Leslie Glass - Burning Time

“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.

49

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.