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 psycho? 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
