guy was carrying a large black duffel bag.
The man in the Mustang had swiveled around the block and was picking them up.
“Well?” Tessa said.
“I won’t be able to leave for a little while,” I said. “Let me see if I can find someone who can take you back to the hotel.”
11
Special Agent Lien-hua Jiang leaned against the pillows of her hotel bed with her notebook computer on her lap. Fighting the bleariness in her eyes, she scrolled through the case information about the serial arsonist.
For the umpteenth time.
With San Diego’s dry climate and dense population, the city officials were nervous about any fires—especially with the memory of the Santa Ana winds that caused the devastating fires of 2007
still fresh in their minds.
Lien-hua had first worked on this arsonist’s profile last fall, but since then there’d been six more fires and the police still didn’t have any solid leads, and lately he’d been progressing, waiting less time in between fires. So, Lieutenant Aina Mendez, the head of San Diego’s Metro Arson Strike Team, or MAST, had called Lien-hua back to update the profile. And this time Lien-hua had asked Special Agent Patrick Bowers to help analyze the timing and sites of the crimes.
She told herself that she’d asked him to come because of his expertise at finding serial offenders, and not because of any kind of personal interest she might have in him.
That’s what she told herself.
He’d agreed to the assignment immediately, just as she knew he would.
Even though Lien-hua had six solid years of experience as a behavioral profiler, she’d never seen anything quite like this before.
By its very nature, arson is one of the toughest crimes to solve.
The fire destroys evidence, and the suppression and rescue efforts leave the crime scene contaminated. Because of that, arson is a great way to hide one crime inside another.
So, when she’d started on the case last fall, she began by looking for motive. What other crime might the fires be masking?
Insurance fraud wasn’t the issue; she’d checked on that right away. The property value on
the buildings was comparatively low by San Diego standards, and the owners had no apparent ties to each other. No fatalities so far, thankfully, so he didn’t seem to be setting the fires to cover up a crime—well, not murder at least.
But what, then? If not for profit or to cover up evidence, why start the fires?
Maybe for the sheer thrill of watching things burn?
Possibly, except Lieutenant Mendez and the Metro Arson Strike Team had interviewed and followed up on everyone in the crowds at each of the fires—even the responding officers and firefighters.
A few leads so far, but nothing substantial.
From everything Lien-hua had seen, this guy didn’t stay to watch.
So then … what was his motive? Why did he do it?
During her career Lien-hua had mostly worked homicides rather than arsons, but Lieutenant Mendez told her that the efficiency of the fires pointed to someone who understood the flow patterns of buoyant gases and could locate the most ideal point of origin so that the building would come down fast.
In other words, a professional.
But if he was a professional, who was hiring him?
And why?
Even now, after fourteen fires, the police still didn’t have a single suspect …
They had thousands.
Lien-hua sighed and massaged her forehead with a tired hand.She left her laptop on the bed and walked to the vase sitting beside her purse on the desk. She’d brought the vase with her, as she always did, and bought the flowers when she arrived in town.
Traveling as much as she did, she’d found that she needed something in addition to yoga and kickboxing to calm her mind and recenter her spirit when she was in the middle of a case.
The simple act of creating beauty and symmetry out of chaos brought her a sense of calm and a welcome escape from the pressures that come with being an FBI profiler—not to mention the grace that the flowers brought to the nondescript hotel rooms she stayed in so often.
Ten years ago, in the months following the “accident” that no one in her family ever dared to talk about—and that Lien-hua still didn’t believe was an accident—her mother had started flower arranging. And over the next seven years, before the car wreck that took her life, Mei Xing had become somewhat of an expert.
After her mother’s death, Lien-hua had decided to take up flower arranging in her place. Maybe in honor of her mother, maybe to work through her grief, she wasn’t sure. After all, the hardest person to know, the hardest person to profile, is yourself.
Flower arranging is supposed to be peaceful and relaxing, but at first Lien-hua found it to be just the opposite.
Frustrating, exasperating, time-consuming? Yes.
Calming and soothing? Not quite.
And yet, in time Lien-hua had learned to distinguish the different moods that a slight change in the arrangement of a single petal could produce. Tranquility. Excitement. Wonder.
Allure.
She angled the two cyclamen to face the white irises and tilted one of the star-of-Bethlehem petals so that it would gather more light.
Using all white flowers in a white vase gave the room an elegant feeling. Pure and innocent.
Lien-hua stepped back.There. Much better.
She plopped onto the bed again and pulled up the computer files, but just as she was about to look over the list of possible accelerants, her cell rang. She answered. “Yes?”
“Lien-hua, I need your help.”
“Pat?” He sounded upset. “What is it? Are you OK?”
“There was an accident. I’m with Tessa—”
A cold chill. “You’re not hurt—”
“No. We’re fine, but listen, can you come get Tessa, take her back to the hotel? I need to stay here, give my statement to the police. If you can just hang out with her for an hour or two until I get back, it would really help out. I think she’ll be all right, I just don’t want her to be alone.”
“Of course. Where are you?”
He gave her the address and they ended the call.
Lien-hua grabbed her purse, but in her rush she bumped her elbow against the vase and it toppled off the desk, scattering her flowers across the carpet.
She took a moment to evaluate the mess and then quickly slipped the flowers back into the vase. She could refill the water later when she had more time.
As she set the vase onto the desk, she noticed that some of the petals had been bruised by the fall.
Wounded petals.
Bruised innocence.
She thought back to the incident that had brought all the flowers into her family’s life. An awkward drop of guilt splattered inside of her.
The arrangement will never be the same again.
Never the same.
As she left the room, she shut the door harder than she needed to, then hurried down the hallway to pick up Tessa from the site of the accident.
12
While I waited for Lien-hua and the police, I took some digital pictures of the scene with my cell phone and emailed them to the dispatcher to forward to the responding officers. It used to be that we had to wait for a photographer to show up at the scene of an accident or a crime.
Not anymore.
Welcome to the twenty-first century.
I noticed that the transient’s tooth was still embedded in my arm.
Without letting Tessa see, I pried it loose. It hurt more than I thought it would, and my fingers were quivering a little as I dropped it into my pocket and snugged up the elastic cuff of my windbreaker to stop the bleeding.
A few minutes later, three police cars and an ambulance pulled to the curb, and as if on cue, Lien-hua arrived and parked just behind them.
I noticed the eyes of all the male—and female—officers following Lien-hua as she crossed the street. I wasn’t surprised. After all, she carries herself with Oriental poise, has an elegantly beautiful face with a slight nose and high cheekbones, and is, to put it mildly, very, very fit. Of course, she’s also brilliant, cool under pressure, single, and, at thirty-two, just four years younger than me.
Overall, she’s one of the most stunning women I’ve ever met. But as she approached, I tried not to think about all that, and instead, after a quick greeting, I focused on explaining to her what had happened. One of the EMTs gave me a tube of antibiotics for my arm, and I pulled back my sleeve as we approached Tessa, who was sitting on the curb halfheartedly snapping a rubber band against her wrist and occasionally writing something in her notebook.
After a moment, Lien-hua sat beside her. “Hello, Tessa.”
Without looking up. “Agent Jiang.”
“Are you doing OK?”
Snap. “Don’t psychoanalyze me or anything. I just want to go to bed.”
Lien-hua dragged a slender finger across the sidewalk. “Fair enough.” Then she stood and offered her hand to Tessa.
I finished smearing some of the antibiotics on my arm and twisted the cap back onto the tube. “Tessa, I asked Lien-hua to stay with you for a little bit while I finish up here.”
Snap. Snap. “I don’t need anyone to stay with me.”
When Lien-hua saw that Tessa wasn’t going to take her hand, she lowered it.
“Please.”
She set her jaw, got up, and huffed over to Lien-hua’s car.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
I need to talk to her about that rubber band thing.
Once Tessa was out of earshot, I told Lien-hua, “It’s been a rough night, but I think she’ll be OK. I’ll see you at the hotel, all right?”
“Sure.”
I touched her elbow softly. “Hey, thanks for coming.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “I’m glad I could be here for you.”
Her words tumbled through my head, meaning more to me than she could have possibly meant them to. “Yeah, me too.”
Then she climbed into the car beside Tessa, and a police officer whose face looked like a block of meat with thick stubble glued to its base ca
lled out, “Where do you think you’re going?” An old scar crawled across his cheek and dragged one of his lips down into a sneer. His arms were two tattooed pythons hanging out of his shirtsleeves. He wore a detective’s badge.
“They didn’t see what happened,” I said.
He looked at me suspiciously. “And you are?”
“Patrick Bowers. I’m a federal agent. FBI.”
As I pulled out my ID, he studied my outfit, apparently taking note of my jeans, running shoes, and T-shirt. “Fed, huh? If you’re an FBI agent, where’s your wingtips and dorky little tie?”
I almost asked him where his doughnut and dinky little mustache were, but I wasn’t sure that would be the best way to jump-start our friendship. Instead, I just showed him my federal ID.
Lien-hua had waited, but now I nodded for her to take off. The detective didn’t seem interested in the two women anymore. He looked over my ID, working his jaw back and forth. “So, now the Feds are involved in this too?”
“Involved in what?”
He handed me the ID. “Look, if you’re gonna come in here and start some kind of turf war—”
I read the name off his badge. “Detective Dunn, I wasn’t sent in to investigate anything. I’m only here because I was the witness to John Doe’s suicide. Is there something going on I should know about?”
He stepped close enough for me to smell his garlicky breath.
“This is my city. The next time you and your pencil-pushing lawyer buddies from Quantico decide to stick your nose into an ongoing investigation, at least have the courtesy to go through the proper channels.”
“I’d suggest you back away,” I said. “Now.”
He backed up slowly.
“What ongoing investigation are you talking about, Detective?”
“Don’t insult me. You know or you wouldn’t be here.” He rubbed at the sandpapery stubble on his cheek. “So, you the photographer too? Little snapshots of the trolley you’re emailing to everyone.”
This guy was something else. “Your badge says you’re a homicide detective. I was a detective in Milwaukee for six years and I know that dispatch wouldn’t send you here to work an eyewitness cor-roborated suicide, at least not until foul play was suspected. What’s going on here?”
