What the record confirmed was that Grebs’s obsession with fire went well beyond letter-writing. It confirmed there had been many occasions in his life when he acted out his desire to burn. Another significant thing about the record was the fact that there was nothing recent on it. That meant he had a high degree of intelligence and had learned from his mistakes. Grebs had found ways to avoid being caught. He may have killed the girl in San Diego by burning her and leaving her in the desert. What was he likely to do in New York?
Jason now had no doubt Grebs was the guy who had written the letters to Emma. Whether or not he killed the college girl was another question. His last letters to Emma indicated he was becoming disorganized. The more disorganized he became, the more unreachable and dangerous he was.
Fire, the guy was obssessed with fire. Jason shivered. Fire was permanent, the damage it did irreparable. Oh, God, help Emma, he prayed. Then stopped himself short.
He slammed the small suitcase shut and looked at his watch. It was a Cartier Tank watch with a brown alligator band that Emma had given him when they got married so he could treasure their time together. The watch told him he could probably make the ten o’clock flight.
49
Troland was disgusted with her. She didn’t seem to remember anything, wouldn’t even make an effort to wake up and do it right. It made him mad, reminded him of another girl, a really young one, who just wouldn’t make a sound no matter what he did. And he did a lot. Finally he got tired of it, had to dump her. This one got him so worked up he couldn’t even stay in the place and do what he was supposed to do.
He pulled the car out of the garage and headed into Manhattan for the third time that day. The traffic going into the city was lighter now, and it didn’t take long. Twenty minutes, by the clock on the dashboard. He got off the bridge and headed downtown. He figured he better stay away from the West Side, even though he’d seen a lot of girls over there and knew that part of town best. Several had talked to him in the bars where he’d stopped for a few beers at night, when he was tracking her and knew she wasn’t coming out again. He didn’t like it when girls tried to pick him up. He was the one who had to choose.
He cruised down Second, and then headed up First. There was a gang of girls on the corner of Fourteenth Street. They looked Spanish. He passed by, didn’t want a Puerto Rican. On Forty-second Street there were some black girls hanging around a coffee shop. They were too tall, were wearing elaborately braided wigs and had big asses. He didn’t like it when they were heavier than he was.
In the Fifties he found what he was looking for. One girl on her own, covering the same stretch of block over and over like she was waiting for somebody who was late. She was wearing tights and a rainbow-colored shirt so short it barely covered her ass. There wasn’t much flesh on her body, and she had the kind of fearless strut in her walk and swinging, little-girl blond hair that turned him on.
He cruised past her two, three times to be sure. He didn’t like to get it wrong. Finally, he parked the car a block away and walked back because he was embarrassed by the navy Ford Tempo. Didn’t want to be seen in it. If he had had his bike with him, he would have just roared up to her and told her to get on.
When she looked him up and down and changed direction to walk his way, he figured she was okay. Pretty much like him, didn’t have much to say. In a few minutes she had already accepted one of the cellophane envelopes left over from the flake, and was taking him someplace he didn’t catch.
It turned out to be at the end of the block in a run-down brownstone with a shabby shoe repair on the street level and an equally shabby locksmith above.
He nodded with approval. Yeah, it was right. The steep flight of stairs sagged so badly in places someone could slide right off the steps and tumble all the way down without a thing to get in the way or stop her from breaking her neck. Her two-room dump was in the back on the second floor, behind the locksmith that was closed for the night despite the sign in the window urging customers to “Come In Anytime. We’re Open Twenty-Four Hours A Day.”
It was grubby and dark. The one window was covered with a piece of faded cloth. A bare light bulb hanging from a socket in the ceiling illuminated the sagging couch in the center of the room. The sofa, though older and in worse condition, was not unlike the one the real girl was lying on in Queens.
“Take off your clothes,” he said as soon as they were inside. “I want to tie you up.”
She shrugged. “Whatever turns you on.” She took the coke out of the pocket of her rainbow-colored shirt and waved it at him. “I got to do something first.”
He looked around coldly. “Hurry up,” he told her. “I’m on a schedule.”
50
It came every few minutes, a sound like thunder. The roar, like an undertow, pulled Emma back to the place she didn’t want to be. It was a noise she knew. What was it?
She opened her eyes cautiously. It roared again and didn’t seem to be in her head, even though a lot of other things were. Terror all the way through, and a fog so dense she couldn’t figure out what had happened, or how long she’d been there. Her throat was dry, and hurt so much she thought he must have tried to strangle her. She couldn’t stop shivering, just couldn’t stop.
He had left the light on. Now she saw the skylight in the ceiling. It had been covered with garbage bags and carefully taped around the edges so no light could get in. What else could she see? She lifted her head. He wasn’t sitting beside her. He wasn’t pacing around the room with the knife or the gun in his hand. He must really have gone.
His face was empty and hard, like a robot’s. She shuddered. There was nothing remotely familiar about him. She still didn’t know who he was, or if she had ever known him. North High School was a long time ago. A year in hell with people she had struck from the record of her life, as she had so many times before. Every time they moved to another base, the life they had before was gone. Everyone they knew and saw every day disappeared, and the system was replicated in another setting. Emma grew up believing that people left behind were erased completely, and that she alone had memories of things that happened.
Her heart wouldn’t slow down. He was going to come back. She was so scared she could hardly breathe. All these years she thought she’d been alone, and she’d never been alone. He had been there all along, following her down the dark school hall that night and watching what happened. He was the only one who knew. And he killed Andy.
She believed him. She had never thought for a minute that Andy’s death, a few days before graduation, was an accident. But she thought she was the one who murdered him. She had made a wish on a star, asked some almighty power she hardly believed existed to kill the bastard. End his life before he got to college. She hated him so much that when he died, there was no doubt at all in her mind she alone was responsible.
Her head hurt. Bits of story lines from plays and movies drifted through, along with her own memories, confusing her. She thought of
It was horrible being naked, unbearable having him look at her and touch her with the gun and the knife point. She tugged desperately on the ropes around her wrists, had to get away. What had Jason said about people who were really crazy, so crazy they couldn’t be reached at all?
When he was in training, he had a patient who got on all fours and barked at him. For months he got on the floor every day and barked back at her. One day the woman got up and sat in a chair.
“You have to enter their world,” he said, “but you can’t go in there with them.”
“Don’t go in there with them,” she muttered.
“Oh, God, help me.” She was afraid to scream.
