Burning Time (30 page)

There’s never a good reason to lose your self-control, Emma Jane
. She could hear her mother’s voice from a long way away.

Sometimes when someone got too close to her on the street, coming from behind, she could still feel Andy’s breath on her neck. Smell the beer. All these years later. And the panic bubbled up all over again. Big guy, drunk at a party. She didn’t even know him.

Her eyes squeezed tight, pushing it away, but she saw it anyway. The blood suddenly coming out of her at a dance; running to the girls’ room. Realizing that the machine was empty. Coming out of the girls’ room and running upstairs to her locker, where the long hall was dark. Hurry, hurry so no one would see her with blood on her dress. She didn’t hear a thing until he was on her, breathing on her, his hands all over her. On her breasts, up her skirt. Big guy, sweaty and drunk, dragging her into the dark classroom, mumbling how great he was, how lucky she was he wanted her. Stop it, get off, get away. No way he would stop. He was on top of her, all his weight trying to shove it in her around her bloody panties.

“No, no,” she whimpered, telling him to stop even now.

“Yeah, you remember.”

And suddenly the fire alarm was ringing and all the lights were on. People everywhere. Blood all over her and her dress torn. Asking what happened to her. So humiliated about her period. So ashamed that someone would do that to her. Don’t tell, captain of the football team. No one will believe you.

“My head hurts,” Emma moaned.

“I took care of him,” he said impatiently, “and you never thanked me.”

“Wha?” She had to think.

“I saw it. I could have let him nail you. So what?”

Emma moved her wrists in the ropes, just a little. “Hurts,” she cried.

“So what? I took care of him.”

“My hands. My head. I’m so dizzy.”

“Listen to me. I took care of him. I’m your best friend, see.”

“If you’re my best friend,” she muttered, “get me some aspirin.”

“Forget the fucking aspirin.”

“If you’re my friend, untie me.” She didn’t dare look at him.

“Oh, Christ.”

He checked the ropes around her wrists. Her hands were white, but they weren’t blue. There was no color in her face at all, but she was a little blue around the lips. Like the flake in California. It worried him. She was so out of it and confused he was afraid she might die.

“Ah, shit. You better not die on me.” He played with the knots, loosening them just a fraction.

A little scream escaped her at his touch. He touched her breast with his finger, then with the tip of his switchblade.

“Shut up,” he cried.

“No circulation, I can’t breathe.”

He started pacing again, his hand in his pants. “Look at what you’re doing. I got a schedule. Don’t mess me up.”

Her heart was hammering so hard she thought it had lost its rhythm and was out of control. She could feel herself dying of fear. She let go. If fakirs could stop their hearts, so could she.

“I’m getting tired of this. Look at me, you stupid bitch. It wasn’t an accident. I offed the guy. It was easy. A little gasoline in a condom. The condom in a toilet paper roll.
Fits right in the pocket. You don’t even have to get under the car. Just reach down in the parking lot and put it in the exhaust manifold. Know what kind of heat is generated a few minutes after a car is turned on? Burns the toilet paper tube and starts a nice big fire. Bye-bye, Andy.”

Emma’s mouth fell open; her head lolled to one side.

“Say thank you.” He slapped her face. Nothing happened. She was out of it, again. He didn’t want to do her like the flake who slept through the whole thing. He kicked the sofa again.

“Shit. I got a schedule,” he muttered.

He paced back and forth in front of her, framing her with his hands and mumbling. When she showed no signs of reviving, he grabbed a few things and slammed out the door.

There were a few vital inconsistencies in the information Detective Woo, calling him from New York, was giving him. Jason sat in the chair by the bed, looking out at the lights on the navy ships in San Diego Harbor.

“Dr. Frank, from the appearance of your apartment, there is no indication that anything untoward happened to your wife,” she began.

He sensed another message behind her words. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“Ah, there are no signs of anything being disturbed,” she said.

There was some crackling in the background. The connection was not a good one. If nothing was wrong, why hadn’t she waited until morning to return his call? Jason looked at his watch. It was way past midnight her time. He had asked Detective Woo to check his apartment, but he more than half expected her not to do it until the next day.

He had pegged her as a bureaucrat from the moment he saw her, from her very first words. There was a lot of
tension around her mouth and eyes, a rigidity in the way she held her slender body. Her precisely layered haircut was extremely controlled, and the navy blue blazer and red-and-white blouse she wore buttoned all the way to the neck took no chances. Everything about her indicated a person who walked a straight line in the middle of the path, afraid of risk-taking, or of veering from the rules in the slightest detail. Jason had known a lot of bureaucrats, still did. Bureaucrats were the people who had accidents in hospitals, who let little things by them that resulted in very big consequences. There were times people died because bureaucrats were just doing their jobs. That’s why Jason didn’t trust them.

“But she’s not there, and you tell me the lights and television were on. That’s already very untoward,” he said.

“That depends on your wife,” Detective Woo said.

What did that mean? What was the real story here? Jason shifted the phone from one ear to the other. He didn’t like the vibrations he was getting from the detective’s voice. He could feel how tightly wound she was. Clocks wound too tightly sometimes froze up and stopped working altogether.

“What did you see, Detective?”

“There were wet towels in the bathroom,” April said. “Some lettuce in the sink. The lights were on in the kitchen. She may have started to make herself something to eat and then changed her mind and gone out to visit a friend.”

There was a slight hesitation before her next question that made Jason think the detective didn’t have any faith in that theory.

“Do you think she was likely to do that?” she asked.

“No, she wouldn’t do that. She wanted to talk to me.”

But how badly did Emma want to talk to him if she
didn’t pick up all the times he rang? Now it was really late and she was still out somewhere. She couldn’t be out negotiating a movie deal at
midnight
.

“No,” he said again.

“Maybe somebody from business you don’t know.”

He pondered the heretofore unconsidered possibility that Emma was indeed out with some producer or movie star, and that was what she wanted to tell him when she called more than twelve hours ago. Just that she was going out with someone wonderful that night. He walked around in the idea for a minute. Emma didn’t know what he was doing in San Diego, what was going on. She might have gone out in all innocence. Maybe she took the afternoon off and went to the hairdresser first.

None of it worked for him. And it was clear the theory wasn’t working for the detective, either, or there wouldn’t be so much strain in her voice.

“Were you aware her answering machine is on the blink?”

“What?” Jason started. “No, I wasn’t.”

“It picks up, but it doesn’t record.”

So maybe Emma didn’t know he returned her call.

There was another small, telling hesitation on the New York end. Jason was sure the detective was keeping something else from him. What was it?

“I’m coming back,” he said suddenly. “There’s no point in trying to talk like this.”

This time there was no pause on the other end. “That’s probably a good idea, Dr. Frank,” Woo said. “You have to be here to file a Missing Person Report.”

“What?”

“I can’t investigate without a complaint,” she said.

“So you don’t think she’s just out for the evening.” Jason had known it from the beginning.

“Well, she left her purse with her wallet in it on the bed.”

Oh, shit. Oh, no. No. Emma wouldn’t leave the apartment for more than a few minutes without her bag. He knew her habits, knew what she did. She must have gone out to pick something up at the store. And something prevented her from coming back.

Jason swallowed. “I’m leaving now.”

He hung up, and started furiously throwing the few clothes he had brought into his suitcase, gathering his notes on Troland Grebs, all the time reviewing what he knew.

There wasn’t a thing on Grebs’s record that was recent. No hint of hospitalizations, no way to find if there had ever been a psychiatric evaluation of him without calling every in-patient and out-patient facility in the state. Grebs didn’t have a file at North High School, which meant he hadn’t been in trouble there. Jason didn’t even know the name of the school Grebs attended in third grade where the little girl’s hair was set on fire. The aunt didn’t remember it, and she couldn’t remember the name of the technical school he went to after high school, either.

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.
Fuck praying
. There was no God to help her. He took some deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. He had to think clearly, must not let his panic over Emma get in the way of finding her. He might have some time, but he was certain now that he didn’t have much.

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.

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.”