The Hundredth Man

by J. A. Kerley

  “Where you been tonight, Cars?” he asked.

  “Camp meeting,” I said, the room creeping into focus. Ava wrapped me lightly in gauze from shoulder to elbow. Harry gently lifted me to sitting position as Ava plumped pillows to brace my arm. She went to the kitchen.

  Harry leaned close. “Was Jeremy at that meeting, Carson?”

  My breath froze; Harry knew. I closed my eyes. “I talked about him while I was out, didn’t I?”

  “You didn’t say a word.”

  “Then how “

  “I know about Jeremy, bro. I’ve known for a year.”

  My mouth didn’t form the question but my eyes did. He said, “I’m a detective, I detect.” Ava returned with a glass of scotch in her hand. She knelt beside me and brought it to my lips. “Stuff’s bad for you,” I mustered.

  “Bad for me, good for you. Drink.”

  The warmth hit my stomach and spread. Lightning flashed outside and the lights flickered momentarily. Thunder echoed. Harry scooted a chair over and sat by my head. The pain beneath my arm started to subside and with it my sense of disconnect.

  “You followed me to the hospital last year?” I asked Harry.

  “Back then you couldn’t see a tail pinned to your forehead; I almost tailgated you to the door. And if that’s a hospital, Fort Knox is an ATM.”

  “You couldn’t let it go. Not your style.”

  Harry said, “Did I do some digging? Hell, yes. I’m still not sure what I found. I know Jeremy Ridgecliff is your brother. Were you going to him for advice about Adrian?”

  I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was right, Harry.”

  Ava said, “Could one of you please tell me what’s going on?”

  I looked away. Harry scooched his chair to face Ava. “A year ago a patrol officer followed some crack heads into a rat-infested sewer beneath the city. He tripped over a girl from the projects, twelve-year-old Tessa Ramirez. Her eyes, face, were horribly burned. Forensics determined silk had been placed over her eyes and ignited. She was alive when it was lit.”

  His words sparked unwanted pictures in my head: Tessa Ramirez, sprawled face-up among the rats and broken glass, her eyes dark cinders burning into my soul. Help me, she cried, though she’d been dead a week.

  Ava said, “My God.”

  Harry said, “A month later an old wino was found the same way.”

  “Nothing to go on?”

  “Zippo, nada. Then, from nowhere, a street officer tells me the burning silk pads might be a bonding mechanism between killer and victims. This cop also suggests the victims were chosen by a ‘bonding fire’ before the killings. I thought he was mouth-foaming nuts, but we checked both vies had been at arson scenes in the previous six month, gawkers. We told the brass. But the department had called in the feebs FBI and their profile types were saying the fires were a form of hiding, the bonding-fire idea was lunatic ranting.”

  “What about the arsons?”

  “Coincidence, the brass said. The fires were big an old apartment building downtown, a ramshackle farm near Saraland. Hundreds of onlookers. The patrolman and I got our asses chewed ragged for interfering.”

  Ava looked at me. “You were the patrol officer.”

  I nodded reluctantly and was glad a rolling surge of thunder prohibited speaking. Harry poured another glass of Glenlivet and continued.

  “Cynthia Porter and her twenty-year-old daughter were found slain, eyes burned to cinders. Ms. Porter’s husband was a well-known auto dealer. He contributed heavily to both political parties. Unlike the previous instances the family was upper-income white. Everything went into uproar mode. The department created a parallel investigation, giving me and Cars a little room to pursue the bonding theory. Not believing it, natch, but wanting to cover all bases for PR reasons.”

  Ava said, “Had the Porters been … selected … by a previous fire?”

  “Selected? Good word. A month prior they’d been at the scene of a mysterious blaze at a strip center. Out shopping, saw the smoke, stopped to gawk. Carson figured we had to hit fire scenes, especially those that might be arson. He told me there was a good chance the perp used the fire to smoke out his victims, so to speak.”

  She looked at me. “You were right, weren’t you?”

  A blast of wind shivered the house and I waited it out before speaking. “There was a major fire in an abandoned warehouse by the state docks. I was following the fire department frequency and got there fast. I scanned the crowd and saw a guy more interested in gawkers than the fire. I snuck behind him and watched him yank out hunks of hair with his fingers, not flinching. It’s called trichollomania and a trichollomaniac “

  The MD in Ava jumped in, nodding. “Pulls hair for pleasure and a tension release. I’ve read about it. Rare in adults, one of the impulse control disorders, like compulsive gambling, explosive anger, kleptomania and … ” She paused, raised her eyebrows.

  “Right,” I said, “pyromania. I watched Joel Adrian pull a notebook from his pocket and walk to a dockworker. Adrian took notes before he booked. The dockworker told me the man was a reporter needing quotes for his story. He also told me the ‘reporter’ took his name and address for verification.”

  “What about Adrian?”

  The story approached the ending. Harry, sensing my unease, jumped in. I lay back into the pillow, trying to listen to the storm, hearing little but Harry.

  “Cars caught up to Adrian and got his tag number. We shadowed him, every hour, every day. Four days later Cars followed him to the home of the dockworker. Adrian conned his way inside, the reporter angle. Carson called in backup and slipped to the window to see the dockworker wired tight and laying on the floor … “

  Ava stared at me. I closed my eyes and saw Harry’s words become a movie. Adrian soaking a red silk pad with gasoline as the dock-worker struggled in wire bondage. Adrian putting the fuming pad over the worker’s terrified eyes, kissing him on the brow. Adrian pulling a lighter from his pocket, one of those pistol-grip tubes he’d fashioned to resemble a magic wand. I dived through the door. Adrian clicking the lighter’s trigger, smiling at me like we were about to share a wonderful dinner …

  “Carson?” Ava’s voice, far away, again under rain.

  The explosion of my gun was numbing. I scrabbled behind the couch, heart roaring, not knowing what I’d hit, if Adrian was armed. I heard loud thumping, like someone hammering erratically, and peeked out. Adrian was bucking on the floor, head and heels pounding the wood. He moaned, spasmed, hacked blood from his mouth. I watched it turn from a spray of pink to a torrent of red. He tried to squirm away from death, a broom-wide swash of red following him across the floor …

  “Carson? You killed him?” Ava’s voice pulled me into Now.

  “He did what he had to do,” Harry said, looking at me. “Don’t start that thinking, Cars.”

  I shook my head; the moment never resolved. “Maybe I could have distracted him. Waited for the backup. He could have been studied for future “

  Harry stood, jabbed his finger at my face. “I don’t want to hear that psychobabble again; you’re a cop, not a fucking psych student. Another second and the dock guy’s head would have been a ball of flame.”

  Ava reached out and touched my hand. “You never told Harry about your brother? Where your ideas were coming from?”

  I looked at Harry. “He figured it out on his own.”

  Our strange moment at the Church Street Cemetery soared back to me and I realized Harry had been telling me not to go to Jeremy alone this time, we’d run it down the pike together.

  I was ashamed to look at him. “I lied, Harry. I played Jeremy’s ideas like my own. Like it was me came up with all those leads to Adrian.”

  Harry snorted. “Not telling ain’t the same as lying, Carson. If you had to lie to eat you’d weigh a pound and a half.”

  “I wasn’t straight with you.”

  “You were going to tell me you were getting ideas from a psy
cho? I had a hard enough time believing when you were selling them as yours.”

  “You found where the ideas came from. And stayed in.”

  Harry’s pointing finger came out again. “Not at first. I found out who you were visiting. I had no idea you were pumping him for info. I only figured that out when you kept adding pieces to the theory after visits. If you’d started off telling me you got your ideas from a mass murderer, I’d have busted down the door getting away. Don’t overestimate the length of my neck, Cars.”

  Ava sat on the edge of the couch, watching and listening, nervous, something stirring on her tongue. She started to speak, but thunder rolled and she waited. When she spoke her voice was as sad as her eyes.

  “You’ve been burned before. On your other arm. Badly. There’s tissue seared away.”

  Harry froze. Turned to Ava. Back to me. Before I could move he gripped my arm in his hand, looking at the year-old scars.

  Whispered, Jesus.

  “Tell me about the past,” Ava said. “Everything.”

  CHAPTER 27

  The heart of the storm covered us. A chair on the deck pitched over in a gust, the rain cutting at a hard angle now. Wind moaned through the joists beneath the floor.

  “My father was a civil engineer,” I began, “who crossed between sanity and insanity as easily as he could lay a bridge over a shallow gorge. He was a dark force who fed on fear and pain and panic.”

  Ava said, “Yours.”

  “Jeremy’s. He abused him in ways beyond desperation. My mother’s pain was excruciating, but wholly mental.”

  “He didn’t touch you?”

  “He hardly saw me. Not until I grew large enough to catch his attention.”

  Harry said, “How old were you when “

  “I turned ten the day before Jeremy lured my father into the woods and ripped him apart.”

  A siren in the distance, the fire department racing to a lightning strike.

  “My father discovered my brother when Jeremy was ten. Like he’d suddenly materialized. I think ten was an age of significance to my father. Something from his own history.”

  Harry said, “You think Jeremy killed your father to save you?”

  “Himself as well. It was too late, he’d become the past.”

  “Where was your mother?” Harry asked.

  “She was a seamstress. Whenever things slipped into nightmare mode she went to her room and sewed wedding dresses, her speciality, great flowing cocoons of silk and lace. She was a simple woman whose only strength was a transient youthful beauty, and who found herself in a situation she couldn’t describe, much less affect.”

  Harry said, “Jeremy continued killing. Women.”

  The room stopped spinning; I pushed up on my good arm. “Though he’d exorcised the father demon, he had to keep killing Mother over and over again. For never standing between father and him.”

  “Why didn’t he kill her, Cars? I mean, her?

  “The other killings didn’t start for five years. Like they were fermenting inside him. And had he killed her I’d have been sent to a foster home or whatever. He didn’t want that.”

  “But why does he burn you? Is it something to do with Adrian, the burning?

  “Not directly, but it may have been what gave him the idea. It’s how I’m supposed to share the pain with him, the burden. That’s how he sees it. In return for his giving me a childhood.”

  It s savage, it s … evil.

  I fell back into the pillows, laid my forearm over my forehead. “It’s mental illness, Harry, a sickness beyond all control. He’s extremely intelligent, seemingly rational at times, but the way he sees the world has no basis in what we call reality.”

  “How could you let him do it?”

  “If I hadn’t let Jeremy exact his moment of what he terms equality, Adrian might still be out there.”

  Ava crossed the room to the deck doors. The rain pelted the glass like hail. She touched the glass, her fingertips lingering over it for a moment, then turned to me. “It’s not over, is it?” she whispered. “It’s happening again.”

  “Yeah, it’s over,” Harry said. “Look at what happened to his arm tonight. He’s paid up.”

  Ava walked over and stood above me. “No. It’s not over. He’s going to burn you again. Tonight was what? A test? A down payment? Next time he’s going to really burn you. Just like before.”

  Wind rattled the house, died away. I said, “I lent him certain materials that might be helpful in solving the beheadings … “

  Ava stared at me, waiting.

  I looked at the floor. “I’m required to return for them.”

  She started shaking, then crying soundlessly, the tears flowing down her face. Her chest heaved and bucked and the ragged sobs broke through. She clenched her hands into fists and beat against the air. Harry and I ran to her but she waved us away as though we were a cloud of wasps. As though my house had filled with indescribable pain, Ava opened the deck doors and escaped into the rain. I moved to follow her.

  Harry, smarter than me, held me back.

  We heard a few long loud moans like she was finding the key, and then Ava grabbed the railing, threw back her head, and started screaming like the world giving birth. Howls, shrieks, growls. She picked up a plastic chair and winged it off the deck, screaming between the bolts, beside them, and above them. She screamed to turn the night and the storm inside out. She grabbed the small table and flung it over the railing. The lightning flashed the world white and black and she screamed like she was going mad. Thunder rattled the foundations of my home and she screamed like she was going sane. She pulled off her left shoe and threw it at the rain. She howled, she moaned, she bellowed. She sounded sad and angry and together and apart and all pounded by rain and electrified by the night. She pulled off her right shoe and threw it at the sky. The storm roared at her and she roared back, charged and defiant. She peeled away her clothes and gave them to the wind.

  Harry turned away and began pulling on his raincoat.

  I went out to join Ava.

  The morning smelled pure enough to drink when we awakened at dawn. The storm slipped north around 3:00 a.m.” the only relics of its passing were breeze in the sea grasses and the pockmark stippling of the sand. I opened the window to the sound of waves.

  Ava rolled toward me, her eyes calm and steady. “I wasn’t thinking of such things last night, but we could have been electrocuted, you know, on the deck.”

  Her forehead was warm beneath my kiss. “Yes, and wouldn’t that have confounded them that found us?”

  It had amazed me last night, the possibilities of joy, even in a weakened condition with one working arm. First on the rain-swept deck, the rain only against our skins, far away from where we were, then, later, rocking the bed as the rain softened to a sussurious undercurrent.

  The possibilities continued afresh: We spent the opening hours in experimentation with the new. Whether to be shy while naked and dressing (neither of us was stricken with false modesty), whether to touch in passing (yes, lightly), who would instigate another session of lovemaking (a tie). Ava inspected my dressings and applied another round of the salve. Neither of us mentioned the cause of the burns, a tacit agreement allowing refreshment at the small oasis blooming in our lives. It was only mentioned as I left for work.

  “When you go again,” Ava said, “to see your brother?” “Yes?”

  “I’m coming with you. Don’t give me that look. I’m as good as there.”

  At four Harry made a run to the bank, and I’d started a half-hearted run to Billie Messer’s, Nelson’s aunt. I was going to reinterview everyone if that’s what it took, hoping to shake something, anything, loose. My phone rang, Harry.

  “Cars, we’ve got another one. A beheading. I’m there now.” Harry gave me the address. His voice was tight, clipped.

  I said, “What’s the physical type?”

  Harry took a breath. “You know how big Burlew is?”

  “The vi
c’s as big as Burlew?”

  “Same exact size,” Harry said. “It is Burlew.”

  I’d never seen anything like Burlew’s home that wasn’t in a hothouse. Orchids flourished everywhere: shelves, low tables, hanging baskets, driftwood fixed to the walls. Some bloomed pink trumpets, others squirted pearlescent bells. There were red cups and blue saucers, yellow lanterns and lavendar chandeliers. A small solarium off the dining room seemed the incubator, cuttings and plant lets getting their legs in small brown pots. The air smelled dense with fecundity, as if you could sprout seeds by letting them drop from your palm.

  Burlew’s headless body was supine in the kitchen. Squill had been and gone. I figured there were heavy-duty meetings among the bras shat clan. Hembree and his people were finishing up, two techs stowing gear. Harry and I stood in the living room, pressed close by the plants at our backs.

  I said, “I been meaning to ask about what you and Burlew were walking around yesterday. Giddy-up?”

  Harry studied the peaceful jungle around us. He reached to a shelf and touched a white cascade of tubular blossoms. “Look like candles, don’t they?” he mused.

  “Burlew and you shared a car?” I asked. “You were partners?”

  “Not long after he’d left his training officer. I was twenty-eight, he was twenty-four.”

  “You and Burlew on the streets together? Strange brew.”

  “Back then he wasn’t the Burlew you knew. You could talk to him. He even looked different, a tall, lanky, wide-shouldered country boy.”

  A wall-mounted branch beside Harry’s head cradled an orchid: a garland of jingle-bell blossoms dangling from a spray of leaves. Harry flicked a blossom and seemed surprised when it didn’t ring.

  “We got a call to the Tallrico Apartments, that sprawling scruff-hole out northwest. Resident said she’d seen a man with a gun running around. It was maybe two a.m. We rolled up and rolled out, Burlew left, me right. I ended up with some woman babbling about a giggling guy waving a gun and running crazy around the place. I left her and went off to see what Burlew’d come up with, but couldn’t find him.”