Burning Man

by Alan Russell

  I pocketed my phone and turned around to face Lisbet. “It’s work. I am really sorry.”

  She smiled to show me that she was good with duty calling and said, “Do you want me to wait here for you?”

  I thought about it and shook my head. “It will be late before I get back. That wouldn’t be fair to you.”

  “I wouldn’t have made the offer if I didn’t want to.”

  “And I appreciate that offer, and I’ll hold you to a rain check for another time, but not this time. Do you have plans for tomorrow night?”

  “Yes, I’m cooking dinner for you and Sirius.”

  “I can make it, but I’m not sure about him. He has quite the social life.”

  “What about it, Sirius?” Lisbet asked.

  At the mention of his name, Sirius came over to her and put his head in her lap, prompting me to say, “Hey, that’s my gal.”

  “He tells me he likes roast beef,” Lisbet said.

  “I do, too, in case you were wondering.”

  She stood up. “Seven o’clock?”

  “Count us in.”

  We sealed that deal with a long kiss. And then I walked Lisbet to her car, where we kissed again.

  I hadn’t been to the arboretum in close to a decade. Naturally, it was Jen that had arranged our first and only visit. I hadn’t wanted to go, but she told me it would be fun, and she was right. There had been waterfalls, I remembered, and a turtle pond, and trees and plants indigenous to the featured continents (“What? No Antarctica?” I’d asked Jen). During our visit, one particular peacock had acted as if he was in love with Jenny and had kept following her around while displaying his plumage and trumpeting his unearthly call. For years afterward she had laughed whenever I attempted my peacock imitation.

  That had been a long time ago.

  There were police barricades up on Baldwin Avenue, and I had to flash my wallet badge to several officers while I made my way to Australia. Lights had been set up to illuminate a spot not far from Colorado Street. There were police cars on both sides of the street. I found a parking spot and, like a good moth, followed the brightest lights.

  It wasn’t cold, but the wind was whipping around, and I hugged my jacket close to me. The arboretum trees and plants were being stirred up by the wind, and the shaking branches sounded like a thousand threatening rattlesnakes. The high grass just off the road whipped at me as I made my way forward. Fronds moved in front of the light and offered the illusion that the dead were dancing. The three bodies had been dumped in a spot not far from the road, one right next to the other. Their legs and hands were still bound with duct tape.

  Nguyen moved away from the lights and came up to me. She was holding her blazer with both her hands. “Welcome to the land down under,” she said.

  My guess was that the attractive detective was first-generation American, but that hadn’t stopped her from picking up on cop humor. Her parents were probably still in mourning that she had chosen law enforcement for a career.

  “Down under the earth is where these guys are going,” I said, looking at the bodies.

  Nguyen raised the crime scene tape and I did the limbo to get under it. We walked over to the bodies. Nguyen shone her flashlight on the man nearest us.

  “Even though his hands are bound, you can still see most of his tattoo,” she said. “If you want, I can have the duct tape cut.”

  “That’s not necessary.” I could see the red A on the one arm, and the jagged lines on the other. “This one’s the ringleader. I recognize the tattoos.”

  Nguyen turned her beam on the other victims. I could see where all the men had been shot in the head. One of the victims showed extensive bruising to his face and neck; the other had visible bite marks.

  “That bruising is consistent with where I was striking one of my attackers with an animal-control pole. And I’m sure those bites were delivered by my big, bad wolf. He’s in the car if you want to take his DNA.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” Nguyen said.

  “I suppose you haven’t had time to ID the victims.”

  “Actually, we have. The killer was cooperative. All three of them had their wallets and licenses.”

  “Do you know anything about them?”

  “The preliminary information I have is that all of them lived together in some kind of ranch in Antelope Valley. It sounds like it’s some kind of commune or sect.”

  “Sect?”

  She nodded. “The person I contacted said they had some strange beliefs. We have a team that will be going out there tonight to check them out.”

  I was certain they wouldn’t find anything. If Ellis Haines was behind the murders, he would make sure of that.

  I offered up the punch line to the joke about the visitor to the monastery who grew tired of all the monks’ shop talk and voiced his disgust by saying, “Sects, sects, sects, is that all you talk about?”

  Nguyen didn’t know the joke, and I didn’t bother to explain.

  CHAPTER 20:

  NOT EVEN GOD CAN FIND ME

  I fought against the gusting wind. It was resisting my efforts to open the front door to my house. If I’d been superstitious, I might have imagined something was trying to prevent me from getting inside, but I was too tired to be paranoid.

  The three men that had attacked me were now dead. I suspected Ellis Haines had somehow reached out from San Quentin and had the men killed. What I didn’t know was if Haines had acted to protect himself, or whether he had been looking out for me.

  A blinking message light was casting its red glow on the living room wall. I walked over to the machine and hit Play.

  “Hey, Mighty Dog,” Martinez said. He sounded upbeat, a tone that had been noticeably absent for days. “I heard about your triple at the arboretum, so that’s why I’m not calling your cell. Anyway, we might have something on one of the poison-pen writers, a kid Computer Crimes identified as Jeremy Levitt. He’s the joker that tried to post on Paul Klein’s memorial wall that Klein’s death was karma. As it turns out, Levitt’s a senior at good old Beverly Hills High School. What do you want to bet he’s the one that’s also guilty of leaving that other bad-mouthing note at Klein’s wailing wall? Anyway, I didn’t get to talk with Levitt for long—his parents made sure of that—but he and his mouthpiece are coming in for questioning tomorrow. Levitt tried to justify his attempt at memorial wall backstabbing by saying that Klein didn’t deserve this outpouring of adoration. He said Klein was anything but a good kid.

  “And then Levitt started telling me about his being friends with an older boy that overdosed two years ago. He said his friend was harassed by Klein and his wolf pack. Levitt didn’t come right out and say it, but I got the feeling he and this other guy had a thing going on between them, and Klein and his friends caught wind of it and weren’t exactly supportive of the gay lifestyle. Tomorrow Levitt is set to come in at ten o’clock. Gump and I are meeting at seven to prepare for the interview. If you can make it then, we’ll all brainstorm.”

  I played the message back several times. If it hadn’t been after midnight, I would have called Martinez back, but I’d be seeing him soon enough anyway. It was also too late to call Assistant Principal Durand. I wanted to know more about this kid that had overdosed.

  A handful of empty beer bottles were on the kitchen counter. I was glad that I’d told Lisbet not to wait for me. The last week—no, the last three years—seemed to have caught up with me, and I was dead on my feet. I gathered the empties and put them in the recycle bin and then decided to add one more to their number. I flipped a cap, grabbed a piece of cold pizza, and planted myself in the easy chair. Sirius took his place on a throw rug next to me.

  I bit into the pizza, felt eyes following my movements, and tore off a chunk for Sirius. I tossed, he caught, and we chewed. We were like an old married couple. Outside, the banshees were screaming. I thought about SID still working the crime scene at the arboretum. The conditions had been bad all the while I was t
here; now they would be even worse. That fucking Ellis Haines was right. It sounded like all hell was breaking loose.

  I took a pull on the beer and with a backhand toss sent another piece of pizza flying. Sirius didn’t disappoint. He caught and then inhaled.

  By the sound of Martinez’s voice, it was clear he thought this Levitt kid might have had something to do with Klein’s death. My gut told me differently. All the words Levitt had offered up were passive. In the note left at the tower he’d written “What goes around, comes around.” And the note he’d tried to post on the Klein memorial wall page wasn’t about retribution but fate: “Some say Paul Klein’s death was tragic. Those that knew him would say it’s karma.” If you cause someone to die, Levitt was saying, you should expect to die yourself. That wasn’t the voice of a killer.

  I thought about the visions I’d had while working the Klein case. I’d paid the price for those insights; I should have listened to them more closely.

  “That’s the problem with me being my own oracle,” I told Sirius. “It’s hard to interpret my own visions.”

  My moment after had told me that this was a revenge killing: an eye for an eye. Maybe it had also somehow told me about the kid that had overdosed, although I didn’t know how that was possible. In one of my visions, Dinah had been lip-synching “A Little Help from My Friends.” Ringo hadn’t only gotten by with a little help from his friends, he’d gotten high.

  There had been that other vision also, the one where I’d had to face up to my own suicidal thoughts. In law enforcement, one of the most dangerous situations an officer can encounter is when he’s up against someone that wants to die. When a suicidal individual is unwilling or unable to take his or her life, he or she often employs the services of the police. That’s why they call it suicide by cop. But just because you want to die doesn’t mean you’re not a danger to those responding to the situation.

  There had been a part of me, I knew, that had wanted suicide by cop, me being the cop. I had wanted to die on the job. But was it possible my vision wasn’t only about me? I had inquired about suicides at Beverly but not drug overdoses. Sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish one from the other. The death of Jeremy Levitt’s friend had been labeled as a drug overdose, but what if it was a suicide guised in needles or pills?

  I fought to stay awake. Some kind of answer felt as if it was within reach, but I had reached the point where even toothpicks would have had a hard time keeping my lids up. I didn’t have the strength or inclination to leave my easy chair and fell asleep sitting. I was in one of those deep REM sleeps when I awakened groggy and confused. This time I wasn’t having my fire dream, but it was something just as horrifying. Nearby I could hear Ellis Haines talking. He was in my house. My heart hammered in my chest.

  “How you are sleeping? Do you hear the wind blowing outside? Is it keeping you up?”

  My hand was still clenched around the half-filled beer bottle. I hadn’t yet gotten a replacement for my Glock, but there was a spare handgun in my bedroom. Get the gun, I thought. My body was shaking, which made it hard to get to my feet. And that’s when I noticed Sirius standing at my side. My partner was watching over me, but he wasn’t on alert. He knew the Weatherman wasn’t in the next room. The voice I was hearing was coming from my answering machine.

  “The wind always invigorates me. It almost makes me feel like I’m flying. Isn’t it nice to be a leaf in the wind? Everything is out of control and direction means nothing. It is the ultimate freedom.”

  My heart continued to pound, but now I wasn’t scared so much as I was angry. Out of my message machine Haines continued to talk.

  “You looked so fragile when you visited me, Detective. I was concerned for your welfare. I didn’t like the idea of others trying to interfere in our unfinished business. I wouldn’t have others do my own work, Detective. That wouldn’t be right.

  “Naturally, I’ve been concerned about the state of your health. You, Sirius, and I are secret sharers. If something should happen to you, I hope you have made provisions for Sirius. Is he watching over you now?”

  My partner’s ears were up and his head was slightly tilted. He’d heard his name spoken, and he seemed to recognize the speaker’s voice.

  “When you visited, you looked like someone at death’s door, Detective. I was afraid the right wind would push you over into the abyss. Are you looking into that darkness right now?”

  My job forces me to deal with people experiencing times of crisis. When someone is attacked or has his property stolen, he invariably feels a sense of violation and helplessness. All of us have boundaries, and we suffer if they’re breached. Haines had violated both my person and my property. That son of a bitch had found a way into my house. He had invaded my world. And there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it.

  Sotto voce, Haines continued talking. “I love it when the Santa Ana winds begin to blow. Have you ever noticed how the wind feels like warm breath down your neck? When that happens I always feel compelled to return the favor and do my own heavy breathing over a special neck of my choosing. I become one with the wind. Take a moment to listen, Detective. Can you hear the wind calling for you?”

  The asshole stopped talking long enough for the silence to fill the room. I didn’t want to listen, but I couldn’t help it. Outside, the wind was howling and its cries filled my house.

  “It’s just warming up for an even bigger show this night, as am I. As I have been wont to say, never leave your audience hanging.”

  I thought he was finished but he wasn’t. My home invasion became surreal when he started singing. What made it even worse was the bastard had a good voice, hitting every note. Maybe it was his audition tape for American Idol. I knew the song: “They Call the Wind Mariah.”

  The last line of the lyrics was particularly plaintive, and he put everything into it. It felt as if he was singing it just for me, and that he knew how lost I had been for so long, and how “not even God may find me.”

  The song came to a merciful end, but the intimacy of it shook me. It didn’t strike close to home. It was in my home and in my head.

  “That’s our song,” Haines whispered. “Have a good night, Detective.”

  In the silence I could still hear his voice. It felt as if Haines were stepping on my grave.

  The easy chair no longer felt comfortable. For a moment I considered taking a shower to cleanse myself from the toxic ramblings of Haines, but instead I just decided to crawl into bed.

  I didn’t replay the message. It could wait until the morning, when I would listen to it in the light of day. And maybe in that light I wouldn’t feel so lost, and maybe God would find me.

  Unfortunately, that light never came. An hour later I was once again burning.

  The Strangler screamed for help, but his words were swallowed by the fire. I watched his mouth moving and his face contort, but as close as I was to him, I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I had never heard the voice of fire—of inferno—until now. It was a terrible thing—a raging, roaring, deafening howl—and in it there was hunger and madness and worst of all, laughter. It was the sound of a demon unleashed.

  The flames were whirling all around us. The wind kept blowing, the bellows kept churning, and we kept running.

  The fire made us move to the rhythm of its churning jaws. It came at us from one direction and then another. And then the fire was everywhere, and our dance became wild and out of control.

  I’d once seen footage of a male tarantula attempting to mate. As it performed for the female, all eight of its legs were moving. We—the Strangler, and me, and Sirius—were eight legs. My partner was grievously hurt, but sometimes his legs twitched and moved as if I was scratching him in his sweet spot.

  In Italy, the tarantula inspired a dance known as the tarantella. Folklore says that when bitten by a tarantula, the only cure is doing the tarantella. It is believed that by frenziedly whirling about, you sweat the poison out.

  The flames were
making us dance the tarantella. There was madness in our steps; we were out-of-control dervishes. I was the one with the badge and gun. I was supposed to have answers, but I was as lost as lost could be. In the flaming wilderness, I went a little mad.

  “We must sweat the poison out!” I shouted.

  The Strangler still thought me sane. “What?”

  “The poison,” I said.

  We continued the dance of the dead.

  The shrieking woke me up. It took me a second to realize I was the one doing the shrieking. Sirius was nudging me and whimpering.

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  But it wasn’t all right. My life was out of control. Every day I was dancing some version of the tarantella.

  My racing heart began to slow, and my sweat started to cool. In the blessed relief, my after-fire moment came. It started with music, the strains of Scheherazade, and in my mind I saw a montage of familiar entertainers and sports figures.

  Then the music stopped and I heard a familiar male voice say, “Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And then murder.”

  I knew the voice; I was sure of that. But I couldn’t quite place it. I thought about my vision. The whole thing—from music, to the images, to the voice—had probably taken no more than fifteen seconds.

  Normally I sleep after a fire dream, but not this time. I grabbed my laptop and called up a search engine. I typed in “denial” and was partway through typing “anger” when the suggested entry of “Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle Model” came up. I clicked on that and began reading. According to Kübler-Ross, those facing death went through five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In my vision there had been a sixth word: murder. That wasn’t on Kübler-Ross’s list.

  It wasn’t as if I had divined the words on her list out of thin air. In college, one of my psych courses had the assigned reading of Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying. Still, I wasn’t sure where in the course of my investigation her grief cycle model fit in.