Fire Angel

by Susanne Matthews

  She watched as his lips moved, but since lip reading was not one of her skills, she had no idea what he’d said. Whatever it was, it made Jake laugh again.

  “Yeah, well, we can always hope,” Jake answered. “Take care of yourself.” He terminated the connection and turned to Alexis, removing the headset as he did.

  “That was my brother. I’m sorry to have been MIA so often the last couple of days, but what could go wrong around here did. Thank God Frank wasn’t hurt and managed to get here yesterday and today. He brought Andrew out with him this morning to have a look at one of the elders with chest pains. They took her to North Bay. She’ll be fine. Did you want to see me about something? Is there anything you need?”

  “I was wondering if I could get a cup of hot milk? Hopefully, it’ll relax me enough to let me get to sleep despite the sound of the rain.”

  He stood and walked over to the fridge. Opening the door, he took out the milk and turned back to her.

  “According to the weather station, the temperature will turn milder during the night and everything should be fine by morning. Once it stops coming down, the highway crews clean it up quickly.”

  “Good, but I’ve never put a lot of faith in meteorologists. Sometimes I truly believe they predict the weather by throwing darts at a board.” She chuckled. “Let’s hope they have it right this time. I need to get to that house. The answers we need are there. I feel it in my bones. While I’m waiting for the milk, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions that have been nagging at me.”

  “I’m all yours. Fire away,” he answered, filling two cups with milk and placing them both in the microwave before returning the milk to the fridge.

  She carried the folder over to the sofa and sat. The heat and light from the fireplace dispelled some of the gloom. Strange how fire could destroy one moment and comfort the next. She opened the file on her lap.

  “Dwayne Crites,” she began, determined to keep this as impersonal as possible despite the romantic atmosphere. “We never did get to talk to him, but if he’d set that fire, he wouldn’t have been trying to get back inside. I thought he could’ve paid someone to do it and changed his mind—it happens. I managed to get Captain Peters to get me his financials, but there haven’t been any transactions that could account for that. What do you think? Is he still a suspect?”

  Jake shook his head. “I phoned him to offer my condolences. He’s a broken man. It seems he and his wife had been attending counselling sessions with Maxine. He joined AA and hired a company from North Bay to refurbish the house. She was only staying at the shelter because the smell of new paint aggravated her sinuses. She would’ve gone home the next day. Damn shame. They were hoping to start a family. The night Duffy’s burned down, he was at The Rusty Nail drowning his sorrows, the same as he’d been almost every night for the last three months since they’d started to have problems. I verified that. He’s no longer on my list. While I had him on the line, I asked him about the dead animals on your window sill. He didn’t know who might’ve done it, either, but he swore it wasn’t him. His father would’ve tanned him good if he’d ever caught him playing with dead varmints—that’s a quote.”

  “So another dead end. What about Andrew? Do you still maintain he can’t be the one?”

  “I do. I know everything fits, but it’s all circumstantial. I phoned the clinic and talked to the staff. All of them were positive, praising him both as a man and a doctor.”

  He put up his hand to stop her from interrupting him.

  “I did my due diligence. Since he has easy access to both the hospital and Providence House, and he was at the scene last night, I made a point of calling him this afternoon. The fact he couldn’t save Gus’s niece has ripped him in two although he did save two others, including an elderly man across the street who had a heart attack. Gus’s niece should’ve been at home with her parents. The girl got in with a bad crowd and got herself in trouble—those bikers as it turns out—but she was there for that seminar, hoping to learn to stand up to jerks like that.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Alexis, Andrew hasn’t got a hidden agenda, and he has no reason for wanting those women and children dead. But there’s something else you need to know, something I meant to tell you before, something that will make him look even more suspicious to you. Your first night here, he was in your cabin. He put the organic beer in your fridge and turned down the bed.”

  She frowned. “Why would Andrew do that?”

  “I phrased that badly. My brain’s half dead. Not Andrew necessarily, the Fire Angel.”

  Cold filled her and the butterflies in her stomach went crazy.

  “And you didn’t think it was important to tell me that?” Anger bubbled inside her. “How long have you been sitting on that little gem?”

  “I haven’t been sitting on it. I didn’t know until the night of the fire at the shelter, and then, with everything that happened, it kind of fell between the cracks. I’m telling you now because Andrew was here that night, had time to go into your cabin and do his thing, and more importantly, wouldn’t have set off the dog’s radar. Maya knows him.”

  She licked her lips, pulling the lower one into her mouth with her teeth, remembering the way the little dog had sniffed the room before settling.

  “I know it looks bad, but I swear this just isn’t his style. You asked me to keep an open mind the other night, I’m asking the same.”

  Alexis nodded.

  The microwaved dinged.

  “Is there anything else?” he asked, retrieving the cups of milk.

  “Yes, there is,” she answered. “Who else wouldn’t raise the dog’s concern?”

  “Any of the regular staff, Ansel Curtis, since he’s her vet, and Frank Arthur.”

  A few moments later, he walked over to her and handed her a cup. She set the fact that the Fire Angel had been inside her room aside for now. No doubt that little tidbit would feature prominently in her dreams tonight, but she didn’t want to argue with him.

  “Thanks. Those dead things I mentioned, Sam reminded me they’re all things that the owl he left me would’ve eaten. I’ve given a lot of thought to this. Is it possible the Fire Angel once saw himself as prey and considered me to be the same? I know he sees himself as the predator now, but if he thought we were equals once and I rejected his offerings...”

  Jake sat down beside her, close enough that she could smell the remnants of the spicy cologne he preferred. Suddenly, the room was almost too warm.

  “It’s possible. If he felt you’d rejected him by doing so ... He would have to be someone who was close enough to see what was going on in your uncle’s home. He might’ve identified with you, reached out to you, and when you dismissed him—you might not have recognized the gesture—he would’ve been angry. Leaving the vermin was a means of rubbing it in to make himself feel superior. Now, he’s convinced he is. Bullying’s been known to make people snap, and if he felt he’d been bullied one time too many.” He rubbed his chin. “You know, if he went to the shelter looking for help and didn’t get it—”

  “He would have an axe to grind against the staff there, too. It’s a possibility. I was reading up on Hester Rollins. The woman was quite a crusader for women’s rights. Ten years ago, she pioneered a clinic for abused women at the hospital in North Bay. She helped women take that first big step away from their abusers. What if Hester came between him and the woman he mourns, the one he lost? That would give him a reason to resent the staff as well as the women who chose to leave their husbands and shelter there. I don’t know how he lost her—she must’ve left him—but he blamed Duffy for making him too late to stop ‘it’ from happening. I thought ‘it’ was an accident, but what if it was leaving him?”

  “You just added to the suspect list and the evidence against Andrew. Paradise has more than its fair share of breakups. You’ve got Maxime, but as far as I know, her husband is still in Millhaven, serving twenty years for manslaughter and aggravated assault. Charley Plunket
t, the mortician’s wife dumped him like a hot potato about eight years ago when she caught him having more fun in the coffin than he should’ve with his new assistant. Andrew’s wife divorced him after their child died, and I think Frank’s wife left, too. There may be a few others.” He chuckled. “Lynette would be the one to ask.”

  “Do you know if any of those women you mentioned talked to Hester?” she asked, chewing the inside of her lip.

  “Maxine did for sure. I don’t know about the others, but I’ll find out. How’s the milk? I added cinnamon to it the way Minette does.”

  The mention of his wife reminded her that while they might be all cozy here, appearances could be deceiving.

  “It’s good. I’m grasping at straws here,” she went on, moving closer to the sofa’s arm and farther away from Jake. “I had another look at those articles in the file, the ones from Ralph Willard. Why isn’t there anything about the third fire?”

  “Because while Ralph Willard may be certifiable, he’s also in Toronto undergoing chemo for cancer. He’s staying with his sister. His rants are yellow journalism at its finest, but the paper’s on hiatus while he’s away. The third fire happened a week after he left. I spoke to him about his source and got as much as there is in that file. Fire Angel told him enough to set him off, but not enough to be useful.” He raised his mug to his lips. “Last night, you seemed entranced by the moon, why?”

  “Because he is. Whatever started all this must’ve happened the night of a full moon and he somehow draws power from it. I felt it’s pull, Jake. It was the strangest sensation I’ve ever had, almost as strange as being inside his head like that was.”

  His face wrinkled in distaste as if his milk were sour.

  “You mean it controls him—you—the way it does a vampire or a werewolf?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be an ass. Vampires and werewolves don’t exist, but lunatics do. I’m certainly not putting myself in that category, but for centuries, people would be locked up the night of the full moon for their own protection. The gravitational pull of the moon affects the tides and many think it affects human behavior as well. Ask any nurse or doctor who works the ER. Teachers I know swear by it. Something happened on a night when the moon was full—maybe that was when he lost his dog or the woman he mourns. The moon’s become a symbol of his revenge. Starting his spree on the night of the blue moon makes a lot of sense when you think of it this way, but an incredible amount of work goes into each fire.”

  Now that she had Jake’s full attention, she warmed to her topic.

  “He has to get the materials together that he needs to build his funeral pyres, because that’s what these fires are. He sees himself as judge, jury, and executioner, and goes one step further by holding a funeral for them, an elaborate one that fits the crime, a funeral pyre complete with his version of incense—the smoke—and candles. Even when it isn’t part of the fire it has to be there. It was still in the box in the kitchen—all melted, but still there.”

  She raised her milk and drank some more. The cinnamon enhanced the sweetness. Was there anything Minette didn’t do well?

  “How well did you trace the drug dealer’s movements before his death?” she asked, unable to stand the tension she sensed hovering between them.

  “As well as we could, but the guy kept a low profile. His mother filed the missing person’s report when he didn’t show up for a promised visit and didn’t answer his phone. Turns out the phone used to set off the pipe bombs was his. The serial number matches his missing one. It was off until he activated it the night of the fire. We weren’t able to get any more information from Slaney’s mother because she was the victim in a hit and run accident about a month later.”

  “After you’d identified the body?” she asked, leaning toward him.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. I wouldn’t have tried to contact her otherwise. What are you thinking?”

  “Fire Angel had access to information back then. He knew you’d identified the man and would look into his movements. This could be another loose end he tied up—like Nate and Angus.”

  She stopped talking. Had she gone too far?

  “Go on. Let’s hear the rest of it,” he said, his face filled with curiosity but without any of the animosity she feared.

  “I know there’s more, something else you got when you were inside his head. You really should take up profiling full time. You have a knack for it.” He smiled. “We could open our own agency.”

  “Maybe I’ll consider doing that when I stop working on fires. Having sick minds inside of mine takes its toll,” she answered. “Let’s assume that something significant happened during a full moon, something so traumatic that it changed our killer—made him crazy,” she continued. “At first, the mania was controlled, and he could cope, but now it’s taken over. He lives for his revenge. It’s all he has left. It could even have created a multiple personality disorder—one part of him is alone and grieving, while his alter ego is a crazed, vengeance seeking killer. You know—Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Since I’m still convinced Dr. Shillingham could be our man, let’s find out if his daughter was killed on a night with a full moon.”

  “I considered the Jekyll and Hyde syndrome earlier. As much as I hate to think of Andrew that way, it’s a place to start, but what if she wasn’t?”

  “Then we’ll have to think this through again and try to figure out when his dog died since that’s important, too.”

  Alexis stood and began to pace. Being so close to him made it impossible for her to stay focused. Even though she knew he was unavailable, she couldn’t seem to get her heart to accept what her brain knew to be true. She turned to him, stress giving an edge to her voice.

  “Here’s what I think. If I’m right, he’ll strike again on December twenty-seventh. If I can’t stop him, Jake, he’ll target sixteen, but how many more will be collateral damage?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, as he always did when frustrated, spiking it further.

  “This isn’t all on you. He’s been pulling my chain since mid-September when Ev asked me to help out. If I’d called you in then ... I wish you were wrong, but I’m terrified you’re right. That date is right in the middle of the town’s Christmas celebration. There are pageants, plays, light displays, dances, an invitational tournament at the bowling alley with teams from all over Ontario ... there will be all kinds of people celebrating and any number of targets packed with revelers, young and old. And if Maxine was supposed to die, he’ll go after her again.”

  He got up and blocked her path. Raising his hand, he brushed a strand of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. He lifted her chin so that she was looking at him.

  “You’re brilliant, you know.” He smiled. “And you’re beautiful and caring. I have no doubt that we’ll get him. Once you go into the house and the shelter ... Hell, we may already have his DNA from the joint he dropped because you interrupted his enjoyment of the fire.” He stared at her. “That sweater makes your eyes gray. I’ve never been able to forget your eyes.”

  She wanted him to kiss her—it was wrong—but she wanted it more than she could’ve imagined wanting anything. The slow burn of anticipation started within her. As if he could read her mind, he leaned towards her, his breath warm on her face. Before his lips could touch hers, the door connecting the apartment to the inn opened, and Minette walked in followed by Maya. Alexis jumped away as if she’d been burned.

  The little dog walked directly to the fireplace and lay down on the rug in front of it as she did every night. Minette smiled at them and walked over to the dishwasher and began to empty it.

  Mortified by what had almost happened, by what might have happened, Alexis made her excuses and escaped with as much dignity as she could muster.

  * * *

  “I interrupted something, didn’t I?” Minette asked, putting the last of the glasses away. “I should have knocked. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. If the lady were
interested, she would still be here,” Jake said, picking up the mugs and carrying them to the sink. “I’ve got a lousy sense of timing. I told you that.”

  “You told me last night that you’d missed your chance twenty years ago because you were afraid she would say no. Are you going to give history a chance to repeat itself or will you go after what you want? Falling in love isn’t easy. Look at David and I. The odds were stacked against us from the get go. I loved Luke and I hate the fact that he died that way, but I’m not dead, and neither are you. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you have to talk about it sooner or later. You blame yourself for what Irena’s family did, but no one else does or ever did. Her father had everyone fooled, including the base commander. You have to let it go—let her go—don’t let them win. If you’re alone and miserable the rest of your life, then you’ve given them exactly what they wanted. Alexis isn’t Irena. You can trust her, Jake.”

  “This is different. It’s complicated. I’ve made the first move, and I thought we were on the same page. In a way, I don’t blame her for wanting to keep our relationship purely professional. Strong emotions muddy things. They get in the way. I can’t do my job and protect her if I’m not at the top of my game, especially with the leg the way it is. I have to think this through. Go to bed, Minette. I’ll be fine.”

  She stepped closer to him. “Of course you will. You’re a big tough man, just like the one I married.”

  “Yeah, but I feel pretty useless and helpless right now,” he answered, meaning every word.

  * * *

  As soon as she opened her bedroom door, Alexis realized that she’d left her notes on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Worse than that, she hadn’t broached the topic of Frank. His name had come up more than once in conversation. Turning on her heel, she retraced her steps and froze when she saw Minette and Jake standing close together.

  “I love you, you big lug,” Minette said and planted a quick kiss on his mouth. “I’ll just check the lounge, and then I’ll go to bed. Don’t stay up too late.”