by Blake Pierce
“I will,” she said. “Thanks, Ramirez.”
He got up from his chair and gave her a light and reassuring squeeze on the shoulder as he passed her and made his exit. Avery was left alone at the table. She stared into space, feeling the sense of uncertainty wash over her.
If Bailey was not their guy, the killer was still out there. And if he had showed them anything so far, it was that he moved quickly—almost as quickly as the fire he used to kill his victims.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
He stared out of the passenger side window of the car, looking at the two-story house beside him. It was a nice house, complete with a pool in the backyard. The neighborhood wasn’t a particularly nice one, but this woman lived on the nicer cul-de-sac. It was easily one of the nicest houses in the subdivision.
He had never met the woman but knew a good deal about her. Her name was Sophia Lesbrook. She was able to live in the house because her husband had worked as a very successful real estate broker. Her husband, though, had died two months ago. He had been able to get her address by calling the flower shop that had taken the bulk of orders from family and friends when her husband had passed away and placing his own fake order which he later cancelled.
Sophia had been a tough one to get. With the others, he had studied their movements and schedules. But Sophia had not gotten out much after her husband had died. She was fifty-two years old. They had never had any kids so she was living in this nice house by herself, visited only by a sister that stopped by once or twice a week. He knew this because this was not the first time he had parked across from her house. In fact, he’d done it six different times.
He was going to have to take some risks tonight if he wanted to procure her. He was pretty sure there were no electrical alarms or security systems within the house. He also knew where the spare key was; he had seen the sister take it from beneath one of the six flower pots that lined the porch.
He’d never broken into anyone’s home before. In fact, up until he had taken Keisha Lawrence, he had never broken the law. He had done some things that he knew others would frown upon and might be considered deranged, but he had never broken the law.
So when he stepped out of his car and headed for Sophia Lesbrook’s house, there was a whole new excitement to it. He had no gun, he had no knife…but he did have the drive behind his work and a pair of hands with the full strength of his toned arms behind them.
It was two in the morning and the entire subdivision was eerily quiet. It made every movement he made seem thunderously loud. He made his way up onto the porch and quietly lifted the fourth flower pot from the right. The silver spare key glittered in the moonlight like a beacon.
He picked it up and the feel of it sent a shock of excitement through him. He was really going to do this. He was about to cross a line that could never be uncrossed. Now it was more than just the fire that drove him…now it was the sense that he could do anything he wanted and could not be stopped.
He slid the key into the front door lock. When he turned it, his mind oddly turned to thoughts of his mother. She would be so disappointed in him. Breaking and entering. Kidnapping. Murder. He had clearly not become the upright young man she had desired him to be.
Well, fuck her, he thought. This is her fault. She did this to me. She sent me on this path.
It felt like a thin excuse but it was good enough for him.
After his father had died, his mother had kept his ashes in an urn on the mantel in the living room. He had been twelve when it happened, staring at that urn for more than seven years until he finally moved out. He recalled the arguments his mother and grandmother had often had. His grandmother tearing into his mother because she claimed her son had not wanted to be cremated. It had been nowhere in his will and he had deserved to be buried in the family plot out by their church. But his mother had always insisted that it had been the right thing to do. He would stare at that urn sometimes and wonder how someone’s entire life and being could be held by it.
When he was twenty, his mother had made him spread the ashes. They’d done it out at a lake where no one had been in attendance. She had been drunk as he scattered the ashes, murmuring about how this was what he would have wanted…this was the best thing. By that point, his grandmother had moved to another state and there had been no arguments. And he had felt that it had been very wrong.
It had seemed wrong to him then and it still seemed wrong. To burn someone’s dead body when they had not wanted such a thing for their final remains. To scatter them in what had seemed like a random location was even worse. He’d hated his mother for it for the longest time. It made him think of her as a witch who had kept his ashes for emotional reasons he had never quite understood.
When he opened the door to Sophia Lesbrook’s house, he almost hoped his mother was hearing it wherever she was these days. He hoped she was dreaming it and that this act of disobedience was pulling her from her sleep.
Ahead of him, the house was dreary and dark. It was a lovely house, the living room opening up on the right to show a fifty-inch television over a fireplace set into the wall. Everything was immaculately cleaned and he could smell something that had been baking earlier in the day—cinnamon rolls, perhaps.
He ventured through the house, enjoying the thrill of seeing the interior of a house he did not belong in. But he did not let himself get distracted. He went from room to room, finally finding Sophia’s bedroom upstairs.
She slept with a noise machine on the bedside table. It was tuned to basic white noise, a hiss that made the room feel small in an odd way.
He stepped to the side of the bed and watched her sleep for a few seconds. With a slight frown, he then made a fist of his right hand, drew it back, and delivered a hard punch to the side of her head.
Her eyes sprang open as she sprang hard to the right. She opened her mouth to cry out but his hand was quick to cover her lips. He crawled onto the bed and straddled her. He drew his right hand back and hit her again. This time, an ache went spiraling through his wrist. Beneath him, her body went limp.
In an almost anticlimactic way, he removed himself from the bed and looked down at her. He removed the covers from her body and stared at her. She was pretty for her age and he wondered what it might be like to be the kind of man that would take advantage of her unconscious body. But that was not him. He would never sink to those depraved depths.
But really…he had never thought he’d break into someone’s house. How much further was he capable of going?
With some effort, he was able to get her out of the bed. He carried her threshold style, feeling the slight rise and fall of her breaths against him. He carried her down the stairs and looked back into the living room. He paused for a moment before leaving.
He stared into the living room. On the mantel between the fireplace and the television, there were a few pictures of family members and of a man he assumed had been Sophia’s husband.
And in the midst of it all, there was an urn…the final resting place of her husband’s ashes until they were scattered.
But with her gone, he didn’t think those ashes would ever be scattered.
He gave the urn a final longing look and then carried Sophia’s unconscious body back out into the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Avery gave up on the hope of sleep sometime after one in the morning. She put on a fresh pot of coffee in the A1 break room and was on her second cup when her thoughts once again turned to her odd meeting with Howard Randall. Randall had never been one to just hand out information. He preferred to provide clues in an almost cryptic form, making her work for it.
Is that what he was doing when I visited him? she wondered. Was his mood a hint?
It was a stretch. All she knew was that his insistence that she never visit him again was not like him at all. He usually enjoyed her visits, mainly because he got off on the fact that someone of her caliber relied on his insights. So why the sudden the change of a heart?
/> It made her wonder if his direction had been misleading. He had suggested that she not worry so much about the arson aspect of fire…that it was totally symbolic. She agreed with it but it was hard to find a suspect based on nothing more than symbolism. There had to be something else…something she was missing.
She rifled through the papers on her desk and pulled out the details on the victims. She read through them a few times, waiting for a link to jump out at her.
All women so far.
The third was rushed, the body not burned. No positive ID as of yet.
The manner in which he leaves the remains indicates that he wants our attention but has no desire to be caught. He wants to gloat about what he’s doing but is content to do it for the attention.
That again made her think of what she and Dr. Sloane Miller had discussed. Arsonists often revisited the scene of their crime to watch the destruction. So maybe the killer was coming back to his crime scenes to watch Avery and her fellow detectives and law enforcement officials try to figure out the method to his madness. But why? What was it about their psychological makeup that drove them to do such a thing?
There was another question, still: if he was using fire as a symbolic means, maybe the symbolism didn’t stop at the fire. Maybe it came down to the victims, too.
What am I missing?
She was about to pore over the information on the victims again when a knock sounded out at her already open door. She looked up and saw Ramirez peeking in. He looked tired but still had that boyish sort of energy to him when he smiled at her.
“Anything new?” he asked.
“No. Just dead ends and frustration. You?”
“Phillip Bailey has a lawyer coming in tomorrow morning. He’d still insisting he has never killed a person—that his perversions never extended beyond animals.”
“So things with him are at a stand-still for now?” she asked.
“Yeah, until tomorrow when the lawyer comes in. Why? You still have your doubts?”
“I do, but I don’t know why.”
“Well, give your brain a rest,” he said. He walked into the office and walked behind her as she remained sitting. He started to massage her shoulders and she instantly felt herself relax. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had rubbed her back.
“My brain never rests,” she said. “And Ramirez…while what you’re doing feels amazing, that’s crossing the line we keep talking about.”
“To hell with that line. There’s no one else on this floor right now.”
“We still have work to do,” she said. She was starting to get irritated. How many different ways did she have to tell him that she did not want their romantic entanglements to interfere with their work? She really didn’t want to be a bitch about it, but he was leaving her no choice.
“You work your ass off,” Ramirez said. “It’s okay to take five or ten minutes for yourself.” As he said this, he increased the pressure on his shoulders. His hands also slid a bit lower below her neck.
“For what?” she asked, shrugging off his hands. “You want me to just throw everything on my desk onto the floor so you can bang me on it? Want a quickie on my desk? Or maybe in a janitor’s closet? Jesus, Ramirez…grow up and do your job.”
“No, I didn’t want a quickie on your desk,” he said, offended.
“Then what is it?” she asked. “What do you want?”
“Ten minutes with you where we aren’t bogged down by our jobs,” he said.
“Well, you aren’t going to get that right now. I’m sorry, but if you make me choose between work and you, you’re not going to stand much of a chance.”
“Oh,” he said, slowly walking back to the door. “It’s that easy for you, huh?”
“Yes. It is.”
“So maybe I should just leave you alone until this case is wrapped…or until you decide that you’re overthinking it and it’s already wrapped. Bailey is our guy. Stop overthinking things. Stop making yourself busy so you can ignore this emotional thing you’re feeling for me.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” she spat.
“I’m not too sure about that,” Ramirez said.
“The world does not revolve around you,” Avery said. “Now, if you don’t mind…close the door on your way out.”
It was obvious that he was biting back a remark as he made his exit, but he managed to swallow it down. He did put some force behind closing the door as he left, though.
Avery looked back down to the files of the victims. All women…but what else? Was there something there that she was missing?
She thought of her conversation with Sloane and the insights she had given into the mind of an arsonist. Maybe they needed to look at it from a different angle—from a fresh perspective. Of course, it was nearing three in the morning right now so there was very little to be done.
Knowing that three hours of sleep would be useless, she stood up and stretched her back. She then settled back down behind the desk and studied the files for Keisha Lawrence and Sarah Osborne. She hoped the identity of the third victim might help tie up some loose ends.
But until then, she only had the two deceased women staring at her from pieces of paper on her desk. They had been reduced to ashes on their last days on earth and it was up to Avery to discover the stories they had to tell.
She thought of Dr. Sloane Miller again and thought she might be just the person to help her figure out what these particularly tragic stories meant.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Avery waited until six in the morning to call Sloane. She was relieved to hear that it sounded like Sloane had been awake for quite some time already. As it so happened, she was in a coffee shop when she answered her phone and happily agreed to meet with Avery the moment she got to the office.
That’s how Avery came to be sitting in Sloane’s office half an hour later with a coffee and a muffin Sloane had brought her from the coffee shop. Sloane set her things down on her desk, powered up her work laptop, and finally took a seat.
“So what can I do for you?” Sloane asked.
“I’m still hung up on this case where the killer is burning his victims,” Avery said. She was sitting in the patient’s chair, eating her small breakfast. For a moment, it almost felt as if she were just hanging out with a close friend. “I’m trying to view it through the lens of someone who might be using fire as a strictly symbolic means without any interest or leaning towards arson.”
“Well, that’s certainly interesting,” Sloane said. “But I’m not sure you’ll find someone fitting that description. I guess it is possible, but unlikely.”
“And why do you say that?”
Sloane thought about it for a moment as she sipped from her coffee. “As we discussed before, even a little kid staring into a campfire—maybe holding a hot dog or marshmallow over it—understands the power that fire has. There’s an inherent sort of respect for it. What an arsonist essentially does is evolve that fascination and respect into a device for power. They want to see the world burn and they have no problem using fire to do it because it’s an outlet of power to them. Does that make sense?”
“So far, yes,” Avery said.
“So now let’s consider someone who is burning bodies on purpose. Sure, there could be some symbolism attached to it and that’s fine. But anyone using fire as a means to destroy or reduce something is working on those same inherent feelings. They understand the absolute power of fire and are using it with intent. It may even be a situation where the killer doesn’t even realize he has these arson-like tendencies. But at the root of what he’s doing, there is a degree of the same sort of mindset an arsonist would have, even if it’s at its most basic form.”
So it could be someone like Phillip Bailey, Avery thought. Behind his obvious mental issues, there’s an almost primitive understanding of how fire is a very basic yet common way to destroy things. Hell, even George Lutz understood that.
“So you think it would be a mistake to rul
e out an arsonist?” Avery asked.
“I wouldn’t do it. In fact, I’d be looking for links between the two. Out of your suspects, is there anyone who has a background in arson that also may have some sort of connection to fire that could be viewed as symbolic?”
Would an arsonist work at a crematorium or trash-burning plant? Avery wondered. And if they did, would they even understand why they were doing it? Would they even be aware of their interest in fire?
Avery nodded, knowing exactly what she needed to look for. But on the heels of that was the question of Howard Randall. Had he purposefully given her wrong information? Had he just been screwing with her, tiring of being her lackluster mentor?
Symbolism versus intent, Avery thought. I’ve been putting too much stake in that thought. What if the two are married? What if we’re looking for someone who is not only very much aware of their obsession with fire, but with the mindset of a killer?
There’s no need to look at those as individual traits if they could be linked to create a sadistic murderer.
But then again, maybe Howard was right all along. Maybe the killer was using fire as a weapon but not with an arsonist’s frame of mind. Sometimes, fire was just fire.
“Does that help?” Sloane asked.
“I think it does. And as much as I hate to take the gift of coffee and run…”
“Run,” Sloane said with a smile of understanding. “Go get the bad guy, Detective Black.”
With a nod of appreciation, Avery left Sloane’s office with the cogs in her head already turning. She walked back to her own office on autopilot as she started putting the pieces together in her head.
By the time she was back behind her desk, she was pretty sure she knew exactly what she was looking for—and that two files in particular were on her desk that lined up almost exactly.
In their searches, Avery had received files based on people with a history of arson and then a completely different set of files based on people who had worked at crematoriums and had been let go for questionable reasons. While she had done some cross-referencing, she had not done anything in-depth because she had been leaning so hard toward arson not being a part of it.
