The Burning Man (8 page)

But whatever, he knew it wasn’t serious.

Rachel walked down the path to the junior girls’ dorm with her chilly hands stuck deep in her pockets, wondering what was going on back in Olivia’s room. She didn’t like being in her own building when it was nearly deserted, which was why she spent so much time in Olivia’s room. But Mrs. Lamquist was there, and she was okay, although she was kind of fussy and got really wigged out if anything got moved around or left in a mess.

She figured maybe she’d get Mrs. L. to let her watch a movie or something while she gave her sister time alone with Kieran.

Rachel just didn’t understand why Olivia was so reluctant to admit that she was into Kieran. He was so obviously into her, and she could deny it all she wanted, but Rachel knew that Olivia liked him back.

It seemed like a no brainer.

But Olivia had never had a boyfriend. Never had any friends at all really, except for this one kid named Nick who went to the daycare center with her when she was younger. But that was like a million years ago. Which was why Rachel was so bound and determined to get Kieran and Olivia together. It didn’t seem healthy or normal to be sixteen and not have a boyfriend. What was she so afraid of anyway?

Afraid she might like it?

It was 5:30 a.m., still dark and quiet. Tony watched his target from across the street as the man loaded a pair of suitcases into the trunk of an old white Datsun.

The man was a cop, a detective. His name was Jimmy Obejas, age thirty-six, Cuban-American, divorced father of three, and reformed alcoholic. He had dark hair and eyes, like Tony. He had the same complexion, same height, and same build—give or take an arm. A little younger than Tony might have wanted, but everything else about him was ideal. Especially the reformed alcoholic part.

Jimmy was on his way to pick up his son and daughter for a visit to Disney World. He didn’t know it, but he was about to fall off the wagon again. His ex-wife and kids wouldn’t be at all surprised when he failed to show up for the promised trip. He’d taken a week off work for this family vacation, so no one in the department would wonder where he was, until long after Tony had gotten what he needed.

But the guy kept screwing around, forgetting things and double-checking things and making Tony crazy. The longer he waited, the lighter the sky would get. There was already a delicate flush of pink along the violet bellies of the clouds crowding the eastern sky. But finally, after the third trip back into his first-floor apartment, Jimmy came back out again with a bag from the toy store and an insulated thermos cup, and locked his front door. He put the toy bag on the passenger seat, took a swig from the cup, checked his watch, and then got in behind the wheel.

Tony let him get a block-and-a-half head start before keying the big sedan he’d stolen and following the smaller white Datsun. He’d been tailing his target for weeks, learning his routine and watching his every move, so he already knew what route Jimmy usually took to pick up his kids at his ex’s house just outside of Haines City. There was a perfect spot along Old Polk City Road where he and his target would meet for the first and last time. It was a ballsy move, taking the target out in the morning, early though it may be. But the circumstances were just too ideal.

He’d known from the beginning that he had divine forces on his side, and finally getting a lucky break like this just proved him right.

He hummed softly to himself along the way, feeling the subdued heat of Olivia’s power throbbing gently in the remaining bones of his right arm. It was almost a weird kind of comfort, that heat. A reminder of his destiny. Ahead of him, the white car turned onto Old Polk, and he was close behind.

He was ready.

Pulling a rumpled map out of the glove box, he held it against the wheel and pretended to be trying to read it while driving. A lost, absent-minded tourist, trying to find his way to the ocean. When they reached the long, empty stretch of road that Tony had selected, he sped up until he was beside his quarry. He pushed the button to roll down the passenger window and gripped the wheel with his hook, using his good hand to make a window rolling motion at Jimmy and flashing his most disarming smile.

He could feel Olivia inside him, flowing sinuously like smoke through the convolutions of his brain.

Jimmy rolled his own window down and returned the smile.

“You lost?” he called out across the purr of the wind.

“Nope,” Tony said, raising his gun and pulling the trigger.

* * *

Olivia pulled the car over to the side of a deserted stretch of road and got out. She could taste the swampy humid air of her home state, and hear the familiar soporific buzz of cicadas in the low, scrubby trees. It was dawn, and still cool, the lazy red sun just raising its head to peer through the eastern clouds.

She walked purposefully back along the empty road, toward a crumpled break in the tree line about a hundred yards away. When she got closer, she noticed the tail end of a white automobile sticking out of the brush. The smell of crushed leaves, sweet bay, and strangler fig mingling uneasily with the harsh odor of burnt brakes and leaking gasoline.

She pushed her way through the broken branches to reach the driver’s side door. The window was open and the man behind the wheel was almost unrecognizable behind a mask of blood.

But he wasn’t dead.

He was slumped against his seatbelt and barely breathing, but when he saw Olivia, his eyes went wide. He held out a shaking hand in desperate, wordless supplication.

She felt nothing for the dying man. No pity. No remorse. He was merely an obstacle to be overcome in the pursuit of a sacred mission.

There was a gun in Olivia’s hand. Her left hand.

She raised the gun and pressed it to the man’s forehead, right between his pleading eyes.

She pulled the trigger.

Blood and brains showered the car’s neat, well-maintained interior, pooling in the concave top of a thermos sitting in the cup holder. The man’s head rocked back on his neck and bounced off the headrest, and then he slid down sideways and over the gear shift until his leaking forehead came to rest against a colorful bag in the passenger seat.

Olivia watched him die like she was waiting for a bus. It took a little longer than she was expecting, but soon enough he stopped breathing. Still she felt nothing.

She woke with a swallowed gasp, sitting up in her bed with the vivid horror of that dream clinging to her mind like an oil slick suffocating a sea bird. It was the most awful, most inexplicable dream she’d ever had.

She’d often talked with Kieran about how important it was in law enforcement to be able to see into minds of killers. She had read dozens of books on the subject of psychopathology and psychological profiling, but she’d never imagined anything even remotely like the kind of casual, careless boredom she’d felt in that dream.

What did it say about her own mind, that she was able to dredge something like that up from the depths of her subconscious? Or had she just been reading too much Thomas Harris?

Olivia pulled her blanket around her shoulders, shivering. Already, the details of the dream were unraveling, slipping away. She looked at her clock radio. It would be going off in two minutes, to wake her for her first period German class. There was a test that day, a minor quiz, but Olivia took every test very seriously and had stayed up late the night before studying.

She concentrated, and before long thoughts of German conjugation filled her head, washing away the last clinging fragments of her terrible, murderous dream.

* * *

The seductive whisper of Olivia’s presence inside Tony’s brain dissipated like fog as he pulled Jimmy’s body upright in the driver’s seat. He shook his head to clear it, and then went through the target’s pockets, removing his wallet and badge. He also removed the keys from the ignition and used them to open the trunk. He took the larger of the two suitcases and set it to one side, then closed the trunk and set about meticulously covering the back end of the car with branches, making it virtually invisible from the road.

He had a bad moment when he heard a car coming down the road, but if the driver noticed anything odd, they didn’t bother to stop and check it out. Tony held his breath as they passed, heart thumping, and tried to blend into the greenery as the sound of the car’s engine faded into the distance.

He was in the clear, for now, but he’d ditch his own car at the earliest opportunity, just to be on the safe side.

* * *

That opportunity came at a rest stop east of Tampa, where he was able to score a green minivan. He ditched the gun in an overflowing dumpster, took only a brief detour to a neighborhood liquor store, and then drove the new vehicle back to Jimmy’s apartment. He parked across the street and headed up the walkway, all ready to be confronted by nosy neighbors. He’d prepared an explanation about how he’d promised to water Jimmy’s plants while he was at Disney World.

Turned out that nobody really cared about anyone else in the crummy little complex. Which was just the way Tony liked it.

Carrying a clinking bag from the liquor store, he let himself into the stuffy apartment and quickly discovered that his excuse wouldn’t have worked, anyhow. There were no plants. In fact, there were hardly any decorations of any kind. The fire-sale sofa, a dull, unappealing plaid, was shoved up against the far wall like the homely girl no one wants to dance with. A second-hand recliner that looked like it got way more mileage than the sofa. Generic table, cluttered with mail and magazines and unwashed coffee mugs. Clearly the house of a recently divorced male who had been used to letting his wife handle things around the house.

Tony didn’t linger. He was on a mission.

He found Jimmy’s gun and shoulder holster hanging inside the closet door. It was a nice rig, comfortable, well-worn leather that fit him perfectly. He was disappointed to find that Jimmy didn’t have any other firearms conveniently stashed around the house, but he did have plenty of ammo for the .38, and a nice buck knife that might come in handy.

He also took 500 dollars that he found hidden in a sock drawer, a tan, summer-weight blazer, and a brand-new pair of those Air Jordan sneakers that the kids were crazy for all of a sudden.

Tony walked through an open archway and into the kitchen, carrying the liquor store bag. He emptied two bottles of vodka down the sink and left them, empty, on the counter. Then he took the third bottle, dumped out a little more than half and used it to prop the apartment door open on his way out.

If anyone came looking, they’d notice the bottle, assume Jimmy had gone off on another bender, and wouldn’t give it a second thought.

In the meanwhile, Jimmy would be in Massachusetts, hunting down a juvenile arson suspect from Jacksonville.

It had taken Tony three days to drive a series of stolen cars from Florida to snowy Westley, Massachusetts.

Having grown up in north Florida, snow was something he’d rarely seen outside of illustrated Christmas cards, and driving through it was a real challenge. But thoughts of Olivia kept him warm.

They also distracted him from the road. The snow turned to rain, and by the time he realized that his tires were sliding uselessly sideways on the icy tarmac, he was unable to avoid plowing into a sign that advertised the local Butchie Burger. When he hit the front leg of the billboard, the large anthropomorphic Boston terrier came crashing down on his hood, shattering the windshield and peppering Tony with cubes of glass.

He struggled to unfasten his seatbelt, but every bone in his body felt like it had been replaced with razor wire. He could taste blood, and feel it burning in his eyes.

Freezing wind clawed at him through the broken windshield, spitting icy rain in his face. He tried the door and found that it had been crushed closed.

Rage welled up in the back of his throat. He was furious at himself for letting something like this happen.

Then the passenger side door was wrenched open and a guy bundled up like a flannel Michelin Man stuck his pink face into the car.

“Had yourself a hell of a crash,” he said loudly. “You all right, mister?”

Tony reached out with his prosthetic arm, catching and twisting the man’s scarf with the hook on the end. The guy’s astonished look would have been funny if Tony wasn’t in such a bad mood. He pulled the knife out of his pocket, thumbed it open, and jammed it into the Good Samaritan’s thick, wattled neck.

At least his blood was warm.

Tony stabbed the guy way more times than he needed to, but it felt good. Like each stab was draining away not only the man’s pointless life, but also Tony’s rage. By the time the guy was dead, Tony felt calm and centered again. He kicked the body out of the car and climbed over it.

It was still horribly cold, but now the wind felt almost bracing, even invigorating. There was no sign of civilization that he could see. No houses or buildings. No people anywhere. There was the Samaritan’s empty car up on the side of the road. The door was hanging open, and the interior of the man’s car seemed warm and inviting in the frozen night, lit by the friendly yellow glow of the automatic overhead light.

Tony grabbed his duffle bag and his map, and got into the man’s car. It was a brand-new Mystique, green with a tan interior. Still had that new-car smell. The guy must’ve just been down to the Butchie Burger and there was a warm sack of chow on the passenger seat. The radio was on, playing “golden oldies.”

Like any time was really golden. Like the world wasn’t always like this.

He twisted the knob until he found a generic rock station. He’d never really cared one way or the other about music, but it made the long drive seem less lonely. He helped himself to a Butchie Burger and drove away.

“Hey, Han,” Chelsea said as she whirled with a dramatic flourish into the dorm room she shared with Olivia, swinging her leopard print roller suitcase up onto her bed. “Did you hear about the peeper? Disgusting!”