Timothy Hallinan - Incinerator

“If the people the Incinerator is burning were privileged,” Annabelle Winston said acidly, “he’d be in jail by now. Let me make our position clear, Lieutenant.”

“Captain,” the captain said.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me if you’re a choir boy,” Annabelle Winston said without raising her voice. “Shut up and let me finish.” The lawyer tried to pat her wrist reassuringly, and she slapped his hand away. “Either you satisfy me, or we’re going to make a laughingstock out of the entire Los Angeles Police Department. You don’t think we can do it? I’m Baby Winston. I go to the bathroom and it’s news. I buy a hat in New York, and designers in Paris change their plans. I’ve fought that kind of attention since I was fifteen. Well, now I’m going to invite it. How would you like to see me on the cover of People? I can arrange it, or Bobby can.”

“‘Orphaned Heiress on the Hunt,’ something like that,” Bobby Grant said with relish. It would look good on his resume.

Annabelle Winston lifted the hand with the emerald, and Grant clamped his lips shut, further eloquence reduced to a bubble of air that pushed his mouth forward like a monkey’s. “The offer of a million dollars is on the square,” Annabelle said. “I could spend that on eye shadow and not miss it. I may only be a girl, Captain, but I’ve run a multimillion-dollar corporation on my own for three years. I went to Mr. Grist because I didn’t trust your abilities,” she said, looking at me while I tried to figure out how to slide under the table without being missed. “The fact is, gentlemen,” Annabelle Winston said, “as far as this case is concerned, you don’t know jack shit.”

I tried to think of something conciliatory to say as Dr. Schultz and one of the lieutenants both pulled out packs of cigarettes and then remembered the ban on smoking. The lieutenant put his pack back, while Dr. Schultz laid his on the table and drummed his nails on it.

“The deal,” the captain said grudgingly, trying to sound like someone with an option. “We might as well listen to the deal.”

“Give us all the information. Give us a full game plan. If I’m satisfied, Captain, I’ll be a good girl.” Annabelle Winston gave him a winning smile along with his proper rank. “Just persuade me that you’ve got an idea that will catch the Incinerator, and I’ll fade away. Catch him, you get all the credit. Don’t catch him, and I’ll fry you alive.”

She looked around the table. “Sorry about the metaphor,” she said. She didn’t sound sorry.

Nobody spoke. Then the captain looked at Dr. Schultz and nodded.

“Here’s what we know,” Schultz said smoothly. He directed the smile, crinkles and all, at Annabelle. “He started last year at about the same time, the beginning of the fire season. September twenty-sixth he burned a bum named Warren Fields. A transient, same as the others. October nineteenth we had another incident. Same modus 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.