Burning Time

Wheel of Fire.

“Do you think he’s a fan of Shakespeare, or fire is like a child’s tears to him?” Jason asked.

“Who knows. Fire’s only one thing. What about motion and power? Here he talks about running with the wind and two legs gone. Maybe he means the cruise missiles. They run with the wind with two legs gone, don’t they?”

“Uh-uh. I think he’s talking about amputation there.”

“Maybe he’s missing something,” Charles speculated.

“Or thinks he’s missing something,” Jason murmured.

“Could be.” Charles made a note. “He could have been in an accident, and was injured. Maybe there’s something physically wrong with him.…”

Jason tried to console himself with the thought that Freud had analyzed Leonardo da Vinci based on the “Mona Lisa.” The problem with that was da Vinci was long dead when Freud did it, and it didn’t matter whether he was right or wrong. He looked at his watch again. Better start making some hypotheses. He had to go soon.

“What do we know?” he asked.

“We know about his obsessions,” Charles said. “He’s clearly obsessed with good woman/bad woman. He has a virgin/whore fixation. Emma was a good woman who is now a bad woman. He believes in punishment for wrongs done. His drawings indicate a great deal of technical skill. Maybe he does something graphic for a living. He’s educated enough to be able to handle the language pretty well. He talks a lot about speed and motion and power. His signature drawing certainly seems to have a wheel in it, as well as fire, but that could be feathers. And, of course, he’s left-handed. Left-handed people are often tortured about it when they’re kids, made to change over.”

“He’s angry that the world is set up for right-handed people,” Jason added. “Emma was on the Right path and went off it. He wants to make things Right again.”

He frowned. About six percent of the population were left-handed. That was a whole lot of people.

“Air power versus land power. He talks about the Apache being sloppy,” Charles went on. “It’s got some design flaws and can’t stay up in the air. Maybe he’s in the military. Air and land. Air and land. Angel and whore. Right and left. Everything is an opposite. He’s probably conflicted about the good/bad in himself.”

They looked at each other over the empty coffee cups. If the good side of him wrote letters and drew pictures, what did the bad side of him do? Jason turned away first.

“I met this bone surgeon on a plane once, wouldn’t shut up.” Charles changed the subject. “Know what he told me? Eighty percent of his emergency cases were amputees.”

“What?” Jason was startled out of his speculation on what the guy might do if he started acting out.

“Bikers.”

“Jesus. So here he’s speculating about missiles on a motorcycle taking out a tank.”

“Yeah, so what’s he telling us? Want some more coffee?”

“Yes, I’ll get it. What about you?” Jason got up to pour it and was distracted again by Charles’s setup.

Charles had everything in his office. Tiny, immaculate kitchen in a closet with a two-burner stove top, sink and refrigerator in one unit, and a coffee maker and microwave on shelves above. Had Charles thought of this himself, or was Brenda responsible for all the luxuries?

Jason and Emma didn’t even have a microwave in their apartment. Jason wasn’t absolutely certain what they were good for. He felt another pang. Emma liked to cook for him, and he rarely had the patience for candlelit dinners. There were a lot of things he should have thought more about, tolerated with better grace.

He poured the last of the coffee into two matching mugs and reached into the refrigerator below for the fresh milk that was in there. Who bothered about all this? Who got the milk and the excellent coffee? There was smoked salmon in there, brown bread and butter. Capers and chilled champagne. It was unimaginable to Jason that Charles had the energy to think of all this. Who did he eat the smoked salmon with?

Jason looked over at him, on the leather sofa with his copies of the letters, his notes. What was going on with him? Charles had the frown of concentration between his eyes. Jason felt another pang. He didn’t have much doubt about the salmon and champagne. Charles, married to Brenda for less than the five years he was to Emma, seemed to be playing the same old games and getting away with it. While he, who had been so responsible and faithful, was losing everything he cared about because the woman he loved didn’t scream at him when she wanted something. The sounds Emma made when she talked were not loud or insistent enough to make him listen. He felt the knife in his gut again. Whatever made him think he could escape the most basic and non-negotiable biological need a woman has? No matter whether she was quiet or loud about it. Really stupid.

The coffee burned his tongue. He sat down again and went over his chart of what they knew. The guy was obsessed with things not turning out Right. Emma was bitten by a snake and poisoned. He was going to make things Right again. There was the threat. But where was he, and what was he likely to do? He was into motorcycles and air power. He himself was off the path of Right. The guy was furious about being left-handed in a world of right-handed people.

He talked about her—about Emma—being branded. By appearing in the film? By having herself tattooed? By having sex, or showing her body? Or was it the whole thing? And branded as what? Somehow Jason thought the guy writing was the one who was branded. But in the film they were both branded, if the brand was the tattoo. Jason shivered. Great. Really great. There was just too much he didn’t know. He looked at his watch and then gathered his notes together. It was time to go.

28

At exactly eight o’clock in the morning, Sanchez dropped the envelope with the five letters April had given him the night before on her desk. He smiled. “Guess where they come from?”

“New York,” April said promptly. She bet it was the husband. He looked just like a Kennedy. She didn’t like the way he came in by himself, talking about his wife’s problem. Maybe it was his problem.

Sanchez shook his head. “Guess again.”

“What is this, a guessing game?”

Sanchez raised a shoulder slightly. He was wearing a gray shirt, a darker gray jacket, and a black tie. April couldn’t decide whether she liked the combination or not. Wednesday and Thursday she worked the eight-to-four shift. So did Sanchez. They were on the same schedule. She was forced to think about that half the night because her mother had a lot of questions about the red Camaro.

“Why don’t Jimmy drive you home in white Baron?” Sai asked.

“LeBaron,” April said. Her mother knew very well he was at work in Brooklyn and couldn’t possibly get to Astoria at that hour. But she was wondering about a lot of things herself. Why didn’t Jimmy care about her enough to give her her car back? If Jimmy had returned her car, she could have driven to the range herself. No, wait a minute. Why did he have to take her car in the first place? She loved that car, really loved it. She frowned. Apparently he loved it, too.

“You want to know or not?” Sanchez asked, noting the frown.

“Sure I do.” She forced herself to look at him square in the face. What was it about that face that was so compelling? The man was nice, gentle? How could a man be nice? That just didn’t make any sense.

“Well, they’ve been handled too much to get even any partials, but they come from San Diego,” Sanchez said with a note of triumph.

“What?” She must have been distracted by the thought of her mother or the subway ride or something.

“I said San Diego,” Sanchez enunciated elaborately.

“No!” April’s breath caught. In six years on the force that name had never crossed her lips. Now she had two cases with a link there.

Sanchez stood beside her desk, a hand on his hip and a smile under his mustache. “Oh, yeah, why not?”

“That’s where that girl dead-ended. Ellen Roane. That’s where they’re trying to make a match with her on a girl’s body that turned up yesterday. I’m waiting for her medical data right now.”

“No kidding.”