Steven James - The Rook

The man’s shoe.

And it looked like it might still have his foot inside it.

A sour, churning flood of nausea swept through me. Some people grow numb to it all. To the death and blood and violence. You’d think in my job I would have, but it still bothers me. It still breaks my heart and turns my stomach.

I took a deep breath to calm myself and then remembered Tessa.

I swiveled around and ran to our car, part of my mind cataloging the scene.

Entrance and exit routes-K Street and 16th. No mobile traffic.

Check.

License plate numbers-five parked cars, memorize the plates.

Check.

Potential witnesses-trolley riders? Unlikely. In the channel, they couldn’t see out… college kid, store owner? Possibly. Tessa, me.

Check.

Surveillance-no visible cameras.

Check.

Tessa was sitting in the passenger seat, rocking back and forth, both hands covering her face. My phone was still in the car beside her. I knocked on the window and called for her to unlock the door.

When she didn’t move, I flagged down a man in a maroon Ford Mustang who’d just turned onto our street. At first I didn’t think he’d stop, but when he saw me glance at his plates, he pulled to a stop beside the curb.

“What’s going on?” he asked. His eyes landed on the blood seeping out of my arm.

“Do you have a phone?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

“Call 911. Tell them a man jumped in front of the trolley.”

He kept gazing at my arm.

“Do it.”

He dialed.

I had to call to Tessa four or five times before she finally unlocked the door and I was able to climb in beside her. “Are you OK?”

She was shaking.

I pulled her close. Held her tight.

“Did he do it?” Her voice fragile, broken. “Did he jump?”

Good. She didn’t see. Thank goodness she didn’t see.

“Don’t worry about that-”

“Did he jump!”

“Yes.” I had to be straight with her. “He did.”

She began hitting me with small, rigid fists. “He shouldn’t have done it, Patrick. He shouldn’t have.”

“I know.”

“Why did he do it?”

We always want a reason, an explanation, but sometimes there aren’t any. “He was confused,” I said. “He made a terrible mistake.”

I hugged her, tried to calm her. “Now, are you OK?”

“I wish we hadn’t come here.”

“Me too. I’m sorry.”

“Can we go?” She was wiping a tear away. “Please. Let’s go.OK?"

A man had just died, just killed himself, and since Tessa had covered her eyes and the college kid had bolted, it looked like I was the only one who’d seen what happened. I knew the police would need my statement, so, as badly as I wanted to, I couldn’t leave the scene quite yet. On the other hand, I didn’t want Tessa anywhere near here. I definitely needed to get her back to the hotel.

Just relax and think for a minute, Pat. Think.

I looked up and saw that the windshield was spider-webbed with cracks and spotted with crimson. Beyond John Doe’s blood spatter, I could see that a crowd was already forming along the edge of the tracks, staring down. Pointing. On the other side of the tracks two men trudged past the onlookers. I couldn’t see their faces, but one walked with the measured steps of an older man, and the bigger, younger guy was carrying a large black duffel bag.

The man in the Mustang had swiveled around the block and was picking them up.

“Well?” Tessa said.

“I won’t be able to leave for a little while,” I said. “Let me see if I can find someone who can take you back to the hotel.”

Special Agent Lien-hua Jiang leaned against the pillows of her hotel bed with her notebook computer on her lap. Fighting the bleariness in her eyes, she scrolled through the case information about the serial arsonist.

For the umpteenth time.

With San Diego’s dry climate and dense population, the city officials were nervous about any fires-especially with the memory of the Santa Ana winds that caused the devastating fires of 2007 still fresh in their minds.

Lien-hua had first worked on this arsonist’s profile last fall, but since then there’d been six more fires and the police still didn’t have any solid leads, and lately he’d been progressing, waiting less time in between fires. So, Lieutenant Aina Mendez, the head of San Diego’s Metro Arson Strike Team, or MAST, had called Lien-hua back to update the profile. And this time Lien-hua had asked Special Agent Patrick Bowers to help analyze the timing and sites of the crimes.

She told herself that she’d asked him to come because of his expertise at finding serial offenders, and not because of any kind of personal interest she might have in him.

That’s what she told herself.

He’d agreed to the assignment immediately, just as she knew he would.

Even though Lien-hua had six solid years of experience as a behavioral profiler, she’d never seen anything quite like this before.

By its very nature, arson is one of the toughest crimes to solve.

The fire destroys evidence, and the suppression and rescue efforts leave the crime scene contaminated. Because of that, arson is a great way to hide one crime inside another.

So, when she’d started on the case last fall, she began by looking for motive. What other crime might the fires be masking?

Insurance fraud wasn’t the issue; she’d checked on that right away. The property value on the buildings was comparatively low by San Diego standards, and the owners had no apparent ties to each other. No fatalities so far, thankfully, so he didn’t seem to be setting the fires to cover up a crime-well, not murder at least.

But what, then? If not for profit or to cover up evidence, why start the fires?

Maybe for the sheer thrill of watching things burn?

Possibly, except Lieutenant Mendez and the Metro Arson Strike Team had interviewed and followed up on everyone in the crowds at each of the fires-even the responding officers and firefighters.

A few leads so far, but nothing substantial.

From everything Lien-hua had seen, this guy didn’t stay to watch.

So then… what was his motive? Why did he do it?

During her career Lien-hua had mostly worked homicides rather than arsons, but Lieutenant Mendez told her that the efficiency of the fires pointed to someone who understood the flow patterns of buoyant gases and could locate the most ideal point of origin so that the building would come down fast.

In other words, a professional.

But if he was a professional, who was hiring him?

And why?

Even now, after fourteen fires, the police still didn’t have a single suspect…

They had thousands.

Lien-hua sighed and massaged her forehead with a tired hand. She left her laptop on the bed and walked to the vase sitting beside her purse on the desk. She’d brought the vase with her, as she always did, and bought the flowers when she arrived in town.

Traveling as much as she did, she’d found that she needed something in addition to yoga and kickboxing to calm her mind and recenter her spirit when she was in the middle of a case.

The simple act of creating beauty and symmetry out of chaos brought her a sense of calm and a welcome escape from the pressures that come with being an FBI profiler-not to mention the grace that the flowers brought to the nondescript hotel rooms she stayed in so often.

Ten years ago, in the months following the “accident” that no one in her family ever dared to talk about-and that Lien-hua still didn’t believe was an accident-her mother had started flower arranging. And over the next seven years, before the car wreck that took her life, Mei Xing had become somewhat of an expert.