Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Read online

  Arson. Loshak was right. This would be a tough one — tough to crack and tough to deal with.

  She thought again about what Officer Klootey had asked — whether or not this guy was a serial killer.

  She wondered again if the first victim, the retired middle school principal, had been an accident. They had one prior fire that matched the M.O., but there had been no victims. If he’d set other fires before that — which the profile strongly suggested — they’d very likely been victimless as well. Possibly in isolated or rural locations, like the abandoned property.

  Some experts had speculated that John Orr may have set tens of thousands of fires in the wooded areas around Los Angeles throughout his life. After his arrest, the number of wildfires county-wide had dropped by 90%. Setting fires was an utter obsession for this kind of person, something he thought about all the time, every waking hour.

  If the retiree was their unsub’s first victim, though, was that by design or by mistake? And had he liked how he’d felt when he realized someone died in his fire?

  Her gut said yes. Her gut said he’d gotten a taste for murder with the fire that killed the retiree, and then targeted somewhere isolated — somewhere well outside the city — but packed with people to really up the brutality.

  Whatever the reason, it was a clear escalation, and it meant things were only going to get worse from here.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning, Darger woke up. Showered. Her phone buzzed as she finished getting dressed. It was Avis. The Toyota Camry she’d requested drop-off service for was waiting downstairs.

  When she got down to the little circular driveway in front of the hotel, however, there was no Toyota Camry. Instead, there stood a man in an Avis polo shirt and a Dodge Caravan.

  “Miss Darger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You ordered the rental car for drop off?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great!”

  “Where is it?”

  “Pardon?”

  “The car.”

  Bewildered look.

  “Well, this is it. Right here.”

  He gestured at the van.

  “That’s not a car. That’s a van.”

  He chuckled.

  “Yes. My apologies, but we were out of — what was it you’d originally booked?”

  “A Camry.”

  “Yes, we were out of Camrys. Actually, we were out of all our base-price model cars. Very busy week.”

  Darger just stared at the van. Normally, she wouldn’t care, but she was going to catch hell from Luck about driving a minivan. She had a feeling that little group of uniformed officers pranking each other would laugh like hyenas if and when they saw it, too.

  “We have luxury SUVs available for a small upcharge, if you’d prefer…”

  “No, it’s fine,” she said.

  She was tempted to ask why she’d been able to book a Camry online at all if they were out of Camrys, but it wasn’t this guy’s fault the company he worked for had a shitty website. No need to give him grief for something he had no control over.

  “You’ll be charged the same price as the Camry, just so you know. No upcharge for the van.”

  “There’s an upcharge for vans?” Darger said, not able to conceal her disbelief.

  He chuckled again.

  “The extra seating.”

  “Right. Well, that’ll come in handy if I give an entire family a ride at some point during my business trip.”

  “Exactly!”

  Darger signed the clipboard the man passed her, accepted the keys, and climbed in. She took a moment to adjust the seat and mirrors before getting a move on. A few blocks away, she grabbed a breakfast sandwich from McDonald’s and got on the highway heading east.

  This drive lacked the scenic qualities of the areas she’d passed with Luck. It was an endless urban sprawl as far as the eye could see: billboards and strip malls and electric substations. The main patches of uninhabited land seemed to belong to golf courses, cemeteries, and landfills.

  The weather was nice, at least. Sunny and clear, with just a light haze of clouds hanging above the horizon.

  She turned the radio on and flipped around until she found an oldies station. She caught the tail end of “Twist and Shout” and then “I Got A Woman” by Ray Charles. Darger tapped out the drum beat against the steering wheel with her fingers.

  Her mind didn’t linger on the music for long. It snapped back to the case, to the pool of information she’d absorbed about arsonists through the years.

  Many serial killers cut their teeth with arson. It was part of the Macdonald triad, which was a set of three childhood behaviors thought to predict sociopathic impulses later in life — the other two being bedwetting and torturing animals.

  David Berkowitz, who would go on to serial killing infamy as the Son of Sam, started fantasizing about killing and setting fires as a seven-year-old. What started as an obsession with fire and explosions turned to something darker when he imagined lighting his babysitter on fire. As an adult, he shot couples sitting in cars in New York, killing six and wounding seven.

  Arthur Shawcross had exhibited a long history of setting fires before he went on to kill 14 victims in upstate New York. His army psychiatrist noted that Shawcross derived “sexual enjoyment” from starting fires years before the murders.

  Dennis Rader AKA BTK, wrote about what he wanted to be his grand finale — his “opus.” Using propane canisters, he’d set a house on fire with a victim — a young girl — tied up inside, hanging upside down. He’d gone so far as selecting a victim and had done extensive sketches that mapped her neighborhood and a partial rendering of her house. Thankfully, he was arrested before he could carry the crime out.

  The list went on and on. It wasn’t so hard to see the connection between arson and serial murder, Darger thought. They often followed a similar pattern. A build-up of stress almost always triggered the violent acts. These were inadequate personality types. Socially inept at best. Antisocial at worst. Many came from traumatic and abusive families. They felt humiliated and powerless. So the stress built and they had no coping mechanisms. No network of family or friends to turn to for support. They needed an outlet.

  Fantasies became the way they escaped.

  Any fantasies of normal achievement or accomplishment eventually warped, pushed farther and farther into the extreme, corrupted until only the darkest dreams remained. In their minds, violence became the only power they could wield, the only way they could reassure themselves of their worth, of their agency in the world.

  And eventually they tried to make the fantasies real, imagined escape from their problems only in choosing a victim. Finally, they acted, poured all of their humiliation, rage, and pain into the violence, into the fire, into the taking of lives.

  Any logic in it was horrifically perverted, of course, but Darger could follow it nevertheless.

  In the case of children or young adults, she could see how starting fires would be the baby step for some sociopaths. There was the forbidden danger — what child isn’t instructed to not play with matches? And then the fact that fire was so destructive as to be awe-inspiring. Who hadn’t sat around a fireplace or campfire and gazed into the flames? There was great power at the end of a lighter, a primal power that could not be tamed.

  Darger often told herself when she worked these cases that the killer was only a man, and usually it was true. But in this case, they sought a man wielding fire, an elemental power that cared not whether it consumed the wood and metal of a building or the flesh and blood of a person.

  They could stand against a man, she was certain of that. But could they stand against fire?

  Chapter 7

  As she traveled further east, the scenery gradually shifted. The buildings spread out, and she spotted mountains in the distance on either side of the road. She crossed the Santa Ana River, which didn’t look much like a river where Darger came from. More hills jutted from the earth straigh
t ahead. She was getting close to her destination.

  The highway snaked through a small canyon with green, rocky mountain tops that looked more like Ireland than California to Darger. Except for the palm trees. They were kind of a dead giveaway.

  Things were decidedly less metropolitan in Yucaipa. The foothills formed natural barriers to the suburban encroachment, leaving wide open spaces of low, scrubby vegetation. She could see now that snow dusted the peaks of the tallest mountains in the background.

  The GPS on her phone told her to take the next exit off the highway, and then she followed the instructions Beck had given from there.

  Take a right at the used car lot with the giant inflatable alien. Two blocks down you’ll hit Marigold Street. Left on Marigold, fourth house on the left. If you reach the Yucaipa Motel, you’ve gone too far.

  Darger parked on the street beside a knobby-looking mulberry tree and climbed out onto the sidewalk. The fenced-in yard was littered with toys. A molded plastic jungle gym with a small slide. A child-sized picnic table painted bright orange. A purple bicycle with training wheels and silver streamers in the handles. And one of the little cars powered by pushing your feet over the ground, which Darger always thought of as the kiddie version of a Flintstones car.

  The gate out front creaked when Darger let herself through then slammed shut with a clang. She climbed the single step up to the front door and knocked.

  Clumps of red and white lilies were blooming on either side of the doorstep, and Darger caught a faint but pleasant whiff. She leaned over to smell them properly while she waited but got too close and ended up with a streak of yellow pollen smeared on her cheek. She wiped it away. No one had come to the door yet, so she knocked again.

  Another thirty seconds passed, and she started to wonder if she was in the wrong place. Her eyes darted over to the neighboring houses. Down the street, she spotted the vintage-looking neon sign for the Yucaipa Motel. So she hadn’t gone too far.

  She double-checked the text from Beck, comparing the address given to the brass numbers next to the door. 324 Marigold. Definitely the right address.

  Darger’s thumbs tapped out a message, letting Beck know she was outside, but before she could hit Send, the door swung open.

  A tall man with dark hair stood before her, clutching a small boy of maybe three or four years old. The boy was squirming and appeared to be covered with a layer of something wet and sticky.

  “Violet?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Georgina’ll be out in a moment. I’m Mike.”

  Darger stepped inside and put out her hand. Mike stopped her.

  “You’d regret that. Wallace here just upended a bottle of maple syrup over his head. I’m afraid I’ve been contaminated.”

  Not relishing the thought of a syrupy handshake, Darger retracted her hand.

  Beck appeared in the hallway beyond, shaking her head.

  “Sorry about that. I have absolutely no leeway when it comes to my bladder these days. When nature calls, it’s kind of a matter of life and death,” she said. Without missing a beat, she eyeballed her husband and son and added, “What’s he gotten into?”

  “Syrup again,” Mike answered and whisked the boy away, presumably to be hosed down in the bathtub.

  Beck rolled her eyes in a way that suggested to Darger that disasters of the maple syrup variety were not unprecedented in her household. She veered toward the kitchen and motioned that Darger should follow.

  An electric kettle gurgled and belched steam. Beck lifted it and dumped the piping hot contents into a waiting travel mug.

  “You want anything? Coffee? Tea?” Beck offered as she unwrapped a peppermint tea bag.

  “No, but thanks.”

  “I’m stuck with herbal tea until I pop this little fella out.” Beck plunked the tea bag into the mug and drummed her fingers against her full belly. “Anyway, I talked to Howard Thorne — the owner — last night, and he’s gonna meet us up there at the church.”

  A minty aroma filled the air, reminding Darger of having a sore throat as a kid and drinking peppermint tea with honey.

  As Beck finished securing the lid of her travel mug, a little girl of about six hurdled into the room. She was clutching a robotic dog toy.

  “Mr. Bow-wow needs new batteries.”

  “Jeez Louise. Again? I just put new ones in last week.”

  The girl shrugged.

  Beck waddled further into the kitchen and slid open a drawer. The pack of batteries she pulled out only had one left. She plucked it from the bubble of plastic, then dug around in the drawer. She closed the drawer, opened the one above it, and rifled some more.

  “Well, shoot, honey. We’re out of batteries.”

  “So I can’t play with him now?”

  “You’ll have to wait. Sorry, nugget. I can stop and get some later today, though.”

  The girl’s cheeks sucked inward.

  “Shit.”

  “Morgan!”

  Morgan’s eyes bulged like a bullfrog’s, and she gasped.

  “Oops. I meant to say ‘fuck.’”

  Beck’s mouth dropped open, and Morgan clapped a hand over her lips.

  “Morgan Marie!”

  “I mean fudge! I meant to say fudge!”

  Darger had to bite down on her cheek. Something about little kids swearing always made her laugh. She could see that Beck was stuck between scolding her daughter’s foul language and trying not to laugh herself.

  “Where in the world did you get language like that?”

  “Uncle Clay says it all the time,” Morgan said.

  Beck snorted.

  “Yeah. Well, that’s a good point.”

  Beck’s husband passed by the kitchen area carrying a folded bath towel and a bottle of baby shampoo.

  “Mike, did you hear what your daughter just said?”

  He backed up and poked his head into the room.

  “Well, it must be bad if she’s my daughter, all of a sudden.”

  “She said the S-word and then followed that up with an F-bomb.”

  Mike’s eyebrows crept up his forehead.

  “Double whammy.”

  “Yeah. What do we do with her?”

  “If she wants to talk like a sailor, I say we make her walk the plank.”

  Morgan put her hands on her hips.

  “That’s pirates. Not sailors. And we don’t have a plank.”

  “Oh,” Mike said before continuing on to the bathroom. “I guess you’re off the hook, then.”

  Beck crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Lucky duck. My parents would have washed my mouth out with soap for that kind of language.”

  The girl’s brow furrowed.

  “Soap? In your mouth? But why?”

  “I guess they figured soap was the only way to clean out all the dirty words.”

  Morgan giggled.

  “That makes no sense.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t. But no more talk like that. OK, kiddo?”

  “OK.”

  Morgan galloped out of the kitchen, leaving Beck to sigh with resignation.

  “Just let me grab my stuff, and I’ll be ready to roll,” she said and marched over to a row of coat hooks near the door. She pulled down a black tote bag and thrust a hand inside.

  “Hmm…” she muttered, frowning. “Keys, keys, keys…”

  Beck’s head swiveled one way and then the other, eyes searching various surfaces for the missing keys. She tried the tote bag again, then patted the pockets of her pants.

  “In my pocket,” she chuckled. “Of course.”

  The keys jangled as she pulled them free.

  Beck opened the front door and shouted back into the house, “We’re going now.”

  Three different voices called out in response all at once.

  “See you later, hon.”

  “Bye, mommy!”

  “Love you mom, and don’t forget the batteries for Mr. Bow-wow!”

  “Batter
ies. Yes. Gotcha.”

  Darger followed her outside and across the yard to the driveway.

  “I’d say things aren’t usually this chaotic around here, but that would be a lie,” Beck said as she unlocked a gray Nissan Altima. “Hope you don’t mind the unofficial vehicle. It’s technically my day off.”

  Darger had noticed Beck wasn’t in uniform when they were still inside but hadn’t considered the implications.

  “You should have said something. We didn’t have to do this today.”

  “Oh shush! I don’t mind one bit.”

  At the end of the driveway, Beck paused, glanced both ways, and backed onto the street, heading east. The San Bernardino mountains loomed on the horizon.

  “What can you tell me about Howard Thorne?” Darger asked.

  “Now, I grew up quite a bit further north of here. Up near Santa Barbara. But Mike was born and raised in Yucaipa. So he knows the Thorne family going all the way back. Howie Thorne’s got a few years on him, but he’d heard stories growing up. Howie was apparently a bit of a wild child in his youth. The kind that puts M-80s in mailboxes and TPs his high school principal’s front yard,” Beck said. “Not what I’d call a full-on delinquent, but certainly no goody-goody. I guess he calmed down sometime in his twenties. Found some religion or other. Buddhism, I think. Anyway, the church itself was one of the first churches in the area, but the Presbyterians ended up building a new deal closer to the city and sold the old structure. The Thorne family’s owned the place since… shoot… at least 50 years, I’d guess. Howie’s the one that decided to fix the church up, use it as a venue — primarily weddings, you know. They’ve got a whole homestead out there. They host a garden festival in the spring, and there’s a cider pressing and a pumpkin carving contest in the fall. It’s a real town institution. Cider and donuts at Thorne’s.”

  Darger nodded, taking it all in.

  “You don’t think… I mean the blowing up mailboxes thing, that wouldn’t be considered the kind of thing you’d expect from your profile, would it?”

  “It depends. If it stopped at fireworks, I’d say probably not. If there was more to it… if he was starting nuisance fires, as well? Then I’d wonder.”