Burning Man

still rankled.

“You don’t see any circumstances where you could forgive these mothers?”

“I’m a cop, Lisbet, and my job is to enforce the laws of our fair city.”

“Enforcement is one thing but exacting vengeance is another.”

“And just how am I exacting vengeance?”

“It sounds as if your own abandonment comes into play.”

“If that’s part of my motivation, why is it a bad thing? You don’t want to see justice handed out to these women?”

“I don’t think all these cases are the same, and I don’t think there is any one punishment that fits the crime.”

“I guess we don’t see eye to eye then.”

“Or eye for an eye?”

“There’s that, too.”

We sipped our wine. With anyone else I probably could have been assured of my self-righteousness, but not with Lisbet. She might not have been abandoned herself, but she dealt with the consequences of abandoned babies, making her more than entitled to her opinion. Besides, she didn’t let me pout for long. My high dander was interrupted by her stretching out her bare foot and tickling me in the ribs.

I grabbed said foot while taking note of its shapely toes and high arch, and began tickling it in turn. After our squirming and laughing was done we were in each other’s arms again, where the only thing we were tickling was each other’s fancy. Our touching became more urgent until Lisbet gave herself some space from my hands.

“You and the wine are making me dizzy.”

“Clear thinking is overrated.”

“You really should spend the night so I don’t have to worry about you.”

“I think you’d have more to worry about if I spent the night.”

“The sofa bed really is comfortable.”

“If that’s the extent of my options, I should probably hit the road.”

Lisbet bit her lip and then opened her mouth to say something, but I interrupted her before she could speak. “I have to be leaving anyway. The last twenty-four hours have been a roller coaster, and tomorrow I have a ton of work waiting for me.”

She nodded, and I was glad to see that Lisbet looked disappointed, or at least that’s how I wanted to interpret it. “Promise me you’ll be careful tonight.”

“I promise.”

We sealed the promise with a kiss.

Lisbet walked me to the door, where we did a little more canoodling, and where I told her, “I could canoodle with you all night.”

That made her laugh and ask, “Are you sure you have to go?”

Her eyes made their offer to me, and it was one I wanted to take up, but I said, “I think I better.”

I took my leave with a last kiss. What Lisbet didn’t know was that what stopped me from staying more than anything else was the prospect of my dreams. It was too late to explain about them and me. I didn’t want to venture into her bed and then wake up screaming and burning. I was more afraid of that than the two of us sharing our bodies for the very first time.

I should have told her, I thought. It’s not good to start a relationship with a lie, and that’s what it felt like I had done.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” I said, the echo reverberating around the parking garage. It seemed an appropriate rhyme, and I remembered the next line: “Hanging from a telephone wire.”

Ever since the fire I had been hanging. My burning had never stopped, and I hadn’t yet found a way to get beyond that.

“You got a stupid partner,” I told Sirius.

He didn’t argue.

CHAPTER 17:

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED

It had been a hell of a day. I was hoping it wouldn’t be a hell of a night. My burning dreams had been working overtime lately. When they occur two or three times a week, I try to tell myself that’s manageable. Of late, though, it had been a nightly event. My cases seemed to be stirring up my subconscious and the end result was me burning.

The next day was Sunday, I told myself. I could sleep in.

I remembered when Jen had shared my bed. We always held one another before turning in. If Jenny kissed me on the lips, that meant she wasn’t ready for sleep. A kiss on the nose was another matter. That meant it was time to snooze. That kiss on my nose always brought a smile to my lips, and the next thing I knew it was morning.

I touched my nose for luck. Within seconds I fell asleep. You’d think I would have been too exhausted to have had one of my dreams. My subconscious begged to differ. As usual, hell broke loose in the middle of the night. Most people drool if they’re sleeping deeply. I am into combustion.

The fiery blast furnace, pushed by the swirling winds, blew into my face. I recoiled from it, but too late. The fire was being blownevery which way and there was no escaping it. We staggered away from the worst of the heat and paused to catch our breath. With so much smoke in the air, there seemed to be a great divide between me and the Strangler, but there was only the length of a dying dog that separated us.

The light from the burning fires allowed me to see his face. His features were almost totally black from all the smoke and soot. The Strangler’s eyebrows had been singed away along with much of his hair, and I knew the flames had exacted the same toll on me. His eyes were red and enflamed, and they were so deep within his sockets they looked like burning embers. But he could still see well enough to plot.

I watched him take a quick peek over his head and sensed he was ready to make a run for it. The Strangler knew how hobbled I was, knew that every step hurt like hell.

“You can’t outrun a bullet,” I croaked. “Before you get two steps away I’ll empty my gun into you.”

He reconsidered his flight, if not his plight. “The dog’s dead,” he said. “We have to think of ourselves.”

I forced myself to look at Sirius. If the Strangler was right, I knew what I’d have to do. “Put him down,” I said, “carefully.”

We lowered Sirius to the ground. As I dropped to one knee I kept my gun pointed at the Strangler.

“See,” the Strangler said. “He’s not breathing.”

Earlier Sirius had been panting wildly, but now he was still. My heart started pounding, and the static inside my head made it impossible for me to hear anything other than my surging blood pressure. With my free hand I reached out and touched Sirius’s chest.

Nothing.

The Strangler looked hopeful. He wanted Sirius to be dead. He thought that not having to carry a heavy dog around would be a good thing for him. He was wrong. My trigger finger tightened, but at that moment Sirius’s paw moved and then his chest rose.

“He’s alive,” I said.

“We can’t…”

I moved my Glock no more than half an inch; I wasn’t going to miss. The way I was feeling, it didn’t really matter to me whether the Strangler cooperated or not.

“We’ll lift him on three,” I said.