Entropy (23 page)

The violence inflicted on the most recent victim was disturbing: over sixty lacerations to the face and neck. The coroner couldn't exactly determine what kind of blade had been used. No weapon had been found. No trace fingerprints were located on any parts of the body. The victim had been bound and gagged, as several ligature marks were discovered around the feet, neck and ankles. I studied the crime scene images.

It was hard to tell if the body photographed at the edge of the riverbed was even that of a boy. Half of his face was gone. There was a large gash below his nose which had split his upper lip like an open zipper. Several of his teeth had been removed, but not enough to inhibit identification. Sediment was embedded underneath his fingernails. It was also depressed into various wounds throughout the body, including the throat. Samples included traces of clay, mud, sandstone and obsidian.

The difference with the latest victim was that his body had been in the water for the least amount of time, only a few minutes before it was dragged to the shore. His body was wrapped tightly in mesh, especially around the neck, which could have restricted his larynx. There was no explanation from the coroner on how mud and soil lined the throat; unless it had been swallowed perhaps during a struggle with the perpetrator, or inserted forcibly before death; unless the victim had been submerged in water previous to the attempts to dispose of the body. I reopened the sexually explicit images of the third victim, Penelope.

I brooded over seeing her in those positions again, but it was the best lead that I had. I concentrated heavily on the background of each photograph. There was nothing unique or distinguishing in the rooms where she appeared to be held. Each had no window, no reflections that I could have enlarged. I studied the extremities of her body, mostly the feet and hands. Laughter echoed in the empty streets below our hotel room window. I stood at the edge of the balcony. To the right of the railing rested a small flower, planted in a copper container. I reached over and pushed my hand into the soil, rubbing it over and over against my palm with my thumb. Uneasily, I closed the balcony door and looked at that photograph of Penelope, her hands tied behind her back. The image of that wilted lily inserted into her mouth ...

Each one merely needed cultivating …

I sent instructions to have the sediment retested and compared against plant fertilizers, landscape mulch, seeding, as well as samples taken from the scene. I went into the bathroom to wash the dirt from my hands. The warm water blended with the soil and turned gray. With a light bulb missing from the fixture above the sink my features in the mirror looked darker, and somehow burnt. It was if I had been caught in a fire.

Who was I?

William McCoy, arsonist. Wanted for questioning in the suspicious burning of a government building in Florida. Currently linked to a group of anti-abortionists in Arkansas. Last official sighting was over four months ago in Missouri. He is listed as a person of interest in the arson-related burning of a clinic in Mississippi that killed two people in an adjacent building, a hardware store. The victims were a man, 54, and his son, 22.

I dropped the rubber gloves into a dumpster behind a gas station. In the distance behind a grove of trees, trails of smoke separated in the strong winds. Headlights flickered in the street from oncoming traffic. I pushed myself up against the side of the dumpster, and watched her disappear under the streetlights into a field. A second-degree burn marred my left hand. I winced as I opened and closed it. Things had gotten worse.

Her group had ended up in Mississippi as part of a protest against a new clinic that had opened in a small suburb outside of Hattiesburg. She brought me along, but gave me as little information as possible about the specific details. All I was told was where to meet her and was given a fraction of a list of supplies that I needed to bring. Once I arrived, there would be an envelope presented to me by one of her members giving me further directions. No one at the Bureau was expecting me to bring her group in quickly. I needed more names, identities, and other possible targets. There had to be more. It would come. But I could only live in this filth for so long before I started to rot. And it all started with thesmallest of things.

Less than an hour after we torched that clinic in Missouri, she ditched the stolen car in a vacant lot and burned it. The building had been completely gutted, but no injuries were reported. Her people had arranged a different hotel for me, registered under another false persona. I wasn't surprised. I had expected to be controlled, or to at least be held under suspicion. I dropped my bag at the side of the bed and switched on the bathroom light. The porcelain on the bottom of the sink was stained. I slid back the shower liner a few inches and twisted the faucet. When the showerhead opened up, the warm water stuttered against a cracked tile.

I tasted smoke at the back of my throat. I stripped down and stood in front of the mirror, tapping my fist against the edge of the sink. William McCoy wasn't a god; he was a fabrication, a distortion. I could have arrested her already. There was enough evidence for the District Attorney to easily attain a conviction. It was obvious from her behavior that the woman was disturbed. Part of me thought that she was more dangerous than her group realized. But I never imagined that compromising her would lead to the death of innocent people.

I wrapped a rough towel around my waist and knelt down on the floor. Looking up, I noticed someone stride past the door. I reached quietly underneath the mattress and pulled out a gun. I cocked it slowly. The shower was still running and the bathroom had begun to be lost behind a growing cloud of steam. The shadows paused at the threshold to the room. An envelope was shoved under the door. I waited for the person to walk away then crouched down and retrieved it. There was nothing written on the outside. I sat down on the edge of the bed, the gun still loaded beside me. I opened the envelope slowly. There was a Polaroid picture on the inside. It was an artist's depiction of the Virgin Mary holding a child, scarred and burnt, in the palm of her hands. Displays of various flowers were set behind her. Blood dripped from some of the stems and covered her legs. Written at the bottom of the photograph was a phrase.

The destroyer of dreams ...

I stood up and noticed movement behind me in a mirror that was set above an uneven dresser. I turned. There was something unnatural about the way she walked, ephemeral and alluring. She seemed to drift through the warm mist circling the doorway of the bathroom. It was obvious she had come here right after ditching the car. Sweat and ash from the fire still covered her body. The flickering light made it glisten.

“I don't appreciate being monitored,” I said. I showed her the gun.

“How did you know that I was in here?” she asked.

“It doesn't matter. What are you doing here?”

“You represent an investment on our part. If you're going to work with us, trust is earned,” she instructed. There was a mildly threatening tone in her diction.

“What makes you think that I trust you, or any of your people?”

“I don't see that you have a lot of options. Remember, other people would be very interested in talking to you,” she said.

“I assume you mean federal authorities? What makes you think that I wouldn't turn on your group if you put me in that position? Besides, I thought that I was an investment,” I said.

“I wasn't involved in recruiting you, so I don't care,” she said.

“So you don't call all the shots?” I asked. It seemed to bother her that I thought of her as a subordinate.

“That's irrelevant,” she said, drawing back the curtains and peering out. “When it comes to you, I do.”

“And what happens if I don't want to follow your instructions?” I asked.

She turned from the window and stood directly in front of me. Assuredly, she raised her hands to the nape of my neck, lingered momentarily, then passed her fingertips down across the plane of my chest. The woman's caress was hot and rough, but arousing. Gently, she reached into her jeans. When she removed her hand I quickly grabbed her wrist and exposed her palm. In the crux of her fingers she carried a lighter. The flare refracted off of the pale color of her eyes. She toyed with it, rolling it around in her hand, watching the thin strands of black smoke appear and disappear. Playfully, she pulled at the frayed edges of the towel. Without warning, she pressed the lighter into the tight flesh of my abdomen.

“Just like all those murderers, you burn,” she said bending over and rolling her tongue across the red patch of blistering skin. I placed a hand around her neck and pressed my fingertips hard into her throat. She smiled alluringly, seemingly enjoying the violence.

When I awoke several hours later, she was gone. The sheets were still soaked with her body's perspiration. In her place was another photograph of a painting. It was again a depiction of the Virgin Mary, standing on a small rock in the middle of the ocean. Floating on the calm waters were children, smoke permeating from their bodies. Each one was scorched, black and unrecognizable. In the distance, behind the Madonna's point of view, flames touched the blurred edges of the clouds.

The politicians of lifelessness will burn …

The water was cold in the shower by the time I stepped in and felt its brutality across my tired skin. I carefully scrubbed the place where she had burned me so it wouldn't become infected. I closed my eyes, determined not to remember where she had touched me, and pressed her bare breasts against my chest. I could taste her sweat on the tips of my fingers.

***

William McCoy had been with her group in Mississippi for eight days assisting with the lead up and planning. I was visible at protests with several other members while she remained inconspicuous. Mostly, I was verifying schematics on building plans, architecture and materials. She wanted her fires to burn quickly, and I needed to know how the building was constructed in order to decide on an accelerant and where to set off the blaze. Several of her group's previous arsons left behind very little, if any, residual debris for forensic investigators to analyze. Whoever really ran her group was educated enough to leave little evidence.

The line about politicians led me to believe that her group was intending to further their violence to include government buildings, as well as other women's clinics. Her intentions were to complete the Mississippi job, then move on to various suburbs of Washington, DC. I reached my handler and was instructed to continue to be William McCoy, but not to make an arrest until I was given orders to do so.

It wasn't supposed to be raining. Winds had increased to thirty miles per hour, not ideal conditions for arson. Nevertheless, I stood in the shadows of the vacant building Hattiesburg, and watched her open the front door to the clinic. The alarm was already disabled. Her group was inside for less than eight minutes. I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the rain. Not long after, the front window to the clinic shattered and elongated flames erupted, pushing glass hundreds of feet into the rain-soaked parking lot. The debris smoldered, shards of broken glass glistening against the ground. I never went inside the building.

The fire rapidly spread and raged through every corner of the clinic, fueled by the accelerants. Only particular groups were allowed to purchase large quantities of accelerants, usually fire departments, which were used in training new fire-fighters. So she most likely had used gasoline. However, it often ignited too easily and left prominent burn patterns. Suddenly a man ran out from behind the building, his body consumed by bright, thick flames. Any screams he uttered were muffled by the sounds of burning flesh and snapping wood. Whoever it was didn't make it more than twenty feet from the building before dropping to the ground dead, his body a lifeless, ashen object. He looked like burnt furniture.

Water was pouring from the aluminium gutters and rushed across my feet. It reminded me of the times spent with Noemi, when we would embrace in our bed, listening to the rain fall upon the roof. I remembered that the first time we kissed was during a brutal thunderstorm. We had gone out to dinner, and talked for so long that we missed attending a musical at the high school. Instead, I walked her back to her apartment. We were mostly soaked, but neither one of us cared. About a block from her place, her umbrella was carried away in the high winds. She started laughing. And in that moment, I kissed her on the smooth, wet underside of her chin.

The sound of a collapsing wall focused my attention on the inferno in front of me. The swirling winds carried the flames into the trees above the clinic. I grabbed her by the arm and told her that we had to leave. She kept looking down at the body. It would take weeks for anyone to identify the remains of her group member. It would give me time. As she dropped to her knees and I started to pull her aside, the adjacent building began to burn. It was a hardware store. No one should have been there given it was in the middle of the night.

And no one heard the screams from the building amongst the howling weather.

***

By the time Noemi came home with her sister I had drifted off to sleep. Keeping the lights off, she had stripped off her clothes and nestled her body behind mine. I awoke as I felt her lips find the soft spot below my neck.

“I love you,” she said.

“I know.”

“You've been quiet since we got here. Is everything okay? I know the place is different,” she said.

“It's not the town. It's quiet,” I said. “It's been a while since I've felt like this,” I added.

“Felt like what?” I rolled over and pulled her across my frame. She rested her head on my chest.

“I'm not sure how to describe it. Calm, I guess.” I wondered if she felt my lies rippling across the surface of my body.

“I don't make you feel calm?”

“You do. You're the only thing to me that's beautiful,” I said. Noemi raised her head and wrapped her hand around my neck and took hold of it firmly. In the darkness she kissed me, and pressed her tongue firmly inside of my mouth. I should have told her everything. It was an opportunity where I could have been honest with her about what was happening to me, and she would have listened.