operandi, same results. Two men this time. The victims died of third-degree burns. Then nothing. We hoped that the, um, Incinerator was one of the two, that maybe he’d made a mistake and doused himself with gasoline, too, and that the two of them had gone up in smoke, as it were, together.”
“Wishful thinking,” Annabelle Winston said, dropping the words onto the table like rocks.
She got a mournful gaze from Schultz in return. “Well, it seemed to be the case, because that was the end of it. Until this year.” Schultz gazed around the room, looking more defeated than he wanted to look. “Then it started again.” He regarded the note projected on the wall as though he hoped it held hidden clues.
“He waits for the fire season,” I said.
“He’s activated by the fire season,” Schultz replied. “The fire season triggers something irresistible in him. Maybe it’s the television coverage or the smell of smoke. Who knows why he burns someone one night but not the next? You must understand, Miss Winston, that a serial murderer is the most difficult of all.” Annabelle didn’t look particularly understanding, but Dr. Schultz plowed on. “Eighty-five, eighty-seven percent of all murders in the United States are committed by someone the victim knew, usually intimately, and that statistic takes into account the people who are killed during violent crimes, robberies, and so forth. Well, that’s relatively simple. You sift through the possible suspects and choose the most likely. Most of the time you’re right.
“But the serial murderer, like this Incinerator,” Schultz said, pronouncing the word with evident distaste, “chooses his victims at random. Stranger to stranger, the new murder fad. They have no relation to him. He can kill anywhere, at any time.”
“He doesn’t,” Annabelle Winston said abruptly.
“Beg pardon?” Schultz asked. He’d picked up his cigarettes again as though he hoped someone would give him permission to light one.
“He doesn’t kill just anywhere. He kills in a very specific district, and he kills only one kind of people. Skid Row and bums. Like my father.”
“Your father was hardly a bum,” Schultz said.
“Dr. Schultz,” Annabelle Winston said, stressing the title in a way that would have made a lesser man leave the room, “you think he made my father fill out a financial statement before he struck the match? You think that bums feel like bums? You don’t believe that all of them think that they’re going to find their way back to, to, I don’t know, clean clothes, and friends, and a decent room at some point in the future? You think that all of them secretly want to be a bonfire?”
Schultz shuffled some papers, taking refuge in facts. “He’s educated, probably college educated. Probably comes from a broken home, middle class or lower middle class, almost all serial murderers do. At some point in his childhood, he had a traumatic experience with fire. Traumatic, in this case, means-”
“I know what traumatic means,” Annabelle Winston said. “ ‘Activated’ was a new one to me, but I’ve been analyzed to the point of death.”
Schultz permitted himself a superior smile. “The analysand,” he said, “usually knows less about analysis than the doctor.”
“I know bullshit when I hear it,” Annabelle Winston said, “and I’m listening to it now.” She touched her lawyer’s shoulder. “Fred,” she said, “why don’t we leave? They haven’t got anything.”
“He lives alone,” Schultz said, a trifle desperately. “Or with parents, more likely with his mother, someone who doesn’t question his actions. His mother is extremely important to him. He’s manipulative, probably has been since childhood. Good at hiding who he really is, his secret identity. In a way, you could say he’s playful.”
“Playful?” It was the captain, and it was scornful.
Schultz anxiously pressed his thinning hair down onto his scalp. “He’s been fooling the world for as long as he can remember. He enjoys it. He’s a trickster and he thinks of himself as more intelligent than anyone else. He loves making all of us sit up or roll over, whichever he wants.” He seemed to lose his place and glanced down at his notes. “And he kills men. That’s very significant.” He paused, waiting for someone to ask him why.
“Why?” I finally asked. I was feeling sorry for him.
“Male serial murderers-they’re almost all male- kill women,” he said gratefully. “That makes him very unusual. It’s also unusual that he kills people at the very bottom of the social ladder, so to speak. Most serial murderers kill up, by which I mean they take revenge on members of a class that’s above them.”
“How do we know it’s not a woman?” Annabelle Winston asked.
“Hermione,” Hammond said unexpectedly from the end of the table.
“And who’s Hermione?” I asked.
“That’s to come,” the captain said, glaring furiously at Hammond.
“It’s to come right now,” Annabelle Winston said. “Otherwise we’re walking.” To emphasize her point, she stood up.
“The lady with the blanket,” Hammond growled.
“She has a name,” Annabelle Winston said. “Does she have a location?”
“She’s here,” the captain said to the table, “in protective custody.”
“Mr. Grist will need to talk to her,” Annabelle Winston said, sitting. “If you know he’s a man, she must have seen him.”
“I thought you quit,” Hammond said, sounding betrayed.
“I did,” I said.
“I didn’t accept your resignation,” Annabelle Winston said. “And if you quit, what are you doing here?”
It was a good question. “I had to bring the letter down anyway, and I’m nosy. I figured I might as well hang around for the meeting, since you’d invited me. But I’m afraid that I really do quit.”
“Actually, I don’t think you do,” the captain said.
“Um,” I said, feeling like a hiker whose compass had just reversed itself. “Captain. Captain, ah… I’m afraid I didn’t get your name.”
“Finch.”
“Right, Captain Finch. Nice to meet you.” Finch’s stare said that he’d just as soon have met me via a head-on collision. “I don’t share Miss Winston’s opinion of the LAPD. I think you’re going to catch him. And I don’t really like the kind of exposure I’m getting. I especially don’t like the fact that the Incinerator knows where I live, and I’m not crazy about knowing that he’s trying to figure out whether I’m friend or fuel. Anyway, as I say, I quit.”
Captain Finch gave me a narrow glance as he weighed the consequences of shooting me and then turned for help to Dr. Schultz.
“Well,” Schultz said, with some discomfort, “with all due regard for the police officers present, I share Miss Winston’s feeling.” He gazed at me and worked on his facial muscles until he was smiling. “We may not catch him without your help.”
Now everybody in the room was looking at me. I may have been the center of attention, but I wasn’t popular. “And why am I so important?”
“Because he’s talking to you,” Schultz said. “It’s exactly what we haven’t had until now. It’s why we haven’t caught him. Look at the tone of that letter. He’s joking with you about not answering the first note. ‘As long as we’re chatting,’ he says. ‘We might be brothers,’ he says. He’s having fun, but this man is obviously starved for someone to talk to. You’re a link, Mr. Grist, the first human link we’ve had to him. We can’t lose you. It’s that simple.”
“It’s nowhere near that simple,” I said. “I’m not a telephone, and I’m not willing to be your open line to someone who’s burned ten people to death. Not when I might be number eleven. This is not a line of fire I want to be in. Excuse the metaphor, as Miss Winston said a few minutes ago.”
“Why do you know about Ahriman?” Dr. Schultz asked.
“One of my degrees is in comparative religion.”
Dr. Schultz’s eyebrows went up. “One of your degrees?”
“I have four,” I said. “That’s what I did before I became an investigator, I was a professional college student. A teacher, too, briefly.”
“So we should be calling you Dr. Grist,” Schultz said fraternally. He had a heavy hand with the butter.
“I’ll leave the titles to you. Call me anything you want, but call me at home. I really quit.” I pushed back my chair and stood up.
“You can’t go,” Finch said.
“Watch me.”
