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  “You got this handled?” Avery asked Ramirez, gesturing to Cox.

  “Yeah. See if you can sort all of this out.”

  Avery quickly made her way over to where Connelly was in the midst of a heated debate between Finley and one of the B3 officers. The tag on his uniform read Simmons.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Avery asked.

  “Too much at once,” Connelly said. “Someone over at B3 leaked the story to the press. In the last hour, the media has been reporting that there’s an interdepartmental rivalry going on.”

  “That’s not exactly accurate,” Simmons said. “Although, we…”

  Simmons trailed off here, looking behind Avery. She turned and followed his gaze. He was looking at Ramirez ushering Cox to an interrogation room.

  “What the fuck?” Simmons said, not quite in a yell but nowhere near quiet. “Is that Denny Cox?”

  “Yes, it is,” Avery said. “Do you know him?”

  He looked at her with such venom that she thought he might throw a punch or shove her. “He used to be a B3 cop.”

  Connelly’s eyes grew wide. “Are you shitting me? This is unbelievable.”

  “I don’t care what department he was with,” Avery said. “He was fired for very good reasons and also has a history of arson. Add to that the fact that he was an ex-boyfriend of Sarah Osborne, the latest victim, and there’s more than enough reason to bring him in.”

  “Jesus,” Simmons said.

  “Seems like karma if you ask me,” Finley said. “You tattle to the media on us and now there are cameras rolling everywhere when one of your boys gets arrested.”

  “Everyone calm down,” Connelly said. “Finley…I need you to go ahead and release Adam Wentz. After that, I don’t care what you do, just stay away from these B3 pricks.”

  “Hey, watch your mouth,” Simmons said.

  “You’re in my station, asshole. I don’t need to watch my mouth.” Ignoring him, Connelly then turned to Avery. “I need a word with you in private. Come on.”

  He led her through the cramped station and to his office. He shut the door behind them and rubbed at his temples.

  “This is a mess,” he said. “This is just one huge clusterfuck, Avery. Now please…tell me there is a really good reason for having that ex-B3 cop here in cuffs.”

  “Aside from his record, he also got violent when we questioned him.”

  “In your opinion, is he our guy?”

  “It’s too soon to tell, sir.”

  “Cut that nonsense. What’s your gut telling you?”

  She thought about it for a moment and then shook her head. “Probably not. If he was the killer and has been dumping bodies at the rate we’re finding them burned, I doubt he’d have been drinking heavily—and Denny Cox is pretty drunk at the moment. If he was the killer, he’d want to stay alert and ready just in case we caught on to him.”

  “But is there a chance he’s our guy?” Connelly asked.

  “There’s always a chance, sir.”

  “Well, if we can’t nail him for it within an hour, I’m letting him go. This just makes an already screwed-up situation even worse.”

  “Understood.”

  “Now,” he said, “as if things aren’t bad enough, I need you to head to O’Malley’s office. The fucking FBI showed up two hours ago and are pushing against us. I need you to talk to him and see if you can work your magic. And I need you on it now.”

  She left Connelly’s office as he started rubbing at his temples in frustration again. She hurried down the hallway to O’Malley’s larger office. She knocked on the door, which was already cracked, and entered following O’Malley’s loud “Come in.”

  She entered the office and saw that O’Malley looked just as flustered as Connelly. The FBI agent that was standing at the edge of O’Malley’s desk and rifling through documents, however, looked unreasonably calm.

  “Special Agent Duggan, this is Detective Avery Black,” O’Malley said. “She’s our very best. She’s also the lead on this case.”

  Duggan extended his hand and gave hers a hearty shake. He looked to be in his late forties. He was well-polished right down to his beard. “Nice to meet you,” Duggan said. “I hear you’re the very best in the A1.”

  “Let’s hope so,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I’m not here to run the show. I just wanted to sort of partner up with the best there is. This guy you just brought in…do you think he’s the culprit?”

  “Honestly, no.”

  Duggan smiled and then looked to O’Malley. “I don’t either,” he said. “Your chief and I had a little bet. Seems he won…he was pretty sure you’d not think this is our guy either. Now, what makes you think he’s not the guy?”

  “He’d be ’fessing up by now,” Avery said. “He’d want to claim the crimes. He’d also not be one beer away from being absolutely hammered if he was in the middle of some weird killing and burning spree. He’s also pretty drunk…and someone in the midst of a killing spree would want a clear head at all times.”

  “You’ve got a smart girl here,” Duggan said.

  O’Malley nodded, but it looked like it pained him to admit it. “Yeah, I know. But I can’t just let this guy go. The pieces are all too coincidental. Even if we know it, the media doesn’t. There’s too much pressure.”

  “So you’re keeping him here?” Avery asked. “You might want to talk to Connelly. He wants him out of here in an hour if nothing solid comes up.”

  “Black, I have no choice for now. Look…help Agent Duggan however you can. But for now, I’m working under the premise that we’ve got our guy. So you can give it a rest for now.”

  “Chief O’Malley,” Duggan said, “you have two very qualified people saying this is not your man and—”

  “With all due respect, you come talk to me when you have a bloodthirsty media and a paranoid public to think about. Until then…thanks for your help, Agent Duggan…but you can take your leave now. You, too, Black.”

  Avery shook her head and chuckled. “No big deal,” she said when Duggan was gone. “You’re wrong. And that means I’ll see you within another day or so, wondering if you’ll actually admit to being wrong.”

  “Get out of here, Black,” O’Malley spat.

  Avery did as he requested, barely aware that Agent Duggan was following after her. It was like being shadowed by a wraith or some sort of demon. Sure, she knew he only wanted to help, but it was like some weight pulling at her as the pressure of her superiors and the media tightened in around her.

  With Duggan trailing her, she knew that she needed time away from the frenzy of the A1. Just a small break where she could get out some frustration. With Duggan still following behind her as she made her way to her office, she turned to the agent and tried to be as friendly as possible.

  “I’m stepping out for an hour or so,” she said. “Has O’Malley given you my contact information?”

  “He has.”

  “Then call me if you need me.”

  “If I might ask…where are you headed that might be more important than what’s happening right now?”

  In a cold and almost calculated voice, she answered: “I’ll be back soon. For right now, I just need to hit something.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  He wasn’t sure why the sight of ash made him feel so at peace. It was something he had struggled with since his childhood. By looking at a pile of ash, he felt not only powerful, but simple and peaceful. It was the same with dust. In the same way that a piece of wood could be burned to nothing more than a weightless pile of ash, bricks and concrete could also be broken down to their basest form—useless dust.

  This was especially true of the human body. The human body was a marvelous thing, from the smooth skin to the unidentifiable cells within it. But when it was met with intense fire, the human body was no better than a common piece of wood. It was reduced to mere ash, a pile of almost nothing that could be placed into a bag and th
rown away without a second thought.

  A bag…or an urn.

  He sat in his rollaway chair and turned to face the shelf that sat to the far side of the room. The shelf, much like the room, was immaculately cleaned. It was empty except for a small desk, his chair, the shelf with the urns, and three buckets of a homemade chemical mixture that were pushed far into the corner. The floor was concrete and the walls were made of cinderblock. A group of glass urns sat on the shelf. There were eight in all—but there had once been ten. He’d taken the other two with him the last time he had carried the bodies out and dumped them. He had almost decided to keep them but had come to the conclusion that the urns should stay with the remains. It seemed more pure that way.

  Slowly, he got up and walked to the back of the room. The place was slit only by a single overhead bulb. There were no windows and even if there were, no light would get in. He was currently about fifteen feet underground, sitting directly below the house he had been raised in. It should have been relatively cold in the room but over the last few days, it had gotten rather warm.

  And there was a foul smell, too.

  The smell came from the back of the room, from the very place he was now walking toward. Along the back of the wall, there was a large metal door. It looked very much like the door of a meat locker but was reinforced by a thick board that slid through a metal clasp, holding the already-secure locking mechanism in place.

  He slid the board out and placed it against the wall. He then opened the door by its U-shaped pressurized handle. He opened it now and looked inside. When he did, the foul smell increased tenfold.

  He was used to it, though. It didn’t bother him in the slightest as he peered inside.

  The room was three feet deep and five feet wide. While it was contained in the cinderblock of the cellar he did his work in, he had spent the better part of a year insulating it. The walls were made of sheets of steel and stone. The stone wall was about a foot thick, with a layer of steel on both sides.

  There were char marks here and there along the walls but he was pleased with how his handiwork had held up. The ceiling had buckled a bit but would hold up for at least another three or four fires.

  So far, he had burned two bodies inside of it. He’d done his very best to clean up after each one but there was still a lingering dust of ash on the floor. There was no vent of any kind within the room, so the room still contained a great deal of the heat from the two fires and the test fires that had come before them.

  And soon—perhaps as early as tomorrow—there would be even more heat inside. The box contained fire much better than he had ever hoped. And over the years, he had learned not only how to properly set fires, but how to make them stronger and how to control them. It was something of an art, an art that he was still learning to perfect.

  He smiled into the room and slowly closed the door again. After he slid the board back through the metal loop, he walked over to the shelf. He took one of the urns down and plucked it lightly. It made a pleasant ting that rang musically through the room.

  He opened it and looked at the emptiness inside.

  He smiled again, knowing that it would not be empty for very long.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Avery never even thought about going back home. If she’d retreated home with her tail between her legs after being dismissed by O’Malley (especially in front of an FBI agent) she would have felt like jumping out of her own skin. Instead, she had headed straight for the gym. She took Krav Maga classes twice a week and although this was not the night of either of her classes, she knew that there were always people hanging around the mats, looking to spar.

  When you were an attractive woman not yet in her forties, finding a random sparring partner was easy.

  Of course, the cocky look on the face of the man who had volunteered to spar with her became one of confusion, then embarrassment, and then fear. He had gone through that whole range of emotion in less than a minute.

  Currently, she was maneuvering herself around his back with his right arm trapped. As she locked in the arm bar, she felt her mind drift off, almost letting her muscles and joints go into some sort of autopilot. She thought of what was going on at headquarters and how FBI interference—not to mention media attention—could make this case harder. She also thought about how irresponsible Ramirez had been on two occasions, one right behind the other. It was not like him. While he could be a hothead from time to time, she was still pretty sure the two altercations had come from a protective feeling he now had for her because they had finally shared a bed.

  She felt the man trying to buckle under her, trying to roll her to the left. He was strong but not nearly as fast or as intuitive as Avery. She moved her right leg, wrapped it around his back, and then quickly brought her arms up to his chest. She caught him mid-roll, stopped his momentum, and was able to not only pin him to the mat in a rear naked choke, but she also managed to trap his right leg beneath him. He wasn’t going anywhere. Now, all Avery had to do was gently apply pressure. She did this gradually, feeling his body tense up beneath her as her train of thought reconnected.

  She thought of her meeting with Sloane and how she had learned the basics of how an arsonist’s mind worked. It seemed eerily simple and she could not figure out why she was having such a hard time grasping it. As of late, it seemed that she was having a hard time understanding anyone: the killer, Ramirez, even her own daughter.

  Thinking of Rose, she wondered where she was right now. She wondered if Rose had finally blown off her anger and unblocked her own mother from Facebook. She wondered if—

  Her thoughts were again broken, this time by the sound of the man beneath her tapping rapidly at the mat in submission.

  She released him and he rolled away, getting to his feet slowly. He looked back at her with an embarrassed smile as Avery sat calmly on the mat, catching her breath. She had worked up a nice sweat and she was starting to feel at peace again.

  “I’d say it doesn’t sting to be beaten since it was by a beautiful woman,” her random sparring partner said. “But that would be a lie. Losing sucks regardless.”

  “It does,” she said.

  And before allowing the time to let the conversation get awkward, she left the mat and headed into the gym. She spent some time at the punching bags, enjoying the almost percussive sound they made against her fists when she worked up her rhythm and speed. She then worked on her lower-body attack. She didn’t stop until her muscles were sore and sweat was stinging her eyes.

  She made her way to the shower, feeling that she had worked some of the day’s frustrations off. She considered calling Ramirez, knowing of at least one other physical activity that did wonders for working off stress. But given the day they’d had, she would only be using him and he didn’t deserve that.

  She left the gym and headed out onto the street. It was just after seven and the clogged traffic of people getting off work had thinned out. She had a brisk ten-block walk ahead of her, something she enjoyed from time to time. It was an especially good little exercise following a workout at the gym.

  But four minutes into her walk, all thoughts of exercise and stress release were forgotten.

  Just up ahead of her on the other side of the street, she caught sight of Rose.

  ***

  She was walking into a small café that Avery had passed countless times but had never visited. There was a young man with her. They were holding hands and Rose was laughing about something as they stepped inside. Avery stopped for a moment, feeling her common sense and her motherly instincts at war. In the end, it wasn’t much of a match; she crossed the street and headed for the diner.

  She peered in through the glass but couldn’t see them. The place didn’t appear to be too busy but Avery couldn’t get a clear view from the street. With a sigh, she pushed at the door and went inside. The place smelled of coffee and freshly baked pastries. From what she could tell, the place catered to a younger crowd, making Avery feel a little out of h
er element—especially after having just come from the gym and dressed in a baggy hoodie and workout pants.

  She spotted Rose and her apparent beau near the back of the café. A waitress was speaking to them, jotting down their orders. Avery walked slowly in that direction and moved in just as the waitress walked away. As luck would have it, there was a third chair at their table, positioned alone on the side opposite them. Avery walked over as if she had been invited but was not so bold as to take a seat.

  Rose looked up, confused at first, but then falling into a state of absolute terror. The guy looked equally confused. Avery checked him over quickly and found that he was exactly the type of guy she imagined Rose would go after: tall, dark hair, scruff from his ears down, and one of those stupid ear-stretchers in each of his ear lobes.

  “Hi, Rose,” Avery said.

  “What are you doing here?” Rose asked.

  “I saw you come in and thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

  “You saw me come in?” Rose asked, clearly not believing her. “Since when do you frequent coffee shops?”

  “I don’t,” Avery said. “I was leaving the gym on the other end of the block and saw you coming in.” She then looked to the young man and gave a small and rather insincere wave. “Hi. I’m Avery—Rose’s mother.”

  “Oh. Nice to meet you,” he said, uncertain.

  “Mom, are you really doing this right here, right now?” Rose asked.

  “Hey,” the guy said. “It’s okay, Rose.” He gave Avery a smile and reached across the table to shake Avery’s hand. “I’m Marcus,” he said.

  She shook the offered hand but wasn’t fooled by the gesture. His expression alone spoke of arrogance. He didn’t think there was any way an unexpected visit from an estranged mother was going to throw him off of his game.